Title: Harwood's Vortex
Author: Silverberg, Robert
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Harwood's Vortex" ***


                Imagine walking up a street and having
             the sky literally burst open over your head;
             imagine invaders pouring down and you have--

                           Harwood's Vortex

                         By Robert Silverberg

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                              April 1957
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The vortex bubbled up out of nowhere, hung shimmering in the air in
front of me, glistened and gleamed brightly. There was a whirlpool of
twisting currents in the air, and I wavered dizzily for a second or two
while the Invaders poured through the newly-created gulf.

Then someone had me by the hand, someone was pulling me away. Leading
me inside the house, behind a screen, safe from danger.

I didn't understand what had happened. I was numb with shock,
half-blinded by the brightness. I felt Laura near me, and that was all
I cared to think about.

After a couple of minutes, I opened my eyes. "What was that?" I asked
weakly. "What happened?"

Two minutes before, I had been approaching the Harwood house, impatient
to see Laura, untroubled by the world around me. And suddenly--

"It was Daddy's experiment," Laura half-sobbed. "It--it worked!"

"The old crackpot," I said. "The dimensional gulf--at last? I wouldn't
believe it, if I hadn't nearly fallen into it!"

She nodded. "I saw you staggering around out there. I got out front
just in time to--to--"

I held her tight against me, while she unloaded some of her anxiety.
She sobbed for a minute or two, not trying to say anything. I looked
uneasily out the window. Yes, it was still going on.

Right in front of Abel Harwood's house, the vortex was open--and coming
up through it were what we later knew as the Invaders. Globes of
light, radiant and intangible, floating up out of nowhere and ringing
themselves in the air like so many loathsome jellyfish.

"Why doesn't he close it?" I asked. "Those things are still coming
through! Laura, where's your father?"

"I'm right here," said a cold, business-like voice from behind me. I
turned and saw Abel Harwood's husky frame in the door. "What do you
want of me?" Harwood asked.

"Do you see what's going on out there?"

He nodded. "So?"

"Those _things_ out there--what are they? What are you letting into the
world, Harwood?"

"It's an experiment, young man." He crossed his arms over his
dressing-gown. "Would you mind leaving my house, now?"

"Daddy!"

"You keep out of this, Laura." He turned to me. "I've asked you to
leave my house. I don't want you meddling in my experiments any more."

I repressed an urge to aim a kick at his well-stuffed belly. Abel
Harwood was a crackpot, a crazy amateur scientist who had been riding
this other-dimension kick for years. Now, he'd let loose Lord knew
what upon the world--the things were still funnelling through the
gateway--and he was determined to see it continue.

"Harwood, you're playing with something too big for you! You're foolish
and blind, and you--"

"_You're_ a trespasser," he interrupted. "I've ordered you out of my
home twice, already. Will you go now--or do I have to get my gun?"

"I'll go," I said. I broke loose from Laura and, with an uneasy look at
the gateway outside, headed for the door.

"Wait, Dad--you can't make him go outside in _that_!"

"Quiet, Laura."

She started to say something else, but I put my hand on her arm. "Never
mind, Laura."

I opened the front door and stepped outside.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was hellish out there. The things had formed a circle around the
vortex in the air and hung there, humming and crackling. The air was
dry and strange-smelling.

I paused on the porch of the Harwood house for just a moment, tucked my
head under my arm and ran--ran as fast as my legs would go. I charged
through the garden, carefully averting the vortex that had opened right
in front of me, circled the nest of things buzzing in the air, and
dashed down the street.

One of the creatures followed me a short distance, hovering a foot or
two above my head. I watched it uneasily, dodged and ducked as it took
swipes at me. It caught me once, a grazing blow on the side of my
scalp. I smelled burned hair, and felt as if I'd stuck my head up an
electric socket. It drove low for another swipe.

And just then it began to rain.

