Empire
Page 15
"You keep them busy," he snapped. "I'll have this thing figured out in just a while."
From the engine rooms came the roar and hum of the laboring units and the Invincible shuddered once again as Greg grimly hurled one beam after another, at the Interplanetarian.
The Interplanetarian struck back, using radio frequency that flamed fiercely against the Invincible's outer screen. Simultaneously the Interplanetarian leaped forward with a sudden surge of accumulated energy, driving at the star that lay not more than three billion miles away.
Greg worked desperately, cursing under his breath. He pulled down the outer screen that was fighting directly against the radio frequency, energy for energy, and allowed the beam to strike squarely on the second screen, the inversion field that shunted the major portion of the energy impacting against it through 90 degrees into another space.
The engines moaned softly and settled into a quieter rumble as the necessity of supplying the first screen was eliminated. But they screamed once again as Greg sent out a tractor beam that seized and held, dragged the Interplanetarian to a standstill. Craven's ship had gained millions of miles, though, and established a tremendous advantage by fighting nearer to its source of energy.
"Russ," gasped Greg, "if you don't get that scheme of yours figured out pretty soon, we're done for. They've stopped everything we've got. They're nearer the sun. We won't stand a chance if they make another break like that."
Russ glanced up to answer, but his mouth fell open in amazement and he did not speak. A streak of terrible light was striking at them from the Interplanetarian, blinding white light, and along that highway of light swarmed a horde of little green figures, like squirming green amebas. Swarming toward the Invincible, stretching out hungry, pale-green pseudopods toward the inversion barrier ... and eating through it!
Wherever they touched, holes appeared. They drifted through the inversion screen easily and began drilling into the inner screen of anti-entropy. Eating their way into the anti-entropy ... into a state of matter which Russ and Greg had thought would resist all change!
For seconds both men stood transfixed, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes. But the ameba things came on in ever-increasing throngs, creatures that gnawed and slobbered at the anti-entropy, eating into it, flaking it away, drilling their way through it.
When they pierced the anti-entropy, they would cut through the steel plates of the Invincible like so much paper!
And more were coming. More and more!
With a grunt of amazement, Greg slammed a beam straight into the heart of the amebas. They ate the beam and vanished as mistily as before, little glowing things that ate and died. But there were always more to take their place. They overwhelmed the beam and ate back along its length, attacked the screen again.
They ate through walls of force and walls of metal, and a rush of hissing air began to flame into ions in the terrific battle of energies outside the Invincible.
Russ was crouching over the manual of the televisor board. His breath moaned in his throat as his fingers flew.
"I have to have power, Greg," he said. "Lots of power."
"Take it." Greg replied. "I haven't been able to do anything with it. It isn't any use to me."
Russ's thumb reached out and tripped the activating lever. The giant engines shrieked and yowled.
Something was happening on the television screen ... something terrifying. Craven's ship seemed to retreat suddenly for millions of miles ... and as suddenly the Invincible appeared on the screen. For a single flashing instant, the view held; then it was gone in blank grayness. For seconds nothing happened on the screen, unnerving seconds while the two men held their breath.
The screen's grayness fled and they looked into the control room of the Interplanetarian. Craven was hunched in a chair, intent upon a series of controls. Behind him and to one side stood Stutsman, a heat pistol dangled from his hand, his face twisted into a sneer of triumph. There was no sign of Chambers.
"You damn fool," Craven was snapping at Stutsman. "You're cheating us out of the only chance we ever had of getting home."
"Shut up," snarled Stutsman, the pistol jerking in his hand. "Have you got that apparatus on full power?"
"It's been on full power for minutes now," said Craven. "It must be eating holes straight through Manning's ship."
"See you keep it that way. I really don't need you any more, anyhow. I've watched and I know all the tricks. I could carry on this battle single-handed."
Craven did not reply, merely hunched closer over the controls, eyes watching flickering dials.
Greg jogged Russ's elbow. "That must be the apparatus over there, in the corner of the room. That triangular affair. A condenser of some sort. That stuff they're throwing at us must be super-saturated force fields and they'd need a space-field condenser for that."
Russ nodded. "We'll take care of that."
His fingers moved swiftly and a transport beam whipped out, riding the television beam. Bands of force wrapped around the triangular machine and wrenched viciously. In the screen the apparatus disappeared ... simply was gone. It now lay within the Invincible's control room, jerked there by the tele-transport.
The flood of dazzling light reaching out from the Interplanetarian snapped off and the little green ameba things were gone. The shrill whistle of escaping air stopped as the eaten screens clamped down again, sealing in the atmosphere despite the holes bored through the metal plates.
In the television screen, Craven leaped from his chair, was staring with Stutsman at the place where the concentrator had stood. The machine had been ripped from a welded base and jagged, bright, torn metal gleamed in the control room lights. Snapped cables and broken busbars lay piled about the room.
"What happened?" Stutsman was screaming. They heard Craven laugh at the terror in the other's voice. "Manning just walked in and grabbed it away from us."
"But he couldn't! We had the screen up! He couldn't get through!"
Craven shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know how he did it, but he did. Probably he could clean out the whole place if he wanted to."
