Of Stegner's Folly Read online

boarded a plane piloted bya man I used to know as a fading stunt pilot--Harry Fredericks. Theplane lifted and took a southerly course which presently changed to aneasterly bearing. I looked below and saw we were over water.

  We came down somewhere in South America and I got out of the plane asmystified as I'd entered it. Secrecy? Fredericks wouldn't even discussthe weather!

  I had expected another Eden, hidden away from the world. But the land ofbrobdignags I found staggered me. Grasses, trying to be trees, andtrees....

  There were no words for the bigness, the health and vitality of Stegnerand the government bigwigs who had welcomed him here in South America.But Stegner hustled me aside before I had time to do more than goggle atthe mammoth layout of this new Eden under government supervision. Hetook me to his house, a huge thing built with huge hands, big enough toaccommodate a man ten feet tall! Yes, Stegner was a giant! _Everybody_in that fantastic hideaway was a giant.

  The second floor of the house overlooked a great, wide valley. Stegnerpointed one great finger to the horizon and I looked. There was anendless fence out there. The same as in California, only more so. Thenatives of the valley, the Indios, the rancheros, the more intelligentanimals, were trying to get in to the wonders they saw beyond thatfence. And some of them were dying against the killing electric chargesin its wires. Through a pair of glasses the Prof handed me, I saw thatsome of the dead were human.

  "That's murder!" I gasped.

  Stegner's voice held the sadness of a great and sorrowful god. "I am ina trap, my friend. I have pretended to acquiesce, but my cohorts are notfully deluded as to my loyalty to the thing they plan. These governmentmen had gone mad with power. And the problem that now faces me seemsinsurmountable. The peoples of this world are too small, morally, for sobig a life. I fear chaos. I thought that perhaps you, with your nativeshrewdness, might help me unlock this prison I am in, reconcile thisEden and its growth to the world that it must eventually overrun. It_will_ overrun the planet, but I would prefer it not to be by violenceas these mad men plan it. They have selfishly taken my gift to mankindto themselves, for their own aggrandizement."

  I gulped. He thought I had the savvy to answer that one! "Hell, Prof. Ithought you saw that from the first. I've often wondered when theblow-off would come. I'm a newspaperman; I know what goes on in theworld. It isn't ready for such a life as you can give it--too muchselfishness. This thing has so many angles, so many ways it can giveprivate groups power."

  "Then what can I do?"

  "As long as this is going to be a fight, let's make it an even one, sothat the chips aren't all on one side of the table. Then maybe there'llbe a balance of power, a stalemate--such as existed between Russia andthe U. S. A. for so long."

  "You mean...?"

  "I mean let me get the hell out of here in a hurry, with the details ofyour processes, and let me spread them all over the world. Publicity canlick this thing. Your mistake was in building fences. Put up a fence,and somebody'll bust it."

  "You are a wise man, my friend," he said.

  "Then I'm making a run for it right now. They won't expect me to bedashing off before I've even taken off my hat. Give me your formulae,and show me the back door."

  "You can only leave by plane...."

  "Okay, I can fly one. I had my own crate for several years until thefinance company took it away from me. The airfield's right next to thehouse...."

  He gave me the papers.

  "What's in 'em?" I asked.

  "The formulae for the creation of the repellent anti-gravitational fieldwhich eliminates the age-factor element. I have been working on a growthinhibitor, but in secret. So I have had little time to develop it.Briefly, it is a method of making the field even more selective, leavingin the body those elements which have caused life to stop growing atadulthood, although it is not natural to stop growing. I am sure thatany good scientist can finish my work. With this development, man canhave his cake and eat it too. He won't grow to giantism as we are doing,yet his life and health will be prolonged."

  "Why not just explain it to these men?"

  He laughed bitterly. "They wish to use their gigantic size to conquerthe world. They can do it, too. Their minds have increased in power.Growth is that way. But moral values are something different--they areacquired by experience. Find some moral men who might use thisinformation to circumvent what is about to happen."

