by Various
And once more all this that he saw was as nothing to the pilot; all thought, too, of his fellow victim went from his mind. He could see only the white ship, doubly hideous because of its seeming purity; and, as before, he brought the cross hairs of directional sights upon it while he opened the rocket exhaust to the full.
But even pilot O'Rourke, with the highest rating in the A. F. F., could not follow the lightning-swift leap of the snow-white thing that buried itself in the smother of cloud banks above.
* * * * *
Danny set his red ship down on that same barren hilltop; he motioned Morgan to follow as he stepped out.
"We're somewhere in Pennsylvania," he announced. "You're stayin' here. Sorry to dump you out like this, but you'll find a way out. Get to a radio--call a plane." He held out his hand in unspoken farewell.
But the other man disregarded it. "What's the idea?" he inquired.
Danny's reply came in short, breathless sentences. "Going up to find that ship. Ram it. No use of your getting smashed up, too. Good-by, Infant; you're a good old scout."
Danny's mind was all on what lay ahead; he was wildly eager to be off on the hunt. It took him an instant to comprehend the look from Morgan's steady, blue eyes.
"Listen!" the younger man was ordering. "You're not going to do that; I am! And not just that way, either."
"Did you see that cable and the electric discharges?" he demanded excitedly. "It's just as I thought: he accumulates a negative charge; he has to get rid of it--he's just like a thunder-cloud loaded with static--and the heat ray does it. I had it figured that way."
"Remember the little tube you saw before--that's why I asked about the wire. I knew he would have to ground it without its going through his body."
Danny O'Rourke was an intent listener now. When the Infant talked like this he was a person to be listened to with respect, even if all he said was not understood.
"Now," said the Infant with finality, "let's forget this idea of ramming him. You couldn't hit him anyway; even a cruiser couldn't do it. If it could you would have radioed for a squadron an hour ago--you know that."
* * * * *
The pilot nodded his acknowledgment. "But, my God, man," he exploded, "I've got to do something; I've got to try!"
"We'll do it," was the confident reply, "--or I will. Now we'll go back to the Consolidated Electric; they will have the Sorenson disintegrator ready. I'll put it in your machine and--"
"And what?" broke in the pilot. "Is this some new death ray? We've been hearing about them for years--just hearing about them. If that's what you mean, then your idea is all wet; it's worse than mine. I'm going up."
Perhaps the younger man saw something of the wild impatience in Danny's deep-sunk eyes. He laid a restraining hand on the pilot's arm while he explained:
"No death ray, Danny--that will come later; we haven't got it now. But we've got the disintegration of matter--the splitting of the atom, on something bigger than a laboratory scale. Sorenson did it. There is a flood of electrical energy poured out--streams of electrons--negative electricity. It leaves a positive charge that is tremendous if it isn't neutralized.
"I said that devilish white thing was like a thunder-cloud; well, I'll make your ship like the earth; then I'll bring them near each other--no need to ram him--and it will be like the hammer of Thor--"
The Infant's words ended in a crackling roar from above. Danny O'Rourke found his whole body tingling as if he were filled with stinging sparks; each single fiber of each muscle was twitching.
A blue light shone eerily overhead. He bent his stiffened, jerking neck till he could look--till he could see, with eyes that were filled with flashing fires of their own, other ripping blue flashes from the ends of outstanding wires, and above him a thousand feet, the belly of a white ship.
And through the brain-hammering clatter of the static discharge he heard the voice of the Infant, whose words came jerkily between the shudders that shook him:
"He doesn't dare, damn him! Can't let the wires touch us. Has to--discharge--in air.... But he'll burn us--afterwards!"
* * * * *
"Stand still!" said Danny through stiffened lips. "Don't make a move! He hasn't seen us, it may be!"
The crackling discharge had ceased; the rain of miniature lightning bolts that had shot around them and through them had ended. The cable had gone up before their eyes and hidden itself in the white ship. The pilot's eyes clung to that white-bellied thing, so slender and round and gleaming against the dark clouds overhead; he saw it hang motionless for long minutes while it seemed that the breath in his throat must choke him. Then he saw that white roundness enlarge as the ship settled swiftly down.