"That's a good idea," said Russ, judiciously.
He stripped bank after bank of the other ship's photo-cells from their moorings, wrecked the force field controls, ripped cables from the engines and left the ship without means of collecting power, without means of using power, without means of movement, of offense or defense.
He leaned back in his chair and regarded the screen with deep satisfaction.
"That," he decided, "should hold them for a while."
He hauled the pipe out of his pocket and filled it from the battered leather pouch.
Greg regarded him with a quizzical stare. "You sent the televisor back in time. You got it inside the Interplanetarian before Craven had run up his screen and then you brought it forward."
"You guessed it," said Russ, tamping the tobacco into the bowl. "We should have thought of that long ago. We have a time factor there. In fact, the whole thing revolves around time. We move the televisor, we use the tele-transport, by giving the objects we wish to move an acceleration in time."
Greg wrinkled his brow. "Maybe that means we can really investigate the past, or even the future. Can sit here before our screen and see everything that has happened, everything that is going to happen."
Russ shook his head. "I don't know, Greg. Notice, though, that we got no screen response until the televisor came up out of the past and actually reached the point which coincided with the present. That is, the screen and the televisor itself have to be on the same time level for them to operate. We might modify the screen, even modify the televisor so that we could travel in time, but it will take a lot of research, a lot of work. And especially it will take a whale of a lot of power."
"We have the power," said Greg.
Russ moved the lighter back and forth over the tobacco, igniting it carefully. Clouds of blue smoke swirled around his head. He spoke out of the smoke.
"What are we going to do now?" demanded Stutsman.
Craven grinned at him. "That's up to you. Remember, you're the master mind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things." He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-out apparatus. "Well, there you are. Go ahead and run the joint."
"But you will have to help," pleaded Stutsman, his face twisted until it seemed that he was suffering intense physical agony. "You know what to do. I don't."
Craven shook his head. "There isn't any use starting. Manning will be along almost anytime now. We'll wait and see what he has in mind."
"Manning!" shrieked Stutsman, waving the pistol wildly. "Always Manning. One would think you were working for Manning."
"He's the big shot out in this little corner of space right now," Craven pointed out. "There isn't any way you can get around that."
Stutsman backed carefully away. His gun came up and he looked at Craven appraisingly, as if selecting his targets.
"Put down that gun," said a voice.
Gregory Manning stood between Stutsman and Craven. There had been no foggy forerunner of his appearance. He had just snapped out of empty air.
Stutsman stared at him, his eyes widening, but the gun remained steady in his hand.
"Look out, Craven," warned Greg. "He's going to fire and it will go right through me and hit you."
There was the thump of a falling body as Craven hurled himself out of his chair, hit the floor and rolled. Stutsman's gun vomited flame. The spouting flame passed through Greg's image, blasted against the chair in which Craven had sat, fused it until it fell in on itself.
"Russ," said Greg quietly, "disarm this fellow before he hurts somebody."
An unseen force reached out and twisted the gun from Stutsman's hand, flung it to one side. Swiftly Stutsman's hands were forced behind his back and held there by invisible bonds.
Stutsman cried out, tried to struggle, but he was unable to move. It was as if giant hands had gripped him, were holding him in a viselike clutch.
"Thanks, Manning," said Craven, getting up off the floor. "The fool would have shot this time. He's threatened it for days. He has been developing a homicidal mania."
"We don't need to worry about him now," declared Greg. He turned around to face Craven. "Where's Chambers?"
"Stutsman locked him up," said Craven. "I imagine he has the key in his pocket. Locked him up in the stateroom. Chambers jumped him and tried to take the gun away from him and Stutsman laid him out, hit him over the head. He kept Chambers locked up after that. Hasn't allowed anyone to go near the room. Hasn't even given him food and water. That was three days ago."
"Get the key out of his pocket," directed Greg. "Go and see how Chambers is."
Alone in the control room with Stutsman, Greg looked at him.
"I have a score to settle with you, Stutsman," he said. "I had intended to let it ride, but not now."
"You can't touch me," blustered Stutsman. "You wouldn't dare."
"What makes you think I wouldn't?"
"You're bluffing. You've got a lot of tricks, but you can't do the things you would like me to think you can. You've got Chambers and Craven fooled, but not me."
"It may be that I can offer you definite proof."
Chambers staggered over the threshold. His clothing was rumpled. A rude bandage was wound around his head. His face was haggard and his eyes red.
"Hello, Manning," he said. "I suppose you've won. The Solar System must be in your control by now."
He lifted his hand to his mustache, brushed it, a feeble attempt at playing the old role he'd acted so long.
"We've won," said Greg quietly, "but you're wrong about our being in control. The governments are in the hands of the people, where they should be."
Chambers nodded. "I see," he mumbled. "Different people, different ideas." His eyes rested on Stutsman and Greg saw sudden rage sweep across the gray, haggard face. "So you've got him, have you? What are you going to do with him? What are you going to do with all of us?"
"I haven't had time to think about it," said Greg. "I've principally been thinking about Stutsman here."
"He mutinied," rasped Chambers. "He seized the ship, turned the crew against me."
