by Don Wilcox
“What’s up?” people yelled. “What’s the matter with Glasgow?”
“We’ve got some ugly business to clear up. Your self-appointed dictator is going to talk. He has a few overripe confessions to make. Come into the cave, all of you. Right into the assembly room. You porters—just check your firearms at the door and everything will be fine.”
One of the porters made the final mistake of reaching for his pistol. The sharp-eyed engineer cut a line of atomic fire at him, close enough to slice away the crest of his hair. The porter ducked behind someone. The engineer held his fire.
Things happened too fast to be seen by most of the crowd. Mamma saw the porter jerk up with his pistol, and for an instant it looked like death for the engineer or possibly Waterfield. But a young mechanic leaped on the porter and flattened him before he could aim. The fire went wild, barely missed Papa Mouse, and caught a girl through the foot, disintegrating it. Before her scream of pain cut the air, a spurt of fire from the engineer’s pistol bit through the porter’s skull, killing him instantly. He was rolled to the edge of the road, the rain soaking into his black uniform.
Then there was order—as much order as there could be in the sudden downpour. Waterfield waved the crowd into the cave. A few workers were dispatched to run back and check the state of the camp under the downpour. The doctor attended the wounded girl. A few minutes later they rejoined the others in the so-called assembly room.
“Where’s George Hurley?” Mamma wailed as she moved through the dimly lit passage into the assembly chamber.
“Quiet,” came the voice of Anna from a dark alcove. “Big Boy needs his sleep.” She was kneeling beside the comfortably outstretched figure.
Mamma saw that George had been fighting and had evidently fainted away. But he was breathing easily and was in good hands. When Anna mopped his face with a wet cloth he began to come to life.
In the assembly chamber everyone was accounted for. Every porter had been relieved of his weapons and had been seated conspicuously within the circle of spectators. In the center of the circle was Garritt Glasgow, ugly and hurt, and dust smeared, making an effort to hold back the twitches of his face. Poppendorf’s eyes were swelling, one was shut. The sweat on his naked chest began to cake in black streaks. He hunched his head down between his massive shoulders; He kept scraping his heel along the floor noiselessly after Waterfield started his speech to the crowd.
“The biggest, roomiest planet in the universe wouldn’t be big enough for people to live together in peace,” Waterfield said, “if some of the people were predatory murderers.”
Glasgow looked up with surly eyes. He started to hiss his defiance. It wasn’t much of a hiss. It was Glasgow convicting himself before the charges had been hurled at him.
Waterfield had the facts well in hand. He went over the whole story—the real story of Paul Keller’s Mogo expedition and his bout with fate. Mamma Mountain liked the way Waterfield told it. It all sounded straight and solid, and she watched Katherine Keller, her steel-blue eyes wide with surprise, making little nods unconsciously as Waterfield kept steadily progressing.
Then Waterfield pointed at Garritt Glasgow and told of the little man’s criminal ambitions. Again the facts rang clear. Even some of the porters opened their eyes. One of them burst out with, “Then all this charge against Paul Keller is a damned hoax!”
“Certainly,” said Waterfield. “The doctor, the engineer and I have just had the pleasure of hearing your self-appointed dictator admit it. We set a trap for him, and he walked into it. While we listened, he did his crowing about a whole nestful of crimes—”
If it hadn’t been so completely absorbing and tense, like watching a man being prepared for the electric chair, Mamma Mountain and Anna and George might have heard the very slight hiss of a small spaceship coming to a stop in the valley landing field.
When they turned simultaneously, it was the sound of footsteps in the tunnel that attracted them. At first, most of the assembled group, engrossed in the meeting, neither saw nor heard. But George saw. It was, to his vast surprise, Madame Zukor!
It was Madame Zukor and a whole squad of gunmen! Flashing guns. Dazzling green and gold uniforms, and the breathtaking spectacle of Madame Zukor in a brilliant red cape and an emerald-studded suit.
If George Hurley hadn’t been somewhat groggy from a recent fight he would probably have gotten himself killed in that moment. It would have been his impulse to leap at the nearest gun. Madame Zukor’s weapon flashed silver in his eyes. A host of guns were pointed into the assembly chamber. There would be a wholesale massacre, George thought, if anyone dared resist—
His hands came up slowly, then faster. Anna’s hands were up, too. And Mammas—and when Mamma’s deep throat emitted a quivering “Wooo-ah!” the assemblage turned.
Waterfield must have paled. George could hear it in his voice. The entrance had been left unguarded because it was thought that everyone was in. That Madame Zukor might choose this particular moment to arrive from Mars had not occurred in the slightest even to the most wary.
“All guns on the floor, gentlemen!” Madame Zukor snapped. The Glasgow forces made short work of turning the tables.
“All right, Garritt,” Madame Zukor said. “My new ship is ready and waiting.”
Glasgow’s voice was shaky, but he managed to call the roll of those who were to come with them. The list wasn’t impressive. Poppendorf , three of the porters, plus Madames Zukor’s green and gold squad of eight were all. The rest had been so obviously convinced of Glasgow’s guilt, during the past few minutes that Glasgow had already struck them off with deadly certainty.
