Lanning considered, running a finger down his lean jaw. “Easily said, Excellence, but I have doubts upon our chances of survival when we reach the Moon. Anton Shaw must surely expect that sooner or later we shall find out the truth and come after him, and a man of his scientific accomplishments will not be easy to overthrow.”
“I don’t see that!” Peter objected. “You’re not exactly a fool in scientific matters yourself, Lanning, and we can surely equip a spaceship and supply it with the most deadly weapons known to your science. Shaw can’t have a tremendous amount of defence, because he was fired to the Moon without a single instrument— Wasn’t he?”
“He himself, yes,” Lanning agreed. “But there are considerable resources available to him in the lunar base. And I am wondering about something else.... I recall that in making tests of space—as he called it—he fired half a dozen exploratory rockets into the void some months before the law caught up on him. Their rockets never came back to Earth. What if he fired some equipment and machine tools in them, in readiness for the fate he knew was coming to him? From these tests, he said, he knew space was still deadly, and recommended it as a means of disposing of criminals. The Governing Council agreed, and not very long afterwards two scientific criminals, lesser fry found to be working for Shaw, were fired into space—as Shaw was later on.”
“All of which boils down to the fact that Shaw was a past master in the art of looking before he leapt,” Peter commented. “That still doesn’t alter my opinion that we should go after him and raise merry hell when we get to the Moon. You can commandeer a space machine, can’t you? I assume that they were simply mothballed, and not dismantled?”
“I can do that, yes, but....” Lanning hesitated. “I do not know how the various engineers who will have to refurbish one of our space vessels will react. They will be bound to guess my purpose, and since space is supposed to be a death trap, it may be assumed that I am intending to commit suicide. Since I am supposed to be the leader of the people in finishing the Task, they will not permit me to do that. You see the position?”
“Then why not simply tell them that you have reason to believe that the radiation levels may return to normal in the near future? That’s near enough the truth, anyway. What more natural than that you need to have a spaceship ready to investigate space when that happens? You could even tell them that you’re planning a test flight to the lunar base, from which to monitor space to verify the situation. We just can’t afford to let slip a chance like this!”
Lanning nodded seriously. “I agree with you, Excellence. It is agreed, then, that I do what I can, and if we come to grief, it cannot be helped. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall retire and work out the myriad details involved for the journey....”
With the solution of the Task mystery complete, there was little left for Peter to puzzle over in the day that followed. In fact he felt very much at a loose end and chafed a good deal under the enforced lack of action. At times he saw Lanning and learned that, so far, the plans for readying a space machine were going on unhindered. The cover for the Grand Tower top was also in the process of construction.
So a week pasted, and merged into a fortnight. He spent the time wandering about the city, sometimes with Alza and sometimes alone, and the more he wandered the more he realized the grim truth of the fact that everybody was utterly absorbed in the Task, and that the hypnotic grip would be impossible to break by any ordinary method.
Towards the middle of the third week he began to notice the Moon, a gleaming floating sickle in the evening skies. It quickened his pulse to look at it, to realize that the nearer it came to the full the nearer came Earth to total destruction. He summoned Lanning to find out how far the cover had progressed.
“It was completed today, Excellence,” the scientist said, with a faint smile of relief. “I had it delivered to my own private laboratory at noon. The remainder of today I have been among the moondust workers, supervising them in loading the stuff into the Tower summit. In three more days the bowl will be full, and no more workers will then have need to go up there. It will be safe then for a nocturnal excursion to fit the lid.”
“Three more days?” Peter stared out into the evening sky where the crescent Moon crept down after the sunset. “How far will the Moon have waxed by then?”
“Almost to her first quarter, Excellence. We shall be in ample time; I have taken care of that.”
Peter turned as the radio-signaller on the desk gleamed for attention. He went over to it.
“Yes?” he asked briefly, depressing the switch.
“Do you happen to know the whereabouts of the First Scientist, Excellence?” asked the voice of the head guard in the Governing Building’s entrance hall.
“He’s with me,” Peter answered. “Somebody want him?”
“Yes. Excellence—Chief Engineer Renshaw.”
Lanning turned and frowned, then he nodded at Peter’s questioning glance.
“Send him in.” Peter ordered, and switched off.
“I wonder what he can want?” the scientist mused. “It must be important for him to seek me this far. He is in charge of the spaceship power plant,” he added.
A few moments later the doors opened and the Chief Engineer entered, broad-shouldered and short in height. Though he gave a respectful nod to both Peter and Lanning, there was no hint of cordiality on his square-jawed face.
“Sorry to break in on you like this, sir,” he said, looking at Lanning, upon whose face an expression of sardonic inquiry had settled. “Only I’m having a lot of trouble concerning this space mission you’re planning.”
“Trouble?” Lanning eyes swept him. “What are you talking about?”
“The men working for me refuse to work on the vessel. For the first time in centuries the workers are on strike, and naturally I can’t do the work by myself.”
