Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “Please turn around!”

  Jim froze at the words. For an instant he debated wheeling and firing, but he turned slowly and helplessly toward the sound of the voice.

  One of the strange creatures of Radion stood in the doorway, a gun in his hand. And behind him were others.

  Jim felt a surge of hope.

  “Don’t shoot,” he cried. “We’re fighting with you.”

  The face of the creature of the radium planet was blankly impassive. Its still eyes studied the two Americans without expression. For an instant there was a dead silence in the room; and then the gun in the small hand lowered.

  “We know of you,” the creature said. “We will fight together.”

  Jim grinned exultantly. “You bet we will.”

  “We need guns and explosives,” the small creature said. “We slipped through the German lines to reach here. Our comrades are waiting for us to return.”

  “How many of you are fighting?” Jim demanded.

  “Every man of Radion has joined the revolt,” the creature answered. “We will die as free men rather than live as slaves. The laborers in the mines and the free fighters of the hills have joined; and we shall never stop until we are free—or dead.”

  “We must work fast,” Jim said crisply. “Take what supplies you need, but post guards here to hold this storeroom. Some of you attack the German rear with grenades; the rest get back to your comrades with the munitions they need. My friend and I will strike at the radio center. We must stop them from radioing to Earth for assistance.”

  “There are two radio towers,” the creature answered. “One is here in camp. The other is several miles from here in the direction of due west.”

  “We’ll have to take care of them both,” Jim snapped. “But the one here in camp is first on the schedule.” He grabbed up a sack of grenades as the small group of Radion creatures streamed into the room and moved swiftly toward the stocked bins of munitions and explosives.

  “Come on,” Jim snapped to Phil, “we’ve got our work cut out for us. If we can get word to Earth, possibly we can get reinforcements. But we’ve got to stop the Germans from doing that themselves.”

  THEY left the munitions storeroom on the run, cutting diagonally across the street toward the German radio station. There were no soldiers in that section of the street and the low, squat radio room was unguarded by sentries. Obviously the surprise attack of the Radion creatures in force had drawn all of the Germans away.

  But the door of the radio room was closed tightly and locked. There was no time to waste, every precious second counted now.

  Jim stepped back a pace and fired three shots into the lock. Then he raised his booted foot and kicked the door open.

  A shot whizzed past his head as he charged into the room.

  The radio operator was on his feet, a flaming gun in his hand. Jim took a bullet in his shoulder that slammed him halfway about. On one knee he whipped up his gun and fired twice at the operator.

  The first bullet missed; but the second caught the German just below the heart. He staggered back, his face tightening with pain.

  “Dog!” he sobbed, grinding the word between his teeth.

  He raised his arm with painful slowness. His breath was catching raggedly in his throat and blood was flecking his slack lips. But he did not fire at the Americans.

  With a horrible smile of triumph, he turned and fired four deliberate shots into the gleaming radio panel, shattering it completely. Still smiling, he slumped forward to the floor.

  Jim closed the door of the room and locked it. His shoulder was on fire; but he forgot his injury as he stared helplessly at the shattered radio equipment.

  “He won,” he said bitterly.

  Phil moved slowly toward the smashed transmitter. His left arm hung limply at his side and blood dripped from his fingertips.

  “Little chance of fixing it,” he said. He reached out a hand to steady himself. His face was a tight, white mask of pain. “We’re licked.”

  “Like hell we are,” Jim said harshly. “There’s another transmitter on this planet, isn’t there?”

  “That’s right,” Phil said. He looked at Jim speculatively. “You’re wounded,” he said. “You wouldn’t have a chance of making it.” His grin was weak. “This is a job for me.”

  Jim shook his head slowly.

  “Not this time, tough guy,” he said softly. “You hold down the fort here.”

  “But Jim—”

  “It’s an order,” Jim said softly. “I’m in better shape than you are, fella.”

  He gripped Phil’s good arm tightly for an instant.

  “If—anything happens,” he grinned fleetingly, “keep ’em flyin’.”

