When The Future Dies

by Nat Schachner

  Behind them blazed the steady trail of rocket flame, spreading fanwise into space. The stout metal struts shook and vibrated and complained at the punishment they were taking.

  But Neal kept his eye glued to the scanner for sight of the runaway Thunderbolt. They flung past the sphere of Moon attraction and Earth swung slowly underneath, and the Moon described a tedious arc to the zenith, but still the Thunderbolt was too far ahead for sight.

  "Look," Shep said hopefully. "I just thought of it. If both control stations were wrecked, wouldn't the force beam that holds the Thunderbolt to her destination disappear with it? That would mean that the slightest deviation would send the runaway smacking into some other part of Earth." A small grin illuminated his wan face. "Maybe she might act like a museum boomerang and let the Northeast Union have it kerplunk."

  "Sorry, Shep, it won't happen. She'll crash at Port New York just the same. You forget a very simple principle. Though the power's cut off, there remains a tremendous magnetic lag. A thing by the name of hysteresis, in case you've forgotten. On the power we were using, the beam can last for days. The only thing that happened with the destruction of the controls is that there's no way of cushioning its fall with directive nose rockets."

  "Damn!" muttered Shep, and fell silent again.

  But a moment later he broke out once more. "Maybe you expect to do it, Neal; but couldn't we send a shell crashing into her when we overhaul her, and explode her in space?"

  Neal looked at his assistant queerly. "You know what that would mean, don't you?"

  Shep reddened with embarrassment. "Yes," he admitted. Then, almost belligerently: "After all, it's two lives against the whole union. I know I shouldn't have talked. I'd have felt a whole lot better if you had stayed back oh the Moon."

  "You old son!" Neal told him affectionately. "I knew I could count on you. Sure, I was thinking of that. But it's too late now. By the time we overtake the Thunderbolt she'll be so close to Earth that the explosion of the dust would sear the face of the union as though the Sun had plopped right down on it."

  "Oh-h-h!" Again Shep subsided into glum silence.

  They roared on, jets blasting, combining gravity fall with maximum acceleration. The pressure on them grew almost unbearable. The lifting of an arm was a torture. Neal grew cold with fear. Even if the Flying Meteor didn't shake herself apart, they'd catch up with the cargo boat too late. Already Earth was a vast panorama beneath and spreading out with frightening rapidity.

  "There she is!" yelled Shep suddenly. Neal tried to turn his head fast toward the scanner and almost wrenched it off.

  There she was, certainly.

  A distant, ovoid body, glittering with reflected Sun, falling fast toward the looming Earth.

  "Can we make it?" husked Shep.

  Neal forced his lead-heavy fingers to the calculators. Slowly the integrations moved. He fetched a deep, painful breath. "She's 4,500 miles ahead of us and about 60,000 miles from Earth. At her present rate of speed she's due to smack in about half an hour." His fingers held the acceleration lever over to the extreme right. "We'll catch up in eight minutes."

  "And then?"

  Neal shook his head wearily. "I don't know," he confessed with tragic despair. "My brains logy with the double gravity. I haven't been able to think of a single thing yet."

  Shep groaned. "Look!" he exclaimed. "There are battle liners rising out of Port New York. A dozen of them! By the ten moons of Neptune, I think they're going to blast the Thunderbolt."

  Neal's face grew gray. "Quick, Shep, get them on the visor! Tell them for God's sake not to try it. They'll rip the whole face of the Earth to pieces."

  Shep's hand moved like a slow-motion stereo to the switch, stopped halfway. Excitement blazed suddenly in his eyes. "Neal! Neal!" he almost screamed. "We've been fools! They're right and we're wrong. We forgot completely."

  "What?"

  "That the dust won't explode unless there's oxygen. There's no air in space, and the Thunderbolt is a practical vacuum. When they smash her up, all that'll happen is that the dust spatters out into space, harmless."

  "Yeah! And then drift down to Earth, contact with Earth's stratosphere—and then what?"

  Shep collapsed. The luster died in his eyes. "I might have known you'd have thought of it already. Hereafter I'll keep my brilliant ideas to myself."

  The grim, gray warships were coming up fast as Shep spat out his warning over the screen. "But, damn it, man!" exploded Squadron Commander Dakin of the flagship, Abraham Lincoln. "We can't just stand back and watch everything go up in smoke."

