Islands in the Sky

by Manly Wade Wellman

  Argyle blinked up at him.

  “This is silly. You can’t be Peyton! You—”

  Peyton hoisted him erect and dug the stolen pistol into his belly.

  “The controls. Tell us where they are!”

  “Shoot me,” dared Argyle. “Ground people can’t order Airmen around.”

  Peyton and Gramp had the same impulse. They seized Argyle and rushed him along a corridor, past rival detachments of Airmen who were sniping at each other. Somewhere resounded the hiss and throb of a mighty atomic power mechanism. Heading for it, they slipped and went down a ramp, all three together. Argyle fought for a gun, but Gramp pistol-whipped him.

  They got to their feet just outside the biggest chamber yet—a domed apartment as big as an old-fashioned metropolitan station. Tier above tier rose the machinery that held and drove the gigantic vehicle. The door was locked. They shot it open with bullets and charged through.

  “Here’s what we want,” said Gramp. He covered a wan Airman just inside. “Up with your hands, or I drill you.”

  “You can’t do this,” protested the Airman. “I steer. This television—”

  Gramp stared at the little screen, shouldered the man away. Peyton, holding the bewildered Argyle with one hand, caught the television steersman with the other. Gramp put his hands on two levers that were like bicycle handlebars. They responded delicately to his touch.

  “These must keep an even keel,” he decided. “I see New York in the screen. Are we just above her?”

  “Of course,” babbled their new prisoner. “Who are you? What’s all the noise about?”

  “Argyle and his stooges are trying to take this Island away from you,” Peyton informed him. “Neither side is going to have it. We’re landing you.”

  “Landing us?” echoed the steersman in terror. “But you—you can’t!” He raised his voice. “Help! Help!”

  Peyton saw that the chamber and its machinery-lined floors swarmed with Airmen. Several looked up. A number trembled at their work. But none answered the appeal. They dared not leave their tasks.

  “Six minutes beyond New York, you say, Blackie?” queried Gramp. “Here’s a map with the course marked. This lake—”

  “That’s the one,” said Peyton. “Think you can make this white elephant land there?”

  “I can make her stop flying,” replied Gramp. “That’s enough, eh?”

  The steersman snatched at Peyton’s pistol. Peyton shot him in the kneecap and he fell sobbing. Then Peyton forced Argyle down on a bench of glass and tubular steel. The sound of battle was growing muffled outside. Someone bustled in. Peyton recognized Marshal Torridge.

  “What has happened?” burst out Torridge. “Who are you men?”

  “Sit down beside Argyle, there,” Peyton ordered. “We’re going to take you down to Earth.”

  Gramp was tugging upon a great lever that was wired to a metal bulkhead.

  “Careful!” screamed Torridge. “That is the power cut-off! If you pull it down—”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” announced Gramp.

  An expanse of water showed on the vision screen. He ripped the lever from its fastenings and forced it to the floor. Instantly all the machinery was dead and silent.

  The Flying Island was flying no more. Down it drifted, like a falling leaf. Peyton felt light on his feet. It was as though he rode in a swiftly descending elevator. Fifteen miles down! He fancied that the time would pass quickly. Sixteen feet the first second, thirty-two the next, sixty-four the third—

  “Spin that wheel gauge!” Torridge thundered at Gramp. “You want us to smash up?”

  GRAMP spun the device indicated, then faced Torridge.

  “You mean this will let us down easy? Some kind of brake blast below, eh?” He turned a quizzical eye on Peyton. “What do you think of that, Blackie?”

  Their fall was slowing. The men who had labored at the machines now deserted their posts and converged on the little group at the controls. Their faces were deadly. Gramp averted the new disaster.

  He leveled his gun at Torridge.

  “Stand easy, every one of you!” he shrilled. “Rush us and I let the friarshal have it right through the brain!”

  Peyton saw men rushing from without. He covered Argyle.

  “No funny business from the other side!” he warned. “If there is, Argyle will be the first to die.”

  They descended in grim silence through many hundred yards of space.

  “This is a trifle swift to follow,” said Torridge finally. “I take it that you two aren’t part of Argyle’s raid.”

  “Not we,” Peyton assured him. “And not part of your defense, either. We come from the ground.”

  “Ground!” muttered Argyle. “I should have known it would happen! Ungrateful scum, rising against us—”

  “As you rose against me,” put in Torridge. “There aren’t enough Airmen for a difference of opinion, Argyle. If you had been content to stay on as commander at New York, probably you would have taken my place in a very short while. As it is, we’re both through.” He sighed. “I feel tired.”

  “The ground people did this to me!” raged Argyle. “First Thora, bearing tales to you; now these two renegades! And what’s happening down below?” The question was rhetorical. Nobody bothered to answer it. From the packed observers a voice spoke.

  “Marshal Torridge, say the word and we’ll rush these pirates!”

  “Rush nobody,” directed Torridge, relaxing on the bench beside Argyle. “Gentlemen, I think we are assisting at the end of an era. Our safety mechanism will keep us from smashing below, but once it’s down, this Island will never fly again. That means the finish of the Airmen.”

  “I’m glad you realize that,” said Gramp.

  “I won’t admit it!” snapped Argyle. “Torridge, we have one more chance. Let’s join forces. When we come down, we’ll march into New York somehow, crush whatever silly rebellion these two represent—”

  “How crush it?” inquired Torridge gently. “As I understand it, all your planes came up to help in the stroke against me. They will not be damaged, but the impact of landing will certainly set off all the atomic energy they still contain. Until more is brought them, they are useless. And I feel certain that without plants we will fail to subjugate New York.”

  “You admit defeat at the hands of ground-grubbers?” exploded Argyle.

  For answer, Torridge gestured toward Peyton and Gramp.

  “Here are two of that gentry who have brought both our forces to nothing,” he said. Once more he yawned and spoke to Peyton. “Will you be amazed to hear that I begin to feel relief?”

  Peyton shook his head. “You look worn out to me. Now that you know the job of flying this Island is off your hands, maybe you’d like to stretch out and take a nap.”

  TORRIDGE looked wistful. “I’d better stay awake and see the finish. It will be a great joke on the person left in the position of victor. Do you realize, gentlemen, that with the ruling out of this Flying Island, the whole fabric of our government is at an end?”

  “I’m glad you admit that,” said Peyton.

  “I would be fatuous to admit otherwise. You must understand this much. The Island was a needle that drew a daily thread through the necklace of Earth’s cities. They are now just so many spilled beads. Each has masses of people and a contingent of Airmen in command, who will not know what happened elsewhere. Some of our planes could span the distances between the cities, but I doubt if any of our pilots are trained highly enough to make it. Each community is cut off from all the others.”

  “Speak for yourself, you Airmen,” growled Gramp. “Who says nobody can navigate? I could fly anywhere a ship will take me, if I have a map and a compass and a quadrant. Why, fifty years ago—”

  “You can!” Torridge pointed a finger at Argyle. “There you have it. Our governing activities have forced us into narrow ruts. We lost skills and abilities and forgot that wise old men like this still existed.”

/>   Argyle was thinking of something else. Peyton’s gun muzzle had drooped. Argyle gathered his booted feet under him and sprang. His tactics were copied from Peyton himself. His left hand caught Peyton’s gun wrist. His right hand doubled into a bunch of knuckles and smote Peyton’s jaw. A moment later he had twisted the gun away and was beating Peyton over the head with it.

  “I win!” he yelled through the broken door. “This is Argyle! Come help, rebels!”

  Somebody rushed in, somebody slender and with streaming blond hair. Thora, forgotten in the confusion, had escaped from her prison. She caught Argyle around the neck from behind. Argyle struggled desperately. A moment later Peyton wrenched himself free and walloped the general. Argyle wilted down through Thora’s arms.

  She turned an utterly bewildered face from one person to another.

  “Whatever is happening?” she begged. “Outside there was a fight starting. Airmen were rushing around, yelling at each other ‘For Torridge or Argyle?’ and then shooting. Now they’re all crouched in corners, behind furniture, with their eyes bulging out.”

  “They know what you fail to realize,” Torridge informed her. “The Flying Island has finished its flight. It is settling down to rest like a tired bird . . .” He glanced at an instrument board. “That gauge says we are ready to land now.”

  And land they did, with an abrupt shock and a mighty splash, in the shallow waters of Lake Hopatcong. Few kept their feet. Peyton and Thora sat down suddenly, clinging to each other. Gramp clung to the handlebar levers, maintaining his upright position.

  “How’s that for landing a contraption I never even handled before?” he piped in shrill triumph. “All I did was keep the lake in the vision screen and—”

  Peyton got up.

  “Outside,” he warned loudly, “will be my men—a large force, armed and ready. If you do as I say, nobody will be hurt. Drop your arms here and march out with your hands up. Wade to the shore and give yourselves up.”

  Blank faces regarded him on all sides. Marshal Torridge spoke with animation for the first time.

  “Don’t you hear what your new commanding officer says? Do what he tells you. Down weapons, up hands, march out—lively!”

  XIV

  BENGALI, pallid and weary, dismissed the last fumbling and fuming work committee from his office. It was a fine office in the same building that housed the Pardon Board, vastly different from the hidden den behind the Underways bar, or the gravelike hiding among the pilings. One more person entered. Bengali sighed and smiled.

  “Come in, Blackie,” he said. “You’re the first man I’ve been glad to see today. The fighting’s over, but the figuring’s only started.”

  “That fighting was a disappointment,” commented Peyton, sitting down. “You face something big and tough, thinking you’ll die game. But after a couple of licks, it keels over. It was like a dream.”

  “Right. And the figuring’s like another kind of dream. You run into something small and slender and harmless, and all of a sudden it swells up into tremendous trouble. I think I’d throw it over, Blackie, if they’d let me.”

