by Earl
His finger pulled; his arm vibrated; his hand guided the handle, pointing the muzzle at a striped ship that swung downward past them. He shouted aloud when one of the gunners slumped into his cockpit. First blood! A flash from the big gun, and something shrieked past his ear. Sarto! That was close! But now to buckle down to earnest work; he must keep his eyes all over every second and swing the gun without hesitation. And so it went on for what seemed hours, but were minutes in reality.
Williams’ appeal to his men had not been in vain; they fought their best, and it was just a little better than the best of the Unidum airmen. Ship after ship spun out of control and fluttered to the waiting ocean, or caught fire to fall like a meteor. Two ships remained, both rebels; all the others were gone.
Williams descended to the cabin, cold and disheveled. “We’ve won out, Terry. But at. . . . a price.” He shook his head as though to clear his mind of gloom. He called the other ship via phone: “Descend and follow. We take over the sunpower station immediately.”
The reply from the other ship was delayed for a while. Then a voice, gasping and pain-filled: “Yes, commander. . . . we descend. . . . soon now. . . . gunner killed. . . . wounded . . . goodbye and. . . . good luck. . . .”
Williams saw from the window that the other ship was behaving erratically. It bespoke the weakening hand of a dying pilot.
“But you’ve not died in vain,” said Williams softly. “I swear it!”
Somehow the dying pilot heard it. His reply was pushed through tremulous lips: “Thanks. . . . commander.”
The other ship lurched drunkenly, poised as though saluting the flagship, then plunged downward.
“Well, Terry, it’s up to us.” Williams’ voice was husky. Then it changed: “Where’s M’bopo?”
“Why, he followed you out! Didn’t he—”
“Lord! Then that was the end of him. Must have fallen; I didn’t see him.”
Already numbed at the many deaths that had been crowded into the past hour, the loss of the black man, although more personal, hardly did more than shake a few faltering Bantu phrases from Williams. Then he breathed deeply and fastened his attention to the approaching sunpower station.
Terry landed the ship without hesitation and he and Williams stepped out with pistols in hand, menacing the small crowd already gathered before the ship. To one side, a half-dozen men with blue capes waited expectantly. To these Scientists, Williams addressed himself.
“This sunpower station is now in the hands of the Brotherhood, or the rebels, as we are called. Since your armed escort is gone, you have no choice but to recognize my authority.”
“We realize that,” spoke one of the Scientists, glancing past and beyond Williams. “And furthermore, we are glad of it!”
“You mean—glad to be in rebel hands?” queried Williams incredulously.
“Certainly. We would never have let those five Unidum ships attack your forces had we been able to prevent it. Let me explain—but first of all, will you please order that man of yours away from the gun; he looks ready to open fire any minute!”
Williams whirled and gasped—with joy. In one of the gun cock-pits, looking very foolish, was M’bopo himself. With his hands on the gun, he looked indeed ready to spout flame and lead.
“Come down from there, you fool!” shouted Williams in Bantu dialect, when shocked surprise was over. The black man clambered from the gun cupola and leaped to the landing floor. He straightened up, frozen but grinning, as his master heaped imprecations on him to cover up his real feelings of joy and relief that he was alive. After a rapid exchange of native dialect, Williams strode back to the Scientists.
To Terry he explained that M’bopo had followed him out on the cabin roof before the battle, had seen him work a machine gun, and had thereby himself taken over the other gun. What effects his bullets had had, no one could say.
Williams turned to the impatient Scientists. “Now, sirs, if you will explain—”
“Just this,” said the one who had acted as spokesman before, “we, of course, on board this experimental sunpower station, have been in touch with national events via radio news, and have from the first favored the Brotherhood. We too see the insidiousness of the Brain-control, and the future threat of brain-enslavement. Practically all our lives we six Scientists here have labored to produce power from the sun, and our goal is near. Despairing indeed was the news that the tyrant Molier was making a bid for absolute dictatorship. When the Brotherhood announced its opposition, and military revolution broke out, we hoped and prayed Molier would be broken. Apparently”—his voice became heavy—“it can’t be done.”
