Collected Short Fiction, page 531
“There are defenses, verdad. Truly.” Amador shrugged delicately. “Lest bandidos come! But let us not speak of any unpleasantness, señor. For coffee is served on the east terrace, and Miss Hardin asks if you will join her.”
Beyond Amador, Jenkins could see another dark compact man, carrying a rifle, pacing back and forth below the bright valves of the yacht. Martin Brand had not accumulated that hoard of precious condulloy, he reflected, without learning how to keep it.
Nodding in surrender, he followed Amador to the east terrace. Jane Hardin looked up from a small table beside the golden railing, smiling in the cold starlight.
“Good morning, Nick.” The aloofness was gone from her quiet voice. She rose and stood near him while the dark servant poured coffee, gesturing at the toppling, tremendous ranges and the jeweled night above them. “Splendid, isn’t it?” Jenkins nodded, wondering what she wanted.
“Nick, I didn’t sleep well.” Her voice turned low and uncertain, when Amador had moved silently away. “I was thinking about last night. I’m sorry if I seemed—unsympathetic.”
“Does it matter?”
“I think so.” She paused, watching his face in the gray starlight. “I don’t quite know how to say it—but people can have different viewpoints, and still be friends. I know this effort to work seetee must be important to you—insane as it seems to me. I can admire you for wanting to go back to Freedonia—even though I think you’re just throwing a very useful life away. I . . . I just wanted to say that, Nick.” Jenkins sat stirring his coffee with an unsteady spoon. The eagerness on her white face made the fact of his coming death throb like an open wound. But she had come to the Tor, he recalled, to help with the merger scheme. If Martin Brand were the ruthless financial buccaneer he seemed, she must share the guilty secrets. Quietly he asked:
“Don’t you think the conquest of seetee might be worth a man’s life?” The girl put her elbows on the tiny table. Her oval face, in the austere radiance of the stars, was smooth and lovely and very grave. “I’m afraid of seetee, Nick.”
“So am I,” Jenkins said, “but still I want to tame it.”
“I’m more afraid of tamed seetee,” she told him. “That’s more dangerous than the drift.”
“It couldn’t be!”
She frowned in the chill gray light arranging her words.
“Physical power creates economic power.” Her voice was sober and slow. “Economic power generates political and military power. That’s history. The energy of human slaves made the Roman Empire. The greater energy of burning coal established the British Empire. Fission energy built the vaster empire of Interplanet. What would contraterrene power do?”
“Anything men want,” Jenkins told her; “The energy in the drift is limitless.”
“Too limitless.” Her low voice was almost foreboding. “It can unlock boundless wealth and power—for a few bold men to grasp, as they always do. Seetee would create a new kind of dictatorship, I’m afraid. Because the very fear of its dreadful power would force the dictators to abuse it ruthlessly.”
She smiled wistfully in the thin light.
“I admire your courage, Nick,” she went on softly. “I wish I could share your confidence that seetee will build a better world. But I’m afraid the planets aren’t ready to stand the impact of a successful seetee technology—”
Her voice died away.
For a terrible light was blazing in the black sky. It lit the sloping lawns and the glass walls and the girl’s taut face with a brightness that burned out color. It blazed savagely on the dead ranges beyond the railing, turning them all to cruel blades of incandescence thrust out of black shadow.
It faded.
Jenkins found himself upright, his coffee spilled across the little table.
“Sorry!” He dabbed automatically with his napkin, trying to keep the liquid from dripping on the girl. “Nerves, I guess.”
He glanced at the geiger on his wrist, and peered upward. Still the stars were blotted from his dazzled vision, but he found the dimming point of white above. It yellowed as he watched, reddened, and went out.
“Nick!” She was breathless. “Did it—?”
He saw her staring at the face of her own wrist geiger, terror dark in her eyes. He grinned at her feebly, shaking his head.
“You aren’t hurt—yet.” His voice was dry and shaken. “That was a seetee blast, but a long way off.” He sat down again, because his knees were weak. “Could be you’re right,” he muttered faintly. “About what seetee will do to men.”
“How, Nick?”
