Dimensiion X

by Jerry eBooks

  And now there was nothing to do but wait. The combat detachment’s confusion subsided; but a subdued clatter of shifting armor, helmets being adjusted, tightening of joints, the rattle of equipment, and telephoned conversation continued. The new bridge watch checked their instruments, then settled down to careful, strained waiting. Sanderson paced his rounds, hearing reports and issuing occasional orders. Culver stood by the intercom, told the crew all their superiors knew of the opposition as the information came in. Carpenter cat-footed through the ship, followed at a discreet distance by four of his strong-arm men.

  Ensign Clark was white with fear. He sat stiffly at his post like a prisoner in death row; the sweat rolled down his face and into his soft black beard. He tried to repeat the autosuggestion formulae Carpenter had prescribed for hint, but all that he could choke out was a series of earnest curses which a kinder age would have called prayers.

  He jumped as if he had been shot at Culver’s sudden announcement: “Attention all hands. Enemy digger believed to have sighted this ship. Prepare for action at close quarters.” The voice paused, and then added: “Bridge to power: full speed ahead for the next half hour, then bring the ship to a halt. We’ll let the enemy carry the fight to us.”

  Clark automatically repeated, “Full speed ahead—” then cringed as the crewman slammed the lever over and the cruiser leaped forward with a shrill whine of its blades. “No!” he suddenly yelled, leaping out of his seat. “Not another inch,—stop this ship!” He ran over to the speed lever, pushed at the crewman’s hands. “I won’t be killed, I won’t, I won’t!” The brawny crewman and the maddened officer wrestled desperately for a moment, then the crewman flung his superior on his back and stood over him, panting. “I’m sorry, sir—”

  Clark lay there whimpering for a few seconds, then made a quick grab inside his shirt and leveled a pistol at the towering crewman. “Get over there,” he half-sobbed, “and stop this ship before I shoot you.”

  The white-uniformed psych corpsman flung open the door and fired, all in one motion. The crewman instinctively backed away as the little pellet exploded, shredding most of Clark’s head into his cherished beard, the crewman stood over the body, making little wordless sounds.

  “Go off watch,” ordered Carpenter, coming into the room on the heels of his henchman. “Get a sedative from the medics.” He gazed lingeringly, almost appreciatively, on the disfigured face of the dead man before covering it with the ensign’s coat. Then he called Culver and told him briefly what had happened.

  “I’ll send a relief,” promised the exec. “Tell him to reduce speed in another twenty minutes. That was quick thinking, Carpenter; the captain says you rate a citation.” The psycho officer had failed to give the corpsman credit for firing the shot.

  Sanderson caught Culver’s eye, put a finger to his lips.

  “Huh?” Culver paused, then got the idea. “Oh—and, say, Carpenter—don’t let the crew hear of this. It wouldn’t do for them to know an officer was the first to crack.” There was a very faint trace of sarcasm in his tone.

  But Sanderson’s warning was already too late. The power crewman who had witnessed Clark’s death agonies talked before he was put to sleep; the medic who administered the sedative took it to the crew. By the time Carpenter had received the new order from Culver, his efficient corpsmen had disposed of Clark’s body and the whole ship knew the story. It hit the combat detachment like a physical blow; their strained morale took a serious beating, and the officers grew alarmed.

  “Pass the word to let them smoke,” Sanderson finally ordered, after the great ship had shuddered to a halt and backed a short distance up the tunnel on his order. “Give them ten minutes—the enemy will take at least twice that to get here. Have Carpenter go down and administer drugs at his own discretion—maybe it will slow them for fighting, but if they crack they’ll be of no use anyway.”

  And so for ten minutes the combat crewmen removed their helmets and relaxed, while the psychos moved unobtrusively throughout the room, asking questions here and there, occasionally giving drugs. Once they helped a man partially out of his armor for a hypo. Tension relaxed somewhat; the psych corpsmen could soothe as well as coerce.

