Floyd Garrett’s face hardened. “So you think,” he said tightly, “that we’d prefer to live on as slaves to your race rather than suffer what you euphemistically describe as elimination?”
Palooka was surprised. “Why not?” he demanded. “You work now. You tell me that for most of you the fruits of your toil accrue to others. What difference would it make if the race of Baridu were the recipients? We would see to it that the Earthians would not starve.”
Floyd was appalled at such logic. “But our liberty—” he exclaimed. “We would no longer be free.”
“Are you free now? Can you do as you please; can you stop this dignified labor of yours when you wish?” The Jovian rose to his bowed legs. “But enough of idle talk. This strange conveyance of yours is too confining. I wish to see the surface of your world. Take me there.”
Palooka was a new sensation to a sensation-torn Earth. The World’s Fair had just reopened in New York with another tremendous fanfare and Grover Whalen. England had delivered its one-hundred-and-fifty-sixth note to Messieurs Hitler and Mussolini, warning both of these gentlemen that if they did not cease and desist, they could expect to receive still another billet-doux. China lost ten pitched battles in a row—and was winning the war. Shirley Temple essayed Juliet to Bobby Breen’s Romeo. Shakespeare turned over in his grave, and Super-Colossal Pictures cleaned up ten million. In short, this planet had headaches enough of its own without the advent of the Jovian.
Grover Whalen at once made him an offer to appear in person at the Fair. Three competing brands of cigarettes clamored for his endorsement of their products. The tooth-paste people were disconsolate. Palooka had no teeth. One enterprising concern, however, began to advertise the merits of its particular concoction as a spread to protect phosphorescent noses against the alien glare of the sun, in anticipation of the Jovian invasion. Haile Selassie sent an emissary to discuss the possibility of regaining his Empire, on the basis of a legend that his people had originally migrated from Jupiter.
But nobody took Palooka’s cheerfully announced intention of taking over Earth seriously. Nobody, that is, with the exception of Dr. Sampson T. Schley and Floyd Garrett.
They attended the Jovian everywhere. They showed him the face of the Earth, as he insisted. They took him in airplanes to the far places; they conducted him through factories and scientific establishments. They pointed with pride to their mighty cities and gigantic engines of warfare.
But Palooka refused to be impressed by the show they put on. He dismissed their most prized evidences of civilization and power with a shrug of his broad-beamed shoulders and a good-natured smile of amusement. They were toys, elementary in form and crude in technique. Earth’s scientific knowledge was halting; and as for lethal weapons—pouf!
With seeming naiveté he permitted himself to be shot at with rifles, bombed with half-ton projectiles, immersed in poison gas, sprayed with shrapnel. But bullets did not penetrate nor gas smother him. The curious glow that lit his nose spread in reddish tints over his entire body, incased him in an armor of interlocked vibrations from which everything rebounded in a shower of disintegrating sparks.
Floyd shook his head in dismay at the results of these secretly cherished tests. “Palooka isn’t as naive as he pretends,” he told Dr. Schley in the privacy of their own room after a particularly vicious bombardment with sixteen-inch guns. “That’s his way of proving to us that resistance to his race is hopeless; and that we’d better submit cheerfully and like it, if we know what’s good for us.”
The physicist scratched the tip of his nose thoughtfully. “You know, Floyd,” he said, flushing, “while naturally I had hoped that at feast one of our weapons might have penetrated those curious vibrations of his, and put an end to the possibility of our enslavement, nevertheless I felt a curious shrinking of the flesh every time a shell roared in his direction.” He thrust back his head with a defiant gesture. “I . . . I sort of like Palooka.”
“So do I,” Floyd admitted. “He’s a likable chap—good-humored, always smiling. And his scientific attainments are way beyond ours. He has nothing but the kindliest feelings for our race. He says so, and I really believe him. According to his point of view, we’d be better off under the domination of Baridu than in our present parlous state. Claims they would teach us how to live in harmony; to produce with a minimum of labor ample supplies both for them and for ourselves.”
