The next night several of these “air balls” were seen, following explosions in various towers and sections of the city roof and walls. In each case repair gangs were “rushed” by them, and suffered many casualties. On the third night a few of the air balls were destroyed by the repair men and guards, who now were equipped with disintegrator pistols.
This, however, was pretty costly business, for in each case the ray bored into the corridor and shaft walls beyond its target, wrecking much machinery, injuring the structural members of that section, penetrating apartments and taking a number of lives. Moreover, the “air balls,” being destroyed, could not be subjected to scientific inspection.
After this the explosions ceased. But for many days the sudden appearances of those “air balls” in the corridors and shafts of the city caused the greatest confusion, and many times they were the cause of death and panic.
At times they released poison gases, and not infrequently themselves burst, instead of withdrawing, in a veritable explosion of disease germs, requiring absolute quarantine by the Han medical department.
There was an utter heartlessness about the defense of the Han authorities, who considered nothing but the good of the community as a whole; for when they established these quarantines, they did not hesitate to seal up thousands of the city’s inhabitants behind hermetic barriers enclosing entire sections of different levels, where deprived of food and ventilation, the wretched inhabitants died miserably, long before the disease germs developed in their systems.
At the end of two weeks the entire population of the city was in a mood of panicky revolt. News service to the public had been suspended, and the use of all viewplates and phones in the city were restricted to official communications. The city administration had issued orders that all citizens not on duty should keep to their apartments, but the order was openly flouted, and small mobs were wandering through the corridors, ascending and descending from one level to another, seeking they knew not what, fleeing the air balls, which might appear anywhere, and being driven back from the innermost and deepest sections of the city by the military guard.
I now made up my mind that the time was ripe for me to attempt my escape. In all this confusion I might have an even break, in spite of the danger I might myself run from the air balls, and the almost insuperable difficulties of making my way to the outside of the city and down the precipitous walls of the mountain to which the city clung like a cap. I would have given much for my inertron belt, that I might simply have leaped outward from the edge of the roof some dark night and floated gently down. I longed for my ultrophone equipment, with which I might have established communication with the beleaguering American forces.
My greatest difficulty, I knew, would be that of escaping my guard. Once free of them, I figured it would be the business of nobody in particular, in that badly disorganized city, to recapture me. The knives of the ordinary citizens I did not fear, and very few of the military guard were armed with disintegrator pistols.
I was sitting in my apartment busying my mind with various plans, when there occurred a commotion in the city corridor outside my door. The captain of my guard jumped nervously from the couch on which he had been reclining, and ordered the excited guards to open the door.
In the broad corridor, the remainder of the guard lay about, dead or groaning, where they had been bowled over by one of these air balls, the first I had ever seen.
The metal sphere floated hesitantly above its victims, turning this way and that to bring its “eye” on various objects around. It stopped dead on sighting the door the guard had thrown open, hesitated a moment, and then shot suddenly into the apartment with a hissing sound, flinging into a far corner one of the guards who had not been quick enough to duck. As the captain drew his disintegrator pistol, it launched itself at him with a vicious hiss. He bounded back from the impact, his chest crushed in, while his pistol, which fortunately had fallen with its muzzle pointed away from me, shot a continuous beam that melted its way instantly through the apartment wall.
The sphere then turned on the other guard, who had thrown himself into a corner where he crouched in fear. Deliberately it seemed to gauge the distance and direction. Then it hurled itself at him with another vicious hiss, which I now saw came from a little rocket motor, crushing him to death where he lay.
It swung slowly around until the lens faced me again, and floated gently into position level with my face, seeming to scan me with its blank, four-inch eye. Then it spoke, with a metallic voice.
“If you are an American,” it said, “answer with your name, gang and position.”
“I am Anthony Rogers,” I replied, still half bewildered, “Boss of the Wyomings. I was captured by the Hans after my swooper was disabled in a fight with a Han airship and had drifted many hundred miles westward. These Hans you have killed were my guard.”
“Good!” ejaculated the metal ball. “We have been hunting for you with these remote control rockets for two weeks. We knew you had been captured. A Han message was picked up. Close the door of your room, and hide this ball somewhere. I have turned off the rocket power. Put it on your couch. Throw some pillows over it. Get out of sight. We’ll speak softly, so no Hans can hear, and we’ll speak only when you speak to us.”
The ball, I found, was floating freely in the air. So perfectly was it balanced with ultron and inertron that it had about the weight of a spider web. Ultimately, I suppose, it would have settled to the floor. But I had no time for such an idle experiment. I quickly pushed it to my couch, where I threw a couple of pillows and some of the bed clothes over it. Then I threw myself back on the couch with my head near it. If the dead guards outside attracted attention, and the Han patrol entered, I could report the attack by the “air ball” and claim that I had been knocked unconscious by it.