“And perhaps it can!” contradicted Williams. He continued eagerly at their blank looks. “I think, with your help, with your pledges to give me any and ah aid, the tide may be turned yet!”
“In behalf of my colleagues and myself, I give that pledge right now,” said the Scientist. His fellows nodded vigorously.
“Would you even”—Williams paused and swept an eye around at the jungle of towered apparatus surrounding them—“willingly endanger all this—your life work ?”
The Scientist swallowed but answered quickly. “We Scientists of the sunpower station here have more than once wished in the past month that we could save Unitaria from threatened evil, even at the price of . . . of all this! So now, we stand by our unwritten agreement. But in what way can the labors of science serve in the matter?”
Williams countered with a question: “How soon can you reach New York with this motored raft?”
The Scientists murmured in surprise. Finally the spokesman said: “Possibly by dawn tomorrow.”
“Now a very important question,” continued Williams. “Can you swing those night beams which throw off excess sun-energy in any direction?”
The Scientist pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Yes, with a little alteration in machinery, it could be simply done.”
“Good!” cried Williams exultantly. “Now, have you an all-wave transmitter?”
“In the building there,” pointed the Scientist.
“I must get in touch with General Bromberg,” shouted Williams by way of excuse as he madly dashed to the building pointed out. A man seated before the control panel of an all-wave radio looked up quizzically.
“Eighteen point two centimeters; full power. And hurry!” barked Williams. “Ask for General Bromberg.”
l Terry stepped into the room just in time to begin coding a message that Williams wrote hastily. The Brotherhood code, which had never been worked out by the baffled Unidum intelligence service, had a key word which changed its vowels every ten hours by the clock. Once the progressive system of change had been memorized, it was simplicity itself to code a message that would be safe from enemy understanding.
The voice that answered from Base One was that of Agarth. “Who calls ?”
“Williams—Marshal Williams.”
“Great guns! Is it possible? I had no hope of hearing your voice again. General Bromberg is ill in bed, Williams.”
“Well, then listen, Agarth ! Take down this code; IT! give it twice.”
The message translated was: “You must hold out at Base One till dawn tomorrow. Fight as you’ve never fought before if necessary! But hold out! The sunpower station is in my hands. It is the most powerful and invincible war-machine in the world! With it at dawn tomorrow I will threaten to burn the Capitol to a cinder if Molier is not arrested and ousted from power. The victory is ours, if all goes well!”
A code came back that Terry worked out.
“What is it; what is it ?” begged Williams almost frantically.
Terry read: “Will hold out if Hell falls!”
* * *
The grey of dawn revealed a huge bulk standing before the front faces of the Capitol of Unitaria. Like a sentient giant from another world, the sunpower station frowned majestically over the seat of government. Buzzing aircraft hovered like flies, darting and spinning in curiosity. Suddenly a blinding beam of lig
ht shot upward from the internal mazes of the station, and two unlucky ships whiffed into flame. The beam swung awesomely downward, frightening away hundreds of ships—down—down—down—till it just barely touched the peak of a dome on a Capitol building. The peak glowed red, then white, then fell away molten.
What internal revolution occurred in the Capitol after the ultimatum was delivered, the watchers aboard the sunpower station did not know. That the Unidum had finally and completely fallen away from Molier, they did know. That the incubus of evil dissolved before the threat of extinction, they also knew. That the Unidum was prepared to call off hostilities against the Brotherhood, and negotiate with its officials, was a third known fact. But what and why the incident of the next hour resulted, was not to be known till many days later.
In the second hour after dawn, a ship arose from a roof-landing of the Capitol, engines beating frantically, as though to escape were a matter of seconds. From somewhere—no one knows just where—came the flash and report of an anti-aircraft gun. A part of the rising ship’s wing crumpled and threw it out of balance. For a few seconds the ship gyrated madly downward. Then the pilot must have regained partial control, for the ship righted part way. Sagging in the air, about to plunge ocean-ward any moment, it miraculously kept an even keel and finally coasted downward to land in the very center of the man-made island of sun-mirrors.
