Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  “The principles of this system (the proposed American constitution) are extremely pernicious, impolitic, and dangerous. (It provides) not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely...”—Patrick Henry, delegate to the Virginia convention of 1788.

  “What, sir, is the present Constitution? A republican government founded on the principles of monarchy, with the three estates... There is an executive fetter in some parts, and as unlimited in others as a Roman dictator. A democratic branch marked with the strong features of aristocracy, and an aristocratic branch with all the impurities and imperfections of the British House of Commons... We have asked for bread, and they have given us a stone.” —William Grayson, delegate to the Virginia convention of 1788.

  “Our Constitution professedly rests upon good sense and attachment of the people. This basis, weak as it may appear, has not yet been found to fail.—John Quincy Adams, 1821.

  “...The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle.” —Abraham Lincoln, 16th American President, in a speech on May 19, 1856.

  “...our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure...we here highly resolve...that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” —Abraham Lincoln, in a speech dedicating a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November, 1863.

  “This great American people is at bottom just, virtuous, and hopeful; the roots of its being are in the soil of what is lovely, pure, and of good report, and the need of the hour is just that radicalism that will clear a way for the realization of the aspirations of a sturdy race.”

  —Woodrow Wilson, 28th American President, 1912.

  “The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history. It is human history." —Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd American President, in his third inaugural speech, January, 1941.

  “In the cause of freedom we have to battle for the rights of people with whom we do not agree; and whom, in many cases, we may not like...If we do not defend their rights, we endanger our own." —Harry Truman, 33rd American President.

  “If we are going to continue to be proud that we are Americans, there must be no weakening of the codes by which we have lived..." —Dwight Eisenhower, 34th American President.

  “When I ran for the Presidency of the United States, I knew that this country faced serious challenges, but I could not realize, nor could any man realize who does not bear the burdens of this office, how heavy and constant would be those burdens. In these days and weeks I ask for your help, and your advice. I ask for your suggestions, when you think we could do better. All of us, I know, love our country, and we shall all do our best to serve it. In meeting my responsibilities in these coming months as President, I need your good will, and your support, and above all, your prayers.”

  —John F. Kennedy, 35th American President in a speech, during the “Berlin Crisis,” 1961.

  “When the helpless call for help—the hearing must hear, the seeing must see, and the able must act.” —Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th American President, in the book, My Hope for America.

  BOOK ONE

  NOVEMBER

  1: CONFRONTATION

  Richard Hunter had no premonition that he was stepping into the pages of history on that sunny November morning when he parked his Porsche at the curb on a Philadelphia street. At 28, Hunter would have been the first to insist that he was too young for history; indeed, he was almost too young for his chosen profession, and all too often had experienced the handicap of youth in his post as political editor of Weekly magazine. His feet had hardly touched the sidewalk when he became aware of another natural handicap to virile professionalism; she was descending on him from the car just ahead of his. Startlingly attractive in a chubby mink jacket, short leather skirt and knee-length boots, her vigorous advance and set expression left little doubt that she was indeed targeting directly on Hunter. He completed exiting the vehicle, lightly closed the door, and leaned with one elbow on the top of the car, smiling down from his lanky height in appreciation of the unexpected confrontation.

  The girl was lithely well-formed, graceful even in obvious anger, and decidedly beautiful. Darkly luminous eyes, deep and nicely spaced, glared at him from beneath a rakish leather beret; the red slash of lips curled starkly into an ivory background. She had halted a few feet distant, long legs spread and stabbing the ground, hips thrust forward, gloved hands clasped angrily in front of her.

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked. It was an exciting voice, perhaps enhanced somewhat by the controlled fury of her tone.

  Hunter hung onto the grin. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, hell!” she advanced another pace. “Why are you following me around?”

  He sighed, looked behind himself as though half expecting to see another person standing there, flashed a glance toward the brick-fronted house just opposite, then let his eyes settle once more on his present problem. “You’re very pretty,” he assured her,” and I’d be glad to follow you anywhere, any time, but...” He raised his hands in a palms-up gesture, emphasizing the mystification in his eyes.

  “Well, just bug off,” she said menacingly. She glowered at him for another brief moment, parted her lips to say something more, then changed her mind, swung about, and charged off across the street, nimbly avoiding a passing automobile.

  Hunter sighed, shrugged, and followed the girl across the street. She paused on the first step of the brick-front, turning to regard him with beautiful exasperation. He couldn’t help chuckling; the situation was just too impossible. “Look, I warned you,” she said, her voice quivering. “I won’t hesitate to call a cop.”

  “Call it a coincidence, instead,” he advised softly. He pushed his credentials into her hand. “I have an appointment to interview the man who lives here.”

  The girl was studiously examining his press card. “Of course,” Hunter added, “if you want to call a cop, why, go ahead. And be my guest as idiot of the day.”

