II
The sighting of the Inland Sea was a signal to start decelerating. The Los Angeles zone signal appeared, a red light on his control panel. The L.A. beam picked him up, swung him gently to the left, and brought him in automatically.
Below him he saw swarms of family fliers, all coming from the city. As he dropped down he found the traffic system entirely disorganized. Outgoing fliers were filling the incoming lanes. After narrowly missing sudden death several times, Art savagely dialed traffic center. The televisor screen lit up—but instead of a picture of the control officer seated at his switchboard, Art saw only an empty chair. It was only then that he realized the extent of the panic that gripped Los Angeles—for the control officer was sworn to remain at his post through the direst emergencies.
Now he was over the city—the vast terraced, pyramidical structures of the metropolitan area, each a mile square at the base, with a narrow rim of landing strip around each level. But as he descended lower he saw that they were no longer structures, but ruins. Even as he watched, they were crumbling and caving in on themselves. Some of them were already mere vast heaps of rubble. Projecting his helicopter propellers, he dropped down and hovered over one of them. Everywhere the broken plastoglass was covered with writhing, squirming duplicates of the creature back in his laboratory.
Art fished out his code book, found the wave length of Los Angeles Police Commissioner Horne, and rapidly dialled it. The strained and perspiring face of the Commissioner appeared, sitting at the controls of his ship as he vainly tried to straighten out the evacuating traffic.
"Douglas of the Institute reporting, Commissioner."
"Hope you brought some disintegrators!" barked the chief. "They're the only thing that will touch these beasts. The shock ray has no effect whatsoever on them. An electron torch will burn them, but that's no good—you can't go about killing them one by one. There are billions of them—they're everywhere!"
"Possibly you'd better describe the situation from the beginning for my benefit, Commissioner," Art interposed.
"What!" roared Horne. "Theller gave me to understand that you had had experience with these things, and understood them. Now you tell me—"
"Easy, Commissioner. I've seen one of these things before for a few minutes, and that's all. You asked for help and Dr. Theller sent me out here in good faith to do what I can." This served to quiet the policeman somewhat, for he merely grunted, "O.K., meet me at the top level of the Administration group; that's the silver one, the only one that still has a top level. You'll have to find it. We had to move out the traffic control—that section of the building's ready to go any minute now."