The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Perry read the note, in a bold, angular script.

  “To Perry, Lord of Earth, pro-tem: I hate a dull world. Try again. But I warn you, you won’t succeed. My father’s offer is still open.”

  It was signed: “Elda, Commander of World Empire Military.”

  Perry knew then, how long the war would last. Till she, and the power behind her, had been annihilated.

  “I’ll gather an army,” he told Aran Deen grimly. “I’ll attack by land. This world isn’t her playground.”

  PERRY sat at the telegraph key, at Gibraltar, a day later.

  “Attention, all tribal-states!” he tapped out. “Send your able-bodied men to the Pree region. Mobilization orders from Perry Knight, Lord of Earth.”

  Near the ruins of what had been gay Paris in another day, Perry gathered his army. They flocked in from all the southern tribes, through which his telegraph crackled the call to arms. Messenger horsemen penetrated to outlying tribal-states. From them all came the pick of their huntsmen, strong and sturdy men, skilled with weapons.

  The excitement of M-day lay in the air.

  Perry was a little amazed at the readiness with which the Tribers came to join the army. Hardly antipathy toward Lar Tane, who had done them no actual harm. Hardly because Perry was Lord of Earth, for they could easily have hung back.

  Perry was dismayed. Was it sheer love of fighting, war?

  But then he knew the true answer. These were the adventurous, restless and reckless strata of any society. The kind who, in civilization, would make good pilots, racers, and football players. His father had often said that in his 20th century, America had let off steam in competitive sports and activities, where the nations of Europe had had boys and men marching and training for battle.

  Perry armed them with metal swords. At his order, the Gibraltar plant had turned these out. Perry hated to give the order. It countermanded his father’s edict of twenty-five years—no metal weapons.

  Instead of rails for a future railroad, and metal girders for radio towers, the presses stamped out weapons of war. Instead of the things that built, the things that destroyed. A bit of 20th century industry arming the Stone Age with new and murderous tools of battle. Grinding irony.

  But Perry had to. Lar Tane had metal weapons. His Rhine plant was probably whining day and night, fashioning metal into the instruments of death.

  IN SIX weeks, Perry’s army was on the march.

  Hurry! Hurry!

  The refrain beat in his mind. Lar Tane had no more than a toehold. Only a hundred tribes in central and northern Europe, who had succumbed to his spell of voice and personal magnetism, offering him their men and will to begin building an empire. Smash him, crush him, before he crept out like an octopus, to trample all the world under his military heel.

  A hundred thousand men followed Perry, from a hundred different tribes. They fraternized, in the comradeship of war. Apart, by tribal traditions, they might have fought over respective tribal borders. Together, the spirit of the crusade filled them, as it had filled the diversity of crusaders in the Middle Ages.

  Their war-cry, suggested by the canny Aran Deen, was—

  “Down with Lar Tane, tyrant of the past!”

  But mostly, Perry realized they were spirited men ready for a fight. At night, around campfires, they practiced delightedly with the new swords. The clang of metal violated the vast hush of the Stone Age world.

  Wagon trains of supplies rumbled behind the army. Fresh food supplies came from tribal-states they passed through, grumbling. But victimized tribal chiefs knew hungry men would be worse than men fed. Perry promised them pay, eventually, in goods from Nartica.

  Hurry! Hurry!

  Trivial details did not matter. While on the march he organized a skeleton staff of officers, parceling out authority. He was amazed at his own forethought, whipping the disjointed horde into the semblance of an organized fighting force.

  “You have an analytical mind,” Aran Deen explained it. “Scientists are soldiers without a cause. Soldiers are scientists without patience.”

  Perry led the way north to the Rhine powerplant. He had tried by sea. He would try by land. After that, a direct campaign to Vinna.

  The first sign of the enemy appeared. Again a plane scouted over them, as over the armada, counting them. Perry cursed, having hoped to make it a total surprise. One of his own scouting planes reported at the next village. There was no sign of an enemy force protecting the Rhine plant!

  “The way is open!” cried Perry, driving his army faster.

