Collected Short Fiction, page 482
The little spaceman didn’t move.
“Paul, what do you mean?” Ann protested sharply.
“Arresting McGee.” His voice was clipped and flat. “Precautionary measure. Y’see, the circumstantial evidence looks a little queer. Dead men everywhere, and that Martian derelict. Have to take the gun.”
Alertly, he started walking forward. The stiff armor made walking laborious, but he liked a solid footing in emergencies. McGee watched silently, until he came to the narrow railways across the platform.
“Wait, captain.” The gentle drawling voice was almost apologetic. “Better not touch those rails.”
Anders jerked back his descending foot, “What’s the matter with them?”
“Charged,” McGee said softly. “Power for the cars. You see, the Invaders never touched them anyhow, so they didn’t have to shield them. Two of the Jovians died that way.” Anders peered through the lens, at his seamed square face.
“Sorry, McGee,” he said skeptically. “Better think of something else. ’Cause I don’t fall for that one. Isn’t feasible to carry current on a bare rail, in this vacuum. Y’need air for insulation. Too much loss.”
“Not for the Invaders,” McGee protested quietly. “You see, captain, they were experts at power transmission. They have power equipment, down inside, that’s a thousand years ahead of us.”
The Earthman stepped back, with a shaken laugh. His foot had almost touched that harmless-looking rail, and he remembered that he had been about to walk the tracks through the doorway from the other platform, before McGee appeared.
“Thanks, McGee.” His voice came husky and weak. “I’ll remember that. But still I’ll have to keep you under arrest, till I find what all has happened here.” His voice turned hard again. “Ann, will you bring me his gun?” Silently, she unsnapped the ancient little weapon from McGee’s belt, and soared over the little railways to hand it to Anders, and silently returned to stand by McGee. The stubby little spaceman merely stood there, waiting.
“Well, McGee?” Anders rapped impatiently. “Got anything to say?”
“Not to you, captain,” McGee said gently.
“But he didn’t kill anybody!” Ann’s brown face was taut, behind the oval lens, and her voice flared out angrily. “Not unless it was in self-defense. Did you, Cap’n Rob?”
“Not even in self-defense,” drawled McGee, “They were all hunting me, but I didn’t have to kill them. Because you see, captain, in one way or another they all killed themselves.”
“P’raps.” Anders was doubtful. “But what do you claim you’ve been up to, McGee, skulking about in the dark with a gun?”
Beyond his lens, McGee’s seamed leathery face was stubbornly set. Seeing that he didn’t mean to answer, Anders moved a little forward, stopping short of the deadly railways, “Listen, McGee.” He tried to be persuasive. “I don’t intend to be unjust. It’s only my duty, as an officer of the High Space Guard, to investigate the death of these men. If you can satisfy me that you’re free of any criminal responsibility, I’ll release you. ’Specially since you spoke about the railways.”
“Better tell him, Cap’n Rob,” Ann advised quietly.
McGee stared at Anders for long seconds, silently.
“You see, captain,” he began at last, “they followed me here from Pallasport. Their ship looked like a Martian. I thought it was von Falkenberg, because he had robbed us before. But I was mistaken.”
“Then who was it?” Anders demanded.
“Jovians.” McGee’s voice was very deliberate and gentle. “Spies and engineers from the Jovian Soviet, who had been sent to the Mandate to join the battle for seetee. Their cruiser was disguised—to keep their government out of trouble for breaking the treaty, if they were sighted. It had flat, Martian-type turrets.”
“Eh!” Anders nodded quickly, in the helmet. “So it wasn’t von Falkenberg at all? That accounts for the made-on-Europa armor. But go ahead, McGee.”
“I had been here twenty-one hours, when they came,” the little spaceman went on softly. “I had already cut loose a seetee bedplate and attached it to the hull of the Jane, to carry it back to the Drakes on Freedonia. The Jovians hailed me in German, and began firing when I wouldn’t surrender.”
“We heard your call to Freedonia,” Anders told him. “But what happened to your ship?”
