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BOOK TWO THE WORLD WAR CHAPTER 5 1941
Chubby, brownette Eunice Kinnison sat in a rocker, reading the Sunday papers and
listening to her radio.
Her husband Ralph lay sprawled upon the davenport, smoking a cigarette and reading
the current issue of EXTRAORDINARY STORIES against an unheard background of music.
Mentally, he was far from Tellus, flitting in his super-dreadnaught through parsec
after parsec of vacuous space.
The music broke off without warning and there blared out an announcement which
yanked Ralph Kinnison back to Earth with a violence almost physical.
He jumped up, jammed his hands into his pockets.
"Pearl Harbor!" he blurted. "How in....
How could they have let them get that far?"
"But Frank!" the woman gasped. She had not worried much about her husband;
but Frank, her son.... "He'll have to go...."
Her voice died away.
"Not a chance in the world." Kinnison did not speak to soothe, but as
though from sure knowledge. "Designing Engineer for Lockwood?
He'll want to, all right, but anyone who was ever even exposed to a course in
aeronautical engineering will sit this war out."
"But they say it can't last very long.
It can't, can it?" "I'll say it can.
Loose talk. Five years minimum is my guess--not that my
guess is any better than anybody else's."
He prowled around the room. His somber expression did not lighten.
"I knew it," the woman said at length. "You, too--even after the last one....
You haven't said anything, so I thought, perhaps...."
"I know I didn't. There was always the chance that we
wouldn't get drawn into it.
If you say so, though, I'll stay home." "Am I apt to?
I let you go when you were really in danger...."
"What do you mean by that crack?" he interrupted.
"Regulations. One year too old--Thank Heaven!"
"So what?
They'll need technical experts, bad. They'll make exceptions."
"Possibly. Desk jobs.
Desk officers don't get killed in action-- or even wounded.
Why, perhaps, with the children all grown up and married, we won't even have to be
separated."
"Another angle--financial." "Pooh!
Who cares about that? Besides, for a man out of a job...."
"From you, I'll let that one pass.
Thanks, Eunie--you're an ace. I'll shoot 'em a wire."
The telegram was sent. The Kinnisons waited.
And waited.
Until, about the middle of January, beautifully-phrased and beautifully-
mimeographed letters began to arrive.
"The War Department recognizes the value of your previous military experience and
appreciates your willingness once again to take up arms in defense of the country ...
Veteran Officer's Questionnaire ... please fill out completely ...
Form 191A ... Form 170 in duplicate ...
Form 315....
Impossible to forecast the extent to which the War Department may ultimately utilize
the services which you and thousands of others have so generously offered ...
Form ...
Form.... Not to be construed as meaning that you
have been permanently rejected ... Form ...
Advise you that while at the present time the War Department is unable to use
you...." "Wouldn't that fry you to a crisp?"
Kinnison demanded.
"What in hell have they got in their heads- -sawdust?
They think that because I'm fifty one years old I've got one foot in the grave--I'll
bet four dollars that I'm in better shape than that cursed Major General and his
whole damned staff!"
"I don't doubt it, dear." Eunice's smile was, however, mostly of
relief. "But here's an ad--it's been running for a
week."
"CHEMICAL ENGINEERS ... shell loading plant ... within seventy-five miles of Townville
... over five years experience ... organic chemistry ... technology ...
explosives...."
"They want you," Eunice declared, soberly. "Well, I'm a Ph.D. in Organic.
I've had more than five years experience in both organic chemistry and technology.
If I don't know something about explosives I did a smart job of fooling Dean Montrose,
back at Gosh Whatta University. I'll write 'em a letter."
He wrote.
He filled out a form. The telephone rang.
"Kinnison speaking ... yes ... Dr. Sumner?
Oh, yes, Chief Chemist....
That's it--one year over age, so I thought....
Oh, that's a minor matter. We won't starve.
If you can't pay a hundred and fifty I'll come for a hundred, or seventy five, or
fifty.... That's all right, too.
I'm well enough known in my own field so that a title of Junior Chemical Engineer
wouldn't hurt me a bit ... O.K., I'll see you about one o'clock ...
Stoner and Black, Inc., Operators, Entwhistle Ordnance Plant, Entwhistle,
Missikota.... What!
Well, maybe I could, at that....
Goodbye." He turned to his wife.
"You know what? They want me to come down right away and go
to work.
Hot Dog! Am I glad that I told that louse Hendricks
exactly where he could stick that job of mine!"
"He must have known that you wouldn't sign a straight-salary contract after getting a
share of the profits so long.
Maybe he believed what you always say just before or just after kicking somebody's
teeth down their throats; that you're so meek and mild--a regular Milquetoast.
Do you really think that they'll want you back, after the war?"
It was clear that Eunice was somewhat concerned concerning Kinnison's
joblessness; but Kinnison was not.
"Probably. That's the gossip.
And I'll come back--when hell freezes over."
His square jaw tightened.
"I've heard of outfits stupid enough to let their technical brains go because they
could sell--for a while--anything they produced, but I didn't know that I was
working for one.
Maybe I'm not exactly a Timid Soul, but you'll have to admit that I never kicked
anybody's teeth out unless they tried to kick mine out first."
Entwhistle Ordnance Plant covered twenty- odd square miles of more or less level
land. Ninety-nine percent of its area was "Inside
the fence."
Most of the buildings within that restricted area, while in reality enormous,
were dwarfed by the vast spaces separating them; for safety-distances are not small
when TNT and tetryl by the ton are involved.
Those structures were built of concrete, steel, glass, transite, and tile.
"Outside the Fence" was different.
This was the Administration Area.
Its buildings were tremendous wooden barracks, relatively close together, packed
with the executive, clerical, and professional personnel appropriate to an
organization employing over twenty thousand men and women.
Well inside the fence, but a safety- distance short of the One Line--Loading
Line Number One--was a long, low building, quite inadequately named the Chemical
Laboratory.
"Inadequately" in that the Chief Chemist, a highly capable--if more than a little
cantankerous--Explosives Engineer, had already gathered into his Chemical Section
most of Development, most of Engineering,
and all of Physics, Weights and Measures, and Weather.
One room of the Chemical Laboratory--in the corner most distant from Administration--
was separated from the rest of the building by a sixteen-inch wall of concrete and
steel extending from foundation to roof without a door, window, or other opening.
This was the laboratory of the Chemical Engineers, the boys who played with
explosives high and low; any explosion occurring therein could not affect the
Chemical Laboratory proper or its personnel.
Entwhistle's main roads were paved; but in February of 1942, such minor items as
sidewalks existed only on the blue-prints.
Entwhistle's soil contained much clay, and at that time the mud was approximately six
inches deep.
Hence, since there were neither inside doors nor sidewalks, it was only natural
that the technologists did not visit at all frequently the polished-tile cleanliness of
the Laboratory.
It was also natural enough for the far larger group to refer to the segregated
ones as exiles and outcasts; and that some witty chemist applied to that isolated
place the name "Siberia."
The name stuck. More, the Engineers seized it and acclaimed
it.
They were Siberians, and proud of it, and Siberians they remained; long after
Entwhistle's mud turned into dust.
And within the year the Siberians were to become well and favorably known in every
ordnance plant in the country, to many high executives who had no idea of how the name
originated.
Kinnison became a Siberian as enthusiastically as the youngest man there.
The term "youngest" is used in its exact sense, for not one of them was a recent
graduate.
Each had had at least five years of responsible experience, and "Cappy" Sumner
kept on building.
He hired extravagantly and fired ruthlessly--to the minds of some,
senselessly. But he knew what he was doing.
He knew explosives, and he knew men.
He was not liked, but he was respected. His building was good.
Being one of the only two "old" men there-- and the other did not stay long--Kinnison,
as a Junior Chemical Engineer, was not at first accepted without reserve.
Apparently he did not notice that fact, but went quietly about his assigned duties.
He was meticulously careful with, but very evidently not in any fear of, the materials
with which he worked.
He pelleted and tested tracer, igniter, and incendiary compositions; he took his turn
at burning out rejects. Whenever asked, he went out on the lines
with any one of them.
His experimental tetryls always "miked" to size, his TNT melt-pours--introductory to
loading forty-millimeter on the Three Line- -came out solid, free from checks and
cavitations.
It became evident to those young but keen minds that he, alone of them all, was on
familiar ground. They began to discuss their problems with
him.
Out of his years of technological experience, and by bringing everyone
present into the discussion, he either helped them directly or helped them to help
themselves.
His stature grew. Black-haired, black-eyed "Tug" Tugwell, two
hundred pounds of ex-football-player in charge of tracer on the Seven Line, called
him "Uncle" Ralph, and the habit spread.
And in a couple of weeks--at about the same time that "***" Abernathy was slightly
injured by being blown through a door by a minor explosion of his igniter on the Eight
line--he was promoted to full Chemical
Engineer; a promotion which went unnoticed, since it involved only changes in title and
salary.
Three weeks later, however, he was made Senior Chemical Engineer, in charge of
Melt-Pour.
At this there was a celebration, led by "Blondie" Wanacek, a sulphuric-acid expert
handling tetryl on the Two.
Kinnison searched minutely for signs of jealousy or antagonism, but could find
none.
He went blithely to work on the Six line, where they wanted to start pouring twenty-
pound fragmentation bombs, ably assisted by Tug and by two new men.
One of these was "Doc" or "Bart" Barton, who, the grapevine said, had been hired by
Cappy to be his Assistant.
His motto, like that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, was to run and find out, and he did so with
glee and abandon. He was a good egg.
So was the other newcomer, "Charley" Charlevoix, a prematurely gray paint-and-
lacquer expert who had also made the Siberian grade.
A few months later, Sumner called Kinnison into the office.
The latter went, wondering what the old hard-shell was going to cry about now; for
to be called into that office meant only one thing--censure.
"Kinnison, I like your work," the Chief Chemist began, gruffly, and Kinnison's
mouth almost dropped open.
"Anybody who ever got a Ph.D. under Montrose would have to know explosives, and
the F.B.I. report on you showed that you had brains, ability, and guts.
But none of that explains how you can get along so well with those damned Siberians.
I want to make you Assistant Chief and put you in charge of Siberia.
Formally, I mean--actually, you have been for months."
"Why, no ... I didn't....
Besides, how about Barton?
He's too good a man to kick in the teeth that way."
"Admitted." This did surprise Kinnison.
He had never thought that the irascible and tempestuous Chief would ever confess to a
mistake. This was a Cappy he had never known.
"I discussed it with him yesterday.
He's a damned good man--but it's decidedly questionable whether he has got whatever it
is that made Tugwell, Wanacek and Charlevoix work straight through for
seventy two hours, napping now and then on
benches and grabbing coffee and sandwiches when they could, until they got that frag
bomb straightened out." Sumner did not mention the fact that
Kinnison had worked straight through, too.
That was taken for granted. "Well, I don't know."
Kinnison's head was spinning. "I'd like to check with Barton first.
O.K.?"
"I expected that. O.K." Kinnison found Barton and led him out
behind the testing shed.
"Bart, Cappy tells me that he figures on kicking you in the face by making me
Assistant and that you O.K.'d it.
One word and I'll tell the old buzzard just where to stick the job and exactly where to
go to do it." "Reaction, perfect.
Yield, one hundred percent."
Barton stuck out his hand. "Otherwise, I would tell him all that
myself and more. As it is, Uncle Ralph, smooth out the
ruffled plumage.
They'd go to hell for you, wading in standing straight up--they might do the
same with me in the driver's seat, and they might not.
Why take a chance?
You're IT.
Some things about the deal I don't like, of course--but at that, it makes me about the
only man working for Stoner and Black who can get a release any time a good permanent
job breaks.
I'll stick until then. O.K.?"
It was unnecessary for Barton to add that as long as he was there he would really
work.
"I'll say it's O.K.!" and Kinnison reported to Sumner.
"All right, Chief, I'll try it--if you can square it with the Siberians."
"That will not be too difficult."
Nor was it. The Siberians' reaction brought a lump to
Kinnison's throat. "Ralph the First, Czar of Siberia!" they
yelled.
"Long live the Czar! Kowtow, serfs and vassals, to Czar Ralph
the First!"
Kinnison was still glowing when he got home that night, to the Government Housing
Project and to the three-room "mansionette" in which he and Eunice lived.
He would never forget the events of that day.
"What a gang! What a gang!
But listen, ace--they work under their own power--you couldn't keep those kids from
working. Why should I get the credit for what they
do?"
"I haven't the foggiest." Eunice wrinkled her forehead--and her nose-
-but the corners of her mouth quirked up. "Are you quite sure that you haven't had
anything to do with it?
But supper is ready--let's eat." More months passed.
Work went on. Absorbing work, and highly varied; the
details of which are of no importance here.
Paul Jones, a big, hard, top-drawer chicle technologist, set up the Four line to pour
demolition blocks.
Frederick Hinton came in, qualified as a Siberian, and went to work on Anti-
Personnel mines. Kinnison was promoted again: to Chief
Chemist.
He and Sumner had never been friendly; he made no effort to find out why Cappy had
quit, or had been terminated, whichever it was.
This promotion made no difference.
Barton, now Assistant, ran the whole Chemical Section save for one unit--
Siberia--and did a superlative job. The Chief Chemist's secretary worked for
Barton, not for Kinnison.
Kinnison was the Czar of Siberia. The Anti-Personnel mines had been giving
trouble. Too many men were being killed by
prematures, and nobody could find out why.
The problem was handed to Siberia. Hinton tackled it, missed, and called for
help. The Siberians rallied round.
Kinnison loaded and tested mines.
So did Paul and Tug and Blondie. Kinnison was testing, out in the Firing
Area, when he was called to Administration to attend a Staff Meeting.
Hinton relieved him.
He had not reached the gate, however, when a guard car flagged him down.
