by Earl
Chard killed his personal guards without compunction. Donning a space suit, he made his way to the exit and burned down the three men there. When the members of the landed Space Patrol ship came on the run to investigate, the superior range of his weapon gave Chard the victory. Their ship was his means of escape from the sixth satellite.
Chard allowed all the bitterness of his fifty years of incarceration to come out in one short, harsh laugh, as the prison satellite faded from his view. They would pay for the humiliation it had cost him, these mortals! When York had left the System and gone far out into space, then Chard would act.
The Immortal had not been out of contact with events in the Solar System for years of his imprisonment. He had been granted the use of a radio and televisor and had watched with avid interest York’s remolding of the Solar System. Safe in his secret hideout in the deepest crater of Earth’s moon—which had been unmolested for the fifty years of his absence—Chard now watched the ceremonies attendant to York’s landing on Earth, his mission finished.
“Why has he done all this?” wondered Chard. “Is he planning to ingratiate himself with the people of the Empire, so that they will offer him a throne? Has he come back from remote space to wrest from me my dream of ten lifetimes?” Always theatrical in his thoughts, from a thousand-year inflation of ego, Chard’s eyes blazed as he concluded: “Is there to be a battle of the gods for this kingdom of mortals? If so, let him beware! He has bested me once, by a trick, but I’ve not tested my full powers!”
Despite this boast, however, Chard felt a strong relief as the televized image of York, standing on a tall marble platform before a sea of faces at Sol City, said:
“People of the Solar System! As the city-planner levels and prepares his city-site, so have I prepared the Solar System for the future Empire of mankind, and his subject races. But when the city-planner is done with his work, he does not seek or accept the rule of the city he has made possible. That is for the city itself to do. The Supreme Council has offered to relinquish authority. You people have petitioned me for ruler. The crown has been offered me, but I must decline, even though it is the greatest crown in the history of man. We are going out into fathomless space again, my wife and I. It is our destiny!”
CHARD’S eyes gleamed in satisfaction. That would make things simpler for him.
After the crowd’s low moan of disappointment had subsided, York spoke again, waving an arm toward the huge, shining bulk of the Cometoid nearby in its landing cradle.
“I leave you this legacy,” he said. “It is an instrument which may yet prove of further use to you. I have left full and complete instructions for its operation and functions in the control chamber. I only ask that you practice care when you make use of the Cometoid. It can be a mighty engine of world-destruction, if used wrongly, or carelessly. Its powers are like the sinews of Jovian-sized Titans. Rightly applied, on the other hand, it can be of inestimable utility, in ways comparable to the things I have done with it in the past fifty years.”
Chard’s eyes had narrowed, looking at the Cometoid. The thoughts it conjured up were so intense that he failed to hear York’s short and final farewell speech. He was suddenly aware of the televisor scene broadening to show a tiny, globular ship leaping into the sky. A million awed faces watched it dwindle to a pinpoint glistening in the sunlight, and then vanish completely.
As they arrowed away from Earth, the immortal couple were silent with their thoughts.
“You have done a great work, Tony,” said Vera. She kissed him impulsively. “They will not forget it for all the ages to come.” A slight frown came to her face. “But, Tony, do you think it wise to leave the Cometoid in their hands? It is such a powerful thing. And they are like children at times.”
“Yes, it is wise,” said York softly. “It is the only way.”
Pluto rolled by their ports after a time. Behind lay the nine-world empire of man. Ahead lay the vast void.
CHAPTER V
Worlds at Bay
MASON CHARD bided his time patiently. He would wait a full year for York to plunge far, far into the void. So far that no chance message could leak out to him and bring him back. For the success of his present plans, it was essential that the one being who could possibly disrupt them was totally out of the picture. Mason Chard waited a long year, a year that seemed longer to him than the previous hundred had been.
