The Devouring Fire

by John Russell Fearn, Vargo Statten

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

The advent of space travel with a prototype spaceship using atomic propulsion ignites the Earth's upper atmosphere, causing hot invisible gases to sweep down and make contact with the Earth's surface. Every area touched becomes incandescent. A young scientist who foresees the catastrophe struggles to warn the authorities to take precautions to survive the coming catastrophe...

Release date: March 31, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 95

Sample

By the year 2000 the greatly changed, and still rapidly changing social conditions on Earth necessitated a fundamental alteration in many laws. A New Order had to be created, since the new ideas were in perpetual conflict with the old laws to which it was often quite impossible to conform.

“For the better advancement of science,” as the old formula of words expressed it, the law relating to patents and inventions underwent a radical transformation. The Patent Office, as it continued to be called, became a repository of secret information that could not under any circumstances be revealed to any person or body of persons other than “the owner or owners of said patent, invention, or formula, or other discovery embodied in words, or in figures, or by model or sample duly deposited by the accredited owner and coded in the department’s archives …”

Had that new law never been made; had inventions been printed in a specification complete with drawings, published and sold by the Patent Office, as of old, then the trouble over the rocket fuel might not have arisen.

Madge Pearson was not looking at all pleased as she walked purposefully along the black-and-white tiled passage way which led to the laboratories. It took her all her time to say “good evening” to the night watchman’s greeting.

“Mr. Meadows in the laboratory?” Madge demanded of him.

“Yes, Miss Pearson. Everybody else has gone.”

“I’m not surprised at this hour!”

Madge was indignant. In fact she was about ready to blow up, otherwise she would never have troubled to enter the sombre splendour of this Institute of Scientific Research.

At the glazed door marked “Experimental Laboratory—Keep Out!” she hesitated for a moment, listening. There were no sounds from within, even though the lights were on. She had been here once before and burst in on a class, to retire again with a red face. She did not intend to make the same mistake again. So she tapped lightly on the opaque glass.

There was no response. At a sound she turned to find that the night watchman had followed her. He scratched his ear.

“Don’t he answer?” he asked; then with perfect logic added, “He should. He ain’t left, not that I seen anyway.”

“He should have met me over an hour ago,” Madge snapped. “Instead I’ve been catching my death of cold hanging round a draughty street.”

“I should go in, Miss Pearson. Can’t be anybody but him in there so it’ll be all right.”

Madge turned the doorknob and stepped into the laboratory beyond, closing the door silently behind her. The huge expanse was brightly lighted with well-contrived shadowless lamps. There were endless benches littered with scientific impedimenta. Against the spotless walls stood complex equipment. Here and there a switch-panel rose like an island, its meters quivering under the impulse of an electrical load. There was the smell of ozone in the air. But Madge Pearson was not a scientist: she was the much-pampered daughter of one of Britain’s most famous financiers—and she was peeved.

Her grey eyes settled finally on a lone figure at a distant bench. He was sitting like a man under a spell, stained white overall falling away down the front from rough tweeds. In one hand he held an extinguished pipe: the other was gripping a bundle of notes from the scratch-pad.

“So this is how you keep your appointment!” Madge exclaimed, going forward slowly. “You’re seated here nice and cosy while I stand in the January wind waiting for you! What’s the idea, Dick?”

Dick Meadows stirred as though he had heard something afar off. There was a look in his deep blue eyes which gave Madge a slight shock for the moment. He seemed to be looking straight through her into infinite spaces beyond.

“What’s—wrong?” she faltered, gripping his arm. “You’re not—ill, or something?”

Still he looked at her, his craggy young face set and hard, his lips compressed over a profound thought. He did not see the girl’s rosy cheeks, her little blonde curls peeping under her saucy hat, her warm winter coat with the fur collar——

“I oughtn’t to be alive!” he declared at last, giving himself a little shake.

“I’m wondering if you are!” Madge nodded to the big electric clock. “Look at the time! Half past eight, and you said you would meet me at the Corner House at seven-thirty as usual. If you go on this way when we’re only engaged, how will you be when we’re married?”

As Dick did not seem to hear her Madge drew up a chair impatiently and sat down. Then gradually her anger cooled before his complete indifference to it.

“No—so much luck shouldn’t fall entirely to one person,” Dick decided, lighting his pipe absently.

“What on earth are you talking about? What about our appointment for——”

Dick gave a start and suddenly seemed to remember.

“Great heavens, of course! I promised to meet you, didn’t I?”

“You did—and in case you’ve forgotten my name too it’s Madge Pearson.”

Dick got up from the stool, his expression full of apology. He put his arm about the girl’s shoulders but she pulled herself away impatiently.

