by Don Wilcox
“I’ll go there and help myself,” Mox muttered, pocketing the notes.
“No!” Gret-O-Gret barked. “It’s my planet.” He was coming to his senses. He sat bolt upright. “It’s my planet, I tell you. I’ve already registered it with the courts as my property!”
Mox was momentarily stopped. “You’ve registered it?”
“Yes, and if you steal as much as one clod of dirt from it, I’ll have the courts of Mogo on you.”
“Ufff!” Mox made an ugly face. He had already made an unfavorable record for himself with the courts. He didn’t want any more such dealings.
However, Mox’s thoughts flashed back to a long forgotten incident in which he had successfully evaded the law.
(It had happened years ago. The courts had proved that Gret owned a certain forest on a neighboring Mogo planet—a piece of property which no one had ever seen. Mox had flown to the land and destroyed half the forest before Gret had got his first glimpse of it. And Gret had never been able to prove a thing.)
“Has anyone seen this new planet that you have registered as your property?”
Gret rubbed his eyes and swept his upper hand over his bruised face. “No. Not yet. But I’ll soon go—” He hesitated as if it had begun to dawn on him that he had been talking too much.
“Don’t be in any hurry,” Mox said. He struck Gret another ugly blow and bolted off toward the city of Forty Towers as fast as he could go.
When Gret came to his feet groggily, he began to search the beaten ground where the fight had taken place. Search as he would, he could find no trace of his little guests from a far-off world.
“Poor things,” he mumbled over and over. “Poor little things.”
Suddenly he straightened. An awful question flashed through his mind, and all at once his six hearts were pounding.
What would Mox do next?
CHAPTER V
The poor old earth never knew what hit it!
A hundred exploding atom bombs would have been only a faint rustle of wind in comparison. A hundred thousand would have been a little more like it. Or a million atom bombs? Well, the fact was that five million atom bombs striking simultaneously would not have equaled one Mogo bomb.
That was why the giant Mox-O-Mox had such an easy time of it. He had only to find the right planet, spiral around it two or three times at high speed, and unload a few dozen Mogo bombs. The earth’s gravitation did the rest. It was enough to make the old planet fold up and quit.
That was all Mox-O-Mox wanted. He had accomplished his spite work in one swift stroke. He flew out into the highways of space and headed for home. Or if he chose, he would coast around and take in the sights awhile.
The surface of the earth was literally blown off.
Cities and harbors, villages and farms were obliterated. Mountains and deserts and oceans and lakes all leaped off the rocky crust and showered their particles into the atmosphere. One moment—sunshine over the broad and comparatively peaceful land. The next moment—a skyful of black bombs plunging toward the earth. Another moment—the blinding white flash of disintegration. And after that—
But who was left to see what happened after that?
George Hurley, a husky young space pilot who tipped the scales at two hundred and forty pounds, was trying out a new ship on a round-the-moon hop when it happened. He had circled the moon eight times to observe the performance of his light-weight craft at varying speeds and varying gravitational stresses. He had been pleased. Now if Judy Longworth were only here to share this maiden voyage, he thought, it would be perfect.
Judy Longworth was one of the most celebrated women space pilots in America. He had known her for almost two years—by television. He had discussed his plans for this very ship with her before she left on the Paul Keller expedition.
Talk about your good-looking gals! M-m-m. Judy Longworth, dressed in her space suit, was as beautiful as any of your famous Hollywood queens. George Hurley carried six pictures of her in his billfold. As soon as she came back from the Paul Keller expedition he was going to have a date with her.
His first date! That just goes to show how busy a guy can be, George thought, when he gets bit by the space flying bug. In spite of all their television visits, he and Judy had never met face to face.
“I could name this space flivver Judy,” George was saying to himself as he throttled toward the earth.
The space flivver suddenly trembled, as if it had crossed a gravitational “bump.”
That was strange. The dial jumped as if the moon had been derailed from its regular path. A freakish thing. George couldn’t understand it. He stared through the window above the control panel. A flare of blinding white light blazed from the earth’s surface! An explosion! A whole continent of explosions! The earth was incandescent! George slapped his hands over his eyes. He swung the green filter screen over the window and gazed again. What a spectacle! Powerful and beautiful and terrible!
Automatically he had let up on the throttle and turned to his radio. What was happening? What was the meaning? How could the earth be suddenly turned into a hell of flame?
“A nova!” he thought. “It’s bursting forth into a star like the sun! It must be!”
But his theory swiftly folded with the fading of the earth’s sudden burst of brilliance. A nova continues to burn through years. This blinding flare had come and gone in a matter of minutes. It dwindled to yellow flames . . . a sphere of black smoke streaked with yellow flames.
He tried continuously to contact someone by radio. His efforts were futile.
“The earth has blown up!” he was saying over and over to himself. “The earth has blown to hell!”
Why? How? What power greater than the power of man had chosen to strike the ambitious planet with such a deadly hand?
“Judy!” he was muttering almost unconsciously, “Judy. You should see this. If you were there, you might know.” (He had fallen into the habit of glorifying Judy in all of his solitary thoughts.)
