Broken Wing: A million deaths were not enough for Cassandra!

by Konig, Artor

  “Extraordinary; you chaps have certainly come a long way. The Wren’s inertialess field for example; that seems to be the cat’s whiskers. I managed to achieve something similar in a field of multiple diamagnets when I was playing about with the old rocket. You turn on the juice and start whizzing away but you don’t feel a damned thing of that acceleration. It was most remarkable.” The Master told him, “Twelve diamagnetic sources arranged,” He went off on an entirely mathematical explanation that left me way back in the dark but the Doctor was obviously impressed, adding bits to the explanation when the Master paused for breath, quite obviously in a transport of discovery, “Yes, quite; I can see how that’s done; it may be safer and better than the system I use; as long as the ray generated by the arrangement of diamagnets is on that exact frequency, linear unity in acceleration will be achieved. It’s so damned simple once a fellow’s had it explained to him.”

  He was leaning far forwards on his seat, neglectful of the tea that was cooling off in front of him, the two ignorant of everything but their wonderful knowledge. They went on from science to politics, both being under the firm impression that having idiots in government should be considered a capital crime, “That it is; think of the wasted resources because the fellows in charge haven’t got a clear idea of where they’re going.” This was the Doctor’s point of view.

  “We must get Black Crag onto an operational footing; get enough people and machines, later a network of satellites with lasers to make sure that those stupid little warmongers get short shrift every time they start their nonsense.” The Master said suddenly, as if the idea had only just occurred to him, “With the machines we have between us, a space-mounted laser station wouldn’t be too trying to make and the craft you have here would be suitable for deploying them. Besides, I haven’t been into space for ages, not since the old rocket sprang a leak.”

  “We could set up a network like that; it would keep the little warmongers out of the picture and leave the major governments with a new dialogue partner.” The Doctor said cheerfully.

  “We would be a partner who would just tell them what to do.” The Master agreed affably, “With a bit of intelligence injected into their administrations; an overall target to work towards, their efficiency would be upped a thousand-fold. We could build our organisation with their assistance until we could set up a singly-directed, universal governing body. Then the human race could really get down to serious business, not wasting time with those childish ideas any more. Turn our attention outwards; we could really get to see how the universe works. Get to the stars; tell me, has anybody worked out a way of getting through the light barrier? Of whom you know, that is?” He asked suddenly.

  “It’s nearly within reach of the Wren.” The Doctor replied candidly, “With the inertialess motor and electro-augmenting ramjets, the Wren has already clocked twelve percent of light speed; and that was with a limited period of acceleration. Given an indefinite open field and a few months to build up speed I believe the Wren could get beyond the barrier. I haven’t tried obviously; there have been other things on my mind and I haven’t been able to leave matters to look after themselves here. Light speed is a funny thing after all; there are all sorts of distortions of space-time that can occur when you go faster than light; the full implications of these haven’t been worked out.”

  “I suppose so.” The Master replied, “Time distortions and all that; lapses of time and,” He cut himself short, looking into the distance for a moment.

  “We were actually rather more worried about some visitors we’re expecting.” The Doctor broke in, “Some folk who have appeared to have nearly broken the light barrier and were on their way here from outside. They’re just inside the orbit of Saturn last time I looked; the craft appear to be war and colony craft. There are seven of them. I was rather thinking that would be a good reason to impose a unity on this planet so we have access to the resources we need to keep them at a suitable distance.”

  “Aliens?” The Master asked incredulously, “Coming through the void to visit us? To colonise; we can’t allow that, you know.” He said decisively, “We ought to capture a few of them to see what they look like, what their plans are; but we must stop the bulk of the fleet without fail. Granted they’ve come a long way and have made a remarkable effort to get here, but there isn’t really space for competing intelligences on this planet. We have a hard enough time getting on with ourselves without aliens species making the picture more complicated.” He looked firmly at both of us; “Have you tried communicating with them? Tried to see just how civilised they are? Or are you just jumping to the conclusion that we have nothing to learn from them?”

  “I’ve recorded inter-ship communications; it’s mostly digital, binary; it was devilishly difficult to crack the code taking into account the fact that I wasn’t even sure of what they thought or knew or saw as right; no basic standard on which values could be based. But I cracked it at length, working on the principle that their basic military considerations would be the same as ours; there are limits to strategy that cannot be ignored. Good strategy is good strategy whatever your basic means of warfare are, after all. And what I understand by their communications is that they know we’re here and are just waiting until they are close enough to aim without error; then they’re going to blast every city we have with their laser beams and subjugate whoever is left, using us as slaves to get this planet a bit more comfortable. Then they’re going to kill the rest of us.” His voice was flat, emotionless, his delivery calm as if his words were about rats in a cage rather than every being capable of thinking on the face of this world.

