A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Trelling sat for some minutes on the narrow bunk and rubbed the places where he had been tied. A gentle force directed toward the rear indicated that the stratoship was accelerating, but no sound came through the heavily insulated wall.

  After he had reduced the ache in his wrists and ankles, Trelling commenced a methodical examination of the cubicle. It measured hardly two by three yards, and he could easily touch the duralumin plates of the ceiling. Save for the door, the only opening in the walls was a three-inch ventilator near the ceiling, which was covered with screen. Standing upon the bunk Trelling peered into this and then listened carefully. No spark of light was visible, but a faint humming and scratching sound came through.

  It was hardly a noise to attract attention, even in the 22nd Century, but for Mark Trelling it seemed to be of the utmost interest, for he pressed his ear flat against the opening and shut his eyes. After several minutes he descended to the floor, an expression of great excitement on his face. He murmured several words to himself.

  “Dahl—it can only be Dahl—he must be in a desperate corner to do this. Well, another hour will tell.”

  Before that time had passed one of the crew brought a dish of food. Trelling took it without speaking and ate slowly and with apparent pleasure. In a few minutes the man returned for the dish and Trelling was left alone for the night. As soon as he was sure of this, the television president did a strange thing. He switched off the room light, placed the aluminum chair on the bunk and sat down, his ear pressed firmly against the air duct.

  The sound was still there, a curious fluttering and scratching, with occasional abrupt buzzes and pops, against a background of steady high-pitched whistling. Trelling listened attentively, nodding his head now and then. After the passage of a half hour, he carefully replaced the chair and crawled into the bunk as calmly as though he were aboard his private stratoship on a vacation cruise.

  Trelling awakened some time before the expiration of the ten hours. The room was still dark, the floor quivered slightly, indicating that the ship was still in motion. He lay quietly for a moment, and then listened at the ventilator. After an interval he chuckled briefly, and then his face became grim.

  A half hour later the bald-headed man and two others entered. They found Trelling lying on the bunk, apparently asleep. The bald man shook him into wakefulness.

  “All out. We are here.”

  “Where?”

  “Kerguelen Island. Now, you’ll have to stand being tied again, and also blindfolded, because we don’t want you to see how we get in and out of this place.”

  Trelling submitted quite calmly, making no answer to this and other bits of voluntary information. When he was satisfactorily bound, the two crew members picked him up and carried him through the control cabin, down an incline about which water could be heard gurgling and into a small room where he was placed on a bench.

  “Submarine,” volunteered the voice of the bald man. “We’re forty feet below the surface and just entering the tunnel.”

  A FAINT mechanical hum shook the bench slightly and a liquid rushing was audible about them. Trelling said nothing. After about ten minutes the vibration ceased and a light rocking motion took its place.

  “We are on the surface,” announced the bald man. “Open the hatch.”

  Trelling listened attentively to the sound of turning bolts and the sudden intensifying of the faint noise of lapping waves. A cold, damp draft blew in on his face, bearing the odor of sea water and kelp. The men picked him up once more, carried him across the rolling deck and onto solid footing.

  “Concrete key,” said the bald man. “Built right out of sixty feet of water.”

  For a score of paces their footsteps echoed as though they were passing through a wide cavern, and then the walls and ceilings of a tunnel closed about, muffling all sounds. Several doors were opened and closed, a half dozen turns were made, and then, at an order from the bald-headed man, blindfold and bonds were stripped off.

  Trelling found himself in a small, concrete-lined room in which were a dozen men and a radio television set. It was, he noted with ironic recognition, a product of his own Company. As they entered the room, the bald man spoke to him.

  “We’ve got Barger waiting at the plant for your call. Get the dope and you’ll be back home in fifteen hours.” Trelling nodded and stepped before the transmitter. In an instant the white screen flashed brightly and George Barger stood before him in the office, an expression of anxiety on his face.

  “Mark,” he cried, “in heaven’s name what’s happened? Where are—” Trelling raised his hand to stop the other. He said nothing for a moment, and then drew a deep breath. Finally he replied.

