Complete Short Fiction, page 33
Jommy Cross shrugged impatiently. There was too much uncertainty in him about the true slans to permit him to discuss them now when his whole mind must be concentrated on escape. He said:
“My interest is not in this futile, miserable three-cornered war among humans and slans. The important thing is the seven warships that are trailing us at this minute.”
“It’s too bad you found out about them,” the slan woman said quietly. “Now you will spend the time in useless worry and planning. It would have been so much less cruel for you to have considered yourself safe; and then, the very moment you discovered you weren’t, to die!”
“I’m not dead yet!” Jommy Cross said, and impatience was suddenly sharp in his tone. “I have no doubt it is presumptuous of a half-grown slan to assume—as I am beginning to—that there must be a way out of this trap. I have the greatest respect for adult slan intelligence, but do not forget that your people have now suffered several preliminary defeats. Why, for instance, if my destruction is so certain, are those ships waiting? Why wait?”
JOANNA HILLORY was smiling, her fine, strong face relaxed. “You don’t really expect me to answer your questions, do you?”
“Yes.” Jommy Cross smiled, but without humor. He went on in a tight, clipped voice: “You see, I’ve grown somewhat older during the past few hours. Until last night I was really very much of an innocent, with a child’s idealistic outlook on life. For instance, during that first few minutes when we were pointing our guns at each other, you could have destroyed me without resistance on my part. Your splendid appearance reminded me so much of my marvelous mother that I couldn’t have pulled the trigger to save my soul. You delayed, of course, because you wanted to question me, but the opportunity was there. That situation exists no longer.”
The woman’s perfect lips pursed in sudden, frowning thought. “I think I’m beginning to see what you’re getting at.”
“It’s really very simple,” Jommy Cross nodded grimly. “You either answer my questions or I’ll knock you over the head and obtain the information from your unconscious mind.”
The woman began: “How do you know I’ll tell the tru—” She stopped, her gray eyes widening with apprehension as she glared at Jommy. “Do you expect—”
“I do!” He stared ironically into her glowing, hostile eyes. “You will lower your mind shield. Of course, I don’t expect absolutely free access to your brain. That would be like asking you to undress. I have no objection to you controlling your thoughts on a narrow range all around the subject. But your shield must go down—now!”
She sat very still, body rigid, gray eyes agleam with repugnance. Jommy Cross’ gaze was curious.
“I’m amazed,” he said. “What strange complexes develop in minds that have no direct contact with other minds. Is it possible that tendrilless slans have built up little sacred, secret worlds within themselves; and, like any sensitive human being, feel shame at letting outsiders see that world? There is material here for psychological study that may be the basic cause of the slan-versus-slan war. However, let that go.”
He finished: “Just remember that I have already been in your mind. Remember, too, that, according to your own logic, in a few hours what I see will be blotted out forever in a blaze of electric projectors.”
“Of course,” she replied quickly, “that’s true. You will be dead, won’t you? Very well, I’ll answer your questions.”
It was disconcerting. He had expected some uncertainty, a hint of doubt about his fate. But here was only unpleasant sureness, as cold and logical as the death she foresaw for him. Was it possible that there really was no hope?
JOANNA HILLORY’S mind was like a book whose thickness could not be measured, with an almost infinity of pages to examine; an incredibly rich, incredibly complex structure embroidered with the billion billion impressions garnered through the years by an acutely observant intellect.
Jommy Cross caught swift, tantalizing glimpses of her recent experiences. There was, briefly, the picture of an unutterably bleak planet, low-mountained, sandy, frozen, everything frozen—Mars! There were pictures of a gorgeous, glass-inclosed city of great machines digging under a blazing battery of lights. Somewhere it was snowing with a bitter, unearthly fury—and a black spaceship, glittering like a dark jewel in the Sun, was briefly visible through a thick plate-glass window—
The confusion of thoughts cleared as she began to talk. She spoke slowly; and he made no attempt to hurry her, in spite of his conviction that every second counted, that at any minute now death would blast from the sky at his defenseless ship.
Her words and the thoughts that verified them were as bright cut as so many gems, and as fascinating:
The tendrilless slans had known from the moment he started to climb the wall that an interloper was coming. Interested primarily in his purpose, they made no effort to stop him when he could have been destroyed without difficulty. They left several ways open for him to get to the ship, and he had used one of them, although—and here was an unknown, unexpected factor—the particular alarms of that way had not gone off.
The reason the warships were slow in destroying him was because they hesitated to use their searchlights over a continent so densely inhabited. If he should climb high enough or go out to sea, the ship would be quickly destroyed.
On the other hand, if he chose to circle around on the continent, his fuel would waste away in a dozen or so hours, and before that, dawn would come and enable the electric projectors to be used with brief, deadly effect.
“Suppose,” said Jommy Cross, “I should land in the downtown section of a great city? I could very possibly escape among so many houses, buildings and people.”
Joanna Hillory shook her head. “If this ship’s speed falls below two hundred miles per hour, it will be destroyed, regardless of the risk involved, regardless of the fact that they hope to save my life by capturing the ship intact. You can see I’m being very frank with you.”
