The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Murv’s eyes held horror. “You see now, Earthman? Why I did not warn Lorg? I had been thinking for days of what to do to avoid the inevitable holocaust that Lorg’s course would bring about. I saw that with the success of your coup, a solution would be reached, quickly. For I believe that now, with the elimination of Lorg, our races can come to an understanding.”

  SHELTON realized, during the moments Murv had been speaking, that the entire complexion of things had changed. It was Lorg who was the arch-enemy of mankind, its would-be conqueror; not his people. Tact and consideration must now be used in dealing with the Torms.

  “Will you expect more planets, by arbitration?” he asked.

  Murv shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “We have forfeited our chance, through Lorg’s blundering tactics. We are now a defeated race, with no right to make demands. I only ask that the two bodies we have already taken to Tor—Pluto and Neptune’s second moon—be left to us!”

  “I can promise you they will be,” Shelton said promptly. “Our sole aim at the moment is to destroy the Great Machine, so there will be no more world moving. And I think the basis for a permanent peace between our races will be your promise never to build another Great Machine!”

  “You will be given that promise, gladly!” the alien said earnestly. “We—”

  A new voice burst in on the all-wave circuit. Traft’s voice; from below. Shelton had almost forgotten that a battle was still raging there.

  “We’ve got them licked, Rod!” came the big pilot’s bellow. We swept through the city, drove them back. One Earthman is worth ten Torms! They’ve thrown down their arms in surrender. We’ve surrounded the chamber in which Lorg has barricaded himself. We’re battering down the door! There it goes—and there’s Lorg!”

  Shelton snapped on his auxiliary opti-screen, barked into the phone. “Shelton calling Lorg!”

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Moon Bargain

  LORG’S autocratic features, twisted with bitterness, appeared on the second screen.

  “You must surrender, Lorg!” barked Shelton. “Your ships above ground have been driven off. My men down below—”

  “They had best not step nearer!” threatened the Alien Superior. “I have my hand on the master switch of the Great Machine. If I close it, all its energy will be released at once, tearing Iapetus apart with its terrific stored forces!”

  His face gleamed evilly. Madness shone from his eyes. True madness now, from the crashing of his power.

  “You have won, Earthman!” he said sardonically. “But I hold your life in my hands. In revenge—”

  “Don’t!” Murv cut in sharply. “Don’t destroy Iapetus and all on it. Then Earth will never know the true facts, and the war will go on!”

  Lorg’s left hand reached to the side, to-tune an auxiliary screen.

  “You, Murv!” he ground out. “I suppose this is all to your liking? With me out of the way, you would arbitrate. But I tell you, races alien to one another cannot live in peace! One must dominate the other. If I had succeeded, we would have ruled the Earthlings. Now, since all is lost, I’ll at least take with me, into death, the Earthman who brought my downfall!”

  Shelton thought rapidly, in this frightful moment of impending death for all.

  “I think you had better not, Lorg!” he said quickly. “You may have forgotten that you started to move Neptune’s moon before the attack came. You had given it a velocity of about a hundred miles a second—toward Tor! That velocity is not lost, as you know from the laws of motion in space. It will take time, at that slow rate, but if you destroy Iapetus, the free-plunging moon will eventually reach Tor, crash into it, drawn by its gravitation. The impact will send out a wave of scorching heat and blinding light to Torm, your planet. If you destroy Iapetus now, you destroy all your people!”

  Lorg’s mad eyes glared in momentary indecision. His insane mind seemed trying to determine whether that was so. Mad or not, he could not let his own people be destroyed, to let the Earth-people reign supreme, in their binary Universe.

  Cold sweat beaded Shelton’s forehead. He felt the wings of death brushing closer than at any time in all this strange adventure. Myra’s face was ash-white, her eyes wide as though staring into eternity. Even Murv’s alien face reflected the stark horror of the moment. All the satellite seemed to be held in an electrified stasis.

