The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  Below it, spread over the slightly sloping area of foothill beneath us, lay our encampment. A ring of our tower vehicles, with their projectors mounted and ready, their colored search-beams slowly sweeping the white plain and the dead grey sky. Within their ring, the camp itself. Lighted by the blue-white tubes set upon quadrupeds at intervals; heated by strings of red-glowing wire and the red wire-balls used on Venus. The snow and ice on the ground within the camp had melted, exposing the naked rock.

  A scene of blue and red lights and shifting shadows; bustling with activity—figures, tiny from this height, hurrying about. The sounds from it rose to us; the low hum and snap of the weapons being tested; the shouted commands; and sometimes, mingled with it, the laughing shout of a light-hearted girl.

  Elza clung close to me. “Everything will be ready soon.”

  I nodded. “They’re going to mount a ray up here on the cliff. Grolier was telling me, for permanent protection—to stay here with the power house when we go out to the attack.”

  Silent with her thoughts she did not answer me. Sidewise, I regarded her solemn little face encased in its hood of fur. And then clumsily, for our furs were heavy and awkward, I put my arm about her.

  “I love you, Elza. It’s worth a great deal to be here alone with you.”

  “Jac, what will he do?” Her gaze was to the far-off City of Ice. “It seems so—so sinister, Jac, this silence from him. This inactivity. It is not like him to be inactive.”

  “He’s there,” I said. “Rolltar the Mars man—boastful fellow, blow-hard—he was telling some of us that in his opinion Tarrano had already run away.”

  “Never!” she exclaimed. “This is his last stand. He’ll make it here—defeat us here—”

  “Elza!”

  She glanced momentarily at me, smiled a queer smile, and then gazed once more over the distant plain. “I do not mean I think he’ll defeat us, Jac. I mean, that is his reasoning—make his last stand here—”

  “He hasn’t run away,” I repeated. “I told Rolltar so. We got an outlaw connection into the Ice Palace today. For a moment only, and then it was discovered and broken off. But we had the image for a moment—it chanced to show Tarrano himself. But he’s isolated now. Bretan said his isolation power—around the Ice Palace and the wall anyway—is greater than any image-ray we can send against it.”

  My heart leaped suddenly, for I saw Elza’s eyes widen, fear spring to her face; heard the sharp intake of her breath, and felt her hand grip my arm.

  “Jac! There’s something wrong! See there? And you hear it?”

  From the instrument room I heard a vague drumming. A hiss, and then a drumming growing louder. It was not a new sound, for now I remembered I had been conscious of it for several moments past. Our encampment was awake to it! A confusion down there; people running about; a figure dashing wildly into the instrument room. And the aerials on the power house began to snap viciously.

  “Jac! What is it?”

  “I don’t know. See there, Elza? The sub-ray lights!”

  The search-beams from our towers were inordinately active. Sweeping the empty snow-plain and the empty sky. Empty? To my fevered imagination they were peopled with enemies. And then one of the towers flashed on a sub-ray—the dull infra-red for envisaging the slow rays below the power of human sight. And another tower with its faint purple beam was using the ultra-violet.

  “That drumming, Elza! That’s a microphone—the big one they just erected near the instrument room. There’s something coming! That’s the magnified sound of some distant rush of air. Very faint sound, but they must have heard it on the ear-phones long ago. That microphone must have just been connected—”

  Something coming? We could see nothing.

  “Let’s go down, Jac! We must get back—”

  “I’ve got infra-red glasses—” I fumbled beneath my furs. But I did not have them.

  “Jac—”

  “Wait, Elza.”

  My glasses would have been useless, for the sub and ultra beams from the towers were disclosing nothing. I could tell that by the hasty searching sweeps they made. And then from the big Wilton tower, the newly connected Zed-ray flashed on, I could hear the load of it in the deepened, throaty hum from the power house. Its dirty brown beam sprayed out over the plain; then swung to the sky, caught something, hung motionless, narrowed into great intensity. The powerful Zed-ray, capturing the visibility of dense solids only.24

  There was something up there in the sky! The Zed-ray met resistance; we could see the sparks, and hear the snap of them coming like a roar from the microphone above the drumming. Met the resistance and conquered it; gradually the snapping roar died away.

  “Jac! I see something! Something there—don’t you see it?”

  A luminous blur became visible in the nearer sky—moving blobs of silver luminosity in the mud-brown light of the Zed-ray. A hundred or more moving silver blobs. They were taking form. The silvery phosphorescent look faded, became grey-white. Took definite shape. Waving arms and legs! Bones bereft of flesh. Human skeletons! Limbs waving rhythmically. Bony arms, with fingers clutching metal weapons. Assailants coming at us through the air, stripped by the Zed-ray of clothing, skin, flesh, organs, to the naked bone. Skeletons with skulls of empty eye-sockets and set jaw-bones to make the travesty of human faces grim with menace!

  CHAPTER XXXV

  Attack on the Power House

  Stricken with surprise and awe, Elza and I sat there motionless. Our encampment was in a turmoil of confusion—chaos, out of which very soon order came. The skeleton figures in the air—I saw now that there were nearer two hundred than one hundred—were perhaps two thousand feet away, and at an altitude of about the cliff-ledge where Elza and I were sitting.

  They swept forward, bathed in the Zed-ray with all our other search-beams darkened to give it full sway. Momentarily I saw them clearer; metallic cylinders in bony fingers, and a metal mechanism of flight encasing, yet not touching the ribs.

  “Jac! Why don’t our rays—”

  As though to answer Elza’s unfinished question, one of our towers turned a disintegrating ray upon them. A narrow pencil-point of light, barely visible in this flat daylight. It swung up into our Zed-ray, searched and clung to one of the skeleton figures. Had it penetrated, the man would have been dissipated like a puff of vapor. But it did not; and then I knew that for that distance at least, this enemy’s isolation power—individual barrage—was too great.

  Yet the assailed figure wavered! Our amplifier gave out his shout—half fear, half admonition. The line of skeletons swung upward. Came on, but mounted so that I saw that they were making for the summit of the cliff above us—above our power house.

  Their defense—invisibility, and a mere isolation barrage so that we could not harm them with our tower rays while they kept beyond range. But what was their means of attack? Why would Tarrano.…

  “The power house,” Elza answered; and I realized then that she had read my thoughts. The power house, if they could demolish it.…

  Our thoughts, questions and answers unspoken, flew fast; but the drama before us unfolded faster. With the knowledge that we could see them, these invaders cast aside a portion of their equipment to give them greater freedom. We could see the metal portions of the trappings falling like plummets. The skeleton images faded; and then as our tower withdrew the Zed-ray and our search-beams picked them up, we saw our enemies as they really were. Men clothed in a casing of cylindrical garments with the flying mechanisms strapped to their chests; some with visors and headpieces, nearly all with small weapons in their hands.

  Keeping well away, they continued to mount. They were striving for the pinnacle of cliff-tops above us; but as our rays darted at them they halted, wavered; and now when nearly above the camp, they began mounting straight up.

  “Jac! Look there!”

  One of our tower vehicles was preparing to rise. Its ray, following the search-beams upward, was aimed at the invaders, but they were
beyond its effective range. Their weapons of attack? I knew now.

  “Suicides!”

  Whether Elza said it, or merely thought it I do not know. One of the figures came down as though falling. A few seconds only; but though our search-beam showed it, the smaller rays for those seconds missed it. Down—until no more than five hundred feet above us it checked its fall. A giant of a man; and with his hand cylinder—in range now—he shot a bolt at our power house. It struck; I could see the flash, saw an aerial shatter before the charge went harmlessly into the body of the building. Then one of our rays caught the man; his figure crumpled; the shower of sparks as his barrage was broken, exploded like a tiny bursting bomb; and as the sparks died, there was nothing where the man had been.

