COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 112
"I'm going to let him," Hale said. "You'll keep an eye on these meetings, then? I know they've got a lot of schemes under way, but nothing's near completion yet, is it?"
"They're still blowing off steam. They'll act, but not for a while."
"Spy away, then. I won't move until I have to. I'll wait—that is, unless Sam moves first."
-
Sam moved first.
As usual, he timed himself carefully, integrating every detail, and his action was spectacular, which made a few people wonder what Sam had up his sleeve. But, of course, they couldn't be sure. Some of them never were sure, even after the fantastic gambit was played. As a gambit it was effective—it was check, though not quite checkmate, and the arena from now on would follow even more closely the imagery of the old poet and his great translator—a checkerboard of nights and days. As for the Opponent—the Unseen Player—not even Sam had penetrated that mysterious symbolism. Who was the Player? The Harkers? Venus? Another part of Sam?
He knows about it all ... He knows ... he knows ...
It was a chilling thought, but, Sam realized, there wasn't anybody who "knew about it all." Certainly not the future, and even the present was difficult enough to interpret in every detail and trend.
Still, he was ready; zero hour had struck, since he had got word certain secret arrangements of his own had been completed. He was in one of his private offices in the great tower he reserved for his own use. Part of that tower was top secret. But this office wasn't; port windows looked seaward toward the archipelago, now covered with farms and little settlements, though the protective pillboxes remained.
He avoided Hale's gaze. He was examining a flat cube on the table before him. It was like a very deep picture frame. But what it held was a siren web, flushing slowly from rose to deep scarlet. Sam opened a silver box on his desk, took out an insect, and fed the siren web through a miniature hinged door. A faint odor of perfume escaped at the same time, and there was a low, rhythmic humming.
"Put it away," Hale said. "I've smelled that odor too often! What about Crowell?"
Sam slid the siren web frame aside. "I didn't know he was working for you. He was one of the mutineers, that's all. So I had him arrested with the others."
"Why did you act without telling me? Why wait till I was forty miles away on an inspection trip?"
"You got here in half an hour," Sam said. "Anyway, I had to move fast. I've found out that there's more to this plot than you ever suspected, from what you've been telling me about it. Crowell may be your man, but he's an inefficient spy."
"I want him released."
Sam shrugged. "Of course. But his usefulness is over, isn't it?"
"Not necessarily."
"A visor call would have done the trick. You needn't have rushed back here."
Hale said, "I didn't want any chance of a slip-up. Crowell's got to be released. Accidents do happen. The wrong order, the wrong interpretation by a guard—"
"I've never seen you so concerned about any one individual. Why is Crowell so important?"
Hale hesitated. Finally he said, "Well—I trust him."
Now it was Sam's turn to pause. He said softly, "Trust? You mean you'd trust him with a gun behind your back?"
Hale nodded.
"Maybe some day I'll find a man like that," Sam said wryly. "So far I haven't. Well, let's get Crowell released. It's almost time for the trial."
"You're holding it today?"
"Yes. I've found out so much—unexpectedly—there are dangers. Worse ones than we'd suspected. Our enemies are better armed than we know. Perhaps they've got Keep backing. I don't know. But I haven't time to tell you now; I've arranged for Venus-wide videocasting of the trial, and the Keeps will be tuning in in a few minutes. Come along. You'll find out what the setup is."
But he paused long enough to feed the siren web another insect. Hale said, with strong distaste, "Where did you get that thing?"
"Oh, it's a trophy."
"Young one. Going to keep it? It'll grow—"
"I expect it to."
"It'll grow dangerous. It's a siren web, Sam."
Sam said, "Still, imagine it twenty feet across. Up on the wall there—"
"With you walking into its mouth."
"I'm not a good hypnosis subject, remember? Anyway, I'll take precautions when it really gets big. Polarized glass or a stroboscopic attachment, a special filtering tonometer for its siren song, some gadget to cut the scent to safety level—the trial's starting. Let's go."
They went out together.
-
Hale said, "How many mutineers have you rounded up?"
"About seventy. Some of them will be useful in the right places. Others are too dangerous to let live—" Sam stopped abruptly. He had almost said too much.
Crowell's release came first, but afterward they went to the room where the trial was to be held. Batteries of visor screens were already set up. There were guards, plenty of them. And the seventy-odd prisoners, unmanacled, were herded together in a railed pen.
