Collected Short Fiction, page 58
Four telescopes from the Fury were turned upon the strange object. Captain Brand and Bill took turns peering through one of them. When Bill looked, he saw the infinite black gulf of space, silvered with star-dust of distant nebulae. Hanging in the blackness was an azure sphere, gleaming bright as a great globe cut from turquoise. Bill was reminded of a similar blue globe he had seen—when he had stood at the enormous telescope on Trainor’s Tower, and watched a little blue circle against the red deserts of Mars.
Brand took two or three observations, figured swiftly.
“It’s moving,” he said. “About fourteen thousand miles per hour. Funny! It is moving directly toward the earth, almost from the direction of the planet Mars. I wonder——” He seized the pencil, figured again.
“Queer. That thing seems headed for the earth, from a point on the orbit of Mars, where that planet was about forty days ago. Do you suppose the Martians are paying us a visit?”
“Then it’s not the Prince of Space?”
“I don’t know. Its direction might be just a coincidence. And the Prince might be a Martian, for all I know. Anyhow, we’re going to find what that blue globe is!”
Two hours later the nine sunships were drawn up in the form of a great half circle, closing swiftly on the blue globe, which had been calculated to be about one hundred feet in diameter. The sunships were nearly a thousand miles from the globe, and scattered along a curved line two thousand miles in length. Captain Brand gave orders for eight forward tubes on each flier to be made ready for use as weapons. From his own ship he flashed a heliographic signal.
“The Fury, of the Moon Patrol, demands that you show ship’s papers, identification tags for all passengers, and submit to search for contraband.”
The message was three times repeated, but no reply came from the azure globe. It continued on its course. The slender white sunships came plunging swiftly toward it, until the crescent they formed was not two hundred miles between the points, the blue globe not a hundred miles from the war-fliers.
Then Bill, with his eye at a telescope, saw a little spark of purple light appear beside the blue globe. A tiny, bright point of violet-red fire, with a white line running from it, back to the center of the sphere. The purple spark grew, the white line lengthened. Abruptly, the newspaperman realized that the purple was an object hurtling toward him with incredible speed.
EVEN as the realization burst upon him, the spark became visible as a little red-blue sphere, brightly luminous. A white beam shone behind it, seemed to push it with ever-increasing velocity. The purple globe shot past, vanished. The white ray snapped out.
“A weapon!” he exclaimed.
“A weapon and a warning!” said Brand, still peering through another eyepiece. “And we reply!”
“Heliograph!” he shouted into a speaking tube. “Each ship will open with one forward tube, operating one second twelve times per minute. Increase power of rear tubes to compensate repulsion.”
White shields flickered. Blindingly brilliant rays, straight bars of dazzling opalescence, burst intermittently from each of the nine ships, striking across a hundred miles of space to batter the blue globe with a hail of charged atoms.
Again a purple spark appeared from the sapphire globe, with a beam of white fire behind it. A tiny purple globe, hurtling at an inconceivable velocity before a lance of white flame. It reached out, with a certain deliberation, yet too quickly for a man to do more than see it.
It struck a sunship, at one tip of the crescent formation.
A dazzling flash of violet flame burst out. The tiny globe seemed to Explode into a huge flare of red-blue light. And where the slim, eight-sided ship had been was a crushed and twisted mass of metal.
“A solid projectile!” Brand cried. “And driven on the positive ray! Our experts have tried it, but the ray always exploded the shell. And that was some explosion! I don’t know what—unless atomic energy!” The eight sunships that remained were closing swiftly upon the blue globe. The dazzling white rays flashed intermittently from them. They struck the blue globe squarely—the fighting crews of the Moon Patrol are trained until their rays are directed with deadly accuracy. The azure sphere, unharmed, shone with bright radiance—it seemed that a thin mist of glittering blue particles was gathering about it, like a dust of powdered sapphires.
