The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 03

by Anthology

  * * * * *

  The other smiled in self-deprecation. "I like a good fighter," he said; "I was never one myself. If I had been I would have accomplished more. Yes, you shall go up a mile or so in the air--and a thousand miles beyond." He turned to close the door and seal it fast.

  Beside the instrument board he seated himself, and at his touch the generator of the ship came startlingly to life. It grumbled softly at first, then the hoarse sound swelled to a thunderous roar, while the metal grating surged up irresistibly beneath the captain's feet. His weight was intolerable. He sank helplessly to the floor....

  Blake was white and shaken when he alighted from the ship an hour later, but his eyes were ablaze with excitement. He stopped to seize the tall man by the shoulders.

  "I am only a poor devil of a flying man," he said, "but I am speaking for the whole world right now. You have saved us; you've furnished the means. It is up to us now. You've given us the right to hope that humanity can save itself, if humanity will do it. That's my next job--to convince them. We have less than a year and a half...."

  * * * * *

  There was one precious week wasted while Captain Blake chafed and waited for a conference to be arranged at Washington. A spirit of hopelessness had swept over the world--hopelessness and a mental sloth that killed every hope with the unanswerable argument: "What is the use? It is the end." But a meeting was arranged at Colonel Boynton's insistence, though his superiors scoffed at what he dared suggest.

  Blake appeared before the meeting, and he told them what he knew--told it to the last detail, while he saw the looks of amusement or commiseration that passed from man to man.

  There were scientists there who asked him coldly a question or two and shrugged a supercilious shoulder; ranking officers of both army and navy who openly excoriated Colonel Boynton for bringing them to hear the wild tale of a half-demented man. It was this that drove Blake to a cold frenzy.

  The weeks of hopeless despair had worn his nerves to the breaking point, and now, with so much to be done, and so little time in which to do it, all requirements of official etiquette were swept aside as he leaped to his feet to face the unbelieving men.

  "Damn it!" he shouted, "will you sit here now and quibble over what you think in your wisdom is possible or not. Get outside those doors--there's an open park beyond--and I'll knock your technicalities all to hell!"

  The door slammed behind him before the words could be spoken to place him under arrest, and he tore across a velvet lawn to leap into a taxi.

  There was a rising storm of indignant protest within the room that he had left. There were admirals, purple of face, who made heated remarks about the lack of discipline in the army, and generals who turned accusingly where the big figure of Colonel Boynton was still seated.

  It was the Secretary of War who stilled the tumult and claimed the privilege of administering the rebuke which was so plainly needed. "Colonel Boynton," he said, and there was no effort to soften the cutting edge of sarcasm in his voice, "it was at your request and suggestion that this outrageous meeting was held. Have you any more requests or suggestions?"

  The colonel rose slowly to his feet.

  "Yes, Mr. Secretary," he said coldly, "I have. I know Captain Blake. He seldom makes promises; when he does he makes good. My suggestion is that you do what the gentleman said--step outside and see your technicalities knocked to hell." He moved unhurriedly toward the door.

  * * * * *

  It was a half-hour's wait, and one or two of the more openly skeptical had left when the first roar came faintly from above. Colonel Boynton led the others to the open ground before the building. "I have always found Blake a man of his word," he said quietly, and pointed upward where a tiny speck was falling from a cloud-flecked sky.

  Captain Blake had had little training in the operation of the ship, but he had flown it across the land and had concealed it where fellow officers were sworn to secrecy. And he felt that he knew how to handle the controls.

  But the drop from those terrible heights was a fearful thing, and it ended only a hundred feet above the heads of the cowering, shouting humans who crouched under the thunderous blast, where a great shell checked its vertical flight and rebounded to the skies.

  Again and again the gleaming cylinder drove at them like a projectile from the mortars of the gods, and it roared and thundered through the air or turned to vanish with incredible speed straight up into the heights, to return and fall again ... until finally it hung motionless a foot above the grass from which the uniformed figures had fled. Only Colonel Boynton was there to greet the flyer as he laid his strange craft gently down.

