“Germany proclaimed the New Order over the face of the whole Earth—humanity to submit to the leadership of the German Volk, its highest evolutionary type. Everywhere the nations surrendered without a fight.
“Since the Conquest there’s been only one serious, organized rebellion in this country; that was in the year two thousand, fifty-one years ago. The Germans put it down with bombs and poison; a lot of innocent people were killed, and for a long time after that it was impossible to organize any resistance. Since our movement got started twenty years ago, we’ve been damn careful not to goad the Germans into making a wholesale slaughter. “Now——” His face twisted in pain.
“They’ve decided to anyway?” asked Manning with studied calm.
“As a matter of policy, not revenge. You see, for a while after the Conquest they had a lot of use for slave labor, so the subject peoples were valuable to them; but now that they have plenty of atomic power, running nearly automatic factories and mechanized farms to supply all their needs and luxuries, the rest of the Earth’s population looks to them like so much excess baggage. All they have use for is land, Lebensraum for their own growing people. They’ve calculated that the whole Earth could be covered by Germans by 2500 A. D. As far as they’re concerned the rest of us can rot or starve—and we do; but we don’t die out! So—they murdered Russia fifty years ago—that was what touched off the rising here—and we’re next!”
Manning said unbelievingly, “What do you mean—‘murdered’ ?”
“The technical term is ‘genocide.’ They did it with guns and gas and, when necessary, the atomic dust. It’s quite a job to wipe out a whole nation, and the Germans bungled Russia pretty badly and met a lot of stiffer resistance than they expected, and a lot of people—such as Igor’s parents—got away to other countries. But since then they’ve made improvements in the method.
“Sometime soon, in a few days, maybe—a rocket will take off for somewhere in Germany and proceed to a point in space about fifty thousand miles from the Earth. There it will discharge fifteen hundred metric tons of radioactive dust—a new mixture of ingredients having a few days’ half life, for initial devastating effect, and of others with a period of about a year—to take care of anybody that tries to sit it out underground. The dust will drift toward Earth in an expanding cloud, whose size and shape they’ve calculated down to the last decimal, and which, when it falls on Earth’s surface, will cover an area a little larger than the United States. It will be spread thin by then—about one gram to the acre—but that will be enough.”
MANNING sat silent. The idea of these new ways of all-compassing destruction was too much for a mind that had learned to regard high explosives, machine guns and flame throwers as adequately murderous. And the plan for exterminating a nation was too monstrous to think about, unless in the same light as it must be seen by the minds that conceived it—as something like dusting a field of grain to kill off insects whose only crime is that they eat what men want to eat.
“And you’ve known about this, and haven’t stopped it?” he asked at last.
“They’ve been busy making and refining the dust for a year now, and we’ve known about it almost that long. And we’ve tried to stop them.
“We’ve tried to assassinate the men responsible for the plan. But the ruling clique, like your acquaintance, Schwinzog, aren’t under any illusions and they aren’t going to yield any power. We’ve tried to get them and mostly failed.
“Finally, one of our men got inside the Reichministerium fur Raumschiffahrt and learned that the space ship Siegfried had been assigned for conversion to the uses of the project. The raid you stumbled into was trying to locate and destroy it, but they didn’t find it and blew up a building instead. That’s our last chance even to gain time—if we can’t wreck the dust ship, I don’t know what we can do.”
Igor Vzryvov broke his brooding silence. “You will do as we did,” he proclaimed with flat conviction. “Save what you can of your organization by flight to other lands, whence you will carry on the fight—to the death, without the crippling reservations imposed by millions of hostages.” Kane looked at him with smoldering eyes. “What would be left to fight for?”
“Wait and see,” insisted the Russian implacably. “You will really begin to fight when there is no more America to be saved, only Germany to be destroyed.” Manning put in hastily, “Your men didn’t locate the—space ship. How do you know it’s even in the Black Forest?”
Kane frowned, then shrugged. “We don’t. But there’s nowhere else it can be. We’ve checked every spaceport in the Reich.”
“Maybe it’s outside Germany.”
“There aren’t any ports in the subject countries. And if one had been built, and the Siegfried landed there—well, it simply couldn’t have been done inconspicuously. We have psychoelectronic communicators scattered over the whole world, and what’s more important, the best grapevine connections. We’d have heard.”
“What about the polar regions? Antarctica?”
“I guess it would be technically possible—though enormously difficult and expensive—to build a spaceport there. But it just isn’t reasonable. They aren’t that scared of our interference.”
Manning bit his lip. “One little thing,” he murmured, half to himself, “makes me think that ship isn’t in the Schwarzwald at all. Herr Schwinzog gloated that your raid missed the refining plant; he must have forgotten for a moment that you’re supposed to believe the space ship is there too . . .” Abruptly he raised his head. “Listen—maybe there’s one part of Germany you didn’t investigate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where Eddie and I were just this afternoon. Long Island.”
KANE and Vzryvov looked at him with wild surmise. “You might be right,” Kane said jerkily. “There’s a field there that would do. But a space ship landing would have been seen for hundreds of miles——” His eyes widened with a sudden idea. “They needn’t have landed it there, though. They could have brought it down in the ocean, and towed it in!”
