by Earl
Lon saw the trap immediately. They were not sure he was the right man yet. If he were to confess his misdemeanor, and even though he promised to discontinue the affair, he would that quickly be arrested. His punishment under the law would then be demotion to the laboring caste!
Lon clenched his fists, a purple anger flooding him. How evil was the system under which they lived! And how he hated the leering man before him, whose uniform marked him as a hard-hearted minion of the upper class tyrants.
Conquering a desire to leap at the officer and choke him, Lon turned to the door. But he paused and turned suddenly. “I have nothing to confess,” he said evenly. “As for your vermin spies on my trail, I have nothing to fear from them.”
Lon grinned to see the leer turn to an angry scowl on the officer’s face. Then he left. As he flung out of the building he was promising himself that he would beat to a pulp the first spy on his trail. Yet he knew, even in his helpless anger and dismay, that he could do no such thing without the gravest of consequences.
Spies dogging his footsteps! Could he risk going to meet Mirna at the airport? Tomorrow night was their prearranged time. Yes, by the stars, he would risk it, if only not to disappoint her. Perhaps he could give his followers the slip like Mirna had done up in the air-traffic.
CHAPTER III
BATTLE IN THE BLUE
“THEN it is inevitable?” asked Lon of his scientist friend. The other nodded. “The orbital expansion of the earth has ceased. But the seed of destruction will grow. The shifting of the axis and the increased distance from the sun will precipitate a super-rapid ice-age. Former ice-ages took thousands of years to come about. This one will be upon us in a short ten or twelve years.”
“Can nothing be done to save even a small part of the human race?”
“We are trying, we scientists. Two things are possible: either burrowing into the earth and living in artificial caverns till the ice-age leaves, or departing from the earth altogether. The first is a hazardous undertaking, and the time is far too short. We do not know how long the ice-age will last but it will probably be hundreds of years. Even present-day science quails at the thought of such a gigantic task as making a self-contained home in the bowels of the earth. As to the second possibility, the men who could most help are gone.”
Lon looked up curiously. “You mean those hundred scientists who disappeared nine years ago?”
The other nodded. “They, curiously enough, represented the flower of science, especially the science of rockets.”
“And nobody knows where they went?”
“No one. They left in absolute secrecy. No doubt they are in some odd corner of earth, living life as they wish. You know, of course, that it was the tyranny of the aristocrats that drove them away.”
Lon pondered a moment. “Isn’t it possible that they foresaw the coming doom and left civilization for the express purpose of preparing for it?”
“Very possible,” agreed the scientist. “We all know how assiduously the aristocrats searched for them, thinking they had left in order to prepare a revolt campaign against their rule. Why, for five years the Air Patrol, a special corps of them, scoured the entire earth. The united nations of Europe. Asia and Africa joined the western world in the quest. Yet never a sign of those hundred was found. It is most baffling.”
Lon shrugged. “The nobility still disregards the threat of doom?”
“Yes. When it was reported that the earth had finally ceased to wander away from the sun, the Royal Class immediately took that as absolute assurance that all would be well. Lon, it is remarkable how narrow-minded they have become! It seems that the two centuries of their luxurious rule has degenerated their minds to the extent that they can no longer reason, or listen to reasoning.”
“They will die too,” supplied Lon without feeling. “What matter whether they realize it or not? They are as powerless as we.”
He left the scientist then and wandered out into the prim, plain streets that composed the portion of the city in which lived the middle class. He wandered through almost deserted avenues, apparently without aim. This was the evening he was to meet Mirna at a certain transport field. Yet he must first shake off the spy or spies he knew must be on his trail.
LON resorted to tactics he had learned in his earlier years while a member of a secret revolutionist group which had been later broken up by the Espionage. Boarding an elevated train that took him to the amusement center of the city, he transferred to a local car that stopped at every loading platform. Such was the cleverness of the men on his trail that he did not know where they were, or who they might be among the crowds pressing close to him.
As the local train began to make its stops in the most crowded sections of this part of the city, Lon put his method into practice. Pulling his hat low he got off at a particularly crowded platform, in the center of a milling group of people. Then he casually pushed his way into the same train, but on the next car. He mingled with a group ready to get off at the next stop. When the train ground to a halt again, he repeated his maneuver. He did this five times. And in all that time he had been squeezed tightly in the crowds, with new faces constantly pushing to the front.
Sure now that he had shaken his trailers, and laughing to himself at the ease of it, he boarded a train that would take him to his destination. But all his trouble had been for nothing. Arriving at the air-field, he did not find Mirna, nor did she show up in the next two hours.
“Something has happened,” he muttered. “Her father not only put spies on my trail, but must have prevented her coming. I guess that puts finis to everything for us.”
He left the air-field despondently. After walking till long after midnight, in a black mood of depression, he suddenly told himself he was not beaten yet. He would do the one thing left—go to her, since she could not come to him. He knew it was dangerous—the law was strict with underclass trespassers in the patrician section—but he would try it.