“The little Jane wasn’t armed or camouflaged,” McGee said sadly. “We couldn’t fight, and we couldn’t get away. We just hid behind the machine. That gave me time to make that call—they had fired from four hundred kilometers.”
His squinted eyes peered solemnly through the lens.
“Then I had to leave the Jane,” his soft drawl continued. “You see, I had welded the stem of that bedplate to the hull. I knew what would happen, if they hit it. I just had time to get inside this valve, before they made a hit. The bedplate went off like a thousand tons of tritonite. There was nothing left.”
“Oh!” Ann made a hurt little gasp. “The poor little Jane.”
“I was sorry to lose her,” said McGee. “We’d had her so long, she seemed almost alive.
Never was a stancher little ship.”
Anders peered at him, wonderingly.
“You mean you’ve been five days in that armor?”
McGee shrugged a tight roll of silvered fabric strapped above the battery pack on his armored shoulders.
“I brought an air balloon,” he said gently. “I inflate that, when I have to eat or sleep. I had a few bars of space rations, and the air unit condenses water enough. I took fresh batteries off a dead Jovian.”
“But you’ve been marooned, in this dreadful place?” Ann’s voice had a thin edge of horror. “With all those men trying to hunt you down?”
McGee nodded calmly.
“They saw me come in through the valve,” he said. “They were trying to kill me, to keep the secret of the machine for the Jovian Soviet. But, you see, they didn’t really understand it. That’s why it killed them.”
“Killed them?” Anders echoed sharply. “How?”
“One way and another,” repeated McGee. “You saw the one holding the bedplate, and the one with his legs cut off—they were already dead when I found them. Two stepped on the power rails. Several must have gone down the ore chutes, and I saw one trip himself into an automatic furnace. But the most of them died down about the power generator. Because, when you don’t understand, that’s the most dangerous part of all.”
“But you understand?”
McGee’s square jaw set stubbornly again.
“See here, McGee.” Anders took a persuasive tone. “Y’know I represent Interplanet. My orders are to get seetee for my employers. I intend to be just. But, naturally, I’m going to take possession of this machine, for the Interplanet.”
McGee didn’t speak, but Ann flared back:
“Do you call that justice?”
“It’s my duty,” Anders said. “But I have full authority, and I can promise that Interplanet will be generous, I admit you have a valid claim, McGee, as first discoverer. You can set your own price on that, and I’ll see you’re paid.”
McGee merely shook his head.
“Seems you know quite a lot about this machine.” Anders peered keenly into his unyielding face. “Maybe you know what it was built for? Maybe you’ve found out how those bedplates work? I’ll give you a contract, if you can tell me that.”
McGee said quietly, “I’m not working for Interplanet.”
“Then I’ll talk to Karen Hood, when we get back to Pallasport,” Anders told him. “She’s got a business head, and I think she’ll admit that Interplanet holds the aces. Understand, I don’t mean to rob you. I’m just going to make the whole firm of Drake, McGee & Drake into billionaires—whether you like it or not.”
He grinned at Ann’s wrathful face.
“Now I think it’s time to go.” He touched his gun. “Come along, McGee.”
Ann lifted toward the mighty valve.
“Come, Cap’n Rob.” Her voice was relieved. “Let’s get out of this dreadful place.”
McGee hung back stubbornly, until Anders gestured with the gun. He lurched unwillingly off the platform. Watchfully, Anders followed him up through the valve. They paused on the lip of that immense cylinder.
The Earthman was glad to see the shining mist of stars again, changeless on the crystal black of space. He heard Ann draw a long breath as if they had come out into fresh air from some musty dungeon.
“The Challenge is waiting, twenty kilometers off,” he told them. “They’re blacked out., and that’s too far to see them. I’ll call Commander Protopopov to show us a light—”
His voice dried up.
For little Rob McGee had pointed silently, and he saw the blacked-out cruiser. The cam-
ouflaged hull made a sharp silhouette against the glowing Galactic clouds of Sagittarius. He stared incredulously, but the trim lines of hull and rounded turrets, the four long guns, couldn’t be mistaken.
