Terrors by Richard A. Lupoff

folding tray acrossher employer’s lap before she noticed Mrs. van Burckhart’s extreme pallor. Next, she noticed that Mrs. van Burckhart was so cold that moisture from the air around her was beginning to condense. When Betty Wilson touched her employer’s hand and realized how cold and rigid it was, the truth became obvious.
    Not so obvious, and in fact unnoticed by Betty Wilson, was the stream of tiny white specksmoving away from the body and toward the slightly open window. Mrs. van Burckhart had been committed to the cultivation of fresh air, even in Seacoast City’s freakishly winter-like summer.
    In luxurious penthouses and cramped tenement dwellings throughout Seacoast City, in the suburban homes of industrialists and the tidy cottages of working families, in a hundred thousand dwellings or more, radioswere tuned to WSCR. Seacoast Citizens high and humble leaned over their radios, hoping for word of the end of the unprecedented cold.
    They were prepared to hear a jingle, an announcer, even a playlet designed to part them from their dimes and dollars in exchange for the latest model automobile, the newest and most improved toothpaste or soap powder, the energizing breakfast cereal or the druggist’snostrum that would fill their lives with excitement and their families with joy.
    They heard neither news of relief from the cold nor messages urging them to empty their pockets or their purses. Instead they heard a hard clicking followed by a discordant screech and finally the tones of a cold, harsh male voice.
    “This is Lord Gorgon, chief servant of the Scorpion Queen, speaking. Prepare yourselves,Seacoast Citizens, to hear the terms of The Scorpion Queen. Her demands are simple. In exchange for meeting them, the snow will cease to fall on your buildings and your thoroughfares. The ice will melt from your river, your harbor, the lakes in your parks.”
    There was a pause. In living rooms across the city men and women, puzzled, frightened, looked at one another questioningly.
    “What has happenedto Seacoast City is a warning to the rest of thenation. The oligarchs in Washington have interfered in the affairs of Europe for too long. They have sent food and munitions to the weak, corrupt nations of that continent in a vain attempt to halt the liberating armies of the glorious leader. Unless this unwarranted meddling stops at once, every port in the United States will be frozen as SeacoastCity has been. There is no need to reply to this message. The Scorpion Queen and her ally in Europe will observe the ports of America. Should this nation fail to comply, it will die in a new ice age!”
    Who was speaking? What had happened? Engineers in the WSCR control booth studied their dials, trained men tending the station’s transmitters conferred frantically with their superiors, trying tounravel the new state of affairs.
    The station’s signal had been hijacked.
    Frantic messages exchanged with the staffs of the Seacoast City’s other radio stations—WGVG, WHIQ, WISP, WBLU—revealed that those stations, too, had been hijacked. The clickings, the screech, the mysterious message that had gone out over the airwaves from WSCR had been carried by every station in the city.
    In the Mayor’soffice in Seacoast City Hall, a meeting was taking place. The Mayor and the city’s Chief of Police were conferring as to steps to be taken.
    In an outer office, a male aide to the Mayor and a female secretary were seated, their heads close together, a small radio on the secretary’s desk tuned to the stylings of Wally Carson, the nation’s latest romantic crooner. Accompanied by an army of violinsand an ocean of harps the crooner was pledging his undying love to the object of his affection. The Mayor’s male aide and female secretary were holding hands across her desktop and gazing passionately into each other’s eyes when the crooner was interrupted by a hard clicking and a discordant screech.
    The cold male voice began to