Lothan moved his contemptuous eyes away from him and surveyed the ticking calculators; then he looked at the small figure of Razak in the immediate foreground. The intellectual’s brows were down in concentrative effort, queer hypnotic eyes fixed on Umyas with a steady, unwavering stare. Suddenly and vividly the truth smote Lothan’s agile brain.
“Umyas!” he cried hoarsely. “Umyas! Don’t you realize that Razak is hypnotizing you? You are not master of your own will!”
The biologist and his comrades looked up sharply from the calculators, Razak’s face hardened from its normal expression of assurance—became fiendishly intense. For a brief moment Umyas seemed to recover a vestige of normalcy, then he shrugged.
“Such accusations will avail you nothing, Lothan,” he returned stonily, and went on with his task.
Lothan pleaded and shouted and clamored in vain. He was not thinking so much of himself now as of the planet he dearly loved—the world he had wished to make the master planet of the universe. Only his brain, not under the control of Razak’s superhuman will power, could detect the evidences of hypnotic control. Even so it was useless. He was still raving impotently as the automatons drove him and lthos into the space projectile. The airlock closed and their shouting was cut off.
Steadily, Umyas fixed the controls of the cannon, then departed with Razak and his colleagues to the observatory.
In silence, Martians and Disepians alike heard the titanic report of the space gun, saw in the reflector a bisected mass go hurtling into space, breaking into two separate balls of incandescence with sprawling tails expanding behind.
“They, too, will enlarge,” murmured Razak. “As they go onward, the life energy will become stronger; they will gleam more brightly. This world is practically rid of all traces of that dangerous energy—but even yet there may be others. We of Disep have gained our end—have removed all traces of opposition and become masters of this planet!”
He turned slowly in the bright lights and faced the surprised Martians. His implacable face was one of frozen hardness, eyes bright and keen. Umyas took a sudden step back amongst his fellows, swept his startled, faceted eyes over the steady array of white faces, male and female, grinning with sardonic amusement. Little people, yes—weak and ineffectual, and yet their minds—
The words of Lothan swept back into Umyas’ mind. Finding his breath with an effort, he gulped out, “Masters of this planet! What do you mean?”
“I mean that Lothan spoke the truth,” answered Razak smoothly. “I did hypnotize you, but only to a good end. They deserved to die, those two—they had to die. Not only because of energy, but because of the opposition they might have caused me. Understand this, Umyas, I am the ruler of this planet and nothing you or your people can do will alter it.”
“Then—then Lothan spoke the truth?”
“I mean that the law of the cosmos is survival of the fittest. We are more intelligent than you; we even forced you, mentally, to come and release us from the prison. We have no world on which to live save this one; therefore, we will take it from this moment onward.”
Umyas’ startled eyes swept the slowly nodding heads of the Disepian men and women. Three hundred of them, themselves almost approaching the inhuman mentality of Razak. The Martian suddenly felt utterly helpless, wished he still had the determined, even though traitorous, Lothan beside him. At least he was his own kin, not a white-skinned being of pitiless intellect. He turned weakly to his fellows and read in their faceted eyes a hopeless despair.
V
Razak of Disep clung immovably to the purpose he had outlined. With effortless ease he wrested all semblances of control from the Martians, even fired several more into space as they revealed unexpected traces of life energy, until, at length, he was satisfied the blight was completely eliminated. Umyas he promptly dispatched to the twin city at the North Pole, there to work in comparative exile.
The Disepians rapidly turned the Martian machines and devices to their own uses, mastered the planet from end to end. But to a mind like Razak’s that did not represent completeness. His insatiable desire for further achievement, that same restless curiosity that had led him to drive himself and fellows into this supra-universe, allowed him no rest. He realized the universe about him opened up immense possibilities for expansion.
He examined each of the surrounding planets in turn and found them impracticable. The nearest to the Sun was a blistered wilderness on one side and a frozen sepulcher on the other. The next nearest was still too young for con-sideration. The giant outer planets, too, were in the same state. But in the third world there lay opportunity. Night after night he sat beside the vast reflector with his two scientific assistants, studying every detail of the third world, watching the writhing of its clouds and the phantasmal visions of a tumbling landscape beneath—cruel and rugged terrain being molded out of the formless into a world of dawning shape.
“An empty world, young and fresh,” he murmured broodingly, and his assistants nodded. “A world without life, without greenery, without even the faintest spark of a living amoeba. There, my friends, lies room for expansion. There are three hundred of us. One hundred and fifty will depart forthwith for that world and commence the generation of a race. I will go personally and direct operations. You, Vildon, will stay here and take over control. You will find it simple enough now that these Martians are under subjection.”
Vildon inclined his head. “As you wish, Razak. Clearly, within several cycles that third world will be well populated. Our race can expand and live as never before, once the seed of life is taken to it.”
Razak nodded slowly, his eyes thoughtful. “We will take seeds from this world—plant seeds—cover that young and barren world with beauty such as our own world of Disep once possessed. Our readings have shown that that third planet is suitable for us in everything except gravitation. That is rather in excess of normal, but no matter. You will give orders for space machines to be prepared for departure at Sundown tomorrow. Within an hour you will receive tabulated lists of those whom I shall choose to accompany me. Now you may both go.”