Sam started talking abruptly. He was talking to the colony and the Keeps as well as to the prisoners. He began by describing the activities of the malcontents, his growing suspicion of such an underground organization in the colony—"a colony expanding every hour, succeeding in conquering landside so in a day to come men will be able to live under the open sky—every man and woman on Venus!"
He had arrested the plotters. But the plot had ramifications stretching deep underground. There had been a great deal of secret theft—theft of vital equipment, technological equipment, even materials for weapons. Why?
The screens focused on the prisoners.
"You men are cat's paws," Sam told them. "Originally you were the ones who started this potential rebellion, but someone else has taken it over. Someone who has kept his identity completely secret. Either you don't know who he is or you won't tell me. You've been questioned. Who is your secret leader?"
Silence.
"What are his plans? Is he a Colony man?"
Silence.
"We have proof. The equipment went somewhere. And there's other evidence. We'll find him, and the rest of his band; he's a menace not only to the colony but to the Keeps. If such a man should seize power—"
The menace hung unspoken over Venus.
"We will find him eventually. We ask the Keeps' cooperation in this. But now—you men have been guilty of treason. You plotted to overthrow the colony government and take control. After that, you intended to rule the Keeps as well."
A man thrust himself forward from the other prisoners. His voice cried thinly across the visors.
"I'm older! We're all older! Where's the immortality you promised us?"
Sam said contemptuously, "I'm not a fool, Commander French. I've known for a long time that this plot was going on, and I knew most of the men involved. Why should I give people like you immortality—to plot further? None of you have been given the immortality radiation treatment for many months. You had nominal treatments, to quiet your suspicions—but immortality isn't for traitors!"
His face hardened.
"Governor Hale and I have been waiting, hoping to locate the top man in your organization. Certain events forced us to move now. We still intend to get the top man and render him harmless to civilization, but the present problem is what to do with traitors.
"I condemn you to death."
The silence began and ticked on and on—longer on landside than in the Keeps. For the colonists knew time now.
Sam made a little gesture.
"You will be taken under escort back to whatever Keeps you may elect. None of you may return. The colony is closed to all of you. So is the immortality treatment. You had your chance to live for a thousand years, and you chose a traitor's way instead.
"You will not be harmed. You will be taken back to the Keeps—and be free. Until you die. And you will die not in a thousand years from now, but in thirty, forty, fifty, perhaps. I withdraw the boon of immortality from you, and therefore I condemn you to death by natural causes.
"Go back to the Keeps. We don't want you here."
He brought his hands together in the conventional gesture.
"The trial is over."
-
Trial: A testing of capacity—
"Message to all Keeps: You will no longer pay korium ransom to Plymouth Colony. You will pay it to the Venusian Provisional Government. We are taking control of the planet. We have means to enforce our demands. Message to the Plymouth Colony: ground all your planes or be destroyed—"
Triangulation couldn't locate the source of the message. It kept moving. And it was always at sea. Apparently the call was being shifted rapidly from transmitter to transmitter—planes, perhaps, though no radar apparatus recorded unauthorized planes in the Venusian atmosphere.
Sam's answer to the challenge was brief—"Surrender!"
"We have means to enforce our demands—"
Sam's face appeared on all vision screens, in the Keeps and in the colony.
"An all-out offensive has been organized from Plymouth Colony. For the first time the mutineers have come out in the open. Now we can find and smash them. We will find them. Television reports on our progress will be relayed as we proceed. Special ships and plane crews are being sent to guard the sea areas above every Keep. We are taking all possible precautions. Unauthorized plane approaching Plymouth Fort has been fired on; it is retreating southward. I must direct certain operations; one of our Operations Officers will take over and keep you informed."
Sam was in his tower. He was alone. For months he had superintended the installation of one-man apparatus. Some tasks he could relay, but the main job depended on him alone. It would be no easy task.
The slap-source message came from the Venusian seas.
"Ground your planes, Plymouth Colony! You can't survive atomic attack!"
Every listener thought suddenly of the memorial eidolon in every Keep; the black-plastic shrouded sphere of the lost Earth. Atomics on Venus—for warfare? Atomic power that could so easily become uncontrollable.
Visors showed infrared and radar jungle vistas as Sam's planes quartered landside and the sea, delicate instruments probing into the black secret fury of native Venus, searching efficiently for the marauders who called themselves the Venusian Provisional Government.
"This is an ultimatum. You have forty-eight hours. At the end of that period, one of the Keeps will be destroyed."