Another purple spark leapt from the turquoise globe. In the time that it took a man’s eyes to move from globe to slim, glistening sunship, the white ray had driven the purple spark across the distance. Another vivid flash of violet light. And another sunship became a hurtling mass of twisted wreckage.
“We are seven!” Brand quoted grimly.
“Heliograph!” he shouted into the mouthpiece. “Fire all forward tubes one second twenty times a minute. Increase rear power to maximum.”
White rays burst from the seven darting sunships, flashing off and on. That sapphire globe grew bright, with a strange luminosity. The thin mist of sparkling blue particles seemed to grow more dense about it.
“Our rays don’t seem to be doing any good,” Brand muttered, puzzled. “The blue about that globe must be some sort of vibratory screen.”
Another purple spark, with the narrow white line of fire behind it, swept across to the flier from the opposite horn of the crescent, burst into a sheet of blinding red-violet light. Another ship was a twisted mass of metal. “Seven no longer!” Brand called grimly to Bill.
“Looks as if the Prince has got us beaten!” the reporter cried.
“Not while a ship can fight!” exclaimed the Captain. “This is the Moon Patrol!”
Another tiny purple globe traced its line of light across the black, star-misted sky. Another sunship crumpled in a violet flash.
“They’re picking ’em off the ends,” Bill observed. “We’re in the middle, so I guess we’re last.”
“Then,” said Captain Brand, “we’ve got time to ram ’em.”
“Control!” he shouted into the speaking tube. “Cut off forward tubes and make all speed for the enemy. Heliograph! Fight to the end! I am going to ram them!”
Another red-blue spark moved with its quick deliberation. A purple flash left another ship in twisted ruin.
Bill took his eye from the telescope. The blue globe, bright under the rays, with the sapphire mist sparkling about it, was only twenty miles away. He could see it with his naked eye, drifting swiftly among the familiar stars of Scorpio.
It grew larger very swiftly.
With the quickness of thought, the purple sparks moved out alternately to right and to left. They never missed. Each one exploded in purple flame, crushed a sunship.
“Three fliers left,” Bill counted, eyes on the growing blue globe before them. “Two left. Good-by, Brand.” He grasped the bluff Captain’s hand. “One left. Will we have time?”
He looked forward. The blue globe, with the dancing, sparkling haze of sapphire swirling about it, was swiftly expanding.
“The last one! Our turn now!”
He saw a tiny fleck of purple light dart out of the expanding azure sphere that they had hoped to ram. Then red-violet flame seemed to envelope him. He felt the floor of the bridge tremble beneath his feet: He heard the beginning of a shivering crash like that of shattering glass. Then the world was mercifully dark and still.
CHAPTER III
The City of Space
BILL lay on an Alpine glacier, a painful broken leg inextricably wedged in a crevasse. It was dark, frightfully cold. In vain he struggled to move, to seek light and warmth, while the grim grip of the ice held him, while bitter wind howled about him and the piercing cold of the blizzard crept numbingly up his limbs.
He came to with a start, realized that it was a dream. But he was none the less freezing, gasping for thin, frigid air, that somehow would not come into his lungs. All about was darkness. He lay on cold metal.
“In the wreck of the Fury!” he thought. “The air is leaking out. And the cold of space! A frozen tomb!” He must have made a sound, for a groan came from beside him. He fought to draw breath, tried to speak. He choked, and his voice was oddly high and thin. “Who are——”
He ended in a fit of coughing, felt warm blood spraying from his mouth. Faintly he heard a whisper beside him.
“I’m Brand. The Moon Patrol—fought to the last!”
Bill could speak no more, and evidently the redoubtable captain could not. For a long time they lay in freezing silence. Bill had no hope of life, he felt only very grim satisfaction in the fact that he and Brand had not been killed outright.
But suddenly he was thrilled with hope. He heard a crash of hammer blows upon metal, sharp as the sound of snapping glass in the thin air. Then he heard the thin hiss of an oxygen lance.
Someone was cutting a way to them through the wreckage. Only a moment later, it seemed, a vivid bar of light cleft the darkness, searched the wrecked bridge, settled upon the two limp figures. Bill saw grotesque figures in clumbrous metal space suits clambering through a hole they had cut. He felt an oxygen helmet being fastened about his head, heard the thin hiss of the escaping gas, and was once more able to breathe. Again he slipped into oblivion.
He awoke with the sensation that infinite time had passed. He sat up quickly, feeling strong, alert, fully recovered in every faculty, a clear memory of every detail of the disastrous encounter with the strange blue globe-ship springing instantly to his mind.
He was in a clean bed in a little white-walled room. Captain Brand, a surprised grin on his bluff, rough-hewn features, was sitting upon another bed beside him. Two attendants in white uniform stood just inside the door; and a nervous little man in black suit, evidently a doctor, was hastily replacing gleaming instruments in a leather bag.
A tall man appeared suddenly in the door, clad in a striking uniform of black, scarlet, and gold—black trousers, scarlet military coat and cap, gold buttons and decorations. He carried in his hand a glittering positive ray pistol.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a crisp, gruff voice, “you may consider yourselves prisoners of the Prince of Space.”
“How come?” Brand demanded.
“The Prince was kind enough to have you removed from the wreck of your ship, and brought aboard the Red Rover, his own sunship. You have been kept unconscious until your recovery was complete.”
“And what do you want with us now?” Brand was rather aggressive.
The man with the pistol smiled. “That, gentlemen, I am happy to say, rests largely with yourselves.”
“I am an officer in the Moon Patrol,” said Brand. “I prefer death to anything——”
“Wait, Captain. You need have none but the kindest feelings for my master, the Prince of Space. I now ask you nothing but your word as an officer and a gentleman that you will act as becomes a guest of the Prince. Your promise will lose you nothing and win you much.”
“Very good, I promise,” Brand agreed after a moment. “——for twenty-four hours.”
He pulled out his watch, looked at it. The man in the door lowered his pistol, smiling, and walked across to shake hands with Brand.
“Call me Smith,” he introduced himself. “Captain of the Prince’s cruiser, Red Rover.”
Still smiling, he beckoned toward the door.
“And if you like, gentlemen, you may come with me to the bridge. The Red Rover is to land in an hour.” Brand sprang nimbly to the floor, and Bill followed. The flier was maintaining a moderate acceleration—they felt light, but were able to walk without difficulty. Beyond the door was a round shaft, with a ladder through its length. Captain Smith clambered up the ladder. Brand and Bill swung up behind him.
After an easy climb of fifty feet or so, they entered a domed pilot-house, with vitrolite observation panels, telescopes, maps and charts, and speaking tube—an arrangement similar to that of the Fury.
Black, star-strewn heavens lay before them. Bill looked for the earth, found it visible in the periscopic screens, almost behind them. It was a little green disk, the moon but a white dot beside it.
“We land in an hour!” he exclaimed.
“I didn’t say where,” said Captain Smith, smiling. “Our landing place is a million miles from the earth.”
“Not on earth! Then where——”
“At the City of Space.”
“The City of Space!”
“The capital of the Prince of Space. It is not a thousand miles before us.
Bill peered ahead, through the vitrolite dome, distinguished the bright constellation of Sagittarius with the luminous clouds of the Galaxy behind it.
“I don’t see anything——”
“The Prince does not care to advertise his city. The outside of the City of Space is covered with black vitalium—which furnishes us with power. Reflecting none of the sun’s rays, it cannot be seen by reflected light. Against the black background of space it is invisible, except when it occults a star.”
CAPTAIN SMITH busied himself with giving orders for the landing. Bill and Brand stood for many minutes looking forward through the vitrolite dome, while the motor ray tubes retarded the flier. Presently a little black point came against the silver haze of the Milky Way. It grew, stars vanishing behind its rim, until a huge section of the heavens was utterly black before them.
