‘High priority message,’ Steel bit out, slamming down the actuator button. Both youths snapped to rigid attention as the screen filled with the stern visage of Colonel von Thorax.
‘M----, L----, to my office on the triple.’ The words fell
like leaden weights from his lips. What could it mean?
‘What can it mean?’ Jax asked as they hurtled down a dropchute at close to the speed of gravity.
‘We’ll find out quickly enough,’ Steel ejaculated as they drew up at the ‘old man’s’ door and activated the announcer button.
Moved by some hidden mechanism the door swung wide and, not without a certain amount of trepidition, they entered. But what was this? This I The Colonel was looking at them and smiling, smiling, an expression never before known to cross his iron visage at any time.
‘Make yourself comfortable, lads,’ he indicated, pointing at comfortable chairs that rose out of the floor at the touch of a button. ‘You’ll find gaspers in the arms of these servochairs, as well as Valumian wine or Snaggian beer.’
‘No koffee?’ Jax open-mouthedly expostulated and they all laughed.
‘I don’t think you really want it,’ the Colonel susurrated coyly through his artificial larynx. ‘Drink up lads, you’re Space Rats of the C.C.C. now and your youth is behind you. Now, look at that.’
That was a three-dimensional image that sprang into being in the air before them at the touch of a button, an image of a spacer like none ever seen before. She was as slender as a swordfish, fine-wedged as a bird, solid as a whale and as armed to the teeth as an alligator.
‘Holy Kolon,’ Steel sighed in open-mouthed awe. ‘Now that is what I call a hunk o’ rocket!’
‘Some of us prefer to call it the Indefectible,' the Colonel said, not unhumorously.
‘Is that her! We heard something . . .’
‘You heard very little for we have had this baby under wraps ever since the earliest stage. She has the largest engines ever built, new improved MacPherson’s1 of the most advanced design, Kelly Drive2 gear that has been improved to where you would not recognize it in a month of Thursdays—as well as double-strength Fitzroy projectors3 that make the old ones look like a kid’s pop-gun. And I’ve saved the best for last. . .’
* * *
1. The MacPherson engine was first mentioned in the author’s story, Rocket Rangers of the J.R.T. (Spicy-Weird Stories, 1923).
2. Loyal readers first discovered the Kelly Drive in the famous book Hell Hounds of the Coal Sack Cluster (Slimecreeper Press, Ltd, 1931), also published in the German language as Teufelhund Nach der Knackwurst Express. Translated into Italian by Re Umberto, unpublished to date.
3. A media breakthrough was made when the Fitzroy projector first appeared in Female Space Zombies of Venus in 1936 in True Story Confessions.
* * *
‘Nothing can be better than what you have already told us,’ Steel broke in.
‘That’s what you think!’ the Colonel laughed, not unkindly, with a sound like tearing steel. ‘The best news is that Steel, you are going to be Captain of this space-going super-dreadnaught, while lucky Jax is Chief Engineer.’
‘Lucky Jax would be a lot happier if he was Captain instead of king of the stokehold,’ he muttered and they all laughed at this joke. All except him because it was no joke.
‘Everything is completely automated,’ the Colonel continued, ‘so it can be flown by a crew of two. But I must warn you that it has experimental gear aboard so whoever flies her has to volunteer ...’
‘I volunteer!’ Steel shouted.
‘I have to go to the terlet,’ Jax said, rising, though he sat again instantly when the ugly blaster leaped from its holster to the Colonel’s hand. ‘Ha-ha, just a joke, I volunteer, sure.’
‘I knew I could count on you lads. The C.C.C. breeds men. Camels too, of course. So here is what you do. At 0304 hours tomorrow you two in the Indefectible will crack ether headed out Cygnus way. In the direction of a certain planet.’
‘Let me guess, if I can, that is,’ Steel said grimly through tight-clenched teeth. ‘You don’t mean to give us a crack at the larshnik-loaded world of Biru-2, do you?’
