The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  I left nothing important out, not even Rena. I admitted that I had taken Benedetto from the clinic, how we had escaped to Rome, how we had fled to Vesuvius…and what I had learned. I made it short, skipping a few unimportant things like Zorchi.

  And Defoe sat sipping his coffee, listening, his warm eyes twinkling.

  I stopped. He pursed his lips, considering.

  “Silly,” he said at last.

  “Silly? What’s silly!”

  He said, “Thomas, I don’t care about your casual affairs. And I would have excused your—precipitousness—since you have brought back certain useful information. Quite useful. I don’t deny it. But I don’t like being lied to, Thomas.”

  “I haven’t lied!”

  He said sharply, “There is no way to get fissionable material except through the Company!”

  “Oh, hell!” I shook my head. “How about a dud bomb, Defoe?”

  For the first time he looked puzzled. “Dud bomb?”

  Gogarty looked sick. “There’s—there’s a report on your desk, Mr. Defoe,” he said worriedly. “We—well—figured the half-masses just got close enough to boil instead of to explode. We—”

  “I see.” Defoe looked at him for a long moment. Then, disregarding Gogarty, he turned back to me, shoved the coffee at me. “All right, Thomas. They’ve got the warhead. Hydrogen? Cobalt? What about fuel?”

  I told him what I knew. Gogarty, listening, licked his lips. I didn’t envy him. I could see the worry in him, the fear of Defoe’s later wrath. For in Defoe, as in Slovetski, there was that deadly fire. It blazed only when it was allowed to; but what it touched withered and died. I had not seen Defoe as tightly concentrated, as drivingly intent, before. I was sorry for Gogarty when at last, having drained me dry, Defoe left. But I was glad for me.

  * * * *

  He was gone less than an hour—just time for me to eat a Class-C meal a silent expediter brought.

  He thrust the door open and stared at me with whitely glaring eyes. “If I thought you were lying, Thomas…” His voice was cracking with suppressed emotion.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  “Don’t you know?” He stood trembling, staring at me. “You told the truth—or part of the truth. There was a hideout on Vesuvius. But an hour ago they got away—while you were wasting time. Was it a stall, Thomas? Did you know they would run?”

  I said, “Defoe, don’t you see, that’s all to the good? If they had to run, they couldn’t possibly take the bomb with them. That means—”

  He was shaking his head. “Oh, but you’re wrong, Thomas. According to the director of the albergo down the hill, three skyhook helicopters came over—big ones. They peeled the roof off, as easy as you please, and they lifted the bomb out and then flew away.”

  I said stupidly, “Where?”

  He nodded. There was no emotion in his voice, only in his eyes. He might have been discussing the weather. “Where? That is a good question. I hope we will find it out, Thomas. We’re checking the radar charts; they can’t hide for long. But how did they get away at all? Why did you give them the time?”

  He left me. Perversely, I was almost glad. It was part of the price of switching allegiance, I was learning, that shreds and tatters of loyalties cling to you and carry over. When I went against the Company to rescue Benedetto, I still carried with me my Adjusters’ Handbook. And I confess that I never lost the habit of reading a page or two in it, even in the Catacombs, when things looked bad. And when I saw the murderous goal that Slovetski’s men were marching toward, and I returned to Defoe, I still could feel glad that Benedetto, at least, had got away.

  But not far.

  It was only a few hours, but already broad daylight when Gogarty, looking shaken, came into the room. He said testily, “Damn it, Wills, I wish I’d never seen you! Come on! Defoe wants you with us.”

  “Come on where?” I got up as he gestured furiously for haste.

  “Where do you think? Did you think your pals would be able to stay out of sight forever? We’ve got them pinpointed, bomb and all.”

  He was almost dragging me down the corridor, toward a courtyard. I limped out into the bright morning and blinked. The court was swarming with armed expediters, clambering into personnel-carrying copters marked with the vivid truce-team insignia of the Company. Gogarty hustled me into the nearest and the jets sizzled and we leaped into the air.

  I shouted, over the screaming of the jets, “Where are we going?”