“I think the impact of the seetee technology has already begun,” he told her quietly. “I think that flash was a spacecraft—probably a war-craft of the High Space Guard—struck by a seetee missile!”
She caught at her white throat. “This is—dreadful!” Her voice went husky with pain. “There’ll be panic. We must wake your uncle and Mr. Gast, and get back to town.”
“There’ll be worse than panic, Jane.” She was rising but he reached to catch her quivering arm. “Please,” he whispered desperately, “I need you—to help me stop a seetee war!”
She peered at him dazedly.
“You can help,—” he insisted sharply. “The condulloy we need on Freedonia is stored here at the Tor. My uncle has been . . . well, stealing it! If you can help me recover eighty tons—”
She was shaking her head.
“I’m not trusted that far.” Her voice was dull, bewildered. “And your uncle’s servants answer only to him. They’re a pretty warlike crew, simple and loyal, from the little rock Nuevo Jalisco. He has been very generous to them and their families, and he’s the gran patron. They would all die for him—or his private treasure.”
Black in the starlight, her troubled eyes stared at him.
“But . . . tell me, Nick . . . what do you hope to do?”
“Jane, I think you’re—honest.” His. voice was hoarse, hurried. “When you understand what happened on Freedonia and what’s going to happen to men everywhere—I think you’ll want to help me start the Brand transmitter.”
She bent to listen, puzzled. “Because it’s too late to stop the impact of seetee against civilization,” he told her. “The destructive force of it is already free—we had developed seetee weapons at the lab, and now they’re in the hands of an unidentified power. That flash was seetee war beginning!”
She nodded-in the starlight, and he began to hope.
“The only force strong enough to contain that violence—to stop the war—is the creative phase of our new technology,” he went on grimly. “The limitless free power from the Brand transmitter!”
“Perhaps you’re right, Nick,” she whispered. “If that was really a seetee shot—”
He thought she was yielding. A breathless hope had already lifted him, when he saw her stiffen. Voiceless with alarm, she pointed. Jenkins peered up to see a long shadow sliding down across the stars, to the narrow spaceport.
The shadow was a tall black cruiser of the High Space Guard. The valves of it clanged open. An iron-faced Martian-German lieutenant tramped down the ramp, with five armed spacemen behind him. He barked something to the sentry beside the Adonis, and came marching to the tiny table on the terrace.
“Herr Nicol Jenkins?” His voice was harshly violent, and his words came to Jenkins like stunning missiles through a haze of shocked incredulity. “Arrest . . . anything you say may be used . . . special warrant . . . treason against the Mandate—”
Swaying weakly, Jenkins flinched from the cold pressure of the handcuffs. Mute with a shaken despair, he could say nothing coherent. Vaguely he heard the girl’s sharp questions, and the Martian’s guttural answer.
“An unidentified spatial force has fired contraterrene weapons against the High Space Guard.” The Martian licked his sunburned lips and looked around him sharply, as if warily expecting another seetee shot from somewhere on the Tor. “The only known facilities which might have been used to manufacture seetee weapons are those on Freedonia, owned by Seetee, Inc.”
His hard eyes glared at Jenkins.
“My orders are to arrest all the officers and engineers of that corporation.”
Jenkins gulped and failed to speak.
“But I’m sure they aren’t guilty of any such crime.” He was mutely grateful for the girl’s quick protest. “Neither Mr. Jenkins nor Mr. Brand. The facilities on Freedonia were built and operated under a special research license.”
“Did that license cover military research?” rasped the Martian. “Nein! Anyhow, the high commissioners have already canceled it, and these men must answer for the crime of contraterrene war.”
XII.
Jenkins saw his uncle’s arrest.
Brand came striding out of the gold-roofed mansion on the Tor, a majestic figure in a gold-and-purple robe, the tiny attorney tagging indignantly behind him. He glanced up at the towering cruiser, and turned imperiously upon the Martian, demanding’:
“What is the meaning of this invasion?”
“You are Herr Martin Brand?” The lieutenant seemed stiffly respectful of his vast wealth. “We must request you to accompany us. You are charged with treason.”
