The Day the Machines Stopped Read online

  POWER FAILURE

  Brian turned up the volume on the radio while Anne sat beside him, listening intently:

  “. . . Soviet experiment can cut off all the power in the world. Industry would be useless. The world would be paralyzed. My studies convince me that modern civilization is in great danger."

  The announcement ended, and Brian turned off the radio. "He claims the experiment will cause widespread irreparable power failure. There is no such thing."

  Anne smiled. "That's a relief to me," she said and stood up.

  Suddenly, the lights went out. Anne's hand gripped Brian's arm. He quickly flipped on the radio. Nothing happened. He opened the door to the hallway. The lights were out. He picked up a flashlight. It wouldn't work. Then he looked at Anne.

  Her face was white. "Oh, Brian," she said. "I'm afraid."

  AUTHOR’S PROFILE

  Christopher Anvil has been writing professionally in the science fiction field for more than a decade, with a record of close to a hundred short stories, novelettes and short novels published in the field's major magazines. Many of his stories have appeared in the important best-of-the-year anthologies. THE DAY THE MACHINES STOPPED is his first full-length novel.

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  A Science Fiction Novel

  THE DAY

  THE MACHINES STOPPED

  Christopher Anvil

  MONARCH BOOKS, INC.

  Derby, Connecticut

  THE DAY

  THE MACHINES STOPPED

  A Monarch Books Science Fiction Novel

  Published in December, 1964

  Copyright © 1964 by Christopher Anvil

  Cover Painting by Ralph Brillhart

  Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC.,

  Capital Building, Derby, Connecticut, and represent the work

  of outstanding novelists and writers of non-fiction especially

  chosen for their literary merit and reading entertainment.

  Printed in the United States of America

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter 1

  Brian Philips hated fights. He was strong and capable enough, but the experience of his twenty-nine years suggested that justice didn’t always win. Often enough, nobody won; both sides were losers. But experience also told him there were times when it was better even to lose than to back down.

  Brian braked his car in the company parking lot, shut off the engine, and looked at his watch. 7:25. He was twenty minutes earlier than usual, and that, he thought, ought to be enough. He glanced around. Although the offices and laboratories of Research East didn’t start work till 8:00, according to the schedule, in actual fact the parking lot was even now more than a quarter filled.

  The big black car of the corporation president, James Cardan, was already in its usual spot near the door, and the window of Cardan’s fourth-floor office was lighted against the dimness of the overcast, early-spring morning. Here and there, Brian noted, other offices and labs were lit up, but not the windows of the lab where he worked as a chemist. That probably meant that he’d arrived before his blond assistant, Anne Cermak. He hoped he’d gotten there about the same time as Carl Jackson.

  Brian remembered Carl’s comment when for a few moments they’d found themselves alone in the lab some days before:

  “This is supposed to be an age of sophistication,” Carl had said. “Everyone is supposed to be very civilized with everyone else. But I’m going to make an exception. I want Anne. Stay, away from her.”

  For a moment, Brian didn’t speak.

  Carl said flatly, “Just so you understand.”

  Brian said, “Maybe I could just say that’s up to Anne.

  But I’ve already spent too much time getting run over by people who knew what they wanted.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “So I’ll make an exception. I want Anne. I’m not staying away from her, either here or outside.”

  They’d been interrupted then. What would have happened If they hadn’t been interrupted, Brian didn’t know . . .

  He slid out of the car, locked it, and crossed the lot toward the building. A very light drizzle was in his face, and the air felt cold and damp. Here it might be warm by noon, but coming in on the short cut through the wooded hills, the snowbanks had still been piled beside the road. Winter hung on despite the fact that tomorrow would be the first day of April.

  As he reached the building and walked up the single broad step, he turned sidewise to shove open the outer door. He noted, as he turned, the mud spattered across the front of Cardan’s car, and smiled. Cardan believed in saving time. The ruts, potholes and dizzy horseshoe curves of short cuts through the surrounding hill country made no difference to Cardan. Beside his car was another equally mud-spattered, with a small Roman Numeral I bolted to the grille. This, Brian knew, was one of the company’s experimental cars, with the gasoline engine taken out and another power plant put in.

  He pushed open the building’s inner door, felt the steady, steam-heated warmth, crossed to the elevator, pressed a button marked 4, and a few moments later was walking down the hall to his lab.