  He referred to his notes.

  “The representations to other towns, for instance. I put that in the hands of Gramp Hooker. He’ll fly a plane to lead the way around the world, where the Flying Island used to sail. Torridge—thank heaven we saved him alive—will confer with the administrators in each town as they come to it. I can imagine how hard the idea will be to communicate.”

  “Nothing to how hard it will be to sell,” returned Blackie Peyton. “Speaking of Torridge, you’re beginning to look like him yourself—worn out and jumpy.”

  “He hated government business. Anybody who does that isn’t bad at bottom, no matter how fancy a uniform he wears. It’s the men who love glory and power, like Argyle, who are to be feared and fought. About the other towns—people will be glad to hear about it, once it trickles through. We can go slowly in introducing the world to freedom. Better slow than never.”

  Peyton smiled savagely.

  “Speaking of Argyle, do me a favor, will you? Send him down into the Pit to smash atoms.”

  “Never a chance,” demurred Bengali. “There’s a lever control machine that will do the work down there without manpower. The Airmen perfected it years ago, even installed it; but atom-smashing was too good a punishment to use for rebellious ground people. I’ve already ordered that mechanism to start.”

  “At least tell Argyle that he’s headed for the Pit,” urged Peyton. “The thought will be almost as tough on him as the work.”

  “I’ll do that,” Bengali said. He scribbled a note on a pad. “As for the currency situation—”

  “Going to abolish money?” queried Peyton. “Most reformers want to.”

  AGAIN Bengali shook his head, saying quietly:

  “There’s a group of executives and experts figuring it out. No manipulators or gamblers. They’re blocking out a plan to base exchange values on labor and commodities, not on any metal that, taken alone, is worth nothing. Money’s no good if you can’t buy things with it, and an honest government doesn’t need a guarantee. We plan to be a really honest government.”

  “Too deep for me,” confessed Peyton. He helped himself from a cigarette box in front of Bengali. “Hey, these are real tobacco!”

  “Everybody will have real tobacco before long,” Bengali told him. “Real coffee, too, and those other things you missed.” Wertz had tramped in. Bengali resumed, nodding at Wertz, “We’re putting him in charge of a fleet of big atomic-powered air vessels to go South after such things. What can’t be found growing wild will be planted for harvest next year.”

  He picked up more scribbled notes. “Now give me advice.”

  “What about?”

  “That girl, Thora. She’s applied for a job.”

  PEYTON had put the cigarette into his mouth. He swiftly snapped it out again.

  “Job? What kind of job?”

  “We hope to reclaim the wilderness. The Airmen didn’t want anything there before. They preferred to keep people in cities like this, or in nearby farms, easier to put a thumb on. But already people are demanding to get back to the land. I’m organizing a squad to send out to Jersey. We’ll use that grounded Flying Island as a sort of living headquarters and supply house around which to clear land and plant crops. First we’ll drop parachute men with axes to make a landing field. Later garden patches. Finally—”

  “And Thora wants to go on that?” Peyton demanded. “That girl? She doesn’t know the first thing about farming!”

  “Thanks for those kind words, Mr. Peyton,” said Thora, walking in from a rear office.

  She wore a rich blue dress, but had pinned paper cuffs over the sleeves and stuck a pencil into her back hair. Her hands were full of papers.

  “Here’s a partial list of what I want to fly in the first day, Bengali. We figure to be self-supporting the first season and show a profit the second. That is, if these volunteer farmers will really work.” She studied Peyton, whose mouth had not closed after he had removed the cigarette. “As for Mr. Peyton, there—”

  “Pierce to you, Thora,” he told her.

  “Miss Thora to you, Mr. Peyton. As for Mr. Peyton, since when did he get to know so much about farming as to suggest—”

  “My dad was a farmer!” snapped Peyton.

  “So was mine!” she flung back.

  “Bengali,” said Peyton to the man at the desk, “cross her off the list and give me that farm detail. I can run it. You know I can handle workers and that I can be trusted.”

  “As if,” said Thora icily, “I can’t handle workers or be trusted.”

  Bengali was glancing from one to the other.

  “I’m going to send you both out there,” he said at last. “The fresh air and hard work will do you good. I don’t want either of you moping here alone, and I don’t want the two of you arguing here together. Now take your debate somewhere else. I’m going to be busy all day, and all night.�
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  THORA hurried into the rear room.

  Peyton sprang after her. He caught her just outside the door.

  “What idiot said you can trust no future?” he cried. “Thora, we’ll make a future that we can trust.”

  “Let me go, Mr. Peyton,” pleaded Thora in smothered tones. “This is noway to start a farming partnership. Let go, Peyton! Gramp, where are you? Why don’t you take a hand in this and help to get me out of this wild man’s clutches?”

  Gramp, at a paper-littered desk of his own, goggled like a bearded king-fisher.

  “Because I’m going on eighty-three,” he replied. “Darn it!”