THE WAR OF THE WEEDS

At ten o’clock on the morning of May 3, 1956, Harold Field, hired man on the farm of Gustav Peterson in Carver County, Minnesota, was alone in the east field that skirts highway No. 7, seeding corn. Resting a moment to light his pipe, he was suddenly knocked to the ground by what seemed a blinding flash of light and a thunderous report.

When he opened his eyes, it was to gaze upon an upraised mound of earth, the center of which was pierced by a circular hole. Field moved forward, examined this hole and, failing to touch bottom, reported the matter to his employer. Peterson, who owned the property, had read something of meteorites and at once telephoned Professor John Calthay, who he remembered was vacationing in Victoria, three miles away. Employer and hired man then took shovels, and went out to dig.

By nightfall they finally brought to the surface the object which had apparently fallen from the sky. Tapered at either end, it resembled a large shell, three feet in length, seven and a half inches in width. It was formed of a black, amazingly light metal.

Meanwhile Professor Calthay, who had won lasting fame a year before for his development of the “mechanist” theory of growth, rushed to the Peterson farm and with his assistant, Lawson Gage, was present when the cartridge was opened.

The cartridge and its contents made front-page news in every paper in the country. Inside the shell was found a hollow chamber, filled with a fine granulated matter that resembled ground coffee.

According to Professor Calthay, the Peterson shell reached the Earth from some point in outer space. Its construction pointed obviously to the work of beings of scientific intelligence, especially the middle core, which was formed of coronium, a substance discovered spectroscopically in the corona of the sun and known on this Earth only in a gaseous state.

On May 6th, Under Calthay’s direction a quarter acre of the east field was cultivated and harrowed, and one-half of the shell seeds sown broadcast. Results were startling. At the end of a week they had apparently reached full growth, an average height of four feet, six inches.

These weeds—and no other word adequately describes them—were of a peculiar shape. The top half of the plant formed an oblong protuberance, not unlike that of the common cat-tail, save that it was a brittle, reedy material and was hollow with a small opening on one side.

The odd part of it was that from the twelfth to the fifteenth of the month there was little or no wind. And it was not until the sixteenth that Calthay made his discovery.

The professor was sitting on the veranda of the Peterson farmhouse, where he had established his temporary headquarters, when Lawson Gage suddenly broke into his reflections. “What’s that funny noise?”

Calthay drew his pipe from his lips and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It’s stopped now. I’ve been noticing it for ten minutes. It seems to sound only when the wind blows. There—”

Calthay heard it then. High-pitched and wailing, there swept out of the field to his ears a distinct chord like the vibrato of a hundred clarinets. Then the wind died, and the sound ceased.

Calthay sat puzzled. A full minute elapsed before he jerked erect.

“It’s the weeds!” he cried. “Come on!”

With Gage at his heels, the white-haired scientist ran down the steps and across the farmyard, heading for the east field. Arriving there, the two men drew up short.

Before them, densely packed, the weeds formed a gently undulating carpet. And issuing from the reed-like top blooms, the droning chord sounded like a great Aeolian harp.

Calthay whipped a knife from his pocket and cut off, the nearest stalk. Holding it by the far end, he swung it to and fro over his head. The result was a thin, drawn-out scream.

“What the devil do you make of it?” Lawson Gage asked. He was a tall, dark-haired youth with gimlet eyes and a high broad forehead.

In silence the professor moved slowly through the field, cutting off bloom after bloom, studying them. At length he looked up.

“On the surface, the phenomenon is simple,” he said. “The brittle tops of these weeds form an almost perfect musical instrument, and when the wind blows they give forth a sound. Each bloom is of a slightly different size, so the tones vary. But do you notice anything about the sound as a whole?”

Gage listened. “Yes,” he said. “It sounds as if a high voice were saying over and over again, ‘Doom! Doom!’” And so it did…

Continuing his investigation, Calthay found that the weeds reached maturity within the brief period of eight days. A small pouch formed on the stalk then, which opened and spread more seeds to the wind. There was, however, no evidence of the weeds multiplying in any dangerous abundance, a fear which the professor had harbored since he planted the first lot. It was apparent that for successful growth, the earth must be first carefully pulverized.

