“Sir? You’re being tracked down for—they say, for murdering Larsen. Please follow us sir, Madame . . .” The look of puzzled bewilderment deepened on the underground leader’s face as he motioned his men in screening flanks surrounding the four. One of the men handed him a white bundle from a compact equipment-pack on his back.
“You had better get these on. We would say we have captured your boys—”
THEY were S-Council uniforms, and the Quadrate and his wife donned them quickly; Blair doing so more in hesitant imitation of Lisa’s frantic haste than from the desperation of a situation which he only half-understood.
Murdered Larsen Tayne? Then . . . yes of course. The other Blair. But why should the other Blair hate Tayne so? He was of a different Earth, of course . . . He would think like those of his own world. He would hate all this world stood for. Hate Tayne for his overbearing, brutish use of authority—criminal cleverness at deception.
Suddenly, he knew the confusion of panic for the first time in his life. Suddenly, his mind was a boiling thing, and all the brilliant solutions that had been forming in it with split-second rapidity were inexplainably invalid, wrong . . .
And then they were at a halfrun, leaving the house, heading for a ’copter painted with the S-Council insigne, counterfeit serial code-numbers beneath it.
In moments, the craft was airborne, and Washington was falling away below them, fading away behind. And now any small thing —an incorrectly acknowledged radio challenge—would undo them, the Quadrate realized, but that was only a part of this terrible gamble they were taking. Gamble, on their very lives, yes—only why? Why?
Slowly, bit by bit, the thing pieced itself together as they flew. A great forest stretched ten miles beneath them, faded, wilted at last into desert as the first shadows of a day dying crept silently upward to engulf them.
In low tones, he and Lisa talked with the heavy-faced leader, and they talked for a long time.
“If it were not for the boys—” Blair murmured finally.
“The boys will be safe with us,” Lisa answered. She looked at them, and they were sleeping, hardly looking the part now of young warriors of broadsword and mace. “We will teach them a different way . . .”
He was silent for long moments. Then: “I cannot understand. I cannot, Lisa. That I have always believed as I have—and he, as we know he did. Yet that we should both have mortal hatred for the same men; he to the point of doing what I did not have courage to do. And now, regardless of what I believe, my own kind are hunting me down.”
“They would have, had you had the courage of which you speak—the courage of that conviction. And was it, Douglas, simply a conviction about a single man?”
“I—I don’t know.” He looked through a port; it was night, and they were speeding silently westward. Then he was looking back to her, and deep into her eyes. He had never felt lost, alone, hunted before. There was something very wrong.
“With us, Douglas . . . will you try? To understand—with us?”
“Not because I am hunted.”
“No. No. But now is the time for that wanting courage. Another man, too, hated a Tayne, and killed him. Can you help us kill the things that all Taynes stood for? In our way?”
Great mountains were looming before them, and the ’copter was beginning to lower into their darkened maw. And suddenly he felt a new strength in him from depths of his being that were opening to him for the first time. Another man had killed Tayne. And could he—
“But what of the other man?” he suddenly heard himself asking. “What have I done to him? What have I done to his world?”
“He must be a man of great courage:” Lisa answered slowly. “I think—I think such a man will find a way to undo what you have done. For such a man, and for such others as he, there is always great hope.”
“You will help me, Lisa.”
“All of us, Douglas.”
“Then that is all I shall need,” he said softly.
The ’copter vanished into the mountains.
TERRY and Mike came running from Doug’s den, a welter of books open on the floor behind them which they had not opened.
Dot was coming from her bedroom. A pistol Doug owned had been in her hand, and she put it in its place in the open drawer from which she had taken it.
“Dot! Kids—the living-room, I’m in the living-room! Dot!”
In a moment they were around him-, and they were the Dot and the Mike and the Terry whose faces had been so familiar so long ago.
“I must’ve—he—I must’ve been reading this final—look, Dot, my God look—”
She saw the Page One streamer.
