But in the other places where he tried to give the information he possessed, he did not appear to be the first. He had outrun the panic to Gracie Mansion. He followed it everywhere else. Newspapers came out with two-hundred-point headlines:
"PLAGUE WIPES OUT NEWARK!"
Other newspapers ran scareheads:
"REDS OCCUPY NEWARK?"
There was one which screamed in red headlines:
"FLYING SAUCERS SMASH NEWARK!"
Nobody seemed possessed of any intelligence whatever. The streets swarmed with people frantically asking each other questions. Men and women clustered before TV stores to listen to the latest news flashes. But aside from catastrophes to buses, a tube train, police cars and ambulances which tried to enter the city, the unchanging fact remained: Newark had blacked out.
But there was additional fact. Nobody mentioned the thin gray mist which seemed to have risen from the city's streets shortly after the major catastrophe itself. Nobody suggested that the city was burning. This would have been a logical expectation. Nobody indicated the actual fact that whatever happened had been progressive, that the cataleptic condition of people on the streets had not been instantaneous. To some degree warning had been given.
The disaster had begun behind the car in which Waldron and Lucy rode. Then it overtook and passed them, somehow not striking them. Possibly this was not a pivotal point, but it was proof that none of the sources of information for the newspapers or broadcasters had been inside Newark at the time of the catastrophe. And failure to mention the gray mist was proof that nobody succeeded in entering Newark and returning.
There were too many cranks to put in confinement. They were simply blocked from approach to any source of authority or information. And to that fact Waldron owed his own freedom to move about. He was simply brushed off, while panic increased and piled up. Hysteria would have swept the population except that a good many people simply did not believe the news. It was starkly out of all reason.
Nearly two hours passed before Waldron realized that he knew one man in New York who wouldn't be important enough to be protected against cranks. Yet this man might be important enough to do something sensible about the information that could be given him. He called the Mayfair. Lucy was all right. He told her where he was going, and headed downtown for Newspaper Row.
He sent in a note to Nick Bannerman, press photographer for the New York Messenger. Nick came out of the newspaper building, brushed aside onlookers, cranks and assorted bystanders. He dragged Waldron back into the building.
"Swell!" he said, beaming. "You live in Newark. I'll use a picture of you for somebody to hang an interview on. What you think may have happened, your agony and suspense, and so on." Then he stopped. "Hey! No! You're a biologist! You make a guess on what sort of weapon could have wiped out everybody without explosions—no noise rules out atom bombs, and—"
"No," said Waldron curtly. "I was in Newark when it happened. I got out with one other person. We're the only people who did get out."
Nick stared at him. "The hell you say! We're fixing up an expedition now. Everybody in germ-proof clothes, gas masks, and all that—as if we were going into an operating room."
"No good," said Waldron grimly.
He thought of the slowly cooling, cryptic object in his pocket. It was unquestionably the reason he and Lucy had not shared the fate of everybody else in Newark. Fran must have borrowed his car, not to make a search for Lucy's father, but to install that thing so Lucy could be gotten out of danger. Abruptly, Waldron realized that he couldn't tell anything that would involve Fran. Fran had saved him and Lucy—him, of course, in order to protect Lucy. He said he'd be killed if it were known....
Nick Bannerman yelped suddenly. "Dumb me!" he gasped. "You're an eyewitness! Come here!"
In minutes, Waldron was being photographed while men shot questions at him. He answered them—most of them. But he left Fran out. He said flatly that he and "a girl"—he did not name Lucy—were on their way to New York in his car when the city began to drop dead around them. He described what he saw. He professed complete ignorance of the reason for his and Lucy's immunity.
The story did not hold together. It would be printed, of course. But it was thin. It was lame. It was not convincing. It sounded like somebody trying to get publicity for himself.
Nick took Waldron aside when he'd finished. "Steve," he said with difficulty, "how much did you hold out? That's a damned phony story. You aren't a phony. What's up?"
"I had help getting away," admitted Waldron. "I can't tell about that. What I'm hoping, of course, is that somebody with real authority will want to ask me some more questions and I can tell the stuff that simply mustn't be made public."
"It's no accident?" demanded Nick. "Men are doing it? Reds?"
"I don't know," admitted Waldron. "Men, yes. Reds—I doubt it. And I don't know what's been done. I do know you can't go into the dead area with gas masks and come out again. It's not gas, whatever it is."
Nick thought shrewdly. "My job is getting pictures. How about shooting pictures from planes?"
"I doubt very much that a plane can fly low over Newark and come back. Maybe a drone plane. I don't know why I think so. But I do." Then he added bitterly: "Not that my thinking is too good! I thought I had some information that would be useful. Your reporter friends thought I was crazy and a liar to boot. Anybody would—unless I told them what I can't!"
Nick said meditatively: "Y'know, Steve, I don't. I don't think you're crazy. You couldn't tell me the stuff you held out just now?"
Waldron hesitated, irresolutely. Then he said grimly: "I don't think I'd better."
Nick said shrewdly, again: "But you almost did. So there's something you do know. Are you sure, Steve, that germ-proof clothes won't do any good?"
"It wasn't germs," said Waldron shortly. "It moved in a wave, whatever it was. Spreading out from a center."
Nick said vexedly: "I should've told the guys your specialty—biology. They'd have asked questions from that angle. Your story'd have sounded better. Too late now." Then he added: "Everything's crazy! But if it wasn't germs that blacked out Newark, could it have been gas?"
"I didn't have a gas mask," said Waldron. He shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe I'll have something more by morning."
He went out, disillusioned and uncomfortable. He hadn't done much good.
He got back in the cab. Biologist ... Suddenly he reached forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder. This cabbie was also listening to a news broadcast. Waldron gave him the address of Professor Jamison, near Columbia University.
Waldron was more than an eyewitness; he was also a biologist. Maybe if he found the right man who knew how to make use of Waldron's special insight and at the same time make some sense out of the now-cold metal thing in his pocket ...
Of course, the answer was the leading American authority on electric anesthesia. Although it was not practical, one could produce anesthesia sometimes, to a limited degree and in a limited area. The use of it, however, was tricky and not fully understood. The theory surrounding the phenomenon was incomplete and the results were very erratic. But something underneath a car had set itself on fire and then destroyed itself before it could be examined. And this something had kept the occupants of the car from turning stiff and glass-hard and lifeless. There was a connection, tenuous enough, but at least a possibility.
He would tell Professor Jamison exactly what he had seen. He wanted to know if it were possible to apply a large-scale electrical anesthesia to a city—the effect moving outward like a wave, as the generating source of anesthesia increased its power and reached a critical value. If such a thing were possible, then there would be a way to counter it by something that—say—could be put under a car. And if it could be countered, the still city could be entered and the generator of anesthesia smashed....