by Earl
“Captain Dor Ven. Who calls?”
“Corporal Lan Tar! Sector 23-V, north. Enemy attacking! Infra-ray coming down here. Probably adjusting range.”
“Are you sure?” barked the voice from the box, skeptically.
“Yes, Captain! A hundred feet away from me the ground has become white-hot! The enemy’s ray is causing that!”
“Good Lord, the impossible has happened!” But there was a lilt of joy in the officer’s voice too at this chance to see action. “Stay at your post, Corporal! I’ll send out a general alarm!” The voice clicked off.
“Stay at my post!” muttered Corporal Lan Tar. “Now my part’s done. All I can do is watch while the lucky chaps at the guns go to it.”
STILL mumbling sourly, he watched the infra-ray rapidly run up the temperature of its target spot. He was driven back by a withering wave of heat.
Suddenly night turned into day around the gigantic city as a flood of searchlights swept the sky. Up and up they pierced, seeking the enemy. Lan Tar, staring, gasped. There was not a ship there. The sky was clear! He stared confusedly at the blazing ten-foot circle of fusing metal. There must be at least one ship up there, training down its invisible beam!
But there wasn’t. And Lan Tar did not guess the answer until the ten-foot piece of metal ground had finally fallen out below. A second later a terrific bubbling hiss told of the plunge of the molten mass into icy ocean waters. Steam came up out of the hole formed. Something like a huge steel hand came up from Below then and clamped vice-like to the radiant edges of the hole.
Lan Tar waited until he saw the first spiked helmet emerge from the hole as its owner climbed up the ladder. One of the enemy, of course! With his right hand, Lan Tar fired his gun and grinned at the surprised look on the man’s face as he tumbled back with a scorched gaping black hole through his chest.
With his left hand, Lan Tar pressed the button of his sono-box, waited for the click.
“Attack from Below!” he shouted into it. “Send out ground troops. They’re coming up like rats—”
“We’ll get ’em!” came from the box. Lan Tar threw it away, jerked out his other pistol, firing with his first. Another spiked helmet tumbled back to a watery grave. Then another—and another. Lan Tar strode forward, aiming deliberately. But now another ladder came into place, and the enemy began climbing up in a second stream.
Lan Tar got ten more of them before they touched him. A searing shot took off his ear. He shook his head and went on. Another charge charred the left side of his ribs. Smiling like a demon, Lan Tar staggered on, firing blindly. The next shot sizzled his brain within its case. But Corporal Lan Tar died happy. Something had happened. . . .
CHAPTER II
Ultimatum
THE full significance of what was happening could not have been guessed by Lan Tar, however.
In the gem-studded Rose Room of the palace, Dal Vor, constitutional ruler of all Metaland, was having tea. It was the custom in Metaland to arise before dawn. With him were his daughter, Vea, and Kar Zim, chief scientist.
“A great scientific achievement, Mr. Leader,” Kar Zim was saying, nibbling at a wafer with his old toothless gums. “I have worked at the problem for twenty years, off and on. Look!” He held up a vial sparkling with a topaz fluid. “Ten drops in one’s veins and—” An insistent buzzing interrupted and the old scientist relapsed into annoyed silence. Vera reached over to the wall to snap the visi-plate on. A thousand colored specks danced aimlessly across the frosted screen. Finally they coalesced to form the tanned, whiskered face of fierce old Commander Mar Jol.
“Attack has come, Leader!” he cried. “What!” gasped Dal Vor. “Not this city—”
The commander nodded.
“They attacked from Below. Stole a trick from the pirates. Their submarine fleet must have sneaked through our lines at North Point, through the iceberg jam. Now they’re here, boring up with infra-rays and pouring out troops around the city like rats out of holes. The fools, to think they can get anywhere! Our crack city-guards are already engaging them, beating them back. And I’ve given orders for our submarine cordon to close in and corner them down Below. We’ll exterminate them like vermin!”
“Good!” exclaimed Dal Vor, relaxing after the first shock of the news. “But this is so unexpected. It’s sheer suicide on their part. Torrang knows that. What made him do it?”
