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?