  Even now, now that I stand alone in the middle of this empty island, watching the empty sea, the horror that his words birthed in me is still a tangible thing. Now that it is all over, now that I can look at the ring on my finger and see the grey spider inlaid into it with clear eyes, the horror of what I had experienced that morning was nothing to that grim statement the Doctor made over lunch in the Master’s lair.

  15. First Reckoning

  “How accurate is their targeting system? Did you manage to work that out?” The Master’s voice seemed to come from very far away, through a fog of confusion and horror. If I had been on my feet at that point, I would have passed out again; the second time in less than two hours. I have no excuse for that weakness but that simple fact alone; weakness. Maybe it was this weakness that the Master had seen right at the beginning and that was why he paid scant attention to me, concentrating his magnetic charm on the Doctor.

  “And more importantly, did you discover just what form of beams they have; the power and whatnot?”

  “The precise data is up in the roundhouse but those questions I can more or less answer off the top of my head. For their beams to deliver enough destructive potential to raze our cities and to be accurate within a mile they have to approach within one half of an astronomical unit of the planet. Their beams are short u. v. photon pulsars heterodyned onto maser multi-phase lateral pulsars; the potential of those beams is formidable; it is in the order of ninety-thousand gigawatts potential in total for the seven craft. Enough to melt the ice caps in less than half an hour, if they chose to.” He noticed his tea, sipped the cold liquor and pulled a face. At once I removed the cup from his hand and set about producing another pot-full of the brew. I was not feeling too hungry or thirsty, although I had been rather hungry when I had entered the kitchen. I had restricted my appetite to fresh fruit in its skin and a single cup of tea. After all, I didn’t trust the Master. I brewed the tea in silence, listening to their conversation and making an effort to be as small and innocuous as possible.

  “You say half an astronomical unit, then; forty-eight million miles. How long will it take them to get here?” The Master pressed.

  “They were going very fast when I first spotted them a good four or five months back, but they have been slowing up savagely; morale on board is apparently quite low because the old retro-rockets have been much more force
ful than when they were speeding up at the other side. At their present rate of approach, taking into account their retro-thrust, they should take another five or six weeks before they can target us accurately.” The Doctor replied.

  “We have time to get ourselves organised, then.” The Master mused, accepting the cup of tea I placed before him without comment.

  “There isn’t all that much we can do.” The Doctor temporised, “We have to think about meeting them a good way away from here; their nuclear systems are the logical target but if they are destroyed too close to the Earth there is going to be comments at the very least, if not some significant damage done. We really have to get to grips with them soon; within three weeks; less, if possible.”

  “Why? What damage could an explosion more than an astronomical unit away possibly do to the Earth?” The Master asked, his face further creased into a frown.

  “There will be large quantities of dangerous debris and residues. Their system of nuclear power uses a form of ultra-dense matter in a state of total conversion. How they control it I don’t know, but the radiation coming from it if it exploded would make the sun feel cool and hospitable. We don’t want it too close to the Earth; that I tell you.”

  The Master wisely didn’t press the matter any further; we could both see that the Doctor was rather sensitive on the matter of nuclear explosions. I found the exchange and the Doctor’s unfamiliar vehemence unsettling. It seemed as if he was definitely losing his grip; on his emotions at least. It was then that I first saw that unfamiliar expression on his face; desperation. The look was fleeting, the hint of his awareness that things were getting out of hand.

  “What advantage do we possess that inclines you towards an attack as soon as possible?” The Master asked, changing his tack smoothly with just the right amount of humility in his tone to settle the Doctor’s mind.

  “Three-fold; Firstly, we have X-lasers, which we can heterodyne onto our masers to give them the reach; whereas they have a colossal power advantage, the beams they have are unlikely to do us serious damage in a short burst but they simply won’t know our beam is coming, they won’t be able to stop it if they do and if it hits it will cause a spontaneous explosion on any target; we may be able to destroy their craft but leave their reactors relatively undamaged; that in itself would be a priceless advance of our nuclear technology. Secondly, we have a distinct advantage in our targeting system; the Wren is capable of hitting them at eight times the distance they could accurately focus on the Wren; the difference in size makes that equation even more favourable. We could direct our beam to the point where they would be when the beam arrived at a distance of nearly ten billion miles; they could only hope to get us at less than three-hundred million miles if they could actually detect us, which brings me to the third advantage we have; the Wren is intrinsically and actually invisible to nearly every form of electromagnetic detection system that I know about apart from actual telescopic observation. And by the time they had brought a telescope to bear on us, we’d be on our way home.”

  This little recital appeared to please the Doctor without end; it also appeared to satisfy the Master. It left a taste of some strange emotion in my mouth; its equivalent would be rather close to drowning a rabid kitten; easy enough to do but with terrible consequences if one was too confident about it.

