GRAMP joined them.
“Say, he reported, “we’re out of luck.”
“How?” Bengali asked.
“These planes have been kept in good shape, but I don’t trust the fabric jobs with an atomic motor. There’s just two metal scows, small cockpit jobs, that might do. Ain’t a very big fleet.”
“It’s enough to land two or three of us on the Island,” said Peyton, “and that ought to be enough.”
His companions gaped in amazement. “Not enough to carry the place by storm, maybe,” he explained swiftly, “but enough to win it by brains. You said I was a great one for getting my licks in first, but that’s not the only way to win a fight. Did you ever hear about making the other guy throw a punch, then ducking and countering while he misses? That’s the way to handle these Airmen. If—”
“Sounds too complicated,” objected Gramp.
“Yes, so don’t waste time explaining,” seconded Bengali. “Peyton, you see a chance to do this job. I don’t. I’m going to hand over command to you, here and now. Work fast, man!”
“What are you standing around for, Gramp?” cried Peyton. “Put motors in those two planes. Pick out the best pilot from among these old vets you’ve gathered. Load up with atomic and stand by to take off.” Gramp saluted with a grin, and hurried to obey. “Bengali, how many men have you got that you can count on?”
“Eight hundred, maybe a thousand, down in the Underways where I can put a hand on them.”
“If they’re tough enough, with a few weapons it ought to be plenty. How often have you watched the Flying Island go over?”
Bengali stared strangely.
“Not often. You get used to it.”
“You do—I don’t. Bengali, I’ve watched it go over every day during the two weeks I’ve been out. That Island made a big dent in my mind. I’ve not only watched it go over New York, but I’ve watched it go away. I’ve followed the shadow on the trees, the landscape. Where’s a map of this part of the country?”
Bengali still stared, but pointed toward another part of the museum.
“That room ought to be full of old ones.”
They went together. Peyton tore open a showcase and took out a hard-wide map of what used to be New York’s metropolitan area. He did mental arithmetic half-aloud.
“Seven hundred miles an hour-seventy miles in six minutes—thirty-five in three. That ought to be time and distance enough.” He laid his finger on a point on the map. “You know what place this is?”
Bengali studied it. “The map says Lake Hopatcong, but—”
“I know. Nobody goes there any more. Well, it’s twelve hours till the Flying Island arrives. You’re going to march your men there in those twelve hours.
Take this map and get started.” He thrust the paper into Bengali’s hand. “Be ready for trouble, too.”
“Won’t you give me some idea?” Bengali pleaded.
“This much. You’ll do it if I promise that Argyle and Torridge and their followers will be there, shaken up and off balance for you to fight. You’re spoiling for a chance like that. Get going while you have time. This map and a compass will help. I’ll be seeing you!”
He gave Bengali a push, and then went to where Gramp supervised the changing of the motors. Another grizzled man, whose name was Wertz, had been chosen to pilot the second plane. Someone had brought oxygen tanks and masks.
“Just what we need,” approved Peyton, inspecting the masks. “Now, is there a parachute in the house?”
Wertz found one.
“Put it on, Wertz. I’m loading all the extra atomic cylinders into your second cockpit.”
Wertz shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re boss. But if my plane cracks up . . .”
“I want it to crack up,” Peyton told him. “You’ll aim it at a target I show you, then bail out. Yours is the easiest job of all.” He raised his voice. “Wertz, Gramp Hooker, stand by your planes! The rest of you, go with Bengali. He’ll lead you to the best fighting you’ve ever had!”
They departed and he faced the two pilots.
“Attention to orders. I won’t take a minute. Then we’ll stand easy until dawn. As the sun comes up, we’ll fly right out through those big windows yonder.”
“We’re listening,” said Gramp. “And it better be good, Blackie.”
XII
FAR in the stratosphere, with a serge-blue sky overhead and a cloud-misted Earth below, rode the Flying Island. Those who had fashioned it had worked with the lightest and strongest of metals and other materials.