The heavens opened and the water came pouring down and the sky was
bright with lightning. And the globes went up to meet it. The one that
had been tormenting me forgot me in an instant and went to join its
fellows.

I stood there and watched them. They rose in a straight line--there
must have been a hundred of them by now--climbing upwards, toward the
black clouds overhead. The sky was split by a giant bolt of lightning,
and I saw all hundred of them limned grotesquely against it, enlarged
and given color by the lightning, _drinking_ it. Then I started running
again.

I kept on running until I was home, in my two-room flat near the
University. I dove in, locked and bolted the door, threw off my soaking
clothing. I grabbed for the phone and dialed the Harwood number.

"Hello?"

It was Laura's voice. I sighed in relief. It could have been old Abel,
after all.

"Laura? This is Chuck."

Her voice dropped. "Daddy's right here. I can't talk very much."

"Tell me--what the devil has he done? You should have seen those
things drinking up the lightning!"

"I did," she said. "I know what you mean."

"Is the gateway still open?"

"Yes. They're still coming through. Chuck, I--I don't know what's going
to happen. I--_no_, Daddy!"

There was a sound of a little scuffle, and then the phone went dead.
I stared at the silent receiver for a second, then let it thunk back
on the cradle. I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at my soggy
socks for a long while.

Abel Harwood fit the classic description of a crackpot perfectly. My
status as an authentic scientist--if only an underpaid engineer--gave
me every right to make that statement.

I had been doing some experimental force-field work, and when I met
Laura she told me her father would be interested in talking to me about
my work. So I had dinner at their home one night, and started talking
about my project--and then old Harwood started talking about his.

It was some hodge-podge. Dimensional tubes, and force vortices, and
subspace converters. A network of gadgetry in the basement that had
taken twenty years and as many thousand dollars to build. A fantastic
theory of bordering dimensions and alien races. I listened as long as
I could, then made the mistake of expressing my honest opinion.

Harwood looked at me a long time after I finished. Then he said, "Just
like all the others. Very well, Mr. Matthews. Kindly don't pay us a
second visit."

"If that's the way you want it," I told him. "But I _still_ think it's
cockeyed!"

And a month later, I still did. Only now there was this vortex in the
street, spewing forth alien entities that drank radiation. Crackpot or
not, Harwood had turned something on that might take some doing to turn
off.

Outside, the storm was continuing. I snapped on my radio, listened
to the crackling of static that was the only sound it produced. Were
Harwood's pets blanketing the radio frequencies, I wondered, as I
twiddled the dials? Were they drinking _them_ too?

I'd know soon enough, I thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

That was just the beginning, that night when the Invaders came storming
out of Harwood's vortex. The next few days told of terror and panic, of
retreat and the swift crumbling of civilization.

The Invaders, they were called. Thousands of them, wandering around
New York and the metropolitan area, devouring electricity, attacking
people, bringing a reign of terror to the city.

The newspapers the second day said, in screaming two-inch headlines,

                        ALIEN BEINGS LOOSE HERE

The third day, there were no more newspapers. No one dared leave his
home--not with the Invaders at large. No newspapers, no radio, no
television--the channels of communication began to break down.

On the fourth day, armed forces from the rest of the country began to
arrive. They combed the city, searching for the creatures. Bullets
had no effect, though. They passed right through the bodies of the
Invaders, splattered off buildings and lampposts as though there had
been nothing in the way.

       *       *       *       *       *

Damn Harwood, I thought, as I stood at my window and watched the
fruitless attempts to drive away the Invaders. All the time, I knew,
that damnable vortex was still open, and more and more of them were
pouring through every second.

It was funny, in a way, that the world should end this way. It _was_
the end of the world, of course; we had no defense against them, and
they burned and killed unstoppably. The streets were blockaded; we
could go nowhere, see no one. Communication was impossible; telephones
were no longer working, ever since the Invaders had discovered what a
juicy supply of radiation the coaxial cables provided. We were walled
up with ourselves, waiting for the end.