“Part of a big drive,” grated the commander. “Just an hour ago they simultaneously attacked our air-lines from the east and west. They haven’t broken through and never will. They also landed troops at South Fort, trying to push past our best land fortress. Torrang has gone crazy!”
“Desperation!” mused Dal Vor. “A concerted drive with all he has. And his last, for after this attempt he’ll be broken, powerless. Torrang has played right into our hands. Commander, here’s your chance. Don’t fail—smash them once and for all!”
The commander’s scarred face twisted in a sardonic smile.
“I’ll give those devils the worst licking in history!” He saluted and faded from the screen.
“And then,” murmured Dal Vor, with a sudden blaze in his eyes, “our democracy will come into its own!”
“Is there any danger,” asked Vea, trembling a bit, “of victory going—the other way?”
“I think not!” declared her father. He stepped to the wall of buttons and pressed the first two. The giant wall-screen burst into spangled hues that sharpened suddenly into a picture of battle. It was an aerial view of the fighting around the city, from the palace’s highest spire. As Dal Vor slowly turned a dial, the views shifted.
EVERYWHERE the spike-helmeted invaders were being driven back toward the holes from which they had ascended, from Below. Their surprise attack had availed little. The plume-helmetted defenders were marching forward relentlessly. From the city’s gun-nests, sharpshooters were picking off the enemy steadily. The loss of life for the enemy was terrific.
All over it was the same. Dal Vor tuned in, from an observation plane, the aerial battle far out on their western shore. Incredible hordes of the enemy fleet smashed themselves vainly against the forces of Metaland. At the eastern front, burning ships rained down into the sea like a meteor swarm. At South Fort the great pyro-cannon whiffed the marching enemy to charred, quivering embers.
Dal Vor could not tune in anything from the lightless Below. But he knew that down there, in the darkness, Metaland’s tremendous fleet of submarines was swiftly closing in on the marauders. If there were any survivors from the battle, they would not escape from Below. Torrang had sent his men to doom.
Dal Vor snapped off the visi-plate suddenly, seeing the look of horror in his daughter’s eyes.
“It is not good to watch such scenes,” he said. Then he sat down and turned to Kar Zim. “Now, what were you saying?”
The old scientist had watched the war scenes with a dispassionate eye.
“Wars come and wars go,” he said calmly. He held up the vial again with its iridescent topaz liquid. “Suspended animation! This elixir was distilled from spores that were found embedded deathlessly in a meteorite dating from a million years ago! It has the power to suspend all operations of life, so that they do not advance toward death. Ten drops in the human organism and the body will be preserved, if kept in a dark, dry place. Preserved, I say, and indefinitely. Sunlight and air bring revival, as with the spores. An important achievement—”
“Yes, perhaps,” said Dal Vor in a preoccupied tone, still thinking of the war. “But of what use is it?”
“What use?” Zar Kim stroked his gray hair reflectively. “That is beside the point. We scientists seek knowledge for its own sake. Sometimes the things we discover are useful. Sometimes not. But—”
Again he was interrupted by the buzz-signal. This time it was the amazed, half-awed face of the palace’s central operator.
“Mr. Leader!” he stuttered. “Torrang wishes to speak with you!”
“Torrang!” gasped Dal Vor. Then he recovered himself a
nd snapped, “Connect him!”
After a minute’s delay, while the long distance contact was completed, the visi-plate displayed the visage of Torrang. Cold, unwinking eyes, thin, flaring nose, compressed lips, angular jutting chin—Torrang. The emotionless, granite features of a man wielding autocratic sway.
SILENTLY, the two men looked at one another, eyes locked. Absolute dictator and democratic leader. Two irreconcilable human forces, waging a bitter struggle for supremacy. Torrang ruled all the land area of Earth, by sheer force of brutality and might. He wanted to have Metaland under his thumb also. Yet Metaland, of recent centuries the stronghold of higher civilization, had successfully resisted his ten-year campaign.
“Greetings, Mr. Leader!” said Torrang in his incisive voice.
“What do you want, Torrang?” asked Dal Vor bluntly. Not since the war had started had they spoken directly to one another like this.