For a long moment Jommy Cross was silent. He was genuinely convinced, overwhelmed by the totality of the danger. There was nothing clever about the plan; here was simply a crude reliance on big guns and plenty of them.
“All this,” he marveled at last, “for one poor slan, one ship. How mighty the fear must be that prompts so much effort, so much expense, for so little return!”
“We have put the snakes outside our law,” came the cool reply. Her gray eyes glowed with a quiet fire; her mind concentrated on the single track of her words. “Human courts do not release criminals because it will cost more to convict them than the amount of the theft. Besides, what you have stolen is so precious that it would be the greatest disaster in our history if you escaped.”
He felt abruptly impatient. He snapped: “You assume far too readily that the true slans are not already in possession of the antigravity secret. My purpose during the coming years is to analyze the true slans to their hiding place; and I can tell you now that practically everything you’ve told me I shall not use as evidence. The very fact that they are so completely hidden is an indication of their immense resourcefulness.”
Joanna Hillory said: “Our logic is very simple. We have not seen them in rocketships—so they have no rocketships. Even yesterday, in that ridiculous flight to the palace, their craft, while very pretty, was powered by vibration-electric motors, a type of engine we discarded a hundred years ago. Logic, like science, is deduction on the basis of observation, so—”
JOMMY CROSS frowned unhappily. Everything about the true slans was wrong. They were fools and murderers. They had started a stupid, ruthless, fratricidal war against the tendrilless slans. They sneaked around the country, using their diabolical mutation machines on human mothers—and the monstrosities that resulted were destroyed by medical authorities. Mad, purposeless destruction! And it simply didn’t fit!
It didn’t fit with the noble characters of his father and mother; it didn’t fit with his father’s genius, nor with the fact that for six years he himself had lived under the influence of Granny’s squalid mind and remained untouched, unsoiled, and finally, it didn’t fit with the fact that he, a half-grown true slan, had braved a trap he did not even suspect and because of one loophole in their net, one unknown factor, had so far escaped their vengeance.
His atomic gun! The one factor that they still didn’t suspect. It would be useless, of course, against the battle cruisers coasting along in the blackness behind him. It would take a year or more to build a projector with a beam big enough to reach out and tear those ships to pieces. But one thing it could do. What it could touch, its shattering fire would disintegrate into component atoms. And by God, he had the answer. Given time and a little luck—
The glare of a searchlight splashed against his visiplates. Simultaneously, the ship jumped like some toy that had been struck an intolerable blow. Metal squealed, Avails shook, lights blinked; and then, as the sounds of violence died into little menacing whispers, he bounded from the deeps of the chair into which he had been flung, snatched at the rocket activator.
The machine leaped forward in dizzy acceleration. Against the pressure of plunging fury, he reached forward and clicked on the radio.
The battle was on—and unless he could persuade them to desist, the chance to put his one lone plan into action would never come. The rich, vibrant voice of Joanna Hillory echoed the thought that beat in his mind.
“What are you going to do, talk them out of what they plan on doing? Don’t be so silly. If they’ve finally decided to sacrifice me, you don’t think they’ll give your welfare any consideration, do you?”
It sounded as true as the implication of death that went with every curt-cut word of it.
X.
OUTSIDE, the night sky was dark; a sprinkling of stars glittered coldly in the moonless night. There was not the sign of an enemy ship, not a shadow, not a movement against the immensity of turgid, deep, deep-blue ceiling.
Inside—the tense silence was shattered by a hoarse choking cry from the next room. An angry barrage of vituperation followed. Granny was awake.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
Brief silence, and then, abrupt end of anger and mad beginning of fear. Instantly, her terrified thought poured out in frantic flood. Obscene fear curses assailed the air. Granny didn’t want to die. Kill all slans, but not Granny. Granny had money to—
She was drunk. The sleep had allowed the liquor to take control of her again. Jommy Cross shut her thoughts and her voice out of his mind; urgently he spoke into the radio:
“Calling the commander of the warships! Calling the commander! Joanna Hillory is alive. I am willing to release her at dawn, the only condition being that I be allowed to get up into the air again.”
There was silence, then a woman’s quiet voice entered the room: “Joanna, are you there?”
“Yes, Marion.”
“Very well,” the calm voice of the other went on, “we accept on the following conditions: You will inform us an hour before the actual landing where it will be. The point of landing must be at least thirty miles—that is, five minutes allowing for acceleration and deceleration—from the nearest large city. We assume, of course, that you believe you can escape. Very well. You will have two hours more of opportunity. We shall have Joanna Hillory. A fair exchange!”
“I accept,” said Jommy Cross.
“WAIT!” cried Joanna Hillory. But Jommy Cross was too quick for her. The barest second before the word jerked from her lips, his finger flicked off the radio switch.
He whirled on her. “You shouldn’t have put up your mind shield. It was all the warning I needed. But, of course, I had you either way. If you hadn’t put up the shield, I would have caught the thought in your brain.”
His eyes glinted at her suspiciously. “What is this sudden mad passion to sacrifice yourself simply to deny me two hours more of life?”