“Damn it!” exploded Schley. “There’s something in that, my boy. It sounds wrong and detestable—but is it? I was a bit ashamed of our own kind when he started to pick things apart. A lot of liberty there is in most of Europe and Asia today. Men slaughtered by the millions, women and children dying of hunger, ruthless dictatorships everywhere. Perhaps Palooka is right.”
Floyd said grimly, harshly: “No, be is not. Liberty—the sense and dignity of freedom—is worth more than bread and butter, than long life and slothful ease. It is born of danger and suffering, but it lifts us above the brute. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Earth is in travail just now, yet there is always the chance to win back to peace and decency and the triumph of the human mind. Under the rule of Baridu, no matter how kindly or well-intentioned, we shall be condemned forever to a state of hopeless slavery from which it will be impossible to emerge.”
Schley looked blank. “But what can we do? Palooka laughs at our weapons. In a short while he will have completed his survey. We know the results already. He is delighted with our planet. In fact, he should have returned to Jupiter already if it weren’t for his essential laziness. He is enjoying himself so much he keeps on putting off the day of departure. But sooner or later he will go, and then—”
“He will return with his whole race to claim our planet as their own,” Floyd finished. “I wish to God I knew how to stop him!”
Meanwhile Palooka was enjoying himself thoroughly. Little, unexpected things to which Earthians were wholly indifferent, gave him the keenest pleasure. The soft green of grass, the warmth of the overhead sun, the bright, clear sparkle of snow crystals, the paintings of El Greco, the Adagio of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—and above all, the sense of release from gravitational pull—these things all filled him with unutterable delight.
“Baridu,” he told his Earthian friends, “is a gloomy place in comparison. Our vegetation is a dull red brown; our climate is a dead uniformity of ceaseless warmth; and we are not an artistic race.”
He leaped high in the air and kicked his feet for the sheer joy of it. His muscles, inured to the tremendous pull of Jupiter, sent him soaring over their astonished heads. He seemed shod with Seven League boots when he went for a walk. They had to accompany him in an automobile to keep on even terms.
His antics were funny; his cavorting leaps and his curving legs churning vigorously in the air were irresistibly humorous. But somehow, neither Floyd nor Dr. Schley could laugh. Each spasm of delight for the good things of Earth meant but another driving nail in the coffin of Earth’s liberties.
At first the governments had been inclined to scoff at his claims, but the tests with guns and bombs aroused them at length to the seriousness of the situation. Committees of scientists, of high officials of government, met in solemn conclave with the Jovian. Speeches were made to him, alternately cajoling and threatening.
He listened to both cajoleries and threats with the same eternal good humor. And to all arguments he interposed the same impregnable retorts. Firstly, the race of Baridu would be better off on Earth; secondly, the race of Earth would be better off under their genial rule than in its present state.
He made pointed references to the war in China, the holocaust in Spain. He spoke of conditions as he had observed them in Italy and Germany; he politely called England’s attention to India; he merely mentioned to the Russian representative the number of political executions that had taken place in that country the previous year. He gently reminded the Americans of the millions on relief, the slums of their great cities, and the distress of the sh
are-croppers in the South.
“I am sure, my friends,” he would invariably murmur at the end, “you would all be infinitely happier under our benign rule.”
The news of these convocations made headlines in that part of the world’s press which was still free, and filtered in by subterranean channels to the people of those countries where the press was forbidden to publish such subversive accounts.
For, without question, the arguments of this solitary alien invader were subversive.
The oppressed people of many lands, the underprivileged everywhere, began to murmur. There was much truth in what this Jovian said, they whispered among themselves. He promised them but little work, and a plentiful supply of the world’s goods. What more could they wish? Liberty? Freedom to govern themselves? Bah! Empty, meaningless words! A pitiful mockery to those who writhed in the grip of dictatorships. Slogans that did not fill the stomachs of those who lived in the depression-clouded democracies.