“Treason?”
Brand smiled sardonically. And Jenkins, stunned and ill from the shock of his own arrest, felt a grudging admiration. For his uncle’s lean, rawboned face showed no dismay. The gray candid eyes widened to a brief surprise, and narrowed with veiled purpose.
“One moment.” Brand looked at his watch, and turned to Adam Cast. “We must move a little faster,” he said calmly. “Go ahead with the merger—and get us out when you can.”
“You’ll be free by noon.” Gast smiled with uneven yellow teeth. “And I’ll take our merger memorandum to Interplanet as soon as it is typed—”
“But—Mr. Brand!” Jane Hardin moved toward him quickly, taut with alarm. “Our research license has been canceled—that means trouble for Seetee!”
“We thrive on trouble.” Brand chuckled softly. “If there’s any threat of seetee war—”
Harshly, the Martian cleared his throat.
“Seetee war is a fact, Herr Brand!” he rasped. “Seetee missiles have been fired upon craft and establishments of tire Guard.”
“Indeed!” Brand’s narrowed eyes lifted to the pointed shadow of the ship against the stars. “In that case, the commissioners would appear very foolish to take any measures against the only firm possessing seetee industrial facilities.”
His reddish, hollow-cheeked face reflected nothing more than offended honor as he added the quiet-voiced question:
“Who are these attackers?”
For an instant, behind the bleak, sunburnt military mask of the Martian, Jenkins saw frightened bewilderment. The lieutenant licked his dry lips again, and stiffened the painful straightness of his shoulders.
“The identity of the attacking force is not yet known, Herr Brand,” he said harshly, “but I am ordered to secure that information from you and Herr Jenkins.”
Brand’s lean, honest face hardened with indignation.
“You may inform your superiors that our firm has not supplied contraterrene weapons to the forces of any power.”
“You must come with us.” The Martian studied him with hard eyes. “The matter is exceedingly grave, Herr Brand.”
It was grave, Jenkins knew. His own knees still quivered from the shock of that terrible flash at space. He had a sick, helpless sense of contraterrene war thundering down upon men everywhere in a dark and overwhelming avalanche of ruin and slavery and monstrous death.
He could see the frightened tension on the faces of the armed men behind the stern-visaged lieutenant. He watched Jane Hardin’s tight fingers aimlessly ripping a lace handkerchief, until she saw what she was doing and smiled at him briefly with a troubled, wry amusement.
His own stiff face failed to answer, for he was thinking of the Drakes and little Rob McGee and all the other victims of the first seetee shot, waiting in Worringer’s clinic for the seed of death to sprout and bloom and ripen in them. He was aware of the same dark seed in himself, and he felt cold and ill.
Martin Brand alone seemed calm and sure in the frightful face of the contraterrene war. Jenkins looked at the open candor and the courage on his uncle’s red, cragged face, and felt warm again with an uncomfortable admiration. Perhaps Brand was a superior human type, he admitted that unwelcome thought reluctantly, entitled to a different code of ethics.
“Cheer up, Nicky!” Brand smiled at him, bluffly genial. “Mr. Cast has beaten better charges than any they can trump up against us, and no seetee war can be fought long without the aid of our corporation. We’re riding high!”
Jenkins shook his head, uneasily silent.
“Well, lieutenant!” Brand turned briskly to the waiting Martian, and put his wrists cheerfully into the handcuffs that one of the taut-faced spacemen held uncertainly. “Shall we go?”
As they marched up the ramp to the cruiser, Jenkins managed to get a last glimpse of Jane Hardin’s troubled face. She waved at him, smiling as if to. cheer his sick despair, and then turned quickly to little Adam Gast.
Aboard, Jenkins wanted to stay with his uncle. That glow of reluctant admiration was still warm in him. He couldn’t help hoping that this grim turn of events would somehow put a kinder light on the motives of Martin Brand, and make his corporation seem something better than a ruthless racket.
The guards separated them at once, however. Jenkins was escorted to a tiny cabin, furnished in austere simplicity with two chairs and a bare desk and crossed Martian sabers on the steel bulkhead. The lieutenant entered behind him, leaving the spacemen outside.