  I took the papers and shook his gigantic hand. I left via the back door,and sneaked through a clump of giant ferns to the edge of the airfield.A little prowling revealed a parked plane, long unused because those whohad flown it here had grown too big to use it. I waited, hidden in thelush greenery until the setting sun would hide my movements. It wouldonly be a few minutes now....

  The hangar in which the plane was parked contained several gasolinedrums, the kind with pumps on them that worked with a crank. I got intothe hangar, finally, and before it got too dark to see, checked theplane's gas gauge. It was about a quarter full. I connected the gas hoseand started pumping. In twenty minutes I had her full, then I climbedinto the plane....

  When the motor caught, after I was sure it never would, the thunder ofthe prop brought giants running toward me from the far end of the field,their twenty-foot strides eating up the distance. But I taxied straighttoward them, giving the plane's motors all they would take. The planeroared down the field, and they fell flat as the prop came at them. Theplane lifted, spun over them, was off. Now slugs from oversize riflescame buzzing about me, crashing through the fuselage. But it was darkand I was away. No serious damage had been done.

  In Texas it took me four hours to get the brass to listen to me. Finallythey did. They didn't ask me to keep my mouth shut. They just turned meloose. I went to my editor and told him the truth. He didn't believe me.When he checked with the army, they said I was obviously trying toperpetrate a hoax. I nearly got fired.

  * * * * *

  Months went by, and I waited. I knew I'd have to wait until my chancecame. There'd have to be hellfire before anybody'd believe my story.Then the storm broke, in sensational headlines. "Gigantic beasts wipeout town in South America."

  My editor sent for me. He showed me the headline. "Maybe I made amistake not believing your story about Stegner," he said. "I make a lotof mistakes."

  "You want me to cover this?" I said.

  "That's it. And if you can come up with proof of what you told me whenyou got back from that crazy trip, I'll print every damned word."

  * * * * *

  When I got on the scene, I knew they were at last taking it seriously.The locals had called out the army to fight the strange monsters thatwere coming out of the jungle. They were such things as army ants sixfeet long; anteaters looking like ambling locomotives with hairy hidesand noses; lumbering sloths vast as a houses on legs, sleepy and comicas ever, but terrifyingly destructive; jaguars like trucks and trailers;centipedes with stingers over their backs that would reach a man in athird-story window; wasps and bees like buzzards. The army was lashingat these things with machine guns, flame throwers, tanks and rockets.Jeeps careened across the landscape with loads of ammo. It was amadhouse on a vast scale, and being fought to the death. They waited forthe beasts to come out of the jungle, then they jumped them--or werejumped. Nobody was allowed to fly into the hinterland to see where theywere coming from. And when I tried to get officials to consider it, theyabsolutely refused. Up there, it was hinted, were secret governmentprojects--besides they were too far away--and radio said there was nosign of anything unusual there. It was worth even a general's job topoke his nose in near those projects. And how could I tell these peopletraitorous men of their own government were the culprits? It just wasn'tpossible--and because I had to stay on the scene, I never even hintedit. I merely waited my chance to produce proof. I knew I'd get it,sooner or later. Something would come out of that jungle I'd be able touse to convey the real menace to the knowledge of a puzzled world.

  _O
nly the fire-power of cannon could stop the monster._]

  I wrote carefully, reporting the weird war with the animal world--and Ikept inserting paragraphs hinting about Stegner and his growth field,adding "rumors" that maybe his work had been taken over by a power-madclique and it was they who were loosing this horror.

  My boss liked the stuff I was putting in, because it sold papers, and Iwas careful to keep my facts separate, and label my theories. Nobody--atleast so it seemed--believed the theories, but they made good reading. Igot a raise in salary.

  Other reporters were knocking out stories as good as mine, but withoutthe insight into the facts that I had. So their stories went too farafield. Mine became popular, and were in demand as reprints all over theworld. But officially,