The aristocratic section of the city was the hub. Surrounding it completely and separating it from the circle of middle-class dwellings was a high stone wall. As the aircraft and all weapons were in sole possession of the ruling class, this wall was a sufficient barrier to mobs and rioters. But a lone man could clamber up in places where the stone had crumbled to allow a foothold.
Carefully, from the top of the wall, Lon surveyed the scene at his eyes’ command. It was like looking from a jungle to an Eden. On one side of the wall was the drabness of unadorned middle-class dwellings—on the other a vast expanse of park and garden, shimmering softly in the full moon. In the dim distance he could see the vague outlines of the nearest of the palatial homes of the aristocrats, some of them veritable castles.
It brought a numb ache to his heart, it was so beautiful. But it brought burning bitterness, too. He, and millions like him, must live in plain surroundings, drab streets, and uncomfortable houses—while these parasites of the ruling class lived in a comparative heaven! And further beyond the middle-class city was the abomination that made up the miserable homes of the lowest class. They, poor souls, lived in hovels.
Lon shook emotion from him. He must be wary. Seeing no sign of the police who patrolled the patrician city, he dropped to the street level and scurried into the shadows of the trees that lined an avenue. Keeping always in shadow, he walked uncounted miles. He knew exactly where he was going, for several times Mirna had sailed the airship they were in over her home to show him what it was like. He remembered vividly the outlay of homes.
When the Haverton mansion loomed before him, Lon breathed easier. He had escaped the watchful eye of the police, who, in these troublous times, patrolled the Royal City against any possible assassins. No one knew he was here. It should be easy to communicate with Mirna. He followed a line of flowering shrubbery to that part of the mansion that Mirna had once pointed out to him as her suite of rooms.
THERE was a light streaming from one of the windows. Lon drew in a full breath and prepared to run across
the moon-flooded lawn between him and the window.
At that moment a light in the sky caught his eye. It was merely a dim glow of green, but it was descending rapidly.
Lon watched. With a suddenness that startled him, a black shape, bearing the green light, dropped out of the sky, glinting somberly in the moonlight. It hovered a moment above the Haverton mansion, then floated lightly as a feather downward, to land on the lawn exactly between Lon and the window.
The watcher passed a hand before his eyes. What hallucination was this? He had never seen such a ship before. Built like the body of a stream-lined airplane though it was, it had no wings! More, it had no propeller and he had heard no engine-noise from it! What amazing ship was this? Where had it come from? And—most important—why was it here?
Lon’s thoughts were cut abruptly short by the opening of a sliding octagonal doorway of the strange ship. From it stepped two figures clothed in black, with masks over their features. After glancing around the open lawn—not seeing Lon, who had drawn behind the shrubbery—they approached the window.
Lon, seeing all this, sensed that something decidedly strange was underfoot. His first thought was to rush out and shout, thus bringing out the Haverton servants and perhaps a nearby policeman. But another thought prompted him to stand still and watch.
The two figures now stood at the window. One of them raised his arm, pointing at the glass, an instrument in his hand. There was no sound, no indication of anything happening, yet the next moment they had both leaped lightly to the sill and clambered into the room. It came to Lon that the glass of the window had been made to vanish completely! Was it robbery or abduction?
He must circumvent this, whatever it was. The fact that they entered a window of Mirna’s room boded no good for the girl. Then he noticed with a shock a third masked figure standing beside the ship, ceaselessly looking around. In his hand he held what was plainly a shock-pistol, such as the police carried.
Now Lon was in a quandary. If he rushed out there, unarmed as he was, the guard would use his shock-pistol on him. If he began shouting and raising a clamor from where he stood, no one might hear him, for the buildings were an appreciable distance away. Before he had time to think of a third possibility, the figures again appeared at the window.
Lon needed but a glance to see that one of them carried in his arms a limp, girlish figure that could be only Mirna! With a wild shout, Lon rushed out at them. The masked figures glanced at him, startled. Then with hurried motions they all leaped into their ship. The octagonal door clanged shut in Lon’s face, and even as he pounded and clawed at the metal, the ship rose gently. Gathering speed, it raised into the silver blackness of the sky.
Lon, in stunned surprise, watched the alien ship’s dark shape melt into the blue-black vault above. But next moment he was running at top speed toward the Haverton airship hangar. His shouting of a minute before had apparently aroused the household, for he saw various figures flying about. One of them, a burly man, lunged at Lon, apparently thinking him the cause of the whole thing. Lon avoided him easily and raced on, glancing upward over his shoulder to see where the wingless ship was. He was able to see the green light it carried. But it grew fainter and smaller steadily as the ship gained altitude.
LON stopped before the door of the hangar to find it locked. With a curse of vexation he broke a small statuette off its base and flung it through a nearby window. Then he scrambled in and ran quickly up to the ship that Mirna always used, and which she had taught him how to fly. He started the motor, knowing that the roof opened automatically when the noise beat on its audio-sensitive lock. Then he pulled at the controls.
Like an agile insect, the tiny airplane leaped upward and into the night sky. Lon could see below many figures looking up at him, waving their arms and shouting. Even Haverton himself was there, shaking a fist. But Lon had no time to conjecture what they thought of him for so highhandedly confiscating a Royal ship. He turned his eyes upward.