"Sorry, sir, but there has been an accident at Pit Five and you are needed out there."
"Accident!
Fred Hinton! Is he...?"
"I'm afraid so, sir."
It is a harrowing thing to have to help gather up what fragments can be found of
one of your best friends.
Kinnison was white and sick as he got back to the firing station, just in time to hear
the Chief Safety Officer say: "Must have been carelessness--rank
carelessness.
I warned this man Hinton myself, on one occasion."
"Carelessness, hell!" Kinnison blazed.
"You had the guts to warn me once, too, and I've forgotten more about safety in
explosives than you ever will know. Fred Hinton was not careless--if I hadn't
been called in, that would have been me."
"What is it, then?" "I don't know--yet.
I tell you now, though, Major Moulton, that I will know, and the minute I find out I'll
talk to you again."
He went back to Siberia, where he found Tug and Paul, faces still tear-streaked,
staring at something that looked like a small piece of wire.
"This is it, Uncle Ralph," Tug said, brokenly.
"Don't see how it could be, but it is." "What is what?"
Kinnison demanded.
"Firing pin. Brittle.
When you pull the safety, the force of the spring must break it off at this
constricted section here."
"But damn it, Tug, it doesn't make sense. It's tension ... but wait--there'd be some
horizontal component, at that. But they'd have to be brittle as glass."
"I know it.
It doesn't seem to make much sense. But we were there, you know--and I
assembled every one of those God damned mines myself.
Nothing else could possibly have made that mine go off just when it did."
"O.K., Tug. We'll test 'em.
Call Bart in--he can have the scale-lab boys rig us up a gadget by the time we can
get some more of those pins in off the line."
They tested a hundred, under the normal tension of the spring, and three of them
broke. They tested another hundred.
Five broke.
They stared at each other. "That's it."
Kinnison declared.
"But this will stink to high Heaven--have Inspection break out a new lot and we'll
test a thousand." Of that thousand pins, thirty two broke.
"Bart, will you dictate a one-page preliminary report to Vera and rush it over
to Building One as fast as you can? I'll go over and tell Moulton a few
things."
Major Moulton was, as usual, "in conference," but Kinnison was in no mood to
wait.
"Tell him," he instructed the Major's private secretary, who had barred his way,
"that either he will talk to me right now or I will call District Safety over his
head.
I'll give him sixty seconds to decide which."
Moulton decided to see him. "I'm very busy, Doctor Kinnison, but...."
"I don't give a swivel-eyed tinker's damn how busy you are.
I told you that the minute I found out what was the matter with the M2 mine I'd talk to
you again.
Here I am. Brittle firing pins.
Three and two-tenths percent defective. So I'm...."
"Very irregular, Doctor.
The matter will have to go through channels...."
"Not this one.
The formal report is going through channels, but as I started to tell you,
this is an emergency report to you as Chief of Safety.
Since the defect is not covered by specs, neither Process nor Ordnance can reject
except by test, and whoever does the testing will very probably be killed.
Therefore, as every employee of Stoner and Black is not only authorized but positively
instructed to do upon discovering an unsafe condition, I am reporting it direct to
Safety.
Since my whiskers are a trifle longer than an operator's, I am reporting it direct to
the Head of the Safety Division; and I am telling you that if you don't do something
about it damned quick--stop production and
slap a HOLD order on all the M2AP's you can reach--I'll call District and make you
personally responsible for every premature that occurs from now on."
Since any safety man, anywhere, would much rather stop a process than authorize one,
and since this particular safety man loved to throw his weight around, Kinnison was
surprised that Moulton did not act instantly.
The fact that he did not so act should have, but did not, give the naive Kinnison
much information as to conditions existing Outside the Fence.
"But they need those mines very badly; they are an item of very heavy production.
If we stop them ... how long? Have you any suggestions?"
"Yes. Call District and have them rush through a change of spec--include heat-
treat and a modified Charpy test.
In the meantime, we can get back into full production tomorrow if you have District
slap a hundred-per-cent inspection onto those pins."
"Excellent!
We can do that--very fine work, Doctor! Miss Morgan, get District at once!"
This, too, should have warned Kinnison, but it did not.
He went back to the Laboratory.
Tempus fugited.
Orders came to get ready to load M67 H.E., A.T. (105 m/m High Explosive, Armor
Tearing) shell on the Nine, and the Siberians went joyously to work upon the
new load.
The explosive was to be a mixture of TNT and a polysyllabic compound, everything
about which was highly confidential and restricted.
"But what the hell's so hush-hush about that stuff?" demanded Blondie, who, with
five or six others, was crowding around the Czar's desk.
Unlike the days of Cappy Sumner, the private office of the Chief Chemist was now
as much Siberia as Siberia itself. "The Germans developed it originally,
didn't they?"
"Yes, and the Italians used it against the Ethiopians--which was why their bombs were
so effective. But it says 'hush-hush,' so that's the way
it will be.
And if you talk in your sleep, Blondie, tell Betty not to listen."
The Siberians worked. The M67 was put into production.
It was such a success that orders for it came in faster than they could be filled.
Production was speeded up. Small cavitations began to appear.
Nothing serious, since they passed Inspection.
Nevertheless, Kinnison protested, in a formal report, receipt of which was
formally acknowledged.
General Somebody-or-other, Entwhistle's Commanding Officer, whom none of the
Siberians had ever met, was transferred to more active duty, and a colonel--Snodgrass
or some such name--took his place.
Ordnance got a new Chief Inspector. An M67, Entwhistle loaded, prematured in a
gun-barrel, killing twenty seven men. Kinnison protested again, verbally this
time, at a staff meeting.
He was assured--verbally--that a formal and thorough investigation was being made.
Later he was informed--verbally and without witnesses--that the investigation had been
completed and that the loading was not at fault.
A new Commanding Officer--Lieutenant- Colonel Franklin--appeared.
The Siberians, too busy to do more than glance at newspapers, paid very little
attention to a glider-crash in which several notables were killed.
They heard that an investigation was being made, but even the Czar did not know until
later that Washington had for once acted fast in correcting a bad situation; that
Inspection, which had been under
Production, was summarily divorced therefrom.
And gossip spread abroad that Stillman, then Head of the Inspection Division, was
not a big enough man for the job.
Thus it was an entirely unsuspecting Kinnison who was called into the innermost
private office of Thomas Keller, the Superintendent of Production.
"Kinnison, how in hell do you handle those Siberians?
I never saw anything like them before in my life."
"No, and you never will again.
Nothing on Earth except a war could get them together or hold them together.
I don't 'handle' them--they can't be 'handled'.
I give them a job to do and let them do it.
I back them up. That's all."
"Umngpf." Keller grunted.
"That's a hell of a formula--if I want anything done right I've got to do it
myself. But whatever your system is, it works.
But what I wanted to talk to you about is, how'd you like to be Head of the Inspection
Division, which would be enlarged to include your present Chemical Section?"
"Huh?"
Kinnison demanded, dumbfounded. "At a salary well up on the confidential
scale."
Keller wrote a figure upon a piece of paper, showed it to his visitor, then
burned it in an ash-tray. Kinnison whistled.
"I'd like it--for more reasons than that.
But I didn't know that you--or have you already checked with the General and Mr.
Black?" "Naturally," came the smooth reply.
"In fact, I suggested it to them and have their approval.
Perhaps you are curious to know why?" "I certainly am."
"For two reasons.
First, because you have developed a crew of technical experts that is the envy of every
technical man in the country.
Second, you and your Siberians have done every job I ever asked you to, and done it
fast.
As a Division Head, you will no longer be under me, but I am right, I think, in
assuming that you will work with me just as efficiently as you do now?"
"I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't."
This reply was made in all honesty; but later, when he came to understand what
Keller had meant, how bitterly Kinnison was to regret its making!
He moved into Stillman's office, and found there what he thought was ample reason for
his predecessor's failure to make good.
To his way of thinking it was tremendously over-staffed, particularly with Assistant
Chief Inspectors.
Delegation of authority, so widely preached throughout Entwhistle Ordnance Plant, had
not been given even lip service here.
Stillman had not made a habit of visiting the lines; nor did the Chief Line
Inspectors, the boys who really knew what was going on, ever visit him.
They reported to the Assistants, who reported to Stillman, who handed down his
Jovian pronouncements.
Kinnison set out, deliberately this time, to mold his key Chief Line Inspectors into
just such a group as the Siberians already were.
He released the Assistants to more productive work; retaining of Stillman's
office staff only a few clerks and his private secretary, one Celeste de St.
Aubin, a dynamic, vivacious--at times explosive--brunette.
He gave the boys on the Lines full authority; the few who could not handle the
load he replaced with men who could.
At first the Chief Line Inspectors simply could not believe; but after the affair of
the forty millimeter, in which Kinnison rammed the decision of his subordinate past
Keller, past the General, past Stoner and
Black, and clear up to the Commanding Officer before he made it stick, they were
his to a man. Others of his Section Heads, however,
remained aloof.
Pettler, whose Technical Section was now part of Inspection, and Wilson, of Gages,
were two of those who talked largely and glowingly, but acted obstructively if they
acted at all.
As weeks went on, Kinnison became wiser and wiser, but made no sign.
One day, during a lull, his secretary hung out the "In Conference" sign and went into
Kinnison's private office.
"There isn't a reference to any such Investigation anywhere in Central Files."
She paused, as if to add something, then turned to leave.
"As you were, Celeste.
Sit down. I expected that.
Suppressed--if made at all. You're a smart girl, Celeste, and you know
the ropes.
You know that you can talk to me, don't you?"
"Yes, but this is ... well, the word is going around that they are going to break
you, just as they have broken every other good man on the Reservation."
"I expected that, too."
The words were quiet enough, but the man's jaw tightened.
"Also, I know how they are going to do it." "How?"
"This speed-up on the Nine.
They know that I won't stand still for the kind of casts that Keller's new procedure,
which goes into effect tonight, is going to produce ... and this new C.O. probably
will."
Silence fell, broken by the secretary. "General Sanford, our first C.O., was a
soldier, and a good one," she declared finally.
"So was Colonel Snodgrass.
Lieutenant Colonel Franklin wasn't; but he was too much of a man to do the dir ..."
"Dirty work," dryly. "Exactly.
Go on."
"And Stoner, the New York half--ninety five percent, really--of Stoner and Black, Inc.,
is a Big Time Operator.
So we get this damned nincompoop of a major, who doesn't know a f-u-s-e from a f-
u-z-e, direct from a Wall Street desk." "So what?"
One must have heard Ralph Kinnison say those two words to realize how much meaning
they can be made to carry. "So what!" the girl blazed, wringing her
hands.
"Ever since you have been over here I have been expecting you to blow up--to smash
something--in spite of the dozens of times you have told me 'a fighter can not slug
effectively, Celeste, until he gets both feet firmly planted.'
When--when--are you going to get your feet planted?"
"Never, I'm afraid," he said glumly, and she stared.
"So I'll have to start slugging with at least one foot in the air."
That startled her.
"Explain, please?" "I wanted proof.
Stuff that I could take to the District-- that I could use to tack some hides out
flat on a barn door with.
Do I get it? I do not.
Not a shred. Neither can you.
What chance do you think there is of ever getting any real proof?"
"Very little," Celeste admitted. "But you can at least smash Pettler,
Wilson, and that crowd.
How I hate those slimy snakes! I wish that you could smash Tom Keller, the
poisonous moron!"
"Not so much moron--although he acts like one at times--as an ignorant puppet with a
head swelled three sizes too big for his hat.
But you can quit yapping about slugging-- fireworks are due to start at two o'clock
tomorrow afternoon, when Drake is going to reject tonight's run of shell."
"Really?
But I don't see how either Pettler or Wilson come in."
"They don't. A fight with those small fry--even smashing
them--wouldn't make enough noise.
Keller." "Keller!"
Celeste squealed. "But you'll...."
"I know I'll get fired.
So what? By tackling him I can raise enough hell so
that the Big Shots will have to cut out at least some of the rough stuff.
You'll probably get fired too, you know-- you've been too close to me for your own
good." "Not me."
She shook her head vigorously.
"The minute they terminate you, I quit. Poof!
Who cares? Besides, I can get a better job in
Townville."
"Without leaving the Project. That's what I figured.
It's the boys I'm worried about. I've been getting them ready for this for
weeks."
"But they will quit, too. Your Siberians--your Inspectors--of a
surety they will quit, every one!"
"They won't release them; and what Stoner and Black will do to them, even after the
war, if they quit without releases, shouldn't be done to a dog.
They won't quit, either--at least if they don't try to push them around too much.
Keller's mouth is watering to get hold of Siberia, but he'll never make it, nor any
one of his stooges....
I'd better dictate a memorandum to Black on that now, while I'm calm and collected;
telling him what he'll have to do to keep my boys from tearing Entwhistle apart."
"But do you think he will pay any attention to it?"
"I'll say he will!" Kinnison snorted.
"Don't kid yourself about Black, Celeste.
He's a smart man, and before this is done he'll know that he'll have to keep his nose
clean." "But you--how can you do it?"
Celeste marveled.
"Me, I would urge them on. Few would have the patriotism...."
"Patriotism, hell! If that were all, I would have stirred up a
revolution long ago.
It's for the boys, in years to come. They've got to keep their noses clean, too.
Get your notebook, please, and take this down.
Rough draft--I'm going to polish it up until it has teeth and claws in every
line." And that evening, after supper, he informed
Eunice of all the new developments.
"Is it still O.K. with you," he concluded, "for me to get myself fired off of this
high-salaried job of mine?" "Certainly.
Being you, how can you do anything else?
Oh, how I wish I could wring their necks!" That conversation went on and on, but
additional details are not necessary here.
Shortly after two o'clock of the following afternoon, Celeste took a call; and
listened shamelessly. "Kinnison speaking."
"Tug, Uncle Ralph.
The casts sectioned just like we thought they would.