  "Nice little show, Captain," he said, while his broad face broke into the widest of grins. "A damn nice little show! But take that look off of your face. They'll listen to you now; they'll eat right out of your hand."

  CHAPTER XV

  If Lieutenant McGuire could have erased from his mind the thought of the threat that hung over the earth he would have found nothing but intensest pleasure in the experiences that were his.

  But night after night they had heard the reverberating echoes of the giant gun speeding its messenger of death toward the earth, and he saw as plainly as if he were there the terrible destruction that must come where the missiles struck. Gas, of course; that seemed the chief and only weapon of these monsters, and Djorn, the elected leader of the Venus folk, confirmed him in this surmise.

  "We had many gases," he told McGuire, "but we used them for good ends. You people of Earth--or these invaders, if they conquer Earth--must some day engage in a war more terrible than wars between men. The insects are your greatest foe. With a developing civilization goes the multiplication of insect and bacterial life. We used the gases for that war, and we made this world a heaven." He sighed regretfully for his lost world.

  "These red ones found them, and our factories for making them. But they have no gift for working out or mastering the other means we had for our defense--the electronic projectors, the creation of tremendous magnetic fields: you saw one when we destroyed the attacking ships. Our scientists had gone far--"

  "I wish to Heaven you had some of them to use now," said the lieutenant savagely, and the girl, Althora, standing near, smiled in sympathy for the flyer's distress. But her brother, Djorn, only murmured: "The lust to kill: that is something to be overcome."

  The fatalistic resignation of these folk was disturbing to a man of action like McGuire. His eyes narrowed, and his lips were set for an abrupt retort when Althora intervened.

  "Come," she said, and took the flyer's hand. "It is time for food."

  * * * * *

  She took him to the living quarters occupied by her brother and herself, where opal walls and jewelled inlays were made lovely by the soft light that flooded the rooms.

  "Just one tablet," she said, and brought him a thin white disc, "then plenty of water. You must take this compressed food often and in small quantities till your system is accustomed."

  "You make this?" he asked.

  "But certainly. Our chemists are learned men. We should lack for food, otherwise, here in our underground home."

  He let the tablet dissolve in his mouth. Althora leaned forward to touch his hand gently.

  "I am sorry," she said, "that you and Djorn fail to understand one another. He is good--so good! But you--you, too, are good, and you fear for the safety of your own people."

  "They will be killed to the last woman and child," he replied, "or they will be captured, which will be worse."

  "I understand," she told him, and pressed his hand; "and if I can help, Lieutenant Mack Guire, I shall be so glad."

  He smiled at her stilted pronunciation of his name. He had had the girl for an almost constant companion since his arrival; the sexes, he found, were on a level of mutual freedom, and the girl's companionship was offered and her friendship expressed as openly as might have been that of a youth. Of Sykes he saw little; Professor Sykes was deep in astronomical discussi
ons with the scientists of this world.

  But she was charming, this girl of a strange race so like his own. A skin from the velvet heart of a rose and eyes that looked deep into his and into his mind when he permitted; eyes, too, that could crinkle to ready laughter or grow misty when she sang those weird melodies of such thrilling sweetness.

  Only for the remembrance of Earth and the horrible feeling of impotent fury, Lieutenant McGuire would have found much to occupy his thoughts in this loveliest of companions.

  * * * * *

  He laughed now at the sounding of his name, and the girl laughed with him.

  "But it _is_ your name, is it not?" she asked.

  "Lieutenant Thomas McGuire," he repeated, "and those who like me call me 'Mac.'"

  "Mac," she repeated. "But that is so short and hard sounding. And what do those who love you say?"

  The flyer grinned cheerfully. "There aren't many who could qualify in that respect, but if there were they would call me Tommy."