Atomics!
That was the old, terrible fear. That was the terror that had come down in the race through seven hundred years. And in the Keeps the years had meant nothing—had been as meaningless as the hourless days.
Forty-eight hours?
Time had come to the Keeps at last.
-
Two planes were shot down before they got too close to the fort. Tractor rays eased them to the ground, and there were no explosions. But the threat of the atomic warhead moved closer.
Sam said: "In our all-out effort, we have recalled our men already assigned to the colony expansion effort—our newest venture." His tired, strained face gave way to a view of a wide, cleared area on a seacoast, with its familiar jungle backdrop. Some huts had already been constructed, and others stood half-completed, the plastic layers only partly sprayed on the custom-shaped balloon foundations. Piles of equipment were neatly lined up. But orderly crowds of men were moving toward the motor-powered barges beached to receive them.
"The mutineers have not yet been located. Our planes are proceeding with their search—"
The patterns of radar gave place to depthless, infra-red jungle, seen from far above. It shifted back to the radar matrix as the plane swept on, probing with all the marvelously keen sensory equipment technology had given it.
"Forty-seven hours. You have forty-seven hours. Plymouth Colony, ground your planes. We have atomic power and we will not hesitate to use it—"
Time ...
"You have forty-six hours—"
-
And fear swept the Keeps. Crowds seethed the Ways, gathering at the cloverleaves where the big visor screens were set up. Zachariah Harker said to Kedre:
"The body politic is more than a figure of speech. The Ways, you know, are like the circulatory system. When too many people gather, forming—well, blood clots—then there's danger of an aneurysm."
"Zachariah—" Kedre said.
He took her hand.
"I don't know. I don't know, my dear. I'm trying to think. We still have forty-five hours."
-
"You have forty-four hours."
-
"Another attacking plane has been shot down and eased with tractor beams thirty miles from Plymouth Fort. No atomic explosion resulted. This plane was radio-controlled. The robot-guide signals were relayed from constantly shifting areas at sea."
-
Hale looked at the Logician.
"Things level off," Ben Crowell said packing his pipe.
"It's all right for you to talk. You know the answers. I don't."
"Time to look for real trouble is when you don't see any," Crowell pointed out. "You might see some harmless-looking plants, little ones, and you wouldn't think there's a Man Underground root twenty feet long hiding 'way down, waiting for the right time. Right now—" He glanced at the Keep announcer on the nearest screen. "Well, you don't see me interfering, do you?"
"No. And you ought to be more excited, with atomic war threatened. Even the Free Companies outlawed atomics for offense."
"You have forty-three hours," the screen said.
-
"You have twenty-four hours."
-
"You have twenty hours."
-
"You have sixteen hours."
-
"Sam Reed speaking. We've found the skunks!"
-
The screens showed jungle, seen from high above—green, luxuriant, writhing with life. No more than that. Then the bombardment began, acid, flame, rays, and the fury of man's own weapons crashed against the fury of Venus.
The jungle green blackened. It writhed in torment. It flung up huge ropes of screaming vines. Clouds of flying things poured away from the center of that circle of awful holocaust. The towering, pillarlike neck of the thunder-lizard curved up; the red maw opened. The hissing shriek of the saurian rose high and keening through the dull, incessant roar of the blasting rain from above.
"Surrender! We'll destroy the Keeps—we won't hesitate—stop your attack—"
There was only raw, blackened, steaming earth now where there had been jungle.
The soil melted and crumbled. It flowed like lava. A white-hot lake began to grow. Pressure-jets blasted down, forcing the molten rock out from its lake in a flashing, incandescent spray. And something seemed to rise from the turgid steaming depths. As the molten level sank, a gray, rounded surface emerged.
Sam's face flashed on to the screens.
"You are seeing the secret headquarters of the mutineers," he said. "You will see it destroyed now."
A voice shouted: "We'll destroy the Keeps! Stop your attack—"
The gray dome stood sullenly in the white-hot lake.
The black torpedo shape of a bomb dropped. The gray dome was tough. But then another bomb dropped.
And another.
The first explosion had not mushroomed before the next missile hit. Then the next. And there was no cessation, no pause in the terrible regularity of the pin-point bombing. Hammer-blow after hammer-blow struck. Four—five—six—
Sam dropped forty-eight bombs, one for each hour of the deadline the Venusian Provisional Government had given him.
