The section leader was quickening his pace. “Yes?”
“How in heck do they know about the quota? How do they know if they should pick you up if you’re hurt, or just leave you there?”
“The tab ships take care of it.
There’s a whole fleet of ’em, and they cover each area where there’s fighting. They tabulate everything that happens with things called telescanners, and they keep in constant communication with the Quadrate’s ship. Any time during the fighting, they know if they’re ahead of the quota rate or behind it in their own area. And all the time, the Quadrates are comparing the figures they get from the tab ships with each other so they can keep a running record of the quota rate for all four quadrants. As long as the rate’s right, or high, the medical ships keep landing and picking up the wounded, and flying ’em back. When the tabulations show the rate’s lagging, the medical ships take it easy until they get the word to get to work again.”
“They wouldn’t have so much work to do if we could use guns instead of these things,” Terry said. “I think guns would be more fun, don’t you?”
“That’s what your father thinks, isn’t it?”
“Gosh, no, he doesn’t—”
“My father says that killing at a distance isn’t much good, because you never get into close contact. And if you can’t see what happens when you actually kill somebody, you can’t get conditioned very well. You’d get bored just sitting around with a gun. And even in the short time of a week—”
“Is that how long it lasts?”
“Usually about that. But even then with guns, you’d get used to it. With swords it’s different. You don’t get used to that in a week. You still feel pretty shaky when it’s all over, believe me . . .”
“Were you scared, Jon?”
“You shouldn’t be scared,” he said. “All you have to remember is what they keep telling you—the others will kill you if you don’t kill them. Always remember that. Then it gets to be sort of a—well, like a game, to see who’s strongest, who can use a sword the best . . .”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “Wait’ll I get that guy!” His fingers brushed lightly against the half-healed wound again.
Jon laughed. “Sore at somebody already?”
“I’ll cut his ears off!”
“You’re getting the idea all right! Just be sure you don’t go breaking any more rules—you can’t kill anybody until the games begin, you know.”
“I’ll show him!” Mike said. “How long do we have yet to practice? Now, I mean?”
“Half an hour, maybe. I’ll see you later. I’ll forget about reporting you this time—but don’t go for any more walks!” He left them, and they walked into the recreation area with the others.
Mike found the boy who had laughed. And he found that it was as Jon had said. There wasn’t any reason to feel afraid. The sword wasn’t as heavy in his hands as it had been at first, and it was more thrilling to use than just fists . . .
The other boy was grinning, and it was easy to get mad enough to want to cut his head off. Both hands on the long haft of his weapon, Mike swung harder, more surely than the first times he handled the sword. He could parry, now—and cut. Like that!
The boy staggered back. The side of his head was bleeding profusely, and the blood spurted through his fingers as he pressed them to the gaping place where his ear had been.
“Rules! Rules!”
Mike lowered his sword. That was right, the rules. He couldn’t kill now . . .
So he tried to laugh. At first he had to force the sound from his throat, but suddenly he found it coming easily, clear, and loud.
The boy left the field toward the medical tents.
And Mike found another with whom to practice. It was what Jon had said, a great game—a great, crashing adventure!
He swung the sword and wondered if the dream would ever have to end.
CHAPTER X
DOUG worked silently. His eyes stung, and he wasted a moment to rub them again, because he must see, must see so precisely, so exactly. The work table was almost bare of the equipment he had ordered. The new Contraption had devoured it into its fantastic vitals as fast as his taut hands and flagging memory were able to feed. Yet it was useless work—the gleaming thing he had built would never so much as fryan egg.
Yet he worked as though the power-pack were resting on the table among the scraps of wire, bits and pieces that were left, as though somehow it would be there when he needed it, and then they could go, could escape, and then forget . . . The two shiny terminals glared at him dully like two tiny eyes, each telling him that he was such a fool to hope that they could ever be anything else than bare. They glared at him, told him that he was finished now, finished, but with the end impossibly far away.
He let the tools drop amid the bits and pieces The Contraption was a cold, dead thing, a mockery without its great surging electric heart. A mockery, a precisely assembled heap of shiny junk.
He was near exhaustion as he looked at the two empty terminals. The anger in him had burned out and became a cold leaden thing. He no longer cared about the ridiculous beliefs, the regulations, the laws that prohibited him from obtaining the thing he needed to free himself—no longer cursed himself, for it was not he who was to blame.
He went upstairs to where Dot slept, and wondered if this was how it felt to be a thousand years old. Finally tired, finally fed-up, finally weary of being a fool.
He watched her as she slept, watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, let his eyes wander over the soft symmetry of her body, and asked himself why men were so dutiful in creating their clanking idiocies about life and about death when all that such diligence accomplished was eternal blasphemy of the pure and simple. The beautiful they defiled, then disguised the ruin they left with a cloak labeled Duty, and went forth armed with the rotten wood of what they called Law to build a dingy world more to their liking than the garden that had been given them for nothing . . .
It was not fair, no it was not fair, but he was tired at last. Too tired to look now for another time-track, to throw the Contraption wildly out of focus and careen through a thousand tracks, a million, and look for a place where a man and a woman could be simply that and nothing either more nor less. For in all infinity there was no such place, and the running would be worth less than the wasted breath it took.
