Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  He pressed the top of the panel. And it gave beneath his touch. In the viewscreen, the white mass which rushed to envelop him seemed to shift—

  Further down—that was it, all the way around!

  Slowly, against an unseen source of pressure, he revolved the panel a half-revolution about its lateral axis. Already he could see its reverse side—on it in the same pattern there was an identical set of control buttons, dials.

  In the viewscreen there was a half-second’s glimpse of the blackness of Space before the inverted ship tumbled tail-first into the white ocean of the Venus sky.

  And again there was the awful sensation of falling through infinity. Desperately, he pushed the top button.

  CHAPTER XVII

  HE locked the top button at full depression and struggled to keep his legs straight beneath him, braced as they were now against a bulkhead which but a few minutes before had been, not a floor, but a wall. The ship’s gyro system was no longer functioning as a pseudograv unit, but rather as a vertical stabilizer, and the second dial said four gravities.

  The acceleration needle dropped with agonizing slowness. Four gravities, three point seven. The altimeter said one hundred thousand feet, then ninety thousand, eighty, seventy-five.

  Three point five gravities. Three point three. Even three at last.

  Fifty thousand feet, forty-five, forty-two, forty thousand.

  Two point six gravities.

  Thirty-five thousand.

  Two. One point nine. Point eight, seven, six, five.

  Twenty-three thousand.

  One gravity.

  And the ship was hovering balanced by her gyros, at twenty-one thousand feet above boundless reaches of Venusian sea.

  Gingerly, Doug pressed the top of the panel, released the top button.

  There was a sickening drop as from somewhere deep inside the ship new sets of engines rumbled automatically to life as her nose came down, her belly-jets belching, breaking the drop on their cushion of power. And again the craft hovered, but now horizontally.

  Tayne’s corpse tumbled grotesquely off the bulkhead to the deck, made Doug miss his footing, and he fell.

  But nothing happened. The panel, without pressure, had returned automatically to zero setting, and the belly-jets held steady.

  Swiftly then, cursing himself for his awkwardness, Doug tore at Tayne’s cloak, the blood-soaked tunic beneath it. Somewhere he must have it—logically, he must have it.

  Something crackled. Doug smeared stinging sweat from his eyes as he bent closer, found the neatly-hidden pocket, thrust a hand inside.

  It was hard to keep the thin, bound packet of wide plastisheets steady. Clumsily, he flicked to blank pages of Tayne’s unused record tablet. In those he had examined at his office the campaign maps had been in the back.

  And he found them there. Estimated deployment, Phase One, First Hour.

  No good . . . two, perhaps three hours had elapsed. Gamble on Phase Three.

  Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First Battalion, ‘A’ Company. There.

  He stood up, locked a deep breath inside him, and placed his fingers on the inverted T of control buttons for a second time.

  North was the top of the viewscreen. What shown in it then must slide from the top down.

  His fingertip caressed the bottom-most button. And there was a gentle surge of acceleration, and the screen picture was moving diagonally. First button on the right . . .

  THE picture swung slowly around. And then it was moving from top to bottom of the screen. He pushed the bottom button all the way in, and the velocity needles swung slowly up. A touch on the button above it, and the needle quivered five hundred ten.

  And then on the horizon there was suddenly a light blue blur, and he braced himself against the shock of forward acceleration as he pushed the button all the way in. Its limit was close to two thousand miles per hour, and he locked it there.

  Moments later he released it, eased pressure on it as the blue blur shaped itself into the coastline of the northern land mass. Gradually, he depressed the panel a full ninety degrees.

  And the hurtling craft swung again on her blazing tail. Doug let the panel return to zero and held the bottom button in. The belly-jets had automatically cut out, and again he hovered, sinking slightly, this time not above the dark blue waste of the Venusian sea, but above the place where fantastic young armies with ten-year-old soldiers were writhing, dying.