It hung in another moment directly above their red ship. Danny saw three round holes open in the white shell--the three outlets that the Infant had predicted. It had descended noiselessly, but now there came from within a high-pitched whining hum. The dreaded heat and ray! They were about to see their own ship destroyed! And, as for themselves--! Danny was still waiting for the first, devastating blast of intolerable heat, when the ship settled softly down.
Green port-holes stared at him like eyes. A door was outlined with a line of black that spread to a round opening as a door swung wide. A huge door in the side of a huge ship, but it was none too large for the giant figure that crept through.
And Danny O'Rourke stared wordlessly at the flat-nosed face above a robe of chilled steel blue.
"'Tis him!" he gasped out that the Infant might hear. "The same one--the devil I saw in Stobolsk!" And if any other identification were needed it came in the slender rod, whose heavy metal butt was gripped in the giant's hand. At sight of the wire looping back from the weapon; at remembrance of the Infant's shrewd guess; and with the conviction that now this same weapon was to annihilate the only two men who knew how to combat this destroyer, Danny threw back his head and laughed--until his harsh laughter died away in a snarl of rage.
"Go on and do it," he heard, "you ugly devil. You killed those Reds; you've killed thousands of us since, you murderin' beast! Go on and kill us, too!"
* * * * *
The slender tube was aimed at him squarely. Danny waited to hear the faint click that would mean his death as the invisible ray sawed into his body. Instead the huge figure leaned down to stare at the pilot; then straightened while a crooked smile of recognition appeared on the deformed face.... And the slender rod moved on--on--in a slow circle toward the other waiting man!
It clicked before it reached him. Danny heard it, and "No--no!" he screamed in a horrible voice. "Run, Infant! Beat it, for God's sake!"
The enemy was twenty feet away; it seemed as many miles to Danny as he threw himself at the foe. He did not see the ray strike. He heard only the Infant's steady voice calling: "Remember Danny--the Sorenson machine--if you live."
Then a blast of reflected heat swept upon him, and he felt himself stifling. There was a pool of molten rock, white and glaring with heat ... and a puff of smoke, grayish black, and ashes that whirled in the wind that swept up from the pool....
Danny tried to raise himself from the hot stone where he had fallen, so near he was to the pool of death. He saw the grotesque figure of the giant move over toward the red ship, look at it, sneer contemptuously, and turn back to his own ship of doom. He saw the black entrance swallow the huge foe and he saw the door close, while the great ship, so innocently white in its sleek slender roundness, rose again in the air where the clouds took it up.
And Danny, resting on scorched but unfeeling hands, stared after him until he got the enemy's direction of flight as he entered the clouds, then he turned towards a place of glowing rock where the air rose in quivering waves.
"You said it, Infant," he whispered; "you knew I was just a fightin' fool that wouldn't think the way you would. You told me to get the Sorenson machine--" He brushed at his suddenly blinded eyes with one seared hand, then turned to stare grimly and appraisingly where the white ship had gone.
> "And I'm thinkin'," he told the beastly occupant of that carrier of death, "that you didn't shoot your damned ray quite quick enough. The Infant beat you to it! He got his message to me first!"
* * * * *
How he got to the flat-roofed landing zone of the Consolidated Electric, Danny, doubtless, could never have told. Nor was he aware of the hand that set in the forward cabin of his ship a strange machine. But he growled his instructions:
"Set it goin'! 'Tis the Infant's orders--I mean Mr. Morgan's. What the devil it is I don't know, but 'Turn it on!' he told me--'Have them put it on full!'" And, though a man whom Danny knew only as Gimlet-eyes stared at him curiously, he reached down to the apparatus, set a dial, closed a switch here and there, then stepped back.