  As he snapped on the lights he was aware of the familiar sense of pleasure that two years of work at Research East had only made more real. He glanced at the soapstone-topped lab benches, with cabinets underneath for apparatus, that ran down two sides of the small room. He noted the chemical balances in their glass cases, the shelves of reagents in bottles and jars, and, at the far end of the room, the two cubicles with their partitions of wavy glass. He went into the right-hand cubicle, fitted out as a small office, and hung up his coat. Beside his desk, in a low bookcase holding chemical texts and handbooks, was a portable transistor radio that incidentally served as a book end. He glanced at his watch. Almost 7:30. He snapped on the radio for the news summary he usually listened to in his car on the way in.

/>   The sound came on loud, and as Brian turned down the volume, he saw near- the leg of his desk, beneath the cord from the phone, a pale-blue square of cloth. He picked it up - a girl’s small, clean handkerchief with the letter “A” in one corner. He breathed in the pleasant scent and shut his eyes. For a moment it seemed that Anne was right there before him, a blond girl with dark-blue eyes, a straight nose, a firm chin, and a figure disguised but not hidden by the gray lab coat.

  The radio announcer finished an ad for a local bank and started to give the news.

  There was a quiet knock on the lab door.

  Brian turned up the news a little louder and walked to the door. He was reasonably sure who would be there. Carl Jackson was in the habit of dropping in to talk to Anne before Brian, who had farther to drive, got in in the morning.

  Brian opened the door. Carl Jackson blinked, then stepped in and shut the door. He glanced around, scowling. “Where’s Anne?”

  “Not here yet.”

  The two men looked at each other. Brian could feel the intensity of Carl’s gaze as they measured themselves against each other. Brian stood a fraction under six feet. Carl was about six feet two. Brian weighed a little less than a hundred and eighty. Carl, equally muscular and athletic, weighed over a hundred and ninety. In addition, there was something about Carl’s light-blue eyes that suggested sudden anger and lightning reflexes. With his close-cropped pale-blond hair, tanned lean face, and powerful build, Carl presented the appearance of a formidable athlete. Brian felt the sense of oppression of a man physically outclassed by his opponent.

  The mutual inspection had lasted only a few seconds, but at the end', Brian could fee} his own disadvantage, tinged by a brief sadness, because only a few weeks ago, before

  Anne had arrived on the scene, he and Carl had been almost friends.

  Carl broke into his thoughts abruptly. “How old are you, Brian? About thirty?”

  “Twenty-nine,” said Brian.

  “When’s your birthday?”

  Brian frowned. “In a few months.”

  “How much do you make?”

  Brian now caught the drift of Carl’s questions. There was a chill in his voice as he said, “Why do you ask?”

  “About five thousand,” said Carl. “Isn’t it?”

  Brian said nothing, not bothering to volunteer the information that Carl’s figure was out of date. Cardan had quickly raised Brian’s pay to six thousand five hundred, and Brian had no feeling of being cramped on his salary. A few years ago he would have thought himself lucky to earn half as much.

  Carl, his eyes slightly narrowed and glowing an electric blue, said, “I make eleven thousand. Twice what you make. I’m twenty-seven, not almost thirty years old. You’ve got a dead-end job in a dead-end field. I’m in electronics, the fastest growing field there is.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Which of us has the most to offer?”

  Brian, feeling the pressure of Carl’s physical superiority, and the strain of looking unflinchingly into the hard, confident blue eyes, had the feeling of a man cut off and besieged on every side. Carl’s manner showed his awareness of what Brian must be going through. But there was a little quirk in Brian’s character that Carl wasn’t aware of.

  Carl went on. “I’ve been doing some research on you, Brian. I know in detail just what a mess you made of your life till you finally settled down.” He looked Brian up and down, still unaware that Brian functioned a little differently than he did himself, and added, “Just forget about Anne. If you’re honest, you’ll see you aren’t good enough.” He paused, then added deliberately, “If you’ve got any guts at all, that is.”

  And that did it. All through this torrent of abuse Brian had said nothing in his own defense, had made no angry accusations of his own. He had even been able to see a certain one-sided truth and logic in what Carl said, He had stood perfectly still while Carl filled the cup of insults to the brim, seeking to break Brian’s spirit by words. And Brian had done nothing.. The pressure had built up in silence.

  Before iron melts, it glows red, then white. It is possible to detect, by watching it, just how hot iron is. Dynamite is different.

  Brian felt the blow as a heavy impact on his right fist. That was all. His vision cleared, and Carl was back against the doorframe, bent nearly double, his hands over the lower part of his chest. Time stretched out as he leaned there, unable to move.