  He turned then and opened the door. With his gun held tightly in his unimpaired hand, he faded into the darkness of Radion’s night.

  CHAPTER VI

  Fight to the Finish

  FOR fully a minute, Phil Roberts stared at the door that had closed behind his buddy. Then, a curious expression coming into his eyes, the radioman shifted his gaze to the ruins of the Nazi short-wave apparatus.

  His jaw tightened grimly as he stepped across the body of the dead German operator. Then, painfully, he was bending over the shattered wreckage of the radio, turning the fragments appraisingly with his uninjured arm.

  For another five minutes, squatting first on one side, then another, of the damaged equipment, Phil Roberts continued his appraisal of the wreckage.

  “It should be hopeless,” he muttered sickly to himself. And then a hard gleam frosted his eyes and his jaw went even tighter. “But by Judas Priest—it has to be licked!”

  He rose then, unsteadily. His face was white, his eyes growing glazed.

  Quickly, violently, Phil shook his head to clear the gray mists that were wrapping insidiously around his mind. He thrust his right hand forward swiftly to save himself from falling.

  The edge of the radio table was blurred before his eyes. His hand couldn’t reach it, couldn’t quite locate it. The gray mists were around him.

  Phil Roberts crashed face forward to the floor and lay there inertly. Consciousness had fled. The loss of blood had been too much . . .

  TN the shadows of the barracks to the west of the Nazi encampment,

  Jim Hawkins moved swiftly along at a half trot. Ahead of him, silhouetted perhaps a hundred yards away in the darkness, loomed the hangars and space craft catapults of the Nazis.

  To the east the sounds of the delaying battle of the Radion infiltration patrols still crackled through the night. The brief, changing, sporadic fire, Jim knew, came from the little bands of Radion creatures; the heavy fire of tommy guns and automatic rifle squads, came from the surprised Nazi garrison.

  As Jim drew closer to the hangars and catapults, his jaw tightened. What he was about to do might well amount to a suicidal burning of all bridges behind himself and Phil—but it had to be accomplished.

  He slowed his trot to a walk now, crouching lower in the shadows of the barracks buildings. The first hangars and catapults were less than twenty yards away; the remainder not more than forty yards distant.

  There would be sentries out there, sticking by their posts on orders in spite of the attack of the Radion creatures. But their presence had to be risked. He was alone, with small chance of dispatching them one by one

  Now Jim was at the corner of the last barracks building, and he bent even lower in a crouch that resembled the racing start of a century dash man in a track meet.

  He filled his lungs with air, steeled himself in one last instant, and sprang forth from the shadows of the building, heading straight for the first group of hangars and catapults.

  His dash was straight into the open sections before the hangars, and he buried his head against his chest, driving hard to cover the distance with all the speed at his command.

  “Halt!” The alarmed cry, shouted in German, rang forth in the darkness, to be immediately followed by four similar cries alon
g the hangar lines.

  But Jim didn’t halt. Instead he was fishing into the grenade bag slung from his shoulder, pulling forth a Nazi masher-type hand grenade and jerking the pin from it with his teeth.

  A shot blasted through the darkness—an orange flame spitting from directly before the first hangar line.

  Jim dropped to one knee, counting as he did so. Then he let fly with the masher grenade, hurling it with all his strength in the direction of the first hangar line.

  He dropped flat to his face, scant seconds before a jarring explosion rocked the grounds and the hangar line burst into a crimson ball of smoke and flame.

  But Jim didn’t pause. He was back on one knee, now, scrambling to one side a bit to throw the sentry fire off range again, pulling another masher grenade from the sack and jerking the pin free with his teeth.

  Again Jim hurled a masher grenade through the darkness, this time toward the second hangar line. And again, as he threw himself flat on the ground, another section of hangars and catapults went up in the resultant explosion.

  Now he was on his feet, dashing forward. The grounds were eeriely, waveringly illuminated now by the fires the grenades had started. The cries of the sentries were wild with near hysteria, and their rifles blazed forth blindly in an effort to bring down the unseen creator of this devastation.