First a traylike base of aluminum, a mile across and many yards thick. Upon this, like a multitude of masts upon a strange and intricate ship, countless hollow towers and spires of alloy, faced with gold-leaf for rustproofing and show. Rigged and braced with struts, wires and cables; supported among these, like bubbles among mash weeds, clustered glass chambers of all sizes and shapes. These, despite the tinting and clouding against the sun’s rays, gave off rainbow flashes in all directions.
The largest chambers, centrally located, housed the mighty atomic engines that kept the Island constantly flying. Others contained the compressor pumps that laboriously turned the stratosphere into breathable air. There were storerooms for food and other supplies, and, in the outer and upper tiers, hangars for aircraft. Elsewhere were tiers of dormitories and living quarters, but these were occupied less frequently than any other chambers.
For in 1980 there were but twenty-thousand Airmen to rule the world. Not even twenty-thousand supermen can be everywhere at once. Most of them filled police and command posts in the ring of the cities around Earth, but three thousand were always needed upon the Flying Island.
For the sake of survey, co-ordination, and to subject unprotesting millions, it must circle the globe once a day. It was a symbol, a threat, a legend, but it was also the most costly device in all the history of despotic government.
The towers were filled with watchers. Relaxation by one man of a single degree of alertness might cause the whole unwieldy mass to lose balance, topple and crash. Squadrons of observers must scan the empty sky, the misted Earth. Others must check gauges, altimeters, feeds, level devices. Still others, a thousand at a time, must feel, service and direct the intricate mass of flying machinery with perfect precision and care.
Without the make-up used during television appearances, Marshal Torridge was gray-templed, wan-faced, wrinkle-browed. His thin body was fragile inside its splendid uniform. Standing in a great central watch tower, peering through binoculars at a great port, he bit his mustached lip.
“Planes coming,” he said to his two aides. “Flock of them. Every plane in the New York contingent. The girl who sneaked up here told the truth.”
“It’s Argyle, sir, attacking us?”
“Naturally it’s Argyle. Who else could it be? And it must be an attack, as she said. No planes here in our hangars except bombers, eh?”
The aides shook their heads. For twenty years nobody had dreamed of conflict with other planes. Only punishment or reprisal was ever thought of, and then for a city of Earth, a defenseless bomb target.
“Then,” ordered Torridge, “gather and arm all who are off duty. Let the rebels board. We don’t want them bombing us. Let them show their hands. They’ll expect us to be unready, but we won’t be.”
The aides moved swiftly away. Torridge looked at a chronometer. Half an hour, he judged, until those silver-bright wasps landed. By then they’d be just above New York City. Wonders could be done in that time. He turned to a glass table and pressed the switch on a radio communicator.
“Bring in that female prisoner.”
AN AIRMAN in captain’s uniform brought in Thora. She was paler than ever, but not frightened, and stood before them proudly, her frosty blonde hair a little unkempt, but her green eyes did not flinch.
The marshal gestured her guard away.
“Young woman, when you stowed away on the New York supply craft yesterday and rushed into my presence with that
bizarre story about danger of my overthrow, I was too preoccupied with your impudence in coming where we never allow ground people, and have never before admitted a woman. I called you a fool and a liar and had you confined.” His tired eyes turned again in the direction whence came Argyle’s swarm of wasps. “Now I find that I was wrong. Why did you steal a ride up here at risk of your life, to warn me?”
“Now that you believe, I’ll explain,” she replied. “General Argyle wants to supplant you as world ruler. He has put a certain man into prison. My hope is that this service will be repaid by giving that man freedom.”
“A man in prison?” repeated Torridge. “Dangerous?”
“Probably the most dangerous man of all the ground people,” said Thora proudly. “Dangerous, I mean, to you. He’s a born and bred rebel He feels outraged and murderous. The very name ‘Airman’ drives him into a fury. I ask you not to let that count. I have helped you. Now help me, and—the man I love.”