  Lorg’s right hand, on the Great Machine’s master control, grew limp for an instant. And in that instant, there came a sharp zing, and the nauseating sound of the impact of a bullet in living flesh. A hole appeared in Lorg’s right temple as if by magic. Pale blood gushed forth. His limp fingers tightened for a moment on the switch handle, then relaxed and fell free. With an expression of stark bewilderment, Lorg, the alien conqueror, slumped to the floor—lifeless.

  “Whew!” came Traft’s voice in a long-drawn-out sigh. “If I had missed—”

  For a moment Shelton leaned back, panting.

  “Good work, Mark old boy!” he murmured finally.

  HE snapped himself alert. Matters had to be attended to. “Mark,” he ordered, “find all Earthmen down there who are in suspended animation. Benning can point out the chambers. Bring them up, to be taken to Earth and revived. When you come up, leave a few of the bio-men On guard.”

  “Okay, Rod! And while I’m going around, I’ll be taking a complete series of pictures of this place. I’ll get some kind of a prize for them, on Earth.” Shelton looked at the image of Murv. The alien had stood unmoving since the death of Lorg. His face expressionless, there was no clue to the thoughts going through his mind. But faintly, Shelton could sense bitterness, perhaps at the crashing of plans he and his people had nourished for a century.

  “Can you direct the handling of the Great Machine, Murv?” Shelton asked.

  The alien nodded.

  “Then you will have the moon of Neptune put back in its orbit,” Shelton said. “After that the Great Machine will be destroyed!”

  He would not feel a moment’s peace until that had been done, and the threat of its terrible powers removed forever.

  But the alien remained silent for a moment. Then he said, slowly, his tone half apologetic:

  “There would be no need to put the moon back into its orbit!”

  “But you surely don’t want your world destroyed!” Shelton snapped, impatiently.

  The alien shook his head. “No, that would not happen. Tor swings in an orbit itself, with Sol. When the moon of Neptune arrived, it would swing to one side of Tor. Tor’s great attraction would then grasp it, pull it into an eccentric orbit. Neptune’s moon would be captured, as a body of Tor’s system!”

  “You mean,” Shelton queried wonderingly, “that you would want to have the moon as another world in your system?” This was all incongruous, fantastic, this bargaining for worlds! “I’m afraid it can’t be, Murv, I have no authority to present you with another planetary body—” He stopped, wondering how to say it. “You already have Pluto and Neptune’s first moon, at Tor. No sense in taking them back. But to let this second moon of Neptune go—”

  “I am asking for this moon!” the alien said softly, firmly. “For my people. We will remove our colonies on Neptune and Uranus, leave your System free. Iapetus will be destroyed, in the void between our Systems, and our premise will be given never to build another Great Machine. Let this moon be a token of peace between us.”

  Shelton’s thoughts were in a turmoil. Was this some trick on Murv’s part?

  Was he scheming to carry on the aliens’ program, now that Lorg was gone? Shelton felt ashamed of himself instantly. No, obviously Murv was sincere.

  “IT is such a small thing to ask, Earthman!” Murv went on, his voice vibrant, “This moon is but one of your many bodies. Ours is an impoverished System, yours rich with worlds. What difference can it make it this little moon is gone from your Sun, when you have giant Jupiter and Saturn and their moons, and all the other great planets? And we have so little! To us, this one moon wo
uld be a great new world! Can you understand, Earthman? How long we have lived on one, lone planet, gazing across with our telescopes to your magnificent System? Can you blame us for building the Great Machine, hoping to bargain for some of your worlds? Results have been unfortunate, but that is over. I am asking, pleading, for this one more moon! Surely you can spare it!”

  Shelton could glimpse the alien’s depth of emotion. With all the eloquence at his command, he was begging for another small world for his restricted System. And incredible as it might seem, Shelton knew that he sympathized with him!

  “Murv, the moon is yours!” Shelton said quietly. “I may be utterly crazy for taking this responsibility, but I am.” He grinned briefly at the thought of facing the council, on Earth, and blandly telling them he had given away a moon!