She was silent; her fine gray eyes were more thoughtful than he had seen them all night. He mocked gently:
“Can it be that you actually grant me the possibility of escape?”
“I’ve been wondering,” she said, “why the alarms back in the spaceship building didn’t warn us of the exact way you approached this ship. There is a factor here that apparently we did not take into account. If you should really escape with this ship—”
“I shall escape,” Jommy Cross said quietly, “and I shall live, in spite of human beings, in spite of Kier Gray and John Petty and the ghoulish crew of murderers that live in the palace. I shall live in spite of the vastness of the tendrilless-slan organization, and their murder intentions—and some day I shall find the true slans. Not now, for no youth can hope to succeed where the tendrilless slans in their thousands have failed. But I shall find them, and on that day—”
He stopped; then, gravely: “Miss Hillory, I want to assure you that neither this nor any other ship will ever be turned against your people.”
“You speak very rashly,” she replied with sudden bitterness. “How can you assure anything in the name of those ruthless creatures who dominate the councils of the snakes?” Jommy Cross gazed down at the woman. There was truth in her words. And yet—
Yet something of the greatness that was to be his came to him in that moment as he sat there in that finely built control room, with its glittering instrument board, the shining visiplates, his body deep in the beautifully constructed chair.
He was his father’s son, heir to the products of his father’s genius. Given time, he would be lord of irresistible power. The soft flame of those thoughts was in his voice as he said:
“MADAM, in all modesty I can say that, of all the slans in the world today, there is none more important than the son of Peter Cross. Wherever I go, my words and my will shall rule. The day that I find the true slans, the war against your people shall end forever. You have said that my escape would be disaster for the tendrilless slans; rather it will be their greatest victory. Some day you and they will realize that.”
“Meantime,” the slan woman smiled grimly, “you have two hours to escape seven heavy cruisers owned by the real rulers of the Earth. What you do not seem to realize is that we actually fear neither human nor snake, that our organization is vast beyond imagination. Every village, every town, every city has its quota of tendrilless slans. We know our power; and one of these days we shall come out into the open, take control and—”
“It would mean war!” Jommy Cross flared.
Her answer was cold. “We’ll smash everything they’ve got within two months.”
“And then what? What about the human beings in that after world? Do you contemplate four billion slaves in perpetuity?”
“We are immeasurably their superiors. Shall we live in endless hiding, endure privation on the colder planets when we long for the green earth and freedom from this eternal fight against nature—and against the men whom you defend so valiantly? We owe them nothing but pain; circumstances force us to repay with interest!”
“You unutterable scoundrels!” said Jommy Cross contemptuously. “The powerful should use their strength to help, not to destroy, the weak.” The woman shrugged. “Well, I’m afraid that in a little while that power must destroy you. The factor that worked in your favor back at the Air Center, when our attitude was the negative one of waiting for events, cannot possibly help you now, when our attitude is the utterly positive one of destroying you with our heaviest weapons. One minute of fire will burn this machine to ashes that will fall to Earth in a fine sprinkling of dust.”
“One minute!” Jommy Cross exclaimed sharply. “They can’t possibly—”
He stopped short. He couldn’t admit that he hadn’t dreamed the time limit would be so short, that now he had to depend on a flimsy psychological hope that the speed of his ship would lull their suspicions. He said harshly:
“Enough of this damn talk. And I’ll have to carry you into the next room. I’ve got to rig up a vise at the inside of the nose of the ship, and I can’t let you see what I put in that vise.”
FOR a bare moment before Jommy Cross landed he saw the lights of the city to the west. Then the rising wall of valley blotted the flashing sea of brilliance from his view. Soft as a thistledown, the rocketship touched the ground and floated there with an unearthly buoyancy as Jommy Cross set the anti-gravity plates at half power. He clicked open the door and then untied the slan woman.
Her electric gun in hand—his own weapon was fastened in the vise he had set up—he watched Joanna Hillory as she poised for a moment in the doorway. Dawn was breaking over the hills to the east; and the light, still a sickly gray, made a queer silhouette of her strong, shapely figure. Without a word, she jumped to the ground below. As he stepped forward to the threshold he could see her head on a level now with the bottom of the doorway, reflecting the flood of light from inside the ship.
Her head turned; and the face that looked up at him was marked by deep, thoughtful lines. She said simply:
“How do you feel?”
He shrugged. “A little shaky, but death seems remote and not applicable to me.”
“It’s more than that,” was the earnest reply. “The nervous system of a slan is an almost impregnable fortress. It cannot really be touched by insanity or ‘nerves’ or fear. When we kill, it is because of policy arrived at through logic; when death approaches our personal lives, we accept the situation, fight to the last in the hope of an unpredictable factor turning up to save us, and finally, reluctantly, give up the ghost, conscious that we have not lived in vain.”
He stared at her curiously, his mind projecting against hers, feeling of the gentle pulsing of overtones, the strange half friendliness that was in her voice and overflowed from her mind. His eyes narrowed. What purpose was forming in her enormously alert, sensitive, completely unsentimental brain? She went on:
