Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER THIRTEEN_

  The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Regand Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.

  "It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!"

  Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and,as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls werelocked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and theship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.

  "Do something!" screamed Max. "You damn fool, do something!"

  "I can't," moaned Chizzy. "The ship is out of control."

  It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reservepower far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream ... it wastops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerfulthan the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.

  "Manning's got us!" squealed Pete. "We came out to get him and now hehas us instead!"

  The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against itsplates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel andhear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greaterpace through the tenuous atmosphere.

  The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon andthe brush-stroke mountains far below.

  Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, downinto the saw-teeth of the mountains.

  "We're falling!" yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.

  But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspendedabove a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.

  "That's Manning's laboratory," whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.

  The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over,drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into theengines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined andscreamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast ofheat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of theframe creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines ... but theship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.

  Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand beganclawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were onlytwo men in the cabin with him--Reg and Max. Pete had gone!

  "He just disappeared," Max jabbered. "He was standing there in front ofus. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke.Then he was gone."

  * * * * *

  Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, noheat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind hadbecome disembodied.

  Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on alight. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split secondbefore, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.

  It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, alaboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery,lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illuminationwhite as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.

  Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile onhis lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. Thesmiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!

  With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights cameup and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heatthat sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemedto strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with aflare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into thegangster's body.

  His finger released its pressure and the gun dangled limply from hishand. He moaned with the pain of burns upon his unprotected face andhands. He beat feebly at tiny, licking blazes that ran along hisclothing.

  Manning was still smiling at him.

  "You can't reach me, Pete," he said. "You can only hurt yourself. You'reenclosed within a solid wall of force that matter cannot penetrate."

  A voice came from one corner of the room: "I'll bring Chizzy down next."

  Pete whirled around and saw Russell Page for the first time. Thescientist sat in front of a great control board, his swift, skillfulfingers playing over the banks of keys, his eyes watching the instrumentand the screen that slanted upward from the control banks.

  Pete felt dizzy as he stared at the screen. He could see the interior ofthe ship he had been yanked from a moment before. He could see his threecompanions, talking excitedly, frightened by his disappearance.

  * * * * *

  His eyes flicked away from the screen, looked up through the skylightabove him. Outlined against the sky hung the ship. At the nose andstern, two hemispheres of blue-white radiance fitted over the metalframework, like the jaws of a powerful vise, holding the craftimmovable.

  His gaze went back to the screen again, just in time to see Chizzydisappear. It was as if the man had been a mere figure chalked upon aboard ... and then someone had taken a sponge and wiped him out.

  Russ's fingers were flying over the keys. His thumb reached out andtripped a lever. There was a slight hum of power.

  And Chizzy stood beside him.

  Chizzy did not pull his gun. He whimpered and cowered within theinvisible cradle of force.

  "You're yellow," Pete snarled at him, but Chizzy only covered his eyeswith his arms.

  "Look, boss," said Pete, addressing Scorio, "what are you doing here? Weleft you back in New York."

  Scorio did not answer. He merely glared. Pete lapsed into silence,watching.

  * * * * *

  Manning stood poised before the captives, rocking back and forth on hisheels.

  "A nice bag for one evening," he told Russ.

  Russ grinned and stoked up his pipe.

  Manning turned to the gangster chief. "What do you think we ought to dowith these fellows? We can't leave them in those force shells too longbecause they'll die for lack of air. And we can't let them loose becausethey might use their guns on us."

  "Listen, Manning," Scorio rasped hoarsely, "just name your price to letus loose. We'll do anything you want."

  Manning drew his mouth down. "I can't think of a thing. We just don'tseem to have any use for you."

  "Then what in hell," the gangster asked shakily, "are you going to dowith us?"

  "You know," said Manning, "I may be a bit old-fashioned along somelines. Maybe I am. I just don't like the idea of killing people formoney. I don't like people stealing things other people have worked hardto get. I don't like thieves and murderers and thugs corrupting citygovernments, taking tribute on every man, woman and child in our bigcities."

  "But look here, Manning," pleaded Scorio, "we'd be good citizens if wejust had a chance."

  Manning's face hardened. "You sent these men here to kill us tonight,didn't you?"

  "Well, not exactly. Stutsman kind of wanted you killed, but I told theboys just to get the stuff in the safe and never mind killing you. Isaid to them that you were pretty good eggs and I didn't like to bumpyou off, see?"

  "I see," said Manning.

  He turned his back on Scorio and started to walk away. The gangsterchief came half-way out of his chair, and as he did so, Russ reached outa single finger and tapped a key. Scorio screamed and beat with hisfists against the wall of force that had suddenly formed about him. Thatsingle tap on the great keyboard had sprung a trap, had been the onefactor necessary to bring into being a force shell already spun andwaiting for him.

  Manning did not even turn around at Scorio's scream. He slowly paced hisway down the line of standing gangsters. He stopped in front of Pete andlooked at him.

  "Pete," he said, "you've sprung a good many prisons, haven't you?"

  "There ain't a jug in the System that can hold me," Pete boasted, "andthat's a fact."

/>   "I believe there's one that could," Greg told him. "One that no man hasever escaped from, or ever will."

  "What's that?" demanded Pete.

  "The Vulcan Fleet," said Greg.

  Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose inthose eyes. "Don't send me there! Send me any place but there!"

  Greg turned to Russ and nodded. Russ's fingers played their tune of doomupon the keyboard. His thumb depressed a lever. With a roar fivegigantic material energy engines screamed with thrumming power.

