Nomad (1944)

by Wesley Long; George O. Smith

  “We gave them protection against a common enemy.”

  “An enemy of yours that would probably have treated them no worse than you did. The protection you prattle of was protection of your own mines against the enemy, not of the natives against this enemy. In either case, the natives would be no better off.”

  “You paint our race as blackhearted,” said Guy.

  “And what did you do?” came the cynical thought. “As soon as you discovered this barrier-screen, you raised it over Pluto, and the rise in temperature, good for Terrans, killed the Plutonians to the last one! A benign race? Bah!” “We—”

  “Nothing you say will convince me that your main desire is not for yourselves! And if you think for one moment that we will permit you to throw up a barrier around Mephisto and kill us off. you’re mistaken.”

  “You’re all convinced that we mean harm?”

  “You do!” The creature tapped the thought-beam instrument.

  “I presume that you speak for the entire race?”

  “I do. You, with your so-called democratic government; with your populace swayed by orators; with your justice biased with bribery; with your elections purchased by the highest bidder, could not possibly understand how a race could hold an honest government. But we do,” said the Mephistan proudly. Again he tapped the thought-beam instrument. “This instrument tells the truth! No silvery-tongued orator can sway the people; no biased judge can color the evidence; no public servant can buy an election, for problems of state are presented via thought-wave, and a liar is detected! When you first advanced into the planets, we saw your progress. And when we found you in our system, we knew your real thoughts at last! We broadcast your hidden purpose and to the last Mephistan, we decided to fight! To the last one of us we will fight, for we know that your purpose is to move in on us and run us to death. We have nothing to lose but our lives, and those we will lose if we permit your invasion.”

  “You hold us in deep contempt,” said Maynard. “Therefore your statements themselves are biased.” “They are not. Perhaps, with this instrument, we know you better than you do yourselves. You are death for us—unless we become death for you!”

  “But what can we do when you fire upon us without provocation?” “Stop prattling about provocation,” came the thought. “When a burglar pries his way into your living room, do you wait until he collects your valuables before you fire on him?”

  “Now we’re burglars?”

  “Worse. A burglar knows that he is doing wrong.”

  Guy shook his head. How could he make this creature see that Terra meant no real harm until the Mephistans made the first aggressive move?

  “You made the first aggressive move,” said the Mephistan. “You made it when you first landed on Titan. You made the second on Pluto. What is your feeling toward Mars? You plan extermination for them—and they only desire to grow with you.”

  “They—”

  “Only fought back when you fought them. Only this”—tapping the instrument at his belt—“will keep us from falling in death. You, yourself, brought home many new concepts from Ertene which will throw the balance of power for Terra.”

  Guy started, and then looked wildly around at the other officers in the room.

  “I know of Ertene from your own mind,” said the creature. “These others can not hear my mind. But I curse Ertene for the things she gave you; they will make our battle difficult.”

  “It will make your fight impossible,” said Maynard, catching the brief flash of a hidden, fearsome thought in the Mephistan’s mind.

  He turned to Hamilton and said: “Set up a barrier about the system, and focus the output of the screen on the center of Mephisto!”

  The creature snarled audibly; it was the first sound ever heard that was -made by a Mephistan. He drove forward, shaking the officers’ grip from him as though the hold was nothing.

  A darting tentacle lunged forward like a rapier; and like a rapier it impaled Hamilton through the throat. Withdrawn, it flattened and swung like a scimitar in and among the stunned officers.

  They came to life and rushed the Mephistan. Crowding the creature close. The stool upon which he had been sitting was lifted high in another tentacle and it shattered to bits against the skull of the tallest officer in the room. The other three grappled with the Mephistan and bore him backward to the floor which may have seemed desirable to the Terrans. It was also desirable to the Mephistan, too, for it gave him a more solid basis for his slashing attack. He cut through one officer’s midsection entirely, crushed the skull of the next against his own by driving that bullet head forward, and then picked the last from the floor in his tentacles and dashed him across the room against the wall. The body crunched, quivered, and fell to the floor.

