“John, you—you’re not going through with your plan after all that’s happened?”
“To the bitter end, Doug. My dream hasn’t lost a bit of its reality.”
Reid stood there, straight and stiff, while the pound of approaching footsteps grew louder. Cold flames swirled in the dark depths of his eyes.
And then men were pouring through the engine-room door. Norlin was the first to enter. After him came a compact group of grim-faced Arkites.
Norlin strode forward.
“Reid, we’ve come here for a showdown.”
Reid looked at the scout. Norlin had been changed by the storm as all had been changed. His uniform was no longer neat and immaculate; it was wrinkled and torn. His irrepressible grin was gone, as was the carefree light in his eyes. His face was set, ominously purposeful.
“We know why you both are here,” Norlin went on. “You’ve come to overhaul the engines to take us away from New Terra. Well, we’re not going. We’ve made up our minds—we’re going to the city. And you’re going to take us there in the Parsec. What you do after that, none of us cares.”
“This is mutiny!” Reid whispered fiercely.
“Make of it what you will! We refuse to follow you any longer. If you won’t have any consideration for our well-being while you follow your crazy plans, then we’ll have to look out for ourselves.”
“Wait a moment, Norlin.” Reid leaned forward, his eyes burning into the scout. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Aren’t you forgetting that I rescued you and all the rest from the hell that was left of Earth? What do you think your chances would be if you were there now—soft as you all are? Starvation, plague, madness—death!
“By that very act of saving you, your lives have become my property. You owe me a debt of gratitude that can be paid back only through the strict obedience of my wishes and commands. Have you lost all pride and self-respect, become so degraded and without sense of honor or duty that you’d be willing to forego this debt for the life of luxury and ease which you imagine the city holds for you?” Reid’s bitterly accusing gaze raked the Arkites, and one by one, their eyes dropped before his.
“Don’t be fools!” Norlin’s voice lashed at them. “I’ll admit he saved us, but does this fact make us his slaves? Are we going to be led around by our noses, made to suffer and die, because of a debt? The storm gave you all a sample of what to expect if you keep on following him. Do you want more of that?” He whirled back to Reid.
“You’re mad to exact such payment from us! Your whole plan of leaving New Terra after all that’s happened is insane. We can owe no debt of gratitude to a madman—we cannot be expected to follow him, either.”
“Madman!” Reid was coldly furious. “Is this the only interpretation which you can make of my determination to leave New Terra and having nothing to do with the city? Then you are stupid, Norlin! Can’t you see that my own personal satisfaction does not enter into it? Can’t you see that the comfort and safety of the Arkites is of no importance whatsoever? It’s the future of our race that counts. Everything I’ve done and intend to do has been meant for your children and your children’s children. If you can’t see that, then you’re the ones who are mad!” Suddenly all anger left Reid; he became desperately earnest.
“Men, you’ve just got to understand that your intention of going to the city is wrong—terribly wrong. It’s an unforgivable expression of weakness and cowardice. You’ll be making beggars of yourselves, parasites upon another race. You’ll be destroying the last hope of a once mighty civilization. What sort of chances do you think your children will have, living among an alien people? And, for that matter, what do you think your own chances will be? You don’t know a single thing about the people in the city. You can’t be certain whether you’ll be welcomed or killed outright.”
“We’ve discussed that, Reid,” Norlin said coldly. “We’re certain we can take care of ourselves.” He made a gesture of sudden impatience. “I’ve had enough of this! We’ve made up our minds and nothing’s going to change them. After the storm, we’d risk anything rather than go further. For the last time, are you going to take us to the city?”
Showdown had come, Reid knew. Both pleading and reasoning had failed; there was but one response to make now. Norlin’s jaw muscles were clenched whitely, his body taut as a spring wound for instant, furious action. The grimly determined Arkites behind him were making a slow, almost imperceptible movement forward.
“Do you know what my answer is?” Reid snapped. “This!” His hand flashed to the, holster at his hip, pulling the blast-gun free. As straight and steady as though set in rock the weapon covered them. “Ill kill the first one who moves, I swear it! Now listen to me. Both sides of the matter have been presented fully by now, and by all the laws of common sense, mine still remains the right one. If you can’t and won’t see it that way, then there’s only one—”
“John! Steve! My God, stop it!”
Reid’s attention focused involuntarily upon the source of the cry, his sentence left unfinished. An auburn-haired fury was scratching and clawing her way into the engine room. It was Susan, her face pale and twisted with terror.
Reid jerked his eyes back to the men before him, but the diversion caused by the girl’s entrance, even though of less than a second’s duration, was a disastrous one for him. The blast-gun was smashed suddenly from his grasp, and almost in the same instant the Arkites threw themselves upon him in a battering wave of human flesh. Doug Lain uttered a strangled sob and threw himself frantically to Reid’s aid. But the attempt to fight back was futile for both of them, heavily outnumbered as they were.
For a moment only was Reid aware of pounding fists and clutching hands, of pain that flashed and roared. The next, he was plunging abruptly into the ebon depths of unconsciousness.