“If you have no better control over your workers than this you will have to be replaced,” Lanning said acidly. “I never heard of such utter nonsense! I—”
“I think you should know, sir, that not only my worker but all workers in the engineering section have struck on account of the various instructions you’ve given. You know how fast news travels amongst the technicians. The belief is abroad that you are intending to fly the vessel into space.”
“And I am!” Lanning retorted. “Since when has it been the policy of workers to question the orders of the First Scientist?”
“This case is different, sir.” Renshaw held his ground. “We all know that space cannot be travelled in safety, so why should you require a space machine to risk such a thing? Further, the Task is likely to be endangered if you leave us because you are the leader, and—”
“Ijax is the leader!” Lanning interrupted, his voice hard. “I merely work under his orders. If I were not here, you would all continue with the Task just the same. In any case the Task will be completed shortly. As a matter of fact,” Lanning added, a faint gleam in his eyes, “it is the orders of Ijax himself that I am having the space machine prepared. It was revealed to me that whatever is causing the high level of spatial radiation is coming to an end, I do not yet know when this will be, but no doubt I shall when Ijax speaks again on the Twenty-Ninth of August.”
A frown crossed Renshaw’s brow. “Mr. Lanning, you, like many of us, attend the Ijax Temple on the Twenty-Third Intersection. I was there near to you the other night when Ijax last spoke, and I did not hear any particular orders of that nature addressed specifically to you! Ijax merely ordered you to commence loading the Grand Tower with moondust.”
“Damn you, man, by what right do you dare question the orders of Ijax or myself?” Lanning shouted. “Do you imagine that I, the First Scientist and leader among you, receive all my orders through the Temple Ijax alone? Not at all! I have many private sessions with Ijax of which you know nothing.... Now get back to work and see to it that the engineers finish the job I have given them. Otherwise I shall report the matter to the President.”
&
nbsp; The Engineer gave a slow nod, then inclined his head slightly at Peter.
“I’ll do my utmost, sir,” he said—and then departed. When the doors had closed Lanning gave a troubled frown.
“Just as I expected,” he sighed. “They are suspicious—afraid that I am going to desert them after the Task is completed, or even before it’s completed. They do not want that because my knowledge of science is essential to their well-being.”
“I thought you wriggled out of it very nicely,” Peter commented. “I’ll bet you that they carry on now they think Ijax gave the orders.”
“Perhaps,” Lanning muttered. “Renshaw is no fool, and I am quite sure he doubted every word I uttered. All we can do is to hope for the best,”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GUARDIANS OF THE TOWER
Since there were no further reports of a strike by the engineers, Peter and Lanning both assumed that they had decided to go on with the job. To make sure, Lanning contacted Renshaw by visiphone and learned that work was progressing, though the Chief Engineer was careful not to say how rapidly. More than this Lanning could not do: he had to give every scrap of his attention to the Grand Tower, as in two day of ceaseless work and unlimited labour the bowl was filled with moondust. This done, and the Moon not quite at her first quarter, Lanning reported progress to date to Peter and Alza, the girl having been specially summoned to hear it.
“Then we’re literally ready to put the lid on it?” Peter questioned.
“As soon as it is dark,” the scientist assented. “I have had the cover moved into a breakdown-helicopter, and as soon as darkness falls we can get busy. That is”—he glanced outside at the evening sky and the sailing moon—“in about two hours.”
Peter and the girl nodded and settled themselves to wait.
“When the cover is on what do you propose doing?” Alza inquired. “How can we be sure that nobody will go and take another look at the moondust in the eight days or so which will have to elapse before the Moon’s radiations are due to take effect?”
“We cannot be sure of anything,” Lanning answered her, shrugging. “I shall leave a television transmitter at the top of the Tower and it will immediately reveal if anyone ascends the Tower. If that happens.... Well, a radio-disintegrator can take care of that person. He—or she—will die before getting to the top. It’s ruthless, but we have got to be that when the fate of the whole planet depends on it. I shall have the transmitter linked to here, Excellence, where it will be safe from inquisitive eyes. This is one sacrosanct territory which no one can enter without permission.”
“Right,” Peter agreed. “And once we have passed the crisis of the full Moon, how do we bring the problem to a proper end? The people have got to know sooner or later of the fate which is intended for them.”
“Our only hope is to get to the Moon at top speed the moment the ship is finished and try and force decisive action before next full moon,” Lanning answered. “We can only try: it is in the lap of the gods whether we shall succeed or not. Certainly we have got to destroy the thing at the source, just as you yourself said.”
“I wonder,” Alza said, musing, “what Anton Shaw will do when he sees Earth does not become wracked with atomic explosions on schedule? Obviously he will be watching from somewhere on the Moon. What do you think he’ll do?”
“That worries me,” Lanning confessed. “The people will probably get orders on August Twenty-Ninth to destroy whoever has stopped the Task coming to fruition—and that will mean us!”
“Actually,” Peter said, “had this moondust idea worked humanity would never have reached that date anyway! Two nights before that we’d all have been blown to bits—may still be so for all we can tell—so in giving that date Shaw must have known that nobody would be alive to hear him.”
“True,” Lanning admitted, “but because his dates have so far tallied with the full Moon I suppose he saw no reason to depart from consistency....”