  “I’m in the office of Dahl Television, Dahl Building, New York. Surround the building—”

  The screen before him went blank, a dozen hands seized him, but the damage was done. For an instant it appeared that he would receive bodily harm, and then an authoritative voice called out and a thick-set, spectacled man came from behind the screen. He rubbed his hands together and made a weak attempt to smile.

  “The game’s up,” said Trelling crisply. “Now, Dahl, talk and talk fast. The aerial police are landing by now. This was a pretty raw trick and you’re going to pay.”

  Three minutes later; as the first of the aerial police entered the room, Trelling slipped a seven figure draft into his pocket. Dahl sank into a chair. In another moment Barger and a score from the American Television burst into the room. Trelling, now as calm as though he were at a Board meeting, took the police captain aside.

  When the aerial police had departed, Trelling turned to Dahl and the bald-headed man.

  “Since you were so kind as to give me a conducted tour through your ‘subterranean caverns,’ ” he said briskly, “I’ll reciprocate by showing you where your scheme slipped up.” His glance flicked over the abject group before him. “There were several minor errors, such as record scratch in the bubbling and wave noises, and distortion in the electrical echo machine, but I knew the whole trick before I’d even left the ship.”

  DAHL stared at him in stupefaction.

  “You did a good job, frightening me with fear of life-long imprisonment at the ends of the earth, and putting me in a windowless cabin so I couldn’t see where I was taken, but there was one loophole—or rather a ventilator hole. I couldn’t see through it, but I could hear. I heard the hum coming from the audio transformers of the infra-red television navigator that transmitted the route to the pilot.”

  Seeing the blank expressions on the faces before him, Trelling explained.

  “Dahl, there’re some advantages in being trained as a television operator.

  I checked images for fifteen years before I became president, and in that time I learned a lot that no business man ever knows. All those years while I watched images, I also listened, involuntarily, to the sound of the television signals—the hisses and clicks and bumps that correspond to light and dark shades in the picture. You scarcely notice them even around a high-powered set, unless you know for what to listen. But once you hear them, they’re unmistakable. And after you’ve heard them often enough you commence to be able to understand the picture they represent without seeing the screen. After all, the details are all there—it’s merely a matter of correct interpretation—developing of a sixth sense, if you wish, that of seeing through the ears.

  “Naturally, when I heard the sound of television coming through the ventilator from the navigation room, I watched with my ears I soon saw—or heard—that we were not heading southwest toward the Indian Ocean, but were circling about a few hundred miles from New York. The rest was simple. The ship hovered above the Dahl Building for a half hour before settling—the letters Dahl Television were clearly audible on the roof, and I could almost hear the features of Dahl himself looking up at us.”

  Trelling paused and glanced about the room.

  “Racketeering,” he said virtuously, “doesn’t pay in the year 2136.”

/>   ZERO AS A LIMIT

  Robert Moore Williams

  “Beta diminishes to nothing, you see——”

  THROUGH the thin air of the stratosphere the lone ship knifed, keeping its wary vigil above the desperate Earth, ready to fight or flee. More often they fled.

  Lieutenant Jan Grath sat hunched over the controls, his gray eyes scanning the void. Beside him, Iar Marto nervously fingered the trigger of the Z-gun, which would hurl, with the speed of light, an electric charge that would explode on contact.

  Off to the southwest a blue dot flickered. The lieutenant saw it. He pushed the power bar forward and the rockets in the rear thrummed sharply.

  “Zarlee patrol in sight,” he spoke softly into the microphone beside him. “Will engage.” For the benefit of the listener in the central base, he ran off a string of directions that would enable headquarters to locate the hostile ship.

  “Ready, gunner?” he asked.

  Marto nodded. His eyes ran down the telescope sight of the Z-gun. Through the ’scope he could barely see the blue flicker of the Zarlee ship.

  “It’s too far for effective aiming,” Marto reported. “I can’t hold him on the cross hairs.”