But by opening these pouches prematurely, planting them in a separate field and making a detailed catalogue of each planting, Calthay made another discovery. The seeds of each weed, he found, propagated a bloom of the exact size and tone-note as the original.

The scientist mused over this for some time until an idea struck him. Over the dinner table one night in the Peterson house, he spoke to his assistant.

“You used to be interested in music before you turned to science, didn’t you, Lawson?”

Gage nodded. “Directed my college orchestra and learned to play the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ on the piano,” he smiled. “But after that Einstein proved too great a lure. Why?”

Calthay toyed with his fork a moment, then turned to Peterson.

“Is there a fairgrounds in the vicinity?” he asked. “Or a place where there’s a grandstand that might be available for rent?”

Peterson stared. “Yes,” he replied slowly. “The county fair grounds are at Carver, and there’s a good-sized grandstand. But what on earth—”

* * * *

Thereafter for the next three weeks, Calthay and Gage worked in mysterious seclusion. No inkling of what the scientist was up to reached the public until the twentieth of June, when the following notice appeared in the Carver County Clarion:

COSMIC SYMPHONY

CARVER FAIR GROUNDS AT 8 P.M.

ADMISSION FREE

Tonight, assuming meteorological predictions are correct and there will be a sufficiently strong east wind, I shall attempt a musical experiment with the Peterson space-shell weeds. The weeds which have Aeolian properties have been arranged in order of their proper tones, with the same attention to harmony as a pipe organ.

By means of draw-shades I propose to control the wind as much as possible and produce ear-pleasing results.

The public is cordially invited to attend this performance.

PROF. JOHN CALTHAY.

The draw-shades were seen by the first arrivals at the fair grounds as large sheets of canvas, strung in triple tiers on wires on the west side of the race track. The fact that these canvas sheets had originally been hay-covers, pressed into service from neighboring farms, detracted little from the public’s general excitement.

But more than Carver County was present. The afternoon train brought representatives of the United Press and Associated Press, in addition to syndicate and feature writers, not to mention Sir Hammond Gore, the eminent music critic of New York City. Also there was Professor Albert de Carta, of the Federal University of Science, and Dr. A. T. Holwell, astronomical authority and author of “Can We Reach Mars?”

Inside the race track a curious sight was revealed. The entire oval arena, which was surrounded by a high board fence, was a field of densely packed weeds, four to five feet in height, all of them of a luxuriant green color. In the judges’ stand before the grandstand Professor Calthay stood, his white locks streaming in the wind. At his side was the ever-present Lawson Gage.

After a short speech in which he spoke of the Peterson shell and its potentialities, Calthay gave a signal, and five of the draw curtains were pulled back. A steady east wind was blowing. The weeds in the arena began to wave and undulate. An instant later the audience sat electrified.

A high, melodious chord vibrated through the evening air. Swelling as the wind increased, it reverberated against the grandstand, growing louder and louder.

Up on the West wall of the race track, under the glare of the floodlights, six men on high ladders stood watching Calthay. After a moment the scientist waved his hand. Five curtains were drawn closed, leaving only one open space at the far side of the field.

Almost imperceptibly at first the song of the weeds changed. Slowly it mounted the octaves into a higher register.

The audience was buzzing with excitement now. Once again Calthay raised his hand to give a signal. But abruptly a hush fell on the grounds. Above them the crowd noticed for the first time a black storm cloud. The wind returned with a shriek, and simultaneously something happened.

In the grandstand the crowd rose en masse, raced for the exits. Screams rose up—screams of agony and horror. Seats banged, crashed. A woman stood up, tore insanely at her hair. A man flailed his arms and dived headforemost over the rear wall.

“Stop it! For God’s sake, stop it!” somebody yelled.

For five minutes the horror continued. Then the screams died, and the crowd quieted. But none lingered to find an explanation of what had happened. Filing in bewilderment out of the fair grounds, they stumbled into their cars and drove madly away. Lawson Gage leaned white-faced against the wall of the judges’ stand and stared incredulously at the professor.

“In heaven’s name,” he gasped, “what was it?”

