The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  “Look here, Thalma. The time-lever you pressed returned automatically to neutral position. That must mean the time mechanism is set to make just that one leap of approximately four hundred years. That gives me an idea. All we have to do is press the other handle. We’ll shoot back to my time—I’ll see that you’re taken care of there for life.” His hands darted to the board.

  Thalma thrust it aside.

  “No!” Low-voiced as the exclamation was, inflexible determination sounded in it. “No, Jim, I cannot. I must remain in my own time. I must meet Marnota face to face and accuse him of his crimes. My father’s memory cries out for vengeance, and the downtrodden people lift their hands to me in mute appeal. Something here,” a white hand pressed against her heart, “tells me that he cannot triumph.”

  Dunning’s hand dropped from the levers, and he was silent. He could not argue against the burning vision in Thalma’s grey eyes, the fire in her low voice.

  “But you can easily escape.” The girl turned and pointed. “There, just in front of the couch, is a trapdoor to the lower hull. Hide below there, among the coils, till I am taken away. Then you can steal but, shift the time lever and go back to the twentieth century.”

  “No!” Dunning told her firmly. “I’m staying here—with you.”

  They were slowing now. Below was a far-spreading, white city. Great towers reached upward to the dropping sphere. The rooftops were landscaped gardens. Airy bridges leaped in a gossamer network across mile-deep chasms. Dunning glimpsed the Hudson, almost hidden beneath many bridges.

  In the middle of a watery expanse Dunning recognized as New York’s Upper Bay a circular building brooded, black, ominous. Straight down to its flat roof the sphere with the blue band drifted, and Thalma followed. The roof opened, dividing into many leaves that slid one under the other, and a round gap showed. The leading stratocar dipped within.

  Guards in bright green uniforms surrounded them as they emerged from the stratocar. Two mercenaries ranged themselves on either side of Dunning and the girl, seizing their arms at the elbows. But just as they started forward a voice rang out.

  “Sergeant Farston!”

  The leader whirled, and saluted the communication disc. “Here, sir,” he snapped.

  From somewhere among the half dozen private police crowding around him Dunning heard a gasped, “Mar-nota, himself!”

  “You will bring the prisoners to me, at once!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gosh, the chief has listened in on damn near everything the last week!” someone said, low-voiced.

  Presently they were marched to Marnota through a circling corridor whose marble walls showed fine veinings of gold. Then the party was being challenged by a sentry before a doorway curtained by cloth of gold.

  “Halt! Who goes there?”

  “Sergeant Farston and prisoners.”

  “You will pass in at once, Sergeant, with the prisoners. Orders are to dismiss the rest of your men.” The guard drew the curtain aside. A bronze portal behind it swung open.

  Dunning had a confused sense of tapestry-hung walls in the room they entered, of a floor covered thick with glowing rugs. But a tableau at the other end of the chamber, fifty feet away, caught and held his attention as the sergeant halted him just within the closing door.

  On a great carved chair of ebony in the center of a gold dais, sat a small thin man whose black eyes gleamed piercingly out of a sharp-featured, hawk-like face. Thin lips were twisted in a cruel, sardonic smile.

  Marnota’s stubby hands rested on the arms of the throne-like chair, and it seemed to Dunning that the short fingers curled and uncurled like the claws of a cat toying with a helpless victim.

  Thalma approached him fearlessly, her slight form straight and defiant. The girl’s arm was outstretched, her hand pointed at the throned man.

  “Remember, Marnota,” her clear accents rang out, “in the end, you will fail, and terrible will be the price you pay.”

  Thalma’s arm fell to her side. She swayed a bit, then drew herself again proudly upright. A rustle of sound drew Dunning’s eyes away from her. He started. Behind the rich tapestries, to the left of the entrance, someone was hidden, someone in the green uniform of Marnota’s helots. He saw a black death-cylinder, ominously ready.

  Marnota’s sadistic smile deepened. There was amusement in his silky tones.

  “Splendid!” he said. “You are a marvelous actress. No wonder you were selected to come here with your absurd claim to be my niece. Unfortunately the forger who concocted the note that preceded you was not as skillful as the surgeon who remodeled your features.”

