Low enough at last, he pulled the ring, Z-r-r-e-e-k—WHAP! The chute banged open; his harness tightened with a savage jerk, mere seconds before his hard-sprung knees took the shock of landing.
That was close—too close! He was white and shaking, but unhurt, as he gathered in the billowing, fighting sheet and rolled it, together with his harness, into a wad. He broke open a tiny ampoule, and as the drops of liquid touched it the stout fabric began to disappear. It did not burn; it simply disintegrated and vanished. In less than a minute there remained only a few steel snaps and rings, which the Atlantean buried under a meticulously replaced circle of sod.
He was still on schedule. In less than three minutes the signal would be on the air and he would know where he was—unless the Norsks had succeeded in finding and eliminating the whole Atlantean undercover group. He pressed a stud on a small instrument; held it down. A line burned green across the dial—flared red—vanished.
“Damn!” he breathed, explosively. The strength of the signal told him that he was within a mile or so of the hideout—first-class computation—but the red flash warned him to keep away. Kinnexa—it had better be Kinnexa!—would come to him.
How? By air? Along the road? Through the woods on foot? He had no way of knowing—talking, even on a tight beam, was out of the question. He made his way to the highway and crouched behind a tree. Here she could come at him by any route of the three. Again he waited, pressing infrequently a stud of his sender.
A long, low-slung ground-car swung around the curve and Phryges’ binoculars were at his eyes. It was Kinnexa—or a duplicate. At the thought he dropped the glasses and pulled his guns—blaster in right hand, air-pistol in left. But no, that wouldn’t do. She’d be suspicious, too—she’d have to be—and that car probably mounted heavy stuff. If he stepped out ready for business she’d fry him, and quick. Maybe not—she might have protection—but he couldn’t take the chance.
The car slowed; stopped. The girl got out, examined a front tire, straightened up, and looked down the road, straight at Phryges’ hiding place. This time the binoculars brought her up to a little more than arm’s length. Tall, blonde, beautifully built; the slightly crooked left eyebrow. The thread-line of gold betraying a one-tooth bridge and the tiny scar on her upper lip, for both of which he had been responsible— she always did insist on playing cops-and-robbers with boys older and bigger than herself—it was Kinnexa! Not even Norheim’s science could imitate so perfectly every personalizing characteristic of a girl he had known ever since she was knee-high to a duck!
The girl slid back into her seat and the heavy car began to move. Open-handed, Phryges stepped out into its way. The car stopped.
“Turn around. Back up to me, hands behind you,” she directed, crisply.
The man, although surprised, obeyed. Not until he felt a finger exploring the short hair at the back of his neck did he realize what she was seeking—the almost imperceptible scar marking the place where she bit him when she was seven years old!
“Oh, Fry! It is you! Really you! Thank the gods I’ve been ashamed of that all my life, but now . . .”
He whirled and caught her as she slumped, but she did not quite faint.
“Quick; Get in . . . drive on . . . not too fast!” she cautioned, sharply, as the tires began to scream. “The speed limit along here is seventy, and we can’t be picked up.”
“Easy it is, Kinny. But give! What’s the score? Where’s Kolanides? Or rather, what happened to him?”
“Dead. So are the others, I think. They put him on a psycho-bench and turned him inside out.”
“But the blocks?”
“Didn’t hold—over here they add such trimmings as skinning and salt to the regular psycho routine. But none of them knew anything about me, nor about how their reports were picked up, or I’d have been dead, too. But it doesn’t make any difference, Fry—we’re just one week too late.”
“What do you mean, too late? Speed it up!” His tone was rough, but the hand he placed on her arm was gentleness itself.
“I’m telling you as fast as I can. I picked up his last report day before yesterday. They have missiles just as big and just as fast as ours— maybe more so—and they are going to fire one at Atlantis tonight at exactly seven o’clock.”
“Tonight! Holy gods!” The man’s mind raced.
“Yes.” Kinnexa’s voice was low, uninfected. “And there was nothing in the world that I could do about it. If I approached any one of our places, or tried to use a beam strong enough to reach anywhere, I would simply have got picked up, too. I’ve, thought and thought, but could figure out only one thing that might possibly be of any use, and I couldn’t do that alone. But two of us, perhaps . . .”
“Go on. Brief me. Nobody ever accused you of not having a brain, and you know this whole country like the palm of your hand.”
“Steal a ship. Be over the ramp at exactly Seven Pay Emma. When the lid opens, go into a full-power dive, beam Artomenes—if I have a second before they blanket my wave—and meet their rocket head-on in their own launching-tube.”
This was stark stuff, but so tense was the moment and so highly keyed up were the two that neither of them saw anything out of the ordinary in it.
“Not bad, if we can’t figure out anything better. The joker being, of course, that you didn’t see how you could steal a ship?”
“Exactly. I can’t carry blasters. No woman in Norheim is wearing a coat or a cloak now, so I can’t either. And just look at this dress! Do you see any place where I could hide even one?”
