Post by dans on Sept 15, 2021 22:44:39 GMT
If you want to read this story in a single post, the complete story is here: Mac Maine complete story, or continue reading post by post. |
September, 1941
Chapter 1: Astounding Demonstration
Outside a remote Army outpost in the Mohave Desert in Southern California, a group of mixed Army and Navy brass was warily watching the rumbling advance of a line of 4 tanks. A large man, wearing a form fitting outfit that seemed to be made of rubber, stood staunchly in the path of the advance. Over the outfit he wore a heavy vest. On the side side where the watch pocket would have been was attached what might have been the keypad for a large calculator, though there were a number of extra keys. A curly telephone headset cord ran from the keypad to a massive metal box the man was wearing like a backpack. He also wore leather gloves and a helmet like that of a welder. The box on his back made a high-pitched whine.
After the tanks had crossed some imaginary line, he quickly but carefully typed in a multi-digit number on the keypad. “I hope this isn’t the time it blows up!!” he though worriedly as he crossed his fingers. “Although a mile wide crater would definitely be a spectacular display of how powerful my Molecular Converter is, I doubt if any of us would appreciated the demonstration!”
The whine rose in pitch and volume and the man was surrounded by a blur that seemed to be dozens of giant electrons whirling around at fantastic speeds as if he were the nucleus of a giant atom. The illusion faded and a beam flashed out from the man and engulfed the tanks. As the beam struck each tank, it vanished in a bright flash of light and a puff of smoke.
“And THAT’s an even better demonstration! That should show that jackass Clutterbuck!” he thought with savage satisfaction.
"My God!" General Beaumont, the most senior of the observers, exclaimed loudly in stunned astonishment. "I'm absolutely flummoxed! It's a good thing we used obsolete tanks and remote control!"
"Even though they were obsolete, we just lost almost 20 tons of steel! What wasteful destruction! I've a good mind to bring you up on charges, Maine!" Another general huffed.
"Excuse me, General Clutterbuck, you were the one who insisted on 4 tanks. And remember, too, that you were so sure my molecular convertor couldn't do what I claimed that you wanted to use our most modern tanks and full crews instead of remote control!" Mac Maine coldly reminded the general. "If we'd done it your way, there'd be 20 dead men and a million dollars of melted tanks in front of us right now."
Clutterbuck harrumphed, but he shut up. The rest of the observers surrounded Maine, clamoring for more details. Except for one who hurried to his car, which was parked out of sight of the group behind one of the base buildings. After glancing furtively around to make sure he was unobserved, he quickly slid back a panel revealing a concealed short wave and made a quick broadcast, not waiting for a response.
"Mac Maine's secret weapon is too powerful to let it slip from our gasp. It must be captured - or destroyed!!"
On a remote island off the coast of Southern California, the personnel of a secret Axis base sprang into action. The commander made several short-wave calls of his own, activating several of his agents in the Southern California city where Mac Maine lived, and then visited the giant hanger secreted in a cavern in the mountain in the center of the island, where he oversaw other preparations.
Meanwhile, Maine wasn't through with his demonstration. "I'm willing to put my life on the line to prove the powers of my invention, gentlemen. Please set up a firing squad - and shoot me!"
“Why, you're MAD, Maine!" Beaumont declared.
But Clutterbuck, stung by his earlier words with Maine, quickly lined up a group of soldiers. "Ready! Aim!" Maine typed a very short sequence on his keypad and was instantly surrounded by the whirling electrons effect, almost invisible this time, as the whine rose into frequency, becoming inaudible. "FIRE!" A dozen rifles fired almost as one; the shots fired had no apparent effect.
"It's amazing!" An admiral announced in a shout. "The bullets don't phase him!"
"Are they bouncing off, or not even hitting him?" an astounded Marine officer wondered.
After 3 volleys, Beaumont ordered the firing squad to stand down, and once again the military observers clustered excitedly around Maine, who took off his heavy helmet.