  For a moment the two stared into one another’s eyes. Alien and Earthman. A spark of something akin to brotherhood passed between them. There would be peace between Earth and Torm, in the coming ages. . . .

  A day later, after Iapetus had been motivated, under Murv’s guidance, to a point far beyond Pluto’s former orbit, all the ships within and upon it left. The black ones of the aliens streamed out into the dark void, toward Tor. The fleet of Earth soared with thrumming rockets toward Sol.

  Within the pilot cupola of the ETBI-14, Traft and Hugh Benning had their heads together, plotting the return course, after the take-off.

  “Let’s go down to the cabin, Myra,” Shelton suggested to the girl beside him.

  Traft turned to watch. Shelton, limping, had his arm around the girl’s shoulder for support. But they were also holding hands. Traft snatched up his camera and clicked the shutter.

  “I’ve been waiting for that shot!” he grunted in satisfaction.

  Hours later, as Murv had set the timed mechanism to throw the master control of the Great Machine, deserted, stranded Iapetus exploded into cosmic debris, ripped to atomic shreds by the release of world-moving gravitational force stressed within. The Great Machine, and Lorg—and his dream—were no more.

  Shelton stared back at the bright ring of shimmering dust that expanded and faded into the dark void. It was hard to believe that their great adventure had been real. That a world, an Impossible World of aliens, existed close in the void. That a planet and two moons had been whisked from Sol to Tor. That he had been instrumental in ending an unsuspected menace, one that had been hanging over them for a century.

  And last, that he had given away a moon as a symbol of peace between their races.

  Shelton felt content.

  MARTIAN MARTYRS

  The most terrible plot ever to work against the future of mankind throws Tom and Dik into a desperate adventure! They see through the monstrous hoax—but it is too late!

  CHAPTER I

  WITH his face pressed close to the curved glass of the turbocar, Dik 4M-277 swore softly to himself. Before his eyes and far downward swung the city, a staggering maze of buildings and spans. It was 3004 A.D.

  “Grumbling again?” queried Tom 3M-189, his companion who sat beside him in the small compartment.

  Dik made no answer, so Tom continued: “I suppose it’s the same old subject—you don’t like the way the world is run; you’re a misfit; you should have been born ten centuries ago; etc. I should think, Dik, that your mind would be sick of reviewing that same thing so long.” Tom laughed softly.

  The other glared at him. “You might look at this as some huge joke, but your mind isn’t as analytical and deep-seeing as mine.”

  Tom again had occasion to laugh, He had teased Dik about his discontented state of mind as long as they had known each other, which had been most of their lives. Together they had studied side by side and grown to manhood.

  Dik’s periodical “grumbling” and the ensuing arguments often afforded them relaxation and even fun in the stern and disciplined age of 3004 A.D. Ten centuries before, the rule of earth fell into the hands of scientists, because their inventions and discoveries had gradually made them all-powerful; more especially that they hoarded their secrets from political parties. All mankind obeyed the scientific ruling power in the new regime. Bigotry and political machinations vanished. They had fashioned a new world and a new life. It consisted of work, study, and the thirst for more knowledge. Few, very few, were dissatisfied with it, for it was pleasant and easy to live. But Dik and Tom, the latter to lesser degree, were “throw-backs” with atavistic tendencies that would have fitted them better in the year 1940 A.D. when all men were “free” to do as they pleased and get away with it.

  After some moments of silence, as the turbo-car hummed along its span a thousand feet above ground through and between the canyons of buildings, Tom turned his head.

  “Look here, Dik. For every moment you have thought of that, as many individuals in the 20th century had wished they could live in our well-ordered times. Why, do you know, in those old times it was possible for a man to be unemployed and actually starve to death? You’re just wasting energy, grumbling against our life. What does it bring you?”

  “A grand headache,” answered Dik. “But seriously, Tom, it wasn’t exactly of that I was thinking. It’s this meeting we’re on our way to now. Take my word for it, there is a Dark Moon in it somewhere. For instance . . .”

