by Earl
Always, in the past, key cities had held out insanely, magnificently, like Madrid and Warsaw, in the days his father told of. The people, besieged, fired by a mad courage. Perhaps believing, by some twisted psychology of Lar Tane’s that they were in the right, against a world of barbarian invaders.
Why didn’t Elda stop it? Was she as mad as her father? Had she hardened her heart against the lives thrown to the winds? That was the true Elda, letting this go on. More than ever, it beat in Perry’s mind that there was only one way she could pay.
With her own life.
It must be ended. This was the way.
Shell after shell. And with each one, Perry winced. One hit and the tower would go. And Lar Tane. And Elda. And Elda. And Elda. Each shell screamed that, as it belched from the guns.
Suddenly it happened.
A puff of white smoke at the base of the tower. With the range at last, Perry drove a dozen more shells across. The tower rocked. Crazily it swayed, leaned, prepared to crash.
“Cease firing!” Perry shrieked.
All over the ship, the guns stopped. And minute by minute, as though a blanket of silence had dropped from a pitying sky, the dull roar of battle stopped everywhere. The heat-beams winked out. Stuart’s planes buzzed high overhead, then left, their work over. The rattle of guns and cannon thumps died into the background of silence.
Stone Age quiet smothered all the frightful din of war.
Faintly, in his mind, Perry heard the echoing crash of a colossus, in that aching surcease of sound. A colossus that had begun its fall in the 30th century, and completed it now, after an age. Lar Tane’s toppled empire.
It was over.
PERRY left the Chicago and marched his troops of occupation into the city. Detachments branched away, to disarm the surrendered troops. Perry went on, toward the tower. Each step jarred through his brain like a sledge-blow.
Aran Deen, hobbling at his side, slowly shook his head.
“You saved weeks of slaughter, Perry,” he mumbled. “But at a terrific cost—to you.”
Perry’s stony face gave no sign of hearing.
A plane dropped from above and landed daringly in the torn air-field before the tower. Stuart stepped out and ran forward.
“Perry—”
Whatever words of triumph Stuart had been about to shout he left unsaid. With a look at his younger brother’s face, he fell in step beside him, silently.
The base of the tower was a smoking ruin. But the tower itself, by a miracle, still stood upright, leaning at a crazy angle. They stopped before it, looking up. Lar Tane’s body lay crumpled on the balcony. A flying piece from the shells had struck him, perhaps.
A gasp went up.
The figure stirred, staggered to its feet. Clutching the balcony rail, Lar Tane looked around, swaying. Blood dripped from a deep wound in his chest. He looked down, at the watching figures below.
He saluted Perry, and there was defiant mockery in the gesture. Whatever else Lar Tane had been, he was not a weakling. He took defeat, in that one magnificent gesture, like a proud and unhumbled monarch.
He stiffened, lifting his head arrogantly. Folding his arms, he looked out over the city, out over the world, taking one last look at the empire that might have been his. Then, with a little leap, he threw himself over the balcony rail. His figure hurtled down into the jagged debris below.
Perry looked at the body, lying broken and sprawled on the ruins. He suppressed the moan on his lips. Somewhere within, another body lay, crushed more horribly.
He stood rigidly, while searching parties scrabbled within, for any that might be alive. Would he have one more glimpse of the emerald glory of her eyes, before they faded in death? He trembled, afraid to face the next moment.
Ten crushed bodies were brought out. Six more were reported pinned hopelessly under fallen walls. All men, Elda’s staff of aides and generals.
Where was Elda’s body?
“We can’t find it,” was the report. “One room is completely caved in.”
She must be in there, ground to pulp. Perry’s shoulders sagged. It was best that way, after all.
He turned away, brokenly.
Aran Deen squeezed his arm.
“Look—”
Perry looked, vacantly.
Then a cry rasped from his throat.
STUART had been gone for some minutes. He reappeared now, a hundred yards away, from beyond the tower ruins. With him was Elda, leaning on his arm. A trickle of blood ran from a slight cut in her smooth temple. She walked slowly, as though not sure of herself. But otherwise she was unharmed.
