Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER FOURTEEN_

  The _Invincible_ hung in space, an empty, airless hull, the largestthing afloat.

  Chartered freighters, leaving their ports from distant parts of theEarth, had converged upon her hours before, had unloaded cratedapparatus, storing it in the yawning hull. Then they had departed.

  Now the sturdy little space-yacht, _Comet_, was towing the great shipout into space, 500,000 miles beyond the orbit of the Moon. Slowly thehull was being taken farther and farther away from possible discovery.

  Work on the installation of the apparatus had started almost as soon asthe _Comet_ had first tugged at the ponderous mass. Leaving only askeleton crew in charge of the _Comet_, the rest of the selected crewhad begun the assembly of the mighty machines which would transform the_Invincible_ into a thing of unimaginable power and speed.

  The doors were closed and sealed and the air, already stored in theship's tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the _Comet's_towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but notenough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. Anelectric cable was run back from the little yacht and the _Invincible_took her first breath of life.

  The work advanced rapidly, for every man was more than a mere engineeror spacebuster. They were a selected crew, the men who had helped tomake the name of Gregory Manning famous throughout the Solar System.

  First the engines were installed, then the two groups of five massivepower plants and the single smaller engine as an auxiliary supply plantfor the light, heat, air.

  The accumulators of the _Comet_ were drained in a single tremendoussurge and the auxiliary generator started. It in turn awoke to life theother power plants, to leave them sleeping, idling, but ready forinstant use to develop power such as man never before had dreamed ofholding and molding to his will.

  Then, with the gigantic tools these engines supplied ... tools of pureforce and strange space fields ... the work was rapidly completed. Thepower boards were set in place, welded in position by a sudden furiousblast of white hot metal and as equally sudden freezing, to be followedby careful heating and recooling till the beryl-steel reached itsmaximum strength. Over the hull swarmed spacesuited men, using thatstrange new power, heat-treating the stubborn metal in a manner neverbefore possible.

  The generators were charging the atoms of the ship's beryl-steel hidewith the same hazy force that had trapped and held the gangster ship ina mighty vise. Thus charged, no material thing could penetrate them. Thegreatest meteor would be crushed to drifting dust without so much asscarring that wall of mighty force ... meteors traveling with a speedand penetrative power that no gun-hurled projectile could ever hope toattain.

  Riding under her own power, driven by the concentration of gravitationallines, impregnable to all known forces, containing within her hull thesecrets of many strange devices, the _Invincible_ wheeled in space.

  * * * * *

  Russell Page lounged in a chair before the control manual of thetele-transport machine. He puffed placidly at his pipe and looked outthrough the great sweep of the vision panel. Out there was the black ofspace and the glint of stars, the soft glow of distant Jupiter.

  Greg Manning was hunched over the navigation controls, sharp eyeswatching the panorama of space.

  Russ looked at him and grinned. On Greg's face there was a smile, butabout his eyes were lines of alert watchfulness and thought. GregManning was in his proper role at the controls of a ship such as the_Invincible_, a man who never stepped backward from danger, whose spirithungered for the vast stretches of void that lay between the worlds.

  Russ leaned back, blowing smoke toward the high-arched control roomceiling.

  They had burned their bridges behind them. The laboratory back in themountains was destroyed. Locked against any possible attack by a sphereof force until the tele-transport had lifted from it certain items ofequipment, it had been melted into a mass of molten metal that formed apool upon the mountain top, that ran in gushing, fiery ribbons down themountain side, flowing in gleaming curtains over precipices. It wouldhave been easier to have merely disintegrated in one bursting flash ofenergy, but that would have torn apart the entire mountain range,overwhelmed and toppled cities hundreds of miles away, dealt Earth astaggering blow.

  A skeleton crew had taken the _Comet_ back to Earth and landed it onGreg's estate. Once again the tele-transport had reached out, wrappedits fingers around the men who stepped from the little ship. In lessthan the flash of a strobe light, they had been snatched back to the_Invincible_, through a million miles of space, through the very wallsof the ship itself. One second they had been on Earth, the next secondthey were in the control room of the _Invincible_, grinning, salutingGreg Manning, trotting back to their quarters in the engine rooms.

  * * * * *

  Russ stared out at space, puffed at his pipe, considering.

  A thousand years ago men had held what they called tournaments. Armoredknights rode out into the jousting grounds and broke their lances toprove which was the better man. Today there was to be anothertournament. This ship was to be their charger, and the gauntlet had beenflung to Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power. And all of space wasto be the jousting grounds.

  This was war. War without trappings, without fanfare, but bitter warupon which depended the future of the Solar System. A war to break thegrip of steel that Interplanetary accumulators had gained upon theplanets, to shatter the grim dream of empire held by one man, a war forthe right to give to the people of the worlds a source of power thatwould forever unshackle them.

