by Anthology
* * * * *
Only two of them came up out of the lower level--Burnine and Case Damon. Behind them, they left a pile of corpses. Burnine was kept going by sheer strength of will, lugging a shoulder gun that weighed half as much as he.
The corridor on the main level was packed with armed men, but they cleared it by keeping a blast of fire always before them. Men melted away into side rooms, slid down intersecting halls. But at the entrance, the big door was closed.
"Looks like we're stuck," Burnine grunted. "We can't burn our way through that. And if we move, we'll have a hundred men popping out again behind our backs."
"We'll try one of these rooms back here," Case said. "Always the chance of it having a window."
The first room they tried was a blank. So were the next couple. While Case kept the corridor cleared, Burnine stuck his head inside and investigated.
"This one," he said at his fourth try. "Bars on the window, but maybe we can burn them off. Looks like a council room."
They darted inside, slammed the door behind them. Outside there was the pounding of many feet. While Burnine watched the door, Case turned his fire on the barred windows.
One of the bars turned red, glowed bright and started to melt. But it was going to be a long job. And they hadn't much time now. Case snatched a quick look at his watch and saw there was but an hour left.
"Damon!" That was from the corridor. Yuna's voice. Too calm, Case thought. Yuma had a card up his sleeve. "Better give up!"
"Make us," Case called.
"There is a telecast machine in the room," came the reply. "Turn it on."
Yuna wasn't just wasting time. He knew something. Case hesitated, looked around and sighted the machine. It was the familiar kind, but with an unfamiliar attachment. He fiddled with it, got it going.
"Damon," said a voice he remembered but could not identify. "Turn up the video."
There was a threat in the words. But Case Damon was beyond being frightened. He had nothing to lose. Only curiosity made him flick the switch.
There was that room again, with its unpainted walls. There was the couch. And there was Karin!
"We decided to save her on the chance you'd get through," said the voice. A moment later, a man walked into view.
* * * * *
It was Vargas. Somehow, Case was not surprised. It all made sense. Vargas had not wanted to join the Council. He'd held out for concessions, and those concessions had included a certain freedom from supervision of his country.
"Listen," Vargas said. "It is possible you have managed to do some harm there. If so, undo it at once."
His hand dipped into his pocket and came out with a gun. He calmly pointed it at Karin's head. With a sinking heart, Case realized that this time there would be no interference, this time Vargas would go through with it.
"All right," Case said. "You win."
He turned away from the video, and swung his gun around at Burnine. He hated to do this, but it had to be done. His eyes avoided Burnine's as he said:
"Open that door."
But before Burnine could comply with the order, there was a shout from the machine. Case whirled, startled. The room in the fishing cabin had erupted into a maelstrom of struggling men. He saw Vargas go down, smothered by blue-jacketed men of Earth Intelligence.
And then there was Cranly, his broad back bent over Karin's figure on the couch. He straightened with a length of rope in his hands. She was free. Cranly turned and his face filled the screen.
"Nice going, Case. I had a hunch Vargas was behind this, but I couldn't move until I had him dead to rights. But it was you who helped me to fight the Council for the time I needed."
"How much time have I got?" Case wanted to know.
"Not much. The Council can't take a chance on having another city blasted. Within fifteen minutes they will destroy the machine Vargas built."
"That's time enough," Case said. "Give me a look at Karin."
He got his look, and then turned to Burnine. Yuna and his men had got the news elsewhere, apparently, for they were hammering at the door. But the lock was holding.
Together now, Case and Burnine turned their guns on the bars of the window. It went faster now. One bar melted away, another, still another. There was room enough for Burnine, then room enough for Case's broad shoulders.
They dropped through and hit the ground, running. With Burnine leading the way and Case keeping him covered from behind, they raced around the edge of the tower, cut down a pair of surprised guards who weren't expecting them here, and skirted the outside tower.
Then the hangars were only yards away and they were sprinting toward them. Now there were no more men to block their way. Only time was the enemy.
And time ticked away on Case's watch as he and Burnine strapped themselves into their seats. Five minutes was all the time they could hope for. With his own ship that would have been enough, but this space liner was not built for speed.
* * * * *
Case had deliberately spoken with more confidence than he'd felt. If that was to be his last look at Karin, he'd wanted her to have a smile on her face.
"All set," Burnine said. His skin was drawn tight over the long bones in his face.
They took off with all jets wide open. From stem to stern, the big liner shuddered. Even with all power on, they lifted slowly. From overhead, a small attack ship flashed in. Fire darted at them, slid harmlessly off the liner's duralloy plates.
"Wish that was our biggest worry," Case said. He could still grin weakly.
Now their speed was mounting steadily. The altimeter climbed past 60,000 and kept going. Case kept his eyes glued to the vision plate.
Now was the time. Thunder rumbled, roared in their ears. Far, far below and behind them there was another roar. Then came the single blinding flash that spelled the end of Kanato, and afterward a billowing mushroom cloud. It was the end of Yuna and his devilish weapon.