  Kelly and Marconi were engaged in a heated argument over the relative merits of synthetic and natural foods—a time-tested emotional release the two veterans used habitually. Koch was up to his ears in a more serious controversy—for Sheehan and Richards were practically at each other’s throats again. Carson as usual said nothing, smoked continuously; even the level-headed Fontaine got up and paced the floor, his armor clanking as he walked. Three men had to be put to sleep. Then the ten-minute break was over and the strain grew even worse.

  Carpenter spoke softly into the intercom. “Tell the commander that if battle is not joined in another hour I cannot prevent a mutiny. Culver, I told you not to leave that man on watch—if you had listened to me Ensign Clark need not have been liquidated.”

  Culver’s lip curled; he opened his mouth to reply in his usual irritating manner—but at that moment the soundman flung the earphones off his head. The roar of shearing duralloy blades was audible several feet away as the phones bounced to the deck. “Enemy digger within one hundred feet and coming in fast!” the soundman shouted.

  Don’t reverse engines!” Sanderson roared as Culver contacted the new power officer. “Turn on our drill, leaving the treads stationary—we’ll call his bluff.”

  Culver issued the necessary order, then alerted the crew again. The great blades began to whirl once more; there was a brief shower of rocks, and they churned emptiness—their usual throbbing, tearing chant became a hair-raising shriek; the blast of air they raised kicked up a cloud of dust which blanketed the fresh-carved tunnel—“That’s for their optical technician,” explained Sanderson. “He’ll be blind when he comes out—and we’ve a sharp gunnery officer down in fire control that will catch them by surprise.”

  The soundman gingerly picked up the headphones; the roar of the enemy’s drill had dropped to a whisper—Sanderson’s curious tactics evidently had him guessing, for he had slowed down—

  The sound of the approaching drill was now audible without the benefit of electronic gear, as a muffled noise like the chewing of a great rat. Then came the chattering break-through, and Sanderson knew he had contacted the enemy, despite the dust clouds which baffled even the infrared visual equipment.

  Temporarily blind, confused by the whirling blades of their motionless opponent, the enemy hesitated for the precious seconds that meant the difference between victory and destruction.

  As the enemy warhead broke through, the cruiser’s whirling blades suddenly came to a quivering halt. Simultaneously the forward batteries opened fire.

  Gone were the days of laboring, sweating gun crews and ammunition loaders. All the stubby barrels were controlled from a small, semicircular control panel like an organ console. Lieutenant Atkins, a cool, competent, graying officer who had once been an instructor at the military academy, calmly pressed buttons and pulled levers and interestedly watched the results by means of various types of mechanical “eyes.” And so it was that when the sweep second hand of his chronometer crossed the red line, Atkins’ sensitive fingers danced over the keys and the ship rocked to the salvos of half its guns.

  Magnified and echoed in the narrow tunnel, the crash of the barrage rolled and reverberated and shouted in an uninterrupted tornado of pure noise, roar upon roar—the light of the explosions was by contrast insignificant, a vicious reddish flare quickly snuffed in the dust. The ship jerked with each salvo; faint flashes and Olympian thunders tossed the great cruiser like a raft: on the wild Atlantic. The fury of sound beat through the thick armor plate, poured and pounded savagely past the vaunted “Soundproof” insulation. The decks lurched and reeled underfoot; instruments and equipment trembled with boneshaking vibrations. Crash upon thunderous crash filled the air with new strains of this artillery symphony; and then Culver pressed a button. His voice c
ould not be heard through the racket, but the sudden glow of a red light in the combat detachment’s assembly room transmitted his order instantly—“Away landing party!”

  And then the trap between the great, flat treads was sprung, and the mechanical monster spawned progeny, visible only by infrared light in the underground gloom—little doll-like figures in bulky, nightmarish costumes, dropping from a chain ladder to the broken shale underfoot, running and stumbling through the debris, falling and picking themselves up and falling again like so many children—Marconi and Kelly and Carson and Sheehan and Richards and Fontaine and Koch, tripping over the debris and fragments which the great machine had made.