  He turned toward Dunning and his guard.

  “Ah, Sergeant, you arrived a little more quickly than I anticipated. But I’ll be through soon, very soon. You may leave your prisoner here, and go.”

  The sergeant saluted, turned sharply, and was gone.

  “I shall be finished directly, young man. Just step to one side.”

  Marnota turned back to Thalma. “Yes,” he purred. “You are a wonderful actress. Too bad you have allowed yourself to be duped into this imposture. However, you will not be able to deceive the court. You may go.”

  Thalma turned wonderingly toward the door. And suddenly Dunning understood Marnota’s amazing show of leniency. The lurking mercenary was posted to flash the girl down as she passed. If there were an inquiry, the explanation would be simple. Balked in her attempted fraud, she had tried to escape, had been rayed by an over-zealous guard. The cylinder would do its work well, there would be no chance for troublesome identification. He was the only witness. He would not be alive to testify.

  Thalma came slowly across the floor, straight toward the waiting assassin. Dunning whirled. His great hands spread wide, caught the arras on either side of the form behind it. He lunged forward, tearing the fabric from its fastenings. He toppled, fell heavily, with the writhing, heaving bundle in his arms. A tearing dart of flame seared his shoulder. He located the round of a head under the cloth, and slugged at it. The wrapped, entangled figure slumped beneath him.

  Dunning leaped to his feet—glimpsed Marnota, standing on the gold dais, blue flashes crackling from his ray-gun—saw Thalma, just outside the open door, struggling in the arms of the outer guard.

  Dunning was a maelstrom of lightning action, the very swiftness of his movements foiling Marnota’s darts. He sprang through the opening, thrusting at the door as he went. The clang of its shutting drowned the smack of his fist as it splashed into the snarling face of the guard. The helot jarred loose from Thalma. His hand shot to the ray-gun, jerked it from his belt. Before he could use it, hard knuckles exploded again on his jutting jaw, and the mercenary crashed to the floor.

  A siren moaned an alarm. Dunning twisted to Thalma. She was snatching up the guard’s weapon from where it had spun as he fell. Its blue ray shot out, spattered against the edge of the bronze portal. The metal glowed red and fused where the heat vibrations impinged.

  “The lock,” the girl gasped. “That will hold him for a while.”

  The siren’s wailing rose to new fury. From around the curve of the corridor shouts came and the thunder of many rushing feet.

  “They’re coming!” Dunning exclaimed. “We’ve got to get out of here!” He whirled to the right, hesitated as from that side, too, clamored an oncoming rush still hidden by the arc of the circling hall. Aside from the sealed entrance to Marnota’s audience chamber, the black marble walls were without a break. “Finish!” he groaned. “We’re trapped!”

  “Not yet,” Thalma snapped, her face white but her eyes bright and fearless. She was at the wall opposite the bronze door. Her hand reached out to it, her fingers pressed the center of an apparently aimless whorl in the gold tracery. A narrow rectangle of stone shot down into the floor, revealing a black void behind. “Quick! In here!”

  Dunning was on her heels as she darted through. Some gesture of the girl’s, indistinguishable in the darkness, sent the secret panel thudding back
into place.

  He crouched, listening. Had they been swift enough? Had the screen closed in time to conceal their retreat from Marnota’s men? Or would the cracking of heated marble show that the ray-guns were at work, seeking out the fugitives?

  Muffled noises, the moaning siren, guttural calls, an authoritative voice in sharp command, came through the wall. Behind him, Thalma’s heavy breathing gusted and the beat of his own pulse hammered in his ears. The air was musty, stagnant. Dust, long undisturbed, choked him. Fierce agony seared his shoulder, sent tendrils of pain raying through him.

  A hand tugged at Dunning.

  “Come!” Thalma’s voice was an almost inaudible whisper. “We’ve got to get out of here before Marnota frees himself and directs his stupid helots in their search.”

  The endless passage twisted, pitched downward, so narrow that Dunning’s arms brushed the walls on either side. In the tar-barrel darkness even Thalma’s white garments were invisible. Dunning clung to her icy, trembling hand, let it guide him down and down.

