Within those three hours the last of the great battleships, Earth’s pride and power, were dead. One of those ships, given ten minutes inside the enemy’s defenses, could have reduced the part of Venus inhabited by the Over Race to something resembling the surface of the Moon; but they had never had a chance to get that near, had never, after the first contact, had even a chance to win free again.
With a shrinking foreboding, Degnan glanced round him, covertly studying the faces of the other people in the cafe. In them he did not find the shock and unwillingness to believe that he felt himself—but then these people had, no doubt, heard earlier reports and had time to grow familiar with catastrophe. He did see an ominous blankness, a helpless, hopeless fixity in the eyes that watched the screen, that might mean resigned despair—might mean the end. If people like these, a couple of billion of them in all the lands of Earth, were ready to give up, it would be their decision that counted. The delegates’ votes would be cast according to what the observers in their various countries reported on the state of mass feeling, on the results of hurried surveys, the resolutions of local political organizations . . . It was obvious that, as Athalie had said, the censorship had been removed, complete freedom of information restored; that at least was a heroic gesture in what might be man’s last hour.
DEGNAN compelled himself to finish eating and drinking, and went into the streets again, under the veiled noonday sun. He had to keep going—the more nearly he was approaching the end of his strength, the more surely he had to keep moving; if he stopped for long, he might sleep, and sleeping be captured. But as long as he was awake and in command of himself—Degnan’s hand tightened on the pistol that reposed in his pocket.
He wasn’t much worried about the militia now, and was sure he had nothing to fear from the bulk of the people he passed, or who passed him by—merely wandering aimlessly, like him, or going mechanically about business that no longer mattered. He wondered what they would do, if they knew what walked among them—run screaming for non-existent safety, or merely stand rooted in a numbness beyond fear?
The pale sun had passed the zenith; the air hung dusty, hot and heavy as the air before a storm, unshaken in the abnormal silence that lay over the city. But in that silence Degnan heard suddenly an explosion of voices, a murmur that rose and swelled with bursting tension. He saw a cluster of people on the street-corner ahead. They pressed round a news-vending machine; sheets fluttered, were snatched and torn as the crowd jostled and grew.
Degnan sensed that the storm had already broken. Careless for the moment of attracting attention, he grasped an arm on the outskirts of the mob: “What’s up?”
The man turned with an unseeing stare, then gestured at a paper that was held briefly aloft by someone, its headline vivid:
UN REJECTS VENUS DEMAND
Somehow he was a couple of blocks further on, hearing the same story from a public newsscreen. Ten minutes ago the Nations’ delegates had voted unanimously against surrender; perhaps their decision had been made much earlier, but they had delayed, gaining time.
The crowd collected in front of the screen blocked the street, but even now, after the first stirring, they were surprisingly quiet. Most of them wore the same still, set expression that Degnan had seen and tried to analyze before, but now, looking from one to the other, he saw those faces with new eyes. Resigned they were—resigned to suffer and die if it must be, without shouting and fanfares, but not to yield.
And in him rose a feeling long unfamiliar—a sweet and poignant sense of pride in his own kind. If man were about to pass into extinction, he would not go like the dodos that bowed their heads under the clubs, but as the last tyrannosaur or the last sabertoothed tiger must have perished—fighting.
DEGNAN felt clearheaded once more, stronger; it was as if a part of his burden and weariness had been taken from him. The spirit of Earth’s peoples, expressed in that unanimous vote—even if their unity should mean no more now than that of the Five Nations of the Iroquois or of Sitting Bull’s confederacy had meant against the white man’s rifles—was something to remember to the very end.
Someone in the crowd shouted, loud above the rustle of voices, and pointed into the sky; and many, Degnan among them, looked up in time to see a great ball of fire that fell through the overcast, seemed for a moment striking at the city, then veered away and vanished into the west.
The voices blended in a long sigh. The torment had begun again, and this time there would be no reprieve . . . Presently there were other flashes in the clouds, meanings and whistlings far up in air, the hurtling fire-trails of last-ditch interception missiles rising from Earth itself. With what the defenders had learned and the preparations that must have been made in over twelve hours’ respite, it should be possible, for a time, to destroy most of the enemy projectiles or at least deflect them away from the great population centers; it might even be days before the world’s defensive stores were exhausted. But it would be folly to hope that the Over Race was not ready to carry on the bombardment that long, for as long as they needed to.
Degnan stood motionless, face upturned like the rest; but inside him was a sudden turmoil. It was as if the sight of that first fireball had tripped a spring in his head, even as a similar spectacle had last night—but then the spring had been set by Venus. This time was different; there was no flash of memory lighting up the dark places of his mind, but facts he knew long since were falling into place with swift precision.
Abruptly he whirled, pushed his way ruthlessly out of the crowd and began to run.
He pounded through deserted streets and past other skyward-staring groups clustered round the news centers, while above the lightning flickered, up there where the Battle of Earth was being fought. He no longer saw it. Before him danced images from memory, and most constant among them was the vision of Margaret—a queerly superimposed picture, that, of her face as he had seen it last in reality, shadowed by horror past, and as she looked at him from the screen, smiling unafraid in a world that was gone. And in his ears was the echo of words she had spoken last night.