  And at last the enemy cruiser replied, even as the landing party picked its way through the obscuring dust and fanned out from its source. Though confused and blind, the men of the other ship, too, had been prepared for action, and thus new sounds were added to the din that were not of the attackers’ making.

  A titanic explosion rocked the carriage of Sanderson’s cruiser; then another, and still another, strewing steel fragments indiscriminately among the men in the tunnel. The ferocity of the defense was less than the attack; much of their armament must have been destroyed on the first salvo—but what remained wrought havoc. Some quick-witted commander of the enemy must have anticipated the landing of a ground party for fragmentation shells burst near the embattled cruisers, and here and there the armored figures began to twist and jerk and go down. Their comrades dropped into the partial protection of the broken rock and continued their advance.

  Fontaine ran and crawled and scrambled and crouched over the tunnel floor, which was visible to his infrared-sensitive helmet, and torn now even more by arrowing slivers of steel. His hand found a valve, twisted it to give him more oxygen for this most critical part of the struggle. He did not think much; he was too busy keeping alive. But a bitter thought flashed across his mind—This part of war hasn’t changed a bit. He leaped over a strange and terrible object in which armor, blood, rock, and flesh made a fantastic jigsaw puzzle which had lost its meaning. Once again he merely noted the item in his subconscious mind; he did not think.

  Lieutenant Atkins’ fingers still danced over the console; his face was exalted like that of a man playing a concerto. And into the symphony of death which he wove with subtle skill there crept fewer and fewer of the discords of the enemy’s guns.

  Sanderson paced the deck moodily, communicating briefly with his subordinates by means of lip reading which Culver swiftly translated into many-colored lights. Information came back to the bridge in the same manner. Sanderson smiled with grim satisfaction at the scarcity of dark lamps on the master damage control board. Those mighty walls could take a lot of punishment, and damage so far had been superficial—one blast in the psycho ward; Private Worth would suffer Carpenter’s displeasure no longer.

  The helmeted monstrosities grew bolder in their advance as the counter-barrage slackened. Now there was but one battery in action, far to the left—all the thunder came from their own ship.

  Fontaine rose from the little depression in which he had been crouching. Another man waved to him; from that outsized suit it would have to be Koch. The big man’s armor was dented, the rubber portions torn—his steel right boot looked like a large, wrinkled sheet of tinfoil, and he dragged the leg behind him. But he saw Fontaine, pointed a gauntleted finger into the gloom. The enemy ship must be up there; yes, there was the flash of the one operating gun—Fontaine moved forward.

  There was another, nearer flash; something exploded on Koch’s chestplate, knocking him down. He moved, feebly, like a crushed insect, then lay still. Fontaine immediately slipped back into his hollow; for here was the enemy.

  A man in a light, jointed metal suit of Asian make appeared from behind a boulder, slipped over to Koch’s body to examine it, felt for Koch’s weapons.

  Fontaine unslung the long, bazookalike heat ray tube—an adaptation of very slow atomic disintegration—and pressed the firing stud. The weapon contributed no noise and no flare to the hellish inferno of the tunnel, but the Asiatic suddenly straightened up, took a step forward. That was all he had time for.

  Accident and his jointed armor combined to keep his body standing. Fontaine made sure of his man by holding the heat ray on him until the enemy’s armor glowed cherry-red, then released the stud. He came forward, gave the still-glowing figure a push. The body collapsed with a clatter across Koch. Fontaine pushed on—the dust was at last clearing slightly, and directly ahead loomed the enemy ship.

  Another Asiatic appeared over a short ridge; too quick for the heat ray. Fontaine drew his pistol and fired. The pellet flared; another enemy went down.

  Something whizzed over Fontaine’s head; he ducked, ran for cover. Somebody was firing highspeed metallic slugs from an old-fashioned machine gun, and his party-rubber suit would not stop them. Miraculously he found himself unharmed in front of the enemy ship.