Dead ringers for Plate D. So Drake hung a red ticket on every tray.
Piddy was right there, waiting, and started to raise hell.
So I chipped in, and he beat it so fast that I looked to see his coat-tail catch
fire.
Drake didn't quite like to call you, so I did.
If Piddy keeps on going at the rate he left here, he'll be in Keller's office in
nothing flat."
"O.K., Tug. Tell Drake that the shell he rejected are
going to stay rejected, and to come in right now with his report.
Would you like to come along?"
"Would I!" Tugwell hung up and:
"But do you want him here, Doc?"
Celeste asked, anxiously, without considering whether or not her boss would
approve of her eavesdropping. "I certainly do.
If I can keep Tug from blowing his top, the rest of the boys will stay in line."
A few minutes later Tugwell strode in, bringing with him Drake, the Chief Line
Inspector of the Nine Line.
Shortly thereafter the office door was wrenched open.
Keller had come to Kinnison, accompanied by the Superintendent whom the Siberians
referred to, somewhat contemptuously, as "Piddy."
"Damn your soul, Kinnison, come out here--I want to talk to you!"
Keller roared, and doors snapped open up and down the long corridor.
"Shut up, you God damned louse!"
This from Tugwell, who, black eyes almost emitting sparks, was striding purposefully
forward. "I'll sock you so damned hard that...."
"Pipe down, Tug, I'll handle this."
Kinnison's voice was not loud, but it had then a peculiarly carrying and immensely
authoritative quality. "Verbally or physically; however he wants
to have it."
He turned to Keller, who had jumped backward into the hall to avoid the young
Siberian.
"As for you, Keller, if you had the brains that God gave *** geese in Ireland, you
would have had this conference in private. Since you started it in public, however,
I'll finish it in public.
How you came to pick me for a yes-man I'll never know--just one more measure of your
stupidity, I suppose." "Those shell are perfect!"
Keller shouted.
"Tell Drake here to pass them, right now. If you don't, by God I'll...."
"Shut up!" Kinnison's voice cut.
"I'll do the talking--you listen.
The spec says quote shall be free from objectionable cavitation unquote.
The Line Inspectors, who know their stuff, say that those cavitations are
objectionable.
So do the Chemical Engineers. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, they
are objectionable. Those shell are rejected, and they will
stay rejected."
"That's what you think," Keller raged. "But there'll be a new Head of Inspection,
who will pass them, tomorrow morning!" "In that you may be half right.
When you get done licking Black's boots, tell him that I am in my office."
Kinnison re-entered his suite. Keller, swearing, strode away with Piddy.
Doors clicked shut.
"I am going to quit, Uncle Ralph, law or no law!"
Tugwell stormed. "They'll run that bunch of crap through,
and then...."
"Will you promise not to quit until they do?"
Kinnison asked, quietly. "Huh?"
"What?"
Tugwell's eyes--and Celeste's--were pools of astonishment.
Celeste, being on the inside, understood first.
"Oh--to keep his nose clean--I see!" she exclaimed.
"Exactly. Those shell will not be accepted, nor any
like them.
On the surface, we got licked. I will get fired.
You will find, however, that we won this particular battle.
And if you boys stay here and hang together and keep on slugging you can win a lot
more." "Maybe, if we raise enough hell, we can
make them fire us, too?"
Drake suggested. "I doubt it.
But unless I'm wrong, you can just about write your own ticket from now on, if you
play it straight."
Kinnison grinned to himself, at something which the young people could not see.
"You told me what Stoner and Black would do to us," Tugwell said, intensely.
"What I'm afraid of is that they'll do it to you."
"They can't. Not a chance in the world," Kinnison
assured him.
"You fellows are young--not established. But I'm well-enough known in my own field
so that if they tried to black-ball me they'd just get themselves laughed at, and
they know it.
So beat it back to the Nine, you kids, and hang red tickets on everything that doesn't
cross-section up to standard. Tell the gang goodbye for me--I'll keep you
posted."
In less than an hour Kinnison was called into the Office of the President.
He was completely at ease; Black was not.
"It has been decided to ... uh ... ask for your resignation," the President announced
at last. "Save your breath," Kinnison advised.
"I came down here to do a job, and the only way you can keep me from doing that job is
to fire me." "That was not ... uh ... entirely
unexpected.
A difficulty arose, however, in deciding what reason to put on your termination
papers." "I can well believe that.
You can put down anything you like," Kinnison shrugged, "with one exception.
Any implication of incompetence and you'll have to prove it in court."
"Incompatibility, say?"
"O.K." "Miss Briggs--'Incompatibility with the
highest echelon of Stoner and Black, Inc.,' please.
You may as well wait, Dr. Kinnison; it will take only a moment."
"Fine. I've got a couple of things to say.
First, I know as well as you do that you're between Scylla and Charybdis--damned if you
do and damned if you don't." "Certainly not!
Ridiculous!"
Black blustered, but his eyes wavered. "Where did you get such a preposterous
idea? What do you mean?"
"If you ram those sub-standard H.E.A.T. shell through, you are going to have some
more prematures.
Not many--the stuff is actually almost good enough--one in ten thousand, say: perhaps
one in fifty thousand. But you know damned well that you can't
afford any.
What my Siberians and Inspectors know about you and Keller and Piddy and the Nine Line
would be enough; but to cap the climax that brainless jackal of yours let the cat
completely out of the bag this afternoon,
and everybody in Building One was listening.
One more premature would blow Entwhistle wide open--would start something that not
all the politicians in Washington could stop.
On the other hand, if you scrap those lots and go back to pouring good loads, your Mr.
Stoner, of New York and Washington, will be very unhappy and will scream bloody ***.
I'm sure, however, that you won't offer any Plate D loads to Ordnance--in view of the
temper of my boys and girls, and the number of people who heard your dumb stooge give
you away, you won't dare to.
In fact, I told some of my people that you wouldn't; that you are a smart enough
operator to keep your nose clean." "You told them!"
Black shouted, in anger and dismay.
"Yes? Why not?" The words were innocent enough, but
Kinnison's expression was full of meaning.
"I don't want to seem trite, but you are just beginning to find out that honesty and
loyalty are a hell of a hard team to beat." "Get out!
Take these termination papers and GET OUT!"
And Doctor Ralph K. Kinnison, head high, strode out of President Black's office and
out of Entwhistle Ordnance Plant.
>
BOOK TWO THE WORLD WAR CHAPTER 6 19--?
"Theodore K. Kinnison!" a crisp, clear voice snapped from the speaker of an
apparently cold, ordinary-enough-looking radio-television set.
A burly young man caught his breath sharply as he leaped to the instrument and pressed
an inconspicuous button. "Theodore K. Kinnison acknowledging!"
The plate remained dark, but he knew that he was being scanned.
"Operation Bullfinch!" the speaker blatted. Kinnison gulped.
"Operation Bullfinch--Off!" he managed to say.
"Off!"
He pushed the button again and turned to face the tall, trim honey-blonde who stood
tensely poised in the archway. Her eyes were wide and protesting; both
hands clutched at her throat.
"Uh-huh, sweets, they're coming--over the Pole," he gritted.
"Two hours, more or less." "Oh, Ted!"
She threw herself into his arms.
They kissed, then broke away. The man picked up two large suitcases,
already packed--everything else, including food and water, had been in the car for
weeks--and made strides.
The girl rushed after him, not bothering even to close the door of the apartment,
scooping up en passant a leggy boy of four and a chubby, curly-haired girl of two or
thereabouts.
They ran across the lawn toward a big, low- slung sedan.
"Sure you got your caffeine tablets?" he demanded as they ran.
"Uh-huh."
"You'll need 'em. Drive like the devil--stay ahead!
You can--this heap has got the legs of a centipede and you've got plenty of gas and
oil.
Eleven hundred miles from anywhere and a population of one-tenth per square mile--
you'll be safe there if anybody is." "It isn't us I'm worried about--it's you!"
she panted.
"Technos' wives get a few minutes' notice ahead of the H-blast--I'll be ahead of the
rush and I'll stay ahead. It's you, Ted--you!"
"Don't worry, keed.
That popcycle of mine has got legs, too, and there won't be so much traffic, the way
I'm going." "Oh, blast!
I didn't mean that, and you know it!"
They were at the car. While he jammed the two bags into an
exactly-fitting space, she tossed the children into the front seat, slid lithely
under the wheel, and started the engine.
"I know you didn't, sweetheart. I'll be back."
He kissed her and the little girl, the while shaking hands with his son.
"Kidlets, you and mother are going out to visit Grand-dad Kinnison, like we told you
all about. Lots of fun.
I'll be along later.
Now, Lady Lead-Foot, scram--and shovel on the coal!"
The heavy vehicle backed and swung; gravel flew as the accelerator-pedal hit the
floor.
Kinnison galloped across the alley and opened the door of a small garage,
revealing a long, squat motorcycle.
Two deft passes of his hands and two of his three spotlights were no longer white--one
flashed a brilliant purple, the other a searing blue.
He dropped a perforated metal box into a hanger and flipped a switch--a peculiarly-
toned siren began its ululating shriek.
He took the alley turn at an angle of forty-five degrees; burned the pavement
toward Diversey. The light was red.
No matter--everybody had stopped--that siren could be heard for miles.
He barreled into the intersection; his step-plate ground the concrete as he made a
screaming left turn.
A siren--creeping up from behind. City tone.
Two red spots--city cop--so soon--good! He cut his gun a trifle, the other bike
came alongside.
"Is this IT?" the uniformed rider yelled, over the coughing thunder of the competing
exhausts. "Yes!"
Kinnison yelled back.
"Clear Diversey to the Outer Drive, and the Drive south to Gary and north to Waukegan.
Snap it up!" The white-and-black motorcycle slowed; shot
over toward the curb.
The officer reached for his microphone. Kinnison sped on.
At Cicero Avenue, although he had a green light, traffic was so heavy that he had to
slow down; at Pulaski two policemen waved him through a red.
Beyond Sacramento nothing moved on wheels.
Seventy ... seventy five ... he took the bridge at eighty, both wheels in air for
forty feet.
Eighty five ... ninety ... that was about all he could do and keep the heap on so
rough a road.
Also, he did not have Diversey all to himself any more; blue-and-purple-flashing
bikes were coming in from every side- street.
He slowed to a conservative fifty and went into close formation with the other riders.
The H-blast--the city-wide warning for the planned and supposedly orderly evacuation
of all Chicago--sounded, but Kinnison did not hear it.
Across the Park, edging over to the left so that the boys going south would have room
to make the turn--even such riders as those need some room to make a turn at fifty
miles per hour!
Under the viaduct--biting brakes and squealing tires at that sharp, narrow,
right-angle left turn--north on the wide, smooth Drive!
That highway was made for speed.
So were those machines. Each rider, as he got into the flat, lay
down along his tank, tucked his chin behind the cross-bar, and twisted both throttles
out against their stops.
They were in a hurry. They had a long way to go; and if they did
not get there in time to stop those trans- polar atomic missiles, all hell would be
out for noon.
Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-
second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding?
Why were not all these motorcycle-racers stationed permanently at their posts, so as
to be ready for any emergency?
Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait--wait in
instant readiness--until she was actually attacked.
Because every good Techno in America had his assigned place in some American Defense
Plan; of which Operation Bullfinch was only one.
Because, without the presence of those Technos at their every-day jobs, all
ordinary technological work in America would perforce have stopped.
A branch road curved away to the right.
Scarcely slowing down, Kinnison bulleted into the turn and through an open, heavily-
guarded gate.
Here his mount and his lights were passwords enough: the real test would come
later.
He approached a towering structure of alloy--jammed on his brakes--stopped beside
a soldier who, as soon as Kinnison jumped off, mounted the motorcycle and drove it
away.
Kinnison dashed up to an apparently blank wall, turned his back upon four
commissioned officers holding cocked forty- fives at the ready, and fitted his right
eye into a cup.
Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered;
any imposter would have died instantly, without arrest or question.
For every man who belonged aboard that rocket had been checked and tested--how he
had been checked and tested!--since one spy, in any one of those Technos' chairs,
could wreak damage untellable.
The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large,
but crowded, Operations Room. "Hi, Teddy!" a yell arose.
"Hi, Walt!
Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!" and so on.
These men were friends of old. "Where are they?" he demanded.
"Is our stuff getting away?
Lemme take a peek at the Ball!" "I'll say it is!
O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!" He squeezed in.
It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and centered approximately
by the North Pole.
A multitude of red dots moved slowly--a hundred miles upon that map was a small
distance--northward over Canada; a closer- packed, less numerous group of yellowish-
greens, already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south.
As had been expected, the Americans had more missiles than did the enemy.
The other belief, that America had more adequate defenses and better-trained, more
highly skilled defenders, would soon be put to test.
A string of blue lights blazed across the continent, from Nome through Skagway and
Wallaston and Churchill and Kaniapiskau to Belle Isle; America's First Line of
Defense.
Regulars all. Ambers almost blanketed those blues; their
combat rockets were already grabbing altitude.
The Second Line, from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver across to Halifax, also
showed solid green, with some flashes of amber.
Part Regulars; part National Guard.
Chicago was in the Third Line, all National Guard, extending from San Francisco to New
York. Green--alert and operating.
So were the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth.
Operation Bullfinch was clicking; on schedule to the second.
A bell clanged; the men sprang to their stations and strapped down.
Every chair was occupied.
Combat Rocket Number One Oh Six Eight Five, full-powered by the disintegrating nuclei
of unstable isotopes, took off with a whooshing roar which even her thick walls
could not mute.
The Technos, crushed down into their form- fitting cushions by three G's of
acceleration, clenched their teeth and took it.
Higher!
Faster! The rocket shivered and trembled as it hit
the wall at the velocity of sound, but it did not pause.
Higher!
Faster! Higher!
