CHAPTER I

_The New Murders_

I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic

when the first of the new murders was committed. The President fell

almost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at my

elbow was the murderer. I don't know why, call it intuition if you will.

The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in the

press of the throng, seemingly as absorbed as all of us in what the

President was saying.

It was late afternoon. The sun was setting behind the cliffs across the

river. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand people within

sight of the President, listening raptly to his words. It was at Park

Sixty, and I was standing on the Tenth Level.[1] The crowd packed all

twelve of the levels; the park was black with people. The President

stood on a balcony of the park tower. He was no more than a few hundred

feet above me, well within direct earshot. Around him on all sides were

the electric megaphones which carried his voice to all parts of the

audience. Behind me, a thousand feet overhead, the main aerials were

scattering it throughout the city, I suppose five million people were

listening to the voice of the President at that moment. He had just said

that we must remain friendly with Venus; that in our enlightened age

controversies were inevitable, but that they should be settled with

sober thought--around the council table. This talk of war was

ridiculous. He was denouncing the public news-broadcasters; moulders of

public opinion, who every day--every hour--must offer a new sensation to

their millions of subscribers.

[Footnote 1: New York City, about where Yonkers now stands.]

He had reached this point when without warning his body pitched forward.

The balcony rail caught it; and it hung there inert. The slanting rays

of the sun fell full upon the ruffled white shirt; white, but turning

pink, then red, with the crimson stain welling out from beneath.

For an instant the crowd was stunned into silence. Then a murmur arose,

and swelled into shouts of horror. A surge of people swept me forward. I

could not see clearly what was happening on the balcony. The form of the

murdered President was hanging there against the rail; a score of

government officials were rushing toward it; but the body, toppling over

the low support, came hurtling downward into the crowd, quite near me;

but I could not reach it--the throng was too dense.

The shouts everywhere were deafening. I was shoved along the Tenth Level

by the press of people coming up the stairway. Shouts, excited

questions; the wail of children almost trampled under foot; the screams

of women. And over it all, the electrically magnified voice of the

traffic director-general in the peak of the main tower roaring his

orders to the crowd.

It was a panic until the traffic-directors descended upon us. We were

pushed up on the moving sidewalks. North or south, whichever direction

came handiest, we were herded upon the sidewalks and whirled away. With

a hundred other spectators near me I was shoved to a sidewalk moving

south along the Tenth Level. It was going some four miles an hour. But

they would not let me stay there. From behind, the crowd was shoving;

and from one parallel strip of moving pavement to the other I was pushed

along--until at last I reached the seats of the forty mile an hour

inside section.

The scene at Park Sixty was far out of direct sight and hearing. The

park there had already been cleared of spectators, I knew; and they were

doubtless bearing the President's body away.

"Murdered!" said a man beside me. "Murdered! Look there!"

We were across the river, into Manhattan. The Tenth Level here runs

about four hundred feet above the ground-street of the city. The man

beside me was pointing to a steel tower we were passing. It was several

hundreds yards away; on its side abreast of us was a forty-foot square

news-mirror, brightly illumined. On all the stairways and balconies here

a local crowd had gathered, watching the mirror. It was reporting the

present scene at Park Sixty. As we sped past the tower I could see in

the silver surface of the mirror the image of the now empty park from

which we had been so summarily ejected. They were carrying off the

President's body; a little group of officials bearing it away; red,

broken, gruesome, with the dying rays of the sun still upon it. Carrying

it slowly along to where an aero-car was waiting on the side landing

stage.

We were past the mirror in a moment.

"Murdered," the man next to me repeated. "The President murdered."

He seemed stunned, as indeed everyone was. Then he eyed me--my cap,

which had on it the insignia of my calling.

"You are one of them," he said bitterly. "The last word he said--the

lurid news-gatherers."

But I shook my head. "We are necessary. It was unfortunate that he

should have said that."

I had no opportunity to talk further. The man moved away toward the foot

of a landing stage near us. A south-bound flyer had overtaken us and was

landing. I boarded it also, and ten minutes later was in my office in

South-Manhattan.