The two departed, left their superior gazing musingly into the reflector.
“To that world shall come life,” he muttered. “Life from a world within a world. The power of long-dead Disep shall be felt throughout the length and breadth of this supra-universe.”
* * * *
There was one thing, however, that the implacable Razak overlooked in his anxiety during the hours preceding the departure of the ten space machines to the third world. During those hours, while he arranged for the ships to be fully provided, together with new high-power disintegrators for the leveling of mountainous terrain, the intellectual sway he held over the Martians was removed; his whole concentration and that of his fellows was trained on the difficulties and trials of the last hours.
In consequence, Umyas arose, with his fellows at Polar City, from the depths of a semi-mental stupor, realized clearly for the first time the tremendous dominance Razak and his fellows had been holding over them.
Reference to the television machines soon placed them in possession of the facts as to what Razak was planning to do. Immediately Umyas went into conference with his fellows and from the conference emerged a plan, a possible scheme whereby to overcome the deputizing Vildon once Razak had departed into space.
Umyas acted immediately. In the five short hours he had left to him whilst the Disepians were in the projectile laboratories, he got an army of automatons to work, formerly doing only the tasks planned for them by the white skins. Following the biologist’s directions they drove fast machines to the four corners of the planet, disintegrating beams in the base of their fliers gouging vast chasms in the landscape as they went, soundlessly cleaving mountains and plateaus alike, forming about the uninhabited parts of the planet a veritable network of 1,000-foot-deep valleys, all leading back to within two miles of the shores of the principal
oceans grouped about the opposite poles of the planet.
In all, the automatons took three hours to accomplish their noiseless purpose, scored the Martian disk with regular parallel lines in all directions from the sea defenses, ending the channels at five miles distance from the mighty equatorial city wherein the interlopers were now watching Razak’s departure for the third world.
The Sun had been set some little time; darkness enveloped the planet. Before long Phobos would be above the horizon. This very fact of darkness, as Umyas had hoped, served to prevent Razak from observing the changed appearance of the planet’s disk, nor was his mind trained on Umyas, for he had all his mentality still directed on the successful maneuvers of the fleet into space.
Umyas, from his Polar City laboratory, surrounded by as many of his fellows as the place would hold, was smiling grimly. His massive hand twitched over a series of buttons and switches.
“Interlopers!” he breathed vengefully. “Razak has departed into space; that leaves only Vildon and his immediate contemporaries. They seek to master our planet, do they? Here under my hands lies a series of remote-control explosive switches. Whilst one sector of automatons carved chasms from the oceans to the chief city, another sector laid depth charges of space-gun explosive at the shore end of each channel. I am told the work is finished and the wiring is connected.
“Once I depress these buttons every channel at the sea end will explode, permit the twin oceans of opposite poles to deluge inward to the center—will utterly overwhelm and destroy the Disepians before they can do a thing to help themselves. Some of our own people will go, too—that is unavoidable. The point is that we shall be left with Polar City, fully equipped—ready to start again. If Razak ever dares to return with his fleet we will destroy them all before they ever reach this planet. Later we will destroy him on his third world and be rid of him forever. Is that clear?”
The assembled Martians nodded, eyes gleaming brightly with triumph. Umyas smiled grimly, depressed the multiple switches, then stood back. Almost instantly the entire bulk of Mars quaked and trembled to the force of titanic concussions. The explosive tore out the remaining barriers between channels and oceans. Inconceivable volumes of water belched inward along the given tracks—an inevitable, smashing deluge that reached the equatorial city and crashed in upon it from all four sides.
Vildon, about to take, over the control Razak had assigned to him, received warning too late. Before he or his fellows could make a move the flood was upon them. It crushed them to pieces in the tumbled ruins of the city, drove their remains deep down into swirling vortices of brine, stone and metal.
In an hour the entire face of Mars had changed. Slowly, gradually, the spent oceans started to reform themselves, thundering in raging torrents through the specially made channels that left only the poles high and dry, the northern one containing the exulting Martians.
“We win!” breathed Umyas, staring into the televisor that gave him a view of the ocean where the equatorial city had lain. “The Disepians have been destroyed! Our task now is to rebuild and chart the land. Once the oceans have established a new level and position we can start again.”
In his triumphant decision, however, Umyas had reckoned without Razak himself. The Disepian ruler, once Sunlight came to the red planet, saw immediately what had happened, realized suddenly why his efforts to get into touch with Vildon over the spatial radio had met with no response.
His expression scarcely changed as he stared down; only his lips set into a thin, bitter line of hate. About him his colleagues burst into cries of dismay, stared unbelieving into the reflecting screens.
“Razak, what’s happened?” demanded Cralo, his immediate attendant.
“Is it not obvious?” the ruler asked coldly. “Those Martian scientists at Polar City played a swift move that has utterly defeated Vildon. Umyas is responsible for this. He has destroyed the city by diverting the polar oceans. Our control over that planet is at an end.”
