Complete Short Fiction, page 149
Or simply learn how to reverse it!
Shakily, he forced the hope out of his mind. Thirty feet long, he estimated, twelve high and eighteen wide. Big enough for almost anything except a locomotive.
He walked along the platform, and paused finally where it twisted around the edge that overlooked the abyss. The distance that stretched below shocked him. His body did not succumb easily to dizziness, but it wasn’t necessary to take the risk merely to get a down look at the mouth of the machine.
He drew back. He faced Big Oaf who had been sitting watching him with expressionless eyes.
“How do you get into the stockade?” Pendrake asked.
“There’s a door at the other side.”
There was. Padlocked. Big Oaf fumbled down into the fur that was strapped around his great belly, and produced a key. As the creature swung open the heavy door, Pendrake extended his hand.
“How about letting me have the lock? I don’t think I could climb up those walls if I happened to get left inside.”
He spoke deliberately. He had done a lot of thinking of what his face-to-face policy to Big Oaf should be; and it seemed even now in the speaking that open distrust expressed without rancor was psychologically correct.
Big Oaf grimaced. “That place ain’t fer you. I built it strong and high like that so nobody nor nuthin’ could come through from Earth and catch me by surprise.”
“Nevertheless,” Pendrake insisted, “I wouldn’t be able to concentrate properly if I had even the feeling that maybe—”
Big Oaf grunted. “Look,” he said, “maybe you’d like to lock me in.”
Pendrake pointed. “See that hill over there, about a hundred yards?”
“Yaah?”
“Throw it over there?”
Big Oaf stared at him surlily, then he cursed. “Like hell! Suppose you got somebody over there to pick her up, and lock us both in? Then they put an arrow in me, and let you out.”
In spite of his tenseness, Pendrake smiled. “You’re one ahead of me,” he confessed.
He frowned finally. It wasn’t that he had any real fear of Big Oaf at this stage. The man didn’t have to use trickery, not yet. And it might be a good idea, now that his protest had been made, to let the beast win. Not too fast, though.
“Ever leave anybody in there?” he asked.
The squat man hesitated. “Yaah,” he said. “Two funny-lookin’ guys all dressed up in metal. They had a damn queer gun, all kinds of fine wires on it, and the whole thing shining with a blue light.
“I used to have a scar on my shoulder where they burned me with it. I was scared stiff they’d burn down the stockade, but I guess it didn’t work on wood.”
He sighed hoarsely with regret. “I’d sure like to have had that gun. But they took it with ’em when they jumped over the cliff.”
Big Oaf explained: “There’s another door that opens onto the cliff side. I opened it fer ’em, when they went mad. All this,” he finished, “was long ago, maybe half the time that I was here.”
Human beings with heat guns and metal suits five hundred thousand years ago—locked up with the machine for weeks. He tried to picture them caught in this towering horror of a cage, with an ape thing looking down at them.
The picture grew so vivid that, for a moment, he could almost see the men staggering from thirst and hunger and insanity leaping down to the merciful death below.
The vastness of the elapsed time—and a crowding thought—abruptly dimmed the horrible vision. The interrupting thought grew enormous. He said at last, wearily:
“You must be a sap, Big Oaf. If men who could make and understand guns like that, couldn’t make the machine reverse itself, how do you expect me to? In their deadly desperation, they must have tried everything.”
“Huh!” said Big Oaf. Then he cursed his comprehension of the defeat that was here.
All Pendrake said was: “I’ll have a look, anyway.”
But there was nothing. The trouble was, the machine had no knobs or dials, or any levers. It lay hard on the rock, an expanse of smooth metal, with a deep indentation where it functioned.
The indentation was a regular cave. Pendrake walked in without much hope, and his pessimism was justified. The active wall was pierced with tens of thousands, millions of tiny, needle-sized holes.
He took out his lighter, and, holding the flickering flame in front of his master eye, tried to peer through the flame into one of the holes. Something glittered back at him. Shrugging, Pendrake came out of the chamber.
“The control room must be elsewhere,” he said with decision. “In fact it has to be. There must be some kind of television control board from which they aim the machine.”
He stood, studying the rock. “Or perhaps we ought to try our hand at drilling under the machine. Might be some connecting cables.” He glanced up at Big Oaf. “You said something about other machines—” He left the question hanging. A scowl was gathering on the beast man’s hairy face. Big Oaf said curtly:
“You ain’t seein’ no other machines till we make a deal. And just in case you figger you got lots of time to lie around here gettin’ all set with Devlin to knock me off my perch—that expedition is leavin’ tomorrow far some more women.
“I wasn’t gonna send it till t’other one got back, but I gotta hunch it’s time we start pullin’ down the caves between us and them Germans. You can go or not, any way it suits your play, but you better make up your mind fast. Now, come on, let’s get back to town.”
There was a tight silence between them as they walked. Pendrake’s mind was seething. So Big Oaf was forcing issues, taking no chances.
He studied the waddling creature out of the corner of His eye, trying to read in the heavy, brutish countenance something of the purpose behind it. But impassivity was a norm of that facial structure. Only the implacable physical strength of the man stabbed forth in every movement, every writhing muscle.