“Then he was—he was trying, here, he was trying, Doug . . . That was why. When I arrived, I had a pistol in my hand . . .”
The headline read BLAIR BILL GOES TO HOUSE TOMORROW. And in the three-column drop beneath it: Unanimous Passage Seen—Senate Reported Favorable—President Says He’ll Sign Immediately—Draft of 13’s Would Begin Nov. 15—Soviet Terms Measure ‘Fantastic.’
“Doug—”
“He’s begun it all right. How, I don’t know, unless—And beneath the centerfold he read CLERGY LAUDS BLAIR BILL AT PARLEY HERE.
“Had them falling for it, had ’em mainlined all the way!” Doug said.
And then he was going swiftly toward the den, almost at a run.
He pulled a battered chair up to the big desk, lifted his telephone from its cradle almost in a single motion.
Quietly, Dot shut the door behind him. It would be a long time, she knew, before it would open again.
CHAPTER XXII
THE night was quiet, and the air was warm and still.
The man and the woman walked close together, and with slow, unmeasured steps, as though the great, slumbering city was a garden, and they were exploring it for the first time.
They did not speak, for their eyes were wide, engrossed simply in seeing.
A soldier passed them, then a man who might “have been a store-clerk, a student, a salesman, a clergyman, a scientist.
A young couple approached from the opposite direction, saying quiet things to each other, perhaps deciding intimate, very important plans for some near future time.
They passed an all-night drug store, its gaudy light washing the sidewalk to the curb, limning the wide racks of newspapers and magazines which told their stories in a dozen languages, on a thousand themes.
The streets were wide and empty, but they were not lonely, for in them were the silent echoes of the struggles and victories, big and small, that had been fought, won and lost in them in a day just dying, just to be born again in a few short hours.
The man and woman walked for a long time.
And Douglas Blair thought of what would not happen tomorrow.
Not tomorrow or, perhaps with great care and the forgiveness of the Almighty, not even the day after that.
THE END
Earthmen Ask No Quarter!
General Taylor knew that Earth could not resist the invaders, so he ordered all units to surrender. But one commander thought he meant—
“LET them in, sergeant.” The white-haired New United Nations World Space Force chief spoke the words as though he had been forced into the most humiliating surrender in history. And he had been.
What could he tell them? They were not fools, after all, and he was so impossibly exhausted . . .
Uniform was a mess. All day and all night, words, words . . . and nothing. Too many useless, powerless words, all adding up to nothing. Foreign space admirals, ground-force field marshals, defense secretaries from a dozen capitals.
Where were the ion-field cannon that had been promised for the last twenty years? Where were the new main-drives? The new alloys? Promises, always promises—but where in God’s name were they?
And now—now it didn’t matter any more.
He let his massive frame slump tiredly for a moment, elbows flattening some of the official litter strewn across the broad desk-top,
head in his big hands.
“General Taylor, sir—”
He forced the thoughts from his brain with almost the same physical force with which he shoved his tired body erect.
“Yes, yes, thank you, sergeant. Good morning, gentlemen. Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
There were perhaps thirty of them, all civilians, all crowding for a spot nearest the huge desk, all with stub pencils and sheafs of rumpled newsprint in their hands. A couple of flash-bulbs went off.
“General, can you tell us what the aliens’ intentions are?”
And it had begun.
“Tm authorized to tell you that the alien space ship is hostile. But, under the circumstances we are convinced with reasonable certainty that their hostility may be . . . mollified to an appreciable degree.”
He watched them as they got the official double-talk down word for word. And then, “In other words, General—we are counterattacking?”
“Sorry. That information is classified.”
“About how high is the alien, sir?”
He is circling Earth in an orbit about two thousand miles out, passing our own stations about once every forty-eight hours.”
“How big is the ship, sir? About what shape?”
“It is a cigar-shaped vessel, approximately three miles in length and slightly under one at maximum diameter.”