‘I do. This is the larshnik’s prime base, the seat of operation of all their drug and gambling traffic, where the white-slavers offload and the queer green is printed, site of the flnnx distilleries and lair of the pirate hordes.’
‘If you want action that sounds like it,' Steel grimaced.
‘You are not just whistling through your back teeth,’ the Colonel agreed. ‘If I were younger and had a few less replaceable parts this is the kind of opportunity I would leap at. . .’
‘You can be Chief Engineer,’ Jax hinted.
‘Shut up,’ the Colonel implied. ‘Good luck, gentlemen, for the honour of the C.C.C. rides with you.’
‘But not the camels?’ Steel asked.
‘Maybe next time. There are, well, adjustment problems. We have lost four more graduates since we have been sitting here. Maybe we’ll even change animals. Make it the C.D.C.’
‘With combat dogs?' Jax asked.
‘Either that or donkeys. Or dugongs. But it is my worry, not yours. All you guys have to do is get out there and crack Biru-2 wide open. I know you can do it.’
If the stern-faced Corpsmen had any doubts they kept them to themselves, for that is the way of the Corps. They did what had to be done and the next morning, at exactly 0304:00 hours, the mighty bulk of the Indefectible hurled itself into space. The roaring MacPherson engines poured quintillions of ergs of energy into the reactor drive, until they were safely out of the gravity field of Mother Earth. Jax laboured over his engines, shovelling the radioactive transvestite into the gaping maw of the hungry furnace, until Steel signalled from the bridge that it was ‘changeover’ time. Then they changed over to the space-eating Kelly drive. Steel jammed home the button that activated the drive and the great ship leaped starward at seven times the speed of light.1 Since the drive was fully automatic Jax freshened up in the fresher while his clothes were automatically washed in the washer, then proceeded to the bridge.
‘Really,’ Steel said, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead.
‘I didn’t know you went in for polkadot jockstraps.’
‘It was the only thing I had clean. The washer dissolved the rest of my clothes.’
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s the larshniks of Biru-2 who have to worry! We hit atmosphere in exactly seventeen minutes and I have been thinking about what to do when that happens.’
‘Well I certainly hope someone has! I haven’t had time to draw a deep breath, much less think.’
‘Don’t worry, old pal, we are in this together. The way I figure it we have two choices. We can blast right in, guns roaring, or we can slip in by stealth.’
‘Oh you really have been thinking, haven’t you?’
‘I’ll ignore that because you are tired. Strong as we are, I think the land-based batteries are stronger. So I suggest we slip in without being noticed.’
‘Isn’t that a little hard when you are flying in a thirty-million-ton spacer?’
‘Normally, yes. But do you see this button here marked invisibility! While you were loading the fuel they explained this to me. It is a new invention, never used in action before, that will render us invisible and impervious to detection by any of their detection instruments.’
‘Now that’s more like it. Fifteen minutes to go, we should be getting mighty close. Turn on the old invisibility ray. . .’
‘‘Don't!!'’
‘Done. Now what’s your problem?’
‘Nothing really. Except the experimental invisibility device is not expected to last more than thirteen minutes before it burns out.’
Unhappily, this proved to be the case. One hundred miles above the barren, blasted surface of Biru-2 the good old Indefectible popped into existence.
In the minutest fraction of a millisecond the mighty spacesonar and superadar had locked grimly ont
o the invading ship while the sublights flickered their secret signals, waiting for the correct response that would reveal the invader as one of theirs.
‘I’ll send a signal, stall them, these larshniks aren’t too bright,’ Steel laughed. He thumbed on the microphone, switched to the interstellar emergency frequency, then bit out the rasping words in a sordid voice. ‘Agent X-9 to prime base. Had a firefight with the patrol, shot up my code books, but I got all the--s, ha-ha! Am coming home with a load
of 800,000 long tons of the hellish krmml weed.’