* * * *
When Reid came to, he found himself in the control room of the Parsec, seated in the pilot chair. He shook his head dazedly, and it was as though the action had upset a bucket of molten metal inside his skull, for droplets of searing pain coursed suddenly along the channels of his nerves. He winced and closed his eyes again, realizing with a dull fury that his body was so bruised and battered that it was almost one, huge, continuous throbbing ache.
Reid stared hard at the instrument board before him, his eyes settling slowly back into focus. Then a flicker of motion caught his quickening awareness; he turned to see Norlin appear beside him. In one hand the scout gripped the blast-gun upon which Reid had pinned his last hopes of resistance—and failed.
“So you’re finally awake, eh?” Norlin grunted. “Well, it’s about time. We’ve all been waiting for you to come out of it. Everything’s been packed into the ship, and we’re ready to move.”
“Ready—” Reid’s lips curled bitterly. “You’re in a hurry to see your folly through, aren’t you, Norlin?”
“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t call it folly. I’ve got this, remember.” Norlin brandished the blast-gun. “Now listen, Reid, I’ll have no tricks, see? You’ve lost irrevocably, and the least you can do now is to be decent about it. I’m holding no grudges against you; in fact, when we reach the city, you and Lain will be free to do as you please.”
“Where is Lain?”
“Down in the engine room, waiting for orders. I told you we were ready, didn’t I?”
Reid leaned forward and pressed the signal button of the inter-ship communicator. After a moment a voice buzzed from the speaker.
“What is it?”
“Doug, is that you?”
“John! Are you all right?”
“Well enough. Doug, hasn’t anything been done about the engines?”
“Of course not. You know it’s a two-man job. We’ll never get down to the source of the trouble unless we take them completely apart, and then put them back together again, checking every detail against our formulae. And, well—you k
now how it is…”
“Norlin tells me we’re ready to leave at once.”
Lain’s sigh was just barely audible through the speaker. “That’s what I meant.”
Reid swung around to the scout. “Norlin, something’s wrong with the engines. It won’t be safe to move the ship until the trouble has been found and corrected.”
“You’re stalling!” the other snapped. “If you think you can make a play for time in order to—”
“I’m serious, I tell you!” Reid gritted. “Look. Remember that queer shake-up we had upon first emerging from hyperspace into Alpha Centauri’s system? Well, it wasn’t the natural phenomenon you all thought it was. Normally, the translation process should have been almost unnoticeable. That shake-up meant something was drastically wrong somewhere. Remember, Norlin, this isn’t the kind of ship with which you’ve grown familiar. It travels through an entirely different medium, upon an entirely different principle. We just can’t take chances.”
“Well, if another shake-up’s all we can expect, that won’t be taking much of a chance. Reid, I’ve told you we’re ready; we won’t stand for any delays.”
Reid started to speak again, but a glance at Norlin’s stubbornly determined face told him it was useless. He turned back to the inter-ship communicator.
“Doug, have you heard everything?”
“Yes, John. I’m afraid we’ll just have to risk it, then. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take a chance like this with hyperspace, but I guess there’s nothing else we can do.”
Reid’s features settled grimly. “All right. Stand by.” His fingers played over a bank of keys on the control board. “Signals?”
“All clear.”
“Ready, now. I’m turning on power.” Reid pulled down a switch and simultaneously the instrument board before him lighted up. He depressed an activator stud and now a deep hum spread throughout the ship. He watched the progress of an indicator along the face of one of the meters on the control board, his hand ready upon a lever. When the indicator reached the stop, he pulled the lever forward. The hum rose to a shrill whine; there was a sudden sensation of motion-change. Another indicator moved and came to rest.
Reid turned. “We’re in hyperspace.”
“No tricks, now!” Norlin warned.
“Tricks?” Reid snorted contemptuously. “You’re in my power out here, Norlin, and don’t forget it. One wrong move upon these controls would kill us all instantly and horribly. But there would be no point to it; either here or in the city, the last hope of our civilization dies. I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for it. Your own senseless determination will take care of that.”
Reid turned his attention to the control board again. He pressed a button beneath what appeared to be a large, concave mirror. This was the hypervon, a viewing device which served somewhat the same purpose as did periscopes on 20th century submarines. Reid and Lain had realized early in their experiments that hyperspatial travel would be useless unless some means of reference could be made constantly to the familiar guide-stars of normal, interstellar space. Almost as much as the warp engines, perfection of the hypervon had occupied their time.
Now the hypervon lighted up. In its center, tiny, though sharp and dear, appeared the flooded campsite and the rise upon which the Parsec had rested. This was all that was visible; the outer edges of the screen remained grey and featureless, flickering weirdly with light and shadow.
Reid touched the control stick and the scene changed abruptly. Mountain, plain, and forest appeared and vanished with incredible rapidity. For a longer time there was the deep blue of water. Then the mountains of the other continent appeared and swelled into size. Soon they were within the bay, and Reid cut their progress to a crawl, following the shoreline.
“Lord,” Norlin whispered, watching the hypervon in awe. “And to think it took us almost three days to get here in the auxiliary!”