One of the soldiers who’d fired inspected the ground in front of Maine, and found most of the bullets. Or, at least, bullet-sized lumps of lead. "That light show stopped 'em dead - and melted them!" he said quietly, in awe of what he'd just seen. He had deliberately missed with his first volley, but when there had been no effect from the shots of others, on the second and third rounds he'd aimed at vulnerable spots not likely to be fatal - and they hadn't been vulnerable, either!
"Maine, you must protect the secret of your Molecular Convertor with your LIFE" Beaumont commanded. "It must NOT fall into enemy hands!"
"Gentlemen, you can count on me!" Maine responded. "When you've made your decision, I'll be in my lab, working on improvements!" He almost saluted before remembering he'd left the Army Air Corps about 5 years ago.
The officer who'd used the radio before observed closely as Maine left, and then headed back to his car. Waiting until he was unobserved he made another radio call.
Chapter 2: Enemy Spies
The next morning, dressed in casual civilian clothes, Mac walked into his lab on the top floor of one of the taller buildings in the city and greeted his assistant, Rick Adams, a heavy-set man wearing a white lab jacked. "Hiya, Rick! Say, the exhibition yesterday went perfectly. I expect a BIG order from the War Department real soon!"
"Jeepers, Mac, we'll have to turn them out like Ford turns out tin lizzies!" Rick responded, shaking his head in mock woe. "Well, we should make some preparations to get started." He turned back to his workbench and started putting things in order. "Good thing, too - after all the hours we've been putting in, I didn't remember what to do with 'spare time'!" he quipped.
Meanwhile, three Axis agents, following the orders of their commander on the island, had stealthily followed Mac to his lab building, then climbed to the roof via the fire escape where they now peered down through the skylight. "When the heavy one is directly under the skylight, pounce on him!" one commanded the others. "I will wait here and join you if you are unable to overcome them." It wasn't long before Rick moved under the skylight; one agent dropped on top of Rick and knocked him to the floor while the other landed on his feet with a pistol in his hand, and brought it up aimed at Mac.
"What is this, an invasion?!" Mac yelled in alarm. He leaped forward and before the man with the gun could fire, had grabbed his wrist - in a grip like iron! Even so, the agent fired, but Mac was able to force the gun off-line so none of the shots hit him. But one shot DID hit something vulnerable...
An experimental ray projector! A white beam flashed out, barely missing the fighters. Mac landed a powerful right to the agent, who stumbled backward, almost into the beam. The fight had been knocked out of Rick when he hit the floor, so the other spy tackled Mac around the waist. As he toppled, Mac drove his elbow into the back of the tackler's neck, then squirmed free and pushed him into the beam, where he lay motionless.
With a roar, the other agent jumped back into the fight. Mac called on the years of experience he'd gained as a Golden Gloves fighter before he joined the military and kept his arms up to deflect blows while circling warily. When the other man had his back to the beam, Mac lunged forward with a powerful right cross and knocked the enemy agent into the beam - where he stopped moving, paralyzed.
Mac immediately unplugged the beam generator - he didn't want to get caught himself! And then tended to Rick, who by now had his breath back and was somewhat disappointed that he'd missed the fisticuffs!
Meanwhile, the agent still on the roof had seen his minions beaten and captured, and rather then going to their aid, he quickly scooted down the fire escape. "I must report to our leader that the mission to capture Mac Maine and his weapon didn't fare well."
He didn't seem very eager to report. His commander was known to beat or even kill men who had failed on their missions. But not reporting failure to him would produce even worse consequences. Similarly to the military traitor, he made his report from a concealed short wave in his car. Back on the island base, after he was sure he'd received the whole message, the commander nodded to the operator in the radio shack, who pushed a button on a panel covered with a lot of similar buttons. The microphone the agent was holding delivered to him a powerful electric shock, and the agent in command of the failed mission died instantly.
***
It took over an hour for the paralysis ray to wear off. Mac had wanted to interrogate the men before he called in the authorities, but when they awakened they stubbornly refused to talk. So he finally called the FBI. It took a few minutes to convince the FBI to send out some agents and it would be a while before they arrived. Mac returned to the lab where the bad guys were tied up, where Rick stood menacingly over the bound spies, ready to whack them with a heavy rolling pin if they tried to escape.