The murmurs and whispers grew in volume; they became threatening shouts. The rulers of Earth quaked in their shoes. Ineradicable hatred filled them for the bland, genial Jovian who was responsible. The dictators, distant from the scene, believed the whole thing to be a frameup. They accused the democracies of having put up a charlatan to overthrow their governments. Officially, they decried his pretense to Jovian parentage. He was but a sideshow freak, they sneered; a monster with agile muscles. Even his silly name was but the comic invention of American humor. The whole affair was ridiculous, they declared. And meanwhile they suppressed with ruthless venom the first rustlings of revolt in their own realms.
One day, about two months after he had appeared in a New York subway train, Palooka bounded into the laboratory of Dr. Schley. Floyd Garrett had just preceded him. There was much of painful import he wanted to discuss. But the Jovian gave him no chance. His round, dark face with its glowing headlight of a nose was wreathed in grins. Throaty chuckles bubbled out from toothless mouth, came unimpeded through the translation-screen.
“Good news, my friends,” he cried “Good news!”
Dr. Schley looked up quickly from the feed line he was tightening. Floyd Garrett pivoted around. A strange feeling of alarm clutched at his heart. “What,” he demanded, “do you call good news?”
“I have received a message from the Council of Baridu. They were finally able to locate me on their search-beams. They wish me to return immediately and report.”
Something whirred within Floyd; stopped. He heard as from a great distance Schley’s gasp of dismay.
“And you are going?” he asked in a choked voice. Carefully, slowly, his hand slid into his pocket.
Palooka surveyed him in round-eyed surprise. “Why, of course!” he exclaimed. “My mission is ended.”
It was hard, what Floyd was going to do. In spite of everything, he had developed in these two short months a considerable fondness for the merry Jovian. Yet it had to be done. The liberty of Earth depended on it. He had thought it out carefully during long hours of sleepless tossing. If he could catch the Jovian off guard—
His hand whipped out suddenly. He shot from the hip, emptying his automatic full in the face of the alien. Palooka would have no time to adjust his defensive screen—
The steel bullets bounced back as though they were made of rubber. Great red sparks flew outward, caught them on the rebound, disintegrated them into little puffs of smoke.
The gun dropped from Floyd’s fingers. He was suddenly weary. His last attempt to save Earth had failed. Pale, composed, he faced the Jovian. Without doubt the man from another planet, enraged at this sudden attempt upon his life, would blast him down. Well, it did not matter! Nothing mattered any more!
For once the eternal grin deserted Palooka’s face. The scarlet vibrations gradually died away. He looked inscrutably at Floyd, at Dr. Schley. For a long moment no one spoke.
Floyd said quietly: “Go on, Palooka, kill me! What are you waiting for? I tried to kill you.”
Slowly the Jovian raised his hand. Floyd braced himself against inevitable death. Dr. Schley cried out sharply. Then the hand dropped as slowly.
“I won’t kill you,” the man from Jupiter replied in toneless accents. “You both may go. I require this laboratory to set up my return apparatus.”
“You might as well,” Floyd cried passionately. “I’d rather die than live a slave to you and your kind, no matter how benevolent your rule. Take warning, Palooka, and put an end to me. Once I go out, I’ll rouse the world to prevent your ever leaving this planet. We’ll blast you out of existence if we can.”
The Jovian’s gaze was inscrutable. “Go!” he repeated.
Slowly, unwillingly, they went out.
The news they flung around the world brought sudden realization to millions who had secretly believed the whole episode to be a gigantic hoax. A wave of hysteria swept the peoples. The American government acted promptly. Troops were rushed to the laboratory of Dr. Schley, armed with the latest deathdealing equipment. Scientists, under the leadership of the dispossessed physicist, went into huddles and evolved strange new electrical barrages.
But the isolated laboratory, standing on a little knoll outside the city of Washington, was impregnable.
It was completely inclosed in a transparent, tenuous play of light. Bombing squadrons roared overhead, dropping tons of detonite; great tanks crashed in vain against those immaterial surfaces; thousands of shells described screaming arcs through the flaming atmosphere. The fragile building remained intact, while Palooka could be seen through the unshattered windows calmly engaged in erecting a curious platform ringed in by shining tubular columns of steel.