  "That is better," said Althora with engaging directness; "that is much better--Tommy." Then she sprang to her feet and hurried him out where some further wonders must be seen and exclaimed over without delay. But Lieutenant McGuire saw the pink flush that crept into her face, and his own heart responded to the telltale betrayal of her feeling for him. For never in his young and eventful life had the man found anyone who seemed so entirely one with himself as did this lovely girl from a distant star.

  He followed where she went dancing on her way, but not for long could his mind be led away from the menace he could not forget. And on this day, as on many days to come, he struggled and racked his brain to find some way in which he could thwart the enemy and avert or delay their stroke.

  * * * * *

  It was another day, and they were some months on their long journey away from the earth when an inspiration came. Althora had offered to help, and he knew well how gladly she would aid him; the feeling between them had flowered into open, if unspoken love. Not that he would subject her to any danger--he himself would take all of that when it came--but meanwhile--

  "Althora," he asked her, "can you project your mind into that of one of the reds?"

  "I could, easily," she replied, "but it would not be pleasant. Their minds are horrible; they reek of evil things." She shuddered at the thought, but the man persisted.

  "But if you could help, would you be willing? I can do so little; I can never stop them; but I may save my people from some suffering at least. Here is my idea:

  "Djorn tells me that I had it figured right: they plan an invasion of the earth when next the two planets approach. He has told me of their armies and their fleets of ships that will set off into space. I can't prevent it; I am helpless! But if I knew what their leader was thinking--"

  "Torg!" she exclaimed. "You want to know the mind of that beast of beasts!"

  "Yes," said the man. "It might be of value. Particularly if I could know something of their great gun--where it is and what it is--well, I might do something about that."

  The girl averted her eyes from the savage determination on his face. "No--no!" she exclaimed; "I could not. Not Torg!"

  McGuire's own face fell at the realization of the enormity of this favor he had demanded. "That's all right," he said and held her soft hand in his; "just forget it. I shouldn't have asked."

  But she whispered as she turned to walk away: "I must think, I must think. You ask much of me, Tommy; but oh, Tommy, I would do much for you!" She was sobbing softly as she ran swiftly away.

  And the man in khaki--this flyer of a distant air-service--strode blindly off to rage and fume at his helplessness and his inability to strike one blow at those beings who lived in that world above.

  * * * * *

  There were countless rooms and passages where the work of the world below went on. There were men and women whose artistic ability found outlet in carvings and sculpture, chemists and others whose work was the making of foods and endless experimentation, some thousand of men and women in the strength of their endless youth, who worked for the love of the doing and lived contentedly and happily while they waited for the day of their liberation. But of fighters there were none, and for this Lieutenant McGuire grieved wholeheartedly.

  He was striding swiftly along where a corridor ended in blackness ahead. There was a gleaming machine on the floor beside him when a hand clutched at his arm and a warning voice exclaimed: "No further, Lieutenant McGuire; you must not go!"

  "Why?" questioned the lieutenant. "I've got to walk--do something to keep from this damnable futile thinking."

  "But not there," said the other; "it is a place of death. Ten paces more and you would have vanished in a flicker of flame. The projector"--he touched the mechanism beside them--"is always on. Our caves extend in an endless succession; they join with the labyrinth where the red ones used to live. They could attack us but for this. Nothing can live in its invisible ray; they are placed at all such entrances."

  "Yet Djorn," McGuire told himself slowly, "said they had no weapons. He knows nothing of war. But, great heavens! what wouldn't I give for a regiment of scrappers--good husky boys with their faces tanned and a spark in their eyes and their gas masks on their chests. With a regiment, and equipment like this--"

  And again he realized the futility of armament with none to serve and direct it.

  * * * * *

  It was a month or more before Althora consented to the tests. Djorn advised against it and made his protest emphatic, but here, as in all things, Althora was a free agent. It was her right to do as she saw fit, and there was none to prevent in this small world where individual liberty was unquestioned.