“Have any of our own ships as vet had actual contact with this craft?”
“Yes, there has been contact. I am sorry that for the time being the result cannot be disclosed.”
“There are rumors, General, that the 402nd Space Wing sent a five or six-ship element of J-SS Lancers from Lunar Base, and that the ships have not reported back. Is this true, sir?”
“It is true that they, have not been heard from since they left.” Then a young, unquavering voice cut in softly. “When is it to begin, sir? And when will we—”
“You may—write, gentlemen, that the invasion of Earth has already begun. And, that we have absolutely no defense against it. None. Because of that fact, the decision of the New II. N. Joint Chiefs has been that there should be no needless loss of life. You may write that we have—that we have already surrendered.”
His face felt as though it were hewn from wood—a strange wood with a fever in it. He had spoken far beyond his authorization. But they had to know. They could not be lied to forever. And the lies had always, ultimately, been worthless things, He was so tired. “General, can you tell us why?” The group was white-faced, still. The flash-bulbs had stopped popping. The first impulse to bolt the Generals office for the nearest bank of press telephones had somehow died even as it had arisen. Belief and disbelief mingled as one in the eyes of each.
“I’ll try gentlemen,” Taylor said wearily, leaning across the desk, his knuckles white against the smooth surface. “I could talk about our stressing of cultural advancement in this 21st century, rather than technological . . . a trend that has always made us of the military fearful of the future—now at hand—but what’s the use of rehashing problems of the past . . . Plainly and simply, gentlemen, the Invader is superior to us in every phase of known warfare. Add to that the element of a surprise attack and you find us as we are at this moment—beaten, irreparably.”
No one said anything. There was nothing to say.
General Taylor sank into his chair and stared at them, a grim hopelessness in his eyes.
Then the newsmen walked from the room. Slowly and silently.
ROBERT Manning, civilian Pentagon clerk, told himself that the Invaders might better kill everybody off and get it over with than to just regiment the hell out of everything. A man couldn’t even stay home so his wife could take care of his cold for him.
He sneezed. If allowed to live it, there were perhaps forty years of life yet for him. Forty years, and they would be slave years. It was all too damned new and just hadn’t got through to him yet. What in God’s name was it going to be like . . .
There was a sickness in his stomach, and he knew it was not from his cold.
“Manning—”
He looked up. It was Sweeney, the chief clerk. Manning always thought of him as a man who should’ve been a first-sergeant somewhere. He was big enough and loud enough, and certainly had temper enough.
“Yes, Mr. Sweeney?”
“Need these damn records right away. They all here? Each reel double-wound with positive and negative both?”
“Yes, sir.” Sweeney picked up the bundlesome stack of microfilm reels. “Mr. Sweeney—”
“What is it?”
“Are—are They going to get ’em? All of Earth’s Space outpost and military records—everything?”
“After the Joint Chiefs make out emergency recall orders for every last damn unit, they are. They will check each set of orders against every unit record here, all the way from Corps down to each individual ship.” Sweeney grunted. “Then they’ll burn ’em, positives, negatives, everything . . . then when the ships come in, they will destroy them too.”
Manning felt something turn over inside him. “General Taylor—”
“What the hell can Taylor do?
Christ, you’re better off than he is. Once every ship is back here and ‘busted up, he won’t even have a job. Maybe not even a head.”
“Every ship. They’re all there, Mr. Sweeney. Positives and negatives double-wound on every reel.”
“They better be. Or you won’t have a damn head!”
Sweeney turned and steamrollered out of the office, with every existing record past and present of General Taylor’s New U.N. World Space Force under one beefy arm. For security reasons, Manning realized, there had been made but a single copy and negative for each of its units.
His desk was an old one, practically an antique dating back to the 1940 s, and his sonotyper was buried deep in its insides on a wooden shelf that folded out to meet you in an awkward manner when you pushed the desk-top up, over and down.