  The altimeter needle showed five thousand feet, and already he was able to discern the battle-lines of the two quadrants, no longer in close marching formation, but now spread wide to cover an irregular area of more than one hundred square miles. The lines surged first forward then back, as though joined in some Gargantuan tug-of-war—shifted, changed, like a great wounded serpent in its death-throes.

  The lines were little more than a hundred yards in depth because deployment for the games provided for no rear echelons—there were only the battle echelons, with their ends defended mightily against encirclement, attack from the rear.

  Eventually, Doug knew, the flank defenses of both lines would give way, and the centers of each would rupture, and then, until the hovering tab and evac planes gave the signal that the Phase Three limit had been reached, the battle would wage in a great undulating mass, without formation, without plan, without reason. He had to reach Mike and Terry before then, for once the lines disintegrated into Final Phase—deployment at will—they’d be lost to him for good.

  And Phase Three lasted at best for three hours. Final Phase, when it begun, would last as many days.

  Somehow, he had to jockey the hovering ship over the area where the map-estimate indicated that Mike and Terry would be fighting. And when he landed, he must somehow halt the carnage momentarily—just long enough for them to see him, to run . . .

  Doug tilted the great ship at an angle of about seventy degrees, compensated it on the main drive and the single bank of bow belly-jets that automatically checked in as the ship left vertical balance. And the terrain below him moved slowly, canted oddly between horizon and sky.

  Slowly, toward the area designated on the map—slowly, sinking slightly, so that he could see their faces now, watch as their maces shattered the glittering helmets into junk, smashed into living flesh, as their broadswords glistened red and swung, struck . . .

  MOMENTARILY hypnotized by the horror that screamed below him and by the sickening realization that what he saw was real even though his reason rebelled through force of habit from admission that such reality could exist, Doug watched the tilted battlefield as it stretched but hundreds of feet below him now, watched as a smoothly-oiled, carefully calculated device preserved the peace of a planet.

  A small, sweating body was hewn in two.

  A helmeted head jell; an arm dropped grotesquely beside it.

  A boy’s boot was bathed in blood as he kicked viciously at his opponent’s chest to withdraw his sword from it.

  A brief, two-handed struggle with sword and mace—a sword stroke was parried, the swinging mace was not, and a splintered rib with shreds of flesh still sticking to it clung to the mace-pikes as an adversary fell, the left side of his body gone.

  And the dead, still-quivering masses of flesh and bone were trampled as they fell, to be swiftly covered by other still-dying bodies which collapsed, writhing, atop them, to be trampled in their turn . . .

  Doug shuddered uncontrollably. Kids, dying on a battlefield like this!

  A pair of helmeted heads suddenly disappeared in a twin red gush from two pairs of sweating shoulders, and a group of twenty boys converged on the spot, fought for almost a minute, and then the heads were covered, and one boy at length dragged himself away, arms limp, helpless. He died while an evac ship was landing. The swinging mace that broke his back had not been necessary. He who wielded it fell also an instant later, his spine severed in a long, diagonal gash. And Doug thought how odd it was that a sword-cleft could look so like the tearing wound which a flying chunk
of shrapnel would gouge.

  He was so low now that he had long since lost sight of the lines’ ends, had no way of knowing when encirclement at last would begin, when the center of each line would give way, when Final Phase would begin. But it seemed that the fighting had become less orderly, more closely-grouped, more frenzied. Within minutes the Third Phase map would be useless, and in Final Phase, there would be no knowing. No knowing until long after the end.

  The altimeter needle said two hundred feet, when, if he had read the map with any degree of accuracy, he was over the area assigned to Tayne’s Thirtieth Division. He had the ship straightened and descending when the blue light inset in the communications panel began to blink. He would let it blink. Yet if he answered, at least he would know their intentions . . .

  Bloody young warriors sought desperately to give the great craft room as he descended. Some were incinerated in its back-blast, and Doug murmured a prayer that they had been among the already-dying. He would not let himself think that of all he had seen die, any two could have been Terry and Mike. He refused to let himself think that of the dozen turned to cinders by his descending jets, any two could have been Terry and Mike . . .