The larshnik response was instantaneous. From the gaping, pitted orifices of thousands of giant blaster cannon there vomited force-ravening rays of energy that strained the very fabric of space itself. These coruscating forces blasted into the impregnable screens of the old Indefectible which, sadly, was destined not to get much older, and instantly punched their way through and splashed coruscatingly from the very hull of the ship itself. Mere matter could not stand against such forces unlocked in the coruscating bowels of the planet itself so that the impregnable imperialite metal walls instantly vapourized into a thin gas which was, in turn, vapourized into the very electrons and protons (and neutrons too) of which it was made.
Mere flesh and blood could riot stand against such forces.
But in the few seconds it took the coruscating energies to eat through the force screens, hull, vapourized gas and protons, the reckless pair of valiant Corpsmen had hurled themselves headlong into their space armour. And just in time! The ruin of the once great ship hit the atmosphere and seconds later slammed into the poison soil of Biru-2.
To the casual observer it looked like the end. The once mighty queen of the spaceways would fly no more for she now consisted of no more than two hundred pounds of smoking junk. Nor was there any sign of life from the tragic wreck, as was evidenced when surface crawlers erupted from a nearby secret hatch concealed in the rock and crawled through the smoking remains with all their detectors detecting at maximum gain. Report! the radio signal wailed. No sign of life to fifteen decimal places! snapped back the cursing operator of the crawlers before he signalled them to return to base. Their metal cleats clanked viciously across the barren soil and then they were gone. All that remained was the cooling metal wreck hissing with despair as the poison rain poured like tears upon it.
Were these two good friends dead? I thought you would never ask. Unbeknownst to the larshnik technicians, just one millisecond before the wreck struck down, two massive and almost indestructible suits of space armour had been ejected by coiled steelite springs, sent flying to the very horizon where they landed behind a concealing spine of rock, which, just by chance was the spine of rock into which the secret hatch had been built that concealed the crawlway from which-the surface crawlers with their detectors emerged for their fruitless search, to which they returned under control of their cursing operator who, stoned again with hellish krmml weed, never noticed the quick flick of the detector needles as the crawlers reentered the tunnel this time bearing on their return journey a cargo they had not exited with as the great door slammed shut behind them.
‘We’ve done it! We’re inside their defences!’ Steel rejoiced.
‘And no thanks to you, pushing that Mrddl-cursed invisibility button.’
‘Well, how was I to know?’ Jax grated. ‘Anyways, we don’t have a ship anymore but we do have the element of surprise. They don’t know that we are here, but we know they are here!’
‘Good thinking. . . hssst!’ he hissed. ‘Stay low, we’re coming to something.’
The clanking crawlers rattled into the immense chamber cut into the living stone and now filled with deadly war machines of all descriptions. The only human there, if he could be called human, was the larshnik operator whose soiled fingertips sprang to the gun controls the instant he spotted the intruders, but he never stood a chance. Precisely-aimed rays from two blasters zeroed in on him and in a millisecond he was no more than a charred fragment of smoking flesh in the chair. Corps justice was striking at last to the larshnik lair.
Justice it was, impersonal and final, impartial and murderous, for there were no ‘innocents’ in this lair of evil. Ravening forces of civilized vengeance struck down all that crossed their path as the two chums rode a death-dealing combat gun through the corridors of infamy.
‘This is the big one,’ Steel grimaced as they came to an immense door of gold-plated impervialite before which a suicide squad committed suicide under the relentless scourge of fire. There was more feeble resistance, smokily, coruscatingly and noisily exterminated, before this last barrier went down and they rode in triumph into the central control now manned by a single figure at the main panel, Superlarsh himself, secret head of the empire of interstellar crime.
‘You have met your destiny,’ Steel intoned grimly, his weapon fixed unmovingly upon the black-robed figure in the opaque space helmet. ‘Take off that helmet or you die upon the instant.’
His only reply was a slobbered growl of inchoate rage and for a long instant the black-gloved hands trembled over the gun controls. Then, ever so slowly, these same hands raised themselves to clutch at the helmet, to turn it, to lift it slowly off...