Manning pushed, and with a couple of bronchial grunts produced the sonotyper. He fed in a continuous paper spool, turned on the current, unhooked the compact microphone from the machine’s side, and began dictating the rest of his day’s work.
Something got kicked viciously out of the key-bed. Black, shiny squares of something. All he needed was for the sonotyper to go haywire and start shooting its complex insides all over.
He stopped dictating to remove his glasses and dry his streaming eyes. His vision cleared, and for an instant settled on the shiny things that had landed near the front edge of his desk.
Hunks of microfilm.
He picked them up, held one to the light. Words. He fished in a drawer, found a magnifying glass that was used for half-obliterated old files.
He could see the words better, but they were backwards. He had the negative. Impatiently, he grabbed the other square. And read it.
And shivered. And again, it wasn’t his cold that was bothering him. He would have to call Sweeney right away—
. . . Light Space Brigade, Experimental. Temporary outpost, Cal list 0. Force: 20 Lancer-type J-88 destroyers. Complement: 600. Commanding: Col. Geofferey Steele—
He felt his insides turning to cold jelly. He would have to call Sweeney. God! Sweeney would skin him alive. Somehow, the tail ends of one of the double-wound reels must have stuck out a little, got sliced neatly off when he’d hastily jammed its pan-cover back on after inspecting it. Then the severed squares of microfilm had slipped down, unnoticed, through one of the desktop cracks where the sonotyper fold-away unit was. And landed in the key-bed. Only Sweeney wouldn’t understand it that way. And the Joint Chiefs—
Oh God no!
He had to think.
And he thought of that other name. On the microfilm record—Steele, it was. who commanded 600 men, twenty J-88s . . .
He thought of forty years of slavery.
And then he was doing a crazy thing—crazy—
While no one looked, Robert Manning sneezed and blew his nose and touched
the flame of his cigarette lighter to the two squares of microfilm.
THE white-faced communications sergeant stood just inside the door, and this time he failed to be impressed with the unusual smartness of the Colonel’s acknowledging salute. The thick sheaf of yellow papers he held in his left hand was trembling visibly, noisily, and he couldn’t make it stop.
“Well. Grady, what is it? You look as though you’d picked up a telepath message from one of our Callistan cap-crawlers, or something—” He reached out for the quaking message the sergeant held, and the communications man smiled nervously and held it out to him.
“Sorry, sir. I—I guess I just—”
“No trouble, boy?” The stocky black-and-silver uniformed figure paused in its movement, the thick pile of yellow papers momentarily forgotten. All of Steele’s personnel seemed like sons to him. Even the raw recruits who had previously never been further out than Earth’s own Moon. Sometimes, during the lonely hours there had been in the fastnesses of Space, he had surmised it was because there had never been a real son of his own with whom to share the adventures of his calling.
But hadn’t it been Space itself that had denied him those many things other men could take for granted—the things for which he had never quite been able to trade? Forty years of it. Venus to Pluto. Deep Space at the System’s rim and beyond, to the very edge of Infinity itself.
Sometimes this deep hurt within him seemed too great. And yet, somehow, it seemed always worth the venture. One day, no matter the cost or the hurt, men’s outposts would be flung to the stars themselves. This thing he knew.
The sergeant was speaking, and there was a fear in his eyes.
“Something’s—happened, home, sir. You’d better read this right away. All the way to the very end, sir.”
Steele ran a freckled, stub-fingered hand slowly and deliberately along the close-cropped iron-gray side of his squarish skull.
Attention all stations, the message read. URGENT IMPERATIVE. Earth has been successfully invaded. The rapidity, timing, and infallibility of the attack has made the necessity of immediate capitulation unquestionable. The following-listed units are therefore commanded, for the good of the planet, to return to home Fourth bases at once, with all armament either completely dismantled or destroyed. The conquerors have warned that failure to comply with this command will result in wholesale liquidation of Earth’s populace.
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 35