And then the city appeared, tiny picture of perfection. Just within sight of its outlying farmlands, Reid returned the control stick to neutral. He operated a series of switches and buttons, and gradually the ground below the Parsec as seen in the hypervon grew in size and detail. He took up the stick again, and once more they moved forward. Finally a road that gleamed with the hue of metal appeared on the screen.
“We’re on the outskirts of the city,” Reid said.
Norlin nodded eagerly. “Land here.”
As Reid prepared to fold in the warp-field and return the Parsec to normal space, he paused, gripped by a sudden premonition of disaster. The trip thus far had been without danger, but he remembered that it was just at this point on the previous voyage that the shake-up had taken place. There had been no serious consequences, other than the mere fact of the occurrence, but he felt that a repetition might not be so fortunate.
Suddenly Reid shrugged; he had nothing to lose. Everything had been lost already. He reached out to the control board again and began to draw back the power release lever, watching the meters and gauges on the instrument panel.
The field was folding in; the indicators flickered toward their stops. Reid held his breath tensely.
It happened, then, just as he had subconsciously felt it would. There was a sudden, ear-piercing whine that rose into inaudibility, became a vibration that tingled painfully along his nerves. The Parsec was shaken with abrupt violence, and Reid, clutching desperately at his seat, saw the hypervon flare with intolerable brightness. Simultaneously, there came the sound of a terrific explosion. Scarcely had the echoes of this died away, when Reid was thrown out of the pilot chair by a great crash.
Sickened, stunned, Reid groped to his feet. Across the room, Norlin was arising painfully out of the corner into which he had been thrown. Everything was very still.
And then Reid stiffened, paralyzed with sudden, chilling horror. He darted to the inter-ship communicator.
“Doug!” he cried. “Doug! Answer me!”
He strained his ears with the intensity of his listening, but no sound came from the speaker. He turned and ran crazily from the room, his breath sobbing in his throat. Only a very small part of him was aware that Norlin followed.
Reid reached the engine room to find smoke pouring from the door in thick, black clouds. The air was acrid with the smell of ozone. The interior was a shambles of destruction. Flame had blackened and seared the walls. The engine housings had been blown entirely off and the delicate inner mechanisms lay scattered all over the room, blasted into fragments.
Finally Reid’s eyes settled upon the charred body of Doug Lain. He walked forward slowly, his face a gray, lined death-mask. Everything became very motionless and quiet.
“Doug!” he whispered. “We could have gone on together, you and I. There’s so much we could have seen, so much we could have talked about. And now—” Reid’s voice ended brokenly. After a time he looked up. His gaze fixed upon Norlin standing woodenly in the engine room doorway.
“You did this!” Reid accused in low, terrible tones. “You killed him just as surely as if you had blasted him with the gun you’re holding. If you had listened to me this would never have happened.” Reid stalked toward the scout, his hands spread like talons. His eyes burned with a light as awful as the very fires of hell.
Norlin’s face paled. “I didn’t know!” he gasped. “I tell you, I didn’t realize—”
Reid’s forward progress was the slow and inevitable one of death itself.
“Reid, wait! Let me explain.”
But Reid did not halt, did not waver. He came on.
Norlin broke; he released an inarticulate cry, whirled, and ran from the engine room. He fled as if every fear known to man since the dawn of time had suddenly taken on form and substance to pursue him. He had forgotten the blast-gun in his hand, had forgotten everything save his insane desire to get away from the hideous, consuming fire that blazed in Reid’s eyes.
&
nbsp; Like an automaton Reid continued onward. And then, suddenly, the supernal fury died out of him. Just at the foot of the ladder which led to the upper deck he collapsed, crumpling slowly like a man grown abruptly old and weak. He lay there motionlessly, his head buried in his arms.
He had lost—utterly, completely, beyond all hope of recovery. His dream of transplanting civilization and watching it bud had failed. By now the Arkites were within the city, their first step toward racial destruction having been taken.
With Doug Lain he might have found solace, traveling in the Parsec to all the numberless, glittering stars of the universe. But Doug Lain was dead and the Parsec would never travel again. There was nothing left for him. Nothing, except—
“John!”
He lifted his head wearily, mechanically. Someone was calling him. Susan. But what difference did it make? He had lost Susan, too.
“John! Where are you?”
A dim response of emotion stirred within him. Susan’s voice was sharp and strained. Something was wrong.
He shook himself out of the numbness of despair. What could be wrong? He remembered, suddenly, having warned the Arkites against the inhabitants of the city. His eyes widened. Could the Arkites have been attacked?
Strength and spirit came back to him in a rush. He rose to his feet and climbed Up the ladder. He gained the upper deck in time to see Susan turn a corner at the lower end of the passageway.
“Susan!” he called.
The girl reappeared, her face lighting in relief. “Oh, John, I’ve been looking all over for you!” She hurried toward him breathlessly.
“What’s wrong?” Reid demanded.
“The city!” she gasped. “The city, John. It—it’s gone!”
“Gone?” Reid stared at her bewilderedly. Abruptly he whirled and bounded toward the airlock. Bright, afternoon sunlight poured down upon him as he jumped to the ground outside the ship. He looked quickly about him, his eyes widening with shock and disbelief.
The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK Page 8