  "Nothing else to do, sir," Shep reported heavily. "Unless Neal here can—"

  Neal was pacing feverishly up and down the narrow limits of the chamber, picking up pieces of apparatus, studying them with fiercely narrowed eyes, setting them down again with an impatient groan.

  "There must be a way!" he kept on repeating. "There must—"

  He stopped short, stared at a small, shining tube of magneton, mounted on a swinging pivot and looking for all the world like an old-fashioned machine gun. The difference was that its slender arm and solid base were wound with fine strands of spider-thin wires that made a sheath of open mesh about two inches equidistant around the magneton and capable of whirling revolution at the turn of a switch.

  Shep turned anxiously, and Dakin was fixed on the screen. "Got anything?" asked Shep.

  Neal furrowed his scalp with a swift movement of his hand. "Something's beginning to glimmer. Let me think." He was talking half incoherently to himself. "The beam of force ... pure magnetism ... tremendous lag ... hysteresis ... but it's cut off from both bases ... floating in space, so to speak."

  "What about it?" demanded Dakin from his uprushing flagship.

  Neal looked vacantly at the pale, drawn features of the space fighter. His brain was moving furiously.

  "Means it shouldn't take much power to move it. If the beam moves, the Thunderbolt goes with it."

  Shep whooped. "You mean you can do it?"

  "I can try. But not what you think. I couldn't possibly shunt it out into space."

  "Oh!" groaned Dakin. "You mean you might be able to shunt it onto some other land." His voice hardened. "Sorry, Cass. As commander of the space fleet of the North American Union, I'll have to forbid that. The Council of Experts will never permit the sacrifice of millions of innocent lives to save our own."

  "Wasn't thinking of that," snapped Neal. "Shut up a moment; I'm groping around."

  Dakin shut up. Neal Cass had a certain reputation.

  "Let's see now. The floating force beam's at right angles to the magnetic lines of force of the Earth, The lines run north and south through the magnetic poles. A regular mesh work. The dangling end of the beam is in contact. Suppose ... suppose—"

  Shep kept his eyes glued straight ahead on the falling Thunderbolt. They were overhauling it fast, but Earth was barely 40,000 miles below. Soon it would be too late to do any thing.

  Neal's eyes cleared. He pounded balled fist into open palm. "I've got it!" he shouted.

  "Thank God!" breathed Shep. "I knew you would."

  A hopeful yet half-skeptical flicker played over Dakin's tight-drawn countenance. "Then hurry, man! You've barely got twenty minutes to do your stuff."

  Neal was already at the magneton tube, his hands like blurred lightning. He hooked up tubes in series, he attached wires, he plugged the whole thing into the power circuit of their generators, and spun the magneton on its pivots until it pointed at right angles to their line of flight and tangential to the outspread Earth beneath.

  As he worked he spoke rapidly. "It's a gigantic gamble. I haven't time to work the thing out mathematically on the integrator. But this magneton instrument is a refinement on the usual thing. When the power goes on it develops a negative magnetic beam. A sort of hole in space. Along its cylindrical stream of action it clears out of its path every type of electro-magnetic wave, every light wave, even the gravitational warp itself."

&nbs
p; He spun sharply. "What are you dawdling for, Shep? Get going! Blast on every rocket. Pull in front of the Thunderbolt, turn the nose of the Flying Meteor directly down along the force beam. Hurry!"

  Shep gulped, obeyed. He wasn't resentful, though Neal should have known he wasn't a mind reader. Neat's nerves were on the ragged edge, that was all.

  "Hold on to your hat!" he yelled back. "Here we go."

  The ship was no longer a flying meteor; it was a blazing, portentous comet. All space behind was a flame of dazzling spray. The Thunderbolt seemed to reverse its gait, to rush back upon them at an alarming speed.

  They fled past, swerved, barely missing the frantically maneuvering battle liners. Into the stream of the force beam they swung, held. Not more than fifty miles behind, along the same magnetic flow, shot the Thunderbolt.

  Shep drew a deep breath. In fifteen minutes more they'd hit the stratosphere. "Here you are, Neal," he said. "Now what are you going to do?"