  The girl thrust the card back at him. Without a word, she retraced her steps to the other side of the street, climbed into her car and departed.

  Hunter watched in thoughtful silence until her car left the curb; then he went up the steps of the house, noticing a flicker of motion at a curtained window on the first floor.

  An elderly woman in a maid’s uniform answered his ring, opening the door just enough to show herself. “I’m Dick Hunter of Weekly,” he told her. “The committeeman is expecting me.”

  Her reply was a rush of words: “I’m sorry he left word that he’ll contact you later he had to go out all of a sudden.”

  “Uh...I’ve come all the way from New York,” Hunter replied. “I’d be glad to wait awhile if—”

  “He might not get back all day. He’ll contact you later.” The door had closed so that he could just see the speaker’s mouth during this rejoinder, and it clicked completely shut on the final word.

  He went back down the steps, his eyes angling toward the window where he’d detected movement earlier. Someone was still there, he was certain-peering out at him from behind the curtain. He went on to his car, got in, stared at the building reflectively for a moment, then started the engine and pulled away.

  The entire episode, to Hunter’s mind, was ridiculous. Dunaway was in that house; he was positive of it. Hunter was no bill collector; he was a journalist doing a story—a very routine story, but for a big national magazine; a publication in which any ward politician would be proud to be named and quoted. Now, why had the guy avoided him? It was a bone-feeling for Hunter; Dunaway had witnessed the little altercation with the girl, and then had sent a flustered maid to turn him away. But for God’s sake, why?

  He drove several bl
ocks in morose speculation, then yielded to impulse and circled about for another run past the house of the ward committeeman, who also happened to be an appointee of the people of Pennsylvania to act in their behalf as one of their Presidential electors. He shifted to a low gear and crept slowly past the brick-fronted house, but with his eyes scanning in the cars parked along the street on both sides. A black Buick sedan just like the one the girl in the leather skirt had been driving was now parked in the space Hunter had vacated. He went on to the corner, then pulled over and jotted down the license number he’d been repeating in his mind.

  It was ten o’clock; his next interview, with another elector, was scheduled for late afternoon. He had some time on his hands. Still, he didn’t want to get diverted into some wildly improbably lunatic idea... Then again, it was a deep bone-feeling which no self-respecting journalist could dismiss.

  Though not entirely convinced that he wasn’t merely giving way to journalistic romanticism—another handicap of youth?—Hunter sighed, gunned the Porsche back into the traffic and drove to the Philadelphia Inquirer Building.

  A friend on the editorial staff took the license number off Hunter’s hands, while Hunter himself invaded the paper’s morgue in search of an ivory-skinned wench with flashing eyes and jet-black hair. His eyes had not even begun to tire of the society sections when his friend reappeared with the license-number intelligence. The tag was registered to a rental car—one of the large U-Drive fleets. The Inquirer man had even managed to locate the specific agency-office to which the car had last been assigned; it was an airport office. This was enough to convince Hunter that a search of Philadelphia newspaper files would be a futile one.

  The girl at the rental desk at the airport proved quite susceptible to Hunter’s charm, producing a carbon of the rental transaction for his inspection. Hunter recorded the name and address of the renter, then he placed a call to New York, and moments later heard the familiar voice of his managing editor’s secretary.

  “This is Dick Hunter, Betty,” he said. “I have to talk to Saul, no matter what he’s doing.”

  “You sound mildly lathered,” she told him. “What are they doing to my favorite editor there in the city of brotherly love?”

  “Conspiring against him, I’d say. Seriously, Betty, I need his ear.”

  “Well, I’ll see if I can find it for you.”

  “Find what?” Hunter asked, his voice becoming more agitated.

  “The boss’s ear, of course. Hang on.”

  Saul Martens came on with his usual no-preliminary directness. “If you’re not in Philadelphia, why aren’t you? And if you are, what the hell are you doing on this call?”

  Hunter chuckled. “How many other houses would you say are working this Electoral College angle?” he asked.

  “We’re the only one,” Martens replied positively. “Or we would be if my political editor wasn’t lollygagging around on a damn phone.”

  “Somebody else is interested. I bumped into her twice yesterday in New Jersey, and again this morning here in Philadelphia. About twenty-five or-six, runs around in mink and leather, and with stunning results; dark hair, dark eyes. And I suspect that her name may be Paula Mannclift. I wouldn’t lay any money on the name, though, if it’s no better than the address that goes with it. You ever hear of a Jackass Crags, Wyoming?”

  There was a momentary silence on the line, then Martens said: “You pulling my leg, Dickie boy?”

  “You mean it means something to you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it does. And it should mean something to you. Say, uh, you’d better get on back here.”

  “Who’s the competition?” Hunter asked quickly.

  “Never mind. And keep quiet about this. How long will it take you to get back?”

  “Well...I have this appointment with the Keller woman for this afternoon. If I cancel that...I guess... Well, I’m driving, you know.”

