The Lybblas, of course, had disappeared, probably in search of cookies. Cantrell, eying his watch, urged Van Decker into a chair. He kept one hand significantly on his pocket, and from time to time looked toward Gallegher. The ray gun was still around; its outline was visible beneath the flexocloth of Cantrell’s coat.
“Show you how easy I can do it,” Grandpa cackled, tottering on spindly legs toward the mental hookup device and throwing switches.
“Careful, Grandpa,” Cantrell warned, his voice tight.
Van Decker stared. “Something is wrong?”
“No, no,” Grandpa said. “Mr. Cantrell is afraid I will make a mistake. But no. This helmet—”
He fitted it on Van Decker’s head. A stylus scratched wavering lines on graphs. Deftly Grandpa sheafed them together, fell over his own feet and collapsed, the cards flying far and wide. Before Cantrell could move the old man was up again, muttering oaths as he collected the charts.
He laid them on a table. Gallegher moved forward, peering over Cantrell’s shoulder. Whew! This was the real thing, all right. Van Decker’s I.Q. was tremendous. His wild talents were—well, wildly remarkable.
Cantrell—who also knew the details of the mental hookup now, since he had absorbed Gallegher’s mathematical ability via Grandpa—nodded with satisfaction. He fitted a helmet on his own head and moved toward the device. With a cursory glance at Van Decker to see that all was well, he threw the switches. Lights blazed; the humming rose to a scream. And died.
Cantrell removed the helmet. As he reached into his pocket, Grandpa lifted a casual hand and showed a small, gleaming pistol.
“Don’t do it,” Grandpa said.
Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. “Drop that gun.”
“Nope. I figured you’d want to kill us and smash the machine, so you’d stay unique. It won’t work. This gun’s got a hair trigger. You can burn a hole in me, Cantrell, but you’ll be dead while you’re doing it.”
Cantrell considered. “Well?”
“Get out. I don’t want to be burned down, any more than you want a bullet in your stomach. Live and let live.
Cantrell laughed softly. “Fair enough, Grandpa. You’ve earned it. Don’t forget, I still know how to build the machine. And—I’ve skimmed the cream. You can do the same thing, but not any better than I can.”
“So it’s even,” Grandpa said.
“Yes, it’s even. We’ll meet again. Don’t forget what killed those corpses in your yard, Gallegher,” Cantrell said, and backed out of the door, smiling tightly.
Gallegher came to life with a jump. “We’ve got to ’vise the police!” he snapped. “Cantrell’s too dangerous now to let loose.”
“Take it easy,” Grandpa cautioned, waving the gun. “I told you it was all fixed up. You don’t want to be convicted for murder, do you? If Cantrell’s arrested—and we couldn’t make a charge stick, anyway—the police would find the heat-ray projector. This way’s better.”
“What way?” Gallegher demanded.
“O.K., Mickey.” Grandpa said, grinning at Dr. Simon van Decker, who took off his red beard and wig and started to laugh joyously.
Gallegher’s jaw dropped. “A ringer!” he gasped.
“Sure. I ‘vised Mickey privately a few days ago. Told him what I wanted. He dressed up, ‘vised Cantrell, and pretended to be Van Decker. Made an appointment for tonight.”
“But the charts. They showed a genius I.Q.—”
“I switched charts when I dropped ‘em on the floor,” Grandpa confessed. “I’d made up some fakes in advance.”
Gallegher scowled. “That doesn’t alter the situation, though. Cantrell’s still loose, and with too damn much knowledge.”
“Hold your horses, young fellow,” Grandpa said. “Wait’ll I explain.”
He explained.
About three hours later the telecast news came through: a man named Roland Cantrell had fallen to his death from the Atlantic stratoliner.
Gallegher, however, knew the exact moment of Cantrell’s death. For the corpse in the back yard had vanished at that time.
Because, with the heat-ray projector destroyed, Gallegher’s future no longer could involve his death through a heat beam. Unless he made another, which he would take care not to do.
