by Earl
“Go and finish your fight, as you told me so often! That’s all that’s left for us. Now it’s you who will fight against me—and for me! Your every thought will be of me, as mine was of you. Take your own medicine, Elda. Get out—get out.”
His savage shouts died away.
Elda’s green eyes glistened. Tears in her eyes, the first he had seen—or thought possible. She was the true Elda standing there, a young tender girl, stripped of all the mask of her tumultuous 30th century start in life. The Elda that Stuart must have loved hopelessly.
But abruptly, she changed.
The head lifted, imperiously. The eyes green fire. The perfect lips thinned and formed words. She was Elda, battle-queen again. She spoke in tones bitter cold.
“All right, Perry. I’ll go. I’ll finish the fight. And I promise you it will be a good fight. I’ll smash the world if I can! I’ll kill, kill—”
Green hell glittered in her eyes.
She jerked open the outer door, flashed him one look of fury, and left.
Perry watched her reach her plane. The Nartican guards waved her on. Her ship rocketed up and vanished among the stars.
She was gone. Gone forever.
Perry reviled the fate that kept them apart. He turned away, haunted by her vision. The vision of her tear-wet face, as he had last seen it. The Elda he loved, but who didn’t exist, except as one of a hundred poses behind a lovely mask.
She would continue the war, fight to the last. That was the real Elda.
CHAPTER XXVI
Blitzkrieg!
PERRY listened, as a thunderous drone filled the air. A hundred Nartican planes, hastily loaded with bombs, soared up to join the battle against Lar Tane’s secret sea fleet.
Perry took a deep breath, sweeping Elda from his mind.
The roaring eagles meant victory in the war. They and the destroyer. He must work thoroughly this time, not hastily. His next attack on Lar Tane’s stronghold must be with full, devastating preparation for a world-shaking blow.
With the drums of war in his pulse, he raced below.
He found Aran Deen with Lord Plaronne and the councillors.
“Elda is gone,” Perry announced briefly. “Now, begin turning out guns, tanks, bombs, bayonets. Every machine in Nartica must be used, an army raised. We’ll arm five million men before we attack.”
Aran Deen spoke gravely.
“We’ve been discussing the situation. Frankly, we need a new war plan. Some of those sea-vessels have the heat-ray, and already they’ve brought down dozens of our planes. We’ll down the fleet, since they left Europe a month ago, before the heat-ray was well-developed. But cracking the Maginot Line in Europe, studded with powerful heat-ray guns, is going to be another story.”
“Yes, we need another war plan. And I have it.” Perry went on eagerly. “That ancient fighting boat, in your museum, Lord Plaronne. I conscript it in the war.”
“But it has no engine,” Aran Deen cried. “It is a bigger, heavier boat than any known today. There is no engine in the world big enough to drive it.”
“You forget the engine in the Dogstar II,” Perry reminded. “I’m sending for it immediately. When we’re ready, the destroyer Chicago will lead our fleet to attack. That, in conjunction with our air-fleet—”
Stuart stood at the side, trembling, eager. Perry looked at him.
“I appoint you commander of the air-fleet, Stuart,” he said “O.K.?”
“O.K.!” Stuart cried back.
They smiled at each other. As boys, they had used that 20th century term, learned from their father.
SIX months later, the skies looked down on what was yet a Stone Age world, and saw an amazing thing.
Long, sleek and deadly, a strange craft led the way from Antarctica. An armored fighting ship of yore, whose like had not sailed the seas for 20 centuries. It was one of the smallest of ancient warships. It would have been a cockleshell beside one of the colossal dreadnaughts of the 30th century.
But in the 50th century, it loomed as the mightiest and deadliest war-machine in existence.
Like a ghost from the past, the destroyer Chicago led the way for a fleet of windjammers, its engine idling, cutting the waves with its sharp steel prow.
Perry stood at the bridge of the USS Chicago, exulting in the feel of power. Beneath the deck sounded the rumble of his Dogstar engine, whirling a huge four-bladed propeller. Nartican technicians had installed the engine. They had also refilled the ancient shells with fresh explosive, to replace powder deteriorated through 3000 years. Leaving Nartica, a test salvo from the guns had ripped apart the Stone Age air.