They all fell silent, following their own thoughts. Outside the great windows night closed down gradually. At last Lanning got to his feet, surveyed the lighted city and the sky with Moon and stars.
“I think we can risk it now,” he said. “Come on. The robots will take us down to the airport where I have left the breakdown helicopter.”
As usual all three of then were whisked out over the dizzying gulf of the city and down to the great flat roof space where the various machines stood.
Freeing themselves from the robots, Peter and the girl followed Lanning’s tall figure to a gigantic air machine looming larger than all the others and fitted with multi-atomic engines. Climbing in and switching on the interior lights, Lanning pointed to a thin, wide cover standing edgewise in a wooden cradle.
“The cover is made of duraplex,” he said, “the lightest metal known to our science and of course opaque to light. You will not find this machine very comfortable since there is only one seat for the pilot. I shall fly it if you two can find room to squeeze in somewhere.”
Peter nodded and the girl and he settled down beside the giant cover while Lanning climbed into the pilot seat and switched on the atom motors. The huge machine rose swiftly into the air, and through the transparent floor the lighted city became visible below as a mass of glowing lines and dots.
Lanning wasted no time and in ten minutes slowed the machine down, its helicopter screws whirring, and finally halted it altogether exactly over the Grand Tower summit. In the dim light of the half Moon the faint glitter of the moondust in the inverted hemisphere reflected up to them.
“This shouldn’t be too difficult a job,” Lanning said, stumbling forward round the cover’s cradle. “The winches will attend to it. Stand aside, both of you. I am opening the floor trap.”
He directed Peter and the girl to a safe position and then from the curved roof pulled down four strong cables, each one having a magnetic grapple on the end. By considerable manoeuvring he fixed one grapple to the approximate compass points of the circular cover, the magnetic current flowing through the cables to give the grapples their power. Then he closed a switch and half the floor opened downwards like bomb-rack doors towards the immense circular rim.
Skilfully, operating first one cable and then the other, Lanning eased the cover into position until one part of its edge contacted the hemisphere’s rim. The rest was a matter of lowering the remainder and shifting and pulling until it finally settled, as near as they could tell, flush over the top.
“I shall have to make sure, though,” Lanning said, withdrawing the cables on the winch after he had cut the grapple’s magnetism. “Of course, we dare not use a searchlight to help us in case it is seen from below. I shall take the opportunity of fixing my television transmitter while I am there.”
He took the transmitter from beside the cradle and fastened it over his shoulder, then lowering a flexible metal cat-ladder into the abyss he began to descend it with agile movements. He was on the Tower cover for perhaps ten minutes, dimly visible to Peter and Alza as they watched him anxiously; then he climbed up again and joined them. The metal ladder coiled up silently on to the drum again.
“That takes care of that,” he murmured, closing the floor door. “The cover is dead flush to the edge. Not the tiniest portion of moondust is exposed. I have fixed my television transmitter’s universal eye so that I can see from your suite, Excellence, if anybody comes from below or flies over from above. In either event the person must be destroyed on the spot before any information can be conveyed.... Now we had better get back.”
He returned to the pilot’s seat and drove back to the airport swiftly. Once they had landed he took the complementary receiving section of the television equipment from the other side of the wooden cradle, and then they all went over to the waiting helicopter-robots. Rapidly they were transported back to Peter’s suite and upon the desk by the centre window Lanning began to erect the pick-up television screen with its small control panel.
“All this does is pick up light waves b
eing absorbed by the transmitter on the Tower,” he explained. “The transmitter first absorbs the light waves and then redirects them on a radio beam to this part of the city, and of course the receiver here picks them up. Being of my own design, the transmitter’s emanations will not be detected by anyone else. By control of this knob, the sky over the Tower and the structure below it can be watched at will. Observe!”
After a moment or two of adjustment he switched on and a light-spotted view of the city below the Tower, blacked out in places by girders themselves, became visible. The knob turned and gave a complete view of the stars and Moon from the Tower’s top.
“We must take it in turn to watch this screen day and night,” Lanning said grimly. “We must never leave it, one or other of us, for a single moment until two days after full Moon. If the people find out about that cover they will do anything to remove it because they know, from Ijax’s orders, that the Tower top is to be left uncovered, and the moondust untouched, for the consummation of the Task. You know that too, Miss Holmes?”
Alza nodded emphatically.
“And if somebody does prove inquisitive, what do we do?” Peter questioned. “Didn’t you say something about a radio-disintegrator?”
Lanning nodded and turned to give a robot brief orders. As the automaton went out the scientist said:
“I brought a radio-disintegrator home with me from the laboratory, together with one or two other weapons of defence which may come in useful in case of trouble. They are all in my suite elsewhere in the building. The robot will bring the annihilator in a moment. It is not a large instrument, but it has a range of eighty miles, which is ample for our needs. On moving the switch a disintegrative force is transmitted on the radio beam and destroys organic substance wherever it encounters it. In the case of an airplane it cuts out the electric circuit and sends the plane down out of control.”
“As in the case of Swanson,” Peter commented, and Lanning nodded grimly.
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