  Gogarty spat and pointed down the long purple coastline. “To their hideout—Pompeii!”

  CHAPTER XIII

  No one discussed tactics with me, but it was clear that this operation was carefully planned. Our copter was second in a long string of at least a dozen that whirled down the coastline, past the foothills of Vesuvius, over the clusters of fishing villages and vineyards.

  I had never seen Pompeii, but I caught a glimpse of something glittering and needle-nosed, upthrust in the middle of a cluster of stone buildings that might have been the ruins.

  Then the first ten of the copters spun down to a landing, while two or three more flew a covering mission overhead.

  The expediters, hard-pellet guns at the ready, leaped out and formed in a skirmish line. Gogarty and a pair of expediters stayed close by me, behind the line of attack; we followed the troops as they dog-trotted through a field of some sort of grain, around fresh excavations, down a defile into the shallow pit that held the ruins of first-century Pompeii.

  I had no time for archeology, but I remember tripping over wide, shallow gutters in the stone-paved streets, and cutting through a tiny villa of some sort whose plaster walls still were decorated with faded frescoes.

  Then we heard the spatter of gunfire and Gogarty, clutching at me, skidded to a halt. “This is specialist work,” he panted. “Best thing we can do is stay out of it.”

  I peered around a column and saw a wide open stretch. Beyond it was a Roman arch and the ruined marble front of what once had been a temple of some sort; in the open ground lay the three gigantic copters Defoe had mentioned.

  The vanes of one of them were spinning slowly, and it lurched and quivered as someone tried to get it off the ground under fire. But the big thing was in the middle of the area: The bomb, enormous and terrifying as its venomous nose thrust up into the sky. By its side was a tank truck, the side of it painted with the undoubtedly untrue legend that it contained crude olive oil. Hydrazine, more likely!

  Hoses connected it with the base of the guided-missile bomb; and a knot of men were feverishly in action around it, some clawing desperately at the fittings of the bomb, some returning the skirmish fire of the expediters.

  We had the advantage of surprise, but not very much of that. From the top of the ancient temple a rapid-fire pellet gun sprayed into the flank of the skirmish line, which immediately broke up as the expediters leaped for cover.

  One man fell screaming out of the big skyhook copter, but someone remained inside, for it lurched and dipped and roared crazily across the field in as ragged a takeoff as I ever saw, until its pilot got it under control. It bobbed over the skirmish line under fire, but returning the fire as whatever few persons were inside it leaned out and strafed the expediters. Then the skyhook itself came under attack as the patrol copters swooped in.

  The big ship staggered toward the nearest of them. It must have been intentional: We could see the faint flare of muzzle-blast as the two copters fired on each other; they closed, and there was a brutal rending noise as they collided. They were barely a hundred feet in the air; they crashed in a breath, and flames spread out from the wreckage.

  And Slovetski’s resources still had not run out. There was a roar and a screech of metal, and a one-man cobra tank slithered out of one of the buildings and came rapidly across the field toward the expediters.

  Gogarty, beside me, was sobbing with fear; that little tank carried self-loading rockets. It blasted a tiny shrine into rubble, spun and came directly towar
d us.

  We ran. I didn’t even see the second expediter aircraft come whirling in and put the cobra tank out of action with its heavy weapons. I heard the firing, but it was swallowed up in a louder screaming roar.

  Gogarty stared at me from the drainage trench we had flung ourselves into. We both leaped up and ran back toward the open field.

  There was an explosion as we got there—the fake “olive-oil” truck, now twenty yards from the bomb, had gone up in a violent blast. But we hardly noticed. For at the base of the bomb itself red-purple fire was billowing out. It screamed and howled and changed color to a blinding blue as the ugly squat shape danced and jiggled. The roar screamed up from a bull-bass to a shrieking coloratura and beyond as the bomb lifted and gained speed and, in the blink of an eye, was gone.

  I hardly noticed that the sound of gunfire died raggedly away. We were not the only ones staring unbelievingly at the sky where that deadly shape had disappeared. Of the scores of men on both sides in that area, not a single eye was anywhere else.