Fifty miles high. One hundred ... five hundred ... a thousand
... fifteen hundred ... two thousand!
Half a radius--the designated altitude at which the Chicago Contingent would go into
action. Acceleration was cut to zero.
The Technos, breathing deeply in relief, donned peculiarly-goggled helmets and set
up their panels.
Kinnison stared into his plate with everything he could put into his optic
nerve.
This was not like the Ball, in which the lights were electronically placed,
automatically controlled, clear, sharp, and steady.
This was radar.
A radar considerably different from that of 1948, of course, and greatly improved, but
still pitifully inadequate in dealing with objects separated by hundreds of miles and
traveling at velocities of thousands of miles per hour!
Nor was this like the practice cruises, in which the targets had been harmless barrels
or equally harmless dirigible rockets.
This was the real thing; the targets today would be lethal objects indeed.
Practice gunnery, with only a place in the Proficiency List at stake, had been
exciting enough: this was too exciting-- much too exciting--for the keenness of
brain and the quickness and steadiness of eye and of hand so soon to be required.
A target? Or was it?
Yes--three or four of them!
"Target One--Zone Ten," a quiet voice spoke into Kinnison's ear and one of the white
specks upon his plate turned yellowish green.
The same words, the same lights, were heard and seen by the eleven other Technos of
Sector A, of which Kinnison, by virtue of standing at the top of his Combat Rocket's
Proficiency List, was Sector Chief.
He knew that the voice was that of Sector A's Fire Control Officer, whose duty it was
to determine, from courses, velocities, and all other data to be had from ground and
lofty observers, the order in which his Sector's targets should be eliminated.
And Sector A, an imaginary but sharply- defined cone, was in normal maneuvering the
hottest part of the sky.
Fire Control's "Zone Ten" had informed him that the object was at extreme range and
hence there would be plenty of time. Nevertheless:
"Lawrence--two!
Doyle--one! Drummond--stand by with three!" he snapped,
at the first word.
In the instant of hearing his name each Techno stabbed down a series of studs and
there flowed into his ears a rapid stream of figures--the up-to-the-second data from
every point of observation as to every element of motion of his target.
He punched the figures into his calculator, which would correct automatically for the
motion of his own vessel--glanced once at the printed solution of the problem--
tramped down upon a pedal once, twice, or
three times, depending upon the number of projectiles he had been directed to handle.
Kinnison had ordered Lawrence, a better shot than Doyle, to launch two torpedoes;
neither of which, at such long range, was expected to strike its mark.
His second, however, should come close; so close that the instantaneous data sent back
to both screens--and to Kinnison's--by the torpedo itself would make the target a
sitting duck for Doyle, the less proficient follower.
Drummond, Kinnison's Number Three, would not launch his missiles unless Doyle
missed.
Nor could both Drummond and Harper, Kinnison's Number Two, be "out" at once.
One of the two had to be "in" at all times, to take Kinnison's place in charge of the
Sector if the Chief were ordered out.
For while Kinnison could order either Harper or Drummond on target, he could not
send himself.
He could go out only when ordered to do so by Fire Control: Sector Chiefs were
reserved for emergency use only. "Target Two--Zone Nine," Fire Control said.
"Carney, two.
French, one. Day, stand by with three!"
Kinnison ordered. "Damn it--missed!"
This from Doyle.
"Buck fever--no end." "O.K., boy--that's why we're starting so
soon. I'm shaking like a vibrator myself.
We'll get over it...."
The point of light which represented Target One bulged slightly and went out.
Drummond had connected and was back "in". "Target Three--Zone Eight.
Four--eight," Fire Control remarked.
"Target Three--Higgins and Green; Harper stand by.
Four--Case and Santos: Lawrence." After a minute or two of actual combat the
Technos of Sector A began to steady down.
Stand-by men were no longer required and were no longer assigned.
"Target Forty-one--six," said Fire Control; and:
"Lawrence, two.
Doyle, two," ordered Kinnison. This was routine enough, but in a moment:
"Ted!" Lawrence snapped.
"Missed--wide--both barrels.
Forty-one's dodging--manned or directed-- coming like hell--watch it, Doyle--WATCH
IT!" "Kinnison, take it!"
Fire Control barked, voice now neither low nor steady, and without waiting to see
whether Doyle would hit or miss. "It's in Zone Three already--collision
course!"
"Harper! Take over!"
Kinnison got the data, solved the equations, launched five torpedoes at fifty
gravities of acceleration.
One ... two--three-four-five; the last three as close together as they could fly
without setting off their proximity fuzes.
Communications and mathematics and the electronic brains of calculating machines
had done all that they could do; the rest was up to human skill, to the perfection of
co-ordination and the speed of reaction of human mind, nerve, and muscle.
Kinnison's glance darted from plate to panel to computer-tape to meter to
galvanometer and back to plate; his left hand moved in tiny arcs the knobs whose
rotation varied the intensities of two
mutually perpendicular components of his torpedoes' drives.
He listened attentively to the reports of triangulating observers, now giving him
data covering his own missiles, as well as the target object.
The fingers of his right hand punched almost constantly the keys of his computer;
he corrected almost constantly his torpedoes' course.
"Up a hair," he decided.
"Left about a point." The target moved away from its predicted
path. Down two--left three--down a hair--Right!
The thing was almost through Zone Two; was blasting into Zone One.
He thought for a second that his first torp was going to connect.
It almost did--only a last-instant, full- powered side thrust enabled the target to
evade it.
Two numbers flashed white upon his plate; his actual error, exact to the foot of
distance and to the degree on the clock, measured and transmitted back to his board
by instruments in his torpedo.
Working with instantaneous and exact data, and because the enemy had so little time in
which to act, Kinnison's second projectile made a very near miss indeed.
His third was a graze; so close that its proximity fuze functioned, detonating the
cyclonite-packed war-head.
Kinnison knew that his third went off, because the error-figures vanished, almost
in the instant of their coming into being, as its detecting and transmitting
instruments were destroyed.
That one detonation might have been enough; but Kinnison had had one glimpse of his
error--how small it was!--and had a fraction of a second of time.
Hence Four and Five slammed home; dead center.
Whatever that target had been, it was no longer a threat.
"Kinnison, in," he reported briefly to Fire Control, and took over from Harper the
direction of the activities of Sector A. The battle went on.
Kinnison sent Harper and Drummond out time after time.
He himself was given three more targets. The first wave of the enemy--what was left
of it--passed.
Sector A went into action, again at extreme range, upon the second.
Its remains, too, plunged downward and onward toward the distant ground.
The third wave was really tough.
Not that it was actually any worse than the first two had been, but the CR10685 was no
longer getting the data which her Technos ought to have to do a good job; and every
man aboard her knew why.
Some enemy stuff had got through, of course; and the observatories, both on the
ground and above it--the eye of the whole American Defense--had suffered heavily.
Nevertheless, Kinnison and his fellows were not too perturbed.
Such a condition was not entirely unexpected.
They were now veterans; they had been tried and had not been found wanting.
They had come unscathed through a bath of fire the like of which the world had never
before known.
Give them any kind of computation at all-- or no computation at all except old
CR10685's own radar and their own torps, of which they still had plenty--and they could
and would take care of anything that could be thrown at them.
The third wave passed. Targets became fewer and fewer.
Action slowed down ... stopped.
The Technos, even the Sector Chiefs, knew nothing whatever of the progress of the
battle as a whole.
They did not know where their rocket was, or whether it was going north, east, south,
or west. They knew when it was going up or down only
by the "seats of their pants."
They did not even know the nature of the targets they destroyed, since upon their
plates all targets looked alike--small, bright, greenish-yellow spots.
Hence:
"Give us the dope, Pete, if we've got a minute to spare," Kinnison begged of his
Fire Control Officer. "You know more than we do--give!"
"It's coming in now," came the prompt reply.
"Six of those targets that did such fancy dodging were atomics, aimed at the Lines.
Five were dirigibles, with our number on 'em.
You fellows did a swell job.
Very little of their stuff got through--not enough, they say, to do much damage to a
country as big as the U.S.A.
On the other hand, they stopped scarcely any of ours--they apparently didn't have
anything to compare with you Technos. "But all hell seems to be busting loose,
all over the world.
Our east and west coasts are both being attacked, they say; but are holding.
Operation Daisy and Operation Fairfield are clicking, just like we did.
Europe, they say, is going to hell-- everybody is taking pot-shots at everybody
else. One report says that the South American
nations are bombing each other ...
Asia, too ... nothing definite; as straight dope comes in I'll relay it to you.
"We came through in very good shape, considering ... losses less than
anticipated, only seven percent.
The First Line--as you know already--took a God-awful shellacking; in fact, the
Churchill-Belcher section was practically wiped out, which was what lost us about all
of our Observation....
We are now just about over the southern end of Hudson Bay, heading down and south to
join in making a vertical Fleet Formation ... no more waves coming, but they say to
expect attacks from low-flying combat rockets--there goes the alert!
On your toes, fellows--but there isn't a thing on Sector A's screen...."
There wasn't.
Since the CR10685 was diving downward and southward, there wouldn't be.
Nevertheless, some observer aboard that rocket saw that atomic missile coming.
Some Fire Control Officer yelled orders; some Technos did their best--and failed.
And such is the violence of nuclear fission; so utterly incomprehensible is its
speed, that Theodore K. Kinnison died without realizing that anything whatever
was happening to his ship or to him.
Gharlane of Eddore looked upon ruined Earth, his handiwork, and found it good.
Knowing that it would be many of hundreds of Tellurian years before that planet would
again require his personal attention, he went elsewhere; to Rigel Four, to Palain
Seven, and to the solar system of Velantia,
where he found that his creatures the Overlords were not progressing according to
schedule.
He spent quite a little time there, then searched minutely and fruitlessly for
evidence of inimical activity within the Innermost Circle.
And upon far Arisia a momentous decision was made: the time had come to curb sharply
the hitherto unhampered Eddorians. "We are ready, then, to war openly upon
them?"
Eukonidor asked, somewhat doubtfully. "Again to cleanse the planet Tellus of
dangerous radioactives and of too-noxious forms of life is of course a simple matter.
From our protected areas in North America a strong but democratic government can spread
to cover the world. That government can be extended easily
enough to include Mars and Venus.
But Gharlane, who is to operate as Roger, who has already planted, in the Adepts of
North Polar Jupiter, the seeds of the Jovian Wars...."
"Your visualization is sound, youth.
Think on."
"Those interplanetary wars are of course inevitable, and will serve to strengthen
and to unify the government of the Inner Planets ... provided that Gharlane does not
interfere....
Oh, I see. Gharlane will not at first know; since a
zone of compulsion will be held upon him.
When he or some Eddorian fusion perceives that compulsion and breaks it--at some such
time of high stress as the Nevian incident- -it will be too late.
Our fusions will be operating.
Roger will be allowed to perform only such acts as will be for Civilization's eventual
good.
Nevia was selected as Prime Operator because of its location in a small region
of the galaxy which is almost devoid of solid iron and because of its watery
nature; its aquatic forms of life being
precisely those in which the Eddorians are least interested.
They will be given partial neutralization of inertia; they will be able to attain
velocities a few times greater than that of light.
That covers the situation, I think?"
"Very good, Eukonidor," the Elders approved.
"A concise and accurate summation." Hundreds of Tellurian years passed.
The aftermath.
Reconstruction. Advancement.
One world--two worlds--three worlds-- united, harmonious, friendly.
The Jovian Wars.
A solid, unshakeable union. Nor did any Eddorian know that such
fantastically rapid progress was being made.
Indeed, Gharlane knew, as he drove his immense ship of space toward Sol, that he
would find Tellus inhabited by peoples little above savagery.
And it should be noted in passing that not once, throughout all those centuries, did a
man named Kinnison marry a girl with red- bronze-auburn hair and gold-flecked, tawny
eyes.
>
BOOK THREE TRIPLANETARY CHAPTER 7 PIRATES OF SPACE
Apparently motionless to her passengers and crew, the Interplanetary liner Hyperion
bored serenely onward through space at normal acceleration.
In the railed-off sanctum in one corner of the control room a bell tinkled, a
smothered whirr was heard, and Captain Bradley frowned as he studied the brief
message upon the tape of the recorder--a
message flashed to his desk from the operator's panel.
He beckoned, and the second officer, whose watch it now was, read aloud:
"Reports of scout patrols still negative."
"Still negative." The officer scowled in thought.
"They've already searched beyond the widest possible location of wreckage, too.
Two unexplained disappearances inside a month--first the Dione, then the Rhea--and
not a plate nor a lifeboat recovered. Looks bad, sir.
One might be an accident; two might possibly be a coincidence...."
His voice died away. "But at three it would get to be a habit,"
the captain finished the thought.
"And whatever happened, happened quick. Neither of them had time to say a word--
their location recorders simply went dead. But of course they didn't have our detector
screens nor our armament.
According to the observatories we're in clear ether, but I wouldn't trust them from
Tellus to Luna. You have given the new orders, of course?"
"Yes, sir.
Detectors full out, all three courses of defensive screen on the trips, projectors
manned, suits on the hooks.
Every object detected to be investigated immediately--if vessels, they are to be
warned to stay beyond extreme range. Anything entering the fourth zone is to be
rayed."
"Right--we are going through!" "But no known type of vessel could have
made away with them without detection," the second officer argued.
"I wonder if there isn't something in those wild rumors we've been hearing lately?"
"Bah! Of course not!" snorted the captain.
"Pirates in ships faster than light--sub- ethereal rays--nullification of gravity
mass without inertia--ridiculous! Proved impossible, over and over again.
No, sir, if pirates are operating in space- -and it looks very much like it--they won't
get far against a good big battery full of kilowatt-hours behind three courses of
heavy screen, and good gunners behind multiplex projectors.
They're good enough for anybody.