But Gimlet-eyes ventured one protest. "You're not grounding it!" he exclaimed, in a voice that was tinged with horror. "You'll get an accumulation on your ship that will shoot off like lightning--millions of volts!"
"How long would that be takin'?" Danny inquired gruffly.
And Gimlet-eyes replied, as one who washes his hands of all responsibility in a rather horrible affair: "An hour--not more than an hour!"
"Then I'll just be drivin' around for an hour," said Danny, and slammed shut the door-port of the red ship.
* * * * *
The red rocket drove in slow circles that were a hundred miles across while that hour passed and the numbness of mind that had held Danny in a stupor slipped away. For the first time he realized the emptiness of the world that the Infant had left; he knew with a sharp stab of self-reproach how much had gone from his life in that instant when he sprang vainly toward the giant enemy.
He called himself wild names for his fancied sluggishness. Then that, too, passed, and at thought of the weapon the Infant had given him and of the work that lay ahead, his haggard face forgot the lines that horror had drawn and relaxed into a tired smile that told of a mind content.
Gradually his looping whirls had carried him toward the east. Another city was being devastated by the enemy; that Danny got from the newscast. Only that and one other message broke the tedious eternity of that long hour.
Danny's number flashed on the screen beside his controls. Unconsciously he answered, but he sat up alertly at sound of his Chief's voice.
"I can't get anyone," the voice said. "Headquarters is gone; I just called you on a chance. And I believe you now, Danny. That devil wiped out a whole fleet of our planes; melted the cruisers with one shot, and the scouts couldn't go fast enough to escape. Only one got away....
"But where are you? What's to be done? I've just got here. My God! What can we do?"
"Wait," said Danny O'Rourke calmly, and glanced at his watch; "wait for another ten minutes! He's over Boston now. And he's waitin' there for me--though he doesn't know it yet. But I'll be droppin' in on him."
"Don't be an utter fool, Danny," urged the voice of the Chief; "there isn't a thing you can do. You try to come down on him, and he'll do as he did with the cruisers--just slip aside like lightning and nail you with his damned heat ray when you're below! I'm near Boston now. You keep away. Where can I meet you? We've got to think--got to do something!"
* * * * *
And Danny, before he opened the switch that ended their talk, said meditatively: "Like lightnin' he moves ... but he'll have to move faster than lightnin' to dodge me. And if you're near Boston, stick around; I'm comin' now, but not to meet you, Chief; I've got another important engagement. I'm keepin' it for--for the Infant. And give the Infant the credit, Chief; give it all to him, he's earned it: he's paid for it in full." Then the snap of a switch cut off the sound of Danny's voice before it showed a tell-tale quaver.
It was steady some minutes later, when Danny swept in above the mounting clouds that he had learned to know. Beneath them invisible fingers of death were sweeping back and forth where men and women ran shrieking in terror or waited calmly and dry-eyed for the end. Above them a slender rounded thing wove its pattern of destruction back and forth ... back and forth. A spectral ship--a pale phantom, elusive and dimly seen until it came against the black of rolling smoke from below.
But to Danny O'Rourke, slanting down from tremendous heights, the white shape was never lost. On the cross hairs of his directional sights the ghostly ship hung, and Danny threw his own red rocket like a living flame over and down where the white one sensed his coming and waited.
Beside him a human voice, high with horror, called to him. "Come back!" the Chief of the Mountain Division was commanding. "Danny! For the love of Heaven, turn back!"
* * * * *
But the voice was unheard by Danny O'Rourke. There was another voice speaking ... he could almost see the smiling pink and white face of one beside him who spoke of his "little tin ship" ... spoke, too, of a white ship that would be like a great thunder-cloud ... and of his own screaming meteor that was like the earth ... and there was to be a messenger of death like the hammer of Thor that would flash between the two....
Danny saw the white one slipping easily aside; the ship was swelling suddenly before him--it was close ... but the jagged lightning--the ripping flash of blue that joined the two craft in a crashing arc--was neither seen nor heard by Danny. Danny was too busy to notice, for he was engaged in smiling converse with one whom he called the "Infant" and whose pink and white face beamed gladly upon him "like a damned little cherub," as Danny was telling him....