  Pete disappeared.

  The engines roared with thunderous throats, a roar that seemed to drownthe laboratory in solid waves of sound. A curious refractive effectdeveloped about the straining hulks as space near them bent under theirlashing power.

  Months ago Russ and Greg had learned a better way of transmitting powerthan by metal bars or through conducting beams. Beams of such power aswere developing now would have smashed atoms to protons and electrons.Through a window in the side of the near engine, Greg could see the ironingot used as fuel dwindling under the sucking force.

  * * * * *

  The droning died and only a hum remained.

  "He's in a prison now he'll never get out of," said Greg calmly. "Iwonder what they'll think when they find him, dressed in civilianclothes and carrying a heat gun. They'll clap him into a photo-cell andkeep him there until they investigate. When they find out who he is, hewon't get out--he has enough unfinished prison sentences to last acentury or two."

  For Pete was on one of the Vulcan Fleet ships, the hell-ships of theprison fleet. There were confined only the most vicious and the mostdepraved of the Solar System's criminals. He would be forced to workunder the flaming whip-lashes of a Sun that hurled such intenseradiations that mere spacesuits were no protection at all. The workerson the Vulcan Fleet ships wore suits that were in reality photo-cellswhich converted the deadly radiations into electric power. For electricpower can be disposed of where heat cannot.

  Quailing inside his force shell, Scorio saw his men go, one by one. Sawthem lifted and whisked away, out through the depths of space by themagic touch upon the keyboards. With terror-widened eyes he watchedRuss set up the equations, saw him trip the activating lever, saw themen disappear, listened to the thunderous rumbling of the mightyengines.

  Chizzy went to the Outpost, the harsh prison on Neptune's satellite. Regwent to Titan, clear across the Solar System, where men in the infamouspenal colony labored in the frigid wastes of that moon of Saturn. Maxwent to Vesta, the asteroid prison, which long had been the target ofreformers, who claimed that on it 50 per cent of the prisoners died ofboredom and fear.

  Max was gone and only Scorio remained.

  "Stutsman's the one who got us into this," wailed the gangster. "He'sthe man you want to get. Not me. Not the boys. Stutsman."

  "I promise you," said Greg, "that we'll take care of Stutsman."

  "And Chambers, too," chattered Scorio. "But you can't touch Chambers.You wouldn't dare."

  "We're not worrying about Chambers," Greg told him. "We're not worryingabout anyone. You're the one who had better start doing some."

  Scorio cringed.

  "Let me tell you about a place on Venus," said Greg. "It's in the centerof a big swamp that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction.It's a sort of mountain rising out of the swamp. And the swamp is filledwith beasts and reptiles of every kind. Ravenous things, lusting forblood. But they don't climb the mountain. A man, if he stayed on themountain, would be safe. There's food there. Roots and berries andfruits and even small animals one could kill. A man might go hungry fora while, but soon he'd find the things to eat.

  "But he'd be alone. No one ever goes near that mountain. I am the onlyman who ever set foot on it. Perhaps no one ever will again. At nightyou hear the screaming and the crying of the things down in swamp, butyou mustn't pay any attention to them."

  * * * * *

  Scorio's eyes widened, staring. "You won't send me _there_!"

  "You'll find my campfires," Greg told him, "if the rain hasn't washedthem away. It rains a lot. So much and so drearily that you'll want toleave that mountain and walk down into the swamp, of your own free will,and let the monsters finish you."

  Scorio sat dully. He did not move. Horror glazed his eyes.

  Greg signed to Russ. Russ, pipe clenched between his teeth, reached outhis fingers for the keys. The engines droned.

  Manning walked slowly to a television control, sat down in the chairand flipped over a lever. A face stared out of the screen. It wasstrangely filled with anger and a sort of half-fear.

  "You watched it, didn't you, Stutsman?" Greg asked.

  Stutsman nodded. "I watched. You can't get away with it, Manning. Youcan't take the law into your own hands that way."

  "You and Chambers have been taking the law into your hands for years,"said Greg. "All I did tonight was clear the Earth of some vermin. Everyone of those men was guilty of murder ... and worse."

  "What did you gain by it?" asked Stutsman.

  Greg gave a bitter laugh. "I convinced you, Stutsman," he said, "that itisn't so easy to kill me. I think it'll be some time before you tryagain. Better luck next time."

  He flipped the switch and turned about in the chair.

  Russ jerked his thumb at the skylight. "Might as well finish the shipnow."

  Greg nodded.

  An instant later there was a fierce, intolerably blue-white light thatlit the mountains for many miles. For just an instant it flared,exploding into millions of brilliant, harmless sparks that died intodarkness before they touched the ground. The gangster ship was destroyedbeyond all tracing, disintegrated. The metal and quartz of which it wasmade were simply gone.

  Russ brought his glance back from the skylight, looked at his friend."Stutsman will do everything he can to wipe us out. By tomorrow morningthe Interplanetary machine will be rolling. With only one purpose--tocrush us."

  "That's right," Greg agreed, "but we're ready for them now. Our shipleft the Belgium factories several hours ago. The _Comet_ towed it outin space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours the _Comet_ will behere to pick us up."

  "War in space," said Russ, musingly. "That's what it will be."

  "Chambers and his gang won't fight according to any rules. There'll beno holds barred, no more feeble attempts like the one they triedtonight. From now on we need a base that simply can't be located."

  "The ship," said Russ.