The time machine came out of its stasis and returned to normal. Gallegher guessed why. It had been set to fulfill a definite pattern—involving the death of Gallegher according to a certain set of variables. Within the limits of those variables, it was frozen. It could not stop operating till it had exhausted all the possibilities. As long as any of Gallegher’s probable futures held heat-ray death—corpses would appear.
Now the future was altered drastically. No longer did it involve a, b, c, etcetera. The heat ray—the prime factor of the equation—was destroyed in the present. So Gallegher’s probable futures now involved a-1, b-1, c-1, et cetera.
And the machine wasn’t set for such radical variations. It had fulfilled the task for which it had been set. Now it awaited new orders.
But Gallegher studied it thoroughly before using it again.
He had plenty of time. Without a single corpus delicti, Persson had no difficulty in getting the case quashed, though the unfortunate Mahoney nearly went mad trying to figure out what had happened. As for the Lybblas—
Gallegher absently passed around the cookies, wondering how he could get rid of the small, stupid creatures without hurting their feelings. “You don’t want to stay here all your lives, do you?” he inquired.
“Well, no,” one of them replied, brushing crumbs from his whiskers with a furry paw. “But we gotta conquer the Earth,” he pointed out plaintively.
“Mm-m-m,” Gallegher said. And went out to make a purchase, returning later with some apparatus he surreptitiously attached to the televisor.
Shortly thereafter, the regular telecast was broken off for what purported to be a news flash. By a curious coincidence, the three Lybblas were watching the ’visor at the time. The scene on the screen faded into a close-up of the newscaster, whose face was almost entirely concealed by the sheaf of papers he held. From the eyebrows up—the only part visible—he looked much like Gallegher, but the Lybblas were too intrigued to notice.
“Flash!” said the ’visor excitedly. “Important bulletin! For some time the world has known of the presence of three distinguished visitors from Mars. They have—”
The Lybblas exchanged startled glances. One of them started to pipe a question and was hastily shushed. They listened again.
“They had been planning to conquer the Earth, it has been learned, and we are pleased to report that the world’s entire population has gone over to the side of the Lybblas. A bloodless revolution has taken place. The Lybblas are unanimously acclaimed as our sole rulers—”
“Whee!” cried a small voice.
—“and the new form of government is already being set up. There will be a different fiscal system, and coins bearing the heads of the Lybblas are being minted. It is expected that the three rulers will shortly return to Mars to explain the situation to their friends there.”
The newscaster’s partially exposed face vanished from the screen, and the regular telecast resumed. After a while Gallegher appeared, smiling secretively. He was greeted with shrill shouts from the Lybblas.
“We gotta go home, now. It was a bloodless—”
“Revolution! The world is ours!”
Their optimism was surpassed only by their credulity. Gallegher allowed himself to be convinced that the Lybblas must go back to Mars.
“O.K.,” Gallegher agreed. “The machine’s all ready. One last cookie all around, and then off you go.”
He shook each fuzzy paw, bowed politely, and the three Lybblas, ears bobbing, piping excitedly among themselves. Mere shot back to Mars, five hundred years in the future. They were anxious to return to their friends and relate their adventures. They did—but nobody ever believed them.
There were no repercussions from Cantrell’s
death, though Gallegher, Grandpa and Mickey waited rather worriedly for several days before they felt able to relax. After that, Grandpa and Gallegher went on a terrific binge and felt far better.
Mickey couldn’t join them. Regretfully, he returned to the circus lot, where, twice a day, he capitalized on his peculiar talents by diving from the top of a thirty-foot ladder into a tub filled with water—
THE END.
EARTH’S LAST CITADEL
Final Installment of a Four-Part Serial
At the dying earth’s flaming Source of Power, Alan Drake pitted puny human strength against the all-consuming Alien’s irresistible might—in lost mankind’s last struggle for survival
Synopsis
FOUR twentieth-century human beings, stranded in the North African desert, come upon a monstrous, strangely brilliant sphere that appears to have risen out of the sand, and they are compelled by some irresistible alien power to open the door in its side and enter. Once inside they fall into a drugged sleep. These four are Alan Drake of U.S. Army Intelligence; Sir Colin Douglas, a distinguished Scottish scientist Alan has been assigned to protect; and two Nazi agents—the beautiful spy, Karen Martin, and a former American gangster named Mike Smith.