Pirates, Neptunians, angels, or devils--in ships or on broomsticks--if they tackle the
Hyperion we'll burn them out of the ether!" Leaving the captain's desk, the watch
officer resumed his tour of duty.
The six great lookout plates into which the alert observers peered were blank, their
far-flung ultra-sensitive detector screens encountering no obstacle--the ether was
empty for thousands upon thousands of kilometers.
The signal lamps upon the pilot's panel were dark, its warning bells were silent.
A brilliant point of white light in the center of the pilot's closely ruled
micrometer grating, exactly upon the cross- hairs of his directors, showed that the
immense vessel was precisely upon the
calculated course, as laid down by the automatic integrating course plotters.
Everything was quiet and in order. "All's well, sir," he reported briefly to
Captain Bradley--but all was not well.
Danger--more serious by far in that it was not external--was even then, all
unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's vitals.
In a locked and shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the liner, was the
great air purifier.
Now a man leaned against the primary duct-- the aorta through which flowed the stream
of pure air supplying the entire vessel.
This man, grotesque in full panoply of space armor, leaned against the duct, and
as he leaned a drill bit deeper and deeper into the steel wall of the pipe.
Soon it broke through, and the slight rush of air was stopped by the insertion of a
tightly fitting rubber tube.
The tube terminated in a heavy rubber balloon, which surrounded a frail glass
bulb.
The man stood tense, one hand holding before his silica-and-steel-helmeted head a
large pocket chronometer, the other lightly grasping the balloon.
A sneering grin was upon his face as he waited the exact second of action--the
carefully predetermined instant when his right hand, closing, would shatter the
fragile flask and force its contents into the primary air stream of the Hyperion!
Far above, in the main saloon, the regular evening dance was in full swing.
The ship's orchestra crashed into silence, there was a patter of applause, and Clio
Marsden, radiant belle of the voyage, led her partner out onto the promenade and up
to one of the observation plates.
"Oh, we can't see the Earth any more!" she exclaimed.
"Which way do you turn this, Mr. Costigan?"
"Like this," and Conway Costigan, burly young First Officer of the liner, turned
the dials.
"There--this plate is looking back, or down, at Tellus; this other one is looking
ahead." Earth was a brilliantly shining crescent
far beneath the flying vessel.
Above her, ruddy Mars and silvery Jupiter blazed in splendor ineffable against a
background of utterly indescribable blackness--a background thickly besprinkled
with dimensionless points of dazzling brilliance which were the stars.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" breathed the girl, awed.
"Of course, I suppose that it's old stuff to you, but I'm a ground-gripper, you know,
and I could look at it forever, I think. That's why I want to come out here after
every dance.
You know, I...." Her voice broke off suddenly, with a ***,
rasping catch, as she seized his arm in a frantic clutch and as quickly went limp.
He stared at her sharply, and understood instantly the message written in her eyes--
eyes now enlarged, staring, hard, brilliant, and full of soul-searing terror
as she slumped down, helpless but for his support.
In the act of exhaling as he was, lungs almost entirely empty, yet he held his
breath until he had seized the microphone from his belt and had snapped the lever to
"emergency."
"Control room!" he gasped then, and every speaker throughout the great cruiser of the
void blared out the warning as he forced his already evacuated lungs to absolute
emptiness.
"Vee-Two Gas! Get tight!"
Writhing and twisting in his fierce struggle to keep his lungs from gulping in
a draft of that noxious atmosphere, and with the unconscious form of the girl
draped limply over his left arm, Costigan
leaped toward the portal of the nearest lifeboat.
Orchestra instruments crashed to the floor and dancing couples fell and sprawled
inertly while the tortured First Officer swung the door of the lifeboat open and
dashed across the tiny room to the air- valves.
Throwing them wide open, he put his mouth to the orifice and let his laboring lungs
gasp their eager fill of the cold blast roaring from the tanks.
Then, air-hunger partially assuaged, he again held his breath, broke open the
emergency locker, donned one of the space- suits always kept there, and opened its
valves wide in order to flush out of his
uniform any lingering trace of the lethal gas.
He then leaped back to his companion.
Shutting off the air, he released a stream of pure oxygen, held her face in it, and
made shift to force some of it into her lungs by compressing and releasing her
chest against his own body.
Soon she drew a spasmodic breath, choking and coughing, and he again changed the
gaseous stream to one of pure air, speaking urgently as she showed signs of returning
consciousness.
"Stand up!" he snapped. "Hang onto this brace and keep your face in
this air-stream until I get a suit around you!
Got me?"
She nodded weakly, and, assured that she could hold herself at the valve, it was the
work of only a minute to encase her in one of the protective coverings.
Then, as she sat upon a bench, recovering her strength, he flipped on the lifeboat's
visiphone projector and shot its invisible beam up into the control room, where he saw
space-armored figures furiously busy at the panels.
"Dirty work at the cross-roads!" he blazed to his captain, man to man--formality
disregarded, as it so often was in the Triplanetary service.
"There's skulduggery afoot somewhere in our primary air!
Maybe that's the way they got those other two ships--pirates!
Might have been a timed bomb--don't see how anybody could have stowed away down there
through the inspections, and nobody but Franklin can neutralize the shield of the
air room--but I'm going to look around, anyway.
Then I'll join you fellows up there." "What was it?" the shaken girl asked.
"I think that I remember your saying 'Vee- Two gas.'
That's forbidden! Anyway, I owe you my life, Conway, and I'll
never forget it--never.
Thanks--but the others--how about all the rest of us?"
"It was Vee-Two, and it is forbidden," Costigan replied grimly, eyes fast upon the
flashing plate, whose point of projection was now deep in the bowels of the vessel.
"The penalty for using it or having it is death on sight.
Gangsters and pirates use it, since they have nothing to lose, being on the death
list already.
As for your life, I haven't saved it yet-- you may wish I'd let it ride before we get
done.
The others are too far gone for oxygen-- couldn't have brought even you around in a
few more seconds, quick as I got to you.
But there's a sure antidote--we all carry it in a lock-box in our armor--and we all
know how to use it, because crooks all use Vee-Two and so we're always expecting it.
But since the air will be pure again in half an hour we'll be able to revive the
others easily enough if we can get by with whatever is going to happen next.
There's the bird that did it, right in the air-room.
It's the Chief Engineer's suit, but that isn't Franklin that's in it.
Some passenger--disguised--slugged the Chief--took his suit and projectors--hole
in duct--p-s-s-t! All washed out!
Maybe that's all he was scheduled to do to us in this performance, but he'll do
nothing else in his life!" "Don't go down there!" protested the girl.
"His armor is so much better than that emergency suit you are wearing, and he's
got Mr. Franklin's Lewiston, besides!" "Don't be an idiot!" he snapped.
"We can't have a live pirate aboard--we're going to be altogether too busy with
outsiders directly. Don't worry, I'm not going to give him a
break.
I'll take a Standish--I'll rub him out like a blot.
Stay right here until I come back after you," he commanded, and the heavy door of
the lifeboat clanged shut behind him as he leaped out into the promenade.
Straight across the saloon he made his way, paying no attention to the inert forms
scattered here and there.
Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its
surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish--a fearsome weapon.
Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but
one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and
parabolic reflectors.
Laboring under the weight of the thing, he strode along corridors and clambered
heavily down short stairways.
Finally he came to the purifier room, and grinned savagely as he saw the greenish
haze of light obscuring the door and walls- -the shield was still in place; the pirate
was still inside, still flooding with the
terrible Vee Two the Hyperion's primary air.
He set his peculiar weapon down, unfolded its three massive legs, crouched down
behind it, and threw in a switch.
Dull red beams of frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks, almost of
lightning proportions, leaped from the shielding screen under their impact.
Roaring and snapping, the conflict went on for seconds, then, under the superior force
of the Standish, the greenish radiance gave way.
Behind it the metal of the door ran the gamut of color--red, yellow, blinding
white--then literally exploded; molten, vaporized, burned away.
Through the aperture thus made Costigan could plainly see the pirate in the space-
armor of the chief engineer--an armor which was proof against rifle fire and which
could reflect and neutralize for some
little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing.
Nor was the pirate unarmed--a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston,
to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against the ether-wall of the
squat and monstrous Standish.
But Costigan's infernal engine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction.
At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger, there
was a double report, ear-shattering in that narrowly confined space, and the pirate's
body literally flew into mist as a half-
kilogram shell tore through his armor and exploded.
Costigan shut off his beam, and with not the slightest softening of one hard
lineament stared around the air-room; making sure that no serious damage had been
done to the vital machinery of the air-
purifier--the very lungs of the great space-ship.
Dismounting the Standish, he lugged it back up to the main saloon, replaced it in its
safe, and again set the combination lock.
Thence to the lifeboat, where Clio cried out in relief as she saw that he was
unhurt.
"Oh, Conway, I've been so afraid something would happen to you!" she exclaimed, as he
led her rapidly upward toward the control room.
"Of course you ..." she paused.
"Sure," he replied, laconically. "Nothing to it.
How do you feel--about back to normal?"
"All right, I think, except for being scared to death and just about out of
control.
I don't suppose that I'll be good for anything, but whatever I can do, count me
in on." "Fine--you may be needed, at that.
Everybody's out, apparently, except those like me, who had a warning and could hold
their breath until they got to their suits."
"But how did you know what it was?
You can't see it, nor smell it, nor anything."
"You inhaled a second before I did, and I saw your eyes.
I've been in it before--and when you see a man get a jolt of that stuff just once, you
never forget it. The engineers down below got it first, of
course--it must have wiped them out.
Then we got it in the saloon. Your passing out warned me, and luckily I
had enough breath left to give the word.
Quite a few of the fellows up above should have had time to get away--we'll see 'em
all in the control room."
"I suppose that was why you revived me--in payment for so kindly warning you of the
gas attack?" The girl laughed; shaky, but game.
"Something like that, probably," he answered, lightly.
"Here we are--now we'll soon find out what's going to happen next."
In the control room they saw at least a dozen armored figures; not now rushing
about, but seated at their instruments, tense and ready.
Fortunate it was that Costigan--veteran of space as he was, though young in years--had
been down in the saloon; fortunate that he had been familiar with that horrible
outlawed gas; fortunate that he had had
presence of mind enough and sheer physical stamina enough to send his warning without
allowing one paralyzing trace to enter his own lungs.
Captain Bradley, the men on watch, and several other officers in their quarters or
in the wardrooms--space-hardened veterans all--had obeyed instantly and without
question the amplifiers' gasped command to "get tight".
Exhaling or inhaling, their air-passages had snapped shut as that dread "Vee-Two"
was heard, and they had literally jumped into their armored suits of space--flushing
them out with volume after volume of
unquestionable air; holding their breath to the last possible second, until their
straining lungs could endure no more.
Costigan waved the girl to a vacant bench, cautiously changing into his own armor from
the emergency suit he had been wearing, and approached the captain.
"Anything in sight, sir?" he asked, saluting.
"They should have started something before this."
"They've started, but we can't locate them.
We tried to send out a general sector alarm, but had hardly started when they
blanketed our wave. Look at that!"
Following the captain's eyes, Costigan stared at the high powered set of the
ship's operator.
Upon the plate, instead of a moving, living, three-dimensional picture, there
was a flashing glare of blinding white light; from the speaker, instead of
intelligible speech, was issuing a roaring, crackling stream of noise.
"It's impossible!" Bradley burst out, violently.
"There's not a gram of metal inside the fourth zone--within a hundred thousand
kilometers--and yet they must be close to send such a wave as that.
But the Second thinks not--what do you think, Costigan?"
The bluff commander, reactionary and of the old school as was his breed, was furious--
baffled, raging inwardly to come to grips with the invisible and indetectable foe.
Face to face with the inexplicable, however, he listened to the younger men
with unusual tolerance. "It's not only possible; it's quite evident
that they've got something we haven't."
Costigan's voice was bitter. "But why shouldn't they have?
Service ships never get anything until it's been experimented with for years, but
pirates and such always get the new stuff as soon as it's discovered.
The only good thing I can see is that we got part of a message away, and the scouts
can trace that interference out there. But the pirates know that, too--it won't be
long now," he concluded, grimly.
He spoke truly.
Before another word was said the outer screen flared white under a beam of
terrific power, and simultaneously there appeared upon one of the lookout plates a
vivid picture of the pirate vessel--a huge,
black torpedo of steel, now emitting flaring offensive beams of force.
Instantly the powerful weapons of the Hyperion were brought to bear, and in the
blast of full-driven beams the stranger's screens flamed incandescent.
Heavy guns, under the recoil of whose fierce salvos the frame of the giant globe
trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of high-explosive shell.
But the pirate commander had known accurately the strength of the liner, and
knew that her armament was impotent against the forces at his command.
His screens were invulnerable, the giant shells were exploded harmlessly in mid-
space, miles from their objective.
And suddenly a frightful pencil of flame stabbed brilliantly from the black hulk of
the enemy.
Through the empty ether it tore, through the mighty defensive screens, through the
tough metal of the outer and inner walls.
Every ether-defense of the Hyperion vanished, and her acceleration dropped to a
quarter of its normal value. "Right through the battery room!"
Bradley groaned.
"We're on the emergency drive now. Our rays are done for, and we can't seem to
put a shell anywhere near her with our guns!"
But ineffective as the guns were, they were silenced forever as a frightful beam of
destruction stabbed relentlessly through the control room, whiffing out of existence
the pilot, gunnery, and lookout panels and the men before them.
The air rushed into space, and the suits of the three survivors bulged out into drum-
head tightness as the pressure in the room decreased.
Costigan pushed the captain lightly toward a wall, then seized the girl and leaped in
the same direction.
"Let's get out of here, quick!" he cried, the miniature radio instruments of the
helmets automatically taking up the duty of transmitting speech as the sound disks
refused to function.