  THE blue-red ground came slowly up to meet him. The blue light kept blinking. He increased pressure on the bottom button—hovered, sank, hovered again, sank.

  And when the ground was obliterated with the searing flame of his drive tubes, there was a gentle jar, and Doug let the button snap from beneath his finger. He was down, and there was not even time to feel relief.

  He tripped over Tayne’s body, fell heavily against the communications panel. His fingers fumbled for a switch near the inset microphone. The words blurred . . . FIELD ADDRESS. RADIO-SEND. RADIO-REC. FLEET INTERCOM.

  He twisted the knob to RADIO-REC. and the blue light stopped blinking.

  “. . . D to QT, D to QT, over.”

  He turned the dial to RADIO-SEND.

  “This is QT,” he said. He switched back, waited.

  “Larsen, this is Gundar! What in Napoleon’s name are you doing? What did you do with Blair?”

  Doug tore a plastisheet leaf from Tayne’s note tablet, thrust it over the mike-face.

  “I had to kill him.”

  “Kill him? Larsen you fool . . . You know what they’ll say—”

  “He tried to get at the manual controls . . . succeeded in wrecking the autorobot, so I had to use them. And I had to kill him when he tried to take over by force. Give you a—”

  “Larsen, something wrong with your communications? You’re coming in badly—didn’t read your last. Say again please.”

  “He wrecked the robot control,” Doug repeated. His lips were dry across his teeth and it was hard to keep his voice even. “I had to break out the manual. He tried to take them over, too, so I had to kill him. He was like a maniac—you know how he hated me. Must have figured out the whole plan somehow, and went berserk. I’ll file a complete report when this is finished. Over.” He waited, sweat rolling in icy rivulets the length of his arms. The wound on his back stung, and his muscles were trembling with fatigue.

  “What do you mean, when this is finished? Got to be immediate, man! There’ll be hell to pay as it is. I was afraid something would go wrong—he was a smarter man than you thought, and I told you as much. Take care of whatever you’re checking on down there immediately and then get back to headquarters and draw up a form 312-L-5. File for my office and the PG’s. You should’ve done that at once. Out.”

  “Yes, sir, right away. Out.”

  There was a silent prayer on Doug’s lips as he turned the knob to FIELD ADDRESS. It was worth a try . . .

  There was a humming sound. However it functioned, it was ready.

  “This is Senior Quadrate Blair. All units within range of this command will cease battle immediately . . .”

  He twisted a control under the viewscreen, kept twisting until its scope had undergone a ninety degree shift. And then he saw them, waves of them, slowing, stopping, turning to face the ship. Unbelievably, the sound of his voice had somehow been carried for a radius of at least a mile, and thousands of them, their blood mingled with their muddied sweat, were suddenly still, listening. Some fell, untouched, as a last wound belatedly took its toll. But all that could remained standing. There could be no sitting rest, for none knew when the command to resume battle would come, and when it did, it would be death to be sitting.

  Within a half minute, a great circle of them was still, battle continuing only at its periphery where his command was either being defended or had gone unheard.

  “Attention, troops of Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First Battalion, A Company. If—” and he dared not hesitate, must say it quickly, and then wait, “—Ronal Blair and Kurt Blair are able, they will report to this ship on the double! Terry, Mike—” and there was a sudden catch in his voice that he could not help. Then, “Come running”

  And he watched the viewscreen, turned the knob slowly to revolve its range, a complete 360 degrees.

  Nothing, nothing as he turned slowly.

  IN moments Gundar Tayne would contact him again, question him, and he would have no convincing answer. And then it would be too late. He would have the choice of punching the top button and catapulting himself to safety, not knowing even if Mike and Terry still lived somewhere down there, or staying to carry out a gamble that should have been lost a dozen times already.