"So, Rick, the FBI men are on the way to take these rotten spies into custody!"
"That's where they belong, in the klink!" Rick insisted loudly. “But I could MAKE them talk… with this!” He waved the rolling pin towards the heads of the prisoners. “Why, I could break their…” The two spies, bound back to back on a pair of chairs, glared at him defiantly – but there was more than a tinge of fear in their expressions.
“No, let the FBI men question them. They should be here in a couple of minutes.” Mac sounded reluctant to turn the men over without learning anything from them, and Rick was definitely disappointed. But he grudgingly put down his club.
"Bet this won't be the last of them," Mac mused. "We must be ready when the others strike! This secret belongs to our own United States!"
"Sure," Rick agreed uncertainly, a little unsettled at the thought of more confrontations with enemy agents. "So... why not let Uncle Sam protect it then?"
"No, we'll do it, Rick," Mac contradicted his friend. "I've hidden the keypad separately - you know what that means."
"Yeah, the MC won't work without the keypad - no molecular conversion for them bums! But suppose they steal it and one of 'em is smart enough to figure out how it works?" Rick was definitely worried. Before Mac could speak, he brightened considerably. “Hey, it will explode if they figure out how to turn it on without the keypad. It’ll suit them right!”
"Then we'll have to build another one. We'll just have to risk our necks to protect this one," Mac replied defiantly. "We can't let the convertor or the keypad fall into their hands, even for an hour!"
Chapter 3: Dirigible Attack
Back on the island, an hour ago, a giant door, camouflaged on the outside, had rumbled open in the side of the mountain. Like the head of a giant reptile, the nose of a dirigible lumbered through the open door. It was a giant of its kind, much larger than the Hindenburg, painted a non-reflective black which made it almost invisible against the gray storm clouds currently blanketing the sky - and it would be even harder to spot above those clouds. The motors were silent and highly advanced - it was incredible that such a large craft could move so quickly! Before the FBI reached Mac Maine's lab, the giant dirigible was hovering overhead, partially concealed by the dark storm clouds. Inside, one man, Commander Faulig, prepared to descend from the dirigible to the roof of the lab.
“You are going yourself, Commander?” one of the fliers asked, somewhat hesitantly.
“Ya, I shall go… alone! This effort must not be bungled; the prize is too valuable to lose!” he boasted, as he donned an unusual helmet, which covered his entire face, with lenses over the eyes and a filter of some kind over his nose and mouth.
He climbed into a gondola that was attached to the end of a cable. Inside the gondola was a control for a winch mounted to the dirigible’s hanger deck “Hold this position carefully!” Faulig commanded his underling harshly “Your life, and all aboard, depend on my safety!”
There were rumors that Commander Faulig had installed a remote control destruct mechanism into the the Darke Vulture, which was the official name of the dirigible, and that he always carried the detonator dead-man switch with him. Not a single man in the crew had any doubt that this rumor was true.
It only took Faulig a few minutes to reach the roof. He pulled a pistol and a glass vial from pouches on his belt, shattered the skylight, and threw the vial forcefully against the floor below. A cloud of vapor spilled from the smashed vial. Mac crumpled over the top of a table, while Rick fell to the floor. The two prisoners slumped against their bonds, unconscious. Faulig then used the gondola to descend into the lab. Protected from the fumes by the helmet covering his face, he quickly searched the lab. When he found the Molecular Convertor he strapped it to his back. He stopped before he got back into his gondola and addressed the unconscious men.
“I will take Maine with me, but the rest of you can die of this poison gas.” He laughed evilly as he pronounced their death sentences. He turned directly toward his unconscious agents. “You two deserve to die like the bungling idiots you have proved to be.” Perhaps fooled by Rick’s lab jacket, Faulig dragged the unconscious assistant to the gondola. As he was manhandling him inside, someone outside the lab started pounding on the door and yelling Mac Maine’s name.
In the hall, two arriving FBI agents were very concerned. “Why don’t they answer?” one demanded. “I’m going to smash it down!”
The other was perhaps a tad more observant. “Be careful, there may be a fire in there! There’s smoke coming out from under the door!”