  ANOTHER line of catapults and hangars, and two more grenades hurled unerringly at them, while Jim Hawkins’ lips flattened savagely against his teeth in a mirthless grin of satisfaction. For in those hangars, and in many of the catapults, were the now smoldering wrecks of what had once been Nazi space flight ships. Ships that would not be used in any Nazi dash to the Vaterland for assistance.

  Three more hangar lines, and three more explosions splitting the darkness with noise and flame and smoke. Jim hesitated only a moment as he looked across the grounds at the chaos he’d created single-handed. There wasn’t a ship left on this asteroid, to his knowledge, in which the Nazi swine could make a run for assistance from their Earth forces.

  It was dog eat dog, now. No one was leaving this asteroid—including himself and Phil.

  “Now,” Jim said tightly, “for that other radio transmitter outfit!”

  It was necessary for Jim to make his way around the outskirts of the German encampment until he was clear of the immediate zone of hostilities between Nazi squads and Radion patrols. Mentally, Jim thanked his Maker that the Nazis were still treating the Radion attack as a foolhardy skirmish on the part of the natives. But he knew that this would not be the case much longer. Even now the word was probably being carried to Schiller’s quarters that the space flight hangars and catapults had been decimated.

  “The moment the Nazi, Schiller, realizes that,” Jim told himself, “this fracas is going to be all out for sure!”

  For an instant Jim thought of Phil back in the first radio transmission shack. That arm wound had been far worse than his own. But yet, Phil seemed able to carry on. He had weapons, and he’d know enough to clear out of there before Hun soldiers stormed into the place. Jim pushed that worry from his mind and hurried onward.

  It was difficult establishing his location and the probable location of the other transmission shack map-like in his mind. But with the factors Jim already knew about the terrain of the little asteroid, plus a strong sense of reckoning found only in born pilots and navigators, Jim was able to continue in what he felt certain to be the approximate direction of the transmission shack without too much delay and hesitation.

  He was scarcely five minutes beyond the Nazi encampment when the sound of exploding grenades joined the incessant gunfire of the many skirmishes around the camp. Mentally, Jim prayed that the grenades he heard exploding were those of the Radion creatures—seized from the munitions supply house—rather than the Nazi defenders.

  IT WAS later, a brief three minutes later, that Jim heard the sound of gunfire dead ahead of him and perhaps half a mile off. He frowned worriedly. Gunfire, dead ahead. There couldn’t be! The only gunfire he should be hearing should be behind him, around the Nazi encampment he’d left.

  Cold fear seized Jim’s heart. Had he doubled in his tracks unconsciously? Was he somehow confused, lost in the none too familiar terrain of the asteroid? Had he become so badly mixed in his calculations as to now be approaching the German encampment again?

  For just an instant, Jim hesitated. Then, setting his lips tightly, he resumed his trot toward the sound of that gunfire. Jim had come to count on his directional reflexes far too long to allow himself to lose confidence for more than an instant. He had to be right. That had to be the transmission shack up ahead. And as for the gunfire, which sounded as if it came from that location—Jim could only guess.

  Lungs burning, legs weary and almost lifeless, Jim forced himself into greater speed as he hurried toward the gunfire ahead. And with the passing of the first minute, as he sought for any sort of landmarks in the darkness of the crystalline asteroid wastes, Jim felt more and more certain that he was right. The transmission shack of the Nazis had to be ahead up there.

  Already Jim was reorganizing plans he’d conceived to meet any possibilities. It had been his intention to take the shack by strategic maneuver, so that he wouldn’t run the risk of having the operator destroy the transmission apparatus as the first one had done. Then, his course of action was clear cut. He had to radio Earth. Had to get word to the United Nations forces, and to Colonel Mollison in particular—before additional Nazi forces arrived on Radion, or before the radio silence from Radion was interpreted by the Nazis to mean trouble. Jim had a hunch that this so-called native skirmish against the German garrison would not be reported by Schiller to his superiors on Earth. Not, at least, until it gained proportions of serious trouble.