Pendrake said finally: “How do you get up to the surface? There’s no air or warmth up there, is there?” He added before Big Oaf could speak: “What kind of quarters have the Germans made for themselves?”
A minute dragged. He thought:
“He’s not going to answer.” But abruptly the other grunted:
“It’s the lighted passages that’s warm and got air in ’em. A whole bunch of ’em got right to the surface, some of ’em hidden damn smart by doors that look like rock or dirt. That’s how we fooled the Germans so far. We just rush out of a new door and—”
A shout cut off his words. A man burst over the near hill, and ran toward them. Pendrake recognized him as a Big Oaf hanger-on. The fellow came up breathing hard.
“They’re back with women. The men are going wild.”
“They’d better watch out!” Big Oaf growled. “They know what they’ll get if they touch any of ’em before I see ’em.”
There were about thirty women huddled, and the motley throng gathered around them; set up a wild yelling as Big Oaf arrived; lusting voices squealed with demand and counterdemand:
“I’ve only got one wife; I got a right to another.”
“It’s my turn.”
“Big Oaf, you gotta.”
“I’ve earned—”
“Shurrup !”
The silence was instantaneous and deafening, and was broken finally by a bull-necked man who came up to Big Oaf and said:
“I guess that’s the last woman rustlin’ we do, boss. Those blankety-blank Germans were ready for us, and they seem to have explored all the cave approaches to their place. They followed us like a bunch of vigilantes, and we escaped only by knocking down that narrow cut-off at—”
“I know the one. How many dead?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Big Oaf was silent for a moment, frowning, finally: “Well, let’s get to the pickin’. I’m takin’ one for myself and—”
“Jim!”
Pendrake had been listening grimly to the conversation. Now, he spun on his heel, and stared wildly at a lithely built young woman who was running toward him, crying as she ran. She flung herself into his infolding arm, and lay against him in a dead faint.
Over her limp, dark head, Pendrake gazed straight into Big Oaf’s grinning face.
“Somebody you know?” the monster smirked.
“My wife!” Pendrake said; and there was a terrible sinking sensation in him. He found himself looking around for Devlin, but the man didn’t seem to be in the crowd. “The Germans—”
He was vaguely aware as he talked that Big Oaf was looking beyond him. Now, suddenly, the hideous head nodded; simultaneously, a warning voice yelled: “Watch out!”
Pendrake came to, his head aching, and stared dizzily up at the heavy, anxious face of Devlin.
“What happened?” he muttered; and then in a surge of returning consciousness: “Where is she?” Devlin said: “He’s just taken her inside the stockade. Look, Pendrake, we’re all ready to make the attack. Here’s a knife—”
Pendrake grabbed it, and slipped it into his pocket. He said incisively: “Launch the attack when I’ve been inside the stockade about five minutes.”
“But how are you going to get in?” Devlin gasped.
“Don’t worry about that,” Pendrake flung over his shoulder. To the guards he said: “Tell Big Oaf that I’m ready to talk business—” Big Oaf came grinning out of his house. “I thought you’d see sense,” he said—and then he grunted as the knife Pendrake threw buried itself seven inches in his great chest.
He tore the bloody thing out of his flesh, and grimacing, flung it to the ground.
“You get the pit for that,” he said. “I’ll just tie you up and—”
He came forward and—just like that—a chill raced up Pendrake’s back. Monstrous head bent low, animal arms spread out, the abnormal strength of the man showed in all its hideous power. In a single flash of terrible realization, Pendrake’s confidence collapsed before the mighty thought that—
No man born in the last hundred thousand years could begin to have the superhuman strength necessary to defeat this hairy, titanic beast.
VIII.
The whining winds of an early winter started to blow steadily in mid-September. On the thirtieth, snow fell; and nearly all New York State and Pennsylvania awoke on the morning of the first day of October to a world that was white and pure and peaceful.
That same day far, far to the south, Hoskins and Cree Lipton took off from the bulge of Brazil, and headed for Germany via Dakar, Algiers and Vichy.
The converted Hotel Adlon on Unter den Linden, Berlin, was a beehive of United Nations officers. In the great thick-carpeted Red Room on the second floor, the general officer commanding Occupation Forces showed them around:
“Now this,” he said, “is what we call our murder map. And in view of the watch we’ve been keeping for you the past two weeks, this is an amazingly interesting document.” The map was thirty feet long and covered with colored pins—hardly a “document,” Hoskins thought dryly. But he said nothing, simply watched and listened with an anxious will to hear the end result.
“Two weeks ago to the day,” the general said, “we sent out the trucks all over what was formerly occupied Europe with the posters asking for information about the engine; the poster having been worded according to your cabled instructions.” He pulled out a package of cigarettes, offered them to the two men; Hoskins refused with a tiny inclination of his head, and waited impatiently while the others lit up. The officer went on:
“Now, before I tell you the extent and limitations of our success, I think it is necessary to describe briefly the situation that exists in Germany today. As you know, Hitler’s method was to put a party man into every conceivable controlling position in every community.
“Naturally, we deposed all these petty fuehrers, replacing them with the stanchest pre-war democrats we could find. At this point we ran into a difficulty.