And there was a mathematical certainty. The end of the first hyperspace bombardment had come shortly before midnight—bare minutes after Degnan had arrived at NAMI headquarters. For some six hours, then, the Venusians had held their fire without explanation.
To Degnan the reason was clear. They had discontinued the assault lest it interfere with the functioning of their final weapon. Forced at last to assume that something had gone wrong, they had sent the ultimatum, allowing another quarter-day for its acceptance, during which Degnan might still conceivably accomplish their plan. And now at last they had given him up . . .
But they could not have known what time he got to the NAMI office. No matter how uncanny their ability to foresee probabilities—and they had shown it amply in the scheme they had built around him—they couldn’t have calculated that closely, if for no other reason than that his involvement with their own agents would have upset all timetables.
Unless—
Margaret saying: “Sometimes I can feel it trying to creep back . . .”
If that had been a post-hypnotic effect, it meant nothing. But if it were what she had seemed to think it was, if she had been—possessed—by an alien mind millions of miles away, on Venus—then the Venusians could have known through her. It seemed impossible, but it made the picture complete. Degnan had judged her telepathically sensitive; and now he could guess, for the first time, why she had been returned to Earth with him.
And she had helped him escape—why? Degnan winced. But it didn’t matter. What mattered now was to find her, use her in one last attempt.
AS DEGNAN ran, there settled on his shoulders a new burden of responsibility, and that which he had had to bear before seemed light. For he was about to take the fate of worlds deliberately into his own hands.
Pounding heart and straining lungs told him he couldn’t keep up this pace much longer—and there must be miles to go; he was still only
roughly oriented in the unfamiliar section of the city to which his wanderings had led him. Grudgingly, he slowed to a rapid walk. Public transportation seemed to have vanished, and there were very few vehicles of any kind moving; Degnan glanced wistfully at the occasional parked cars, but to appropriate one would take time and tools he didn’t have.
Ahead of him walls and windows were suddenly lit by a flash far brighter than the murky day. He looked back into the west, and saw there a cloud rising, an immense inverted cone of steam and spray, losing shape as the fire within it faded, dwarfing all the city’s buildings. A hyperspace projectile had barely missed and had fallen into the ocean.
Moments later the ground jarred and shook with a force that flung Degnan to the pavement. He heard the tinkle of shattering glass and from somewhere the prolonged roar of collapsing structures. Dust and plaster fell from overhead. He scrambled to his feet and broke into a run again.
Three quarters of an hour later, spent from haste and from struggling through streets half-blocked with rubble, he reached his goal.
The small hotel looked deserted, though it was practically undamaged, having lost no more than a few windows. Degnan panted up the stairs—and paused in dismay; the door of the room where he had told Margaret to stay stood ajar.
As by its own will, his hand dipped into his pocket and came out with the pistol, slipped off the safety catch. Dead silence all around. He pushed the door wide with an abrupt motion, and looked into an empty room, almost as he had seen it last.
A picture hanging askew, a lamp toppled—but that was no doubt caused by the temblors just past. Intuitively he knew she was gone, and at the same time his mind refused stupidly to grasp the possibility—gone without leaving any word? Or taken away?
Then a scuffing sound from behind warned him; he spun and recoiled inside the room, catching a flashing glimpse of the half-dozen men in police uniforms and civilian clothes who had appeared almost soundlessly. Degnan heaved a table against the door just as a crashing impact sprung the latch. A second blow jarred the heavy table back a couple of inches. Then Degnan took aim at the door, just above head level, and fired.
A sound of hasty steps and silence again, broken only by a mutter of voices in which he could catch no words.
He was in the bag. The room was on the third floor, and even so there’d be others posted around. This was the end . . .
“WHAT’S THE matter, Ralph? Can’t we talk this over?” Jay Marlin’s voice from the hall outside. Degnan shifted his grip on the pistol butt, grown slippery in his hand. He answered in a flat voice, “No. I’m afraid not, Jay.”
“Listen—we’ve got plenty of guns and gas out here, but we don’t want to use either one. There are some who think the Venusians got to you, Ralph; but I don’t believe it, I don’t believe you’d turn against us. Whatever’s happened, it can’t be as important right now as a defense against the bombardment. And you’re the only man that can give us that, the only man that can save Earth!”
How close that was to the truth and yet how grotesquely far away! He was not Earth’s salvation but its greatest danger. Try to explain that? He remembered Athalie’s unbelief and treachery. The chance was too great, the danger too monstrous. And yet—
He was silent, trying for a moment to put everything else out of his mind and look sanely, objectively at the thought that had come to him, trying to be sure it was not just that he was cracking up, his personal urge to cling to life getting the upper hand and urging him to grasp at a hope that was not there.
He said from a dry throat, “There was a girl here—”
“She’s all right. We picked her up early this morning.”
So Margaret had already been in their hands when her picture was broadcast. They would have suspected he might come back here, sent out the picture in hopes of increasing the probability. And they had guessed right, without knowing all that was at stake.