As I paced my room impatiently, I thought of Laura, there with her
father--her father who had, unwittingly or otherwise, brought this
destruction into the world. Then I looked around at my equipment, my
partially-designed force-field generators. An idea struck me.

We were completely defenseless against the Invaders now. But maybe, if--

I worked through the night and on into the morning, soldering and
reconnecting. I had only the barest shred of a plan, and that a mostly
wishful one, but I had nothing else at all to do but work.

Finally morning came. Again there was the booming of guns from outside,
as the army continued its attempts to drive out the Invaders. I glanced
out the window and saw three of the translucent globes hovering over
the charred body of a man in military uniform, and shuddered. I went
back to my generator, and worked until hunger reminded me that there
was no food left in the house.

This was the end, then. I was nowhere near the solution of my problem,
and I knew I wouldn't be able to work for long without food. I glanced
outside again. The air was thick with the things; I didn't dare risk a
break.

So I turned back to my generator and forced myself to keep working.
I did. I worked far on into the afternoon, getting more and more
tired--until, sometime near nightfall, I fell asleep.

I slept. Suddenly, I was awakened by the simultaneous touch of a hand
on my shoulder and clap of thunder outside. I looked up.

"Laura! What are you doing here?"

"I had to get away," she said. She was soaked to the skin, cold and
shivering. She was wearing only a flimsy housecoat over some sort of
pajamas. "Daddy wasn't looking, and I ran out of the house. I ran all
the way."

"But how'd you get past the--the--?"

"The Invaders?" She pointed outside. "There's a storm going on. They're
all in the sky, drinking up the lightning again. They didn't bother
me at all on the way over. Much better food available, I guess." She
shivered again.

"Look, you've got to get out of that wet stuff," I told her. I threw
her a towel and my bathrobe. "Here, get into this, and then we can
talk."

"Okay."

She disappeared into my other room, and returned a few minutes later,
looking drier but just as pale and frightened. She peered inquisitively
at the machine I had been building, then turned to me.

"Chuck--Dad's out of his mind!"

"I've known that a long time," I said.

"No--I don't mean _that_ way. He's really insane, Chuck. You know that
he's been in contact with these Invaders? That he deliberately brought
them here!"

"No!"

She nodded. "He reached them through some short-wave transmitter of
his, and made mental contact with them. They showed him how to build
the Gateway--and he let them through! They promised to give him the
world, when they get through with it!"

I clenched my fists and stared angrily at the cloud-swept sky. "The
madman! He was getting his revenge for the years people laughed at him,
I guess. But--what's to happen to us?"

"I don't know. The creatures won't harm him, and they're under orders
not to touch me unless I leave his protection--which I have. But as for
you and the rest of the world, I don't think Daddy cares at all. Chuck,
he's out of his head!"

"We've got to stop him," I said grimly. "We've got to close that
gateway and drive off the things he's let through. But how?"

"The generator's in his basement," Laura said. "If we could get in
there and smash it, somehow, and--"

"How would we kill the Invaders that have already come through? There
must be thousands of them!"

"We'll find some way, Chuck. There _must_ be a way." I looked out the
window. The rain was letting up, and there were only occasional flashes
of lightning in the dark tormented-looking sky. "The Invaders will be
coming back soon," I said. "Do you want to risk a dash over to your
place to try to get at the generator?"

She nodded. "If we wait any longer, we won't be able to make it. But--"

She gasped and pointed to the rear window. I turned, saw what she was
trying to show me. Abel Harwood, hovering twenty feet off the ground,
riding on a cloud of Invaders.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Come out of there, Laura!" His voice was somehow amplified and it
seemed to shake my little room. Horror-stricken, we watched as the
buzzing horrors bore Harwood closer and closer to my window. Laura
shrank back against the wall and tried to flatten herself into
invisibility. With a sudden nervous gesture I pushed the table
containing my unfinished generator into the closet, and turned to face
Harwood.