"They can't see us--our ether wall is still up and their spy-rays can't get through it
from the outside, you know.
They're working from blue-prints, and they'll probably take your desk next," and
even as they bounded toward the door, now become the outer seal of an airlock, the
pirates' beam tore through the space which they had just quitted.
Through the airlock, down through several levels of passengers' quarters they
hurried, and into a lifeboat, whose one doorway commanded the full length of the
third lounge--an ideal spot, either for
defense or for escape outward by means of the miniature cruiser.
As they entered their retreat they felt their weight begin to increase.
More and more force was applied to the helpless liner, until it was moving at
normal acceleration. "What do you make of that, Costigan?" asked
the captain.
"Tractor beams?" "Apparently.
They've got something, all right. They're taking us somewhere, fast.
I'll go get a couple of Standishes, and another suit of armor--we'd better dig in,"
and soon the small room became a veritable fortress, housing as it did those two
formidable engines of destruction.
Then the first officer made another and longer trip, returning with a complete suit
of Triplanetary space armor, exactly like those worn by the two men, but considerably
smaller.
"Just as an added factor of safety, you'd better put this on, Clio--those emergency
suits aren't good for much in a battle. I don't suppose that you ever fired a
Standish, did you?"
"No, but I can soon learn how to do it," she replied pluckily.
"Two is all that can work here at once, but you should know how to take hold in case
one of us goes out.
And while you're changing suits you'd better put on some stuff I've got here--
Service Special phones and detectors. Stick this little disk onto your chest with
this bit of tape; low down, out of sight.
Just under your wishbone is the best place. Take off your wrist-watch and wear this one
continuously--never take it off for a second.
Put on these pearls, and wear them all the time, too.
Take this capsule and hide it against your skin, some place where it can't be found
except by the most rigid search.
Swallow it in an emergency--it goes down easily and works just as well inside as
outside.
It is the most important thing of all--you can get along with it alone if you lose
everything else, but without that capsule the whole system's shot to pieces.
With that outfit, if we should get separated, you can talk to us--we're both
wearing 'em, although in somewhat different forms.
You don't need to talk loud--just a mutter will be enough.
They're handy little outfits--almost impossible to find, and capable of a lot of
things."
"Thanks, Conway--I'll remember that, too," Clio replied, as she turned toward the tiny
locker to follow his instructions. "But won't the scouts and patrols be
catching us pretty quick?
The operator sent a warning." "Afraid the ether's empty, as far as we're
concerned." Captain Bradley had stood by in silent
astonishment during this conversation.
His eyes had bulged slightly at Costigan's "we're both wearing 'em," but he had held
his peace and as the girl disappeared a look of dawning comprehension came over his
face.
"Oh, I see, sir," he said, respectfully-- far more respectfully than he had ever
before addressed a mere first officer. "Meaning that we both will be wearing them
shortly, I assume.
'Service Specials'--but you didn't specify exactly what Service, did you?"
"Now that you mention it, I don't believe that I did," Costigan grinned.
"That explains several things about you-- particularly your recognition of Vee-Two
and your uncanny control and speed of reaction.
But aren't you...."
"No," Costigan interrupted. "This situation is apt to get altogether
too serious to overlook any bets.
If we get away, I'll take them away from her and she'll never know that they aren't
routine equipment. As for you, I know that you can and do keep
your mouth shut.
That's why I'm hanging this junk on you--I had a lot of stuff in my kit, but I flashed
it all with the Standish except what I brought in here for us three.
Whether you think so or not, we're in a real jam--our chance of getting away is
mighty close to zero...."
He broke off as the girl came back, now to all appearances a small Triplanetary
officer, and the three settled down to a long and eventless wait.
Hour after hour they flew through the ether, but finally there was a lurching
swing and an abrupt increase in their acceleration.
After a short consultation Captain Bradley turned on the visiray set and, with the
beam at its minimum power, peered cautiously downward, in the direction
opposite to that in which he knew the pirate vessel must be.
All three stared into the plate, seeing only an infinity of emptiness, marked only
by the infinitely remote and coldly brilliant stars.
While they stared into space a vast area of the heavens was blotted out and they saw,
faintly illuminated by a peculiar blue luminescence, a vast ball--a sphere so
large and so close that they seemed to be
dropping downward toward it as though it were a world!
They came to a stop--paused, weightless--a vast door slid smoothly aside--they were
drawn upward through an airlock and floated quietly in the air above a small, but
brightly-lighted and orderly city of metallic buildings!
Gently the Hyperion was lowered, to come to rest in the embracing arms of a regulation
landing cradle.
"Well, wherever it is, we're here," remarked Captain Bradley, grimly, and:
"And now the fireworks start," assented Costigan, with a questioning glance at the
girl.
"Don't mind me," she answered his unspoken question.
"I don't believe in surrendering, either."
"Right," and both men squatted down behind the ether-walls of their terrific weapons;
the girl prone behind them. They had not long to wait.
A group of human beings--men and to all appearances Americans--appeared unarmed in
the little lounge.
As soon as they were well inside the room, Bradley and Costigan released upon them
without compunction the full power of their frightful projectors.
From the reflectors, through the doorway, there tore a concentrated double beam of
pure destruction--but that beam did not reach its goal.
Yards from the men it met a screen of impenetrable density.
Instantly the gunners pressed their triggers and a stream of high-explosive
shells issued from the roaring weapons.
But shells, also, were futile. They struck the shield and vanished--
vanished without exploding and without leaving a trace to show that they had ever
existed.
Costigan sprang to his feet, but before he could launch his intended attack a vast
tunnel appeared beside him--something had gone through the entire width of the liner,
cutting effortlessly a smooth cylinder of emptiness.
Air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and the three visitors felt themselves seized by
invisible forces and drawn into the tunnel.
Through it they floated, up to and over buildings, finally slanting downward toward
the door of a great high-towered structure.
Doors opened before them and closed behind them, until at last they stood upright in a
room which was evidently the office of a busy executive.
They faced a desk which, in addition to the usual equipment of the business man,
carried also a bewilderingly complete switchboard and instrument panel.
Seated impassively at the desk there was a gray man.
Not only was he dressed entirely in gray, but his heavy hair was gray, his eyes were
gray, and even his tanned skin seemed to give the impression of grayness in
disguise.
His overwhelming personality radiated an aura of grayness--not the gentle gray of
the dove, but the resistless, driving gray of the super-dreadnought; the hard,
inflexible, brittle gray of the fracture of high-carbon steel.
"Captain Bradley, First Officer Costigan, Miss Marsden," the man spoke quietly, but
crisply.
"I had not intended you two men to live so long.
That is a detail, however, which we will pass by for the moment.
You may remove your suits."
Neither officer moved, but both stared back at the speaker, unflinchingly.
"I am not accustomed to repeating instructions," the man at the desk
continued; voice still low and level, but instinct with deadly menace.
"You may choose between removing those suits and dying in them, here and now."
Costigan moved over to Clio and slowly took off her armor.
Then, after a flashing exchange of glances and a muttered word, the two officers threw
off their suits simultaneously and fired at the same instant; Bradley with his
Lewiston, Costigan with a heavy automatic
pistol whose bullets were explosive shells of tremendous power.
But the man in gray, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of force, only smiled at
the fusillade, tolerantly and maddeningly.
Costigan leaped fiercely, only to be hurled backward as he struck that unyielding,
invisible wall.
A vicious beam snapped him back into place, the weapons were snatched away, and all
three captives were held to their former positions.
"I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility," the gray man said, his hard
voice becoming harder, "but I will permit no more foolishness.
Now I will introduce myself.
I am known as Roger. You probably have heard nothing of me: very
few Tellurians have, or ever will. Whether or not you two live depends solely
upon yourselves.
Being something of a student of men, I fear that you will both die shortly.
Able and resourceful as you have just shown yourselves to be, you could be valuable to
me, but you probably will not--in which case you shall, of course, cease to exist.
That, however, in its proper time--you shall be of some slight service to me in
the process of being eliminated.
In your case, Miss Marsden, I find myself undecided between two courses of action;
each highly desirable, but unfortunately mutually exclusive.
Your father will be glad to ransom you at an exceedingly high figure, but in spite of
that fact I may decide to use you in a research upon sex."
"Yes?"
Clio rose magnificently to the occasion. Fear forgotten, her courageous spirit
flashed from her clear young eyes and emanated from her taut young body, erect in
defiance.
"You may think that you can do anything with me that you please, but you can't!"
"Peculiar--highly perplexing--why should that one stimulus, in the case of young
females, produce such an entirely disproportionate reaction?"
Roger's eyes bored into Clio's; the girl shivered and looked away.
"But sex itself, primal and basic, the most widespread concomitant of life in this
continuum, is completely illogical and paradoxical.
Most baffling--decidedly, this research on sex must go on."
Roger pressed a button and a tall, comely woman appeared--a woman of indefinite age
and of uncertain nationality.
"Show Miss Marsden to her apartment," he directed, and as the two women went out a
man came in. "The cargo is unloaded, sir," the newcomer
reported.
"The two men and the five women indicated have been taken to the hospital."
"Very well, dispose of the others in the usual fashion."
The minion went out, and Roger continued, emotionlessly:
"Collectively, the other passengers may be worth a million or so, but it would not be
worthwhile to waste time upon them."
"What are you, anyway?" blazed Costigan, helpless but enraged beyond caution.
"I have heard of mad scientists who tried to destroy the Earth, and of equally mad
geniuses who thought themselves Napoleons capable of conquering even the Solar
System.
Whichever you are, you should know that you can't get away with it."
"I am neither. I am, however, a scientist, and I direct
many other scientists.
I am not mad. You have undoubtedly noticed several
peculiar features of this place?" "Yes, particularly the artificial gravity
and those screens.
An ordinary ether-wall is opaque in one direction, and doesn't bar matter--yours
are transparent both ways and something more than impenetrable to matter.
How do you do it?"
"You could not understand them if I explained them to you, and they are merely
two of our smaller developments.
I do not intend to destroy your planet Earth; I have no desire to rule over masses
of futile and brainless men. I have, however, certain ends of my own in
view.
To accomplish my plans I require hundreds of millions in gold and other hundreds of
millions in uranium, thorium, and radium; all of which I shall take from the planets
of this Solar System before I leave it.
I shall take them in spite of the puerile efforts of the fleets of your Triplanetary
League. "This structure was designed by me and
built under my direction.
It is protected from meteorites by forces of my devising.
It is indetectable and invisible--ether waves are bent around it without loss or
distortion.
I am discussing these points at such length so that you may realize exactly your
position. As I have intimated, you can be of
assistance to me if you will."
"Now just what could you offer any man to make him join your outfit?" demanded
Costigan, venomously.
"Many things," Roger's cold tone betrayed no emotion, no recognition of Costigan's
open and bitter contempt. "I have under me many men, bound to me by
many ties.
Needs, wants, longings, and desires differ from man to man, and I can satisfy
practically any of them.
Many men take delight in the society of young and beautiful women, but there are
other urges which I have found quite efficient.
Greed, thirst for fame, longing for power, and so on, including many qualities usually
regarded as 'noble.' And what I promise, I deliver.
I demand only loyalty to me, and that only in certain things and for a relatively
short period. In all else, my men do as they please.
In conclusion, I can use you two conveniently, but I do not need you.
Therefore you may choose now between my service and--the alternative."
"Exactly what is the alternative?"
"We will not go into that. Suffice it to say that it has to do with a
minor research, which is not progressing satisfactorily.
It will result in your extinction, and perhaps I should mention that that
extinction will not be particularly pleasant."
"I say NO, you...."
Bradley roared. He intended to give an unexpurgated
classification, but was rudely interrupted. "Hold on a minute!" snapped Costigan.
"How about Miss Marsden?"
"She has nothing to do with this discussion," returned Roger, icily.
"I do not bargain--in fact, I believe that I shall keep her for a time.
She has it in mind to destroy herself if I do not allow her to be ransomed, but she
will find that door closed to her until I permit it to open."
"In that case, I string along with the Chief--take what he started to say about
you and run it clear across the board for me!" barked Costigan.
"Very well.
That decision was to be expected from men of your type."
The gray man touched two buttons and two of his creatures entered the room.
"Put these men into two separate cells on the second level," he ordered.
"Search them; all their weapons may not have been in their armor.
Seal the doors and mount special guards, tuned to me here."
Imprisoned they were, and carefully searched; but they bore no arms, and
nothing had been said concerning communicators.
Even if such instruments could be concealed, Roger would detect their use
instantly. At least, so ran his thought.
But Roger's men had no inkling of the possibility of Costigan's "Service Special"
phones, detectors, and spy-ray--instruments of minute size and of infinitesimal power,
but yet instruments which, working as they
were below the level of the ether, were effective at great distances and caused no
vibrations in the ether by which their use could be detected.
And what could be more innocent than the regulation personal equipment of every
officer of space?
The heavy goggles, the wrist-watch and its supplementary pocket chronometer, the
flash-lamp, the automatic lighter, the sender, the money-belt?
All these items of equipment were examined with due care; but the cleverest minds of
the Triplanetary Service had designed those communicators to pass any ordinary search,
however careful, and when Costigan and
Bradley were finally locked into the designated cells they still possessed their
ultra-instruments.
>
BOOK THREE TRIPLANETARY CHAPTER 8 IN ROGER'S PLANETOID
In the hall Clio glanced around her wildly, seeking even the narrowest avenue of
escape.
Before she could act, however, her body was clamped as though in a vise, and she
struggled, motionless.
"It is useless to attempt to escape, or to do anything except what Roger wishes," the
guide informed her somberly, snapping off the instrument in her hand and thus
restoring to the thoroughly cowed girl her freedom of motion.
"His lightest wish is law," she continued as they walked down a long corridor.
"The sooner you realize that you must do exactly as he pleases, in all things, the
easier your life will be." "But I wouldn't want to keep on living!"