“The City of Space is in a cylinder,” Captain Smith said. “Roughly five thousand feet in diameter, and about that high. It is built largely of meteoric iron which we captured from a meteorite swarm—making navigation safe and getting useful metal at the same time. The cylinder whirls constantly, with such speed that the centrifugal force against the sides equals the force of gravity on the earth. The city is built around the inside of the cylinder—so that one can look up and see his neighbor’s house apparently upside down, a mile above his head. We enter through a lock in one end of the cylinder.”
A vast disk of dull black metal was now visible a few yards outside the vitrolite panels. A huge metal valve swung open in it, revealing a bright space beyond. The Red Rover moved into the chamber, the mighty valve closed behind her, air hissed in about her, an inner valve was opened, and she slipped into the City of Space.
They were, Bill saw, at the center of an enormous cylinder. The sides, half a mile away, above and below them, were covered with buildings along neat, tree-bordered streets, scattered with green lawns, tiny gardens, and bits of wooded park. It seemed very strange to Bill, to see these endless streets about the inside of a tube, so that one by walking a little over three miles in one direction would arrive again at the starting point, in the same way that one gets back to the starting point after going around the earth in one direction.
At the ends of the cylinder, fastened to the huge metal disks, which closed the ends, were elaborate and complex mechanisms, machines strange and massive. “They must be for heating the city,” Bill thought, “and for purifying the air, for furnishing light and power, perhaps even for moving it about.” The lock through which they had entered was part of this mechanism.
In the center of each end of the cylinder hung a huge light, seeming large and round as the sun, flooding the place with brilliant mellow rays.
“There are five thousand people here,” said Captain Smith. “The Prince has always kept the best specimens among his captives, and others have been recruited besides. We are self-sustaining as the earth is. We use the power of the sun—through our vitalium batteries. We grow our own food. We utilize our waste products—matter here goes through a regular cycle of life and death as on the earth. Men eat food containing carbon, breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide; our plants break up the carbon dioxide, make more foods containing the same carbon, and give off the oxygen for men to breathe again. Our nitrogen, or oxygen and hydrogen, go through similar cycles. The power of the sun is all we need from outside.”
Captain Smith guided his “guests” down the ladder, and out through the ship’s airlock. They entered an elevator. Three minutes later they stepped off upon the side of the great cylinder that housed the City, and entered a low building with a broad concrete road curving up before it. As they stepped out, it gave Bill a curious dizzy feeling to look up and see busy streets, inverted, a mile above his head. The road before them curved smoothly up on either hand, bordered with beautiful trees, until its ends met again above his head.
The centrifugal force that held objects against the sides of the cylinder acted in precisely the same way as gravity on the earth—except that it pulled away from the center of the cylinder, instead of toward it.
A glistening heliocar came skimming down upon whirling heliocopters, dropped to rubber tires, and rolled up beside them. A young man of military bearing, clad in a striking uniform of red, black, and gold, stepped out, saluted stiffly.
“Captain Smith,” he said, “the Prince desires your attendance at his private office immediately with your guests.”
Smith motioned Bill and Captain Brand into the richly upholstered body of the heliocar. Bill, gazing up at the end of the huge cylinder with a city inside it, caught sight, for the first time, of the exterior of the Red Rover, the ship that had brought them to the City of Space. It lay just beside the massive machinery of the air-lock, supported in a heavy metal cradle, with the elevator tube running straight from it to the building behind them.
“Look, Brand!” Bill gasped. “That isn’t the blue globe. It isn’t the ship we fought at all!”
Brand looked. The Red Rover was much the same sort of ship that the Fury had been. She was slender and tapering, cigar-shaped, some two hundred feet in length and twenty-five in diameter—nearly twice as large as the Fury. She was cylindrical, instead of octagonal, and she mounted twenty-four motor tubes, in two rings fore and aft, of twelve each, instead of eight.
Brand turned to Smith. “How’s this?” he demanded. “Where is the blue globe? Did you have two ships?”