  Maynard lifted the MacMillan and drilled the Mephistan again and again. His eyes blazed with hatred for the alien creature, and his mouth curled in utter distaste. The room filled with the stench of—burning varnish!

  ‘‘Naturally,” came the thought, continuing as though nothing had happened, “I could not come to such a fearsome temperature as you maintain and hope to live. You seem to have destroyed my servant, but we shall destroy you !”

  When the aides came to clean up Guy’s office, they found him inspecting the little instrument that fitted head and waistline of the alien creature. It was off, now, and partly disassembled upon the patrol marshal’s desk.

  Williamson came at Maynard’s call and raised an eyebrow at Maynard’s action.

  “I had to do something,” said Guy in a flat voice. “I couldn’t just sit here and contemplate those bodies.”

  “I know,” said Ben softly. “Anything I can do?”

  ‘‘Yes. Set up a barrier. Focus the screen’s output on the center of Mephisto. And then maintain that barrier for your life—and it will be just that. It will be for your very life, for it will be against the lives of all Mephistans!”

  “Good!” glowed Williamson. ‘‘That’ll do it!”

  “It may take months,” said Maynard. “But from now on we’re fighting a winning battle.”

  “What is that thing you’re tinkering with?”

  “A goldberg that was on the creature’s body. Interesting thing, too. Look, Ben, this thing may have been a robot, but their psychology is such that they hate us completely. Issue orders that no more prisoners are to be taken. Extermination is the only way; their strength is such that three of them could wipe out a regiment. If we don’t exterminate them, they’ll exterminate us, and they can do it if we permit them one chance. We’ll not give them that chance. Have the technicians figure out the estimated temperature rise of Mephisto with a full screen and full output directed at the center of the planet. I’d like to know’ when this affair can-be considered over.”

  “Check. I’ll do it, Guy. What you need is a rest.”

  “I know. But there’ll be no rest for any of us until this fight is finished. Come on, Ben. Let’s get moving. We’ve got a job to do.”

  XII.

  Guy put the alien instrument in his personal locker and went to see how the battle was coming. Out across the face of Mephisto, he saw the battle machinery locked in mobile death with the huge, alien machines of Mephisto.

  The ground was strewn with smoking ruin, and Guy saw with horrified gratification that the ruined machinery was all on the Terran side of the battleground—which meant that his ring of offense was advancing. The energy bombs were bursting above the planethead, and the sky was filled with blinding light. Sub-ships fell as their drive was burned by the entrapped energy within the barriers, and Guy wondered how many men were getting energy burns from the terrific radiation from the energy bombs.

  Orionad, standing in the circle of planeted ships, was dealing power blows from the turrets, and beams of energy—just energy—were roving the sky to saturate the barrier-protected sub-ships. Now and then a MacMillan beam would touch one of the sub-ships unawares, and there would be a terrific blast as the entire ship explode
d instantly.

  Then Guy saw his forces waver slightly, fall back, and then go down in a terrible wave of destruction from massed sub-ships.

  Again they retreated, and as the next wave dropped, they expended their energy on nothing but the bald surface of Mephisto. The solid ice of Mephisto boiled into great clouds of vapor and liquid water ran across Mephisto’s face for the first time.

  The vapor clouded operations— for both.

  One sub-ship scraped Mephisto— broke the barrier, and slid through a crashing pile of accumulating rubble to a destructive stop.

  And on one upthrust plate, torn and almost obliterated, was the device of the Martian Space Guard!

  “Martian!” breathed Guy.

  “Right!” agreed Ben.

  “Check that wreck!” exploded Guy. “What’s running it!”

  His order was passed: fifty Terran machines raced forward and encircled the smoking ruin; and seven of the planeted constellation ships blasted a pathway back to safety for the carry-alls.

  The ruined Martian ship was dropped in a clear area, opened by brute force, and through the torn plates streamed a group of cautious Terrans. They emerged immediately.