They are transported in the sphere to a strange, gray, slowly dying world of many centuries ahead. Faint in their memories, as they awaken and step out of the sphere, is a fearsome and shadowy force that they know only as the Alien.
Through the mists and desolate landscape of their new surroundings, they make their way toward a huge and fantastic structure in the distance. At last they encounter a living creature—a girl of fragile, remarkable beauty who calls herself Evaya—and she leads them to the amazing cavern city of Carcasilla.
It seems like a setting out of an incredible and lovely dream. Yet Alan Drake and his companions soon find that Carcasilla and its ruler Flande mean them no good. Flande, who appears to them as a great ageless face residing in a tower walled in by falling water, attempts to question them by telepathic communication. Tiring of that, he calls in a band of ragged barbarians—the Terasi—and, in the battle that follows, Drake is struck unconscious and the other three are captured.
Alan lies in a state of semi-consciousness for a long time. He is dimly aware that Evaya is attending him and that the secret properties of a fountain where she bathes him are giving him new strength. He returns to consciousness at last so endowed that he does not feel hunger or weariness.
This strange city, Evaya tells him, was built by the Light-Wearers, super-beings who conquered the earth long ago. Evaya, made immortal by the magic fountain, was once a priestess to them. All the Light-Wearers are believed to have left the world—but as Alan and Evaya are talking the girl is drawn into a spell that signals the return of one of them.
A huge, shapeless figure, with light-robes swirling about it, comes striding toward them. The Light-Wearer! It envelops Evaya in a cloud of nothingness, and leaves her the blind servant of its mystic, hungering desires. Alan escapes its awesome, engulfing embrace only through the help of Sir Colin, who drives back the Alien, the Light-Wearer, with the echoing roar of his gun; sound is the only weapon that is effective against the god-like being.
Alan and Sir Colin make their escape to the cavern of the Terasi by the Way of the Gods, a river of force where they float without effort through a gravitationless corridor. They are forced to leave Evaya in the power of the Light-Wearer for the time being, but Alan vows that he will be back.
Sir Colin and the others are determined to abandon this earth of ruin and outrage, but they must first find the means of power for the space sphere in which they slept away a million years. Alan, though, knows he will never leave the earth until he has freed Evaya.
As they are debating their course, the Carcasillians are led into a final battle against the Terasi by the Light-Wearer. Just as escape to Venus seems possible, if only they can tap the source of power that sustained Alan at the magic fountain of Carcasilla, their way is cut off.
To the four humans, who watch the battle from a rooftop, all seems lost. The Terasi’s arrows are futile against the might of the Light-Wearer. Their city is falling and the four lost humans resign themselves to destruction.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Portals of Light
THIS had happened before, Alan thought. And it had happened in his own lifetime—in the familiar world of the Twentieth Century, before an unguessable flood of years had swept him to the end of time. Below the sloping rooftop where they stood watching, the little army of the Terasi stood at bay, their bull thews and savagery useless now against the weapons that struck from far away, fingering out like swords of living light.
In the past such scenes had happened many times. In Tunisia, he remembered, at Bataan and Corregidor, wherever the armadas of sea and sky and land had met in conflict, such hopeless battles had been fought. But this, he thought, was the last battle of all.
These were civilization’s last defenders—these brutish, iron-bodied men—and this little group of less than a hundred represented all that he had known of the world that was gone. The towers of metropolitan New York, the gray cathedrals of London, the white ramparts of Chicago lifting above the blue lake—these were the symbols of a race that built and aspired, a race that had gone down to defeat.
All over the earth was darkness. Civilization’s last sparks were being crushed out here, where mankind fought savagely and hopelessly in its last remaining fortress. The thunder of the brazen gongs was fading imperceptibly as the heat rays licked out to splash in white fire across them.
Alan glanced around at the tense little group on the rooftop. Sir Colin, a tattered, scarecrow figure squinting down at the battle with a look of cold, impartial, scientific interest on his face. Mike Smith, half-crouched, hand nervous on his gun, his quick eyes raking the walls where Carcasillians moved like gaily colored moths in the crevices. Mike was afraid. Not of the Carcasillians, not even of death—but of death in the embrace of the terrible shadowy thing that waited in the darkness, watching.