In that time, he perfected his plans with a finesse that assured triumph, barring a remote unlucky chance. Delving into the vast worldly riches he had accumulated throughout his extended lifetime, he circulated among the scattered space-ports. Keeping his identity utterly secret, he hired a man here and there. He picked them carefully—bitter, disappointed souls whose careers had not been untainted, yet whose abilities as spacemen at one time had been, or still were, respected. Knowing human nature as he did, from a thousand years of observation, he could readily choose men whose cupidity was great and conscience small. Swearing each to utter secrecy, he had them congregate quietly and singly, as he met them, at his Lunar lair.
Through the centuries, he had at other times banded together similar groups, at the other hidden quarters throughout the Solar System. Yet never before had he picked so carefully, nor so many, nor for so stupendous a reason.
At last he had over two thousand men under his banner. Finally, with the entire band before him in his Lunar headquarters, Chard revealed his identity. The hardened, laconic men-of-fortune were not too surprised.
But when he laid bare his reason for having them together, they were completely dumfounded. It was something that made them gasp. Chard spoke at some length. Surprise gave way to interest. Interest to avarice when he began to list the rewards that would follow. When Chard saw that he had won the majority over, he requested those who wished to withdraw to step away from the main crowd.
Some twenty men gathered together at one side of the huge underground chamber, expecting safe departure in return for a promise of secrecy. Chard calmly pulled out the hand weapon in his belt. A livid beam of exploding neutrons sprang toward the unlucky men, sprayed back and forth. In a minute a score of blackened bodies sprawled grotesquely. When the last screams of agony had died away, Chard sheathed his gun and turned to the silent group who had watched this wanton carnage.
“That,” he said ominously, “is to prove I mean business.”
THE large armed force guarding the giant drome that had been built around the Cometoid was not prepared for the sudden, vicious onslaught that came out of the night sky. A half hundred silent ships dropped in their midst and sprayed fiery death. While this was going on, half the ships landed next to the drome and deposited small figures which scurried into the huge structure, blasting their way through metal walls with powerful heat-bolts.
Mason Chard himself was in the lead, closely followed by a dozen men who had been part of the crew of the Cometoid years before. With their knowledge, they showed the way to enter the ship and swarm up its miles of corridors, by rail-car. Each of the dozen who knew the intricacies of the ship led a separate party in a separate direction.
An elevator took Chard and one other to the master control room. Quickly the other explained. Chard, veteran of space travel for a thousand years, soon had a working conception of the incredible craft’s controls. York’s amazing genius had reduced them to comparatively few. Then the ship’s local communication system was switched on. In a short time, various sections of the ship began reporting that the men had grasped their duties and were ready to execute them.
Chard snapped on the exterior vision screen and the all-seeing electric eye beyond the drome. The guard had been utterly routed. Then he saw a unit of Earth’s air police swoop down from the sky, answering an alarm. He watched as the half hundred well-armed ships staved off the more numerous attackers. The battle went on for long minutes. When reinforcements for the police arrived, the end was inevitable. But so Chard had expected. It had all been timed to the last minute.
When his
ships outside had been cut down to half under the blasting guns of the police, Chard received the final report from the last, remote corner of the huge ship. He barked orders. A steady, low throb rumbled in the bowels of the great vessel, and its walls began to vibrate from the birth of great energies.
When the last ten of his outside ships broke under the police onslaught, Chard grasped a lever with a sweaty, but confident hand; pulled it over. The mighty ship leaped from the ground, grinding the drome to shreds. Chard left his remaining, defending ships to the mercy of the air police. He grinned sardonically to think they had believed he would bother to save any left after the battle.
The Cometoid, a juggernaut of space, rose from Earth, manned by a thousand unprincipled scoundrels, captained by a ruthless, immortal demon. He might have been a demon from the way his evil eyes gleamed redly in triumph as he directed the captured ship toward the barren reaches beyond Jupiter. Here, where passing ships were rare, the Cometoid hovered for a month, while its new masters familiarized themselves with it.