  Suddenly, he saw it. The huge ship of the Director, in a long, circling glide. And the boys were moving again, raising their swords, circling their maces. He had been countermanded—

  The blue light was blinking. Another ten degrees of turn—There was a terrible clattering at the stern of the ship as though it was being rent apart plate by plate. The screen would not depress that far. He revolved it back. Tayne’s ship had landed a scant hundred yards away and a guard had already been flung around it. And men were approaching on the run, strange devices in their hands. Then they stopped, were putting the devices in position on the ground.

  The clanging grew louder now. It would be one of them. One of them with a warning, and if he did not open up, surrender . . . But the blue light still blinked.

  He could have missed them. As he swung the screen, they could have been running in an area yet untouched—the last ten degrees . . .

  The clanging was lessening.

  He hauled down the knife-switch marked “STERN PORT.”

  The clanging ceased.

  And then, muffled almost to inaudibility, a wild, far-off veil. “Shut it, Dad, for the luvva mike, SHUT IT!”

  And he jammed the switch home.

  There was an awful racket then. An awful, wonderful racket. Mike, Terry, clambering hell-bent up the spiraling cat-walks! Mike, Terry, safe aboard . . .

  A movement in the viewplate stilled the cry that had formed in his throat. The strange devices—there was a bluish-white flash, and the viewscreen was suddenly white with a ball of coruscating brilliance. Short . . .

  Had to blast off—but the kids, not braced on the cat-walks . . . Still clambering, maybe only halfway up . . .

  Another streak, but no flash. Over. They were bracketing.

  The next one, whatever it was, the next one would be a bulls-eye.

  With all his voice he bellowed “HANG ON!” even as Mike and Terry burst, breathless, into the control room.

  His finger hesitated only a moment. And then he jammed the bottom button in and his knees bent, but they held.

  And in the corner of his eye he saw the blue-white flash erupt dead-center below.

  He eased the button pressure and hovered, out of range.

  In a moment Gundar Tayne’s craft would be in the air. Then . . .

  “Kids—kids, you O.K.?” He locked the ship in its hover and then he was beside them, scanning their half-naked, bruised bodies in quick glances, then holding them to him with all the strength of both arms.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes. Me, your old man . . .”
>
  “We been dodgin’ and watchin’ for hours, Dad. Let’s get out of here!”

  He held them to him a second longer, then turned to the communications panel, Mike at his left, Terry at his right. “. . . They almost caught us at the door down there . . . Dad I—I think I killed one . . .”

  “We did as you said, Dad. We watched as much as we could, but most of the time we had to stay on the ground, playing dead . . .”

  The communications dial was still at FIELD ADDRESS.

  He looked at it, then looked at the viewscreen. Thousands of them, stilled for so short a moment, now surging, tearing at each other’s vitals again. There was a terrible hurt somewhere deep inside him, and he wanted to voice it, to get it out, to tell them somehow.

  But they would not understand him if he were to speak for a minute or for an hour. These whom he watched had been lost from the day of their birth.

  But, thank Heaven, not the two at his side.

  “Get in those hammocks, kids,” he said.

  They did, and he braced himself against the bulkhead. He was twisting the top button even as he punched it home, and it caught.

  The deck rushed up with smashing force.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE white, sterile room seemed to have closed in upon itself since she had been first brought to it so many hours before, and the heavy desk was now just a great mass of steel, its curved lines no longer distinct, but trailing off somewhere in an incomprehensible geometry of their own. There was movement behind the desk, white, blurry movement that blended with the walls, but the flesh-colored mask that hovered above it did not seem to move at all. Dot’s eyes could no longer focus for the fatigue of the tests had sucked the well of her physical energy dry, but she knew the face.

  He was Mannix, director of the S-Council, they had told her.

  The tests had torn her soul from her, turned it inside out, stripped it naked, examined it beneath their microscopes of unending questions asked in a thousand different ways with a thousand different inflections, connotations . . . The sterile white rooms, the lights, the darkness . . .