The Chicago—named after a city that had long ago ceased to exist—was ready after 30 centuries to resume its deathdealing work.
“Strange,” Aran Deen mused, as though he stood in some higher dimension and looked down over two ages. “In 1986 this ship and its fleet lost against European forces. Today, in 5000, destiny resurrects it for a second try. Forty-five superdreadnaughts failed in that past war. Will one little destroyer win, this time?”
There was reason for doubt.
“Elda knows, of course,” Terry said soberly. “If she’s thought of some defense—mines, steel nets—it won’t. Then the war will grind on, maybe for years, till we crack through by sheer force—if we do.”
“The green-eyed witch—” Aran Deen began, and then coughed at the pain in Perry’s eyes. “I mean Elda—she will fight to the last.”
“So will I,” Perry said, with another meaning.
PERRY had organized his tremendous assault on Europe carefully. The Nartican fleet waited at the Azores. A week later it was joined by the American fleet. Altogether 5,000 ships, five million men. A million were armed with steam-rifles. Scores of tanks and cannon lay in the holds. A total armament that in the 20th or 30th centuries would have been laughed at. But in the 50th, it rated as a formidable war-machine.
When all was ready, the armada sailed en masse for the coast of ancient France. As Perry expected, no resistance met them here. Lar Tane had strategically withdrawn into his Maginot shell. One-third of Perry’s troops disembarked in France, ready to march.
A plane launched to America brought back five hundred Nartican eagles, based there, led by Stuart. They landed at the coastal region, to await the zero hour.
Drive by land, sea, and air. That was the plan.
Yet it would not be easy.
Scouting planes, roaming completely around his borders, found Tar Tane apparently impregnable. From the Rhine mouth to the Alps, the ancient Maginot Line was fully manned, and stuldded unbrokenly with heat-ray guns. He had mobilized perhaps five million men himself.
From the Alps to the Adriatic, Lar Tane had closed the gap, digging in where Perry had dug in for reverse reasons. From the Adriatic to Budapest, and from Budapest to the Baltic Sea, the other old-time Maginot Line was fully manned. And all the northern sea-coast was studded with heat-ray guns, against invasion by sea.
Curious parallel.
It was ancient Greater Germany again, hotbed of world ambitions, surrounded by enemies, holding off till the attack had drained itself, and then sweeping out. Lar Tane had won his World Empire that way in 2902. Would he succeed again?
Perry set his jaw grimly. Not if he could help it.
Drive by land, sea, and air.
The universe seemed to peer down, watching.
In the Chicago, Perry steamed slowly north, leading two-thirds of his fleet. At the Dover Straits, the expected enemy phalanx of ships blocked the way. Perry could picture coppery-haired Elda aboard her flagship, mocking, taunting: He could almost hear her voice:
“Trying it again? I’ll throw you back, like the other time. This is 30th century war, the kind I know.”
Perry felt cold and uncertain, as he gave the battle signal.
Would his mailed fist, in the first test, smash futilely against a stone wall?
Battle began. Hell moved in.
FROM Elda’s phalanx swept a
storm of heat-beams. The sails of Perry’s front line of ships caught fire. Men in the focus of the beam screamed horribly and turned lobster-red, slowly cooking alive. This heat-beam was far more powerful than the one tested on New York.
Realizing that, Perry recalled his ragged front line, out of range, which seemed to be a mile. Waiting, there finally came a multiplied drone, and 200 Nartican bombing planes soared from their base in France, as prearranged. Perry had worked out a complete blitzkrieg time-table.
Perry shouted in his speaking tube, to the engine room of the Chicago.
“Full speed ahead! Man the guns!”
The Chicago leaped out, like a bulldog. Its guns thundered. Six-inch shells screamed across to the phalanx, in broadsides that needed no skilled aiming. Enemy ships shuddered and sank.
Back came the hellish heat-rays. But they met only metal. Thick armor plate that did not burn, as sails and wood did. And now the circling bombers dived, dropping their cargoes of death. Heat-rays stabbed up at them, here and there bringing a plane down, but there were many more.