Elda was alive—alive!
“Not alive!” his thoughts groaned. “Anything but that.”
For now, the war over, came the implacable aftermath—her execution. The world would cry for it. In an earlier time, she might have fled to a neutral country, in exile. There was no such spot on Earth, now.
She stood before him.
The impact of her beauty, first seen after six months, was like a blow to Perry. Coppery cascade of hair, shining in the sun. Ivory face of cameo-cut features. Green eyes that stared haughtily around, unyielding as ever. Whatever her fate, she would accept it unflinchingly.
She saw her father’s body. Only a slight quiver of her lips, a momentary flash of tender pain, showed what she felt. Then she turned back to Perry, head high.
Green eyes met grey eyes, wordlessly.
They stood as in a painted picture. The commander who had lost, and the commander who had won. No, there was no commander who had won.
They had both lost.
The crowd about murmured. Muttered against her, lovely demon who had led legions of death. And the people of the city, the worn, defeated troops, muttered loudest, as though awakening rudely from the evil spell she and her father had cast, leading them to catastrophe.
“Elda—”
Perry went on with his eyes, trying to tell her that what was to come was forced from him. She made no response, no sign of understanding. The emerald eyes were cold, even mocking. She was the Elda of the mask, asking no mercy.
Perry straightened.
The crowd was watching. There could be no unbending, no compromise, with what she represented. The world must realize, with her going, that there would be a new world, a new way.
Elda, symbol of war and merciless ways of might, had to be sacrificed on this altar of a new faith.
Perry spoke ringingly, for all to hear. The world was listening. And perhaps somewhere in a higher realm, higher beings who shook their heads pityingly.
“Lar Tane is dead! The creed of rule by force dies with him. The Magna Charta of humanity will be adopted. For your part in the attempt to smash that course, I sentence you, Elda Tane—”
“WAIT!” Stuart’s voice had burst in. He took a step forward.
“Perry, listen. I found Elda in the prison room, under the tower. She was imprisoned there, by Lar Tane! She wasn’t the commander of his forces, in this last campaign. She hasn’t been, for six months!”
Perry struggled up from dark depths.
“Elda, is it true?”
His voice was a ragged whisper.
She spoke without appeal.
“Yes. When I returned from Nartica, I told my father he was wrong. For six months, I told him that. When you attacked, I refused to lead our forces. He imprisoned me below the tower.”
Was she lying, to save her skin? Hoping to arouse the sympathy of the crowd? And of him? Had Stuart and she devised this cheap scheme?
Stuart had dragged a captured officer forward, questioning him.
“Elda was not our commander,” he vouched. “On the day of the attack, at the Rhine, she came and screamed that we must not fight. It was then Lar Tane had her imprisoned.”
Aran Deen was peering at the girl. There was something soft in his wrinkled old face as he peered from her to Perry.
“And you didn’t tell of the destroyer, Elda?” Aran Deen queried. “Else your fa
ther would have made mines, or slung steel nets before the Rhine and Budapest. You didn’t tell, did you, Elda?”
She shook her head.
“If she had, the war would still be going on—for years!” the old seer said loudly, for the benefit of the crowd. “She brought it to a quick close!”
The audience murmured, and suddenly burst out into cheers. In one instant, Elda Tane had become almost a heroine, in that act of omission. In the glaring light of peace, all things were bright.
Aran Deen smiled and mumbled to himself.
“Human nature is a queer thing. Elda Tane will be remembered in history more for this than all before. And rightly so. The courage to change convictions is greater than any other, in this strange groping called life.”
Aran Deen raised his arm again to speak, seeing that Perry had apparently fallen into a stupefied trance.
“In behalf of Stirnye, Lord of Earth, I grant full pardon to Elda Tane, as to all who took part in the rebellion. It is past and forgotten!”
And now the assemblage, soldiers of Lar Tane and Perry alike, burst out in full-throated acclaim.