  A suicide; but one of our aerials was shattered. And then others came down—not many, for it was grim business and the courage of them must have failed at the last. Falling bodies; tiny bolts striking the power house; the sparks—then empty air where living men had been.

  Our tower left the ground. Some of our men, with small flying platforms strapped to them, were crowding its top. Its beams preceded it—but I saw the beams breaking intermittently as the bolts struck the power house. The invaders wavered with indecision. Some of them came down to voluntary death; others strove for the cliff-top; some took flight. Our tower swept into them; one of them, injured but not annihilated, fell with a crash into the encampment.

  Above Elza and me was a maze of flashing beams; futile bolts; the puffs of myriad sparks. A bolt seemed to strike quite near where we were sitting; I drew Elza back and we crouched in the hollow of a rock. A body came hurtling down, crashed to the cliff-ledge almost at our feet with the sickening thump of mangled flesh and broken bones—hung an instant to give me a momentary glimpse of a face contorted in death agony; then rolled over and fell further down the jagged cliff.

  Then above us presently there was silence and the drab empty sky. Our tower was back beyond the cliff-top. Soon it appeared; apparently unharmed, it came dropping down to its former place on the ground.

  The first attack was over. And off in the distance a few solitary figures were winging their way back to the City of Ice.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  City of Ice Besieged

  We were not greatly harmed by this surprise attack; the power house was superficially damaged, but soon repaired. That night—I call it that though the constant weak daylight made the term incongruous—activity showed in the City of Ice.

  It came with a vertical spray of light rising from the ice wall which encircled the city. Spreading light beams rising from points a hundred feet apart along the wall. The beams spread fan-shape, so that within fifty feet above their source they met and merged into a thin sheet of effulgence rising into the sky. Tarrano’s barrage.

  It seemed then that beyond suicidal sorties of the kind we had just repulsed, Tarrano was planning to stand purely on the defensive. It was our own plan to surround the city with our towers; even those on the further side would be within range of our power house; and with the city thus beleaguered, we would attack the wall from every side at once.

  We tested now this barrage Tarrano had thrown up. Sprays of its insulated area came down to protect the wall in front; and protected also the triangular spaces between the sources of the main beams. Tentatively one of our towers approached within range; but our rays only beat into the barrage with the hiss of molten metal plunged into water, and with a burst of interference sparks. Even at a horizontal thousand feet we could do nothing. Then we tried altitude. Our projectors, mounted individually on small platforms automatically controlled to fly without human pilot, went up and we strove to get them over the barrage.

  At five thousand feet one went over safely. But the electronic bomb it dropped into the city was an easy mark for Tarrano’s watchful defense rays. He exploded it harmlessly when it was still high above him.

  After the next time of sleep we invested the city. Our towers were set in a ring about it, two thousand feet from the wall. They were mobile units, ready to sail forward or back or upward at any moment. Georg stayed in command of the instrument room. It was never placed, but sailed continuously in slow circular flight around the city above our line. The power house remained in its place, with our largest projector mounted on the cliff beside it in order to frustrate any further attacks.

  They were solemn moments as we broke our encampment. The girls, far more agile in the air than men, were lightly dressed, with the supporting mechanism strapped to them. The heating units enveloped them in an invisible cloak of warm air. To their left arms a strapped cylinder gave off a fan-shape area of insulation—an almost invisible shield of protective barrage some five feet long. It showed as a faint glow of light; and in flight their left arms could swing it like a shield to protect their bodies. They had telephonic ear-pieces available; a tiny mirror fastened to their chests to face them, upon which Georg or Geno-Rhaalton could project images; a mouthpiece for talking to Georg; and a belt of offensive weapons, useful within a range of five hundred feet but no further.

  Very alert and agile, twisting and turning in the air were these girls. We men were similarly equipped, but our movements in the air were heavier, clumsier. Elza and I had practiced with the others for days; and with our harmless duelling rays I had found that I could never hope to hit her while she dealt me mortal blows.