Hurrying figures approached it. From the badly smashed cabin crawled a tall and gaunt figure. His clothing indicated that he was, or had been, one of the two executive-heads of Unitaria. His blue cape betokened him a Scientist. He straightened up to face a group of men who gasped upon recognizing him.
Standing at the head of the group was a robust figure whose tanned face indicated that he had known rigorous climates. The gaunt figure, wild-eyed, poured out a flood of words. The tanned man answered, pointing a stern finger as though in denunciation. The gaunt figure again broke out in torrentous language, and the other man made a threatening move toward him.
Of a sudden there was a flurry of action. The gaunt man’s hand whipped into his robe and came out with a tiny tubular object. It pointed straight for the tanned man and from it came a dull blue flash. But the killing charge of the lightning pistol did not find the mark for which it had been aimed. A figure whose skin was black had a second before leaped between the two men. It was he who sagged to the wooden landing lifeless.
For a moment every person in the tableau froze, as though time had stood still. Then with a shout, the tanned man leaped for the gaunt man, a quivering rage apparent in his manner of motion. The figures came together, twisted, contorted. The gaunt man seemed to have an unnatural strength, like the strength of a madman, so that even the other’s steel muscles were matched. Suddenly the blue flash again appeared. The gaunt man lay stretched.
The tanned man looked at his vanquished antagonist a moment, then turned to kneel beside the figure of the black man, reverently.
Thus died Molier, arch-tyrant of 1973.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Lost Scientist
l Earl Hackworth could hardly control his voice. “Tell me all about it, Dan and Terry. Good Lord! Don’t you realize that I know very little of what really happened to you two after we separated at the tide-station! How did you get away? How did you meet Agarth? How—”
“All in good time, Earl,” said Williams. “The thing now is—Lila!”
“Oh, yes, yes,” agreed Hackworth, calming down. The excitement of seeing his two closest friends again after weeks of separation—and eternities of events—had thrown him into a turmoil. “Let’s go then to the hospital. I was there just yesterday. She’s sleeping as peacefully as ever, Terry.”
“What a relief,” breathed Terry, “that the drug held out through all those weeks. Dear girl—!” His eyes softened with tender thoughts and memories.
“But Williams,” he turned to the other, “Agarth called, don’t you remember? He will be here—and I guess some sort of parade in your honor with him—to take you to the Capitol to witness the ceremonies which take the Brain-control Act and the Eugenics Law from the statutes, and the formal announcement of Europe’s agreement to veto secession.”
“Terry,” answered Williams slowly, “you’ve been with me through thick and thin. You’ve stuck with me even when it seemed I had gone mad in my moves. I’d feel like a deserter if I didn’t go along with you now.”
“But Agarth will—”
“Hang Agarth—at least for the time being! Come on; I must see the awakening of Lila.”
So they went. During the drive, no word was spoken. Terry, face aglow with an eager light, seemed lost in dreams. Williams, with something of brooding melancholy in his eyes, seemed enervated, depressed. For the first time that Hackworth could remember, he began to show that his years were not so few. Williams had not once mentioned the dramatic events of the day before on board the sunpower station. But M’bopo was to be buried in state; that much he had specified.
Hackworth stopped his auto before the Unidum Hospital. “Miss Lila Hackworth, Room 2024,” said Hackworth to the attendant.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the white-clad woman, “but she’s gone!”
“Gone? Gone! GONE!” The word seemed to echo and re-echo in thunders. It was Terry shouting the word incredulously. Williams placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“You must be mistaken,” said Hackworth confidently. “I saw her just yesterday. She’s that ‘sleeping’ case, you know.”
“I know, sir. But she is gone!”
“Great Heavens, explain what you mean!” cried Terry.