He was right outside the window now. I saw the old man's staring eyes
blazing at me, as he stood there astride two of the Invaders. They
droned like defective neon signs, a horrifying slow buzz.

I picked up a heavy soldering iron and waited as they reached the
window. Then Harwood reached out and contemptuously smashed the glass
and stepped through--stepped right off the backs of his hideous mounts
and into my room. One of the Invaders entered also, squeezing its bulk
through the window. There was a pungent odor of ozone in the air.

"Get back, Harwood. You can't have her," I said.

He laughed. "Who are you to give me orders? Come here, Laura."

Laura shrank back even further. I gripped the hot soldering iron
tightly and sprang forward, plunging it into the Invader that hovered
between me and Harwood. I stabbed again and again--and it was like
stabbing air. Finally Harwood made an impatient gesture, and the
Invader glowed a brilliant red for an instant.

I dropped the soldering iron and clutched at my burned hand.

"For the last time, Laura--will you come with me?"

"No! I hate you!" she shrieked.

Harwood frowned and started toward her. As he came past me, I grabbed
him with my one good hand and tried to pull him back. I had thirty
years on him, but my right hand was badly seared and he was no weakling
even at his age. He shoved me away and sent me sprawling against the
wall. I saw him grab Laura roughly. The alien hummed ominously above my
head.

I made a mad dash for Harwood, caught him by the throat, started to
squeeze. The humming sound grew louder, and then suddenly there was a
blinding wave of heat sweeping through the apartment, and I fell back,
clawing at the floor.

When I was able to open my eyes, a few minutes later, I dashed to the
window just in time to see Harwood holding the struggling form of Laura
and riding off into the night on the backs of his extra-dimensional
Invaders.

       *       *       *       *       *

I sat down heavily on the bed and stayed there for what might have been
hours, recovering my strength. The Invader had given me just a glancing
shock, just enough to stun me and singe my eyebrows--and Harwood had
grabbed Laura.

Now I _had_ to find the answer. I had to close the gateway and find
some way of killing the Invaders--and get Laura out of her father's
clutches.

It was nearly morning by the time I shook off the last effects of my
stunning and was able to think clearly again. I pulled my generator out
of the closet and looked at it, wondering what needed to be done.

The gateway, first of all. It was a doorway to some alien dimension,
Harwood had said. All right. I'd accept that at face value.

The Invaders--what were they? Pure radiation? Energy-eaters? They were
intangible, immaterial, but yet very much present. Perhaps, I thought
wildly, their corporeal bodies were still in whatever dimension of
infraspace they came from, and merely their essences, their _elans_,
had come through?

Could be, I thought. And if it were true, I might have the answer.

Ignoring the fierce pangs of hunger shooting through me, I got back
to work and concentrated steadily. The thought of Laura was with me
always--the image of her riding off in the sky with her father's arms
locked tightly around her. Riding off as if kidnapped by a witch on a
broomstick.

I don't know how long it took, but finally my generator was finished.
Finished, and portable. I strapped it to my back and picked up my
longest and sharpest kitchen knife. I didn't have a gun, but it didn't
matter. If my theory was correct, a knife would be just as good--and if
I were wrong, a gun wouldn't help anyway.

Then, without stopping to ponder, I ran downstairs and out into the
street for the test.

Fresh air smelled good after days of being cooped up in my little
apartment. I stood in the middle of the street and surveyed the
wreckage.

Bodies lay everywhere, charred and lifeless. Overturned automobiles lay
piled here and there, stalled trucks, artillery batteries and tanks.
The defensive maneuver had failed, and what few people remained were in
hiding. I stood alone in the middle of the street, the heavy generator
on my back, and waved my kitchen knife as triumphantly as if it were
Excalibur.

"Come and get me," I yelled. "Come on Invaders. Let's see what you can
do!"