Chard had not slipped up on anything. He had known from spies that the ship was well-stocked and fueled. He had known that its creator’s instructions on the full operation of the monster craft were stored in the helm-room.
Chard was astounded at the full scope of powers at his disposal. Sweeping atomic rays that could eat their way to the heart of a planet. Giant plants that could produce millions of cubic feet of violent gases, given suitable raw material. Powerful force-beams that could grip mighty Jupiter himself and yank him from his age-old orbit. Energy-conversion machines which could store the dynamite of cosmic radiation and the slow, infinite power of gravitation.
Chard realized he had a truly godlike instrument in his hands, one that could make him master of ten universes, if he wished.
CHARD’S stentorian all-wave radio voice that burst into the broadcast channels of the Solar System carried the most startling message in all history:
“Mason Chard, the Immortal, speaks! I speak to all the Solar System, and to all of its so-called ruling element. My ship, the Invincible—formerly the Cometoid—hovers over the moon of Earth. You all know the illimitable powers of this ship, but I invite the eyes of Earth to watch the center of the moon, the mountain range known to astronomers as the Apennines. Watch it for the next hour!” Millions of eyes on the night side of Earth watched and saw a small spark blaze in the center of the Lunar disc. It grew and widened until it was a fiery, incandescent diamond, spewing out a shower of sparkles that spattered over the entire moon’s face. Some terrific holocaust of supernal fire, comparable to the Sun’s blazing furnace, was creating a deep, molten puddle on the moon!
Then the sparkles ceased and the voice continued: “This same beam of atom-fire can quite readily be focused on any city or spot on Earth, to reduce it to molten matter that will not cool for a week. Or on any planet in the Solar System! The Invincible has moved from the moon to Earth. It is now hovering over Sol City. Nothing can save it, if I decide to destroy this citadel of ruling power!”
To himself. Chard added: “Not even the once timely York, who is now trillions of miles beyond reach.”
After a suitable pause, to allow the poison of fear to invade their minds, Chard continued:
“Does the Supreme Council of Earth, doomed at the flick of my finger if I so will it, have anything to say?” Chard laughed triumphantly—
“No, but I have!”
Mason Chard choked in his laugh. Had his ears tricked him? Surely that had not been the voice of—
“Anton York speaking!” continued the quiet voice, inexorable as the stars. “Chard, you’ve just signed your death warrant. I knew you would try this sort of thing again. Unknown to you, the Council and I arranged, before I left Earth, to leave the Cometoid reasonably open to capture. You went for it, like a bee for its hive. You’ve been tricked, like any stupid fool. But it was necessary, for I could not leave the Solar System knowing you were at large, scheming. I’ve been hovering just beyond Pluto for the past year, waiting to trap you. It would be best if you would just quietly land the Cometoid and surrender yourself.”
Chard’s emotions racked his body. Dismayed to the roots of his being, his mind reeled on the verge of madness. A bitter acid seemed to eat its way to his brain and dissolve it. His gigantic ego wilted as overgrown weeds wilt under a hot sun.
His hand touched cold metal. It was a lever that could release, in one stellar blast, the awful power of tons of matter. Could York’s little ship withstand it?
Chard sneaked a hand to his vision screen and twisted its knob rapidly. While the Solar System held its breath at this battle of wills between gods, he searched for York’s ship. Presently he found it, a ridiculous pebble alongside the supership. Chard whispered orders into the local phone system, careful that his radio transmitter was off. Down below men fed giant powers into huge engines. Up above, a flamingeyed man waited for the final moment. When it came, he jerked his levers with a desperate finality.
The frightful blast of energy that issued from one vent in the Cometoid’s broad side engulfed York’s ship and rammed it a mile backward. It should have blasted it to atom-debris. Chard turned a greenish white, for the little ship stopped, darted gracefully upward, and came back fully as fast as it had been flung away.