  “You’ll be close enough soon enough,” Grath growled, thrusting the power bar forward to the last notch.

  The rockets exploded in a thundering blast of sound. The acceleration caught Marto, flung him against the padded seat, seemingly draining the last drop of blood from his body. He glanced at Grath, saw the face of the lieutenant was white and bloodless, and changed his mind. Acceleration could kill, but any Terrestrial pilot would thrust his power bar forward to the last notch if a lone Zarlee ship was in sight, and acceleration be damned.

  “On your toes, gunner,” Grath ordered through bloodless lips. “That ship hasn’t seen us yet. The minute you can keep him on the cross hairs, you hold that trigger down. If you miss, the Zarlee will cut us into pieces with his needle beam.” The lieutenant made a minor adjustment of the power load, and growled, “You better not miss.”

  “I—I won’t.”

  “Train your sights. We’re getting close.”

  Marto glued his eye to the sight. The blue globule was nearer, much nearer. The thin blue haze that was connected with the propulsive mechanism of the Zarlee ships—no Terrestrial scientist knew exactly how they operated—was dimly visible. The hull gyrated back and forth over the cross hairs of the telescope.

  “Can you hold it?” Grath questioned.

  “Not—not yet.”

  “Quit stammering, you fool, and lay that gun. You’re as nervous as a cat.”

  “Yes—yes, sir.”

  IAR MARTO fought for self-control. Though he, in common with every other native of Mother Earth, vehemently hated the Zarlee, when it came to actually killing them some nervous kink within his mind made him flinch. It was not something that he could control, or explain. With the desperately embattled Earth under strict military discipline and all able-bodied men conscripted, you did not explain to the commanding military that the sight of blood, even Zarlee blood, made you sick, not unless you wanted to stand with your back to the walk Such an explanation would sound like cowardice. Court-martials had little time to bother about fixations.

  “Gunner, lay that gun. We’re almost within range. Snap into it. That ship is certain to see us any minute now. If we can’t surprise the Zarlee, they’ll blow us out of the sky. They can outfly and outshoot us. Lay that gun!”

  Marto brought the cross hairs into line, held them there. They were centered dead on the Zarlee ship. Press the trigger and a flood of disruptive charges would obliterate the enemy vessel. Press the trigger, you fool, squeeze it. Blast that ship out of the sky.

  Marto squeezed. His fingers wouldn’t work.

  “Shoot, you idiot!” screamed Grath. “They’ve seen us, are starting to move. Shoot!”

  Desperately, Marto tried. The cross hairs were centered dead; he had only to fire. But his muscles would not obey the orders of his mind. Perhaps his mind would not give the orders. He didn’t know which. He turned a white, pleading face toward Grath.

  There was a sibilant, hissing sound. The nose of their vessel was sheered off as if it had been cut by a mighty knife. The Zarlee needle beam had struck. Their ship faltered, swung dizzily in space, sloped down toward Earth. The stern buoyancy vibrator slowed their plunge. Grath and Marto—there were only two men on these tiny scout ships—were sitting on the edge of nothing. Their vessel had been knifed inches in front of them. Grath was holding his left hand. No, it wasn’t his hand. His left hand was gone. With his right hand he was squeezing the stump of his left arm, trying to stop the spurting of a red fountain.

  They floated slowly down to Earth. The Zarlee ship came up, prepared to capture them when they landed. The Zarlee took all the captives they could. They had a use for the bodies of humans. But the use they made of them was known, and they took few captives alive.

  They hit the Earth with a stunning thud. The Zarlee eased to Earth near them, then darted rapidly away. Midway in flight, the ship exploded in a flare of white light. Marto looked up. Three huge Terrestrial battleships were knifing down the sky overhead, coming in response to Grath’s report of their position. They were taken aboard.

  Marto, white-faced and shaken, visited Lieutenant Grath in the hospital ward. Grath was swearing weakly. He wasted few words on Marto.

  “What happened? Why didn’t you fire?”