  Martens grunted loudly. “Cancel Keller and get back here as fast as you can. Don’t say a word—not a goddamn word to anybody about Jackass Crags. Got it? I’ll be waiting for you here at the office. Come straight. Hear?”

  “I hear,” Hunter assured his boss. “Save me some time and have Betty cancel out for me with Keller. I’m heading in right now.” He didn’t know why, and understood none of it, but that deep-bone feeling had settled into his newsman’s frame full-weight. It didn’t even occur to him, at the time, to wonder if the feeling was customary for those who stumble onto the pages of history.

  Understandingly or not, however, young Richard Hunter had just wandered onto page one of America’s obituary. History had reserved a place for him, and he was responding to history’s call-even if only his bones knew it.

  2: DESTINY’S CHILD

  Saul Martens was stretched out in the big leather chair, his feet crossed atop the desk, puffing dreamily on his pipe when Hunter swept into the office. He threw his coat across a file cabinet and dropped his hat and briefcase alongside it, then went over to sit beside Martens’ feet on the desk. “Jackass Crags,” Hunter said simply.

  “Yeah?” Martens replied, not looking up.

  “It’s in Wyoming.”

  Martens nodded sleepily. “But don’t look for it on the map, buddy.”

  “I’ve heard of Jackass Flats. That’s in Nevada; atomic facility of some type. But Jackass Crags kicks no bells for me. You gonna kick my bell?”

  “I ought to just let you squirm,” Martens said, angling his gaze finally onto his young staffer. “Anybody on my staff don’t know... Well, it’s not politics; that’s for sure. I guess I can forgive you.”

  “I’d much rather you just shared the secret with me,” Hunter said. He wasn’t deceived by his boss’s languid manner; it was symptomatic, for Martens, of a deep disturbance. The more relaxed and composed he appeared on the outside, as the entire staff knew well, the more agitated was his interior.

  “It won’t show on a map,” Martens was saying softly, “because to all intents and purposes it’s not in the United States. It’s private territory. A whole damn mountain top—about thirteen thousand feet high, I understand—privately owned, and damn few outsiders have ever set foot on the place. There’s rumored to be a thirty-room mansion up there, a number of small lodges or cottages or something, a private airstrip, its own power plant... It’s a mountain fortress with no way in and out except by air, and it’s owned by one man. Now, do I have to tell you who that man is?”

  “Brian Donaldson, of course,” Hunter murmured.

  “Of course. And this Paula Mannclift, I discovered about thirty minutes ago, is one of Donaldson’s aides. Now you tell me, buddy boy, what the legendary super-millionaire’s pretty young aide is doing hobnobbing with the small-time politicians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”

  “I don’t, uh... I just don’t get it,” Hunter said, searching Martens’ face for an answer. “Donaldson has never shown any interest whatever in politics. As a matter of fact, back in the ‘70s—”

  “Yeah, I know. He got so pissed off at the president that he retreated to the mountain top.”

  “That’s why I’m so surprised Jackass Crags didn’t bell you. That was when he set up the camp. I’m just surprised—”

  “All right, I should have known. But back then I was in second grade, and—”

  Martens cut him off with a wave of the hand. “Down, boy. Let’s not start pissin’ at each other. How do you make this Mannclift broad?”

  “Sharp, full of fire, pretty enough to be a teevee model. The third time I bumped into her, she got the idea I was tailing her, or something. So she confronted me. That says plenty right there.”

  Martens grunted, scratched his nose, glared at the dying coal in the bowl of his pipe. “This could be dyne-o-mite. Or it could be simply, absolutely nothing at all, and period.” He hummed a tune while contemplating the pipe, then added, “Why the hell would a Donaldson aide be gliding around paying social calls on federal electors? Huh?”

  Hunter’s bones be
came downright chilly. “How, uh...how much money does this guy actually have?”

  “I don’t suppose anybody knows for sure. Probably not even Donaldson himself. The people in Research tell me he’s probably a billionaire. Is that enough for you?”

  “How, uh...how much do you figure it would take to buy an Electoral College?” Hunter asked quietly.

  “Shit. You said that; I didn’t,” Martens replied, his voice almost a whisper.

  “Well, I guess I’d better go back over my tracks and talk to some people.” Hunter’s tone was sober, hushed. “As nutty as it sounds, I guess I’d better.”

  “I guess you better not.”

  “Huh?”

  “I got a call from upstairs just ten minutes before you walked in here, buddy-o. The man upstairs wants to know how come we’re doing a dry old thing on the Electoral College.”

  “He didn’t know about it?”

  Martens snorted. “He never knows what we’re doing until he reads it in the magazine. But all of a sudden—quite coincidentally, of course—he’s full of interest in an upcoming feature. Or disinterest, rather. Did the Mannclift babe know who you are?”

  Hunted nodded. “I showed her my credentials. She was about to call a cop.”