I was at this time employed by one of the most enterprising

news-organizations in Greater New York. There was pandemonium in there

that evening. My supper came up in the pneumatic tube from the public

cookery nearby, but I had hardly time to taste it.

This, the evening of May 12, 2430, was for me--and for all the

Earth--the most stirring evening of history. Events of inter-planetary

importance tumbled over each other as they came to us through the air

from the Official Information Stations. And we--myself and a thousand

like me in our office--retold them for our twenty million subscribers

throughout the Anglo-Saxon Nation.

The President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic was murdered at 5:10. It was

the first of the new murders. I say new murders, for not in two hundred

years had the life of so high an official been wilfully taken. But it

was only the first. At 6:15 word came from Tokyohama,[2] that the ruler

of Allied Mongolia was dead--murdered under similar circumstances. And

ten minutes later from Mombozo, Africa, the blacks reported their leader

killed while asleep in his official residence.

[Footnote 2: Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan.]

The Earth momentarily was without leadership!

I was struggling to get accounts of these successive disasters out over

our audiophones. Above my desk, in a duplicating mirror from

Headquarters, I could see that at the palace of Mombozo a throng of

terrified blacks were gathered. It was night there--a blurred scene of

flashing lights and frightened, milling people.

Greys--next to me--had a mirror tuned to Tokyohama. The sun there was

shining upon almost a similar scene of panic. Black and yellow men--on

opposite sides of the Earth. And between them our white races in

turmoil. Outside my own window I could hear the shouts of the crowd that

jammed the Twentieth Level.

Greys leaned toward me. "Seven o'clock, Jac. You've got the arrival of

the Venus mail. Don't overlook it ... By the code, man, your hands are

shaking! You're white as a ghost!"

The Venus mail; I had forgotten it completely.

"Greys, I wonder if it'll get in."

He stared at me strangely. "You're thinking that, too. I told the

British National Announcer it was a Venus plot. He laughed at me. Those

Great Londoners can't see their fingers before them. He said, 'That's

your lurid sense of newscasting.'"

Venus plot! I remembered my impressions of the Venus man who was beside

me when our President fell.

Greys was back at his work. I swept the south shore of Eastern Island[3]

with my finder, and picked up the image of the inter-planetary landing

stage, at which the Venus mail was due to arrive. I could see the blaze

of lights plainly; and with another, closer focus I caught the huge

landing platform itself. It was empty.

[Footnote 3: Now Long Island.]

The station-master there answered my call. He had no word of the mail.

"Try the lookout at Table Mountain," he advised me. "They may be coming

down that way.... Sure I'll let you know.... What a night! They say that

in Mediterrania--"

But I cut off; it was no time to chat with him. Table Mountain,

Capetown, had no word of the mail. Then I caught the Yukon Station. The

mail flyer had come down on the North Polar side--was already crossing

Hudson Bay.

At 8:26 it landed on Eastern Island. A deluge of Venus despatches

overwhelmed me. But the mail news, before I could even begin to handle

my section of it, was far overshadowed. Venus, now at 8:44 was calling

us by helio. The message came in the inter-planetary code, was decoded

at National Headquarters, and from there flashed to us.

The ruler of the Venus Central State was murdered! An almost incoherent

message. The murder of the ruler, at a time co-incident with 6:30 in

Greater New York. Then the words:

_"City being attacked ... Tarrano, beware Tarrano ... You are in danger

of ..."_

In danger of what? The message broke off. The observers, behind their

huge telescopes at the Potomac Headquarters, saw the helio-lights of the

Venus Central State go dark suddenly. Our own station flashed its call,

but there was no answer. Venus--evening star on that date--was sinking

to the horizon. But our Observatory in Texas could see the planet

clearly; and gave the same report.

Communication was broken. The authorities of the Venus Central

State--friendly to us in spite of the recent immigration

controversy--had tried to warn us.

Of what?