He could see nothing of the ship. But he knew it had gone straight up, at least till it had become invisible. Anyway, upward was the best bet, and upward he went as fast as the motor could manage. He peered steadily ahead, casting a quick glance below and around at times to see if any of the snoopy Air Patrol were chasing him for using high speed at low levels. For long minutes he saw nothing and began to fear that he had lost the trail altogether.
Then suddenly he saw a dim speck of green that grew brighter steadily. It must be the alien ship! At the same time he saw with sinking heart one of the green-and-white moth planes of the Air Patrol zoom up at him from the First Level, which he had passed a moment before. What should he do? What could he do?—the Air Patrol had super-fast ships and also weapons. He ground his teeth in rage.
“You won’t stop me, you hell-hound!” he shouted uselessly at the inexorably oncoming ship.
With that he turned off the helicopter and brought the front motor to roaring life. Turning nose upward at a sharp angle, he jerked open the throttle. Looking back, he saw the blunt-nosed moth ship fall back momentarily, then loom up again at high speed.
Lon knew the range of their weapons. If he could twist and turn and maneuver enough to keep out of line of the guns, he might win free of them. Then if he could put on a burst of speed and catch up with the alien ship, and put the Air Patrol on its trail …
The next few minutes seemed like a vivid but impossible dream. Lon, using all the skill at his command, made his ship perform like a mad thing. Loops, twists, wide highspeed curves, anything and everything he could think of he used to baffle the striped moth ship. At first the Air Patrol ship shot to him the red beam, which meant stop. Then, when the miscreant refused to halt and instead attempted to flee, the minions of the law brought their guns into play.
Lon, still manipulating the controls like a demon, felt faint as the livid streaks of trail-fire bullets spun by him, often missing him by mere inches. Then at times the pale violet of a shock-beam swung by so close that he shuddered and shrank back in his seat. It could not last long, he knew. Sooner or later—
He had almost forgotten the alien ship in the excitement of escaping the Air Patrol. Out of the corner of his eyes he suddenly saw it again, so close that he wondered if it had stopped or was coming down. As Lon flashed by the Second Level, hounded by the green-and-white moth ship, another moth ship leaped from an air-buoy landing to aid its sister ship. Now with two after him, Lon knew he had no chance.
He wondered why the alien ship was hovering about. If only the Air Patrol would see it and chase it too. But what if they did, and suppose there were resistance and they were shot down—Mirna, too, would die! Lon was in misery now and heartily wished he had not given chase to the alien ship at all.
He found himself suddenly on the other side of the wingless mystery ship. One of his gyrating swings had carried him there. The two moth ships, widely separated, came up at a furious rate. Evidently they had at last spotted the wingless ship, for one veered toward it, and the other at Lon. Within them were grim-faced Air Patrol men—men whose greed for small luxuries and influence had drowned their gentler emotions. They were the Air Patrol and they were dangerous opponents in this day of harshness and class hatred.
It all happened in a few seconds. The guns of the moth ships spluttered fire-bullets as they zoomed closer to their prey. The alien ship, Lon noticed, had ceased all motion and hung there magically. Suddenly one of the moth ships ceased its gunfire. Then its engine died and the prop stood still. Unpowered, it lost altitude and glided downward, obviously still under the control of the pilot. Then the second moth ship sped to attack this strange enemy and a moment later it, too, became silent and glided earthward.
Quite bewildered, Lon circled his craft around the adamant ship without wings, and tried to think. What marvelous, invincible craft was this which could disarm and unpower the troublesome Air Patrol and send them down like spanked children? And now, what was there left for him to do?
He kept circling ab
ove the motionless ship, unable to initiate a new move. He knew now it was within their power to disable him and send him on his way.
And whoever or whatever was in that strange craft—Mirna was in their power! For what purpose he could not guess. A seething frustration at this inexplicable turn of affairs rose in Lon. He was about to recklessly turn his ship and try ramming the other in pure desperation, when the wingless wonder broke from its invisible mooring and swung toward him. Lon was in a daze as it loomed large.
He was about to jerk at the control to shoot away, when a tingling sensation came over his whole body. His nerveless fingers slipped away from the guidestick as a complete paralysis followed the tingling. And something pressed on his brain. A cloud of ink was falling over him, blotting out his sight, numbing his brain . . .
He slumped to one side of the seat, unconscious.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHOICE
LON awoke from blankness to find himself in a small metal chamber whose roof came together over the center of the floor. He sat up in the couch on which he lay and looked around, puzzled. At the peak of the indrawn roof was a light globe. One side of the room was flat, bearing a transparent port-window. The rest of the wall space curved around him in a perfect arc. At one indented spot was a tiny, curtain-concealed lavatory.
Standing on unsteady feet, he dashed to the port and looked out. It was broad daylight, yet the stars shone dimly and the sky was a deep blue-black. Lon knew immediately that he was in the upper reaches of the stratosphere, perhaps 20 or more miles above ground. He and Mirna had been this high several times before in their numerous trips in her tiny ship.