I looked up. There were a few clusters of them, browsing idly around
some television antennas atop a neighboring building. They ignored me
for a few minutes; maybe they were so surprised to see a living human
in the streets that they were unable to move. I shook my fists at them.

"Come down here where I can get at you!" I shouted.

They hovered uncertainly--and then they came.

       *       *       *       *       *

Six of them swooped down, humming and buzzing, glowing faintly and
billowing in and out as they dropped toward me. I waited, waited until
they were no more than three or four feet above my head, waited until I
was dizzy with the strain and suspense and could wait no more.

Then I snapped on the generator.

It was like catching flies in molasses. The six aliens stopped dead
in their tracks as my force-field spread out around them, engulfed
them, imprisoned them. Suddenly they were forced to contend with more
radiation than they could possibly swallow. It pinned them there, nine
feet above the ground.

I listened to their frenzied buzzing as they stretched themselves,
elongated fantastically in an attempt to free themselves from the
unexpected thing that had grabbed them. And then I stretched up on
tiptoes and began to stab.

My knife flashed once, twice--and the buzzing became an unbearable
shriek. My heart surged as I struck home again and again. Now we had
them! Now they were vulnerable!

Snared in the force-field, they no longer were able to flicker out of
phase with our dimension every time a weapon approached. They were
anchored now, mired in our continuum, helpless before my savage attack.

I kept stabbing until all six of them were torn and wounded, and then
I snapped off the force-field. And they were gone. Instantly, without
lapse, they popped out of existence like so many snuffed flames.

_Six down_, I thought grimly. _Six down, and untold thousands to go.
But now we have a weapon._

I thumbed my power-pack and the field spread out around me. I began to
cut my way through the streets to the Harwood house.

The aliens took notice of me, now. No more hovering around tv antennae;
they clustered in the air, just outside range of my force-field, and
chattered and buzzed for all they were worth. Every once in a while,
one would blunder into my field, and a swift upward cut with the knife
would take care of him. One cut. They were like balloons, and the
first puncture did it. I didn't dare shut off the force-field to see
if they'd pop out of existence, for fear the clouds of them in the air
would swoop in on me before I could turn it on again--but as I moved
on, through the dead and deserted streets, I could see the string of
dead Invaders hanging in the air vanishing one by one as I moved out of
range.

And then I was standing in front of Laura's home, right in front of
the vortex itself. It was still there, and the aliens came thundering
through at a rate of ten or twenty a minute.

I stepped past the vortex, ignoring the aliens that clustered around
me, as helpless against me as humanity had been against them only a few
hours before. There was no point in dealing with the Invaders yet--not
until the source was cut off.

       *       *       *       *       *

I strode up to the porch and peered in the window. I saw Laura huddled
in a far corner of the sitting-room, and behind her Abel Harwood
marching up and down, probably delivering a fiery parental harangue.
It was a nightmare scene, with a dead city outside, hordes of alien
invaders swarming in the air--and the man responsible for it busy
delivering a lecture to his unruly daughter!

I banged on the door.

"Come on out of there, Harwood!"

He looked up, astonished. I saw Laura's pale face brighten as she
recognized me, then grow downcast as Harwood started to come toward me.

I walked off the porch into the garden and waited there for him. He
emerged, eyes blazing, and said, "How did you get here? How did you get
past my guards?"

"Your guards don't worry me any more, Harwood. I'm going to put a stop
to all this now!"

He chuckled. "You're a very troublesome young man, Mr. Matthews. I
spared you once, for my daughter's sake--but I'll have no such scruples
this time." He gestured imperiously to the thick swarm of Invaders
billowing out of the vortex.

"You don't scare me, Harwood." I drew a deep breath, reached around
back, and cut off the force-field for the barest fraction of a second,
then restored it. It was just enough time to trap twenty or so aliens
in a glowing ring right above my head.