“One moment,” said the ball, after I reported myself ready to talk. “Here is someone who wants to speak to you.” And I nearly leaped from the couch with joy when, despite the metallic tone of the instrument, I recognized the eager, loving voice of my wife, almost hysterical in her own joy at talking to me again.
CHAPTER 13
Escape!
We had little time, however, to waste in endearments, and very little to devote to informing me as to the American plans. The essential thing was that I report the Han plans and resources to the fullest of my ability. And for an hour or two I talked steadily, giving an outline of all I had learned from San-Lan and his Councillors, and particularly of the arrangements for drawing off the population of the city to new cities concealed underground, through the system of tunnels radiating from the base of the mountain. And as a result, the Americans determined to speed up their attack.
There were, as a matter of fact, only two relatively small commands facing the city, Wilma told me, but both of them were picked troops of the new Federal Council. Those to the south were a division of veterans who a few weeks before had destroyed the Han city of Sa-Lus (St. Louis). On the east were a number of the Colorado Gangs and an expeditionary force of our own Wyomings. The attack on Lo-Tan was intended chiefly as an attack on the morale of the Hans of the other twelve cities. If there seemed to be a chance of victory, the operations were to be pushed through. Otherwise the object would be to do as much damage as possible, and fade away into the forests if the Hans developed any real pressure with their new infantry and field batteries of rocket guns and disintegrator-rays.
The “air balls” were simply miniature swoopers of spherical shape, ultronically controlled by operators at control boards miles away, and who saw on their viewplates whatever picture the ultronic television lens in the sphere itself picked up at the predetermined focus. The main propulsive rocket motor was diametrically opposite the lens, so that the sphere could be steered simply by keeping the picture of its objective centered on the crossed hairlines of the viewplates. The outer shell moved magnetically as desired with respect to the core, which was gyroscopically stabilized. Auxiliary rocket motors enabled
the operator to make a sphere move sidewise, backward or vertically. Some of these spheres were equipped with devices which enabled their operators to hear as well as see through their ultronic broadcasts, and most of those which had invaded the interior of Lo-Tan were equipped with “speakers,” in the hope of finding me and establishing communication. Still others were equipped for two-stage control. That is, the operator controlled the vision sphere, and through it watched and steered an air torpedo that travelled ahead of it.
The Han airship or any other target selected by the operator of such a combination was doomed. There was no escape. The spheres and torpedoes were too small to be hit. They could travel with the speed of bullets. They could trail a ship indefinitely, hover a safe distance from their mark, and strike at will. Finally, neither darkness nor smoke screens were any bar to their ultronic vision. The spheres, which had penetrated and explored Lo-Tan in their search for me, had floated through breaches in the walls and roofs made by their advance torpedoes.
Wilma had just finished explaining all this to me when I heard a noise outside my door. With a whispered warning I flung myself back on the couch and simulated unconsciousness. When I did not answer the poundings and calls to open, a police detail broke in and shook me roughly.
“The air ball,” I moaned, pretending to regain consciousness slowly. “It came in from the corridor. Look what it did to the guard. It must have grazed my head. Where is it?”
“Gone,” muttered the under-officer, looking fearfully around. “Yes, undoubtedly gone. These men have been dead some time. And this pistol. The ball got him before he had a chance to use it. See, it has beamed through the wall only here, where he dropped it. Who are you? You look like a tribesman. Oh, yes, you’re the Heaven-Born’s special prisoner. Maybe I ought to beam you right now. Good thing. Everyone would call it an accident. By the Grand Dragon, I will!”
While he was talking, I had staggered to the other side of the room, to draw his attention away from the couch where the ball was concealed.
Now suddenly the pillows burst apart, and a blanket with which I had covered the thing streaked from the couch, hitting the man in the small of the back. I could hear his spine snap under the impact. Then it shot through the air toward the group of soldiers in the doorway, bowling them over and sending them shrieking right and left along the corridor. Relentlessly and with amazing speed it launched itself at each in turn, until the corpses lay grotesquely strewn about, and not one had escaped.
It returned to me for all the world like an old-fashioned ghost, the blanket still draped over it (and not interfering with its ultronic vision in the least) and “stood” before me.
“The yellow devils were going to kill you, Tony,” I heard Wilma’s voice saying. “You’ve got to get out of there, Tony, before you are killed. Besides, we need you at the control boards, where you can make real use of your knowledge of the city. Have you your jumping belt, ultrophone and rocket gun?”
“No,” I replied, “they are all gone.”
“It would be no good for you to try to make your way to one of the breaches in the wall, nor to the roof,” she mused.
“No, they are too well guarded,” I replied, “and even if you made a new one at a predetermined spot I’m afraid the repair men and the patrol would go to it ahead of me.”
“Yes, and they would beam you before you could climb inside of a swooper,” she added.