  “Martians!”

  “The devil! They’ve made a pact!”

  Maynard looked understandingly at the broken ship. “Naturally,” he said sourly. “What would you do?” Williamson looked up and nodded. “Right. Well, does this change anything?”

  “No—unless it is to apply what we know about fighting Martians to the present situation. We didn’t consider this possibility.”

  As Maynard turned to re-enter the Orionad, eighteen of Hamilton’s raiding horde returned in a screaming landing. Hamilton came out, white-faced, and said, dully: “It was sheer hell—both ways. We got ’em—but they hit us with the book. Sixty percent lost!”

  “How do you feel?” asked Maynard.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take your command out again and hit Sector F-67.”

  Hamilton looked up in surprise, and then anger crossed his face. He saluted and said: “Yes sir!”

  As he turned to go, Maynard called softly: “Hamilton! We’re fighting Martians now—they’ve made a pact!”

  Hamilton turned, looked at Maynard, and muttered something that Guy could not hear over the roar of battle. Then he returned, and faced Guy.

  “The stinking, rotten devils—!” His face cleared, and he left.

  Behind the embattled lines of the Mephistans, Martian craft landed. Martian sluggers, Martian power-craft, Martian constellation class super battlecraft. And as they were landing, and getting set for an open battle, the Terran forces lined up behind the thin line that flanked Orionad.

  It was a situation that made Maynard start. For years, no real action had ever been fought between the two forces. Sorties, scrapes, incidents; these had been the sum total of the trouble between the denizens of two worlds. Ream upon ream had been written concerning theoretical battle-plans for war against Mars, and in the Martian pictographs, equally large quantities of ink and paper went into the libraries on how to fight Terra.

  Guy realized: Here it is!

  The power ships of the two forces faced one another across ten miles of plain. Above the heads of each roved the tiny fighters, and above this cover, reaching up far into the realm of space, were rising the battlecraft.

  Planet forces began to move against one another, right through the unseen death that roved from the MacMillans on the tractors and the moving pillboxes. Space above the battleground filled with a continuously exploding roar, and sheets of released energy flares at the meeting points of crossed MacMillans.

  The constellation ships fenced momentarily, and then roared forward into lull battle. The sluggers stood back and threw the might of their energy from long range. Tiny fighters raced forward, depending upon speed, mobility, and minuteness to escape the wary detector-coupled Auto Macs.

  Sight became impossible. The flaring of explosive and raw energy seared the eye that dared to look, and when the flaring light stopped by chance, the rising wreaths of smoke, steam, and incandescent vapor obscured the vision. Lightnings flashed in and through this cloud, and the instruments became wobbly.

  Fire ceased briefly, and both sides waited for the veil to clear. Technicians put the cancel plugs on ruined targets to clear them from further destruction, and turretmen served the heating projectors.

  A wave of sub-ships zoomed in and spread flaming death among the Terran forces, and the energy bombs poured up, and among the barrier-protected ships. A group of Martians holding disperser screens zoomed over, spreading energy in wide-aperture releases from their turrets. Bombs and torpedoes raced in through the disperser screens, and the blind crew’s died without knowing whether they had hit anything. Terran sub-ships crossed beneath the first wave of Martians, and hit the enemy. A veritable fence of exploding ships barred the view as sub-ships collided. Their indetectability was mutual, too.

  Like twin tornadoes, the ships of both worlds spun upwards in a vast, whirling spiral. Bits of dust, smoke, and vapor intermingled with the ships, giving them a definitely tornadolike appearance as they swept the surface of Mephisto towards each other.

  The volume between the twin vortices was torn and blasted. Slowly and ponderously they moved together, and as they intermingled in a whirling eddy of battle, the ground of Mephisto was scoured clean of life.

  The weight of Terra’s forces carried the most momentum, and the spout moved across the territory formerly held by Mars.