  That was a chance he was counting heavily on. That, and the chance that Colonel Mollison and Baldwin could make that swift, one-hour conversion job on enough strata interceptor ships—turning them into crude equivalents of the X-80—to dispatch to Radion as swiftly as possible.

  The terrain was sloping upward, now, into what seemed to be a high knoll of crystalline asteroid crust. The sound of firing ahead was much louder, and Jim knew that just beyond the peak of this knoll would be the transmission shack.

  Slipping, sliding, falling twice, Jim scrambled up the sloping surface of the knoll, the din of gunfire now less than a hundred yards away. Almost at the top of the knoll, Jim dropped to his stomach. Now he began a painful snake-wiggle along the jagged asteroid crust toward the peak.

  Half a minute, then a minute, and Jim was on the peak of the knoll, looking down into a small valley, in the center of which he saw the transmission shack. Orange spurts of flame flashed sporadically from the windows of the shack into the darkness around it. And from the other three approaches to it, answering flashes of gunfire streaked the darkness.

  A patrol of Radion creatures had surrounded the transmission shack, had the Nazi operator—or operators—cornered inside, and were now determinedly taking their time in cutting them down!

  INWARDLY, Jim cursed. The well-meaning natives had almost completely destroyed his chance to gain the transmission shack. There was obviously no longer an opportunity to carry out the strategic maneuver he’d planned for its capture. And in addition to that, the time that would be wasted before the Radion creatures were able to cut down the Nazis in the shack was infinitely vital in Jim’s calculations.

  Sickly, Jim watched the siege display, fully aware of what each passing second was costing his chances of success. There had to be some salvation to his plans. He had to gain that transmission shack quickly and at all costs. But how?

  Minutes passed, precious minutes, while Jim desperately hit upon and discarded at least a dozen revisions in his plans. There didn’t seem to be anything that would end that long siege unless—unless, Jim frowned, he could get to the leader of this Radion band and persuade him to call off the siege.

  Jim started to scramble down the knoll with this in mind, when a deafe
ning explosion shattered the night.

  The transmission shack—a bursting geyser of flame and smoke—blown sky-high by a well-placed grenade from one of the Radion besiegers!

  Cold horror gripped Jim’s heart in crushing fingers. He stared unbelievingly at the blazing ruins of the transmission shack. One of the Radion besiegers, impatient with the progress of their attack, had taken a swift, sure method of eliminating the hated oppressors.

  But with that grenade’s explosion had also been blown sky-high every last chance of success that Jim had hoped for. With the destruction of the shack by the unwitting besiegers, went the last fragment of Jim’s chance to send to Earth for aid. That grenade had destroyed the last fighting chance for the free peoples of a planet miles away in space. With its explosion went every hope of the United Nations ever learning the secret of the Axis radium sources which would enslave Earth!

  Jim buried his head in his hands, heedless of the stabbing agony that lanced his wounded arm. It was over, all over. He was licked, clean through. Licked, ironically enough, by the unwitting action of the oppressed people he’d hoped to save.

  What now lay in store for them was horribly clear. With both transmission shacks destroyed, the Nazi receiving stations on Earth would become alarmed at the sudden cessation of contact with their radium asteroid. That alarm would result in a swift dispatch of Nazi space flight ships and troops to Radion. And those troops and ships would regain control of their invaluable asteroid with incredible ease.

  It was all over. Through, finished. He was beaten.

  Suddenly Jim rose, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side, the hot, searing pain in his wounded arm driving furious needles of protest into his agonized mind.

  And it was then that the wild, red, engulfing wave of rage swept over him. A rage born of pain, bitter anguish, stark despair.

  “Damn them!” Jim snarled. “There won’t be one of them alive to greet their rescuers when they come!”

  He started down the treacherous slope of the knoll at a heedless, breakneck run. Down there around the wreckage of the transmission shack were enough creatures of Radion to form the first small fragment of a hell-defying band.