But the Chief of the Mountain Division who saw all from afar could say nothing. He only stared from the lookout of his own speeding plane that framed a picture of two ships; where the red one, flaming from within, kept on in its swift, straight dive; while the white one fell slowly, turning sluggishly to show its gashed and blasted sides ... till the black clouds wrapped them both in a billowy shroud....
But clouds are no bar to man's inner vision. And the Chief looked through, as Danny had done, to see as in a lightning flash a world beaten to its knees, hopeless, ravaged and scarred--a world where courage might again be born--a world that would still be a world of men.
* * *
Contents
THE PLANETOID OF PERIL
By Paul Ernst
Undaunted by crazy tales of an indestructible presence on Asteroid Z-40, Harley 2Q14N20 sets out alone to face and master it.
Harley 2Q14N20 stopped for a moment outside the great dome of the Celestial Developments Company. Moodily he stared at their asteroid development chart. It showed, as was to be expected, the pick of the latest asteroid subdivision projects: the Celestial Developments Company, established far back in 2045, would handle none but the very best. Small chance of his finding anything here!
However, as he gazed at the chart, hope came suddenly to his face, and his heart beat high under his sapphire blue tunic. There was an asteroid left for sale there--one blank space among the myriad, pink-lettered Sold symbols. Could it be that here was the chance he had been hunting so desperately?
He bent closer, to read the description of the sphere, and the hope faded gradually from his countenance. According to its orbit and location, and the spectroscopic table of its mineral resources, it was a choice planetoid indeed. Of course such a rich little sphere, listed for sale by the luxurious Celestial Developments Company, would cost far more than he could ever rake together to pay for an asteroid.
Shaking his head, he adjusted his gravity regulator to give him about a pound and a half of weight, and started to float on. Then, his lips twisting at his own absurd hopefulness, he stopped again; and after another moment of indecision turned into the archway that led to the concern's great main office. After all, it wouldn't hurt to inquire the price, even though he knew in advance it would be beyond his humble means.
* * * * *
A youngster in the pale green of the one-bar neophyte in business promptly glided toward him.
"Something for you to-day, sir?" he asked politely.
"Yes," said Harley. "I'm looking around for a planetoid; want to get a place of my own ou
t a way from Earth. Something, you understand, that may turn out to be a profitable investment as well as furnishing an exclusive home-site. I see on your chart that you have a sphere left for sale, in the Red Belt, so I came in to ask about it."
"Ah, you mean asteroid Z-40," said the youngster, gazing with envious respect at the ten-bar insignia, with the crossed Sco drills, that proclaimed Harley to be a mining engineer of the highest rank. "Yes, that is still for sale. A splendid sphere, sir; and listed at a remarkably low figure. Half a million dollars."
"Half a million dollars!" exclaimed Harley. It was an incredibly small sum: scarcely the yearly salary of an unskilled laborer. "Are you sure that's right?"
"Yes, that's the correct figure. Down payment of a third, and the remaining two thirds to be paid out of the exploitation profits--"
* * * * *
Here the conversation was interrupted by an elderly, grey-haired man with the six-bar dollar-mark insignia of a business executive on his purple tunic. He had been standing nearby, and at the mention of asteroid Z-40 had looked up alertly. He glided to the two with a frown on his forehead, and spoke a few curt words to the neophyte, who slunk away.
"Sorry, sir," he said to Harley. "Z-40 isn't for sale."
"But your young man just told me that it was," replied Hartley, loath to give up what had begun to look like an almost unbelievable bargain.
"He was mistaken. It's not on the market. It isn't habitable, you see."
"What's wrong--hasn't it an atmosphere?"
"Oh, yes. One that is exceptionally rich in oxygen, as is true of all the spheres we handle. With a late model oxygen concentrator, one would have no trouble at all existing there."
"Is its speed of revolution too great?"