“Nothing,” said the dictator, “except to tell you that this is my hour!” Dal Vor laughed.
“With your forces being defeated in the air, on the ground and in the water?”
Torrang smiled enigmatically.
“You still refuse, I suppose, to let your daughter marry my son, thus welding our two lands?”
Dal Vor put an arm around Vea protectively.
“That is exactly the difference between our two ideologies, Torrang. My daughter doesn’t want to marry your son, doesn’t love him, never will. My democratic principles do not allow force to influence the free choice of individuals, in that and in all other things. Whereas, in your conception, all things must be done for the good of the state, or, more frankly, yourself. But you will never rule Metaland, Torrang!”
The dictator’s eyes glittered.
“If not, I pronounce your doom!” He went on in the taut silence. “What do you think this has all meant, this futile attack? Nothing more than camouflage! Particularly to concentrate attention at your city. Most of your submarine fleet has converged, to destroy mine. But only a few of my ships are there. The rest are scattered all around Below. They are ready with their most powerful infra-rays. At a given signal, they will puncture the buoys nearest them that uphold you and your metal land. Our engineers have calculated that if one out of ten is destroyed, it will be enough to sink your entire continent!”
His voice became triumphant. “What is your choice, Mr. Leader? Unconditional surrender—or—the other!”
“It’s a trick!” gasped Dal Vor, but he sensed differently. The diabolical scheme fitted in too neatly with the suicidal attack that had no other reasonable explanation.
“I’ll give you ten seconds to decide!” boomed the dictator, proving that he wanted no choice. “Surrender—yes or no:
“No!” roared back Dal Vor instantly. “Now and forever! no!”
CHAPTER III
The Three Sleepers
TORRANG gave a mock sigh. His face turned away momentarily as he gave the signal. Then he looked again at the trio.
“My ships are now doing their work, burning holes in the nearest buoys. I will watch your faces blanch when you feel your underfooting sinking. It won’t take long!”
It was true. The inconceivable weight of the continental floor of metal, no longer sufficiently buoyed, promptly sank, pushing the remaining air-drums down with it. At the first tremor, Vea flew into her father’s arms. Dal Vor’s eyes had grown bleak and dull.
“You may live if you wish,” spoke the dictator’s image. “My squadrons have orders to shoot down any who try to escape your doomed land. But I can arrange to send a ship to pick you up. My son will gladly welcome Vea—and I, you—in our palace!”
“Vea and I will go down with our people!” said Dal Vor quietly. He stared full into the eyes of the dictator. “Torrang, your soul, if you have one, will never know peace in all eternity!
Five thousand years of a greater civilization than Earth has ever known—destroyed in one moment!” He snapped off the screen, and the leering face of the destroyer of Metaland vanished from view.
Vea sobbed in her father’s arms. A moment later they were clutching for support as the floor seemed to dip away from their feet. Vibrations ran through the metal walls from unnatural strains that were being born Below. There had always been subtle vibrations from the pounding of the waves against the drums, but these were new forces, fearfully ominous.
“How can it all end, this wonderful world we know?” cried Vea. “Isn’t there any way to stop it?”
“None!” whispered Dal Vor. “It has always been known that such a fate could be ours, and our submarine fleet has been diligent through the years. But this time we were boldly, childishly tricked—and there is no hope.”
Old Kar Zim had stood by silently, dazed at what had come about. He almost lost his balance as the surroundings swayed strangely. He was clutching Dal Vor’s arm now.
“But perhaps—” he began. “Come to my laboratory!”
“Why?” said Dal Vor hopelessly. “There is nothing that can interest me in the face of this—”
“You must come!” pleaded the scientist.
“You—you have a way of saving Metaland?” queried Vea breathlessly.
Old Kar Zim’s eyes narrowed strangely.
“Yes!” he mumbled. “Come!”
Dal Vor hesitated no longer, hope in his haggard face. Kar Zim led the way to his laboratory, which was an adjunct to the palace building. They hurried along, reeling constantly, while the walls swayed dangerously. As they emerged into open air along balconies and winding stairs, the panic-stricken city lay before them. Shrieking, fear-crazed people were trampling one another in the streets, deserting their homes.
