Four Astounding Novellas

by Nat Schachner

  But Webb was in furious action. He sprang to the various controls, set them on their courses, restored the repulso screen—just in case Ku-mer had thought quickly enough to sight the schoda on their upward zoom. Then, grimly, he leveled off his flight, poised the great space lab directly over the swarming plateau.

  Susan swayed to his side. "Why don't we escape?" she cried.

  Webb's jaw was hard. "First I want to blast Gar-Mando out of existence. Ku-mer is too great a menace to the peace of the planets to remain alive."

  His fingers tightened on the trips of the snouting blasters. Their ugly orifices trained down on the black plateau. In the screen they could see the outlaws, like a swarm of ants, running aimlessly back and forth, pouring futile pellets at the hovering ship. Ku-mer was nowhere to be seen.

  The girl caught Webb's hand with a little cry. She pointed. Far beneath, like a variable star, the orb of crystal thought was pouring a blaze of glory through the transparent hemisphere of inclosing quartz. Never had they seen it so dazzling, so alive. "My father," she said with a catch in her voice. "He's in there. He, too, will be destroyed."

  Webb's eyes clouded. He thought of that strange breaking through of Jim Blake—of the triumph of a long-dead emotion over the impersonal intellectualism of the crystals—of the warning that Jim Blake, a mere series of octahedrons, had managed to convey.

  "I think," he said softly, "your father—and all the others—must know what we are about to do. What you see is their pæan of victory, their welcoming of sweet oblivion. Pure intellect, divorced from all warmth of human relations, all the loveliness of human forms and sights and sounds, must be a frightful thing. Jim Blake knows—and approves."

  Hastily, he sprang the trips. The great blast shells dropped at terrific speed. The still-firing outlaws saw them coming, fled howling in all directions. Then the mountain of black rock seemed to heave on its base. It blasted open like a volcano, spouted huge geysers of molten magna. The plateau shuddered, split wide, and toppled in a ruin of flaring fragments into the inky seas. The wide-lapping liquid tossed and boiled like a cauldron of hellish brew. Vast monsters, incredible in size, obscene nightmares beyond all human imagination, erupted from the sticky, foaming depths, flung high, and dropped back with the crash of a thousand Niagaras.

  NOW the planet of Gar-Mando was an uninterrupted ocean. The mountain plateau, solitary bit of land, was no more. Of all the buildings, of all the scuttling men, not a trace remained.

  But Webb had seen, or thought he saw, the crystal globe that represented a hundred men burst open like a shower of bright sparks. The separate sparks fled in all directions, on a curious, singing note, upward through the phosphorescent air, out into the sudden space beyond. For with the destruction of Ku-mer's laboratory, light was no longer curved, and far above blazed the familiar stars, while the Sun, a slightly larger star, blinked in amazement at this strange addition to its family.

  Susan stood very erect. "Poor father," she said quietly.

  "I am not so sure," Webb murmured, holding her hand in his. "Thought is indestructible. It is the subelement beneath the tiniest wave lengths. No mere explosion could break it down. All I did, I think, was to separate the hundred martyrs from one another, scatter their crystal units into the all-embracing mother—space. Perhaps, my dear, that is all that death itself can do."

  She digested that. Perhaps it brought her a measure of comfort. "But how," she changed the subject, "did the opening of the repulsor screen release us from Ku-mer's grip?"

  "I think it was due to the nature of the interference waves he set up. Obviously, though I didn't realize it at the time, they must have had trains in subspace also. Otherwise the repulsor screen would have remained unaffected. By cutting off my own power, to which it had been carefully attuned, I thrust the whole wave system off balance. As a result, the interference no longer held good, and my own units started functioning again."

  Susan took a deep breath. "We had better be starting for our own planets," she said, "now that Ku-mer is dead."

  "Ku-mer not dead!"

  Webb whirled. It was the Titan who had spoken. His black face was a tight, screwed mask. "What do you mean, Stet?" the Earthman demanded. "Of course he's dead. We blasted him and his island to smithereens."

  But the Titan held his ground. "He not dead," he insisted stubbornly. And Webb, knowing the peculiar other senses of the Titans, felt a cold wind ruffle his hair. He shook his head half angrily. "Don't talk nonsense," he snapped. "Set our rockets for Earth. It's a long trek this time—without the Martian's secret power acceleration."

  "Yes, master," the Titan said stolidly, and shuffled to his duties.

  "How long will it take?" asked Susan.

  "About one hundred and forty days, Earth time."

  The girl looked at him impishly. "At least," she said softly, "it will give us time to get acquainted."

  The End