  “Did you say,” interrupted Tom, “a moment ago that you had an analytical mind? I’d call it a suspicious one.”

  “Listen to me,” went on Dik earnestly. “Did you ever stop to think that we have been schooled for three years in spacenautics and yet none of us have ever seen a spaceship?”

  “We have the stratosphere and troposphere rocket ships, and that was our main study and training.”

  “Well and good. But why the spacenautics? Would you take one of those ships out into space?”

  “Well, hardly,” Tom answered, puzzled at the other’s meaning.

  “I’ll tell the stars you wouldn’t! There you are—we learn all there is to know of the plants from air density and gravity, from space-charts to meteor repulsion screens, and by the blessed moon, neither you nor I nor anyone else in the world knows of existing ship that can traverse space.

  Then how can you say that there isn’t more to it than we can guess?”

  “I can, though,” returned Tom for the sake of the argument. “Suppose the Sci-tri[1] has secretly invented such a ship and trained us for the purpose?”

  Dik nodded. “But what has happened to all those others who have been trained in our school for the past—let me see—three score years? Has anybody ever heard of them again?”

  “That’s a foolish question, Dik, You know how we are shifted around by the Sci-tri. It’s their system of doing things. It might happen to you and me, that we would be separated and not see each other for years. I distinctly know of such a case. A, friend of a fellow I met years ago went through spacenautics and today he is captain of a troposphere ship between London and New York.”

  “All right,” assented Dik. “But that one case does not account for the thousands who have vanished. What ever happened to my father? He was also chosen for this years ago. Where is he now? You know that I would be laughed at as a sentimental fool if I were to ask the Section Recorder. Besides, all the answer I would get would be that my father had commendably done his duty.

  “That’s what I’m so against in our life today,” went on Dik moodily. “We are to show no family feeling of any kind. Our lives are forfeit to the State with no questions asked. It’s unnatural—cruel!”

  Tom would have gone into his usual tirade. That last curt statement had often made him tell the other of the benefits of the age in which they lived. He would recall history of earlier times when frightful wars made a shambles of cities, when people were slaughtered like rats. He would tell of political graft, of money tyrants who lived in luxury when thousands died of starvation; of the hodge-podge of finance that swept nations into bankruptcy. Those things were cruel! None of this ever happened under the sage rule of the Sci-tri—but this
time Tom desisted. Dik’s words had brought a vague unrest in his own heart.

  THE turbo-car sped along. It was an express with few stops. Blinding fast though it was, there was no chance of accident, for indefatigable robot controls could make no mistake. The spans of the turbocars, which were the standard intercity transport vehicles, honeycombed the entire conglomerate of a hundred square miles of city structures.

  The two youths sat silent for some time. Both watched the scenery as it swept beyond the windows as though they saw it for the first time. But they were not taking particular notice of the things they had seen from birth onward; they were thinking.

  A bell rang. Mechanically they fastened the wide belts that dangled at the sides of the seats. A minute later their bodies strained at the belts as the brakes wore applied.

  An amplifier in the ceiling droned out: “Station Red-10. Change for 23, 54, and 60. Main transfer on Station Blue-5 in two minutes.”

  When the bell rang again, they unloosed the belts. Some rode with them always fastened, but the majority did not like their bodies so tightly harnessed. Tom even pushed away the shoulder straps. He was large and they chafed his flesh. He look over to Dik.

  “It won’t be long now; next station is ours. What do you think we’ll get—positions, ships berths, a fancy diploma, or connections that will separate us?”

  “I wish I knew,” muttered Dik. “But I can’t help think it will be none of those—perhaps something we can’t foresee.”

  “What a pessimist!” cried Tom. “One would think we’re going to be dissected, by the way you say that. Cheer up! We might get a nice appointment. We didn’t learn all that but for some good use. Think of it, captain of some stratosphere ship, soaring the grand skies—bankits[2]—recreation—women. What more can we ask?” He slapped his hands together in keen anticipation.