  Neal worked on furiously, talking fast. "At the ten-thousand-mile level above Earth, start swinging obliquely, Shep. At one thousand fall into a closed-orbit parallel to the equator, and directly along the line of the sixtieth parallel of latitude. Do you understand?"

  Shep looked blank. "I can follow orders," he grumbled, "but that doesn't mean I understand what you're driving at."

  Neal readjusted the angle of sight of the magneton cylinder, threw the first of the step-up power switches. The tubes began to glow, and the hurtling craft was filled with the humming of innumerable bees.

  "It's simple enough—if it works!" he declared. "I'm starting to cut a negative cylinder of force through space. As the ship swings into an orbit around the Earth, the anti-magnetic stream will follow and form a closed path. It will shear straight through the longitudinal magnetic lines of Earth, so that all around it, completely enveloping the sheath, there will be, practically, a solid wall of incasing magnetic waves.

  "We're now on the Earth-Moon force beam. The dangling end, which stops at ten thousand miles above Port New York, will contact our negative, or antimagnetic hole. Instead of continuing to buck the strong resistance of the Earth's magnetic lines, it will slip easily into the magnetic vacuum."

  "And follow us into a closed orbit around Earth," Shep broke in excitedly. "Which means that the Thunderbolt will follow, too, like a flying chip in the wake of a cyclone."

  "Exactly."

  "By the shining rings of Saturn!" crowed Shep. "I knew you'd get it. But why must I place her along the sixtieth parallel?"

  Neal grinned, said quickly: "Start angling, Shep. We're hitting the ten-thousand-mile level."

  Shep's stubby fingers raced over the controls. Neal caught hold of a strap, clung grimly against the side sway. Earth reeled beneath them. The magneton glowed with a curious luster. The tubes whined with bluish fires.

  Neal's eyes were riveted on the rear screen, where the Thunderbolt made a shining, hurtling ovoid.

  It had not swerved from its original path!

  Shep froze at the controls, his face a tragic mask.

  "Your scheme didn't work," he said.

  But even as he spoke, the Thunderbolt began to turn. Slowly at first; then with increasing speed. Following the angling path of the Flying Meteor, following like an obedient duckling in the wake of its watchful mother.

  Neal expelled his bursting lungs with a gusty whoosh. He had not even known that the taut muscles of his throat had withheld all breathing.

  "You spoke too soon, Shep." Strange how calm his voice was, now that victory perched in the offing. "Don't forget—at one thousand miles, swing into a closed orbit on the sixtieth parallel."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Shep grinned delightedly.

  On the visor screen were crowding faces. A dozen bewildered countenances of the captains of the battle fleet, crowding each other, masking, obliterating, clamoring, all discipline or ordered precedence forgotten.

  Space Commander Dakin's sharp-visaged face ducked from side to side to gain clear vision. "By God, Cass!" he swore. "You've done it! You've saved the union! But why the sixtieth parallel?"

  "You'll see," Neal retorted with a cryptic smile.. To Shep he said: "Got her set properly?"

  "Right!"

  Shep was a skillful pilot. Earth was perilously near, a great, panoramic, swift-rushing ball beneath. Continents fled past like blurs, oceans tumbled green and blue. And still they dived in a long, straightening slant. Behind them rushed the Thunderbolt, and after it, in disciplined array, flung the battle fleet of the union.

  "Now!" said Neal sharply.

  Shep pointed slightly toward the north pole, made a wide arc, and pushed the Flying Meteor into an orbit. Around and around the Earth they swung, once, twice, three times, turning from west to east with the turning globe underneath. North Europe, North Asia, Atlantic, Canada.

  "I want you," said Neal slowly, "to slacken speed so that we revolve in the same period of revolution as Earth. Come to a relative position directly over Bering Strait."

  Shep looked startled. "Oh!" he gasped, and obeyed.

  Meanwhile Neal swung a parabolic repeller ray on the oncoming Thunderbolt. As the Flying Meteor slowed, the cargo boat with its load of Tycho dust slowed also under the impact of the ray.

  Fifty miles behind, motionless with respect to them, motionless with respect to the capital city of the Northeast Asiatic Union. The Bering Straits was a thin, shining hairline beneath, the vast stretch of land on either side blinked back at them.