The secretary of war, who had taken personal charge of operations, groaned in despair. “There is nothing we can do to stop him,” he said bitterly.
“Yes, there is,” Floyd snapped back. “We can rouse the peoples of the world to a sense of their future degradation. We can teach them to prefer death to slavery, now or hereafter. Let them descend upon this plain by the millions; let them prove to Palooka that they will die rather than lift a finger in toil for a master Jovian race; let them swear to lay Earth waste from end to end in one vast holocaust; and Palooka will see that the game is not worth the candle.”
The secretary of war shook his head. “You can never rouse them to that extent, Garrett,” he said. “Half of Earth’s billions today live under dictatorships, under conditions far worse than any they might expect from the Jovians. They never fought for their freedom before.”
“They will now,” Floyd promised. “Their present slavery was sugar-coated with words; their future is a stark reality that even the most befuddled intellect can grasp.”
His insistence won. The troops were called off. Only a strong guard remained to surround the laboratory; where, day by day, with strange slowness, the Jovian could be seen pottering about his queer apparatus.
The air waves were opened to Floyd. His winged, passionate words hurtled out on a hundred different wave lengths. Interpreters translated them immediately into all the languages and dialects of humankind.
His speeches were fiery to the point. “An alien race intends to make you slaves,” he thundered. “You are alarmed, hysterical over the prospect. But you are slaves even now—slaves to the few who rule you with iron fists, slaves to your own selfishness and stupidity that do not permit you to enjoy in peace and plenty the abundant fruits of the earth. Show now that you are men, worthy of freedom—yes, ready to die for it, if need be—and perhaps we can still overwhelm the Jovian and prevent his return.”
The dictators, the warlords of Europe and Asia, screamed out their wrath. Now more than ever, they were convinced that the whole affair was a plot to stir up revolution among their subjects. They tried to jam the air in order to prevent the subversive words from being heard, but the skill and resourcefulness of the American technicians battered down all interference.
Then they declared war upon the United States.
But their people
had heard the propaganda. They mobilized with suspicious placidity. They obediently received their weapons. Then, in a single resistless wave, they flowed over their oppressors, obliterated them from view. Revolutionary governments, based on democratic principles, were hastily formed. That need to arm an army that might use those arms to revolt had ever menaced dictatorship.
“We are ready,” they cried across the oceans. “Lead us against the Jovian. We are not afraid to die.”
Night and day, by ship, by plane, by submarine, by every manner and mode of conveyance, millions of armed men, of a myriad races, converged on Washington. In all their diverse eyes, once separated by mutual hatreds, there now gleamed a common mighty determination. Liberty, the brotherhood of Earth, were mere words no longer. They were realities that no alien, no matter how mighty in science and superior knowledge, could take away.
In another week, Washington and the vast tidal plains of the Potomac seethed with a resistless horde. A hundred million men chanted in unison: “We will die rather than yield to the alien.”
And still Palooka could be seen by the watchful guards going calmly about his work, without haste, without seeming heed of the mighty events that were shaking the world outside to its very foundations.
“I can’t understand him,” declared Dr. Schley, puzzled. “He seems to be making little or no progress with that apparatus he is erecting. I’m only a rank amateur in science compared to him, and possessed of one tenth his physical strength, yet I could have had the whole thing assembled a week ago.”
“Whatever the reason,” Floyd retorted grimly, “it’s giving us our last chance. If necessary, we’ll throw millions of men against his power barricade. They’ll die, yes; but in the dying they’ll pave the way for the living to break through. I’m positive Palooka can’t control unlimited energy. Sooner or later his supply must become exhausted.”
Dr. Clyde turned from the window of their temporary headquarters. It commanded a view of his old laboratory. “It is too late,” he said dully. “Palooka has completed his quanta disintegrator. He is already taking his position between the steel columns.”
When The Future Dies Page 22