  The bomb had been fueled; we were too late. Its servitors, perhaps at the cost of their own lives, had torched it off. It was on its way.

  The cobalt bomb—the single weapon that could poison the world and wipe out the human race—was on its way.

  CHAPTER XIV

  What can you do after the end? What becomes of any plot or plan, when an indigo-gleaming missile sprays murder into the sky and puts a period to planning?

  I do not think there ever was a battlefield as abruptly quiet as that square in old Pompeii. Once the bomb had gone, there was not a sound. The men who had been firing on each other were standing still, jaws hanging, eyes on the sky.

  But it couldn’t last. For one man was not surprised; one man knew what was happening and was ready for it.

  A crouching figure at the top of the ruined temple gesticulated and shouted through a power-megaphone: “Give it up, Defoe! You’ve lost, you’ve lost!” It was Slovetski, and beside him a machine-gun crew sighted in on the nearest knot of expediters.

  Pause, while the Universe waited. And then his answer came; it was a shot that screamed off a cracked capital, missing him by millimeters. He dropped from sight, and the battle was raging.

  Human beings are odd. Now that the cause of the fight was meaningless, it doubled in violence. There were fewer than a hundred of Slovetski’s men involved, and not much more than that many expediters. But for concentrated violence I think they must have overmatched anything in the Short War’s ending.

  I was a non-combatant; but the zinging of the hard-pellet fire swarmed all around me. Gogarty, in his storm sewer, was safe enough, but I was more exposed. While the rapid-fire weapons pattered all around me, I jumped up and zigzagged for the shelter of a low-roofed building.

  The walls were little enough protection, but at least I had the illusion of safety. Most of all, I was out of sight.

  I wormed my way through a gap in the wall to an inner chamber. It was as tiny a room as ever I have been in; less than six feet in its greatest dimension—length—and with most of its floor area taken up by what seemed to be a rude built-in bed. Claustrophobia hit me there; the wall on the other side was broken too, and I wriggled through.

  The next room was larger; and it was occupied.

  A man lay, panting heavily, in a corner. He pushed himself up on an elbow to look at me. In a ragged voice he said: “Thomas!” And he slumped back, exhausted by the effort, blood dripping from his shirt.

  I leaped over to the side of Benedetto dell’Angela. The noise of the battle outside rose to a high pitch and dwindled raggedly away.

  * * * *

  I suppose it was inertia that kept me going—certainly I could see with my mind’s vision no reason to keep struggling. The world was at an end. There was no reason to try again to escape from the rubber hoses of the expediters—and, after I had seen the resistance end, and an expediter-officer appeared atop the temple where Slovetski had shouted his defiance, no possibility of rejoining the rebels.

  Without Slovetski, they were lost.

  But I kept on.

  Benedetto helped. He knew every snake-hole entrance and exit of all the hideouts of Slovetski’s group. They had not survived against the strength of the Company without acquiring skill in escape routes; and here, too, they had a way out. It required a risky dash across open ground but, even with Benedetto on my back, I made it.

  And then we were in old Pompeii’s drainage sewer, the arched stone tunnel that once had carried sewage from the Roman town to the sea. It was a hiding place, and then a tunnel to freedom, for the two of us.

  We waited there all of that day, Benedetto mumbling almost inaudibly beside me. In lucid moments, he told me the name of the hotel where Rena had gone when the Observatory was abandoned, but there seemed few lucid moments. Toward evening, he began to recover.

  We found our way to the seashore just as darkness fell. There was a lateen-rigged fishing vessel of some sort left untended. I do not suppose the owner was far away, but he did not return in time to stop us.

  Benedetto was very weak. He was muttering to himself, words that I could hardly understand. “Wasted, wasted, wasted,” was the burden of his complaint. I did not know what he thought was wasted—except, perhaps, the world.

  We slipped in to one of the deserted wharves under cover of darkness, and I left Benedetto to find a phone. It was risky, but what risk mattered when the world was at an end?