“I’ll tell you what I can do, Wilma,” I suggested. “I know my way about the city pretty well. Suppose I go down one of the shafts to the base of the mountain. I think I can get out. It is dark in the valley, so the Hans cannot see me, and I will stand out in the open, where your ultroscopes can pick me up. Then a swooper can drop quickly down and get me.”
“Good!” Wilma said. “But take that Han’s disintegrator pistol with you. And go right away, Tony. But wrap this ball in something and carry it with you. Just toss it from you if you are attacked. I’ll stay at the control board and operate it in case of emergency.”
So I picked up ball and pistol, and thrust the hand in which I held it into the loose Han blouse I wore, wrapped the ball in a piece of sheeting, and stepped out in the corridor, hurrying toward the nearest magnetic car station, a couple of hundred feet down the corridor, for I had to cross nearly the entire width of the city to reach the shaft that went to the base of the mountain.
I thanked Providence for the perfection of the Han mechanical devices when I reached the station. The automatic checking system of these cars made station attendants unnecessary. I had only to slip the key I had taken from the dead Han officer into the account-charting machine at the station to release a car.
Pressing the proper combinations of main and branch line buttons, I seated myself, holding the pistol ready but concealed beneath my blouse. The car shot with rapid acceleration down the narrow tunnel.
The tubes in which these magnetic cars (which slid along a few inches above the floor of the tunnel by localized repeller rays) ran were very narrow, just the width of the car, and my only danger would come if on catching up to another car its driver should turn around and look in my face. If I kept my face to the front, and hunched over so as to conceal my size, no driver of a following car would suspect that I was not a Han like himself.
The tube dipped under traffic as it came to a trunk line, and my car magnetically lagged, until an opening in the traffic permitted it to swing swiftly into the main line tunnel. At the automatic distance of ten feet it followed a car in which rode a scantily clad girl, her flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my luck. She would be far more likely to turn around than a man, to see if a man were in the car behind, and if he were personable—for not even the impending doom of the city and the public demoralization caused by the “air balls” had dulled the proclivities of the Han women for brazen flirtation. And turn around she did.
Before I could lower my head she had seen my face, and knew I was no Han. I saw her eyebrows arch in surprise. But she seemed puzzled rather than scared. Before she could make up her mind about me, however, her car had swung out of the main tunnel on its predetermined course, and my own automatically was closing up the gap to the car ahead. The passenger in this one wore the uniform of a medical officer, but he did not turn around before I swung out of main traffic to the little station at the head of the shaft.
This particular shaft was intended to serve the very lowest levels exclusively, and since its single car carried nothing but express traffic, it was used only by repair men and other specialists who occasionally had to descend to those levels.
There were only three people on the little platform, which reminded me very much of the subway stations of the Twentieth Century. Two men and a girl stood facing the gate of the shaft, waiting for the car to return from below. One of these was a soldier, apparently off duty, for though he wore the scarlet military coat he carried no weapons other than his knife. The other man wore nothing but sandals and a pair of loose short pants of some heavy and serviceable material. I did not need to look at the compact tool kit and the ray machines attached to his heavy belt, nor the gorgeously jewelled armlet and diadem that he wore to know him for a repair man.
The girl was quite scantily clad, but wore a mask, which was not unusual among the Han women when they went forth on their flirtatious expeditions, and there was something about the sinuous grace of her movements that seemed familiar to me. She was making desperate love to the repair man, whose attitude toward her was that of pleased but lofty tolerance. The soldier, who was seeking no trouble, occupied himself strictly with his own thoughts and paid little attention to them.
I stepped from my car, still carrying my bundle in which the “air ball” was concealed, and the car shot away as I threw the release lever over. Not so successful as the soldier in simulating lack of interest in the amorous girl and her companion, I drew from the latter a stare of haughty challenge, and the girl herself turned to look at me through her mask.
She
gasped as she did so, and shrank back in alarm. And I knew her then in spite of her mask. She was the favorite of the Heaven-Born himself.
“Ngo-Lan!” I exclaimed before I could catch myself.
At the mention of her name, the soldier’s head jerked up quickly, and the girl herself gave a little cry of terror, shrinking against her burly companion. This would mean death for her if it reached the ears of her lord.
And her companion, arrogant in his immunity as a repair man, hesitated not a second. His arm shot out toward the soldier, who was nearer to him than I. There was the flash of a knife blade, and the soldier sagged on his feet, then tumbled over like a sack of potatoes, and before my mind had grasped the danger, he had swept the girl aside and was springing at me.
That I lived for a moment even was due to the devotion of my wife, Wilma, who somewhere in the mountains to the east was standing loyally before the control board of the air ball I carried.
For even as the Han leaped at me, the bundle containing the air ball, which I had placed at my feet, shot diagonally upward, catching the fellow in the middle of his leap, hurling him back against the grilled gate of the elevator shaft, and pinning his lifeless body there.
Buck Rogers' Complete Adventures Page 16