“That fool Protopopov!” His voice was brittle with anger. “Not a kilometer off! When I expressly ordered him to keep a safe distance. Worried about us, I s’pose—and even sent a search party!”
For he saw the tiny shadow of a man in armor, flying swiftly across that mist of distant suns toward the cruiser’s valves. He turned up his helmet photophone, and narrowed its beam, to reach the vessel.
“Challenge ahoy!” The red ray trembled with his impatient voice. “This is Captain Anders, returning. Show us a light, and ready the valves. . . . Challenge ahoy! . . . Challenge ahoy!”
But the black ship showed no light, Anders began to wonder uneasily if he had really seen that fleeting figure, returning to the valves. He wondered if the proud Challenge could be already another derelict, a second vessel sucked of life by this ancient dead machine.
He gripped, his automatic harder, and glanced sharply aside at Rob McGee. For it struck him suddenly that the odd little spaceman had seemed curiously indifferent about departing, for a rescued maroon, and it was pretty clear that he knew much more than he had told.
Anxiously he called again, “Challenge ahoy!”
And now the Challenge answered. The ship’s powerful photophone transmitter glared like an angry red eye from the pointed bow, trembling with the vibrations of Protopopov’s croaking whisper:
“What do you want?”
“This is Captain Anders.” He tried not to sound too curt. “Show us a light and ready the valves. We’re returning aboard.”
For a moment the red eye was still.
“Unfortunately, you’re mistaken,” came the hoarse reply. “Because very regrettable exigencies make it impossible for us to obey your orders any further, Captain Anders. My fellow officers join me in offering our deepest apologies. But you can’t return to the ship.”
“You—” Anders choked. “This is mutiny, treason!”
“Exactly, captain,” came the hollow rasping croak. “We shall inform your superior officers that you lost your head over an asterite girl spy, and attempted to betray the Challenge to a ring of Free Space revolutionists.”
The husky moronic whisper brightened with invention.
“I shall report to Commissioner Hood that you were aiding them by stealing military information from the confidential files of Interplanet. I shall add the warning that the Free Space Party is plotting to attack the Mandate, with seetee weapons manufactured on Freedonia.”
“Commander, you can’t get away with that!” Anders protested desperately. “Are you crazy? Listen to reason, man—you’ll be shot for this. Let me talk to Muratori. Give me Omura!”
The red glaring eye didn’t answer.
“Think what you’re doing, Protopopov—”
“So that’s the name he uses?” little Rob McGee interrupted calmly. “I’ve met that man before, Captain Anders, and I know that undertaker’s whisper. He’s got another name, besides Protopopov. That’s Franz von Falkenberg!”
Back from the drifting ship, the red beam brought a bubbling chuckle. For the ship’s delicate receiver must have picked up McGee’s interruption.
“And what do you think of that, my so-clever captain?” The croaking whisper turned sardonic. “Now” you may as well know that Muratori and Omura are also friends of Mars. The most of your brave crew have already sworn the oath of allegiance to the Reich—and the witless few who refused are dead.”
The red light shuddered again, to that hollow chuckle.
“Aren’t you even clever enough,” inquired that triumphant whisper, “to see the trend of history? Can’t you see, my brilliant captain, that the rich old empire of Interplanet is falling to ruin of its own dead weight? Don’t you see that the Mandate is only a feeble prop? Can’t you perceive that the time is ripe for a new interstellar empire, to be conquered with seetee?”
That strange laugh bubbled again.
“Farewell, my clever captain,” the red beam croaked. “We must leave you now, to reflect upon the cycles of empire.”
The burning eye winked out.
“Moment, commander.” The Earthman’s voice turned brittle again. “If the Martian Reich means to conquer with seetee, you’re just about six months late. Because the spatial engineering firm of Drake, McGee & Drake already has a successful seetee hammer in operation on Freedonia—that they built for Interplanet.”
Ann made a stifled cry of hurt protest.