“But I was with you, damn it!” one of the excited porters wailed. “I was with you, boss—”
“It’s Mr. Glasgow, you traitor!” Glasgow gestured his fury by shooting, and the fire caught the luckless porter through the belly and disintegrated half of him before everyone’s eyes. “Stay where you are, the rest of you, or we’ll sweep you clean.”
The party of fourteen inched their way backward. When they came to the alcove that had served as Glasgow’s office, some of them stood guard while others gathered together the few effects that Glasgow wished to take with him. All of the military equipment, including two wheelbarrow loads of munitions, were to be carted along.
“We’ll never get down the hill with all these explosives,” Poppendorf growled. “They’ll be heaving rocks at us before we’re twenty yards away from the cave if not sooner.”
Glasgow scoffed at him. “I think we’ll have brains enough to touch off the explosives at the cave door.”
So that was it. They would blast the mountainside and let it avalanche down over the mouth of the cave.
“By the time any of them ever dig out,” Glasgow added with a sadistic gleam, “they’ll be the hungriest skeletons the earth ever saw.”
The words carried past George and he heard the weird intake of breath of a half hundred terror-crazed people. The wonder was that some of them didn’t break out of their paralysis and get themselves shot down.
But none of them moved. Glasgow was making his final exodus from the American colony, and he was doing it with the air of glorifying mass murder. That wild glint in his eye—George was fascinated as he watched the little dictator walking slowly backward, his sister beside him, the two of them directing every step of the twelve persons following them. They were almost out. They were even with the alcove that had once served as Paul Keller’s prison.
Swish!
Whiz!
Down from the stone ceiling it came–a tawny form with green wings flashing. Lightning from the storm flared through the cave entrance, and George’s eyes caught the picture. Green Flash. He leaped out of hiding. He pounced upon Glasgow.
A short scream from Madame Zukor. She reached for her brother’s hand. It jerked away from her. Glasgow was being flown out into the rain. Before the first gun flashed, the lightning flare showed the wingman and his victim darting over the cliff.
Madame Zukor might have saved her breath. The wild spraying of gunfire was quite futile—a mad expression of chaos within the party of fourteen—no, thirteen. Glasgow was definitely gone.
Waterfield and George and the rest of the assemblage came down the tunnel with a rush. The moment of chaos gave them their chance. The party of thirteen quickly diminished to ten—ten prisoners, crouched in the rain in the dead-end corner of the cliff road just beyond the cavern entrance. Three had been pushed over the edge. It was a fall from which there was no returning.
Through the rain, the whole terrorized earth colony moved slowly down the slope toward the valley landing. Six blasts of explosives on the cliff road temporarily blocked the route of escape for the cornered party of ten. Madame Zukor, Poppendorf, and their eight gunless gunmen could go back into the cave for the night if they wanted to. Or they could stand out on the cliff road and bellow for Glasgow. But they couldn’t get down—not unless they first spent many hours removing a dangerous avalanche of rocks.
“The Venus Express will be here in the morning,” Waterfield said. “With it and George’s ship and Madame Zukor’s boat from Mars, it won’t take us long to move, bag and baggage, to the other side of the planet. We’ll make sure that all incoming interplanetary traffic lands there instead of here. Are we all in favor?”
The move, long considered, met with unanimous approval. It was also agreed that they should leave the stranded Glasgow party and the wingmen to survive as best they might. Everyone knew that the wingmen wouldn’t have any trouble surviving. And since there were some food supplies in the cave, the Glasgow party could remain exiled without facing immediate starvation. The plan was not cruel, in view of the Glasgow crimes, it was merciful.
“We’re through with Glasgow!” Mamma Mountain chanted, as she loaded herself into George Hurley’s ship. “We’re through with Glasgow!”
George felt vague uncertainties about her elation. He would have liked another chance to punch Poppendorf in the nose. And he’d have liked to see Glasgow ground up into Glasgowburgers and fried crisp for the wingmen. But at least all trouble was about to be left far behind. It was a good song that Mamma Mountain, Anna and the others were singing, and George joined in.
CHAPTER XXXV
On the American side of the continent the new earth got off to a vigorous start. The Venus boat brought a desirable addition to the earth’s population. Panic-stricken persons set into motion by the Mercury disaster had not been able to gain passage. These newcomers were persons who had made reservations earlier, who were coming because of a sincere interest in giving the earth a fresh start. Before the population had swelled to three thousand, an efficient committee of fifteen had gone into service as the governing body.
“We’re doing very well without Glasgow!” the citizens would remind each other jubilantly.
“What happened to him?” the newcomers would ask.
“First he was carried away by his own power, and later by a husky wingman.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No one knows. No one cares, as long as he’s on the other side of the world.”
Exile, then, was to be the fate of Glasgow and his inner circle. To insure that the exile would be permanent, George and Katherine and the governing committee made it a point to bring all incoming traffic to the American continent. Banrab, as a landing place, passed out of existence.