The press went wild after that; and Calthay, in response to popular excitement, called a consultation of three scientists: Gedding, Harcolt and Durose; all of the Federal University of Science. Second, he published an admission of his error in the fair grounds incident. It was absurd; he declared to believe one could control the amount of wind striking the weeds by such elementary means as shifting canvas curtains. The variation in tone must have been caused by other reasons.

But it was Lawson Gage who hit upon the channel leading to the correct answer.

“Undoubtedly,” Gage said, “the thing that so upset the audience in the Carver grandstand was some form of sound. Now, we know that the highest sound the human ear can detect is forty-one thousand vibrations per second. The sensory portions of our brain do not register a vibration above that until we come to a frequency of three hundred seventy million million, when we begin to see rays of red light.

“It therefore stands to reason that ordinary sound, no matter how high-pitched above the ear’s receptive capacity, would have no effect on the human body.

“But the thing which came from the space-shell weeds may have been more than sound. Isn’t it possible that these weeds, as living organisms developed along an entirely different evolutionary scale, might throw off into the vibratory field some form of energy, which we of Earth cannot understand? Add to that that this energy, a botanical one if you will, is insufferable to the human brain, and you have it.”

Gage may have had it, but the public didn’t. Interest continued under force of newspaper sensationalism, then gradually waned.

But on July 16th—to use Professor Calthay’s own words—hell broke loose.

Three spies, unquestionably in the service of August Strausvig, dictator of the new Middle European Empire, were captured and tried in a military court at Washington, D.C. Two were executed. The third escaped.

And with the third man’s escape was announced the disappearance of the Peterson shell, which it will be remembered had been resealed with half of the original weed seeds, and had been kept for convenience sake in the Peterson farmhouse.

* * * *

In their room that night, Calthay and Gage discussed the situation.

“I should never have left the shell here unguarded,” the scientist said, lines of worry showing in his face. “If my simple experiment in the fair grounds had such a terrible effect on people, who is to say what military-minded scientists might not do with those weeds, working along different lines? I tell you, Gage, the possibilities are horrible.”

Lawson Gage nodded. “And not only to the world at large, but to ourselves.”

Calthay stared. “What do you mean?”

For answer the assistant got up and went out the door. A moment later he returned to place upon the table a small black box, upon the top of which was mounted an ordinary alarm clock.

“This,” he said, “in case you don’t recognize it, is an infernal machine, a time bomb. I found it under the house last night but decided to say nothing about it until now. The idea, I believe, was to blow us all to kingdom come.”

“But why—who—?” There was bewilderment in Calthay’s voice.

“Nothing so difficult in that,” Gage replied. “As you stated, some foreign power evidently recognized in those weeds a potential instrument for world power. They see in you the only possible person who could block their plans. So they intend to remove you and perhaps me, too, from the picture!”

And on the fifteenth of August the weed plague suddenly appeared in Ontario. Overnight, it was reported, vast fields of the strange weeds took growth, sown there by an unknown source. A week later the terrible sickness began to strike down the population. The plague was a form of madness, similar to that which had stricken the audience in the Carver grandstand, but a thousand times more virulent. Death came in a few hours. And the weeds seemed impregnable to all attack.

Life in the United States continued unchanged. And then in mid-winter the plague struck lower California.

“It’s just as I feared!” Calthay exclaimed. “Some scientist with a brain trained to military destruction has developed those weed seeds. In their new form, they will grow apparently without the pulverization of the soil which I found necessary. Also they are much more powerful. Nothing seems able to stop them. They propagate faster than man can destroy them. And when they sway in the wind, they give forth their vibration and that strange energy which no human brain can stand. The one and only thing in our favor is the time of the year. It will be three months before the seeds can take hold in a northern climate.”

Gage nodded tensely. “What are we going to do?” he demanded.

The question was never answered. A roaring crash sounded and the reading lamp at Calthay’s side burst into a thousand fragments.

With a single leap the scientist was across to the door, running out into the yard. A tall shadow fled before him. Calthay, his aged legs moving like pistons, raced in pursuit around the west side of the barn and down the lane to the road.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Stop!”

