Empire

by Clifford D. Simak

  _CHAPTER SEVENTEEN_

  It was a weird revolution. There were few battles, little blood shed.There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, nopasswords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion againsttyranny.

  It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police werehelpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and thetroopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest wereshadows that flitter here and there ... large and substantial shadows,but impossible to seize and imprison.

  Every scheme that was hatched within the government circles was knownalmost at once to the ghostly leaders who stalked the land. Policedetachments, armed with warrants for the arrests of men who hadparticipated in some action which would stamp them as active rebels,found the suspects absent when they broke down the doors. Someone hadwarned them. Troops, hurried to points where riots had broken out,arrived to find peaceful scenes, but with evidence of recent battle. Therioters had been warned, had made their getaway.

  When the rebels struck it was always at the most opportune time, whenthe government was off balance or off guard.

  In the first day of the revolt, Ranthoor fell when the maddenedpopulace, urged on by the words of a shadowy John Moore Mallory, chargedthe federation buildings. The government fled, leaving all recordsbehind, to Satellite City on Ganymede.

  In the first week three Martian cities fell, but Sandebar, the capital,still held out. On Venus, Radium City was taken by the rebels withintwenty-four hours after the first call to revolt had rung across theworlds, but New Chicago, the seat of government, still was in thegovernment's hands, facing a siege.

  Government propagandists spread the word that the material energyengines were not safe. Reports were broadcast that on at least twooccasions the engines had blown up, killing the men who operated them.

  But this propaganda failed to gain credence, for in the cities that werein the rebel hands, technicians were at work manufacturing and settingup the material engines. Demonstrations were given. The people saw them,saw what enormous power they developed.

  * * * * *

  Russ Page stared incredulously at the television screen. It seemed to beshifting back and forth. One second it held the distorted view ofSatellite City on Ganymede, and the next second the view of jumbled, icydesert somewhere outside the city.

  "Look here, Greg," he said. "Something's wrong."

  Greg Manning turned away from the calculator where he had been workingand stared at the screen.

  "How long has it been acting that way?" he asked.

  "Just started," said Russ.

  Greg straightened and glanced down the row of television machines. Someof them were dead, their switches closed, but on the screens of many ofthe others was the same effect as on this machine. Their operators wereworking frustratedly at the controls, trying to focus the image, bringit into sharp relief.

  "Can't seem to get a thing, sir," said one of the men. "I was working onthe fueling station out on Io, and the screen just went haywire."

  "Mine seems to be all right," said another man. "I've had it on Sandebarfor the last couple of hours and there's nothing wrong."

  A swift check revealed one fact. The machines, when trained on theJovian worlds, refused to function. Anywhere else in space, however,they worked perfectly.

  Russ stoked and lit his pipe, snapped off his machine and swung aroundin the operator's chair.

  "Somebody's playing hell with us out around Jupiter," he stated calmly.

  "I've been expecting something like this," said Greg. "I have beenafraid of this ever since Craven blanketed us out of the Interplanetarybuilding."

  * * * * *

  "He really must have something this time," Russ agreed. "He's blanketingout the entire Jovian system. There's a space field of low intensitysurrounding all of Jupiter, enclosing all the moons. He keeps shiftingthe intensity so that, even though we can force our way through hisfield, the irregular variations make it impossible to line up anything.It works, in principle, just as effectively as if we couldn't getthrough at all."

  Greg whistled soundlessly through suddenly bared teeth.

  "That takes power," he said, "and I'm afraid Craven has it. Power toburn."

  "The collector field?" asked Russ.

  Greg nodded. "A field that sucks in radiant energy. Free energy that hejust reaches out and grabs. And it doesn't depend on the Sun alone. Itprobably makes use of every type of radiation in all of space."

  Russ slumped in his chair, smoking, his forehead wrinkled in thought.

  "If that's what he's got," he finally declared, "he's going to be hardto crack. He can suck in any radiant vibration form, any spacevibration. He can shift them around, break them down and build them up.He can discharge them, direct them. He's got a vibration plant that'sthe handiest little war machine that ever existed."

  Greg suddenly wheeled and walked to a wall cabinet. From it he took abox and, opening it, lifted out a tiny mechanism.

  He chuckled deep in his throat. "The mechanical shadow. The littlemachine that always tells us where Craven is--as long as he's wearinghis glasses."

  "He always wears them," said Russ crisply. "He's blind as a bat withoutthem."

  Greg set the machine down on the table. "When we find Craven, we'll findthe contraption that's blanketing Jupiter and its moons."

  Dials spun and needles quivered. Rapidly Russ jotted down the readingson a sheet of paper. At the calculator, he tapped keys, depressed theactivator. The machine hummed and snarled and chuckled.