“Hall, Stirnye, Lord of Earth!” Stirnye! Stirnye! They had called him that. Perry choked, as the spirit of his father seemed to look down on the scene.
ARAN DEEN smiled and pushed Perry forward, toward Elda.
“Give the crowd something to really cheer about, you young fool.”
“Elda—”
It was a hoarse croak from Perry as he stumbled toward her.
She flew in his arms, weeping against his shoulder unashamedly. She was the true Elda again, soft, tender, feminine.
“Dearest!” she whispered. “This was the empire I wanted, without knowing it. The empire of love. Don’t let me go—ever!”
She wiped away her tears happily after a moment.
“We’ll build our home here, in Vinna.
I don’t like New York. We’ll raise our sons here.”
“Tamed?” Aran Deen asked himself. “I wonder. Perry will find out his job has just begun, with the green-eyed witch.”
But the old seer grinned like a monkey, thinking it.
The crowd’s cheer, at sight of the couple together, was whole-hearted. The way of a man and girl, changing little with the passing of time and circumstance, was a fitting climax to the dark days past.
Like the glory of a summer dawn, it spread a glow that seemed to light a new world to come.
[1] Electro-leptic suspension of life is an electrically induced catalepsy. The preservation of the body of Lenin is not such a process. Lenin died of a paralysis induced by arterio-sclerosis, and the process of embalming used on his body is perhaps the most perfect modern science has yet been able to produce. Thus, Knight is in error when he says Lenin was the object of a 20th century scientist’s experiment on electro-lepsis. Theorists of today are certain that it can be done, and work is progressing along such lines. However, success has not yet been attained.—ED.
[2] Actually this is the way present-day engineers plan to remove the ocean’s wealth from its suspension in the water. However, their methods are simpler; involving a boiling away of the water by heat, and a distillation of the steam, which carries away many elements in gaseous form, and a fractional distillation and separation of the remaining residue. The possibility of obtaining immense quantities of rubber from seaweed has been advanced, but it is also likely that rubber could be produced directly from sea water, from the minute algae that it contains in uncounted billions of pounds. The radioactive wax that is mentioned here is totally unknown today, although it is known that radium salts, mixed with wax, can be regulated as to degree of power and medicinal application to an amazing degree.—ED.
[3] Obviously the wax mentioned here has a property of breaking down radium and a greatly accelerated pace, thus producing enormous amounts of energy. If this is possible, it is true that a heat ray could be produced from radium energy.—ED.
1946
ADVENTURE IN SPACE
“The masked badmen, robbing the stagecoach, turned in alarm at the sound of galloping hooves. Up came Pecos Pete, on his great horse Dasher, with both six-guns blazing. The bandits made the mistake of trading shots with the famed Western hero, and in seconds were stretched flat on the sand. Laconically, Pecos Pete blew the smoke out of his guns, waved genially to the admiring stage-coach passengers, and thundered off, seeking more badmen . . .”
The reader of these deathless lines, Jon Jarl, snapped shut the book with an excited sigh. Those old Westerners, he pondered, certainly led a life of thrills and danger. No period in human history had been more colorful, more heroic.
Ah, but those days had been long ago. Let’s see—about 400 years ago, to be exact. This was now the year 2261 A.D.
Jon Jarl sighed. Here he was, living in the super-scientific and highly civilized days of the 23rd Century. The great and adventurous days of the Old West were buried in the dim past. He turned to his controls, correcting his course slightly. It wouldn’t do to miss Mars on his routine patrol flight.
Jon Jarl was on his way to Mars, in a small, sleek spaceship. He was Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol, the police of 2261 A.D. It was his duty to cruise the space lanes between Earth and Mars, along the same routes followed by the giant space liners and cargo rockets. But the distance was great—some 45 million miles—and for long periods he merely set the robot pilot and relaxed in his seat. It was during such times that he read from his well-stocked little library of Western literature. Somehow, the mighty deeds of those old Western heroes satisfied him more than any present-day writings.
Jon Jarl looked out at the bright stars peppering black space and stifled a bored yawn—for the signal light of his radio began blinking. Snapping on the switch, he froze to attention at the voice coming out in an urgent flood.