  “I wonder,” returned Aran Deen dubiously. “The green-eyed witch has some plan up her sleeve.”

  They drew close. Perry noticed one day a line of broken concrete pillars, hoary with age. Beyond, dotting the landscape, here and there, were broken piles of concrete that had once domed underground shelters.

  “The old-time Maginot line,” muttered Aran Deen. “Tank-traps, pillboxes, rows of forts. Further on, the great underground line itself. Relic of a folly of your father’s time. He found parts of the chambers still intact. Perry—”

  But Perry had let out a shout.

  “Look—the Rhine plant!”

  It jutted over the skyline.

  “We’re that close—”

  CHAPTER XIV

  Maginot Line

  THE whine of arrows sounded, suddenly.

  Men fell, in first columns of Perry’s army. Instantly the men were alert for battle. But there was nothing to shoot at. Only cracked domes.

  “They’re in those!” screeched Aran Deen. “Elda is using the old Maginot Line!”

  And so it proved. Perry called for battle array, and the army lumbered forward. Arrows rained from concealed vantages ahead, taking a steady toll. When they reached the first line of concrete, figures scurried back—to the next line. Again a shower of arrows. Again the stealthy enemy retreated to the next line of emplacements.

  Perry was appalled, as his men’s ranks were eaten into by the well-protected enemy. How deep were these ancient lines?

  “Miles and miles of this!” asserted Aran Deen.

  There were ten miles of it. Perry crunched through, with the Rhine plant uppermost in his mind, trying not to see how many of his men fell. Then suddenly before them were the formidable ramparts of the main line. From it came such a blast of arrows that Perry was forced to call retreat.

  They were not allowed to stand.

  Snipers drove them back mercilessly, till they had retreated the full ten miles again. There had been no chance to come to grips with the enemy, with swords. It had been Indian fighting, ambush, ideal from behind the widespread pill-boxes and emplacements of a forgotten war-age.

  “We’ll try another point,” Perry decided.

  Overhead droned two of the enemy planes, following and observing. When they next drove in, the same showers of arrows greeted them with singing death. Enraged, Perry led his army almost to the coast. The ubiquitous enemy was there, behind concrete domes and ruins, skipping back from line to line. Perry had already lost hundreds of men, the enemy hardly any.

  “No use, Perry,” Aran Deen muttered. “The lines start at the coast and follow the river, between us and the Rhine plant. I’ve seen the 28th century plans. We might storm through at one point, but only a remnant of our men would be left. These would be slaughtered by Elda’s fresh, full troops.”

  Perry had to try once more. The Rhine plant, no more than twelve miles distant, shouldered against the horizon enticingly. Once he took it, half the war was won.

  But could he take it?

  Perry let his men rest three days. With his officers he planned an organized assault. His first line of archers spread in a long line, advancing slowly from clump to bush, with a minimum loss of men. The enemy retreated stubbornly. Within a mile of the main line of domes, the archers crept within arrow-shot and waited.

  So far so good. Perry caught his breath and called for the charge.

  Back of the archers came the spearmen
, in two separate tides, attacking at two points. When the defenders massed at those two points, with fusillades of arrows, Perry’s archers raked them with feathery death. The odds were somewhat evened.

  And now was the time!

  Perry gave the signal. With a thunder of hooves, his cavalry, unused till now, surged between his charging footmen, straight for the gap in the enemy line of defense. The domes were not a continuous structure. If once his cavalry horde stormed through, the enemy would be split in half.

  Perry held his breath, as his cavalry swirled forward. They were close now—almost through. The enemy had had no chance to close in, to stopper the gap.

  And then, magically, the enemy arose, in that apparent gap.

  Like warriors sown by Jason’s teeth, they sprouted from the ground. Or so it seemed. They came from underground. Two thousand and more years before, in grander wars, waiting fresh troops had thus sprang up from their bomb-proof shelters, to hurl back troops already worn out by fighting. It was the whole underlying purpose of the ancient Maginot Line.

  Perry’s cavalry ran into a snowstorm of arrows and spears. Men toppled like tenpins. Riderless horses wheeled, screaming and snorting, breaking the charge.