“Naturally, Chard, I was prepared for that,” came York’s unruffled voice. “Out in interstellar space, my screens have withstood forces far greater than those you’ve just released. Want to try again? But I warn you”—here for the first time the voice became a little ugly—“you will die sooner that way!”
Chard screamed a series of orders to his crew. The men, unknowing of anything going on outside their respective cells, obeyed with trained alacrity, thinking, if they thought at all, that perhaps the Space Patrol had attacked and needed a lesson.
All hell burst forth from the giant ship hovering over Earth. Some of its tremendous thunderbolts of destruction crashed down upon Earth’s surface and gouged it horribly, killing many. But the ship at which the hell-borne fury was directed continued to gleam in the starlight. It was no longer buffeted by the flaming energies that pounded at its protective screen. York had fastened a force-beam to the center of the ship. Now he began to swing in an arc, swifter and swifter, until he was revolving about the great ship, held tight by the force-beam.
York knew the ship, knew that its blind spot was in this path. None of the world-destroying forces could touch him here. He was able to open his defensive screen, which did not allow offensive rays to be given out, and retaliate at last. First he dragged the great ship along until it was no longer near Sol City. Then a faintly shimmering violet beam, representing the accumulation of a vast amount of cosmic rays, bit viciously into the hull. As York revolved, it neatly sliced the great ship in two, like a knife cutting a sausage.
Mason Chard, as he sensed what had occurred, became a madman. But the sudden sensation of falling jerked his mind, as great fears can at such times. He died the many deaths he had escaped in his many lifetimes as the ship fell, and knew at last that his immortality was ended. . . .
The two halves of the mighty ship crashed with a sound that could be heard miles away in Sol City. It was the signal for rejoicing.
S their ship sped away from the Solar System, fully stocked for the supertrek in galactic space, Vera sighed.
“It has been so diverting, so interesting, Tony! I hate to leave. It was a cross-section of the great drama of intelligence pitting itself against the blind, immutable forces of the Universe, to carve out for itself a lasting dominion. From the lone, fearful ape-man, treading cautiously the threatening jungles of his origin to the bold, daring man who has placed foot on this last of nine far-flung worlds!”
York nodded. His eyes were misty as he scanned the infinite ahead.
“Yet it is all so petty, so small. There is a more supreme drama for us to witness out there. The sublime evolutions of suns and nebulae and the meta-galaxy itself. The riddles of ete
rnity and infinity!”
Already their mental perspective had begun expanding to include the grandeur ahead. Earth and the Solar System receded to a sub-atomic mote in the incredible vastness of the void. A god and his mate were swallowed in its endless depths.
EYE OF THE PAST
A short novel with a new theory of time-vision—
ONE would almost credit Fate with being a diabolical fiend, reviewing the events of that half-century from 1940 to 1990. 1940 to 1960 had seen the most catastrophic warfare known to the history of Earth. A war of science.
Namelessly powerful weapons had been developed with which divided mankind had scourged itself. For twenty years the frightful flames and demolitions spawned by a great science had decimated populations, destroyed cities, and ravished every community of its best and dearest. Blood soaked the world from end to end.
The fever of hatred burned till mankind lay exhausted, betrayed by its science. The inevitable result had been peace without victory for both factions.
Civilization licked its deep wounds after 1960, and rebuilt itself painfully.
Then had come a complete revulsion of feeling. The doctrines of pacifism swept over the world with almost the violence war had. Determined that such a senseless holocaust should never again occur, war had been declared outlaw, and made outlaw. The world had disarmed, completely and almost vengefully. An International Pacifist Congress, given full power, denuded Earth of every warlike instrument. And of even the plans and formulae.
The process was so thorough that by 1990 the construction of a single cannon of any size would have required a complete new set of blue prints. Linked into a federation of amicable nations of every color and creed, the world looked back upon the folly of war and rejoiced that it had been ended.