  Rena was waiting at the hotel. She answered at once. I did not think the call had been intercepted—or that it would mean anything to anyone if it had. I went back to the boat to wait with Benedetto for Rena to arrive, in a rented car. We didn’t dare chance a cab.

  Benedetto was sitting up, propped rigidly against the mast, staring off across the water. Perhaps I startled him as I came to the boat; he turned awkwardly and cried out weakly.

  Then he saw that it was I. He said something I could not understand and pointed out toward the west, where the Sun had gone down long before.

  But there was still light there—though certainly not sunset.

  Far off over the horizon was a faint glow! I couldn’t understand at first, since I was sure the bomb had been zeroed-in on the Home Offices in New York; but something must have happened. From that glow, still showing in the darkness so many hours after the explosion as the dust particles gleamed bluely, it must have gone off over the Atlantic.

  There was no doubt in my mind any longer. The most deadly weapon the world had ever known had gone off!

  CHAPTER XV

  The hotel was not safe, of course, but what place was when the world was at an end? Rena and I, between us, got her father, Benedetto, upstairs into her room without attracting too much attention. We put him on the bed and peeled back his jacket.

  The bullet had gone into his shoulder, a few inches above the heart. The bone was splintered, but the bleeding was not too much. Rena did what she could and, for the first time in what seemed like years, we had a moment’s breathing space.

  I said, “I’ll phone for a doctor.”

  Benedetto said faintly, “No, Thomas! The Company!”

  I protested, “What’s the difference? We’re all dead, now. You’ve seen—” I hesitated and changed it. “Slovetski has seen to that. There was cobalt in that bomb.”

  He peered curiously at me. “Slovetski? Did you suppose it was Slovetski who planned it so?” He shook his head—and winced at the pain. He whispered, “Thomas, you do not understand. It was my project, not Slovetski’s. That one, he proposed to destroy the Company’s Home Office; it was his thought that killing them would bring an end to evil. I persuaded him there was no need to kill—only to gamble.”

  I stared at him. “You’re delirious!”

  “Oh, no.” He shook his head and succeeded in a tiny smile. “Do you not see it, Thomas? The great explosion goes off, the world is showered with particles of death. And then—what then?”

  “We die!”

&nbs
p; “Die? No! Have you forgotten the vaults of the clinics?”

  It staggered me. I’d been reciting all the pat phrases from early schooling about the bomb! If it had gone off in the Short War, of course, it would have ended the human race! But I’d been a fool.

  The vaults had been built to handle the extreme emergencies that couldn’t be foreseen—even one that knocked out nearly the whole race. They hadn’t expected that a cobalt-cased bomb would ever be used. Only the conspirators would have tried, and how could they get fissionables? But they were ready for even that. I’d been expecting universal doom.

  “The clinics,” Benedetto repeated as I stared at him.

  It was the answer. Even radio-poisons of cobalt do not live forever. Five years, and nearly half of them would be gone; eleven years, and more than three-quarters would be dissipated. In fifty years, the residual activity would be down to a fraction of one per cent—and the human race could come back to the surface.

  “But why?” I demanded. “Suppose the Company can handle the population of the whole world? Granted, they’ve space enough and one year is the same as fifty when you’re on ice. But what’s the use?”

  He smiled faintly. “Bankruptcy, Thomas,” he whispered. “So you see, we do not wish to fall into the Company’s hands right now. For there is a chance that we will live…and perhaps the very faintest of chances that we will win!”

  * * * *

  It wasn’t even a faint chance—I kept telling myself that.

  But, if anything could hurt the Company, the area in which it was vulnerable was money. Benedetto had been intelligent in that. Bombing the Home Office would have been an inconvenience, no more. But to disrupt the world’s work with a fifty-year hiatus, while the air purged itself of the radioactive cobalt from the bomb, would mean fifty years while the Company lay dormant; fifty years while the policies ran their course and became due.

  For that was the wonder of Benedetto’s scheme: The Company insured against everything. If a man were to be exposed to radiation and needed to be put away, he automatically went on “disability” benefits, while his policy paid its own premiums!