Karen—he had respected her even in the long-gone days when she had been in the German espionage, and he an American Army Intelligence officer fighting her with every weapon he knew. It seemed ludicrous now to think in those meaningless terms, but he realized suddenly that she had never been intrinsically a Nazi; she was an adventurer, playing for high stakes and ready to take the consequences if she failed. Yes, he could respect Karen. There was a suggestion of a grim smile on her face as she met his glance.
Alan did not think of Evaya. She was up there somewhere, a slim, fragile, steely creature who was no longer human. And she would accomplish her inhuman purpose very soon now, and the demon that possessed her would come sweeping into view, leaping like a hound to the kill, ravening with the hunger of a million years.
The arrows of the Terasi still lanced up toward their besiegers. Now and then a Carcasillian fell, gossamer garments streaming, to death on the rocks below. And death was so new, so strange to these toy-like immortals from an immortal city fed by the fountain of life! The city fed by—power!
And power would save the Terasi—if they could reach it. If it were not as hopelessly far away as power on another planet . . . Save them? Would it?
What was it Sir Colin, had said about great mechanical gongs, built by the rebel race to light the Light-Wearers? Alan reached out suddenly and gripped the Scotsman’s shoulder.
“Those gongs,” he said in an urgent voice. “The big ones. Where were they?” Sir Colin gave him an abstracted glance. “Inside the machine towers. Some of them underground. Why? They were power-driven, remember. You can’t—•” Alan struck the parapet triumphantly. “If we had the power, then, the heat-beams couldn’t reach ’em! Sir Colin, I’m going to get you the power!”
The Scotsman’s face came alive, but with a startled distrust that surprised Alan.
“Anyhow, I’m going to try. We can’t be worse off than we are right now. The gateway to Carcasill
a’s open now—you saw that in the scanner—and nobody’s left there but Flande. There must be a way back from here that wouldn’t lead through the Carcasillians. Tell me what to look for and I’ll try the fountain.”
The distrust on Sir Colin’s gaunt face had changed to a desperate sort of hope. “You’re right, laddie. It’s worth a try—by God, it is! But we’ll have to hurry.”
“We?”
“I’m going too.”
Mike shouldered forward, sweat shining on his bronzed cheeks. “So am I.” Sir Colin frowned. “Your gun’s needed here, Mike.”
“The hell with that! I’m not going to stay. That—that thing—” He broke off, showing the whites of his eyes as he glanced up at the crevice where a pale shimmer flickered now and then as the Alien urged its puppet army on.
“There’s no assurance we may not meet it ourselves,” Sir Colin said dryly. “Still—Karen?”
“I’m staying. I can help here. Fighting’s one thing I know a little about. “
“Good lass.” The Scotsman touched her shoulder lightly.
Brekkir, watching their sudden animation in bewilderment, grunted something that only Sir Colin understood. They spoke together in gutturals. When the scientist turned back to Alan his ruddy face was alight with new enthusiasm.
“Brekkir says there are ways out, if we’re reckless enough to leave the noise of the gongs. He’ll find us a lead box, too. We’ll need something to carry that—that dynamite-pill without the radiation destroying us all. What the thing is the guid God knows, but I suspect something like radioatomic energy—perhaps a uranium isotope . . . Aye, it’s a risk, lads, but think what it means if we win!”
THE timeless current that flowed whispering along the Way of the Gods swept them weightlessly toward Carcasilla. They talked little, in hushed voices, as they drifted through the dimness. Alan thought of Karen, pale under the tousled red curls, saying goodbye at the tunnel entrance. They might never meet again. He thought of Evaya, moving like a soft-winged moth against the craggy walls, blind and terrible, raking the Terasi village with a beam of death. He thought of the way light kindled behind her exquisite features when she smiled, like an ivory lantern suddenly glowing. He thought of the springing resilience of her body in his arms. And he knew that there was no risk too great to face if it might mean her awakening.
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