Perry and his ghost-ship from the past swung back and forth across the phalanx, raking them mercilessly. Gaps appeared in the enemy line. Into these swarmed Perry’s waiting attack ships. At close quarters, the deck mortars belched grapeshot at the enemy, wiping out heat-beam crews.
Before sundown, the phalanx broke, fled. Perry’s victorious fleet sailed into the Straits and anchored.
“I thought you’d do better than that, Elda,” Perry said to her image, triumphantly.
Triumphantly? The first step in victory. At the last step, Elda would be a prisoner of war, sentenced to die.
AT dawn, Perry’s fleet approached its second objective—the Rhine plant.
Here, no ships opposed them. But when Perry tentatively sent a flight forward, invisible fire leaped from the ramparts of the huge plant, and from the beginning of the Maginot Line at the river’s mouth. Long-range heat-rays that fired a ship’s sails at better than two miles.
Perry recalled his ships and once again bellowed into his speaking tube. Going out alone, the Chicago’s guns thundered. Shells whistled toward the plant. Salvos that sent showers of concrete, brick and steel flying. Again Stuart’s eagles descended, raining down bombs. The Rhine plant slowly began to crumble, under the hammering.
But it took three days.
The Rhine plant had been protected with hundreds of heat-ray guns. Their upward stabbing beams brought down the air-fleet so rapidly that they no longer power-dived. Instead, they dropped their bombs haphazardly from a mile high. Many splashed harmlessly in the river, or in surrounding territory.
And the enemy, divining the formidable threat of the Chicago, concentrated a flood of heat-beams toward it. When the metal armor began slowly to heat up, endangering their arsenal, Perry slipped back. Elevating their guns, the crews found the new range by trial and error, and the bombardment kept up.
Three days later, the plant was a shambles. The last heat-beam flicked out, as its crew fled.
“Lar Tane and Elda may not know it, but they’re done for,” Aran Deen chortled. “With the Rhine plant gone, Lar Tane’s only metal source, it’s just a question of time. He’s like a Cyclops now, with the eye knocked out.”
Perry nodded.
“Elda can’t stop me now. I thought she’d put up a stiffer fight than this. Why didn’t she think of mines, to stop the Chicago?”
The next step was simple. Moving, to position, Perry shelled the first three miles of the Maginot Line, in conjunction with Stuart’s bombers. Heat-beams blasted back furiously at first, then blinked out, one by one. A hole had been knocked in the Line!
A week later, half the fleet had disembarked and set up camp in the gap.
“Hold out, if the enemy attacks,” Perry commanded. “When the order comes, march on Vinna!”
With the remaining third of his original fleet and men, Perry steamed back through the Dover Straits, toward Gibraltar, and beyond. Two weeks later he separated from the fleet, sending them up the Adriatic Sea, to land within marching distance of Budapest.
The Chicago, alone now, for the first time utilized its full speed. Like a greyhound of the seas it passed Crete, steamed through the Dardanelles, and turned north into the Black Sea. In three days it was turning into the Danube, and heading for Budapest.
At dawn of the fourth day, the Chicago’s guns raked up and down the Maginot fortifications at Budapest, laughing at the heat-beams, blowing them out of existence. A five-mile gap in the Line allowed the Adriatic army, as soon as it arrived, to swarm in.
“Now we’re ready,” Aran Deen said, rubbing his hands.
Perry nodded, and sent the final signal, by plane.
THE Chicago had opened two holes in the impregnable Maginot Line.
Into these poured his troops, at the Rhine and at Budapest. And at the south, where his Mannerheim Line had been, a third of his huge army, from France, crushed against that one weak link.
In the following month, Perry felt like some Alexander or Napoleon.
His planes reported steadily.
Pushing in at the Rhine gap, his army there had met enemy resistance, finally. Superior in rifles, cannon and attack tanks, Perry’s forces broke through the enemy in three weeks. They were now steam-rolling toward Vinna.
At Budapest, the same had happened, Perry’s army grinding forward inexorably. At the Mannerheim Line, it took the full month for Perry’s forces to smash through, but now they, too, were marching on Vinna.
Blitzkrieg!