  Elza, commanding a squad of twenty girls, was assigned to a portion of the line some helans from me. My own place, with a hundred men under me, was near a tower almost on the opposite side from the power house.

  It was a solemn parting from Elza. I wrapped her in my arms, tried to smile. “Be very—careful, Elza.”

  She kissed me, clung to me; then cast me off and was gone.

  With the city invested, we rested idly for another time of sleep. Occasionally we made a tentative tower attack which came to nothing. Tarrano waited; his barrage remained the same. We tried to provoke a move from him, but could not.

  The snow-plain where I was stationed here was similar to the other side, save that there were no mountains. From the power house to Tarrano’s wall there was a dip, so that the wall stood upon higher ground. On my side, however, the reverse was true. The wall lay in a hollow in one place, with a steady upward slope back from it to uplands behind us, as though in some better day a broad watercourse had flowed down here, now long since buried in solid ice and snow.

  I mention this topography because it had a vital bearing upon what so soon was to transpire.

  Rhaalton desired that Tarrano come out and attack us; but Tarrano would not. We thought perhaps that his offense was inadequate and the one move that he made strengthened that belief. From the city beside the palace, a rectangle of black metal some fifty feet square, rose slowly up. In aspect it was a square, windowless room—a room without a ceiling, open at the top. It rose to a height of five hundred feet and hung level. And from it depended dangling power cables connecting it with the ground.

  It was the presence of these cables that made us feel Tarrano was offensively weak. He could not aerially transport his power; hence, for offense he could only rely upon individual batteries which, unless permanently stationed within the city, we knew would have a short range at best. We watched this thing in the air for hours. It did not move; it was soundless. What was its purpose? We could not guess.

  And then at last, Geno-Rhaalton ordered us all to the attack.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  Battle

  I found myself in the air; with my men around me we hovered. Then Georg’s command from the instrument room sounded in my ears. I gave the signal; and flying wedge-shaped, we hurled ourselves forward. It was like lying on the air, diving head foremost. The rush of wind sang past me; the ground, a hundred feet below, was a white surface flowing backward.

  We were heading for the base of one of Tarrano’s barrage projectors. It was mounted within the wall; but the wall itself was protected merely by a fan-shaped subsidiary beam—
a weaker barrage over that small area, which by concentrated effort we hoped to break.

  From a helan away on both sides of me I saw other wedges of our men coming slanting in to assail the same point; overhead a corps of girls was hovering. Our towers, three of them concentrated here, had risen to a moderate height; their rays were playing upon the threatened area; a steady fountain of sparks showed where they were striking the barrage.

  A silent bombardment of flashing beams and sparks. At five hundred feet we added our own smaller rays to the turmoil. If the barrage would break at this point.…

  The instrument room, watchful of everything, sailed over me. On my mirror I saw Georg’s intent face; his voice said:

  “Careful, Jac! They may come out.”

  Prophetic words! The segment of barrage here suddenly vanished. A ray darted out. Beside it, a cloud of flying figures came out of the city like insects from a hive.

  An inferno of almost hand to hand fighting. It was everyone for himself; and I gave the order for my men to break formation. Ordered them to get up close to the wall if they could…to strike, with the closest possible range at the base of the enemy ray.…

  I flung myself forward. Tarrano’s men soon were around me. Twisting, darting figures…tiny beams of death to be fended off with my shield.…

  A body fell past me in the air…others, while I looked at them, in the blink of an eyelid, vanished into nothingness… One of our towers sailing high, suddenly went dark, turned over, wavered down, dismembered with leprous missing parts—and then in a puff was obliterated.

  I found myself nearly up to the wall, and higher than its top. The segment of barrage remained broken. I could see into the city—the Ice Palace, still seemingly deserted. And near it, the base of the powerful ground ray which was assailing our towers… If I could get past the wall, unnoticed, get within range of that projector.…

  Most of the fighting was now behind me. We seemed to be holding our own…the squad of girls was coming down; I prayed that Elza might not be among them.…