Clio declared, with a flash of spirit.
"And I can always die, you know." "You will find that you cannot," the
passionless creature returned, monotonously.
"If you do not yield, you will long and pray for death, but you will not die unless
Roger wills it. Look at me: I cannot die.
Here is your apartment.
You will stay here until Roger gives further orders concerning you."
The living automaton opened a door and stood silent and impassive while Clio,
staring at her in horror, shrank past her and into the sumptuously furnished suite.
The door closed soundlessly and utter silence descended as a pall.
Not an ordinary silence, but the indescribable perfection of the absolute
silence, complete absence of all sound.
In that silence Clio stood motionless. Tense and rigid, hopeless, despairing, she
stood there in that magnificent room, fighting an almost overwhelming impulse to
scream.
Suddenly she heard the cold voice of Roger, speaking from the empty air.
"You are over-wrought, Miss Marsden. You can be of no use to yourself or to me
in that condition.
I command you to rest; and, to insure that rest, you may pull that cord, which will
establish about this room an ether wall: a wall to cut off even this my voice...."
The voice ceased as she pulled the cord savagely and threw herself upon a divan in
a torrent of gasping, strangling, but rebellious sobs.
Then again came a voice, but not to her ears.
Deep within her, pervading every bone and muscle, it made itself felt rather than
heard.
"Clio?" it asked. "Don't talk yet...."
"Conway!" she gasped in relief, every fiber of her being thrilled into new hope at the
deep, well-remembered voice of Conway Costigan.
"Keep still!" he snapped.
"Don't act so happy! He may have a spy-ray on you.
He can't hear me, but he may be able to hear you.
When he was talking to you you must have noticed a sort of rough, sandpapery feeling
under that necklace I gave you? Since he's got an ether-wall around you the
beads are dead now.
If you feel anything like that under the wrist-watch, breathe deeply, twice.
If you don't feel anything there, it's safe for you to talk, as loud as you please."
"I don't feel anything, Conway!" she rejoiced.
Tears forgotten, she was her old, buoyant self again.
"So that wall is real, after all?
I only about half believed it." "Don't trust it too much, because he can
cut it off from the outside any time he wants to.
Remember what I told you: that necklace will warn you of any spy-ray in the ether,
and the watch will detect anything below the level of the ether.
It's dead now, of course, since our three phones are direct-connected; I'm in touch
with Bradley, too. Don't be too scared; we've got a lot better
chance than I thought we had."
"What? You don't mean it!"
"Absolutely.
I'm beginning to think that maybe we've got something he doesn't know exists--our
ultra-wave.
Of course I wasn't surprised when his searchers failed to find our instruments,
but it never occurred to me that I might have a clear field to use them in!
I can't quite believe it yet, but I haven't been able to find any indication that he
can even detect the bands we are using. I'm going to look around over there with my
spy-ray ...
I'm looking at you now--feel it?" "Yes, the watch feels that way, now."
"Fine! Not a sign of interference over here,
either.
I can't find a trace of ultra-wave-- anything below ether-level, you know--
anywhere in the whole place.
He's got so much stuff that we've never heard of that I supposed of course he'd
have ultra-wave, too; but if he hasn't, that gives us the edge.
Well, Bradley and I've got a lot of work to do....
Wait a minute, I just had a thought. I'll be back in about a second."
There was a brief pause, then the soundless, but clear voice went on:
"Good hunting!
That woman that gave you the blue *** isn't alive--she's full of the prettiest
machinery and circuits you ever saw!"
"Oh, Conway!" and the girl's voice broke in an engulfing wave of thanksgiving and
relief.
"It was so unutterably horrible, thinking of what must have happened to her and to
others like her!" "He's running a colossal bluff, I think.
He's good, all right, but he lacks quite a lot of being omnipotent.
But don't get too cocky, either.
Plenty has happened to plenty of women here, and men too--and plenty may happen to
us unless we put out a few jets. Keep a stiff upper lip, and if you want us,
yell.
'Bye!"
The silent voice ceased, the watch upon Clio's wrist again became an unobtrusive
timepiece, and Costigan, in his solitary cell far below her tower room, turned his
peculiarly goggled eyes toward other scenes.
His hands, apparently idle in his pockets, manipulated tiny controls; his keen,
highly-trained eyes studied every concealed detail of mechanism of the great globe.
Finally, he took off the goggles and spoke in a low voice to Bradley, confined in
another windowless room across the hall. "I think I've got dope enough, Captain.
I've found out where he put our armor and guns, and I've located all the main leads,
controls, and generators.
There are no ether-walls around us here, but every door is shielded, and there are
guards outside our doors--one to each of us.
They're robots, not men.
That makes it harder, since they're undoubtedly connected direct to Roger's
desk and will give an alarm at the first hint of abnormal performance.
We can't do a thing until he leaves his desk.
See that black panel, a little below the cord-switch to the right of your door?
That's the conduit cover.
When I give you the word, tear that off and you'll see one red wire in the cable.
It feeds the shield-generator of your door. Break that wire and join me out in the
hall.
Sorry I had only one of these ultra-wave spies, but once we're together it won't be
so bad.
Here's what I thought we could do," and he went over in detail the only course of
action which his survey had shown to be possible.
"There, he's left his desk!"
Costigan exclaimed after the conversation had continued for almost an hour.
"Now as soon as we find out where he's going, we'll start something ... he's going
to see Clio, the swine!
This changes things, Bradley!" His hard voice was a curse.
"Somewhat!" blazed the captain. "I know how you two have been getting on
all during the cruise.
I'm with you, but what can we do?" "We'll do something," Costigan declared
grimly.
"If he makes a pass at her I'll get him if I have to blow this whole sphere out of
space, with us in it!"
"Don't do that, Conway," Clio's low voice, trembling but determined, was felt by both
men.
"If there's a chance for you to get away and do anything about fighting him, don't
mind me. Maybe he only wants to talk about the
ransom, anyway."
"He wouldn't talk ransom to you--he's going to talk something else entirely," Costigan
gritted, then his voice changed suddenly. "But say, maybe it's just as well this way.
They didn't find our specials when they searched us, you know, and we're going to
do plenty of damage right soon now.
Roger probably isn't a fast worker--more the cat-and-mouse type, I'd say--and after
we get started he'll have something on his mind besides you.
Think you can stall him off and keep him interested for about fifteen minutes?"
"I'm sure I can--I'll do anything to help us, or you, get away from this
horrible...."
Her voice ceased as Roger broke the ether- wall of her apartment and walked toward the
divan, upon which she crouched in wide- eyed, helpless, trembling terror.
"Get ready, Bradley!"
Costigan directed tersely.
"He left Clio's ether-wall off, so that any abnormal signals would be relayed to him
from his desk--he knows that there's no chance of anyone disturbing him in that
room.
But I'm holding a beam on that switch, so that the wall is on, full strength.
No matter what we do now, he can't get a warning.
I'll have to hold the beam exactly in place, though, so you'll have to do the
dirty work. Tear out that red wire and kill those two
guards.
You know how to kill a robot, don't you?" "Yes--break his eye-lenses and his ear-
drums and he'll stop whatever he's doing and send out distress calls....
Got 'em both.
Now what?" "Open my door--the shield switch is to the
right." Costigan's door flew open and the
Triplanetary captain leaped into the room.
"Now for our armor!" he cried. "Not yet!" snapped Costigan.
He was standing rigid, goggled eyes staring immovably at a spot on the ceiling.
"I can't move a millimeter until you've closed Clio's ether-wall switch.
If I take this ray off it for a second we're sunk.
Five floors up, straight ahead down a corridor--fourth door on right.
When you're at the switch you'll feel my ray on your watch.
Snap it up!"
"Right," and the captain leaped away at a pace to be equalled by few men of half his
years.
Soon he was back, and after Costigan had tested the ether-wall of the "bridal suite"
to make sure that no warning signal from his desk or his servants could reach Roger
within it, the two officers hurried away
toward the room in which their space-armor was.
"Too bad they don't wear uniforms," panted Bradley, short of breath from the many
flights of stairs.
"Might have helped some as disguise." "I doubt it--with so many robots around,
they've probably got signals that we couldn't understand anyway.
If we meet anybody it'll mean a battle.
Hold it!" Peering through walls with his spy-ray,
Costigan had seen two men approaching, blocking an intersecting corridor into
which they must turn.
"Two of 'em, a man and a robot--the robot's on your side.
We'll wait here, right at the corner--when they round it take 'em!" and Costigan put
away his goggles in readiness for strife.
All unsuspecting, the two pirates came into view, and as they appeared the two officers
struck.
Costigan, on the inside, drove a short, hard right low into the human pirate's
abdomen.
The fiercely-driven fist sank to the wrist into the soft tissues and the stricken man
collapsed.
But even as the blow landed Costigan had seen that there was a third enemy,
following close behind the two he had been watching, a pirate who was even then
training a ray projector upon him.
Reacting automatically, Costigan swung his unconscious opponent around in front of
him, so that it was into an enemy's body that the vicious ray tore, and not into his
own.
Crouching down into the smallest possible compass, he straightened out with the
lashing force of a mighty steel spring, hurling the corpse straight at the flaming
mouth of the projector.
The weapon crashed to the floor and dead pirate and living went down in a heap.
Upon that heap Costigan hurled himself, feeling for the pirate's throat.
But the fellow had wriggled clear, and countered with a gouging thrust that would
have torn out the eyes of a slower man, following it up instantly with a savage
kick for the groin.
No automaton this, geared and set to perform certain fixed duties with
mechanical precision, but a lithe, strong man in hard training, fighting with every
foul trick known to his murderous ilk.
But Costigan was no tyro in the art of dirty fighting.
Few indeed were the maiming tricks of foul combat unknown to even the rank and file of
the highly efficient under-cover branch of the Triplanetary Service; and Costigan, a
Sector Chief, knew them all.
Not for pleasure, sportsmanship, nor million-dollar purses did those secret
agents use Nature's weapons.
They came to grips only when it could not possibly be avoided, but when they were
forced to fight in that fashion they went in with but one grim purpose--to kill, and
to kill in the shortest possible space of time.
Thus it was that Costigan's opening soon came.
The pirate launched a vicious coup de sabot, which Costigan avoided by a
lightning shift.
It was a slight shift, barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two powerful
hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap.
Closed and twisted viciously, in the same fleeting instant.
There was a shriek, smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its carefully predetermined
mark--the pirate was out, definitely and permanently.
The struggle had lasted scarcely ten seconds, coming to its close just as
Bradley finished blinding and deafening the robot.
Costigan picked up the projector, again donned his spy-ray goggles, and the two
hurried on.
"Nice work, Chief--it must be a gift to rough-house the way you do," Bradley
exclaimed. "That's why you took the live one?"
"Practice helps some, too--I've been in brawls before, and I'm a lot younger and
maybe a bit faster than you are," Costigan explained briefly, penetrant gaze rigidly
to the fore as they ran along one corridor after another.
Several more guards, both living and mechanical, were encountered on the way,
but they were not permitted to offer any opposition.
Costigan saw them first.
In the furious beam of the projector of the dead pirate they were riven into
nothingness, and the two officers sped on to the room which Costigan had located from
afar.
The three suits of Triplanetary space armor had been locked up in a cabinet; a cabinet
whose doors Costigan literally blew off with a blast of force rather than consume
time in tracing the power leads.
"I feel like something now!" Costigan, once more encased in his own
armor, heaved a great sigh of relief.
"Rough-and-tumble's all right with one or two, but that generator room is full of
grief, and we won't have any too much stuff as it is.
We've got to take Clio's suit along--we'll carry it down to the door of the power
room, drop it there, and pick it up on the way back."
Contemptuous now of possible guards, the armored pair strode toward the power plant-
-the very heart of the immense fortress of space.
Guards were encountered, and captains-- officers who signaled frantically to their
chief, since he alone could unleash the frightful forces at his command, and who
profanely wondered at his unwonted silence-
-but the enemy beams were impotent against the ether walls of that armor; and the
pirates, without armor in the security of their own planetoid as they were, vanished
utterly in the ravening beams of the twin Lewistons.
As they paused before the door of the power room, both men felt Clio's voice raised in
her first and last appeal, an appeal wrung from her against her will by the extremity
of her position.
"Conway! Hurry!
His eyes--they're tearing me apart! Hurry, dear!"
In the horror-filled tones both men read clearly--however inaccurately--the girl's
dire extremity.
Each saw plainly a happy, carefree young Earth-girl, upon her first trip into space,
locked inside an ether-wall with an over- brained, under-conscienced human machine--a
super-intelligent, but lecherous and
unmoral mechanism of flesh and blood, acknowledging no authority, ruled by
nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges of
his desires and passions!
She must have fought with every resource at her command.
She must have wept and pleaded, stormed and raged, feigned submission and played for
time--and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and
gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger.
Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play would be done, the horrible gray-brown face
would be close to hers--she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and
attacked that hideous face with the fury of a tigress.
Costigan bit off a bitter imprecation.
"Hold him just a second longer, sweetheart!" he cried, and the power room
door vanished.
Through the great room the two Lewistons swept at full aperture and at maximum
power, two rapidly-opening fans of death and destruction.
Here and there a guard, more rapid than his fellows, trained a futile projector--a
projector whose magazine exploded at the touch of that frightful field of force,
liberating instantaneously its thousands
upon thousands of kilowatt-hours of-stored- up energy.
Through the delicately adjusted, complex mechanisms the destroying beams tore.
At their touch armatures burned out, high- tension leads volatilized in crashing,
high-voltage arcs, masses of metal smoked and burned in the path of vast forces now
seeking the easiest path to neutralization,
delicate instruments blew up, copper ran in streams.
As the last machine subsided into a semi- molten mass of metal the two wreckers, each
grasping a brace, felt themselves become weightless and knew that they had
accomplished the first part of their program.