  Perry screamed, too, in sheer agony of defeat.

  HIS eyes caught a hated flash of copper. Elda stood there, back of her men, fearlessly. Her tall, graceful figure was limned against the distant bulk of the Rhine powerplant, like a symbol against its capture. She had a longbow in her hands and was sending out arrow after arrow herself.

  She seemed to be laughing, exulting, enjoying this game of war, playing with men and lives as if they were pawns.

  “The green-eyed witch,” guessed Aran Deen, watching Perry’s face. “She is there, exposed! If only a kind arrow would seek her out. But she would likely survive the kiss of Death himself, with her hellish charms.”

  Raging, Perry dropped his binoculars and snapped up his longbow. He pulled back of his ear, muscles cracking. The arrow arced up and up, high over the battleground. It struck her shoulder. Spent, it did no harm. It had been a childish gesture.

  She had seen the high-flying arrow. Binoculars to her eyes, she seemed to spy Perry on top the concrete dome from which he watched the battle. Her white arms flashed and back from her came an arrow, thudding into the ground ten feet before Perry’s feet.

  “She is not a woman,” gasped Aran Deen. “Few men could send an arrow that distance. But Perry, this is slaughter—”

  PERRY started, looking back over the battle.

  The enemy was now a solid line, bristling with arrow-fire that thinned his ranks of wavering footmen. The cavalry was huddled in a mass, ready to bolt.

  Perry accepted defeat. Retreat was called. Ten miles back, safe from pillbox snipers, camp was pitched. Night fell, and to Perry it was like a night of future despair.

  The second major campaign of the war was over. Perry had lost 4,000 men. Lar Tane had won again. Lar Tane? Elda! Perry began to think of it as almost a personal war between himself and the emerald-eyed Amazon from a past age.

  “But she didn’t defeat me!” Perry stormed, pacing up and down beside a camp-fire in a frenzy of concern and impatience. “It was the Maginot Line. Without that, I’d have crushed her, in open battle. I had no chance to come to grips with her!”

  Aran Deen nodded.

  “She reached into the past to defeat you. After your father’s time, alternately, two traditional powers tried for decades to smash that line, failing. The Rhine plant is impregnable behind it.”

  Perry bit his lip.

  “Yes,” he admitted bitterly, “I see that now. All right, that’s that. The first part of my war plan is canceled. The second becomes necessary—striking for Vinna itself. Taking over Lar Tane’s self-styled ruling center. A knife in his empire’s heart. Tomorrow we’ll march east—toward Vinna. In open battle, it’s just a matter of grinding through—”

  Aran Deen broke in.

  “Have you forgotten how far the ancient Maginot Line runs?” he asked quietly.

  Perry started.

  “How far?”

  “All the way from here along the Rhine to the mountains of Swizlan, for 600 miles. We’re completely blocked off from the west!”

  Perry pondered that, appalled. Hurry! Hurry! The drive of time still beat in his brain. Where could he crunch through? How? By what strategy?

  By dawn he had devised a plan, before the dying embers of the fire. He called his council of officers.

  “Twenty thousand men will remain here, keeping the enemy occupied,” he told them. “The rest will march, as secretly as possible, to where the Rhine bends deep into enemy territory. There we’ll strike. We’ll march at night, through woods. Surprise attack. The enemy can’t be in force all along the Maginot Line, for hundreds of miles.”

  TEN days later, Perry’s main army of seventy thousand reached the bend of the Rhine. Once through the Line, there would be open plains for a drive on Vinna.

  At dawn, sure that he had stolen a march on Elda, Perry turned into the Line.

  Like a clap of thunder, there was battle.

  Arrows whistled from pill-boxes and the ramparts of saw-toothed tank-trap ruins. Perry smiled uncertainly. A few thousand men, perhaps, a sort of sentry line at this strategic bend of the Rhine. The main enemy army must still be at the mouth of the river, engaging his decoy troops.

  But the resistance increased. Perry’s grin became an empty grimace.

  Desperately, he plowed five miles into the hail of arrows before he realized a full army faced him. Stunned, he retreated. Fully manned, the Line could not be stormed, from bitter experience.