  Its drill was torn and crumpled, blades lying cast off amongst the rocks; one of the treads was fouled, and the forward part of the carriage was smashed in completely. This war vehicle would obviously never fight again—another volley of slugs chattered overhead, and Fontaine rolled back out of the way. Snap judgment, he told himself ironically in another rare flash of lucidity. Maybe she’ll never fight after this time, but she’s got plenty of spirit right now.

  He dug a hole in the loose shale and tried to cover himself as much as possible, meanwhile surveying the layout. They couldn’t know he was here, or his life would have been snuffed out; but he could neither advance nor retreat. He absently transmitted the prearranged “contact” signal back to the cruiser.

  Then he settled himself, soldier-wise, to wait as long as might be necessary.

  Fontaine’s “contact,” and several others, returned to their ship as lights on a board. The landing party could proceed no further or they would encounter their own barrage. Sanderson immediately gave the “cease fire” order. The barrage lifted.

  Culver shouted down an immediate flood of radio reports that broke the sudden, aching silence. “Lieutenant Atkins, you will continue action against the remaining enemy battery until you have destroyed it, or until I inform you that members of the task force have neutralized it.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Atkins turned back to his guns, studied the image of the battered enemy ship which was becoming increasingly visible as the dust settled. He restored all the automatic controls to manual, pressed several buttons judiciously, and fingered a firing switch.

  To Fontaine, crouching in his retreat under the enemy ship, the sudden silence which followed the barrage was almost intolerable. One moment the guns had thundered and bellowed overhead; the next, there were a few echoes and reverberations and then all was over.

  His ears sang for minutes; his addled brains slowly returned to a normal state. And he realized that the silence was not absolute. It was punctually broken by the crash of the remaining enemy battery, and soon at less frequent intervals by the cautious probing of Atkins’ turrets. And between the blows of this duel of giants he could at last hear the whine of metal slugs over his head.

  This weapon had him stumped. The Asiatic explosive bullets, such as the one that had killed Koch, only operated at farily close quarters; the rubber suits were fairly good insulation against death rays; and the Asiatics had no heat ray. But with an antiquated machine gun an Asiatic could sit comfortably at a considerable distance from him and send a volley of missiles crunching through the flimsy Western armor to rip him apart in helpless pain. He raised his head very slightly and looked around. The detachment was well trained; he could see only three of his fellows and they were well concealed from the enemy. Under infrared light—the only possible means of vision in the gloom of the tunnel—they looked like weird red ghosts.

  Something gleamed ahead of him. He sighted along the tubular barrel of the heat ray, energized its coils. The mechanism hummed softly; the Asiatic jumped out of his hiding place and right int
o the machine gun’s line of fire. The singing bits of metal punched a neat line of holes across his armor and knocked him down, twisting as he fell. Moments later the chattering stream stopped flowing, and Fontaine dashed for more adequate cover. Bullets promptly kicked up dust in little spurts in the hollow he had just vacated.

  He searched the darkness, a weird, shimmering ghostland revealed to him by its own tremendous heat through his infrared equipment. The ship and his armor were very well insulated; he had not been conscious of the stifling heat or the absolute night-gloom which would have made combat impossible for an unprepared, unprotected soldier of the Surface Wars.

  Atkins’ insistent batteries spoke; there was a great flash and a series of explosions at the enemy target to the left. Fontaine seized the opportunity to make a charge on the loosely-piled boulders which, his practiced eye told him, sheltered the deadly machine gun. He fell and rolled out of the line of fire as the opposing gunner found him and swerved his weapon; then began to fire explosive pellets at the crude nest, showering it with a series of sharp reports. The enemy machine gun swung back and forth, raking the terrain in search of the invader.

  Fontaine unloaded his heat ray, placed it in a well-sheltered crevice and worked it around until it was aimed at the enemy, then shorted the coils. The weapon throbbed with power; rocks began to glow, and the flying slugs poured down upon the menacing heat ray, trying to silence it. Meanwhile Fontaine, like uncounted warriors of all ages, began cautiously to work his way around to the left for a flank attack. Indeed, there were many things in war that had not changed.