[Magazine 1966-­02] - The Howling Teenagers Affair - Lynds Dennis (книги хорошем качестве бесплатно без регистрации .txt) 📗

"Certain subjects?" Solo said.

Fitzhugh frowned, his grotesque face distorted. "At present the drug is still under development. You see, at the moment it will only work on the young, the teenagers. That is because older people have more resistance. They are under longer social conditioning. They subconsciously resist the effects of the drug. But the young! Ah, they are so eager, so vulnerable, they have not had the time to become emotionally cautious."

"The tendency must be there?" Illya said. "Then that."

"Explains the suicides, the mad swimming out to sea, of course," Fitzhugh said. "The drug is still in its early stages. WE hav eto experiment. When we gave it to those young people it heightened their self destructive desire and they acted."

"And the black-jackets, the mob in New York?" Solo said. "This must be your great."

"They are our triumph," Fitzhugh hissed in his un-human artificial voice. "I call them my teen corps. All are perfectly controlled subjects, as long as they get their dosage of PowerTen. They do exactly as we tell them. We find one in a hundred like that, and they are my pride. Once under the drug, they are my tools. You see, PowerTen is also an addictive drug!"

The disfigured genius laughed, "Like marijuana the drug can be ingested by smoking, by chewing, or by injection. Think of it, gentlemen! A drug that will enslave some, cause many to run wild and do what they only had a tendency to do before, cause others to destroy themselves with a smile! A drug which can be distributed in cigarettes, in chewing gum! All the eager, vulnerable young of the world, the unformed teenagers—they will be in our hands, and we will rule the earth with them! A world where we own the souls of all the young people!"

Illya shuddered in the silent office. Solo's hands twitched as if to reach out and strangle the evil genius with the un-human voice. A world of teenagers addicted to a drug controlled by THRUSH! THRUSH would be destroyed by their own suicidal hands under its baleful influence.

"Conceived of it—all teenagers a weapon of THRUSH!" Marcuc Fitzhugh said. "Ruined, destroyed, rendered into mindless weapons who are happy when they kill and destroy! We will own them all! And I, Marcus Fitzhugh, will rule the council of THRUSH because PowerTen is my work, my secret! They are mine, the teenagers of the world."

At that instant the noise suddenly began again. The machinery below began to hum; alarms began to ring. Herrara walked to a box on the wall of the office and opened it to pull a switch and shut off the alarms. The power lines had been repaired.

Fitzhugh seemed to relax, his eyes calming and turned on Solo and Kuryakin. He raised his Luger.

This time the new voice spoke from behind the two guards holding Mahyana.

"Dad, you forgot one little teenager. Man, that was a real boo-boo."

Fitzhugh whirled, an automatic reaction.

The bearded face of Joe Hooker stood behind the two guards. Hooker leaped on the two guards. Mahyana threw one of them. Herrara, caught at the control box, was attacked by Solo. Illya went for the back of Fitzhugh.

But the disfigured insane genius recovered himself. Before Illya could reach him, he fired at Joe Hooker. Hit, the bearded boy was knocked over backwards.

Fitzhugh leaped forward, kicked Mahyana out of his path, and hurtled through the open door, which instantly closed behind him. The disfigured man was safe inside his emergency corridors.

Illya swore softly. The rest of the enemy had been subdued. Solo stood now, holding a machine-pistol. Mahyana stood up, blood still on her shoulder, a dark bruise on hr pretty face where Fitzhugh had kicked. Joe Hooker lay on the floor.

"Like, Dads, he got me some."

"Where?" Illya said, bending over the bearded boy.

"Nowhere, man, like the shoulder. It smarts, you know, like it was crazy. There I was in that box looking to meet the big banjo man and Shazam, the door opened! I split but quick, you know? All the doors was open, and they just plain forgot about little Joe. I saw them taking the chick down some little passageways. I followed, and they never remembered. Crazy."

"Crazy," Illya said. "Can you walk?"

"If I can't, I'll fly. Man, let's split this scene!"

Solo had walked out to the steel walkway above the vast cavern of chemical machinery. Now he called out.

"Look!"

Below, on the floor of the vast chemical plant, Marcus Fitzhugh was shouting to the workers, waving his arms wildly. AS one man, the workers began to run in a howling mob behind Fitzhugh.

They were running for the stairways up toward the office.

FOUR

Illya ran back to the control box Herrara had used to shut off the alarms. Quickly he pulled a switch and whirled.

"I've opened all the doors again. Run for the elevator as fast as you can. I don't know how much time we'll have."

"Go!" Solo commanded.

Solo helped Joe Hooker along the walkway and into the first corridor. Mahyana came behind them. All the doors were open again.

In the control office and laboratory, Illya bent over a console of dials and gauges. He studied the labels for a moment, then quickly turned four dials to full open. The needles on the dials that controlled the process in the vast cavern began to climb toward the red danger areas.

Illya ran after the others.

The first wave of workers was coming up the stairs from the factory floor below. Illya squeezed off a volley from the machine-pistol he carried.

The first four men screamed and fell back against those behind. Somewhere the hissing voice of Marcus Fitzhugh was shrieking in mad anger, forcing the workers on.

Illya raced down the corridors after the others. Two guards appeared in his path and he shot them down, their shots going wild above his head. Illya ran on over them without looking down. The mob of workers was crowding into the narrow steel corridor behind him.

An explosion somewhere behind on the floor of the cavern rocked the corridor. One of the pieces of equipment had gone up. Illya reached the elevator. He turned to fire one more burst before jumping into the elevator-and saw the thick cloud of greenish-yellow gas flowing along the narrow and windowless corridor.

Caught like rats in a narrow sewer, the mob of workers began to scream, to choke, as the gas flowed over them. The narrow corridor was like a long gas chamber.

Illya leaped into the elevator.

Solo closed the door and the elevator began to rise quickly.

Below them they could hear the screams and groans of the mob caught in the deadly gas from the exploded chemical equipment. Another explosion rocked the elevator shaft. The elevator slowed, hesitated, then surged upward. Moments later they were at the top. They stepped out into the fake shaft-head. It was daylight out in the world.

Joe Hooker slumped to the ground in the glaring sun.

Mahyana bent over, trying to catch a breath.

Another explosion shook the earth.

Below, faint and horrible, the screams and groans rose up to the sunlight from the bowels of the earth.

Illya pulled at Joe Hooker. "Hurry. I don't know how long we have before it all blows. That gas can still reach us."

"Lead on kindly light," Hooker said.

Staggering in the blazing heat of the sun, the four beaten, disheveled refugees from the pit below moved across the desolate land, away from the disguised shaft-head. Every few yards the ground shook, heaved to explosions far below.

The screams of the dying continued to reach faintly to the surface. Streamers of greenish-yellow gas seeped up out of the elevator shaft behind them.