Costigan leaped for the outer door.
His the task to go to Clio's aid--Bradley would follow more slowly, bringing the
girl's armor and taking care of any possible pursuit.
As he sailed through the air he spoke.
"Coming, Clio! All right, girl?"
Questioningly, half fearfully. "All right, Conway."
Her voice was almost unrecognizable, broken in retching agony.
"When everything went crazy he ... found out that the ether-wall was up and ...
forgot all about me.
He shut it off ... and seemed to go crazy too ... he is floundering around like a
wild man now ... I'm trying to keep ... him from ... going
downstairs."
"Good girl--keep him busy one minute more-- he's getting all the warnings at once and
wants to get back to his board. But what's the matter with you?
Did he ... hurt you, after all?"
"Oh, no, not that--he didn't do anything but look at me--but that was bad enough--
but I'm sick--horribly sick. I'm falling ...
I'm so dizzy that I can scarcely see ... my head is breaking up into little pieces ...
I just know I'm going to die, Conway! Oh ... oh!"
"Oh, is that all!"
In his sheer relief that they had been in time, Costigan did not think of
sympathizing with Clio's very real present distress of mind and body.
"I forgot that you're a ground-gripper-- that's just a little touch of space-
sickness. It'll wear off directly....
All right, I'm coming!
Let go of him and get as far away from him as you can!"
He was now in the street.
Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred feet above him was the tower room
in which were Clio and Roger.
He sprang directly toward its large window, and as he floated "upward" he corrected his
course and accelerated his pace by firing backward at various angles with his heavy
service pistol, uncaring that at the point
of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction erupted.
He missed the window a trifle, but that did not matter--his flaming Lewiston opened a
way for him, partly through the window, partly through the wall.
As he soared through the opening he trained projector and pistol upon Roger, now almost
to the door, noticing as he did so that Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-
bracket upon the wall.
Door and wall vanished in the Lewiston's terrific beam, but the pirate stood
unharmed.
Neither ravening ray nor explosive shell could harm him--he had snapped on the
protective shield whose generator was always upon his person.
When Clio reported that Roger seemed to go crazy and was floundering around like a
wild man, she had no idea of how she was understanding the actual situation; for
Gharlane of Eddore, then energizing the
form of flesh that was Roger, had for the first time in his prodigiously long life
met in direct conflict with an overwhelming superior force.
Roger had been sublimely confident that he could detect the use, anywhere in or around
his planetoid, of ultra-wave.
He had been equally sure that he could control directly and absolutely the
physical activities of any number of these semi-intelligent "human beings".
But four Arisians in fusion--Drounli, Brolenteen, Nedanillor, and Kriedigan--had
been on guard for weeks. When the time came to act, they acted.
Roger's first thought, upon discovering what tremendous and inexplicable damage had
already been done, was to destroy instantly the two men who were doing it.
He could not touch them.
His second was to blast out of existence this supposedly human female, but no more
could he touch her.
His fiercest mental bolts spent themselves harmlessly three millimeters away from her
skin; she gazed into his eyes completely unaware of the torrents of energy pouring
from them.
He could not even aim a weapon at her! His third was to call for help to Eddore.
He could not.
The sub-ether was closed; nor could he either discover the manner of its closing
or trace the power which was keeping it closed!
His Eddorian body, even if he could recreate it here, could not withstand the
environment--this Roger-thing would have to do whatever it could, unaided by Gharlane's
mental powers.
And, physically, it was a very capable body indeed.
Also, it was armed and armored with mechanisms of Gharlane's own devising; and
Eddore's second-in-command was in no sense a coward.
But Roger, while not exactly a ground- gripper, did not know how to handle himself
without weight; whereas Costigan, given six walls against which to push, was even more
efficient in weightless combat than when handicapped by the force of gravitation.
Keeping his projector upon the pirate, he seized the first club to hand--a long,
slender pedestal of metal--launched himself past the pirate chief.
With all the momentum of his mass and velocity and all the power of his good
right arm he swung the bar at the pirate's head.
That fiercely-driven mass of metal should have taken head from shoulders, but it did
not.
Roger's shield of force was utterly rigid and impenetrable; the only effect of the
frightful blow was to set him spinning, end over end, like the flying baton of an
acrobatic drum-major.
As the spinning form crashed against the opposite wall of the room Bradley floated
in, carrying Clio's armor.
Without a word the captain loosened the helpless girl's grip upon the bracket and
encased her in the suit.
Then, supporting her at the window, he held his Lewiston upon the captive's head while
Costigan propelled him toward the opening.
Both men knew that Roger's shield of force must be threatened every instant--that if
he were allowed to release it he probably would bring to bear a hand-weapon even
superior to their own.
Braced against the wall, Costigan sighted along Roger's body toward the most distant
point of the lofty dome of the artificial planet and gave him a gentle push.
Then, each grasping Clio by an arm, the two officers shoved mightily with their feet
and the three armored forms darted away toward their only hope of escape--an
emergency boat which could be launched through the shell of the great globe.
To attempt to reach the Hyperion and to escape in one of her lifeboats would have
been useless; they could not have forced the great gates of the main airlocks and no
other exits existed.
As they sailed onward through the air, Costigan keeping the slowly-floating form
of Roger enveloped in his beam, Clio began to recover.
"Suppose they get their gravity fixed?" she asked, apprehensively.
"And they're raying us and shooting at us!" "They may have it fixed already.
They undoubtedly have spare parts and duplicate generators, but if they turn it
on the fall will kill Roger too, and he wouldn't like that.
They'll have to get him down with a helicopter or something, and they know that
we'll get them as fast as they come up.
They can't hurt us with hand-weapons, and before they can bring up any heavy stuff
they'll be afraid to use it, because well be too close to their shell.
"I wish we could have brought Roger along," he continued, savagely, to Bradley.
"But you were right, of course--it'd be altogether too much like a rabbit capturing
a wildcat.
My Lewiston's about done right now, and there can't be much left of yours--what
he'd do to us would be a sin and a shame."
Now at the great wall, the two men heaved mightily upon a lever, the gate of the
emergency port swung slowly open, and they entered the miniature cruiser of the void.
Costigan, familiar with the mechanism of the craft from careful study from his
prison cell, manipulated the controls.
Through gate after massive gate they went, until finally they were out in open space,
shooting toward distant Tellus at the maximum acceleration of which their small
craft was capable.
Costigan cut the other two phones out of circuit and spoke, his attention fixed upon
some extremely distant point. "Samms!" he called sharply.
"Costigan.
We're out ... all right ... yes ... sure ... absolutely ... you tell 'em, Sammy,
I've got company here."
Through the sound-disks of their helmets the girl and the captain had heard
Costigan's share of the conversation.
Bradley stared at his erstwhile first officer in amazement, and even Clio had
often heard that mighty, half-mythical name.
Surely that bewildering young man must rank high, to speak so familiarly to Virgil
Samms, the all-powerful head of the space- pervading Service of the Triplanetary
League!
"You've turned in a general call-out," Bradley stated, rather than asked.
"Long ago--I've been in touch right along," Costigan answered.
"Now that they know what to look for and know that ether-wave detectors are useless,
they can find it.
Every vessel in seven sectors, clear down to the scout patrols, is concentrating on
this point, and the call is out for all battleships and cruisers afloat.
There are enough operatives out there with ultra-waves to locate that globe, and once
they spot it they'll point it out to all the other vessels."
"But how about the other prisoners?" asked the girl.
"They'll be killed, won't they?" "Hard telling," Costigan shrugged.
"Depends on how things turn out.
We lack a lot of being safe ourselves yet." "What's worrying me mostly is our own
chance," Bradley assented. "They will chase us, of course."
"Sure, and they'll have more speed than we have.
Depends on how far away the nearest Triplanetary vessels are.
But we've done everything we can do, for now."
Silence fell, and Costigan cut in Clio's phone and came over to the seat upon which
she was reclining, white and stricken--worn out by the horrible and terrifying ordeals
of the last few hours.
As he seated himself beside her she blushed vividly, but her deep blue eyes met his
gray ones steadily. "Clio, I ... we ... you ... that is," he
flushed hotly and stopped.
This secret agent, whose clear, keen brain no physical danger could cloud; who had
proved over and over again that he was never at a loss in any emergency, however
desperate--this quick-witted officer
floundered in embarrassment like any schoolboy; but continued, doggedly: "I'm
afraid that I gave myself away back there, but...."
"We gave ourselves away, you mean," she filled in the pause.
"I did my share, but I won't hold you to it if you don't want--but I know that you love
me, Conway!"
"Love you!" the man groaned, his face lined and hard, his whole body rigid.
"That doesn't half tell it, Clio. You don't need to hold me--I'm held for
life.
There never was a woman who meant anything to me before, and there never will be
another. You're the only woman that ever existed.
It isn't that.
Can't you see that it's impossible?" "Of course I can't--it isn't impossible, at
all."
She released her shields, four hands met and tightly clasped, and her low voice
thrilled with feeling as she went on: "You love me and I love you.
That is all that matters."
"I wish it were," Costigan returned bitterly, "but you don't know what you'd be
letting yourself in for. It's who and what you are and who and what
I am that's griping me.
You, Clio Marsden, Curtis Marsden's daughter.
Nineteen years old. You think you've been places and done
things.
You haven't. You haven't seen or done anything--you
don't know what it's all about. And whom am I to love a girl like you?
A homeless spacehound who hasn't been on any planet three weeks in three years.
A hard-boiled egg. A trouble-shooter and a brawler by instinct
and training.
A sp ..." he bit off the word and went on quickly: "Why, you don't know me at all,
and there's a lot of me that you never will know--that I can't let you know!
You'd better lay off me, girl, while you can.
It'll be best for you, believe me."
"But I can't, Conway, and neither can you," the girl answered softly, a glorious light
in her eyes. "It's too late for that.
On the ship it was just another of those things, but since then we've come really to
know each other, and we're sunk.
The situation is out of control, and we both know it--and neither of us would
change it if we could, and you know that, too.
I don't know very much, I admit, but I do know what you thought you'd have to keep
from me, and I admire you all the more for it.
We all honor the Service, Conway dearest-- it is only you men who have made and are
keeping the Three Planets fit places to live in--and I know that any one of Virgil
Samms' assistants would have to be a man in a thousand million...."
"What makes you think that?" he demanded sharply.
"You told me so yourself, indirectly.
Who else in the three worlds could possibly call him 'Sammy?'
You are hard, of course, but you must be so--and I never did like soft men, anyway.
And you brawl in a good cause.
You are very much a man, my Conway; a real, real man, and I love you!
Now, if they catch us, all right--we'll die together, at least!" she finished,
intensely.
"You're right, sweetheart, of course," he admitted.
"I don't believe that I could really let you let me go, even though I know you ought
to," and their hands locked together even more firmly than before.
"If we ever get out of this jam I'm going to kiss you, but this is no time to be
taking off your helmet. In fact, I'm taking too many chances with
you in keeping your shields off.
Snap 'em on again--they ought to be getting fairly close by this time."
Hands released and armor again tight, Costigan went over to join Bradley at the
control board.
"How are they coming, Captain?" he asked. "Not so good.
Quite a ways off yet. At least an hour, I'd say, before a cruiser
can get within range."
"I'll see if I can locate any of the pirates chasing us.
If I do it'll be by accident; this little spy-ray isn't good for much except close
work.
I'm afraid the first warning we'll have will be when they take hold of us with a
tractor or spear us with a needle.
Probably a beam, though; this is one of their emergency lifeboats and they wouldn't
want to destroy it unless they have to. Also, I imagine that Roger wants us alive
pretty badly.
He has unfinished business with all three of us, and I can well believe that his 'not
particularly pleasant extinction' will be even less so after the way we rooked him."
"I want you to do me a favor, Conway."
Clio's face was white with horror at the thought of facing again that unspeakable
creature of gray. "Give me a gun or something, please.
I don't want him ever to look at me that way again, to say nothing of what else he
might do, while I'm alive." "He won't," Costigan assured her, narrow of
eye and grim of jaw.
He was, as she had said, hard. "But you don't want a gun.
You might get nervous and use it too soon.
I'll take care of you at the last possible moment, because if he gets hold of us we
won't stand a chance of getting away again."
For minutes there was silence, Costigan surveying the ether in all directions with
his ultra-wave device. Suddenly he laughed, and the others stared
at him in surprise.
"No, I'm not crazy," he told them. "This is really funny; it had never
occurred to me that the ether-walls of all these ships make them invisible.
I can see them, of course, with this sub- ether spy, but they can't see us!
I knew that they should have overtaken us before this.
I've finally found them.
They've passed us, and are now tacking around, waiting for us to do something so
that they can see us!
They're heading right into the Fleet--they think they're safe, of course, but what a
surprise they've got coming to them!" But it was not only the pirates who were to
be surprised.
Long before the pirate ship had come within extreme visibility range of the
Triplanetary Fleet it lost its invisibility and was starkly outlined upon the lookout
plates of the three fugitives.
For a few seconds the pirate craft seemed unchanged, then it began to glow redly,
with a red that seemed to become darker as it grew stronger.
Then the sharp outlines blurred, puffs of air burst outward, and the metal of the
hull became a viscous, fluid-like something, flowing away in a long, red
streamer into seemingly empty space.
Costigan turned his ultra-gaze into that space and saw that it was actually far from
empty.
There lay a vast something, formless and indefinite even to his sub-etheral vision;
a something into which the viscid stream of transformed metal plunged.
Plunged and vanished.
Powerful interference blanketed his ultra- wave and howled throughout his body; but in
the hope that some parts of his message might get through he called Samms, and
calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had just happened.
He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the smallest detail, while their tiny
craft was drawn inexorably toward a redly impermeable veil; continued it until their
lifeboat, still intact, shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move.
He was conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a
voluntary muscle would obey his will!
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