“Sure,” said Manning, though he hadn’t thought of that. “An amphibious operation. The island’s well-guarded?”
“Suspiciously so, now that you mention it. We don’t have a single agent there—we’ve been concentrating on the expeditionary force in Europe, of course, and we’ve supposed the additional Long Island defenses were merely installed in fear of an attack on the German colony, when the people hear——But that could be it! They could have hidden the ship under our noses!”
He sprang to his feet; he wore a look almost of gaiety, but his eyes held feverish lights. “If we could only start after it tonight! But this things calls for preparation. They’ll be ready for anything, invisibility units included . . . But we’ve got to try tomorrow night. If the ship is there—it may not be much longer.”
Manning and Dugan exchanged glances. Manning said pointblank: “Are we in on this deal? We were soldiers in our own time, and—Americans . . .”
Reading Kane’s face, he realized he hadn’t needed to ask.
V
THE BOAT SLIPPED silently, impelled by muffled oars, toward the shore that lay dark and seemingly lifeless a furlong away. The underground in New York had a couple of motor launches—but there might be sound detectors on that shore, which would not be fooled by the powerful invisibility unit that purred quietly, clamped to a thwart amidships. So they rowed.
The boat was laden with men, weapons, and explosives. The men were monstrousheaded shapes, for they wore gas masks under the featureless hoods; but the poised alertness of Kane’s figure, upright in the bow as he scanned the black shore and called soft directions to Vzryvov at the steering oar, expressed all their eager anxiety on the threshold of decision. Manning and Dugan sat side by side; in front of the former was lanky Clark, and beside him a chemist named Larrabie, who clasped between his knees a box full of bombs of his own making—canisters of a versatile compound which with a detonator had the violence of TNT, with
out one was an excellent substitute for thermite.
Manning had to remember that he had once taken part in another landing on a conquered shore—Normady in 1944, when the air had been full of planes and the sea of ships, and the invasion had rolled ashore like a resistless juggernaut . . . If those millions had failed, what could six men in a rowboat do?
The night before, in the room Kane had given them, Manning had lain long sleepless, and passed the time turning through Kane’s books of history—titles like Aufstieg Deutschlands zur Weltherrschaft, Eroberung der Erde, Das deutsche Jahrhundert. One thing about the oddly twisted story they told had piqued his curiosity, and he had sought earnestly before he found mention—in a footnote—of the fact that one Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) had occupied the civic office of Reichskanzler (later abolished) at the time of the Conquest. But the leaders of that period, according to the histories, had been the generals and military men such as Rundstedt, Rommel, Keitel and Doenitz.
The future had obviously not gone according to anybody’s plans made prior to 1949. A new factor had come in—the monstrous reality of atomic weapons, which had suddenly made it possible for a few men in one nation to hold the threat of death over all life on Earth. America had had them first and had used them to subdue Japan. But the German onslaught had been too swift; the combination of atomic dust and atomic bombs had paralyzed the U. S. A. before she could strike back.
“Up oars,” whispered Kane. The boat glided forward the last few yards as the dripping oars rose over the water, then sand crunched under the keel.
Cautiously they sloshed ashore. Vzryvov knelt in the boat for half a minute, working with wires and one of Larrabie’s compact bundles of death—booby-trapping the priceless invisibility unit against possible discovery.
Each man carried a slung automatic rifle, three bombs and a long knife. An invisible man could kill with a knife in the midst of a crowd and walk away before anyone noticed.
They started moving without time wasted in consultation or casting about. All had studied the available maps of the area until their eyes smarted; and the moon was up, which for them was a special advantage.
THIS stretch of shore was occupied by the sea-side villas of the German masters; it was a good hour’s walk from the main colony and the rocket port. The Germans could hardly have protected the whole coastline with automatic alarms.
As they topped the seaward slope, though, from not far distant, where a house bulked in the shadow, exploded the barking of a watchdog. The raiders froze; Kane swore perfunctorily and said shortly, “Push on. Dogs can see us, or at least scent us. That one doesn’t seem to have raised anybody yet——”
They pushed on, tramping across meadows and through woods, steering clear of the roads that might be watched by electric eyes—as the rocket port must be without doubt, if the dust ship was there.
Half a mile from the German colony, in sight of its lights and their glimmering reflection in the water of the East River, a high fence barred their way. It was plain wire, stretching to right and left out of sight—probably across the whole island.
“That wasn’t on the map,” said Dugan.
“Of course not,” responded Kane. “That’s the first line of defense. Touch it, and you’d alert the whole place.” He didn’t look unhappy about it, judging by the flash of his grin in the moonlight. “Brother, I think we’ve come to the right address!”
Vzryvov remarked imperturbably, “The road must pass through it yonder.” He gestured to where an occasional moving light picked out the highway.
“Right,” said Kane. They set out along the fence, keeping at a respectful distance from the wire.
The highway entrance was floodlighted and visibly protected by movable arms like those used at grade crossings. These, together with the sleepy squad of German soldiers that stood guard beyond the fence, would not have given pause to the invisible men. But there had to be invisible defenses too.