  “This is the way I went when I thought I was escaping from Marnota, as he planned I should think. Jarcka, Ran’s father, was in charge of this building’s construction, shortly after my own father’s death. He must have foreseen I should some day need a hiding place. By a minute adjustment of the building machines, he contrived this secret passage, with outlets in my own quarters, in the corridor from which we just came, and in the wall of the stratocar hangar. It also connects to a secret tunnel under the Bay, into the city.”

  “Secret! But thousands of men—”

  Thalma answered swiftly. “Only Jarcka himself knows of it. He used Thorgersen’s Mechanical Mole, converting earth and rocks into energy, reconverting some of it into a lining for the bore, harder and more rigid than steel. I—Oh-h!”

  She broke off in a wail of terror. The tunnel had flared into a sudden luminescence. The walls glowed with a cold, infinitely menacing light.

  “What is it?” Dunning gasped, leaping into new effort after the bounding girl. “What—”

  “The search rays. The kappa-light that penetrates all inorganic matter. Hurry!”

  Far behind ruptured marble crashed, and the confined space echoed with the awed snarling of the human hunting-hounds. The passage dropped steadily, curved dizzily, leveled out. Twisted sharply—and ended against a rust-red wall!

  “Hell!” Dunning gasped. “We’re cut off.” The clamor of the following helots was appallingly nearer. “We’re lost.”

  “No,” Thalma cried, springing to a stance in front of the apparently impregnable barrier. “We’re saved.” She thrust the captured ray-gun into Dunning’s hand, gestured queerly with raised arms, as if in invocation to some strange god. “It’s the tunnel doorway. Eighteen inches of beryllo-steel. Once we’re past it, it will defy the rays for hours.”

  Dunning whirled, crouched, his burning eyes on the angle that cut off view of the passage through which they had come. Pounding footfalls, shrill cries of the pursuers, made a fearful sound about him, and behind him Thalma’s voice went on.

  “Its lock is worked by beams of invisible, infra-red light. Only Jarcka and I know the combination.” Thalma explained her fantastic actions. She was blocking off the guarding beams, one by one, with her waving arms. When she finished—

  A green uniform hurtled around the corner Dunning watched, and toppled headlong to the impact of his beam. Another, and another, coming too fast to save themselves, met the same fate. The narrowness of the passage forced the pursuers into single file. The bodies of Dunning’s victims jammed the way. His position was unassailable—as long as his weapon’s charge lasted!

  Behind him he heard a little exclamation of triumph, and the squealing of ponderous metal on metal. It told him the door was moving. His victims were piled across the corridor, a breast-high mound of contorted corpses that would hold the helots back for minutes.

  “Jim!” There was sudden terror in Thalma’s voice. “Jim! The portal is jammed. It will not open!”

  CHAPTER V

  The Bomb

  Dunning’s tone was calm. “Try again. It must open.”

  “No use. The electric eye responded to my gestures, and the door started to move, but something is in its gears, blocking it. I can do nothing.”

  “Well, they’ll know they’ve been in a scrap before they get us,” he said grimly. “Hey—”

  An ovoid object, black, fist-size, arced over the tangled bodies, hit the wall. Pounding footfalls sounded.

  Horror struck at Dunning.

  “Down, Thalma!” This thing was a bomb, an explosive grenade. He leaped to it, snatched it up, hurled it over the cadavers, far up the tunnel.

  A tremendous detonation crashed about him. Consciousness left him for an instant, then flooded back. Every bone in his body ached, his head whirled, but he was alive. The glow induced by the kappa-light search beams was gone, and impenetrable darkness blanketed sight. “Thalma,” Dunning shouted, “Thalma!”

  “Here, Jim,” a weak voice answered him. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine as silk. And you, girl?” Dunning pulled himself to his feet and groped in the direction of the voice.

  “I—I’m a bit dazed. But there aren’t any bones broken. Will we ever get out of here?” Sudden joy replaced the doubt in her accents. “Jim! I can feel the jamb against which the door rested. It’s open, Jim! The explosion must have blown it open. We can go on, now. We’re safe!”