“Naturally you’re cross.” Dick gave a sigh. “And I don’t blame you. But is it any consolation to you to know you’re engaged to the one scientific engineer in the country who has been commissioned by the Government to design the first spaceship?”

Madge frowned for a moment, not understanding.

“Spaceship?”

“That’s what I said. You will remember that a couple of years ago I submitted to the Government a formula for a new type of spaceship, specially designed to use a fuel of my own discovery. Naturally I kept that formula to myself. Matter of fact the ingredient I add is inaxium, a by-product of uranium which makes ordinary rocket fuel very cheap and very powerful. After two years of messing about I have been informed by the Government that I am to design a spaceship capable of carrying half-a-dozen people, the plant being made so it can use my fuel. No deal yet on the formula. Fortunately I patented my fuel formula so it can’t be stolen from me”

“But—but why in the world didn’t you tell me sooner?” Madge cried in delight, leaping up and hugging Dick tightly. “Why, it’s wonderful. And—and you mean you are the sole engineer doing the job?”

“That’s it!” Dick’s deep blue eyes were bright. “By profession I am a scientific engineer: by accident I found the perfect space fuel. Between the two I’m the Government’s new pet—the man who is going to make space travel a definite thing instead of a vague idea costing millions for every rocket ship fired into the void. I’m sorry about tonight: I was so lost in thought working out the design I quite overlooked everything else——”

“The genius is forgiven,” Madge interrupted, laughing.

“That’s a load off my mind! Now, let me explain how this thing works. With inaxium added to the ordinary rocket fuel, which operates on the disintegrative principle, we have——”

“Yes, dearest, I’m sure we have—but I’m thirsty.”

“Eh?”

“Thirsty! We usually have a little supper at the Corner House, don’t we? Please, Dick, clear the cobwebs for a moment.”

Dick grinned ruefully. “Sorry. All right, I’ll pack it in for tonight and carry on in the morning. And will Vince be surprised when I tell him.”

“Vince? It isn’t a secret, then?”

Vincent Clegg was Dick Meadows’s fellow-worker in the experimental laboratory, but his activities ran to biological work. None the less he was a brilliant all-round scientist, and a likeable fellow, too.

“The fuel is a secret, certainly,” Dick responded, tugging off his overall, “but the fact that I’ve been made chief spaceship designer is not. Vince must know! He’ll be tickled to death … In fact this moment is so solemn I only half understand it myself. I’m laying the foundation stone of one of the greatest achievements known to man. The conquest of space! It only wants somebody with business acumen to start launching a Space Corporation in readiness, and there we are … In fact, Miss Pearson, I may say with all due modesty that you stand the chance of becoming the wife of a millionaire scientist. I have the secret, remember, and that is what makes the millions.”

“Dad has business acumen,” Madge commented, rather dryly.

Dick pulled on his overcoat and looked surprised.

“Well, I should think he has! Morgan T. Pearson, eh?——” Dick stopped and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! Are you thinking he might be interested in launching a Space Corporation?”

“Well, I imagine he would like to be in on the ground floor. Since he’s your prospective father-in-law I think you should give him the opportunity.”

“No doubt about it! Will he be at home now?”

Madge nodded. “I left him with a frown on his brow and the stock market report in his hand. He’ll be at home all evening. There are times when mother insists on it.”

Dick grinned and took Madge’s arm. He led her to the door, switched off the lights, then locked the door securely behind him. The night watchman saluted as the two left the building.

“Corner House first,” Dick said, as they stepped out into the cold January night. “Fortify ourselves to begin with. I always feel I have to before tackling your old man.”

“He’s not so savage, even though he looks like a bulldog,” Madge laughed, following Dick to the private garages at the rear of the vast building where his car was parked.

None the less, Morgan T. Pearson did look like a prize bulldog—at least to Dick who saw less of him than Madge. When, fortified, they entered the financier’s study they found him browsing through a massive ledger, the desk lamp casting a cone of light upon it.

“Well?” he asked briefly, glancing up. “Didn’t your mother tell you I’m busy, Madge?”

“Yes, dad, but you can’t be too busy to hear this.”

Dick grinned privately. He had witnessed these wordy tennis matches before and Madge always seemed to win. Morgan T. cleared his throat, closed the ledger, then motioned a velvet-coated arm.

“Put the light on, Madge.”

She obeyed, filling the room with soft radiance. It was opulent, extremely warm, and self-sufficient. So was Morgan T. in his velvet jacket. He was shortish, thick shouldered, and nearly bald. No other description of his face is needed except that he looked exactly like a bulldog, but when dealing with his daughter—the only offspring of his union with his long-suffering and completely understanding wi. . .