“Quick, help me! We have to get in there fast!” The two men smashed their shoulders into the door and broke it open, and almost instantly backed out of the room as fast as they had crashed in. “Poison gas! No wonder nobody answered!”
The other noticed the gondola rising through the skylight. “Look at that!” He pointed, but his partner was peering through the cloud of gas, which was by now billowing out the door.
“I see some bodies!” he yelled. He pulled out a handkerchief and held it over his mouth and nose. “Help me pull them out!” By now, the gas cloud was pouring out of the room, spreading out to cover the floor of the hall, and rapidly getting less deep. “The gas is heavier than air; as long as we keep our heads above the cloud, we’ll be OK!”
The two FBI men rushed into the room, one heading for the unconscious men, while the other paused momentarily under the skylight. “There’s a dirigible up there! It’s hauling up a basket!” Then he turned to help his partner with the unconscious men.
In the gondola, Faulig pulled a cable loose from the side of his helmet and plugged it into a panel. “Return to the island. Immediately. Reel me in as you go, don’t wait! And you had best avoid any other buildings!”
***
It wasn’t much longer before Mac recovered fully. He was dismayed when he realized his assistant was gone. “They’ve captured Rick! They must have thought he was me – and when they realize he’s NOT me, they’ll kill him. I have to save him!”
As the FBI led the captives out, Rick’s sister Daisy rushed into the room. “What happened? I heard a tremendous crashing and somebody’s smashed through your door. Are you OK?” She paused for a second, and looked around. “And where’s RICK?”
Mac told her the story, ending with: “I’ve GOT to follow that dirigible and get him back!”
“How are you going to chase a dirigible?” Daisy asked.
Mac strode quickly to a cabinets on the wall, opened it, and yelped in satisfaction as he pulled out a cylinder the size of a fire extinguisher, built on the frame of a backpack. “This is it – the prototype Molecular Convertor. It isn’t as powerful as the production version and the range is limited to only a couple feet – but it will let me fly after that blimp!”
“That thing will let you fly? How?!” she was astounded.
"Hold on just a second!" He pulled open a closet and stepped into the insulated outfit he'd worn during the military demonstration, then held up the cylinder, straps dangling.
“Well, you know the pack is a nuclear generator, right?” he asked. She nodded her head; she often talked to her brother about his work. “Well, it produces a kind of ‘atomic field’ around itself when it’s running. I’ve developed a device that lets me manipulate that field, and by manipulating the field in just the right ways, I can induce changes in the matter around me at the molecular level.”
As he talked, he put on his vest, then strapped the pack to his back.
“And how does that let you fly?” she insisted on knowing, and he could hear the strained hope in her voice. Hope that he’d be able to help her brother.
“Watch!” He unlocked a drawer and pulled out the oversized keypad. He fastened it to the front of the vest, and then plugged a cord dangling from the cylinder into a socket on the keypad, A green light on the pad lit up, and the cylinder began to whine – not nearly as loudly as the ‘production model’ had whined.
“I hope this thing holds together!” He tapped a short code into the keys, and was surrounded by the ‘giant atom’ effect for instant, and when it subsided, his insulated outfit had seemingly sprouted miniature airplane wings on his back. “Converted to solid matter from the air around us!” he boasted. “This next one is way more complex – I hope it works, I've never had time to test it!"
He pulled a paper from a drawer, and Daisy saw that it was covered with a string of numbers. His fingers flew across the keypad, faster than Daisy could follow, and then the cylinder whined again, much louder this time, and again there was the flash of the giant atom effect, and when it subsided, the wings had changed again – each wing now had a small nacelle on the bottom edge.
“Jet engines!” he boasted proudly. “The one advantage the prototype has over the production model. We took out a lot of the fine tuning circuitry and built the production model for brute force instead. It makes a better weapon that way - but I can make much more complicated conversions with this model. Of course, it's not easy to come up with those really long codes. And there's not enough power to make anything much larger than these wings."
He spun in place so she could see his shiny new toys. "Stand back and watch my smoke!” He put on his welder's mask and pressed a green key on the keypad.
The engines flared to life and with a “WHOOSH” he rocketed through the skylight!