With Dot, one last time, then.
She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.
“Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?”
“Yes. Yes, I finished it, as far as it ever will be finished.”
She dropped her eyes. “We can keep trying.” They met his. “We will keep trying, Doug. We’ve got to for Terry and Mike . . .”
He said nothing. He sat heavily on the bed, his features grim.
He took off his shirt and dropped, exhausted, beside her.
HE awoke with the idea.
“Dot! Dot I think I’ve found it!” He was instantly on his feet, trying to jam the sleep back from the center of his brain, trying to make sure it was no leftover figment from a nightmare, a wild dream. He heard her footsteps coming almost at a run.
“What is it? You sound as if you’ve found a pre-Truman dollar under the bed—”
“I don’t know—it may be as half-baked as the kind that came later—worth even less, perhaps, but it’s worth a try. They say desperate situations call for desperate action . . .”
“Take it easy, now. You aren’t the blood and thunder type, exactly!” There was a note of cautious anticipation in her voice, but there was hope in it, and it was enough.
“Tomorrow—or more exactly, some sixteen hours from now, we are scheduled to take off for Venus headquarters to begin the games.”
“Yes, I know,” she said quietly.
“Well that’s it, don’t you see? I’ll go of course—I’ll go but not all the way!”
“Doug I won’t let you—anymore than you’d let me try to seduce the Prelate General into giving us the thing!”
“And I’ll bet you could, too!” He laughed, and it was a real laugh for the first time in what seemed all his life. “But I’m afraid the Prelate General is going to be denied that dainty bit of intrigue, my darling. Don’t you see? Space ships—they’ve got to have a method of communication! High-frequency radio—high-voltage stuff! Ten to one I’d find a power-pack aboard!”
“No, Doug, no . . .”
“It’s a chance, Dot, and it’s a good one. I’ll be the ranking officer aboard of course—I shouldn’t have too much trouble in pirating the thing—I’ll make them rip the pack out for me, then I’ll order them to bring me back. Then it’ll just be a race against time.”
He stood there, staring at the delicate tracery of a lattice-work wall, not seeing it. But he heard the fear in Dot’s voice.
“A space ship, Doug . . . Why you’d—you’d die.”
He laughed. “I’m sure the other Quadrates don’t plan on dying, not for awhile yet, anyway. And I know it’ll work, if I’m careful. And I’ve been careful so far.” He looked at her, and the fear had not left her eyes. “You mustn’t be afraid. Dot,” he said then. “There’s less to fear this way, because this way there’s at least a chance. Don’t you see the beauty of it—right up to the last moment, everything will appear to be as it should—and then before there’s even any suspicion I’ll take over—probably be almost back to Earth before they even know anything’s gone haywire.”
“Won’t they be able to radio back from the other ships, I mean, when they realize things aren’t as they should be—that the ship you are in isn’t tagging along in the formation? They’ll just be waiting for you when you land, Doug.”
“They’ll want to be waiting, sure—but they won’t know where, not until I’m down, and safely out, headed here.”
Dot didn’t say anything then. It was such a story-book plan, such a crazy thing that it would never work; she knew it would never work.
“Doug, Doug . . .”
He held her close to him.
“Dot,” he said, “we have two choices I think. We can be mature, we can be logical, we can make a tragedy out of a desperate situation and die martyrs to conservative thinking. Or we can keep grabbing at straws until we are sunk or end up ingloriously alive. Which way?”
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I guess a knock-down drag-out thriller, mister . . . But Doug—I’m scared.”
HE stood still, apart from the other three as they talked in low, casual tones, waiting for the space-tower signal to board their ships. An early morning breeze tugged gently at his blue cloak, and he had to shield his eyes with his gauntlets as he looked at the four slender columns of glittering metal that tapered to needle points high above him. A quarter their diameter and height they might have been simple V-2 rockets on some strange desert proving-ground. At the same time they were the fantastic silver darts that he remembered from the pages of colored Sunday supplements which had foretold the coming of flight through Space. Yet the feeling of everyday security that they tore away was replaced with a vigorous thing inside him that was of firmer stuff than awe, more challenging than fear, more exciting than adventure. And suddenly, sailing ships were the toys of children, and oceans were spilled tea in a saucer.
They were a strange people, Doug thought. A horrible people, perhaps, a people whom he wanted desperately to escape. Yet a people who had learned that the sky and the Earth were not enough, nor were ever meant to be.
A green light flashed. The three Quadrates ended their conversation, boarded waiting surface vehicles and started toward their ships.
A car with a pennant bearing the insignia of a Senior Quadrate flying from atop its sleek passenger enclosure drove up beside Doug.
“Your transportation, sir.”
He returned the salute. “Thank you, no. I shall walk,” he said.
It was a short walk—less than two hundred yards, but he did not want it all to happen too quickly.
His steps were measured in slow, deliberate cadence as he crossed the smooth plaza toward the great craft on which his insignia was emblazoned.
At length he was swallowed up inside it, and at a flashing blue signal, the four great ships thundered for the stars, and left Earth a little thing behind them.