Two more shots cut lanes of fire through the blackness. Calthay heard one of them whistle by a scant inch from his ear. But the shadow did not stop. It continued in long, leaping strides. An instant later the roar of a powerful motor sounded, and a car without headlights sped down the road.

“Close,” Gage observed dryly. “If you’d been sitting a little nearer that lamp, that bullet would have got you.”

* * * *

Next day Calthay caught the afternoon train for Flagstaff, Arizona. Arriving at the famous astronomical observatory there, the scientist announced his mission.

“I want to make a spectroscopic analysis of the light from as many stars of the ninth magnitude as I can.”

The first sign of the hysteria which was to follow was now finding its way into the press. Weed fields were springing up in California and New Mexico. Nothing seemed able to halt their advance. There were reports of planes sighted over the Mexican border, dropping small containers which opened when they struck the ground. The War Department had reinforced the border patrol, and National Guard units from three states were called into action.

In some localities the weeds apparently had no harmful effect. But in most cases the opposite was tragically the case. The population of entire towns was wiped out; asylums were being filled with gibbering idiots; inmates who had managed to escape told of a weird singing chord that seemed to drift on the wind. A chord that brought madness, ending in death.

The United States Department of Agriculture telegraphed Calthay three times, begging him to take charge of the fight against this mysterious menace. Twenty-six of the country’s leading botanists were already at work, attempting to produce some means of preventing further germination of the weeds. But Calthay maintained a deliberate silence at his labors in the Flagstaff observatory.

It was on Christmas Eve that Calthay’s work was rewarded with a discovery. In observing the spectroscopic color range of a ninth magnitude star, Melaris-A, through the recently invented Johnson magno-spectroscope, he found unmistakable traces of coronium.

Feverishly he turned the gigantic telescope, studying that section of the heavens. An hour later the scientist packed his bags and raced back to the Peterson farm in Carver County, Minnesota.

“Lawson,” he said to his assistant a few moments after his arrival, “I’ve got it. You remember that the center core of that space-shell was made of coronium. Now, whereas all matter is generally equally divided over the entire universe, coronium is a very rare substance. “Even in outer space there are few traces of it. But a spectroscopic examination of that light from Star Melaris-A shows its presence!”

“So what?” Gage interrupted skeptically.

“But, don’t you see? It means that that shell came from that star. Or rather from one of several dark planets which must be moving in an orbit around Melaris-A, part of another system.”

“I still don’t see—”

“Let me put it this way. The inhabitants of that planet evidently are faced with cosmic disintegration, which is gradually destroying their atmosphere. They want to make a complete exodus to another planet, and Earth is perhaps one of several likely for their needs and conditions. They realize, however, that the population of Earth is already large and would be in conflict with them—”

“I get it!” cried Gage then. “So they send out that shell filled with seeds, which they hope will kill off the population of Earth—”

Calthay nodded. “Exactly. But conditions here were not precisely as they had expected, and the seeds did not have quite the necessary potency. It remained for man, in his lust for world power, to develop the seeds and strive for that same purpose. We must stop those weeds!”

“But how?” broke in Gage. “We’re back at the same question.”

“And I have the answer to that question. The center core of the space-shell was formed of coronium. It was used because it has a negative effect on the weeds, preventing possible germination. In coronium, therefore, lies our weapon. I’ll get in touch with Washington at once!”

* * * *

Prior to 1952, the world’s entire supply of coronium gas was limited to the volcano of Despliazzo, in Italy.

In 1952 coronium pockets were found at Cotopaxi, Mexico, and in central Colorado. Immediately upon Calthay’s secret report to the Secretary of Agriculture, all sources of this gas were tapped. Special stratosphere transports were dispatched to convey natural coronium to a temporary headquarters set up at San Diego.

On March 15th the fears of the world crystallized in a general all-wave radio warning, broadcast from Danzig, new capital of the Middle European Empire. The voice of August Strausvig, dictator, declared:

“The weed plague is a product, of Middle European scientists. Only a minute quantity of the seeds at our disposal has been used. But they will be used to destroy entire foreign civilizations unless mass acknowledgment of the authority of our government is made. We have developed the weeds so that their potency will continue as long as we see fit. We give the world one month to decide. One month! Strausvig has spoken!”