“We can return at once and reassert ourselves!”
“No.” Razak shook his head slowly. “You may take it for granted that if we tried to return, Umyas would be on the lookout for us—would destroy us completely. In Polar City he has all the devices necessary. I was a fool to send him there—an even bigger fool to forget to hold him under my will during the last hours. Umyas remains to build a new world—or so he imagines,” he concluded softly. “It occurs to me that we placed in these spaceships disintegrators similar to his own, for the purpose of mountain leveling.”
“You mean—” asked Cralo eagerly.
“I mean that at our present slight distance from Mars we can use them very effectually. Umyas shall not succeed; I will destroy him first. Give orders to the remainder of the fleet to train their disintegrators on the planet and to stand by for my firing order. We will see whether these fool Martians are so clever after all. Hurry!”
The attendant immediately obeyed. Razak waited through a short interval, during which the distance from Mars slightly increased. His face was set and hard as he received the information that every weapon was ready. The thought of allowing the victorious Martians to remodel the world they had recaptured never occurred to him; only the idea of extinction gained access to his ruthless brain.
“Fire!” he commanded into the inter-spatial transmitter, and the order was incontinently relayed to all other nine ships.
Simultaneously, the entire battery of ten disintegrators released their powers, trained exactly on the red globe some 100,000 miles distant. Calculated to he dead correct by mathematical machines, the terrific force struck the planet’s surface, instantly blasted Polar City into dust, scooped out great craters in the ground beneath it. The seas boiled furiously, evaporated in enormous clouds of steam and spume, left under their banked clouds of vapor great barren areas of new and sodden continent. Time and time again the disintegrators struck the planet, each time the recoil sending the ships farther away into space, until, at last, Razak gave the order to stop and stood looking down on the receding planet with a grim smile.
“A lifeless world,” he murmured. “A pity in some ways and yet very necessary in others. A lifeless and now waterless world, carrying the eternal mark of Umyas’ short-lived victory in the shape of those still visible chasms stretched across the disk like a network.” He turned abruptly. “Set the course back on a direct line with the third world; recoil has turned us aside. Proceed afterward as already instructed.”
Within 200 hours the Disepian fleet finally landed on the surface of the third world, settled gently down on the soft, lushy soil of that very young planet, upon an immense plateau washed by the foaming breakers of a tempestuous sea. Overhead there lay the densely heavy clouds begotten of eternal warmth and moisture.
“A world of great possibilities,” commented Razak, staring out through the window over the wilderness. “Everything except gravitation is suitable for us.” He drew a deep breath with an effort. “That is one problem that our science cannot altogether overcome. Here on this plateau we will erect our principal city.”
The others nodded slowly and stared at the distant end of the plateau, where the waters of the incessant atmospheric downpour had come together in foaming torrents, already cleaving vast gorges in the upflung mountain range.
“It will be a long time before this world becomes really climatically suitable,” commented Cralo doubtfully. “Do you think that it is wise to stay, Razak, or had we perhaps better journey—”
“To another world?” Razak interrupted him. “How do you propose we do that? We know all the other worlds of this system are useless. Mars, too, is no longer of use now we have blasted all the water from its face. No, we might wander through all eternity and never again find a world such as this. As ages go by it will settle down and become a lovely world. We will conquer it as we have conquered everything else. And we will name it—Earth!”
* * *
*
Accordingly, by the untiring efforts of the scientists of Disep, there began the first colonization and control of the new world—a wild and terrible world in those early days, all but defeating their untiring diligence and labor. By degrees, with the aid of their scientific instruments, they were able to direct the immense rain clouds to areas where they could precipitate their moisture harmlessly. They gained for themselves a slowly drying landscape already flourishing with the germinated seeds that had been laid in the soft, warm soil. Trees and shrubs began to flourish in the enervating air, mothered by the vital chemicals of a planet still in its cradle.
The erection of a city was a tougher problem, but the determination of Razak to establish himself on the planet would accept no defeat. Little by little, braced against the tempests that almost constantly swept the planet, the city began to appear—composed of synthetic stone and gradually supplied with all the necessities of life. Slowly, inevitably, Razak was gaining his ends.
During the ten years occupied in building the city, his colleagues discovered many things, notably the formation of the planet they were on. So far as could be judged their city was erected on a vast plateau of land existing between two enormous continents, icebound to the north with the manifest approach of a glacial age. Nor was the plateau in a very secure position. The ocean, still in the throes of tempestuous upheavals, revealed distinct signs that it might ultimately sweep inward between the two continents and engulf the city in its depths.
To this possibility Razak paid surprisingly little attention. He had other problems on his mind. One was the exuberance of growth occurring on the plateau; the enormously fast germination and spread of plants and trees was worrying him. In every direction, save in the ice regions, there were vast jungles of interlacing green, sodden and crawling with a new form of small life, protoplasmic slime that he knew inevitably spelt the dawn of a beast age, destined to evolve through the ages into wild animals.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 39