“You rely heavily on my sense of gratitude,” observed Torridge. “I have none. Rulers cannot indulge in such luxuries. I should really be opening a trap in the floor of this Island and throwing you through it.” He glanced again in the direction of Argyle’s fleet. “You’re an unusual person. You know what you want, certainly, and no nonsense.”
“I wish,” said Thora, “that I could say the same for you and the rest of the Airmen.”
Torridge stared in a manner that should have frozen her lips, but it did not succeed.
“Don’t you think,” she burst out, “that everyone knows what a farce this Flying Island is? You’re desperate, overworked. The burden of world empire is too much for you. Marshal Torridge, you’re an old man!”
“Old?” cried the greatest man on Earth. “I was old at thirty, when the War ended. I was ancient at forty, when the previous marshal died of heart strain and I replaced him. I’m fifty now, and prehistoric. If it gives you any satisfaction, I want nothing so much as to quit.”
“What is there to hang on to?” demanded Thora. “You distrust and fear your subject peoples, so you must engross them with bloody circus spectacles. You must import strange beasts for slaughter, when ordinary comforts are impossible to get. You squeeze millions into cities like jails, and you stay up here as their jailer. You’re a rider on a wild horse. You want to get off, but don’t dare for fear you’ll have your ribs kicked in. And that is due to happen. Argyle’s almost upon you. I can see his planes clearly.”
“My rule may be crumbling,” agreed Torridge. “Stand by and watch my attempts to prop it up.”
The wasp swarm of Argyle’s planes approached the Flying Island. Argyle, his plane central in the formation, spoke into his radio.
“Hello, hangars! This is General Argyle. Prepare to help us land.”
No response, but the hangars were open, big bottle-like chambers. The planes flew in and came to rest. No attendants stood there. Wondering, some of the pilots emerged and touched the buttons that would close the doors and admit breathable air.
Argyle, whose original plan had been to make prisoners of the hangar attendants, had to change his plans now. He assembled his men in a main crystal-walled promenade just inside. Five hundred planes had brought two thousand men. They were all armed, as Torridge’s men would not be. He conferred with a brace of lieutenants.
“Remember that they outnumber us, but most of them can’t leave their posts. Whatever happens, this Island has to keep flying. What we want, chiefly, is Torridge. Don’t capture him. Kill him. Then his boys will have to come in with us.”
“Argyle!” cried Torridge’s voice.
FROM the far end of the corridor, where a deeper glass-clouding made something like a shadow, the voice echoed to the growing group of invaders. Argyle faced it, saw a slender, richly uniformed figure.
“This is luck!” he whispered. “There he is, come to meet us all by himself.” From among those nearest to him he selected the dozen men he came fairly close to trusting. “Come on. Don’t draw guns until I speak. We’re going to wipe out Torridge here and now.” He and his party moved toward the marshal. “Glad you came out, sir. How did you know it was I?”
“A stowaway came up from New York yesterday,” said Torridge. “A blonde, pale girl, with a fantastic yarn about how you planned to overthrow me.”
The tones were genial, but Argyle started and chewed on his cigarette holder. Was Torridge informed and ready? If so, why was he here alone and apparently unprotected?
“I know that girl, sir,” Argyle improvised quickly. “She’s insane. The fact that she came up here as a stowaway proves that. She knows what happens to ground people who disobey orders.”
“Never fear, Argyle. I have her safe,” assured Torridge.
They were quite close now. At a stealthy motion from Argyle, the party came to a halt not more than twenty yards away. Not one of them but could kill with a snap pistol shot at that range. Argyle saluted and Torridge returned the salute. His gay uniform seemed to shimmer.
“Marshal Torridge,” said Argyle heavily, I came to make an important statement.”
“Ah,” breathed Torridge, “does that statement happen to be that you intend to overthrow and replace me, Argyle? Because I disagree with you that the girl we mentioned is insane. I take her for very sane indeed, and so I have prepared for you.”
“Draw your pistols!” Argyle rasped. “Cover him!”
A dozen weapons swept from their holsters, focused on Marshal Torridge. He did not flinch, move to retreat or resist. One eyebrow lifted. A slender hand slid a monocle under, it.