Preparations during that month progressed with war-time rapidity. Coronium warehouses were established in New York, in Chicago, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Denver. Experimental bombardments of lower California weed fields already had been entirely successful.

The listed stock of a manufacturer of spray guns skyrocketed thirty points: as the company, through mass advertising, disposed of thousands of its products. Fake weed-destroying compounds and plague preventives appeared on the market in great variety.

On both coasts and on the Mexican and Canadian borders, anti-aircraft guns were set up at intervals of every few miles. The United States was arming in the strangest way it had ever known.

Then days of anxious waiting, confusing reports. Strausvig had disappeared! Strausvig was dead! The dictator would strike tomorrow!

Professor Calthay watched the developments with grim eyes.

“Isn’t it ironic,” he said to Gage, “that the people fear one man on the other side of the earth? But the trouble has its inception millions of miles out in space. And yet one menace is interdependent with the other, with civilization at stake.”

April 15th, 1957, dawned, a gray day at the Peterson farm, with low-lying clouds and a threat of coming rain. Foreboding hung in the sky. The very air seemed charged with menace.

Calthay and Gage sat on the farmhouse veranda, gazing out at the fields. The east field was barren now, the original space-shell weeds having been destroyed with coronium. Although, as the professor had remarked, the precaution was unnecessary, since these weeds were of an entirely different type from those developed by the Strausvig scientists.

* * * *

Professor Calthay had just lit his pipe, and Gage was idly turning the pages of a magazine when the sound came. Not the sound of weeds. But the low drone of airplane motors high up in the sky above the cloud level. Steadily it grew nearer, louder.

“Something funny about that,” Gage said. “That’s a six-motor stratosphere transport, or I’m a Dutchman. But it’s coming down, and there’s no ship scheduled here at this time of day.” He turned and ran into the house, to reappear a moment later with a pair of binoculars. Followed by Calthay, he moved out into the yard. And then the plane broke through the clouds.

Gage, focusing the glasses, gave a yell of surprise. “It’s radio-controlled!” he cried. “See the helix-antenna? There’s no one aboard!”

Straight as a bullet the plane shot toward the ground. And now the two scientists could detect the markings on the wings: the circle-surrounded triangle of Strausvig’s Empire. At an altitude of fifteen hundred feet the plane abruptly banked and began to circle.

Then a trap opened in the bottom of the fuselage, and something plummeted downward like a falling stone.

“It’s a seed bomb!” Calthay cried. “Get the coronium!”

But an instant later the two men stood stunned. The seed bomb had burst, and already before their eyes weeds were taking growth. Even as they watched the ground seemed to quiver, erupting greenish stalks which shot up, matured to full growth and multiplied with terrific rapidity. In a matter of seconds the field was an expanding sea of green, and a dull roar mounted into the air as the weeds swept forward on four fronts.

“Come on!” Calthay cried. “We’ve got to get the coronium. If a wind springs up and hits those weeds, the plague will start again. We’ll all be madmen!”

They turned and rushed toward the barn. There they met Peterson and Field, his hired man. Feverishly they began the task of loading the metal coronium tanks into the rear of the Peterson truck. But Gage, after the last tank had been put in place, suddenly turned, a queer glitter in his eyes, and ran in long strides back to the house.

The truck rumbled out onto the field, Calthay and Peterson working like mad to fasten long nozzles with tube-metal hoses to the coronium containers. When they reached the field they stopped for a moment, appalled.

As far as the eye could reach, the farm was a great sea of weeds. An ever-growing ocean of green, sweeping outward.

Calthay’s heart sank. They could never stop the enveloping advance with the little coronium they had. Indeed, even as Calthay looked, he doubted whether the coronium would have any effect at all on this new variety of weeds. All the preparations of the last month seemed in vain.

“Field!” he yelled. “Rush back to the house, get Fort Snelling on long-distance telephone and tell them what’s happening. Tell them to bring every available tank of coronium gas there is in the district. Tell them to radio Washington. Call the governor. When the winds starts, the plague will sweep across the country like a thousand Black Deaths!”

Even as he spoke the wind came. As if to a magic touch the field of weeds swayed and gave forth a high singing chord. Like a huge chorus of contraltos the vibrations rose, louder and louder. And with that sound Calthay felt the madness, like a bulbous entity alive, beginning to eat into his brain.

Field and Peterson had fallen to the ground and were clawing at their hair, screaming insanely. The wind increased. The song of the weeds became a black cacophony of death. Calthay’s heart began to race. He could feel his eyes bulging in their sockets.

And then the scientist heard a dull rumble. He saw his assistant, Lawson Gage, rushing forward, propelling a two-wheel cart, laden with machinery, even as the plane circled again to drop another seed bomb. Above it, resting on a wooden super-structure, was a large wafer-like object, yellowish brown in color, from which a network of wires appended.

Calthay’s cry was a feeble whisper. “Gage! For God’s sake, run! I—I can’t—the weeds—”

Through bloodshot eyes the professor saw that Gage’s face exhibited no signs of madness. His eyes were gleaming with anticipation; he wore over his ears a head-set of strange, oversize earphones.

With a quick movement Gage halted the cart and brought out three more pairs of earphones. He snapped one over the head of Calthay, bent down, and repeated the process with Peterson and Field.

To his amazement, Calthay found the vibrating madness in his brain had subsided.…

“It’s my own idea of a method to stop the plague,” Gage said. “I’ve been working on it while you were at Flagstaff, but I said nothing because I haven’t had a chance to try it out as yet.”

“Those earphones will permit you to hear me because I’m talking to you through a microphone. They also neutralize the sound energy of the weeds at the same time.”

“But how—” Calthay demanded. “How? The government has been experimenting for weeks on something like this, but failed. What’s that thing up there? It looks like a gigantic seed.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Gage replied. “It contains thousands of partially germinated weed seeds held together in a collodion paste. All growth, as anyone who believes in the mechanist theory knows, is a form of energy. I discovered that the energy of the space-shell weeds is a negative energy. I’m fighting it with what I call the Gage mass ray, a super-development of Goldstein’s ‘Canalstrahlen’ and the Thomson ‘Positive Ray.’

“By ionization of gas at a low pressure in a strong electric field, I can detach the negative electrons from the atoms, recapture those electrons by colliding them with charged particles and produce a neutral ray. That’s what I’m doing inside that huge seed.”

Gage had turned to the cart now and was working frantically over a panel covered with dials and switches.

“The neutral ray,” he continued, “is adaptable to almost any form of transmission. A small part of it is deflected along a high-frequency electric current into your earphones. That neutralizes the madness striking your brain. Since light and sound are both vibrations—as is energy itself, in fact—I had no difficulty shunting the remainder into the vibratory field. In other words, I’m fighting the weeds through their own sound!

Gage turned a dial and pulled a switch. A low drone rose up into the air. He pulled a second switch. The droning mounted slowly. Even with the earphones on, Calthay could hear it.

And something was happening to the field of weeds! Writhing as in agony, the top blooms were losing their greenish color, slowly turning black.

The wind became a driving gale. Mounting in magnitude, the horrible wailing chord rose higher. Again Calthay could feel the madness eating at his brain. The earphones seemed powerless to prevent it. He saw Peterson rock backward and utter a hoarse scream. He saw Gage’s face go white, his teeth bite deep into his lips.

And then, with shaking hands, the assistant turned his control as far as it would go.

An arc of purplish flame hovered above the machinery-laden cart. The singing chord died away, and before them the weeds seemed slowly to dissolve into nothingness. A hush fell over the farm. A moment later, where the green stalks had been was only bleak desolation…

“It’s all over,” Professor John Calthay said that night on the veranda of the Peterson house. “With Gage’s machine and others which will be built like it, we can prevent the weed growth in any part of the country. The attempt of Melaris-A to annihilate the civilization of the Earth has been defeated. Strausvig and his Middle Europe can be fought on common grounds. The ‘War of the Weeds’ is at an end.

“And it’s all through your efforts,” the scientist went on, turning toward his assistant. “Once again, Gage, you have won over me in conquering a problem. What have you to say, my young friend?”

Lawson Gage smiled. “Pour me another highball,” he said. “And don’t hold the horses on the Scotch.”