One trip back to Banrab was made at the request of some wingmen. Several of those who had remained at the camp on the American side were fascinated by the reports of jagged mountains and labyrinthine caves. They were uneasy without the leadership of Green Flash and wished to go to him.
Accordingly, the Venus Express accommodated them and took all who wanted to go, dumping them high above the Banrab Valley. The few Venus bound passengers looked down with vast curiosity, knowing that somewhere among the mysterious blue mountains a few earth men, who once moved through the luxurious palaces of every fine space port in the solar system, had been left in the company of the winged cave dwellers.
But no tears were wasted. Banrab had passed out of existence. The first official maps of the new earth bore no markings of Banrab. The landing spots on the American continent where Gret-O-Gret’s hands had scrapped the uneven terrain smooth were the new centers of earth’s civilization.
George had once planned to fly to Mercury to see the effects of the second crushing blow of Mogo ruthlessness. This ambition was set aside in favor of more pressing duties. There were many voyages to be made to Mars and Venus in connection with the earth’s new diplomatic responsibilities. And there was always the task of guarding the skies.
Incoming traffic had to be directed with utmost care. Privateers might have come in their own boats and set up their own outposts, friendly or otherwise, if precautions had not been taken. It was particularly important to the new earth that no un-cooperative groups be allowed to set up their own empires. For this reason, the American embassies on both Mars and Venus, and later Mercury, as well, were appealed to. The established government on the new earth was out to win respect for itself.
Among the original settlers who had gone through the bad days at Banrab, there were a few who tried to surround themselves with an aura of aristocracy. They were the new earth’s first settlers. As soon as the newspapers made their appearance, however, the myth of firstness became a mild joke. It was, after all, quite an accident that certain persons had come on the first Venus excursion to the earth after the disaster. The accident hardly entitled them to consider themselves superior stock. Fortunately for Anna, she was a person of a frank and honest nature, with so little sham about her that the glory of being the one person the earth’s blasts had spared did not go to her head. She would laugh at all jibes and always admit that it was a freakish bit of luck that she was alive; but she refused to take on the airs of being made of special clay.
It could not be denied that the original settlers at Banrab had gone through something of an experience that no later group would ever know. Nor would they easily forget the dream of a little spaceport village nestling in the shadow of the black mountains. They cherished their memories with sentimental fondness, and a few were heartbroken during the first weeks after the move. No one had thought to bring along any of the charts on blueprints.
“We didn’t have time,” was the well remembered reason. The opening had come, quite suddenly, to shake the dust of Glasgow off their feet, and they had moved without stopping to collect any trifling souvenirs. Would anyone ever find the blue-prints of papers left under the canvas on that rainy night? Worthless documents now. Nobody suggested that busy space pilots should take time to go back and get them.
Between trips, George would seek out Anna, who had attached herself to Katherine Keller as a devoted assistant. The committee of fifteen had made Katherine a member at the request of Anna.
“Katherine Keller has been everywhere and seen everything,” Anna announced, when the committee membership was being decided upon. “So I am going to yield my place, which Judge Lagnese wished on me, to Katherine. It’s the least I can do to help give this country a good government.”
Someone suggested that Anna might have a place anyway. But she refused. It was her solid belief that you shouldn’t hold such a responsibility just because people want to honor you; that your good will doesn’t in the least qualify you to make your own rules.
“If the earth hadn’t been blasted, I would still be in school, studying history and politics, and probably complaining that I couldn’t get such things through my head,” she said candidly. “If I tried to hold
down a place on the committee, I’d have to puff myself up like a bullfrog. Now if it were my brother on Venus—urn—now there’s a genius.”
George explained for the benefit of the group that her brother on Venus knew everything there was to know. Someone suggested that her brother, then, should be placed on the committee.
“Unfortunately,” Anna said, “my brother on Venus is on Venus.”
Anna’s gracious act lifted Katherine to one of the highest honors in the land and at the same time added to Anna’s own popularity. George was secretly wondering if she wasn’t becoming much too popular.
It worried him. It worried him that such a thing should worry him. Did it mean that he had fallen in love with her and was afraid to admit it to himself? At such times he would recall his fanciful one-time affection for a myth named Judy—a very wonderful girl, he was sure, though he had never really known her. It had been easy to believe that if she had lived, they might have been the New Earth’s happiest couple. There was still a slight wound from that memory, just enough to screen from him his desire for a real romance.
One evening he found Anna busil sketching. He had walked into the writing room of the New Earth Hotel, an old building that had been cleared of debris for temporary use. The engineers hadn’t gotten around to patching the windows or wall, so that an opening admitted sunlight and made the writing balcony a part of the outdoors. The light shone in upon Anna’s hair and gave it the coppery cast of his space ship. For the first time George thought of her as beautiful. She started to hide her work when she saw George approaching.
“Come on, Pantella, no secrets. You can’t hide anything from us space pilots, you know.”
Anna made a pretense of carrying on some dire underground plan.
“Seal your lips, Inspector, and I’ll cut you in on the take . . . ah, what wouldn’t I give to see an oldtime earth movie!”
“Homesick for the past, are you?”