  Back in those days, a thousand years ago, men had built a system ofgovernment that historians called the feudal system. By this systemcertain men were called lords or barons and other titles. They held thepower of life and death over the men "under" them.

  This was what Spencer Chambers was trying to do with the SolarSystem ... what he would do if someone did not stop him.

  * * * * *

  Russ bit viciously on his pipe-stem.

  The Earth, the Solar System, never could revert to that ancient way ofgovernment. The proud people spawned on the Earth, swarming outward tothe other planets, must never have to bow their heads as minions to anoverlord.

  The thrum of power was beating in his brain, the droning, humming powerfrom the engine rooms that would blast, once and forever, the lastthreat of dictatorship upon any world. The power that would free apeople, that would help them on and up and outward to the great destinythat was theirs.

  And this had come because, wondering, groping, curiously, he had soughtto heat a slender thread of imperm wire within Force Field 348, becauseanother man had listened and had made available his fortune to continuethe experiments. Blind luck and human curiosity ... perhaps even themadness of a human dream ... and from those things had come this greatship, this mighty power, these many bulking pieces of equipment thatwould perform wonders never guessed at less than a year ago.

  Greg Manning swiveled his chair. "Well, Russ, we're ready to begin.Let's get Wrail first."

  Russ nodded silently, his mind still half full of fleeting thought.Absent-mindedly he knocked out his pipe and pocketed it, swung around tothe manual of the televisor. His fingers reached out and tapped apattern.

  Callisto appeared within the screen, leaped upward at them. Then thesurface of the frozen little world seemed to rotate swiftly and a domeappeared.

  The televisor dived through the dome, sped through the city, straightfor a penthouse apartment.

  Ben Wrail sat slumped in a chair. A newspaper was crumpled at his feet.In his lap lay a mangled dead cigar.

  "Greg!" yelled Russ. "Greg, there's something wrong!"

  Greg leaped forward, stared at the screen. Russ heard his smothered cryof rage.

  In Wrail's forehead was a tiny, neatly drilled hole from which a singledrop of blood oozed.

  "Murdered!" exclaimed Russ.

 
; "Yes, murdered," said Greg, and there was a sudden calmness in hisvoice.

  Russ grasped the televisor control. Ranthoor's streets ran beneath them,curiously silent and deserted. Here and there lay bodies. A few shopwindows were smashed. But the only living that stirred was a dog thatslunk across the street and into the shadows of an alley.

  Swiftly the televisor swung along the streets. Straight into the screenclanked a marching detail of government police, herding before them ahalf dozen prisoners. The men had their hands bound behind their backs,but they walked with heads held high.

  "Revolution," gasped Russ.

  "Not a revolution. A purge. Stutsman is clearing the city of all whomight be dangerous to him. This will be happening on every other planetwhere Chambers holds control."

  Perspiration ran down Russ's forehead and dripped into his eyes as hemanipulated the controls.

  "Stutsman is striking first," said Greg, calmly ... far too calmly."He's consolidating his position, possibly on the pretense that plotshave been discovered."

  A few buildings were bombed. A line of bodies were crumpled at the footof a steel wall, marking the spot where men had been lined up and moweddown with one sweeping blast from a heater.

  Russ turned the television controls. "Let's see about Venus and Mars."

  The scenes in Ranthoor were duplicated in Sandebar on Mars, in NewChicago, the capital of Venus. Everywhere Stutsman had struck ...everywhere the purge was wiping out in blood every person who mightrevolt against the Chambers-dictated governments. Throughout the SolarSystem violence was on the march, iron-shod boots trampling the rightsof free men to tighten the grip of Interplanetary.

  * * * * *

  In the control room of the _Invincible_ the two men stared at oneanother.

  "There's one man we need," said Greg. "One man, if he's still alive, andI think he is."

  "Who is that?" asked Russ.

  "John Moore Mallory," said Greg.

  "Where is he?"

  "I don't know. He was imprisoned in Ranthoor, but Stutsman transferredhim some place else. Possibly to one of the prison fleet."

  "If we had the records of the Callisto prison," suggested Russ, "wecould find out."

  "If we had the records ..."

  "We'll get them!" Russ said.

  He swung back to the keyboard again.

  A moment later the administration offices of the prison were on thescreen.

  The two men searched the vision plate.

  "The records are most likely in that vault," said Russ. "And the vaultis locked."

  "Don't worry about the lock," snapped Greg. "Just bring the whole damnthing here--vault and records and all."

  Russ nodded grimly. His thumb tripped the tele-transport control andfrom the engine rooms came a drone of power. In Ranthoor Prison, greatbands of force wrapped themselves around the vault, clutching it,enfolding it within a sphere of power. Back in the _Invincible_ theengines screamed and the vault was ripped out of the solid steel wall aseasily as a man might rip a button from his shirt.