  “Would it be possible for us to launch such an attack now; within a few days; so as to get the matter behind us?” I asked suddenly, more interested in their reactions than in the answer. They both started as if they had completely forgotten that I existed. With a visible effort the Doctor brought his mind back to earth. He took up the query and had a careful think about it before he gave me a nearly cheerful answer, “We have the stores, we have the craft, the people; I don’t see why not. We could probably have ourselves ready to go by this time tomorrow and be within striking distance maybe in four days time.”

  “We might even think rather seriously about that idea of yours.” The Master told me benevolently, as if he was telling me I would be having jam for my supper.

  “We should think about it. But we must explain to everybody in the base just what the matter is and what should be done.” The Doctor added, “The boys will need a bit of a clear idea of just who is out there and what their plans for the next year or so are, so they have no delusions about friendly outsiders.”

  I sat back, feeling with a strange intensity that the conversation was worth nothing, that they had missed some important detail without which their plans were pointless.

  “I’ll have to think about just how I present the idea to them,” The Doctor went on, “And we should also decide who stays behind and what they should do with their time while we’re gone.”

  “We’ll have a think about the design for sky-bases, laser and observation systems and all that sort of thing.” The Master told him, “Once we have a reliable system of satellites up we can begin networking; then instead of sending the Wrens out every time we want to stop a war, we can sit at home pressing buttons instead. Think of how cosy that would be.”

  “And channels of communication; high level contacts in the more powerful countries, able to give us more credibility.” The Doctor agreed, “Quietly and carefully set ourselves up as an international anti-war organisation, gradually building up our influence so we don’t have to use force to make people stop fighting, after all, fighting for peace is a fine contradiction at a moral and motivational level.”

  “Rather like trying to get ice out of a furnace.” The Master replied, but his voice lacked conviction. I began to see where he was headed; and the planetary web of lasers under his sole command seemed to be one of his objectives. I filed that little surmise away for later cogitation. The idea seemed likely enough to me but I wondered if it had occurred to the Doctor. The other fellow was certainly bright enough to spot a detail like that; but he struck me as being somewhat naïve at times. Not that I was overly cynical myself; but at that point I had allowed a deep antipathy to take root and nothing the Master did from that point on struck me as being entirely innocent.

  The Master was quite obviously not worried about what I thought or didn’t think; maybe he had already laid his plans and nothing I was likely to do would affect them in the least. It occurred to me then that he had been here all the time that we had occupied the crag, beyond doubt keeping an eye on us, learning our weaknesses and our capabilities. He was certainly in a position to sabotage our operation if he felt like it, or to set those blasted spiders on anyone of us he felt would not be swayed by his magnetic personality. It occurred to me that he may have had more to do with the spiders’ first appearance than he had told us; we were in no position to discover the truth. If he was the Master of which the records spoke, then he had been behind the scenes on this island manipulating things for his own purpose for a lot longer than I felt was either right or decent. I decided at that point that I really didn’t like him at all.

  He may simply be after the Wrens; those he would know could be flown automatically, the basic staff to maintain them and to build whatever additional gadgets of which his craven old mind happened to think. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense and the less I liked it. As well as that, the more the implications sank home, the more silent I became, fading into what I hoped was an unnoticed spot in the background, where I could act if it was needed; that precious advantage of surprise with which the meek are blessed.

  But what I could do about the whole sticky situation I did not know. It taught me the meaning of the phrase ‘Caught between foes and fools’ with the Doctor starring in one of those roles.

  It occurred to me then that although the Master had learnt a lot about our capabilities during that conversation, we had learnt but a tiny bit of what he was able to do. I began to feel that a lot of his capabilities were less scientific than psychological. He was a cunning fellow, sharper than a hook-knife and quite capable of using one, if it suited his purpose. I sat a bit further back into my chair, tryin
g to clear that line of thought out of my mind, trying to remain objective. I knew then that clarity of thought, that and alertness was my only asset, one that I must not for any reason lose. I saw myself losing a lot of sleep between this pleasant lunch-time interlude and the final conclusion, win or lose, of this merciless train of events. I glanced around me, no longer paying much attention to their conversation.

  An old clock peered at me from across the room; like everything else we had found within the crag, this was an ancient but efficient contrivance. I checked the time it believed it to be against what I knew was correct and found it to be within thirty seconds of the correct time. This impressed me no little bit until it occurred to me that the Master could set his time against any time-piece within the crag if he wanted to. It further occurred to me that Craig and I had always had a friendly, bantering argument about the time, he insisting that my clock was thirty seconds fast and I holding the contrary view. That reminded me, forcefully and painfully, of just where Craig was at this moment, clearing my mind of any thought other than sick grief. I felt the wave of sudden compassion come over me; at Andrew’s last words, with these two helping themselves to tea without seeming to see the person who had prepared it for them and poured it into their cups. I felt the tears trickle unhindered down my face, the slickness of that fear given a new and deeper meaning by the idealistic and callous minds which so calmly discussed their plans before me as if I wasn’t even there. They knew just where they were going; or thought they did.