Did they divine its purpose? I thought so; for as presently it came to rest, lodged in the upright steel where cross girders were riveted, I saw men come rushing with crowbars and axes. Frantically they were tearing at the walls, ripping out the wood and plaster, striving to reach and perhaps to dislodge that shimmering thing lying there in the vitals of the building.
Brutar laughed. "You see, Rob? They're beginning to understand now—and they're frightened. It is materializing—that brick, as you call it, is materializing!"
Growing solid! In a surging torrent of horror complete realization rushed over me. I scarce heard Brutar's gloating words: "That inert matter, freed of physical contact with our Borderland bodies, tends slowly to change to the state of the thing nearest to it. As heat by contact communicates, so does the vibratory rate of all substances. That brick, lodged there, is materializing. Slowly now—but soon very fast. Presently it will be as solid as the steel girder itself—a brick resting there complete in your Earth-state—demanding space of its own, for its own existence!"
Space of its own! What diabolical force of Nature would this unleash! These molecules, atoms, electrons of the steel and brick thus intermingled! In a Space but half sufficient! A force created of unknown, unthinkable power—immeasurable as that proverbial irresistible force meeting an immovable body. Two solid bodies here, intermingled to their very essence, striving to occupy the same space at the same time!
Brutar was drawing at me. "Look at them, Rob! Trying to get at it! And up there—and down below—see them?"
The glowing bricks were lodged up and down the building—all seemingly on the one side. Down underground, lodged in the very foundations of the structure I could see three of them piled together. And frantic shapes of men digging for them through the walls of the cellars.
"Come further away, Rob. We can see it better from a distance. It should be very interesting."
We retreated, going back until again we were standing just beneath the level of City Hall Park. Brutar's men gathered around us—two hundred ghosts clustered there watching the fruit of their diabolical efforts. There were soldiers with machine guns in the park. The guns impotently, ridiculously, were trained upon us. And around the edge of the park a cordon of police kept back the crowds. I wondered what time of night it might be. Evening, possibly; and then I saw the spectral clock of the little tower of the squat City Hall. It was just before midnight.
Our march, perhaps not so much sinister as weird to the public, had drawn a jam of the morbidly curious to this part of the city. They were packed everywhere. And all the normal activities of the city were stopped. No traffic on the streets. Vehicles motionless.