At the edges of the overcrowded pedestrian spans, pressure of numbers forced many of the civilians off, to drop hundreds of feet to sickening death. At the nearby airport, overloaded aircraft lifted groaningly into the air and then fell back, converting their human occupants into a tangled, broken heap.
VEA wept at the terrible sight. Dal Vor bit his lips until blood dripped from his chin. It was all Kar Zim could do to drag them along. Some of the people below caught sight of them and shouted up imploringly, as though their honored Leader must know a way to save them. He paused for a moment.
Old Kar Zim clutched his arm frantically.
“There is no time to be lost!” Soon the water—”
They stumbled down a circular stair, crossed an enclosed courtyard, and stopped before the locked door of Kar Zim’s laboratory. It was a hemispherical structure, solidly built of continuous metal without a seam. Its outer surface was dulled and stained from age, but not corroded. It was the same alloy as their metal land, adamant to the forces of nature.
Kar Zim fumbled with a queer lock of sensitive tumblers while Dal Vor fretted impatiently. The door swung open and they lurched hi. Dal Vor took a swift glance around. It was much the same as before, filled with the paraphernalia of the student of science. As the door closed behind them with a sucking sound, the visitors were startled to note how abruptly outside noises were cut off. Not the faintest murmur of the exterior bedlam came through.
“You do not know the history of this place,” said Kar Zim. His weak voice echoed almost thunderously from the thick walls. “It was built as a caisson for workers, during the time the original metal floor was built—five thousand years ago! It was made strong enough to withstand terrific pressures—even those existing at the bottom of the ocean—so that if by accident the flooring sank, the workers would live in here until it rescued.”
“Don’t stand there uttering brainless talk at a time like this!” snapped Dal Vor. “Get busy with whatever you plan to do to save Metaland. If I can help—” He tore off his resplendent jacket and rolled up his tunic’s sleeves.
“And I!” choked Vea, her eyes still horror-filled.
Old Kar Zim bobbed his head.
“Keep an eye on those dials near you. They show the depth of the water level at various parts of Metaland, below the flooring. Meanwh
ile I—”
He stepped to a strange machine that towered bulkily to the curve of the ceiling. A lever started a deep rumble in its heart. Two large funnels began to make hissing sounds, one with intake of air, the other with ejection.
“Good Lord, hurry!” gasped Dal Vor, watching the water gauges. “The ocean level has crawled up to within twenty feet of the flooring! How does your machine work? What does it do?”
Kar Zim shook his head.
“I cannot explain its operation in such a short time. Just watch the readings.”
“Fifteen feet!” Dal Vor called a little later.
An eternity passed.
“Ten feet! Kar Zim, is it working—”
“Hush!” said Vea. “He is doing all he can.”
Underneath them the metal flooring was groaning in its depths as titanic forces began to operate through its continental expanse. Any other metal but this inconceivably tough one would have long ago been torn to shreds.
“Five feet!” groaned Dal Vor. “Kar Zim, in another five minutes—”
“I know!” croaked the old scientist. His hands flew busily over his machine. Its hum changed at times from light to heavy, as though it were periodically wrestling with an unaccustomed overload.
“One foot!” whispered Dal Vor huskily not long afterward. “Some parts of Metaland, in fact, are already at the ocean level! Kar Zim—”
AN agonized silence came over them. Dal Vor rushed over to the visi-plate and snapped it on. He attuned to the view from the palace tower outside. The streets were strangely quiet. Millions of people were kneeling, some with faces uplifted, others with faces down. It was a strange, awesome sight. A people, faced with doom, finally accepting the inevitable without a qualm. All over Metaland it must be the same—calmness in the face of sure death.
“Look at them!” said Dal Vor proudly. “My people! Even this catastrophe cannot bow their spirit! Torrang’s slaves would have been insane before this.” Then his tones became anguished as trickles of water snaked their way among the people. “Kar Zim, in the name of the eternal, you must hurry!”