He looked, appreciatively, and she had the grace to blush.
“Can’t say that I do,” he admitted. “But I’d rather have one of our own ships, if we could make the approach. Could both of us make it, do you suppose?”
“Not a chance. They’d keep at least one man inside all the time. Even if we killed everybody outside, the ship would take off before we could get close enough to open the port with the outside controls.”
“Probably. Go on. But first, are you sure that you’re in the clear?”
“Positive.” She grinned mirthlesly. “The fact that I am still alive is conclusive evidence that they didn’t find out anything about me. But I don’t want you to work on that idea if you can think of a better one. I’ve got passports and such for you to be anything you want to be, from a tubeman up to an Ekoptian banker. Ditto for me, and for us both. As Mr. and Mrs.”
“Smart girl.” He thought for minutes, then shook his head. “No possible way out that I can see. The sneak-boat isn’t due for a week, and from what you’ve said it probably won’t get here. But you might make it, at that. I’ll drop you somewhere . . .”
“You will not,” she interrupted, quietly but definitely. “Which would you rather—go out in a blast like that one will be, beside a good Atlantean, or, after deserting him, be psychoed, skinned, salted, and— still alive—drawn and quartered?”
“Together, then, all the way,” he assented. “Man and wife. Tourists—newlyweds—from some town not too far away. Pretty well fixed, to match what we’re riding in. Can do?”
“Very simple.” She opened a compartment and selected one of a stack of documents. “I can fix this one up in ten minutes. We’ll have to dispose of the rest of these, and a lot of other stuff, too. And you had better get out of that leather and into a suit that matches this passport photo.”
“Right. Straight road for miles, and nothing in sight either way. Give me the suit and I’ll change now. Keep on going or stop?”
“Better stop, I think,” the girl decided. “Quicker, and we’ll have to find a place to hide or bury this evidence.”
While the man changed clothes, Kinnexa collected the contraband, wrapping it up in the discarded jacket. She looked up just as Phryges was adjusting his coat. She glanced at his armpits then stared.
“Where are your blasters?” she demanded. “They ought to show, at least a little, and even I can’t see a sign of them.”
He showed her.
“But they’re so tiny! I never saw blasters like that!”
“I’ve got a blaster, but it’s in the tail pocket. These aren’t. They’re air-guns. Poisoned needles. Not worth a damn beyond a hundred feet, but deadly close up. One touch anywhere and the guy dies right then. Two seconds max.”
“Nice!” She was no shrinking violet, this young Atlantean spy. “You have spares, of course, and I can hide two of them easily enough in leg-holsters. Gimme, and show me how they work.”
“Standard controls, pretty much like blasters. Like so.” He demonstrated, and as he drove sedately down the highway the girl sewed industriously.
The day wore on, nor was it uneventful. One incident, in fact— the detailing of which would serve no useful purpose here—was of such a nature that at its end:
“Better pin-point me, don’t you think, on that ramp?” Phryges asked, quietly. “Just in case you get scragged in one of these brawls and I don’t?”
“Oh! Of course! Forgive me, Fry—it slipped my mind completely that you didn’t know where it was. Area six; pin-point four seven three dash six oh five.”
“Got it.” He repeated the figures.
But neither of the Atlanteans was “scragged,” and at six P.M. an allegedly honeymooning couple parked their big roadster in the garage at Norgrad Field and went through the gates. Their papers, tickets included, were in perfect order; they were as inconspicuous and as undemonstrative as newlyweds are wont to be. No more so, and no less.
Strolling idly, gazing eagerly at each new thing, they made their circuitous way toward a certain small hangar. As the girl had said, this field boasted hundreds of supersonic fighters, so many that servicing was a round-the-clock routine. In that hangar was a sharp-nosed, stubby-V’d flyer, one of Norheim’s fastest. It was serviced and ready.
It was too much to hope, of course, that the visitors could actually get into the building unchallenged. Nor did they.
“Back, you.” A guard waved them away. “Get back to the Concourse, where you belong—no visitors allowed out here!”
F-f-t! F-f-t! Phryges’ air-guns broke into soft but deadly coughing. Kinnexa whirled—hands flashing down, skirt flying up—and ran. Guards tried to head her off ; tried to bring their own weapons to bear. Tried—failed—died.
Phryges, too, ran; ran backward. His blaster was out now and flaming, for no living enemy remained within needle range. A rifle bullet w-h-l-n-g-e-d past his head, making him duck involuntarily and uselessly. Rifles were bad; but their hazard, too, had been considered and had been accepted.
Kinnexa reached the fighter’s port, opened it, sprang in. He jumped. She fell against him. He tossed her clear, slammed and dogged all doors. He looked at her then, and swore bitterly. A small, round hole marred the bridge of her nose; the back of her head was gone.
He leaped to the controls and the fleet little ship screamed skyward. He cut in transmitter and receiver, keyed and twiddled briefly. No soap. He had been afraid of that. They were already blanketing every frequency he could employ; using power through which he could not drive even a tight beam a hundred miles.
But he could still crack that missile in its tube. Or—could he? He was not afraid of other Norheiman fighters; he had a long lead and he rode one of their very fastest. But since they were already so suspicious, wouldn’t they launch the bomb before seven o’clock? He tried vainly to coax another knot out of his wide-open engines.
With all his speed, he neared the pin-point just in time to see a trail of super-heated vapor extending up into and disappearing beyond the stratosphere. He nosed his flyer upward, locked the missile into his sights, and leveled off. Although his ship did not have the giant rocket’s acceleration, he could catch it before it got to Atlantis, since he did not need its altitude and since most of its journey would be made without power. What he could do about it after he caught it he did not know, but he’d do something.
He caught it; and, by a feat of piloting to be appreciated only by those who have handled planes at supersonic speeds, he matched its course and velocity. Then, from a distance of barely a hundred feet, he poured his heaviest shells into the missile’s warhead. He couldn’t be missing! It was worse than shooting sitting ducks—it was like dynamiting fish in a bucket! Nevertheless, nothing happened. The thing wasn’t fused for impact, then, but for time; and the activating mechanism would be shell-and-shockproof.
But there was still a way. He didn’t need to call Artomenes now, even if he could get through the interfrence which the fast approaching pursuers were still sending out. Atlantean observers would have lined this stuff up long since; the Officer would know exactly what was going on.
Driving ahead and downward, at maximum power, Phryges swung his ship slowly into a right-angle collision course. The fighter’s needle nose struck the war-head within a foot of the Atlantean’s point of aim, and as he died Phryges knew that he had accomplished his mission. Norheim’s missile would not strike Atlantis, but would fall at least ten miles short, and the water there was very deep. Very, very deep. Atlantis would not be harmed.
~ * ~
It might have been better, however, if Phryges had died with Kinnexa on Norgrad Field; in which case the continent would probably have endured. As it was, while that one missile did not reach the city, its frightful atomic charge exploded under a hundred fathoms of water, ten scant miles from Atlantis’ harbor, and very close to an ancient geological fault.
Artomenes, as Phryges had surmised, had had time in which to act, and he knew much more than Phryges did about what was coming toward Atlantis. Too late, he knew that not one missile, but seven, had been launched from Norheim, and at least five from Uighar. The retaliatory rockets which were to wipe out Norgrad, Uigharstoy, and thousands of square miles of environs were on their way long before either bomb or earthquake destroyed the Atlantean launching ramps.
But when equilibrium was at last restored, the ocean rolled serenely where a minor continent had been.
<
~ * ~
Vague as the historical events appear, Mankind’s progress up the ladder toward its intangible Utopia is clearly seen now. A definite pattern had developed. Every step upward had ended with a misstep; backsliding, in which Man lost what he seemed to have gained, served to urge him to greater effort. Egypt, Greece and Rome flourished until, in turn, the barbarians brought the Dark Ages. Another great era was ready to commence.
LETTER TO A PHOENIX
by Fredric Brown
T
here is much to tell you, so much that it is difficult to know where to begin. Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years—the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.
Not that I have forgotten the really great moments. I remember being on the first expedition to land on Mars and the third to land on Venus. I remember—I believe it was in the third great war—the blasting of Skora from the sky by a force that compares to nuclear fission as a nova compares to our slowly dying sun. I was second in command on a Hyper‑A Class spacer in the war against the second extragalactic invaders, the ones who established bases on Jupe’s moons before we knew they were there and almost drove us out of the Solar System before we found the one weapon they couldn’t stand up against. So they fled where we couldn’t follow them, then, outside of the Galaxy. When we did follow them, about fifteen thousand years later, they were gone. They were dead three thousand years.
And this is what I want to tell you about—that mighty race and the others—but first, so that you will know how I know what I know, I will tell you about myself.
I am not immortal. There is only one immortal being in the universe; of it, more anon. Compared to it, I am of no importance, but you will not understand or believe what I say to you unless you understand what
I am.
There is little in a name, and that is a fortunate thing—for I do not remember mine. That is less strange than you think, for a hundred and eighty thousand years is a long time and for one reason or another I have changed my name a thousand times or more. And what could matter less than the name my parents gave me a hundred and eighty thousand years ago?
I am not a mutant. What happened to me happened when I was twenty-three years old, during the first atomic war. The first war, that is, in which both sides used atomic weapons—puny weapons, of course, compared to subsequent ones. It was less than a score of years after the discovery of the atom bomb. The first bombs were dropped in a minor war while I was still a child. They ended that war quickly, for only one side had them.
The first atomic war wasn’t a bad one—the first one never is. I was lucky for, if it had been a bad one—one which ended a civilization—I’d not have survived it despite the biological accident that happened to me. If it had ended a civilization, I wouldn’t have been kept alive during the sixteen-year sleep period I went through about thirty years later. But again I get ahead of the story.
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