He stopped short. What if she had been on the earth instead of far away on the Paul Keller expedition? Suppose she had been at her favorite haunt, the Mid-Continent Telescope. Why, the whole Mid-Continent spaceport must have burned up instantaneously. And the three Atlantic ports—the California port—the Mexico City port—
Slowly his imagination reached out to a whole sphere of question marks. There was no telling whether anything would be left on the whole globe. He was breathing fast, cutting along through space at high speed.
Now he saw the mushrooms of smoke billowing outward all around the earth. Presently, all he could see now was a silvery white cloud hanging there in space, highlighted by sunshine. The flames were lost within.
The dark fog of powdered earth spread wider and wider. Gradually the sullen red fires within were obscured by the growing sphere of blackness.
Hours later it was still spreading. Some of the earth’s substance, George guessed, would float out into the gravitational currents of space and be forever lost.
“Where’s a guy supposed to land at a time like this?”
George’s voice sounded strange to his own ears. He was a space man with no home base. He tried continuously to reach someone by radio. It was something to do, at least, while he pulled his thoughts together. Where to go? What to do? He didn’t have fuel enough to carry him to Mars or Venus.
“Judy, what would you do?”
He glanced at the radio dials, trying to force some answer by sheer willpower. But no such miracle occurred.
Many hours later the fluffy black blanket began to thin. George Hurley nosed his ship toward what he hoped would be the continent of America. If the instruments hadn’t kept track of time for him, he would have lost all record of the days that followed.
He kept circling the earth—into the daylight, out of it, into it again. It was muggy daylight, at best. The cloud from the explosions filled the air to a height of two hundred miles or more. Fortunately, his fuel supply stayed with him. He was determined to fin
d some sort of landing place. He explored any areas where the heat was less intense. Somewhere he might find a strip of the earth’s surface that had been left undamaged.
Finally he spotted a green valley deep within steep banks of mountains. Thanks to a torrent of rain, it might be cool enough in this area to land. His instruments told him that this protected spot had been a part of South Africa.
Air-cruising back and forth through the narrow valley several times before landing, he was heartened to make a discovery. Not quite all of the earth’s people had been consumed. At least one person had lived through it.
He flew low enough to see her—a woman in a white dress who ran out into a certain clearing each time he flew over, waving at him frantically. He wished she would run back out of the way so he could land with safety.
“I wouldn’t want to bump her off,” he thought. “Human life is much too scarce. Well, here goes for a landing.”
CHAPTER VI
The girl in the white dress was walking out from the edge of the clearing when George alighted. She sauntered along the side of the ship, as if inspecting it, and he fancied that she gave a sniff of disdain because it was so small. It was no larger, in fact, than the body of a twelve-passenger airplane. Smallness was its advantage. But she probably knew nothing about space flivvers.
He began to putter around the ship with a polishing rag. Its copper-colored lines took a high polish.
“Where’d you come from?” the girl asked.
She was at once bold and a little scared. George wasted a second glance on her. Somehow he had guessed she would be freckled and homely and she probably giggled like the high school girls back home. Thank goodness, she spoke English.
“Where’s your folks?” he asked, turning to stare at her. She wasn’t so homely after all, he thought. And the freckles weren’t really conspicuous. Her blue eyes were meant to be gay, but she had been doing a lot of crying.
“Where’s your folks?” she countered with a tinge of irony. “Where’s anybody’s folks? There’s nobody alive since last week. You’re the first live one I’ve seen. Where’d you come from?”
“Near St. Louis, originally.”
“Is there anybody alive around St. Louis now?”
“Hell, no, there isn’t any St. Louis.”
“That’s what I mean. I’ve been trying to radio out ever since the big firestorm struck. I can’t get a thing.” She walked on around the ship. George followed her.
“There’s no Chicago or New York, either,” he said.
“I was numb for a couple days after I buried my parents. Buried them in a ditch. And the servants. And my pet dog. I walked around just numb.”
“You can’t even tell where the cities were,” George said. “Or the mountains or oceans or anything. I went around the earth dozens of times. It’s just a different earth.”
“It came so fast, nobody had time to do anything. I saw two awful flashes in the sky over that way, and then it hit here and everything went out. Especially me. I don’t know why it didn’t kill me, like the others.”
“It’s just a different earth,” George repeated, walking back to the ship’s open airlocks to deposit the polishing rag. “You’ve no idea. When I landed here I thought this was a part of Africa—until you stepped up and started talking English.”
“It is Africa. Or was. It was the Banrab Valley. My brother owned a mine here and the family flew over to visit him—all except my older brother. He’s on Venus—I hope!”
“I’ll bet the Venus astronomers got a pretty eyeful. Maybe they can figure out what did it. I was on my way back from the moon in this new ship—” he glanced at the gleaming copper strips that lined the body. The girl didn’t seem to notice what a slick new model it was.
“I was supposed to get back to New York for school next week. I’ve already paid my tuition.”