  “In the name of Heaven, how could she do it?” Perry groaned. “How could Elda know I’d strike here? None of her planes spotted our night marches.”

  “Spies, of course,” Aran Deen shrugged. “Simple for her to slip some of her men into our ranks. We have no regulation uniform, no roll-call, no way of checking spy from soldier. Her army marched with ours, like a shadow across the river. Ah, Perry, the green-eyed witch is no fool!”

  Perry knew that he was temporarily berserk, in the following days.

  Under forced march, he led his army south, and rammed against the Line three more times. Elda and her army were always there. If he marched by day, her scouting planes easily followed, circling like mechanical eyes. If he marched by night, spies leaked across the river. There was no way of checking spies. A strict sentry system meant nothing, when the sentry himself might be a spy. To institute roll-call would take weeks—months!

  No time for that. Three more men-draining, futile thrusts against the adamant Line, and Perry gave up. It was like trying to crack a nut with a rubber nutcracker. Mightier armies of the past had been hurled back. It was like a spring-cushion—the farther the advance, the more devastating the back-push.

  PERRY came out of a daze to realize the war had assumed proportions beyond first expectations. It was not just a matter of gathering an army and smashing forward. Geography had thrust its leering face into the picture.

  “I see it all now,” he murmured, poring over a map of Europe. A plane had brought the Atlas, from America. Printed in the 20th century, it was still the most reliable mapping of the world of the 50th century.

  Perry handled the brittle yellow pages with a sensation of awe. On page 60, Perry blocked in the Maginot Line, shaded in the Swiss Alps, and drew a line around to the head of the Adriatic Sea. It would be his line of march.

  “Lar Tane is impregnable at the west,” Perry summed it up. “The north is out of the question, by sea. But he is open at the east and south—”

  “Not at the east,” denied Aran Deen. “This 20th century map does not show it, but another ‘Maginot Line’ runs from the—what is it called?—Baltic Sea to the Danube.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Perry nodded gloomily. “The great Russo-German struggle of the next century.”

  He blocked in a line down across the plains of long-ago Poland, to
the Danube at Budapest. Then a sharp turn, and a line to the Adriatic Sea. For in the 22nd century, the Slav-Balkan Federation had dug in against invasion from the north.

  “What a mad world it was,” reflected Aran Deen. “Your father saw the beginning of scientific war, Lar Tane the end of it. For a thousand years, the European wolves ran each other down. And America too. Then the lights of civilization blinked out altogether. Now, at the dawn after the Dark Age, Lar Tane is once more fighting the old war!”

  Perry shrugged that away.

  His eyes stared at the blocked-in map.

  “Lar Tane has us cut off from the Rhine to the Adriatic, and then up to the Baltic. But one spot is open. The south, between the Tyrolean Alps and the Adriatic—”

  He clutched the old man’s arm suddenly.

  “Or was a line built there too!”

  Aran Deen grinned toothlessly, at the younger man’s sharp dread.

  “No, not there—luckily.”

  Perry straightened.

  “Then we attack there, for a drive on Vinna.”

  A plane droned down from the clouds, soon after. Again a stone bounced down at Perry’s feet, wrapped in paper. He knew it was from Elda, for again he saw the coppery flash of her hair.

  “To Perry, Lord of Earth, pro-tem. You have made it interesting. If I must tell you, your only chance is from the south. Your last chance! Make it good. Elda.”

  PERRY crumpled the paper in his hand, knuckles white.

  “I’ll make it good!” he hissed. “I’ll take the mockery out of her green eyes. We’ll see if she’s so high and mighty when my army marches into Vinna. We’ll find out if she can smile when she’s a prisoner of war!”

  “You hate her, don’t you, Perry?” Aran Deen cackled.

  “Of course I hate her,” Perry snapped. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “She will have to be sentenced to death, along with Lar Tane. Remember that!”

  Perry started. He hadn’t thought that far.

  “And Stuart?” he whispered. A world divided, brother against brother. That thought struck again, like a sledge-blow.