"And the penalty for that," said Greg, quietly, "is death. Death by walking in space."
Stutsman writhed within the bands of force that held him tight. His face contorted. "No, damn you! You can't do that! Not to me, you can't!"
"Shut up," roared Chambers and Stutsman quieted.
"I was thinking, too," said Greg, "that at his order thousands of people were mercilessly shot down back in the Solar System. Stood against a wall and mowed down. Others were killed like wild animals in the street. Thousands of them."
He moved slowly toward Stutsman and the man cringed.
"Stutsman," he said, "you're a butcher. You're a stench in the nostrils of humanity. You aren't fit to live."
"Those," said Craven, "are my sentiments exactly."
"You hate me," screamed Stutsman. "All of you hate me. You are doing this because you hate me."
"Everyone hates you, Stutsman," said Greg. "Every living person hates you. You have a cloud of hate hanging over you as black and wide as space."
The man closed his eyes, trying to break free of the bonds.
"Bring me a spacesuit," snapped Greg, watching Stutsman's face.
Craven brought it and dropped it at Stutsman's feet.
"All right, Russ," said Greg. "Turn him loose."
Stutsman swayed and almost fell as the bands of force released him.
"Get into that suit," ordered Greg.
Stutsman hesitated, but something he saw in Greg's face made him lift the suit, step into it, fasten it about his body.
"What are you going to do with me?" he whimpered. "You aren't going to take me back to Earth again, are you? You aren't going to make me stand trial?"
"No," said Greg, gravely, "we aren't taking you back to Earth. And you're standing trial right now."
Stutsman read his fate in the cold eyes that stared into his. Chattering frightenedly, he rushed at Greg, plunged through him, collided with the wall of the ship and toppled over, feebly attempting to rise.
Invisible hands hoisted him to his feet, gripped him, held him upright. Greg walked toward him, stood facing him.
"Stutsman," he said, "you have four hours of air. That will give you four hours to think, to make your peace with death." He turned toward the other two. Chambers nodded grimly. Craven said nothing.
"And now," said Greg to Craven, "if you will fasten down his helmet."
The helmet clanged shut, shutting out the pleas and threats that came from Stutsman's throat.
Stutsman saw distant stars, cruel, gleaming eyes that glared at him. Empty space fell away on all sides.
Numbed by fear, he realized where he was. Manning had picked him up and thrown him far into space ... out into that waste where for hundreds of light years there was only the awful nothingness of space.
He was less than a speck of dust, in this great immensity of emptiness. There was no up or down, no means of orientation.
Loneliness and terror closed in on him, a terrible agony of fear. In four hours his air would be gone and then he would die! His body would swirl and eddy through this great cosmic ocean. It would never be found. It would remain here, embalmed by the cold of space, until the last clap of eternity.
There was one way, the easy way. His hand reached up and grasped the connection between his helmet and the air tank. One wrench and he would die swiftly, quickly ... instead of letting death stalk him through the darkness for the next four hours.
He shivered and his hand loosened its hold, dropped away. He w
as afraid to hasten death. He wanted to put it off. He was afraid of death ... horribly afraid.
The stars mocked him and he seemed to hear hooting laughter from somewhere far away. Curiously, it sounded like his own laughter....
"I'll make it easy for you, Manning," Chambers said. "I know that all of us are guilty. Guilty in the eyes of the people and the law. Guilty in your eyes. If we had won, there would have been no penalty. There's never a penalty for the one who wins."
"Penalty," said Greg, his eyes half smiling. "Why, yes, I think there is. I'm going to order you aboard the Invincible for something to eat and to get some rest."
"You mean to say that we aren't prisoners?"
Greg shook his head. "Not prisoners," he said. "Why, I came out here to guide you back to Earth. I hauled you out here and got you into this jam. It was up to me to get you out of it. I would have done the same for Stutsman, too, but ..."
He hesitated and looked at Chambers.
Chambers stared back and slowly nodded.
"Yes, Manning," he said. "I think I understand."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Chambers lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.
"I wish you could see it my way, Manning," he said. "There's no place for me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I tried and failed. I'm just a has-been back there."
He laughed quietly. "Somehow, I can't imagine myself coming back in the role of the defeated tribal leader, chained to your chariot, so to speak."
"But it wouldn't be that way," protested Greg. "Your company is gone, true, and your stocks are worthless, but you haven't lost everything. You still have a fleet of ships. With our new power, the Solar System will especially need ships. Lots of ships. For the spacelanes will be filled with commerce. You'd be coming back to a new deal, a new Solar System, a place that has been transformed almost overnight by power that's practically free."
"Yes, yes, I know all that," said Chambers. "But I climbed too high. I got too big. I can't come back now as something small, a failure."
"You have things we need," said Greg. "The screen that blankets out our television and tele-transport, for example. We need your screen as a safeguard against the very thing we have created. Think of what criminal uses could be made of the tele-transport. No vault, no net of charged wires, nothing, could stop a thief from taking anything he wanted. Prisons would cease to be prisons. Criminals could reach in and pick up their friends, no matter how many guards there were. Prisons and bank vaults and national treasuries could be cleaned out in a single day."