“The Nazis had anticipated us. In every district a secret Nazi cell had been built up with a secret leader under whose command were young, stone-hearted men specially trained to commit murder and to defeat all attempts to reconstitute democracy. The leaders we appointed hardly dare to make a move for fear of displeasing these hidden Nazi zone chiefs.
“It will straighten out in time, of course. As the Nazi youth go into their thirties, get married, their zest for danger will fade; and the new, younger generation is being trained our way.
“Nevertheless, political creeds like pretensions to thrones, die hard. And right now these people are committing about a thousand murders a week in Germany itself; about eight hundred more in the rest of Europe.”
“How does this affect the finding of information about the engine and about the seven missing scientists whose bodies and whose families we couldn’t find in the U. S. A.?” asked the heavy-jawed Lipton.
“We made a murder graph of every district in Europe,” was the reply, “and as the appeal for information spread, watched day by day for any upswing in murders, the assumption being that great precautions would be taken by the Nazis in districts where information existed.”
He faced the two men, a grim smile on his face.
“I report accordingly with mixed feelings, that the number of murders in two widely separated territories, one in Hohnstein in Saxony, the other in the town of Latzky, Bulgaria, increased out of all normal proportion.”
“Bulgaria?” It was Lipton, his tone puzzled.
Hoskins said quickly: “After all, our closest watch has always been on Germany proper. They must have found it easier to set up interplanetary bases among certain sympathetic people.”
The general looked at him from shrewd brown eyes.
“Exactly. We’ve made a very careful, cautious survey of those two districts. On the third day of our search we found a luxuriously furnished mine shaft at Hohnstein that evidently had been hastily abandoned.
“Questioning among townsmen,” the officer went on, “elicited the information that a strange, zeppelin-like machine had been seen at night in the vicinity of the abandoned shaft.”
“Good Heaven!”
Hoskins was scarcely aware that he had uttered the exclamation. He realized after a blank moment that he had been listening to the general with a vague impatience, and anxiety to have an end of words and to get actively on with the search. And now—
It was all done. The search was over; or almost over. All preliminaries were successfully concluded.
“Sir,” he said warmly, “you are a remarkable man.”
“Let me finish,” the officer smiled broadly. “I’m not through yet.”
He went on in a precise tone: “We have received altogether three—out of thousands—letters that are unmistakably genuine and relevant. The third, and most important, from a Frau Kreigmeier, wife of the man who has been Nazi party leader in Latzky for three years, arrived last night when I had already received word that you were on your way.
“Gentlemen”—his voice was quiet but confident—“by the end of the week you will have all the information that is still available on this continent.
“Naturally,” he finished, and his careful phrasing of his promise had already brought the first shock to Hoskins, “the Nazis will have made every effort to insure that nothing vital is available. Nevertheless—”
By noon of October 4th they had the bodies. Seven older men, nine women, two girls and twelve youths lay side by side on the cold ground. Silently, they were loaded onto a line of hearses, and started on the journey to the coast from whence they would be shipped to America for more fitting burial.
After the hearses had disappeared down the road, Hoskins stood with the others in the little clump of bushes where they had been led by the plump husband of Frau Kreigmeier. A cold north wind was blowing, and the men in the armored cars that had escorted them were beating their hands together for warmth.
In spite of the cold, Hoskins noted ferociously, Herr Kreigmeier was sweating profusely. “If ever a man deserved the Shaposhenko punishment—” he thought.
But they had promised; the posters had promised—money, safe removal to any second-degree United Nations Mandate, and unlimited police protection.
The general came up: “The shovel men will finish up here,” he said. “Let’s go. I crave the warmth of a hotel room. You can mull over the successes and”—he looked quickly at Hoskins—“the failures.”
There wasn’t much. Silently, Hoskins sat in his chair before a roaring grate fire, and reread the translation of the single note they had resurrected:
Movement of anything requires a reverse movement, a cancellation, a balancing. A body moving between two points in space uses energy, which is another word for—reverse movement.
The science of reverse movement involves in its greatest functions a relationship between the microscomos and the macrocosmos, between the infinitely small and the infinitely large. When a balance is established between two forces of the macrocosmos, one loses what the other gains. Engines puff noisily, organic creatures laboriously perform their duties. Life seems infinitely hard.
However, when a reverse movement is created in the microscomos for a movement occurring in the macrocosmos, then the ultimate in energy relations is obtained. There is also a complete balancing result; the law that movement is equal to reverse movement holds as rigidly as before—
“I’d hate,” said Hoskins wearily, “to ask any patent office to grant a patent on that. I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the engine trail; and that means my hope for quick action that would rescue Pendrake and his wife is gone. The rest of this stuff”—he flicked the typewritten sheets—“consists of notes on elementary radium reactions. There’s a big gap somewhere, and I guess it’s the hole in the empty sack we’re holding.”
He looked up. “Anything new from Hohnstein, Saxony, the other murder center?”
“Nothing,” said Cree Lipton. “It was obviously only one of their ports of call for spaceships, hastily evacuated during our search. They’ve got their main equipment, all their secrets, on Mars or Venus—”