  Reinforcements swooped in from space, and the whirling mass expanded. And with gathering speed, the vortex moved in an irregular path across Mephisto, sterilizing the planet as it went. Mephistans went before the tornado of huge battlecraft as straws go before a hurricane.

  The path of the storm was strewn with smoking, ruined ships. The luckless were forced inside of the whirling cylinder and gunned there. They fell down that chimney of death to the ground that awaited them at the bottom, or crashed against uprising sub-ships that swooped upward through the vortex and fired on all sides, relying on the identifier-couplers that stopped their aim against their fellows.

  The vortex broke, and the Terran ships opened from circle to crescent to straight line to closing crescent and strove to encircle the Martians. Outnumbered now, the latter fled slowly and kept up a killing fire of retreat.

  Across the face of Mephisto arrowed the embattled fleets. A wall ten miles high and fifty miles long and thirty miles from front to back accelerated and swept everything before it. Between the two walls of fighting ships was a constant flare of death. Cities caught in the conflagration died; their buildings seared, blasted, and broken.

  In full rout, the Martian forces raced to converge upon a large city.

  In a tight circle, the Martians braced themselves. Power beams came from the city to feed them, and as Terra came before them they lashed out with the power of planet-supported fire. Terra englobed the city, but it was a questionable success.

  From horizon to zenith, the Terrans poured their power into the Martian hemisphere. The ground about the city ran hot, and the grounded ring tilted and mired down, but they continued to fire back. Stalemate set in; Terra could not breach that close-knit hemisphere and Mars could not fight off the pressing Terrans. Destroyed torpedoes filled the annular gap with explosions, and crossed MacMillans flared to sear the eye.

  Then a mile inside of the Martian ring, the ground heaved upward, and the ugly snouts of underground raiders appeared. Their protected turrets lifted out of the blisters and began to pour energy into the Martians from behind. The Martians swept downward from their hemisphere and fought back against the pincer-movement. The topmost Terrans pressed downward as a second ring of underground raiders appeared to bolster the first wave.

  The city erupted in tiny areas as Terran undergrounds broke the surface, blasted the interfering building away with torpedoes, and lifted to add to the ever-increasing energy of the battle.

/>   The Martians hopped backwards over the ring of undergrounds and set up an inner line. At point-blank range, and almost plate to plate, the Terrans massed their energy in a flaming wall of destruction, fighting the Martians back, foot by foot.

  The circle tightened upon a tiny, central park. Spacesuited figures worked furiously under a disperser screen; they were putting the last touches Upon an alien projector. No light came to them from without, but they could be seen by the light of their own working floods. Outside of the projector and the disperser, a ring of large detector-coupled MacMillans were dancing from point to point and dropping Terran ships with each point.

  “Ben!” snapped Maynard. “We’d best get that thing before they finish !”

  “Right. We’ll hit ’em with AutoMacs and keep ’em under constant fire.”

  “No good.”

  “We can’t hit ’em through that disperser, but they can’t see to hit us.”

  “I know. But there’s one thing they don’t need sight to hit.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mephisto III, you idiot. Could you hit Luna from Terra without aim?”

  “If I had an ephemeris.”

  “What do you suppose they call theirs?”

  “Break out a ground force,’’ ordered Maynard. “We’re going to take that projector!”

  The Terran fire tripled as the ground force moved ponderously across the intervening yards. A salient point was made, and the sides began to widen. Back and forth the individual sorties went, and as men and machines went up • in flaring puffs of fire, the salient moved forward toward the projector.

  Inside the disperser, the combined Martians and Mephistans worked furiously, though they seemed oblivious to their danger. No signals would enter this barrier, and no living thing could step outside and hope to re-enter.

  They stepped back from the thirty-foot parabola, and one of them thrust down upon a plunger.

  Above the parabolic reflector, a thick haze formed. A torpedo succeeded in passing the coupled AutoMacs and raced inside of the disperser and into the haze. It exploded, and its energy added to the forming vortex.