(Concluded Next Month)
The Time Armada
Trapped on a parallel time world, Douglas Blair was playing a key role in a society which killed children to discourage wars—not knowing that his own two boys were scheduled to die! . . .
TWO PART SERIAL—CONCLUSION
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
IN addition to being one of the most influential Congressmen in the House of Representatives, Douglas Blair also has a background as a graduate physicist from M.I.T. During his evenings home in Washington, he has been secretly working in his basement laboratory on a process for trapping or “catching” light waves from the past. His wife Dorothy, and young sons Terry and Mike, are intrigued with his work, envisioning, as he explains it to them, a “historical television” invention. Blair hopes, following Einsteins theory that space is curved, that light waves must return eventually to their source; thus he expects to transfer them to a screen and actually observe great historical moments from the dawn of time.
As the story opens Blair returns home and puts aside for the moment the weighty political problems facing his troubled world to relax in the culmination of his experiment.
He gathers his wife and sons in the basement lab and turns on the machine he has constructed to trap “historical” light waves. There is a loud hum and a bluish glow—and the machine and basement vanish . . .
Douglas Blair finds himself standing beside his wife in a fantastic house, clad in equally fantastic garments. They are dazed, and Dot becomes frightened when she notices that Terry and Mike are not with them. Doug reassures her by theorizing that whatever happened has not affected the boys—they must still be in the basement at home, wondering where their parents vanished to.
Blair and his wife examine the house and the outside street from a window and see people—like themselves in similar strange attire and peculiar vehicles that move with great speed. Blair comes to the only logical conclusion at the time—they have somehow been teleported into the future or to another world entirely. Their 1958 world is either far in the past or they are on some other planet.
As they wonder about the house they are now in—and its occupants—Blair suddenly realizes that whoever lived there must have been standing in their basement just as he and Dot were in theirs when the experiment took place he theorizes that the occupants must now be back in their own world, as equally confused and puzzled over the transference.
To Dot their problem is a simple one; they must construct a duplicate of the machine at home, with the exact settings, and perform the experiment in this world—transferring them back to the year 1958 on Earth, and their sons—at the same time returning the occupants of this house to their own world and time.
Blair agrees with her, but he realizes the problem is not so simple; they are in an “alien” existence, knowing nothing of these people. He must feel his way cautiously, finding out where they are, and if they can appeal to these people for help. From what they have already noted this world is highly advanced technologically. If they don’t have a machine such as he has invented, he must be careful about putting it into alien hands . . .
Blair and his wife take a walk to look their surroundings over. They are astounded by seeing a giant ship arcing into the heavens, and Blair instinctively realizes that he has seen his first space ship. . . . But his amazement is even greater when they come to what appears to be a local newsstand and he picks up a newspaper.
It is the Washington Post, and the date is April 17th, 1958 . . .
IN the meantime Terry and Mike awaken to find themselves in a barracks along with scores of other ten-year olds. They believe they are home asleep and dreaming. And since dreams can be fantastic, they must accept it as such and play
the dream out.
They are dressed in military-like uniforms and are approached by another youth who seems to know them. He addresses them as Kurt and Ronal Blair, sons of the Senior Quadrate Blair. Nothing makes sense to Terry and Mike except the last name so they accept the situation, knowing that in a dream anything can happen.
The youth identifies himself as Jon Tayne, son of Quadrate Larsen Tayne; he is their group leader and tells them to fall in formation. They do so, marvelling at the strange surroundings—great buildings, giant space liners that are landing on a military strip, and the tens of thousands of other young boys in uniform around them. When they question young Tayne he takes for granted that they should know the obvious answers—they are preparing for the “Games” and are on Venus. They are soon issued their equipment, which they consider quite strange for ten-year olds . . . a dagger, a mace and a double-edged broadsword.
Douglas Blair has now, learned much about the world he and Dot have been thrown into. It is a parallel-time world to their own, caused by a branching off in history at a crucial military crisis around the time of the American Revolution. In this parallel world there is no war or famine or want of any kind. It appears to be the utopia our world seeks from a technological and social standpoint. But all of this is achieved at a great price—individual freedom. Every person is a slave of the state, and the state is controlled by a small group of men: The Director, Gundar Tayne, his brother Quadrate Larsen Tayne, a number of other high officials—among them Senior Quadrate Douglas Blair, in charge of the Annual Games . . .
Blair is thrown into the middle of political intrigue and maneuvering, finding himself pitted against Larsen Tayne for power under the Director. Blair’s years of politics as a Congressman aid him in keeping his “usurped” identity a secret while he tries to get the necessary material to construct another “time” machine. While trying to do so he discovers the true nature of the Games, the annual affair upon which this civilization depends. War is outlawed because men are conditioned at the age of ten to hate war; this is accomplished by drafting all ten year olds and taking them to Venus where they are formed into opposing armies, issued primitive weapons for hand-to-hand combat, and thrown into a battle to the death. He sees tape-records of previous Games, sees young boys killing each other by the tens of thousands . . . the survivors grow up naturally with further psychological conditioning to hate war, and thus this society is controlled “peacefully” with no over-population problem.
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