They waited on the shoulder of the ingoing traffic lane. Manning and Dugan could scarcely quell the jittery feeling of being exposed in plain view of the enemy, but the others were unconcerned.
“We’ve got to hitch a ride,” explained Kane softly. “Just passing through behind a vehicle wouldn’t be good enough, you can bet . . .”
A car came rushing out of the darkness and swooped to a stop with screaming tires. It was a gleaming pleasure machine, transparent plastic top flung back to let the night air cool the heated faces of three young couples that occupied it, evidently on their way to continue in town a party that had outgrown the facilities of the countryside.
“Get a good look at their admission procedure,” said Kane.
The guards bestirred themselves; one operated the gate mechanism, the rest surrounded the car, grasping shining steel blades on long shafts, barbed like medieval halberds. They swung their archaic weapons around and over the car, hacking the air viciously. The girls in the car squealed and snuggled as the driver eased forward under an interlocked arch of steel.
Manning said, “They’re watching for us, all right!”
Kane nodded, then tensed as another automobile rolled up and stopped. “This one’s O. K.” he said aloud. “Quick, now—get inside it!”
They went forward in a pellmell rush. Kane eased open a back door of the car—a sedan with a lone man at the wheel—and all six of them squeezed themselves into the back seat, pulling the door quietly to after them. They held their breath, but there was no cry of surprise or alarm. The soldiers went routinely but thoroughly through the ritual of halberds! any invisible man clinging to the outside of the vehicle would have had to drop off or be dragged into the wicked blades.
THE CAR rolled through the gate and picked up speed with the violent surge of an electric motor. The man hunched in the front seat drove with businesslike concentration, oblivious of his six unwanted passengers. The raiders grinned at each other, shifted their cramped positions a little and waited.
Presently the town’s lights began to swim past. Kane, in a position to see out the left-hand window, muttered: “We’re passing the rocket field—they’ve thrown a brand-new wall around it. If this guy would just slow down—well, we’ve got to stop the car.” He wriggled up until he could lean over the front seat—and stiffened. All of them heard, the moan of a siren closing up behind.
“Donnerwetter!” growled their chauffer, and clamped on the brakes. A few feet behind loomed up a pair of headlights and a searchlight helped bathe the car ahead in a merciless illumination.
“Out!” said Kane sharply, flinging open the left-hand door.
They sprawled out and ran, stooping instinctively, through the patch of brilliance. Uniformed Germans were climbing out of the other vehicle and starting to form a cordon.
Dugan, the last man out, halted a moment to close the car door, then sprinted after the rest. They huddled against the forbidding wall that had been built around the rocket port. Larrabie, eyes on the brightlit scene, nervously hefted a bomb. Kane shook his head.
“Time enough to make big noises when we get inside,” he advised. And to the wholeparty, “I spotted an entrance a couple of hundred yards back. Come on!”
They ran in single file under the frowning face of concrete. It might have been possible to form a human chain and get over the wall; but there was unquestionably alarms atop it, and ready guns.
Beyond the wall, a whistle began hooting. The field was being alerted.
Kane panted, “Don’t know what tipped them off—but probably we were photographed at that gate.”
The entrance to the field was solidly blocked by a massive iron grille. Beyond it, they could see men running and springing into position behind a concrete redoubt, through which a machine gun thrust menacingly, covering the opening in the wall.
“Damn!” said Kane. “No more time to be subtle. We’ll have to knock that out.”
Eddie Dugan was already unhitching one of the home-made grenades from his belt. “Stand out of line with the gate,” he s
aid grimly, “and I’ll get it for you.” He gauged the distance and the weight of the bomb and threw with trained precision. The missile rose in a high arc like a mortar shell’s, and hit the ground almost as Dugan did in his drive for cover. Fragments of shattered concrete and metal clanged against the grillework and whistled out into the street. A crash of glass and frightened screams came from the houses across the way; and down the street the patrol-car siren wailed suddenly into life again.
Kane sprang to his feet, verifying with a glance the emplacement’s destruction, and hurled another bomb at the gateway. Its explosion was blinding, but a moment later they saw the way clear, the grille blown off its hinges and twisted like spaghetti. Simultaneously a rattle of shots, insignificant-sounding after the deafening blasts of high explosive, told that the patrol car, racing it motor up the street, had opened fire on the entrance.
Clark was down on one knee, finger closing on the trigger of his automatic. The oncoming car skidded and spun half around. Two men spilled out and fled for cover; Clark dropped one and missed the other.
THE big noises had begun, and speed was the big thing now. The raiders dashed headlong through the wrecked gateway.
“Get clear!” shouted Kane, and on the heels of his cry came the sputter of machine-gun fire, first from one side of the entrance and then from the other. Puffs of dust sprang out of the wall and ricochets whined plaintively. Other guard posts were covering the breach, but the German gunners must have hesitated before firing without a target, and they were seconds too late.
The Americans crouched, half-sheltered by the ruined emplacement. To the right from a cluster of buildings, the warning whistle shrieked hoarsely on, and they heard through the incessant gunfire the noises of excited voices. Ahead of them stretched the wide, seared waste of the rocket field, its boundaries invisible in the darkness.
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 21