“Space freighter America calling! Attention, Space Patrol! Pirate ship waylaying us! Please answer, Space Patrol . . .!”
Gone was Lt. Jon Jarl’s lazy boredom. “Lt. Jarl of Space Patrol answering,” he barked into the mike. “What is your position?”
“Sun-line 8, 46 degrees, Fifth Sector,” came back quickly and thankfully. “Hurry—they are boarding us now! We carry a cargo of uranium! If they catch me sending out this signal . . . NO! . . .”
Jon Jarl quivered as the last yelled word was followed by the vicious spat of a ray-gun. Then the radio went dead. Jon could picture exactly what had happened—the pirates storming into the radio room and shooting down the operator in cold blood.
Grinding his teeth, Jon moved his hands over his control board, setting course for the stricken ship. A thunder of rockets shoved his ship forward at mounting speed. It would take him almost an hour to reach the stated position. Would he be in time to stop the space marauders?
An hour later, when the huge bulk of the freighter loomed before his viewport, he saw no sign of the pirate ship nearby. He signaled by radio and finally another voice answered, in tired flat tones.
“Pirates gone. Headed for the asteroids. Shot down four of our crew and took all the uranium.”
“Can you make it to port?” snapped Jon.
“Yes, we’ll make it.”
Lt. Jarl wasted no further time there. A blast of side rockets swung his tiny ship off at a tangent, toward the asteroids beyond Mars. If he put on speed, he might overhaul the pirate ship. Few rocketships of that time matched the powerful, thrumming Space Patrol craft.
A moment later, he picked up their faint rocket-trail, extending back through space like a luminous comet’s tail, and with a grim smile, he pushed the engine to its last notch. He was after them like a relentless bulldog.
Yet it took hours before Jarl caught up with the space buccaneers. When finally he spotted them in his periscope, they were nearing the Asteroids, those tiny worlds circling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. He must intercept them before they hid among those thousands of nameless planetoids. He estimated their gun-power as he plunged close. Looked like
two Hausers, and one big ray-cannon.
The Hausers spat forth suddenly. They had spotted him coming.
But Jarl only grinned as the electric-bolts hissed against his armored hull. No danger from them. But the ray-cannon was a different proposition. As a vivid red ray sprang from it and bathed his portside, Jarl hastened to fling his ship aside. If he allowed them to center their ray on his ship for just one full second, it would burn him to a cinder.
Swinging wide, Jarl stretched his free hand to his own gun-control. He had multiple guns, all firing from one control. In broadsides, he could send out enough lethal rays to blast a mountain to bits. He pressed the trigger—
But the pirates were watchful too. They swung to the left, and the broadside missed them. Then again their ray-cannon spoke, and though Jarl twisted and spun crazily, the red ray followed grimly.
He was outgunned. There was no question of it. The duel in space could only end in one way—with the Space Patrol ship blasted. Jarl could either fight it out to the bitter end—or slink away like a dog with its tail between its legs.
Or—there was a third possibility—Jarl could use his wits. He decided on the latter.
When the red ray next time swung for him, he touched the controls and made his ship do a crazy backward spin, tumbling end over end. As he hoped, the pirates took it for a killing shot. They zoomed away.
Turning out all his lights, Jarl carefully righted the ship and again followed them, but without trying to overtake them. This time he would shadow them, so to speak, to their headquarters. It must be somewhere in these asteroids.
Only minutes later, dodging among the tiny worldlets, the pirate craft slanted down to one rocky little world. Jarl did likewise, landing cautiously out of their sight. In his spacesuit, which furnished him his own air to breathe, he stepped forth, crept close behind a boulder, and observed the pirates unloading the stolen uranium.
One—two—three—four—five. That was all.
Jarl breathed a little easier. Only five pirates against him. It could have been worse. Curiously, at that moment, the thought came to him that these lawless men were the “badmen” of 2261 A.D. Quite as vicious and ruthless as the badmen of the ancient West.