“Now you expose your hand, Argyle,” he taunted. “I am glad. My preparations have not been in vain. I can fight and kill you with the most cheerful of hearts.”
“Fire!” roared Argyle.
The pistols all boomed together. Every bullet must have struck the target, yet Torridge only smiled. He shrugged.
“I see that a simple device has baffled you, Argyle.”
“Then take this!”
Argyle threw a grenade, powered with a crumb of atomic power. As it whirled through the air, every man of his party fell on his face for safety. The grenade’s explosion shook and rang the glass chamber. Silence, and then Torridge’s quiet laugh.
Argyle scrambled erect. Torridge stood where he had been standing, not at all disturbed.
“I’m not really here, Argyle. I’m in my command post. A television ray focus, with the dust motes of the air as screen, places my image where you shoot at it, and a television return shows you to me. You’ve often seen me thus at the circus and elsewhere, but in your single-minded greed for conquest you didn’t stop to think.” Torridge’s voice grew grim. “If you want to fight now, I am ready to accommodate you. Winner takes the Island and the power and the glory. Loser takes a long drop and a long long rest.”
“Prepare for action!” Argyle bawled. “Run back to the others, some of you. Deploy, hold these outer chambers and corridors—”
Another explosion seemed to smash the great fabric of glass and metal. Argyle heard the roar of escaping air, tried to run to safety somewhere. A moment later he collapsed, panting and wheezing and strangling. His swimming brain presented him a strange vision—the face of Blackie Peyton. Then he subsided into senseless darkness.
XIII
HIGH up against the sun, hidden in the torrent of its beams, Gramp and Peyton watched from their cockpit as Wertz carried out orders. The Flying Island, swimming in from the east, had been met and swarmed over by Argyle’s air legion. So intent upon triumph had Argyle been that he did not look for, even if he could see, any third party in the sky.
The two makeshift stratosphere craft went undiscovered as the Flying Island drew into position a few minutes from New York. Then Wertz dived. Gramp and Peyton saw him bail out in his parachute, a figure no larger than a spider in respirator and rags. The plane struck among the rainbow bubble chambers and the Island rocked with the mighty discharge of its cargo of atomic cylinders. Among the towers appe
ared a jagged hole.
Gramp went into a dive. So swift did the great, soaring Island travel that it had already slid from under the downward plunge of Wertz’s parachute.
“He’ll land somewhere on Long Island,” observed Gramp at the controls. “By the time he finds his way home, it’ll be all settled.”
Peyton said nothing, strapped his own oxygen mask in place. The Island blotted out the faraway world below. Gramp sent them smoothly into the hole made by the explosion. They smacked home between two high towers, felt the crunch of their craft as it broke up, quickly scrambled out. They stood on the dangerously cracked and shattered floor of half a corridor, inside what had once been the outer tier of glass hangars. Around them was cluttered the wreckage of many metal planes.
Peyton felt puffy. His ears roared.
For twenty years he had dwelt under the pressure of the Pit. Now he moved clumsily over broken glass in the scant pressure of the stratosphere. Gramp was beside him, pulling at his elbow and pointing ahead.
The punctured corridor was full of struggling, smothering Airmen, trying to fight their way through transparent doors into the breathable interior. Many were falling and collapsing. Gramp paused to snatch a pistol from a holster, and Peyton did the same. They ran along the corridor.
The interior of the Island could be seen through many glass partitions. Men and machines moved back there. Peyton, faint despite his oxygen mask, gained a doorway and reached for the catch. But Gramp caught his arm again, pointing to a fallen figure.
It was General Argyle.
They bent, caught him up and between them hurried him through the door they had found. The pressure of inner air slammed it shut behind them. Breathing heavily, Argyle partially recovered. He tried to rise from the crystal floor, but Peyton pinned him down with one foot. He and Gramp ripped off their masks.
“We haven’t any time to lose,” rapped Peyton. “Where’s the control machinery?”
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