Smiling, I drew my trusty kitchen knife and began to lay about. I
heard Harwood's flustered exclamations as, one by one, the imprisoned
Invaders winked out, darkened, and died.

I finished off the twenty and folded my arms. "Care to send some more,
Harwood? It's easier than swatting gnats!"

He sputtered a few unintelligible words, then rushed from the porch
toward me.

He was a big man--big, and heavy. I was under the handicap of the
heavy force-field generator, which I knew I had to keep from his grasp
or else I was finished. All he had to do was to smash the generator,
and I'd be roasted the next second.

Harwood barrelled into me, sweeping away the kitchen knife while I was
still debating whether or not to use it. It went clattering into a pile
of rocks in one corner of the garden, and then his fists hit me.

I backed away, making sure I kept the generator out of his reach, and
flicked out a few defensive gestures. His face was contorted with rage.
He was almost blind with fury, and I could hardly blame him. Here I
stood, threatening to wreck whatever monument of villainy it was that
he had been erecting for twenty years.

We closed in a tight clinch, and his fists pummelled my stomach. I
drove upward and felt teeth splinter as I connected. He spat out a
mouthful of blood and backed off.

"Why did you have to do it?" he muttered. "Why did you ruin everything?"

"You pitiful madman," I said. "For the sake of silly revenge on a world
that rightfully regarded you as a crackpot, you--"

His eyes blazed and he came driving in at me again. In the background,
I heard the continuing buzzing of the Invaders, who hovered out of
reach of my force-field, unable to help their master. And overriding
the dull droning of the aliens was a steady pattern of sobbing coming
from the porch.

Laura. Watching her father and the man she loved fighting to the death
in her front yard.

Harwood grasped me in a tight bear-hug, his thick fingers reaching for
the power-pack on my back. I danced away and landed a solid punch in
the midsection, and he countered with a wild roundhouse that staggered
me and knocked me within a few inches of the garden fence.

He came lumbering after me, obviously determined to flatten me against
the fence and crush the generator that way. I didn't have any way of
escaping to the right or the left; I could only wait there and hope to
withstand his assault.

As he drew near, I tensed my legs and crouched. Then he hit me, and
I pushed upward with all my strength. The fate of a whole world--and
Laura and me--depended on my strength at that instant.

It worked. His heavy body lifted, and he grunted in pain as I rammed
upward. He went up, up, over the garden fence--

And then, to my horror, he cleared the garden fence and, with a
soul-splitting cry, fell into the gaping mouth of his own vortex!

I leaned against the fence, gaping--and before I could think of what to
do, the vortex was gone, winked out as if it had never been!

Then Laura was on the porch, white-faced, terrified.

"What happened? Where's Daddy?"

I ran to her side. "He's gone," I said. "Tripped and fell into the
vortex, and then--"

"Oh!" She gave a little cry and I thought she was going to
faint, but she caught herself with an effort and straightened
up. Speaking carefully, syllable by syllable, she said,
"I--just--smashed--Daddy's--machinery."

"You _what_?"

"While you were fighting--I ran down to the basement and wrecked
everything. Everything!"

I shivered. No wonder the vortex had vanished. At the very instant Abel
Harwood was tumbling into it, his daughter was busily destroying the
generator that operated it.

Her control broke. She burst into sobs and huddled in my arms. Finally
she said, "I--hated him. He was out of his mind."

"Try not to think about it," I told her. "Try to forget him. It's all
over. There's just _us_ now."

"I know," she said.

I looked up at the sky, which was dark with the Invaders. It was a
frightening sight--but I no longer feared them. The Gateway was closed,
and Abel Harwood dead, so far as we were concerned. I didn't want to
think of what might be happening to him in whatever universe he was in.

There would be a lot of work to do. I would have to find the
authorities, if any were left, and show them how to build my generator.
Then would begin the long, slow war of eradication against the
remaining Invaders.

Laura was still sobbing. "Don't worry," I said soothingly. "It's all
over now."

We had won.



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