“Tuition!” George grunted. This girl was too young and frivolous to realize anything, he thought. Judy Longworth should be here. Judy! She’d be coming back some day this summer when the Paul Keller expedition returned. At least there’d be a few people on earth, then!
George’s next thought made him shudder. Just now he and this New York girl might be the only two living persons on the earth! He gulped and edged away from her. It was a terrifying idea, and he certainly hoped she wouldn’t think of it.
But it was already on the tip of her tongue.
“Isn’t it strange?” she was saying. “I’ve always thought there were too many people in the world. Living in New York you come to feel that way. And you don’t think anything will ever change it. But all at once this fire-storm hit, and now, there’s only two of us.” She paused and there was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Then, “That fire-storm—what do you think it was?”
George faced her again, liking her a little better. She had sidetracked the awkward thought. What was the fire-storm? That was a man-sized question. Did she think he knew?
“I’ve got some theories,” he said, and he might have gone on, but she leaped back to the dangerous topic.
“If everyone has been destroyed but you and me—”
“Huh?”
“I mean if we’re the only two people left on this earth—”
George shot a suspicious glance at her. She was looking off into the afternoon sky, frowning with deep thoughts.
“I mean it’s a responsibility—for us—”
“Stop it!” George snapped. “I won’t have that kind of talk.” He whirled away from her and stepped into the air-locks of his ship. She quickly followed him, trying to catch him by the sleeve.
“What’s the matter?” she cried. “What did I say that made you mad?”
He tried to keep her from coming into the ship, but he backed away from touching her. “I’ll have you know that I’ve got a girl, and she’ll be coming back to the earth one of these days. Get it through your head that I’m not having anything to do with anyone else.”
The girl whirled him around to face her, and her blue eyes flashed with anger.
“Who said anything about being your girl?”
“You practically said it.”
She gave a taunting laugh. “What a terrific egotism!” She stamped down the steps as if to exit through the air locks. She turned and blazed at him. “All I said was, we’ll have responsibilities. We’ll have to get things going. Otherwise, when my brother comes back from Venus—and the Paul Keller party returns—and other earth folks come back from other planets—what are they going to find? We’ve got work to do.”
George caught the time from his wrist. “That reminds me.” He bounded up to the control room. “I’m taking off,” he yelled back. “You wait here. I’ll find you when I come back. There’s a Venus plane due in and they won’t know where to land. My radio won’t reach unless I go out. I’ve got to guide them in.”
The dials showed the air locks to be in the clear, so he supposed the girl had alighted. The locks swished shut, and the atomic motors roared as he taxied to one end of the clearing. A moment later he plunged skyward.
Within a few seconds he set the speed and started the automatic radio calls. That was all he could do, for the present. There might be minutes or hours of waiting.
The girl was still on his mind, and he found himself mumbling aloud.
“What a funny kid . . . I didn’t even find out her name . . . or her nationality. . . not that it makes any difference—” He was stopped short by the sounds of tiptoeing in the corridor forward. A familiar voice answered his questions in mock schoolgirl manner.
“My name is Anna Pantella, and I’m an American.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! Who invited you to come along?”
“And I happen to be half French, too.”
“I’m not interested.”
“And half English and half Italian.”
“That’s three halves,” George said dryly, making up his mind to ignore her. “And the other half is misbehavior. That’s what my grandfathe
r in New Jersey always told me . . . You don’t like me, do you?”
George gave her a savage look.
“Do you, Big Boy?”
Since high school days George, weighing over two hundred, had been called Big Boy. And he had liked it. The fact was, he’d loved it. But this girl had no business calling him his favorite name. She had no business being here.
He snarled at her, “Why don’t you get a broom and a dust cloth and go through this ship and make yourself useful? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Okay, Big Boy. Anything you say.”
George cleared his throat and was about to add, in a hard voice, “And don’t call me Big Boy!” But he let it pass. Just then the signal from the earth-bound Venus Express sounded in his receiver, which was his cue to get busy.
CHAPTER VII
The incoming Venus Express was an hour late. The space observers at the Venus port had seen the explosion and had tried for days to communicate with the earth. No luck. A rumor of alarm began to spread. At the hour for the departure of the Express, last-minute passenger cancellations were still coming in.
Now, as George Hurley made radio contact with the approaching ship, it reported only eight passengers.
George’s courtesy messages were eagerly received. After several minutes of excited exchanges of news about the great disaster, the Express took the location of the Banrab Valley as a make-shift landing field. George gave a relieved sigh and headed down toward the stratosphere.
Anna Pantella was at his shoulder.
“You did it perfectly, Big Boy. You’re smart, aren’t you?”
“Any pilot would have done it. Everything for the common good at a time like this. Which reminds me, we’d better get back.”
“You haven’t told me about your theories.”
“What theories?”
“On what made the earth explode.”
George eased his touch on the throttle. “Well, one theory is that it was all a freak of nature. Something that’s been in the cards for billions of years. It’s been all this time coming, and finally—well it got here. All at once.”