Over them, in the heart of the brightness, there was a black speck. It grew larger as they roared toward it. It was a black cleft in the azure. Case flashed a desperate glance at his watch. Seconds left, that was all.
With a prayer in their hearts, and with all jets blazing, they aimed for the blackness. It grew smaller, almost too small. There was a rumble of thunder. And they were through, into a black sky dotted with a myriad of stars.
Case reached up and flicked on the liner's telecast. It warmed up slowly, first the click coming through, and then the audio. Last of all, and best of all, the video.
Karin's face filled the screen. She was smiling, none the worse for her experience. Her hair was in disorder but it still looked like spun gold to Case. He could almost taste those velvety lips.
"Be with you soon, honey," Case said. "We've got a honeymoon to finish."
Her face beckoned him Earthward.
* * *
Contents
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM
By H. B. Hickey
Deep in space lay a weird and threatening world. And it was there that Ben Sessions found the evil daughters . . .
Beyond Ventura B there was no life; there was nothing but one worn out sun after another, each with its retinue of cold planets and its trail of dark asteroids. At least that was what the books showed, and the books had been written by men who knew their business. Yet, despite the books and the men who had written them, Ben Sessions went past Ventura B, deliberately and all alone and knowing that the odds were against his returning alive.
He went because of a file clerk’s error. More correctly, he went as the final result of a chain of events which had begun with the clerk’s mistake.
The clerk’s name was Gilbert Wayne and he worked at the Las Vegas Interplanetary Port. It was Wayne’s job to put through the orders for routine overhaul of interplanetary rockets. Usually Wayne was quite efficient, but even efficient men have bad days, and on one of those days Wayne had removed from the active list the name of Astra instead of its sister ship, the Storan.
Gomez, who always got that job because he was small and slender, dutifully dropped his instruments into his overall pockets and crawled into the left firing tube. Half an hour later he stuck his head out of the tube and yelled to Jacobs, who was in charge of the job:
"Amigo! How many hours this ship she got?"
Jacobs ran his finger down a chart and discovered to his surprise that the Astra had only two hundred hours on its log since the last overhaul. Ordinarily a ship was checked each thousand hours. He scratched his head but decided that if Operations wanted the Astra tuned it was none of his business. So he told Gomez not to ask useless questions and to get back in the tube.
Anyone else but Gomez would have obeyed orders and forgotten all about it. Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando’s head appear.
"Amigo!" Gomez shouted. "How many hours?"
"Two hundred!" Jacobs shouted back, knowing he would have no peace until Gomez was answered. "Now get to work! We ain’t got all year."
But Gomez was out of the tube again in five minutes and yelling for the foreman.
"What do you want now?" Jacobs demanded. He swung himself up on the catwalk beside Gomez.
"Something very funny in here, amigo," Gomez replied. "One plate she is too clean."
"Less work for you," Jacobs grunted. "So why complain?"
Nevertheless he took a look at the plate, which was near the mouth of the tube. It should have been lightly encrusted with the oxides of rocket fuel. Instead, it was only beginning to dull, in strange contrast to its neighbors which were welded to it.
"That is queer," Jacobs muttered.
"Si. As you say, amigo. Queer."
Once Jacobs’ interest was aroused he was also not one to let a matter drop; he told Gomez to work on another tube while he consulted the front office. The front office was not especially interested, but at Jacobs’ insistence they called in a metallurgist. The metallurgist, whose name was Britton, was fortunately a thorough young man. He ordered the plate removed and sent to his laboratory for complete analysis.
After that things happened fast. Britton scanned the analysis of the plate and without hesitation called in his superior who ordered a second test just to be safe, and then notified Washington. Washington turned it over to Interplanetary Intelligence, of which Carson was chief of staff.
One week later Ben Sessions stood before Carson’s desk.
Sessions was only thirty-five, but in his few years with "Two Eyes," as the organization was known, he had rung up an enviable record. Tall, lithe, darkly handsome, he was well liked by the men who worked with him. At the moment there was a puzzled frown on his face, lengthening the line made by a scar which ran from his forehead down the side of his nose. The scar was the result of a crash landing on Neptune.
"I don’t get it, sir," he said. "A single plate from a rocket tube . . . So what if it didn’t oxidize?"
"That makes me feel much better." Carson smiled, an inner bitterness making the smile wry. "I didn’t get it either," he went on. "A mechanic named Gomez got it; a foreman named Jacobs got it; a lab man named Britton got it; but the chief of "Two Eyes" missed the boat. I feel swell about that." He rose suddenly and hammered his fist on the desk. "Every one of us in Intelligence ought to be cashiered!"
"Take it easy," Ben cautioned. "All because of that plate?"
Carson slumped back into his chair. "Yes. And because we have failed in our duty. Our only hope is that we may have time to make it up. I’ll give you the facts:
"Those tubes are made of Virium, but even Virium develops scale. After next week it will develop even more, because next week we make the changeover to the new fuel. If Wayne had made his mistake two weeks later there would have been so much deposit in the tubes that Gomez would not have noticed the difference.