“Seat yourself, Herr Jenkins.” The bullet-headed Martian dropped his voice cautiously. “You are alarmed, ja? But perhaps you need not go to jail.”
Jenkins sat down watchfully.
“The High Space Guard, I must explain, is a mongrel-force.” The officer sat bolt upright in the other chair. “While in name we serve the political faction of the Mandate, our first loyalties naturally remain with our native planets. Is that clear?”
Jenkins nodded doubtfully.
“Now you will understand.” The officer leaned intently toward him. “Herr Jenkins,” his hushed voice rasped violently, “this will be denied if you ever speak of it, but I wish to secure your services for Mars.”
Jenkins merely gasped.
“You need not go to jail,” the harsh voice insisted. “Mars can transport you safely from the jurisdiction of the Mandate, and pay you well for the know-how to manufacture contraterrene weapons. You are interested, nein?”
Jenkins shook his head.
“Consider!” The Martian turned livid. “The Mandate officials and the Pallasport mob are already frightened. A few more seetee shots will cause chaos. The man to blame will suffer, Herr Jenkins.”
Hoarsely, Jenkins whispered: “I am not to blame.”
“The high commissioners believe you are.”
“Not all of them,” Jenkins muttered grimly. “One must know the truth.”
“Ach!” The Martian studied him bleakly. “But which one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Better remember,” the Martian snarled unpleasantly. “If you are not with us, Herr Jenkins, it follows that you are against us!”
Jenkins gulped against the flutter of his stomach, and shook his head again. Snorting unpleasantly, the officer flung the door open. Jenkins walked out of the narrow cabin to rejoin his guards.
He wanted a drink of water. The tight handcuffs hurt his wrists. But this was one step, he reflected hopefully, toward identification of the attacking power—and his own murderers. The lieutenant must be acting on the orders of the Martian commissioner.
Mars was eliminated.
The cruiser landed a few minutes later at Pallasport. Walking down the ramp between two watchful spacemen, Jenkins heard shouts and screams and a crackle of machine-gun fire.
A hundred meters from him on the civilian section of the convex field, towered the sleek, fat spindle of the liner Thorium Star. A muttering mob surged about a little knot of armed spacemen guarding her valves.
“What’s all that?” Jenkins asked the rated spaceman at his elbow, a fair-skinned Earthman.
“Panic.” The rating himself was hoarse and pale. “The liner’s bound for Earth, and they’re fighting to get aboard.”
“Is there that much danger?”
“Rumors,” whispered the uneasy spaceman. “They say the Free Space Party is rising against the Mandate, armed with seetee weapons developed on Freedonia.” The man stiffened, abruptly conscious of his position. “Move along, Mr. Jenkins!”
Bullets snarled above them, from the battle at the liner’s valves. Visibly alarmed, the two guards hurried Jenkins to the dark fortress of the jail annex, behind the Mandate court building.
The warden of the jail was a massive, bearded Callistonian Russian with an affable manner and sad blue eyes, who ordered the handcuffs removed and offered him an Earth-made cigarette.
“Mr. Jenkins,” the big Jovian told him confidentially, “it is still possible for you to avoid the very grave charges which have been made against you.”
“How?”
The warden looked around and lowered his voice.
“The Jovian Soviet maintains its own organization within the High Space Guard. That is an open secret. Our men and ships are ready to convey you to the Vladimir Ilich Ulianov Arsenal, on Europa—”
“I haven’t made any seetee weapons for anybody else,” Jenkins broke in sharply. “I don’t intend to make them for you.”
The blue eyes surveyed him sorrowfully.
“If you know so much, Mr. Jenkins—what power is now attacking the Mandate with contraterrene missiles?” Jenkins sat silent, and the Jovian sighed. “An honest answer can save you much discomfort.”
“I don’t know.”
“If you really don’t—” The massive Callistonian shrugged. “I pity you, Mr. Jenkins.” He pressed a button to call a guard. “Throw the traitor in a solitary cell.”