“Thanks,” the red beam whispered back. “But we’ll take care of that.”
The burning eye went out again, and Anders saw the long spatial rifles of the Challenge swinging swiftly down against the white mist of stars. He snatched desperately for the neck straps of Ann and little McGee, and hauled them down through the open valve.
At this close range, he knew, the shells would be only a fractional second on the way. He tried to push Ann and McGee ahead of him, for this stupid blunder had been no fault of theirs. Then the universe flamed red. The shells made no sound, but something tugged very gently at his helmet.
XIV.
The next thing that Anders distinctly knew, he was lying on his back on the upper terrene platform, inside that dark enormous cylinder. His neck felt stiff, and he didn’t want to move his head. He felt dull throbbling all through his head, not quite pain.
He thought he was alone.
Without moving his head, he could see a broad window of open space, its crystal blackness splendid with the Galactic clouds of the Archer. Against that brilliant mist of suns, he distinguished the leaves of the immense valve above him, scarcely damaged by that unexpected salvo from the Challenge.
Nearer, straight above, he could see that queerly narrow winding footway, where the Invaders must have moved. He caught a faint gleam of starlight on the bright rail above it, a rail too high for things like men.
Once again he tried to picture them, the beings that must have walked that contraterrene ramp. But he knew he never could even the word “walk” must be wrong, he thought, because they had used no steps. He tried to abandon the effort, because he saw now that it was only a road to madness.
Still he didn’t want to move his head. He supposed that he would die here, it didn’t matter when. Von Falkenberg needn’t even bother to make certain of his kill. Because half a billion kilometers of the spatial night could be counted on to finish anything the shells had left alive.
Anders wondered what had happened to Ann and little McGee. He had tried to push them down to safety, but there was no predicting exactly what half a metric ton of detonating tritonite would do. And he couldn’t even try to call them now, because his helmet light was dead.
What was left of them would stay here, he supposed, along with the frozen corpses of the Jovians and whatever strange dust the Invaders might have left. Their remains would only add another grim little chapter, to the machine’s untold story of mystery and death.
He lay still, watching the ramp and the rail. If he were only quiet enough, he thought, one of the Invaders would soon come along. He wanted to see why it used no steps, and why it was so thin and tall.
Would it be clad in some strange armor? Or had the Invaders been less fragile and fatally volatile than men, really spacemen? His slow brain fumbled with that problem, and gave it up. Thinking was difficult.
Somehow, a gray fog was thickening in his head.
He lay there, staring up through the fog, watching the ramp and the rail. If he only waited long enough, one of the Invaders would come somehow along the narrow footway, holding somehow to that high rail.
But the fog grew thicker. He could hardly see through it. The throbbing in his head was fainter now, not even sharp enough to keep him awake. He was suddenly afraid that he would sleep, before the tall Invader came.
Then he saw it.
The thing was bending over him, a vague blur in the fog. He knew it must be tall and narrow. He knew its contraterrene touch meant death. But he didn’t want to move his head, and there was nothing he could do.
He couldn’t see it, through the fog. But it was beside him, down on the terrene platform. It began fumbling with his armor. The strange touch of it made light, and he waited to die.
But the light was not blue annihilating fire. It was only the glow of his helmet light turned on. It showed the figure bending over him. He saw, with a weak, immense relief, that the thing was Ann O’Banion.
She closed the battery case under his shoulders, and did something to the controls on the breast of his armor. The air unit began to hum again. The air was suddenly good to breathe. He hadn’t realized how stale it was.
Immediately he felt stronger. The throbbing was gone from his head, and he tried to sit up.
“Better lie still,” she advised. “You were almost asphyxiated.”
“You—” His voice was disconcertingly inaudible, and he tried again. “You are all right?”
“Yes, you pushed us out of the way,” she told him. “You were the only casualty. Caught a shell splinter against your back. Only knocked you out—it didn’t penetrate. But it ruined your battery pack. You were nearly dead before Cap’n Rob could salvage another, from the Jovian on the other platform.”