"Now, Virium is one of the most standardized products in the world. So Gomez was rightly astonished that the tube didn’t oxidize evenly. Jacobs saw further. Virium is the toughest metal we know of; if this piece was tougher it might be a discovery of major importance. So Britton analyzed the plate."
"Now we get to the point," Sessions grinned.
Carson stabbed a finger at him. "Right. And the point is that this one section of plate is not Virium! In fact, it is a substance which we are positive does not exist in our system!"
"Wait a second. What do you mean by ‘system’?"
"I mean every single bit of matter that lies between here and Ventura B."
"Maybe it’s not a natural substance. Not an element."
"We thought of that. It’s an element, and one we know nothing of."
"Do you mind if I sit down, sir?" Ben asked suddenly.
The enormity of the thing had struck him, almost dazzling him with its implications. Carson laughed bitterly and waved him to a chair, then went on talking.
"Precisely, Ben. The question is: How did this strange substance get into the tube of an Interplanetary rocket called the Astra? To answer that we checked on the ship. The Astra is one of the few ships which have ever gone beyond Ventura B!"
"I almost expected to hear that," Sessions said.
"It adds up, all right, doesn’t it? A foreign substance, a foreign system. But this substance had been made into a plate. That means the work of intelligent beings."
"Who took the Astra on that trip?" Sessions asked, his body tense.
"A licensed space explorer named Murchison. Two others went with him but he returned alone. Claims they fell into a chasm."
"But no explorer has reported life beyond Ventura B," Sessions said, taking up the thread of thought. He whistled softly. "You must have been busy this last week."
"Busy is no word for it. It’s only three years since anyone has been allowed to go outside our system. For the purpose of science Interstellar Flight granted permits to six licensed explorers. All returned with charts showing only a desolate waste. In our own quiet way we have checked on each of these six men, including Murchison, in the last week."
"And . . . ?"
"And we discovered something very interesting. The six who returned from beyond Ventura B were not the same six who went! They are identical in every facial, bodily, and mental characteristic, identical enough to fool even the families of the lost explorers. But when we secretly photographed them with infra-red light we found that their skins contained elements foreign to our system!"
Ventura A and its sister star were the twin beacons that marked the last outposts of the Earth System. Past them was only a trackless waste of inter-stellar space. Ben Sessions knew that the charts he carried were probably worse than useless, were likely downright traps.
He and Carson had planned the trip. Carson had wanted to send a fighting fleet but Ben had opposed the idea. Wayne’s mistake had led them to the uncovering of a gigantic hoax, a hoax which could have only a sinister purpose. Somewhere in the void ahead were sentient beings. To send a fleet would be to let them know that their existence was suspected.
Sessions let the automatic controls take over while he examined the charts once more. They showed the constellation which lay directly ahead, the one after that, and then nothing for hundreds of millions of miles. Those first two reflected a tiny amount of light from Ventura B and were visible through telescopes, therefore it would have created suspicion to falsify their position. Past them, however, the blackness was too intense to penetrate.
The speed of the rocket ship increased. Atomic blasts replaced those of the regular fuel. Sessions knew that an Earth measurement would have shown the ship to have shrunk to half its size. Only light and the radona beam which protected the ship from collisions could travel faster.
From now on it was just a matter of luck. Someone had pulled those six expl
orers out of space and Sessions was hoping the same thing would happen to him. On the third day it happened.
He was sitting in the pilot’s chair, watching the radona chart before him. Most of the chart was blank, only the upper right hand corner showing a mass of black dots which indicated a planetary dispersal about a dead star. Sessions waited for the radona beam to swing the ship leftward.
Instead, the ship was curving in the direction of the dots! Ben’s first thought was that the beam had gone out of order, and he switched to manual controls. No use. Despite all his efforts he was being carried toward those planets.
Habit made him shut off the tubes. Why waste fuel? A tight smile froze on his lips as his speed dropped to twenty million miles then lifted again as the ship by-passed a planet. With calm deliberation Ben switched on the camera he had installed before the flight and let it record his course as shown on the radona chart.
Only one dot remained on the chart. It grew larger and larger until it filled the entire screen. There was no longer any doubt as to the ship’s destination, and as if to add further proof its speed dropped sharply. Ben clicked the switch on the camera and removed a tiny roll of microfilm. The roll fit snugly into the hollow cap which covered the stub of one of his molars.
The altitude indicator went on automatically, showed fifty thousand feet, then forty thousand, went down to hundreds. Ahead there was only blackness. Ben held his breath and waited for the crash. It never came. Long after the altimeter showed zero the ship still moved. Ben could think of only one explanation: he was below the surface of the dark planet! And then he could think no more; the blackness seemed to filter into the ship and into his mind.
"He awakens," a voice said. It was a pleasant voice, a feminine one, silky and soothing.
Ben Sessions sat up and said, "Huh?"
The first thing he noticed was the light. No more darkness, but a light that came from nowhere and yet was everywhere. He was on some sort of couch, in a huge room with a vaulted ceiling. Shaking his head groggily, Ben looked for the source of the silken voice. He was alone in the room.