All Lar Tane’s elaborate Maginot siege strategy was for nothing. The Chicago, war-engine of the 20th century, had cracked the nut wide open. The three-headed Juggernaut swept down on Vinna, heart of Lar Tane’s crumbling empire—from the west, the east and the south.
Victory! He had it. Perry laughed at the image of emerald-eyed Elda in his mind. She had met her match on the battlefield at last, as well as on an inner front.
But the laugh was a grinding, sick one. The image he saw of her was with glorious eyes tear-wet, face sweet, tender. His armies tramped toward Vinna, to deliver her in his hands—for execution.
Unless something happened. Why had nothing happened to stop him? Was something about to happen? Perry was uneasy, with those submerged thoughts plaguing him constantly. Did Elda have some new trick up her sleeve, as the times before?
CHAPTER XXVII
Last Victory
THE Chicago weighed anchor and steamed up toward Vinna itself. The time had come for the last act.
Lar Tane had surrounded his capital city with almost a continuous ring of heat-ray guns. They held off the three armies, Stuart’s diving planes, and even kept the Chicago far down the river.
Perry first had a message dropped within the city, to be delivered to Lar Tane.
“To Lar Tane and Elda. You’ve been defeated. You must know it yourselves. Surrender Vinna, and your persons. If you agree, fly a white flag from your central tower, at noon. If I don’t see the flag, I attack. Perry, Lord of Earth.”
At noon, Perry put down his binoculars with a curse.
“They refuse?” Aran Deen surmised. “I told you, Perry. The green-eyed wi—Elda will fight to the last. Neither of them is quite human.”
Perry gave the attack signal, and all the elemental fury of war tore loose. Stuart’s total fleet of warplanes droned two miles above, over the heat-rays, pouring down lethal cargo. The three armies sniped and bombarded with their mortars. The Chicago meticulously gunned all the heat-ray emplacements within range, and was then forced to wait, with ammunition low.
Yet, in a week, there was no sign of surrender.
“A city is not easy to reduce,” Aran Deen stated. “They might hold out for months.”
“They’re mad!” Perry groaned, sick of the senseless carnage.
A plane swooped and a message bounced to the deck. Perry opened it with trembling fingers, hoping it was surrender. But it was from Stuart, not Elda.
�
�Perry. I flew low over the city, through a gap where the heat-rays were blasted out, to look over the situation. Going past Lar Tane’s tower, I saw him standing there on the balcony. Apparently he watches every day, with arms folded. Perhaps he’s mad, to let the hopeless fight go on. But suppose you aim for the tower with your ship’s guns. I tried to bomb it, but missed. If you blast it, and him, I think the fight will be over. He has a magnetic hold on his troops that will inspire them to fight to the end. If he’s gone, the spell is over. Blast that tower! Stuart.”
“That will do it!” Aran Dean agreed fiercely. “Perry, can we hit the tower? It’s twelve miles.”
“I think we can,” Perry groaned.
Aran Deen looked at him, startled. Then he knew. Elda Tame might be in that tower too, directing the battle from that central point. Aran Deen squinted his eyes toward the city.
“No,” he said. “It would take many shells. Most would hit nearby houses, killing innocent women and children. We’ll go on as we have, wearing down his military forces—”
“Don’t make excuses for me,” Perry blazed. “I’ll blast that tower, and Lar Tane and Elda, and to hell with it all.”
He leaped to a gun turret himself, and applied his eye to the ancient sights, with their accuracy unimpaired.
The tower was a barely visible sliver of shiny metal, even in the binocular sights, rearing among the structures of half-resurrected Vinna. Lar Tane’s figure was a black dot on the crow’s nest balcony. Perry could picture him with arms folded, surveying the battleground.
Napoleon at Waterloo.
And was Elda beside him at times, or below issuing swift orders to a streaming staff of officers?
“FIRE!” Perry yelled, setting the aim.
He watched in the glasses, as shell after shell arced over the city toward that small target. Puffs of exploding debris dotted the vicinity around the tower. Houses shattering. Innocent women and children killed perhaps. But it would be swiftly over, if Lar Tane went. Otherwise it might go on for bloody weeks, with thousands of men sacrificed.