  The Thunderbolt's channel of force, ruptured at both ends by the destruction of the two plants on Earth and Moon, had reknit in the tunnel Neal had carved out of Earth's magnetic field for it. Firmly held in that channel, revolving about Earth at such a speed and at such a distance as to be in a stable, twenty-four-hour orbit, the Thunderbolt would seemingly hang permanently motionless just where it was.

  Magically the visor screen cleared of its crowding faces. Only Dakin's remained.

  "I know now what you have in mind, Cass," he said harshly. "There's no doubt they deserve it. They wanted to wipe us out with the detonation of that load of dust. It's poetic justice. But I can't permit you to do it. Not until I communicate with Washington."

  "I had no such intention, Commander Dakin," Neal quietly replied. "Trust me just this little further. Put one of your scout ships in position at a safe distance, but within firing range. Have her train all her armament on the Thunderbolt and keep it fixed. Meanwhile, I'll call Washington."

  Dakin hesitated, then saluted briefly. "All right, Cass. I'll take your word for it."

  He rapped out orders and a ship dissociated itself from the main fleet, raced upward and took its position.

  Neal put in his call.

  William Pruyn, hawk-faced, gaunt, with imperious air tempered now by grave anxiety, flashed on the screen.

  "Great heavens, Cass!" he greeted abruptly. "We don't know what it's all about, but you seem to have saved us all from a horrible disaster. Explain, man; explain!"

  Neal saluted. "The Northeast Asiatic Union plotted to destroy our union, sir," he said. "The smash of the Thunderbolt would have been their opening gun."

  Pruyn said "Ah-h-h!" His face grew hard as granite. "No wonder their ambassador has been clamoring for an audience."

  "Is he with you now?"

  "In the anteroom. I was just admitting him when you called."

  "Please ask him in, sir. And ... uh ... may I be permitted to speak for you to him?"

  Pruyn permitted himself a rare smile. "You seem to have done pretty well so far, young man. You might as well continue."

  "Thank you, sir."

  The olive-tinted ambassador hurried into the room, stared impassively at the screen. All his race were well schooled against betraying emotions.

  Neal wasted no verbiage. "You know," he started abruptly, "that your plans have miscarried."

  The ambassador's face did not change. "I do not know," he said politely.

  "Then look." Neal switched the rear s
creen in to contact with the main visor.

  The ambassador's eyes took in the picture but betrayed nothing.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "The Thunderbolt that you expected to explode with its cargo on Port New York is now motionless over Ir-tuan, the capital city of your country. It stays there, Mr. Ambassador. I've placed it into a closed orbit that will occupy that position forever. Forever, do you understand?"

  The Northeasterner looked contemptuous. "We have a powerful fleet," he said softly. "At a word from our Great Lord it will rise up and wipe out your puny squadron. Then it will take in tow your Thunderbolt—straight for your country."

  Neal laughed. "You sure give us little credit for intelligence. At this moment a scout cruiser lies overhead, all guns trained on the cargo boat. At the slightest sign of hostility on your part, she blasts her with shells. The Thunderbolt explodes, the dust falls into the stratosphere, and—well, you know the rest. You thought of it before I did."

  The envoy did not change his smile. "How many years can your guardian cruiser stay in position?"

  "Not long," Neal retorted. "But long enough for me to board the Thunderbolt and place a certain little mechanism of my invention into its hold. It is so delicate that the slightest tampering with the ship, the slightest shift from its present orbit, and it detonates the works. Laugh that off."

  The ambassador began to sweat. "What do you want?"

  "Nothing! I'm keeping the dust over your heads as a sort of peace insurance. As long as you fellows watch your steps and mind your own business, the Thunderbolt is harmless. If you make the slightest wrong move, though, I'm having a long-range finder set up in our own country, tuned to the wave length of the detonator within the ship. You act out of turn and, strangely enough, the ship explodes. What's your answer?"

  The ambassador bowed. He was dignified in defeat. "I shall communicate with the Great Lord and explain the situation. I am certain he will follow my advice. Our union has no intention of troubling the peaceful waters of Earth."

  "I thought as much," grinned Neal. He stared affectionately at the shining, ovoid surface of the Thunderbolt. "A little dust sure goes a long way."