  Into the silence came the voice of the radio announcer, giving the news summary:

  “. . . disturbing report from Pakistan, where border patrols have picked up a defector who claims to be a Soviet scientist assigned to work at a secret Soviet base in the mountains of Afghanistan. According to the scientist, the work being done in Afghanistan could destroy overnight much of man’s accumulated progress for several thousand years.”

  Brian frowned and glanced at Carl. Carl slowly straightened, murmuring, as if talking to himself, “One punch ”

  The announcer went on, “Unrest in the Middle East flared up again . . .”

  Carl was looking at Brian with an expression of dazed wonder, and then of respect.

  Brian watched Carl warily, conscious that if he were in Carl’s place, he would have to fight. Carl, however, didn’t work that way. He grinned and said, “Sorry I jumped on you so hard. But you’ve got an unfair advantage. You work with Anne all day.”

  This was so different from what Brian expected that he couldn’t seem to get hold of it. Finally he said, “What choice does that leave me? I could either quit working here or get a new assistant. Naturally, I work with her. She’s a chemist. Why don’t you go find yourself a girl electronics technician?”

  Carl said apologetically, “I like Anne.”

  “I don’t blame you. But I like Anne.”

  They looked at each other in exasperated bafflement.

  In tie quiet, they could hear the radio announcer summing up the news headlines.

  Carl scowled. “What was that about research in Afghanistan?”

  “One of their scientists is supposed to have defected,” Brian explained. “He claims they were doing work that could set progress back several thousand years.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The announcer said, “For further details, listen to our regular newscast at eight . . .”

  Carl glanced at Brian. “Were you planning to listen to that?”

  “No. Why? Do you think there’s something in it?”

  “I don’t know. There have been rumors of a Russian cryogenics lab in Afghanistan. The rumor is that the Russians and Afghans made a deal. The Russians would put up a dam and hydroelectric project, and the Afghans would let them put up a cryogenics lab and supply it with power from the hydroelectric project.”

  Brian thought it over. Cryogenics involved the study of extreme cold. At temperatures well below zero, familiar substances acted far differently than usual. Liquid mercury froze solid and could be used to hammer tacks. Hot dogs snapped like sticks. And when the temperature was made low enough—hundreds of degrees below freezing—there were very strange effects. At these extremely low temperatures an electric current had been started in a lead ring, and two years later, it was still flowing. The helium ordinarily used to fill balloons became a liquid that could slip through tiny cracks, and showed strange properties not shared by other substances. In addition, there was a rare variety of helium that didn’t show the strange properties. Brian could see why anyone might be interested in such research. “Why put the lab in Afghanistan?” Brian inquired.

  Carl smiled. “To get it out of Russia.”

  “Explosive?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I wonder what they were doing?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “Well, I guess I will listen to the news,” Brian mused. “Would you mind if I listened with you? The chief is in and out of our lab. and I don’t care to be listening to the radio when he coined through.” Nearly all the men
called Cardan “chief,” to Cardan’s occasional exasperation.

  “Come on over. But it will probably all boil down to the fact that nobody really knows anything about it.” “Probably.” Carl turned to the door. “I’ll see you.” “Okay.”

  Brian scowled. He and Carl were now apparently back on good terms, but none of their problems had been resolved.

  Out in the hallway, there was a brisk tap of heels. Brian smiled. The room suddenly seemed brighter, the objects in it clearer. Brian even imagined that the air was scented with the faint fragrance of the handkerchief he’d found earlier.

  Chapter 2

  Anne Cermak was wearing a white cotton blouse and a black skirt, and the fragrance Brian had only detected on the handkerchief was now subtly pervasive. She was carrying her short navy-blue coat, and with her free hand reached for the light switch as she came in. She looked at Brian in surprise.

  The almost painful longing Brian felt when she was away suddenly became pure pleasure; then he noticed that she’d been crying.

  She turned away as she closed the door and tried to speak lightly. “You scared me. I’m used to getting here first.”

  Brian put his hand gently on her shoulder.“What’s wrong, Anne?”

  For a moment she stood intensely still. Then Brian noticed the faint trembling. Carefully, he turned her toward him. She was trying to hold her head straight, but tears were streaming from her tightly shut eyes.

  “Anne—” He-held her close, and suddenly her face pressed against his shoulder. She cried desperately for a moment, then gently pulled away. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it?” he asked, still holding on to her.