The woman attendant turned pale and cringed. “Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have let him do it—” She seemed about to become hysterical. But the fierce gleam in Terry’s eye bolstered her spirit to defiance. “What else could I do? Last night Professor Jorgen came and took her away! He is superintendent of Unidum hospitals and has authority.”
“But last night—he had not a shred of authority,” said Terry. “He is one of the group to be exiled—but I suppose you people here in the hospital didn’t know that.”
“No, sir. Furthermore, he had a pistol in his hand, and the look in his eyes—horrible!” The woman attendant lowered her voice. “He was stark mad—insane! We didn’t dare try to stop him.”
“But why should he come here and take Lila away?” asked Hackworth tremulously.
“In insanity,” spoke Williams, “sometimes just a little idea grows to mountainous proportions. Perhaps the exasperation of being balked in marrying Lila for so long, transmitted itself into his madness, and has now become his sole lunatic aim.
“Where did he take her?” he asked of the woman.
“I don’t know, sir. But he has a private summer home at Edgewood, in the Cats-kill Mountains. And his plane, when it left here, went straight north.”
“Let’s go,” said Williams, once again the leader. “That’s the first place to look for him.”
A half-hour later, Hackworth piloted his Sansrun away from New York to the north. Terry sat pale and drawn. “Hurry, Hackworth!” he cried agonized when they had barely worked free of New York air traffic. “That madman might kill her, or mutilate her if we don’t get there in time.”
“Not that,” soothed Williams. “He probably took her to his home, tried to wake her unsuccessfully by the usual methods of waking sleepers, and by now some other fancy will be occupying his distorted brain.”
Not a mile east of Edgewood, in a quiet setting of hills and forest, they found Jorgen’s woodland retreat, after a landing and inquiry in town. Hackworth brought his ship down in the landing space and they saw another ship there that could only be Jorgen’s.
At the front door, Williams held up a hand and whispered to the other two. “Rather than ring the bell or knock, and thus let him know we are here, it would be best to look in all the windows carefully. Hearing us land, he may be waylaying us with a gun.”
Williams, with a lightning pistol in his hand
, led the way. The low, rambling cottage had many windows at each of which he paused and looked in stealthily. None of them showed anything. They completely encircled the house.
Williams looked puzzled. “Looks completely deserted, as though it’s been shut down since summer and since undisturbed. Could it be that he isn’t here after all?”
“But his ship there! He must be here. Is there an attic or basement?” suggested Hackworth in careful whispers.
Williams thought a moment. “Come on, we’ll try the door.”
It opened squeakily to reveal a dusty hallway.
“Look! Tracks in the dust!” said Terry eagerly.
Williams nodded and followed them. He wondered that the madman had not come to meet them. The tracks led to an open door from which streamed artificial light. There were steps leading downward and a faint tinkling sound rose from below. An unmistakable odor came to them—a chemical laboratory!
Williams threw caution to the winds and raced down the steps and into the door at the bottom, Terry not a step behind.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said a calm voice, bringing them to a halt. “No, don’t shoot. I have this needle above the girl’s heart!”
Professor Jorgen, heavy-browed and thin-lipped, stood over the limp form of Lila on a couch, her hospital robe awry. In his hand he had a large hypodermic, poised over her breast. A downward thrust would pierce her heart.
l In the utter silence as the three glared, Jorgen continued through lips drawn in an expression half snarling, half smiling. “I heard your plane land and surmised it must be someone come for the girl. This girl was to be my wife, but for a strange malady. Site’s mine, do you hear?” His voice ended with a maniacal shriek.
“Just a minute, Professor Jorgen,” said Williams. “Perhaps—”
“Stop! Nothing you can say will interest me. You must listen to what I have to say.” The unholy eyes gleamed with devils. “A strange malady has put this girl into a trance, as though a witch had cast an evil spell upon her. But it is no sorcery. No. Science can cure her. I am a Scientist!” His voice had a remnant of former pride in it. “Since last night I have been working with my chemicals. Hour after hour I labored, knowing I must succeed in awakening her before she died of under-nourishment.”