  Russ glanced at the result imprinted on the paper roll.

  "Craven is out near Jupiter," he announced. "About 75,000 miles distantfrom its surface, in a plane normal to the Sun's rays."

  "A spaceship," suggested Greg.

  Russ nodded. "That's the only answer."

  The two men looked at one another.

  "That's something we can get hold of," said Greg.

  He walked to the ship controls and lowered himself into the pilot'schair. A hand came out and hauled back a lever.

  The _Invincible_ moved.

  From the engine rooms came the whine of the gigantic power plant as itbuilt up and maintained the gravity concentration center suddenlycreated in front of the ship.

  Russ, standing beside Greg at the control panel, looked out into spaceand marveled. They were flashing through space, their speed building upat a breath-taking rate, yet they had no real propulsion power. Thediscovery of the gravity concentrator had outdated such a method ofdriving a spaceship. Instead, they were falling, hurtling downward intothe yawning maw of an artificial gravity field. And such a method madefor speed, terrible speed.

  Jupiter seemed to leap at them. It became a great crimson and yellowball that filled almost half the vision plate.

  * * * * *

  The _Invincible's_ speed was slacking off, slower and slower, until itbarely crawled in comparison to its former speed.

  Slowly they circled Jupiter's great girth, staring out of the visionport for a sight of Craven's ship. They were nearing the position thelittle mechanical shadow had indicated.

  "There it is," said Russ suddenly, almost breathlessly.

  Far out in space, tiny, almost like a dust mote against the great bulkof the monster planet, rode a tiny light. Slowly the _Invincible_crawled inward. The mote of light became a gleaming silver ship, amighty ship--one that was fully as large as the _Invincible_!

  "That's it all right," said Greg. "They're lying behind a log out hereraising hell with our television apparatus. Maybe we better tickle thema little bit and see what they have."

  Rising from the control board, he went to another control panel. Russremained standing in front of the vision plate, staring down at theship out in space.

  Behind him came a shrill howl from the power plant. The _Invincible_staggered slightly. A beam of deep indigo lashed across space, a
fingersuddenly jabbing at the other ship.

  Space was suddenly colored, for thousands of miles, as the beam struckCraven's ship and seemed to explode in a blast of dazzling indigo light.The ship reeled under the impact of the blow, reeled and weaved in spaceas the beam struck it and delivered to it the mighty power of thescreaming engines back in the engine room.

  "What happened?" Greg screamed above the roar.

  Russ shrugged his shoulders. "You jarred him a little. Pushed himthrough space for several hundred miles. Made him know something had hithim, but it didn't seem to do any damage."

  "That was pure cosmic I gave him! Five billion horsepower--and it juststaggered him!"

  "He's got a space lens that absorbs the energy," said Russ. "The lensconcentrates it and pours it into a receiving chamber, probably a hugephoto-cell. Nobody yet has burned out one of those things on a closedcircuit."

  Greg wrinkled his brow, perplexed. "What he must have is a special fieldof some sort that lowers the wave-length and the intensity. He's gettingnatural cosmics all the time and taking care of them."

  "That wouldn't be much of a trick," Russ pointed out. "But when he takescare of cosmics backed by five billion horsepower ... that's somethingelse!"

  Greg grinned wickedly. "I'm going to hand him a long heat radiation. Ifhis field shortens that any, he'll have radio beam and that will blowphoto-cells all to hell."

  He stabbed viciously at the keys on the board and once again the shrillhowl of the engines came from the rear of the ship. A lance of redsplashed out across space and touched the other ship. Again space waslit, this time with a crimson glow.

  * * * * *

  Russ shook his head. "Nothing doing."

  Greg sat down and looked at Russ. "Funny thing about this. They just satthere and let us throw two charges at them, took everything we gave themand never tried to hand it back."

  "Maybe they haven't anything to hand us," Russ suggested hopefully.

  "They must have. Craven wouldn't take to space with just a purelydefensive weapon. He knew we'd find him and he'd have a fight on hishands."

  Russ found his pipe was dead. Snapping his lighter, he applied flame tothe blackened tobacco. Walking slowly to the wall cabinet, he lifted twoother boxes out, set them on the table and took from them two othermechanical shadows. He turned them on and leaned close, watching thespinning dials, the quivering needles.

  "Greg," he whispered, "Chambers and Stutsman are there in that ship withCraven! Look, their shadows register identical with the one that spottedCraven."

  "I suspected as much," Greg replied. "We got the whole pack cornered outhere. If we can just get rid of them, the whole war would be won in onestroke."

  Russ lifted a stricken face from the row of tiny mechanisms. "This isour big chance. We may never get it again. The next hour could decidewho is going to win."