‘By the sacred name of the Prophet Mrddl!’ the two Corpsmen gasped in unison, struck speechless by what they saw.
‘Yes, so now you know,’ grated Superlarsh through angry teeth. ‘But, ha-ha, I’ll bet you never suspected.’
‘You!!’ Steel insuflated, breaking the frozen silence. ‘You! You!! YOU!!!’
‘Yes, me, I, Colonel von Thorax, Commandant of the C.C.C. You never suspected me and, ohh, how I laughed at you all of the time.’
‘But. . .’ Jax stammered. ‘Why?’
‘Why? The answer is obvious to any but democratic interstellar swine like you. The only thing the larshniks of the galaxy had to fear was something like the C.C.C., a powerful force impervious to outside bribery or sedition, noble in the cause of righteousness. You could have caused us trouble. Therefore we founded the C.C.C. and I have long been head of both organizations. Our recruiters bring in the best that the civilized planets can offer and I see to it that most of them are brutalized, morale destroyed, bodies wasted and spirits crushed so they are no longer a danger. Of course a few always make it through the course no matter how disgusting I make it, every generation has its share of super-masochists, but I see that these are taken care of pretty quickly.’
‘Like being sent on suicide missions?’ Steel asked ironly.
‘That’s a good way.’
‘Like the one we were sent on—but it didn’t work! Say your prayers, you filthy larshnik, for you are about to meet your maker!’
‘Maker? Prayers? Are you out of your skull? All larshniks are atheists to the end . . .’
And then it was the end, in a coruscating puff of vapour, dead with those vile words upon his lips, no less than he deserved.
‘Now what?’ Steel asked.
‘This,’ Jax responded, shooting the gun from his hand and imprisoning him instantly with an unbreakable paralysis ray. ‘No more second best for me, in the engine room with you on the bridge. This is my ball game from here on in.'
‘Are you mad?’ Steel fluttered through paralysed lips.
‘Sane for the first time in my life. The superlarsh is dead, long live the new superlarsh. It's mine, the whole galaxy, mine'
‘And what about me?’
‘I should kill you, but that would be too easy. And you did share your chocolate bars with me. You will be blamed for this entire debacle, for the death of Colonel von Thorax and for the disaster here at larshnik prime base. Every man's hand will be against you and you will be an outcast and will flee for your life to the farflung outposts of the galaxy where you will live in terror.’
‘Remember the chocolate bars!’
‘I do. All I ever got were the stale ones. Now . . . GO!’
You want to know my name? Old Sarge is good enough. My story? Too much for your tender ears, boyo. Jus
t top up the glasses, that’s the way, and join me in a toast. At least that much for a poor old man who has seen much in this long lifetime. A toast of bad luck, bad cess I say, may Great Kramddl curse forever the man some know as Gentleman Jax. What, hungry?, not me—no—NO! Not a chocolate bar!!!!!
* * *
1
When the inventor, Patsy Kelly, was asked how ships could move at seven times the speed of light when the limiting velocity of matter, according to Einstein, was the speed of light, he responded in his droll Goidelic way, with a shrug, ‘Well—sure and I guess Einstein was wrong.’
How the World Was Saved
Stanislaw Lem
One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could create anything starting with n. When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, niads, and natrium. This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation.
‘Never heard of it,’ said the machine.
‘What? But it’s only sodium. You know, the metal, the element. . .’
‘Sodium starts with an s, and I work only in «.’
‘But in Latin it’s natrium.'
‘Look, old boy,’ said the machine, ‘If I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I’d be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It’s not that easy. I can’t go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium.’
‘Very well,’ said Trurl and ordered it to make Night, which it made at once—small perhaps, but perfectly nocturnal. Only then did Trurl invite over his friend Klapaucius the constructor, and introduced him to the machine, praising its extraordinary skill at such length, that Klapaucius grew annoyed and inquired whether he too might not test the machine.
Antigrav : Cosmic Comedies by SF Masters Page 2