  And it was still longer before she could get anything of importance. The experiments were racking to her nerves, and McGuire, seeing the terrible strain upon her, begged her to stop. But Althora had gained the vision that was always before her loved one's eyes--a world of death and disaster--and he, here where the bolt would be launched, and powerless to prevent. She could not be dissuaded now.

  It was a proud day for Althora when she sent for McGuire, and he found her lying at rest, eyes closed in her young face that was lined and tortured with the mental horror she was contacting. She silenced his protests with a word.

  "The gun," she whispered; "they are talking about the gun ... and the bombardment ... planning...."

  More silent concentration. Then:

  "The inland of Bergo," she said, "--remember that! The gun is there ... a great bore in the earth ... solid rock ... but the casing of titanite must be reinforced ... and bands shrunk about the muzzle that projects ... heavy bands ... it shows signs of distortion--the heat!..."

  She was listening to the thoughts, and selecting those that bore upon gun.

  "... Only fifty days ... the bombardment must begin ... Tahnor has provided a hundred shells; two thousand tals of the green gas-powder in each one ... the explosive charges ready ... yes--yes!..."

  "Oh!" she exclaimed and opened her troubled eyes. "The beast is so complacent, so sure! And the bombardment will begin in fifty days! Will it really cause them anguish on your Earth, Tommy?"

  "Just plain hell; that's all!"

  McGuire's voice was low; his mind was reaching out to find and reject one plan after another. The gun!... He must disable it; he could do that much at least. For himself--well, what of it?--he would die, of course.

  The guard he had been taught to place about his own thoughts must have relaxed, for Althora cried out in distress.

  "No--no!" she protested; "you shall not! I have tried to help you, Tommy dear--say that I have helped you!--but, oh, my beloved, do not go. Do not risk your life to silence this one weapon. They would still have their ships. Remember what Djorn has told of their mighty fleets, their thousands of fighting men. You cannot stop them; you can hardly hinder them. And you would throw away your life! Oh, please do not go!"

  McGuire was seated beside her. His face was hidden in one hand while the other was held t
ight between the white palms of Althora's tense hands. He said nothing, and he shielded his eyes and locked his mind against her thought force.

  "Tommy," said Althora, and now her voice was all love and softness, "Tommy, my dear one! You will not go, for what can you do? And if you stay--oh, my dear!--you can have what you will--the secret of life shall be yours--to live forever in perpetual youth. You may have that. And me, Tommy.... Would you throw your life away in a hopeless attempt, when life might hold so much? Am I offering so little, Tommy?"

  And still the silence and the hand that kept the eyes from meeting hers; then a long-drawn breath and a slim figure in khaki that stood unconsciously erect to look, not at the girl, but out beyond the solid walls, through millions of miles of space, to the helpless speck called Earth.

  "You offer me heaven, my dear," he spoke softly. "But sometimes"--and his lips twisted into a ghost of a smile--"sometimes, to earn our heaven, we have to fight like hell. And, if we fail to make the fight, what heaven worth having is left?

  "And the people," he said softly; "the homes in the cities and towns and villages. My dear, that's part of loving a soldier: you can never own him altogether; his allegiance is divided. And if I failed my own folk what right would I have to you?"

  * * * * *

  He dared to look at the girl who lay before him. That other vision was gone but he had seen a clear course charted, and now, with his mind at rest, he could smile happily at the girl who was looking up at him through her tears.

  She rose slowly to her feet and stood before him to lay firm hands upon his shoulders. She was almost as tall as he, and her eyes, that had shaken off their tears but for a dewy fringe, looked deep and straight into his.

  "We have thought," she said slowly, "we people of this world, that we were superior to you and yours; we have accepted you as someone a shade below our plane of advancement. Yes, we have dared to believe that. But I know better. We have gone far, Tommy, we people of this star; we have lived long. Yet I am wondering if we have lost some virtues that are the heritage of a sterner race.