  It was something you couldn’t explain. Marto tried and failed. Grath must have sensed his meaning.

  “Kid, that gun never jammed, but I’m going to say that it did. I’m going to recommend that you be sent back to the laboratories, where you came from. There’s a streak of yellow in you a foot wide. It cost us a ship and me my left hand. You ought to be stood against a wall and shot, for cowardice in the face of the enemy. But we need every available man, and you may be able to do some good in the laboratories. Heaven knows you’re no good at the front. Now get out.”

  THE MILITARY COUNCIL, plainly aware that Grath’s report was not complete, hemmed and hawed. Finally, they accepted his recommendations, and Iar Marto was ordered back to the lower levels of Snarth, to report to Professor Thielpan, who was in charge of all experimental work.

  Thin and gaunt, showing only by the fire in his eyes that he was alive, Thielpan growled, “You’re a good worker, and as such I’m glad to have you. But the order sending you here indicates that your conduct up above was criticized. You will find we have no room for weaklings here. The survival of man on Earth demands that each of us do his duty, whatever it may be. If you falter here, I’ll have you eliminated. That’s all.”

  Iar Marto kept his chin up and his face straight. Let them call him a coward if they chose. There was no way to answer their accusations. They did not know it was not death that he feared, but killing. His fear of that was so violent that it left him a physical weakling.

  In the deep levels of Snarth he took up life again. Here there was no danger, as yet. As long as the city held, the lower levels were safe. The only indication of trouble that seeped through from above was the tenseness in the air. Men worked and worked and worked, always against time. It almost seemed that time was a greater enemy than the Zarlee. Experiment followed experiment—some new weapon, a new defense. The technicians slaved hour on end, day on day, month on month.

  Up above men begged them to hurry. “Give us a weapon to fight that needle beam,” they begged. “Give us a ship that will fly as fast as the Zarlee globes. Give it to us quickly! Arnst, one of the hidden cities of the Appalachians, fell last week. There aren’t many cities left. The twelve-year-old struggle between the Earth peoples and the invaders from dying Pluto has almost decimated Earth. Give us new weapons, quickly!”

  The months dragged into another year, while Iar Marto slaved. He worked largely alone. The men in the laboratories shunned him, never spoke unless duty demanded. But, grudgingly, they admitted his ability.

  Thielpan
had clearer eyes. He wanted results, and he would have gone to the devil for help if he could have secured aid from that source. If he despised Marto, he kept it to himself. In recognition of his ability, Thielpan made Marto his first assistant. Marto didn’t care. He had no reason to care, one way or another.

  The year of 2841 dawned. The forces of Earth were being slowly forced back. The Zarlee seemed to reproduce faster than they could be killed. Scientists did not know exactly how the Zarlee reproduced, but they suspected it was by fission, where an old individual split into two new ones, each retaining all the knowledge and abilities of the parent. At any rate, though the warrior hordes of Earth had taken an immense toll of the pear-shaped Zarlee, it seemed as many remained as ever. There had been no new migration from Pluto.

  Only eleven subterranean city states remained to the Earth peoples in 2841. They were scattered all over the globe. Man had been forced underground when the Zarlee came. He had dug deep, had learned to raise food in the depths. The entrance to the cities were ringed with Z-guns. No hostile ship could live in the air overhead. But neither could a Terrestrial ship hope to exist for long away from the protection of the forts.

  2841 was a black year. The Zarlee blew out of the Earth one of the cities hidden in the Alps. A tremendous ship, loaded with thousands of tons of explosives, was launched from above the atmosphere, and guided by robots. It struck at the speed of thousands of miles an hour, penetrated to the depths, and exploded. The Earth tremor was felt over the entire globe. Next an Asiatic city went. Nine were left, their inhabitants numbering about three millions. Three millions left of the billions who had once inhabited the Earth.

  THE NEWS, carried on the visaplates to the other cities, brought a feeling of hopelessness. It was only a question of time. But the men in the laboratories slaved harder, and Iar Marto slaved with them.