  Greg rose from the chair and stood before the control board. Grimly hepunched a series of keys. The engines howled again. Greg twisted a dialand the howl rose into a shrill scream.

  From the _Invincible_ another beam lashed out ... another and another.Space was speared with beam after beam hurtling from the great ship.

  Swiftly the beams went through the range of radiation, through radio andshort radio, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, X-ray, the gammasand the cosmics--a terrific flood of billions of horsepower.

  Craven's ship buckled and careened under the lashing impacts of thebombardment, but it seemed unhurt!

  Greg's face was bleaker than usual as he turned from the board to lookat Russ.

  "We've used everything we have," he said, "and he's stopped them all. Wecan't touch him."

  * * * * *

  Russ shivered. The control room suddenly seemed chilly with afrightening kind of cold.

  "He's carrying photo-cells and several thousand tons of accumulatorstacks. Not much power left in them. He could pour a billion horsepowerinto them for hours and still have room for more."

  Greg nodded wearily. "All we've been doing is feeding him."

  The engines were humming quietly now, singing the low song of power heldin leash.

  But then they screamed like a buzz saw biting into an iron-hard stick ofwhite oak. Screamed in a single, frightful agony as they threw into theprotecting wall that enclosed the _Invincible_ all the power they coulddevelop.

  The air of the ship was instantaneously charged with a hazy, bluishglow, and the sharp, stinging odor of ozone filled the ship.

  * * * * *

  Outside, an enormous burst of blue-white flame splashed and spatteredaround the _Invincible_. Living lightning played in solid, snappingsheets around the vision port and ran in trickling blazing fire acrossthe plates.

  Russ cried out and backed away, holding his arm before his eyes. It wasas if he had looked into a nova of energy exploding before his eyes.

  In the instant the scream died and the splash of terrific fire hadvanished. Only a rapidly dying glow remained.

  "What was it?" asked Russ dazedly. "What happened? Ten engines every oneof them capable of over five billion horsepower and every one of themscreaming!"

  "Craven," said Greg grimly. "He let us have everything he had. He simplydrained his accumulator stacks and threw it all into our face. But he'sdone now. That was his only shot. He'll have to build up power now andthat will take a while. But we couldn't have taken much more."

  "Stalemate," said Russ. "We can't hurt him, he can't hurt us."

  "Not by a damn sight," declared Greg. "I still have a trick or two inmind."

  He tried them. From the _Invincible_ a fifty-billion-horsepower bolt ofliving light and fire sprang out as all ten engines thundered with aninsane voice that racked the ship.

  Fireworks exploded in space when the bolt struck Craven's ship. Screenafter screen exploded in glittering, flaming sparks, but the ship rodethe lashing charge, finally halted the thrust of power. The beam glowedfaintly, died out.

  Perspiration streamed down Greg's face as he bent over a calculator andconstructed the formula for a magnetic field. He sent out a field ofsuch unimaginable intensity that it would have drawn any beryl-steelwithin a mile of it into a hard, compact mass. Even the _Invincible_, ahundred miles away, lurched under the strain. But Craven's ship, afterthe first wild jerk, did not move. A curious soft glow spread out fromthe ship, veered sharply and disappeared in the magnetic field.

  Greg swore softly. "He's cutting it down as fast as I try to build itup," he explained, "and I can't move it any nearer."

  From Craven's ship lashed out another thunderbolt and once again theengines screamed in terrible unison as they poured power into the ship'striple screen. The first screen stopped all material things. The secondstopped radiations by refracting them into the fourth dimension. Thethird shield was akin to the anti-entropy field, which stopped allmatter ... and yet the ten engines bellowed like things insane as Cravenstruck with flaming bolts, utilizing the power he had absorbed from thefifty billion horsepower Greg had thrown at him.

  There was anger in Greg Manning's face ... a terrible anger. His fistsknotted and he shook them at the gleaming ship that lay far down nearJupiter.

  "I've got one trick left," he shouted, almost as if he expected Cravento hear. "Just one trick. Damn you, see if you can stop this one!"

  He set up the pattern on the board and punched the activating lever. Theten engines thrummed with power. Then the howling died away.

  Four times they screamed and four times they ebbed into a gentle hum.

  "Get on the navigation controls!" yelled Greg. "Be ready to give theship all you've got."

  Greg leaped for the control chair, grasped the acceleration lever.

  "Now," growled Greg, "look out, Craven, we're coming at you!"

  Greg, teeth gritted, slammed the acceleration over.

  Suddenly all space wrenched horribly with a nauseating, terrible thudthat seemed to strain at the very an
chors of the Universe.