“Jay.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe we can make a bargain.”
“Name it.”
“I’ve got to have a solemn promise. Let me talk to that girl for a little while—half an hour. It doesn’t have to be alone, just undisturbed. At the end of that time, I’ll go quietly to CFHQ, unless—and you’ve got to promise me that, too—unless by then the bombardment has stopped.” There was a brief pause; then Jay Marlin said, “My word on that wouldn’t do you much good. I’ll have to call headquarters; that’ll take a couple of minutes. These other men will stay right where they are. All right?”
“All right,” said Degnan. He didn’t move, but stood facing the door, the automatic in his hand.
After a lifetime, the other was there again. “Ralph—it’s okay. I talked to General Fleming himself. He promises you’ll be given what you ask.”
Degnan let the gun fall; it thudded dully on the carpet. He pushed his barricade aside and let the door swing open.
IN THE anteroom of Fleming’s office, Jay Marlin pressed his hand. “Good luck. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Ralph—but good luck anyway.” He wheeled sharply, and went out before Degnan could manage so much as “Thanks.” There, thought Degnan, went a man who would have believed him.
Other NAMI agents accompanied Degnan into the office. The General was waiting, looking older than he had last night; with him was a youngish man with a smooth face and Mongoloid eyes.
“This is Mr. King,” General Fleming waved a hand jerkily, “liaison deputy from Combined Fleet Headquarters. By his permission, we shan’t have located you—officially—until thirty minutes from now.”
King nodded, glanced silently at an expensive wrist watch.
Degnan hardy gave either of them a second look. He had eyes only for Margaret Lusk.
She was in a chair beside the General’s big desk, and she looked very small and dejected. But at sight of Degnan she sprang to her feet with a tremulous glad cry.
“Ralph, Ralph!” She flung her arms about his neck, “They told me you’d disappeared—and I thought—”
“Easy,” he said softly. “Things haven’t gone just the way I figured, Margaret. I need your help again.” She raised her head and looked into his face clear-eyed. “Tell me how.” He couldn’t believe, now, the dark suspicions that had burgeoned again not long ago—and that made what he had to ask harder. He steeled himself.
“Remember what you told me last night? About the thing that kept trying to creep back. Is it still trying?” A shadow of pain crossed the face close to his; she closed her eyes as if to shut something out.
“I think so—I’m afraid—”
“Stop being afraid—and let it come back, have control again just for a little while. You’ve built up a defense against it—you’ve got to tear the wall down now. It’s the only thing that will help—and you’re the only one that can do it.” He was at once commanding and pleading.
She shuddered, then was quiet; but he could feel the effort she was making, the tenseness of her body. “I—I’ll try.”
GENTLY he seated her in the chair.
She looked up at him for a long moment, then leaned back. After a little she closed her eyes, and he saw a wave of revulsion pass over her face. Her hands clenched in her lap and then slowly, deliberately unclasped. Her eyes stayed shut and she was still.
Degnan had to know how fast his time was passing. He glanced round and saw no clock, but his eye lit on King; he made a peremptory beckoning motion and pointed to his own wrist. The other man’s slanted eyes read the gesture; face impassive, he unfastened his watch and handed it over.
Five, six minutes gone. “Margaret!”
Her eyes opened and stared; they were blank, blind, as they had been when he first looked into them on the Sheneb.
Degnan spoke to her, to the thing behind her eyes, slowly and distinctly. “I have twenty-four minutes left.
When that time is up, unless by then the hyperspace bombardment has ceased and Venus is ready to surrender, I will be sent to Combined Fleet Headquarters
. The Headquarters is located at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the General and the liaison agent start and look at one another. He went on steadily, “Earth’s oceans are water, hydrogen oxide. Their total mass is in the neighborhood of one and one-half quintillion tons, of which about one-tenth is hydrogen. One gram of hydrogen, converted into helium, yields seventeen hundred billion calories of heat . . .”
He added a few more rough calculations. The enemy could check and reduce them to exactitude in next to no time—if the message were heard, if the thing in Margaret’s eye was not only here, in her mind, but also there, forty million miles away . . .
If they heard, and if they believed, it would take them time to decide—though far less time than men would have needed—and again time for radio signals to halt the hyperspace projectiles that were on their way to Earth now. And how long might it take for a thought to cross space? The speed of light—or less, or more? There was no way of knowing. The hands of King’s watch moved at abnormal speed, as if the mechanism were running mad.
Degnan began again, repeated the message almost word for word, with slow deadly emphasis. It was as if his naked will strained to bridge the gulf of nothing and make contact with the enemy.
Venusians were not men. No man quite knew how they would respond to a given situation. He was offering them, now, the choice they had hurled at Earth: surrender or die. The people of Earth were willing to accept death before defeat. But the Over Race was coldly logical, and Degnan felt sure that it would not respond as man had done . . .
THERE was silence when he finished. And in the stillness the faint tintinnabulation of small objects in the room, responding to the Earth’s ceaseless vibration beneath the onslaught it was enduring. The floor shook solidly, once or twice, at shock-waves from nearer hits.
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 38