  “Great!” Dunning exclaimed. “And Marnota thinks we were killed! Otherwise he’d still be using the search-rays.”

  “That’s right. He’s sure we’re out of his way at last. There’s a surprise coming to him. Now I wonder if I can get this barrier shut again.” Dunning heard Thalma moving in the darkness. “No. The shock must have damaged the photo-electric control. We shall have to trust to the debris to hold them back. Come on. I shan’t feel safe till we are well out of here.”

  The footing rose, abruptly. Thalma’s fingers on Dunning’s arm sent an electric tingle through him.

  “The end of the tunnel, Jim!”

  He sensed that she was standing before some unseen barrier, again was going through the fantastic gyrations that opened locks in this fantastic world of the future. Abruptly there was a vertical line of light in front of him. It grew rapidly wider, filling the tunnel end. The light blinded Dunning’s eyes, so long used to darkness.

  And then there were vague forms about him, many hands seizing him. Thalma screamed. Dunning grunted, jerked. He couldn’t break the grips that held him. He was helpless! Caught! After all they had gone through they were caught! Marnota had outwitted them. He must have known all along of this tunnel.

  “Salom!” It was Thalma’s voice, strangely joyous. “Jarcka! Let him go. He’s my friend. He saved me.”

  The hands dropped. A circle of men, stalwart, clad in flowing, pastel-hued cloaks, hemmed in the girl and himself.

  Each was armed with a ray-tube and the face of each was alight with a peculiar exaltation.

  “Salom!” Thalma was speaking to one of them, tall grave-countenanced, grey-haired, the evident leader. “How did you know to come and meet me? How did you know I would be here?

  “We didn’t,” the man replied. “We thought you lost. We were determined that Marnota should not live till tomorrow to claim your estates. We were going through the tunnel to raid his lair. To surprise and slay him.”

  “Thalma.” Another spoke, shorter, his stern visage seamed with anxiety and grief. “Marnota broadcast a report that you had been killed in an explosion of your stratocar. Ran, too, has disappeared. Do you know anything of him?”

  Thalma turned to him, and there was compassion, pity, in her eyes.

  “Ran is dead, Jarcka. He gave his life for me, when Marnota attempted to murder me.”

  Jarcka staggered, as if a physical blow had struck him, and then was straight, stalwart as before.

  “It is high time to put an end to Marnota’s crimes. Let
us proceed, Salom.”

  A sigh gusted through the group. They started toward the tunnel entrance. Thalma barred their way.

  “Stop! You cannot go through. The tunnel is blocked.”

  “But you have come through it.”

  Thalma told them what had happened. When she had finished there was silence for a moment. Then Salom made a hopeless gesture.

  “It was our last, desperate hope. Now America is lost indeed. Tomorrow morning Marnota will appear in court to demand immediate title to your half of the company. Under the law it must be given him and—” Again his gesture took the place of words.

  “Tomorrow! Where, Salom?”

  “In the Federal Court, before judge Layton. Layton is on our side, but he is bound by the law. He will have to—”

  “You forgot that I am alive. The law is on our side now.”

  “Marnota will defy the law. He will not retreat now. He has the power—and he will use it.”

  “No!” Thalma’s clear voice rang out, and she was living flame in that dim chamber, her face aglow with a light that was somehow blinding. “He has the power. But we have right on our side. Salom. Jarcka. Take me to a safe hiding place. We have all night to think. To plan. We shall find a way to defeat him.”

  “Impossible,” someone muttered. “He is too powerful.”

  * * * *

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez. The court is open!” In ten centuries the immemorial formula had not changed. On the wall above the long, ornately carved bench still was pictured the ancient representation of the blindfolded goddess, with her balanced scales. The justice, in his high-backed chair, still wore the ancient black robes. Judge Layton was a short, slender man, stooped a little under the weight of his years and learning. His jaw was grim-set as he surveyed the scene below him.

  The row upon row of chairs that filled the courtroom were occupied, every one, by hard-visaged men who wore the green of Marnota’s cohorts. Each held, ready in his hand, the black cylinder of his ray-gun, and the eyes of each was fastened immovably on the countenance of his master.