The Collected Stories

by Earl

  And when Hall heard the powerful telepathic broadcast of Kard and his gang, exhorting all the other criminal electron-entities to join them, he likewise had his group chorus out a broadcast call for all non-criminals to join his side. There was no globebeing in any corner of Earth who did not hear both the messages and react accordingly. Those of foreign origin, who did not understand English, were yet able to sense the meaning.

  On Earth, these super-powerful telepathic messages were also vaguely intercepted by sensitive minds, who wondered if they were dreaming some strange dream. Though it startled these mortals, they had no realization of its true import. They could not have imagined that up above Earth two armies were gathering whose battle would decide the immediate fate of the world of living men.

  Hall’s army gathered over Niagara. They straggled up in small and large groups in the next three days, some from halfway around the world. Hall found himself ably supplied with eager lieutenants no less impatient than himself to destroy Kard. Besides Leon Kard, there was Prexy, who in life had been their employer, and the two men Kard had electrocuted in his first murder exploit. Then there were the twelve prominent men whom Kard had murdered in his last exploit before Hall had chased him to the moon.

  Grim, determined souls they were, all bearing a deep hatred for the man who had so wantonly taken them from mortal life and precipitated them into this bewildering existence. Like the ghosts of murdered victims, they awaited the time to avenge their murderer. They spoke so eloquently of Kard’s evil nature to the hundreds of lightning-formed globe-beings, who had no personal grudge against Kard, that they too became eager to end his career.

  Hal! counted his forces when no more came in and found he had just over 3000, all told. Dr. Rumanov assured him that Kard could have but few more in his criminal horde. Hall then sent them down to various cities to replenish themselves with surface-elcetrons from man-made electrical sources. There was no help for it, no time now to wait for lightning storms of dense, charged cloud-packs.

  The power-houses in Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and other northern cities found great quantities of their electrical output draining away to some mysterious vanishment, but did not know that invisible, sentient globes were sitting at the power terminals, swelling larger and larger as they sucked in current. Niagara in particular noticed its gigantic output going to waste and eventually shut down to investigate. But by then Hall’s army was supercharged.

  There was no attempt between the two opposing forces to make a surprise attack or try any strategy. By the very nature of the thing, they knew it must be a prearranged battle, out in the open, and the stronger side would win, A week after they had parted, Hall and Kard again contacted each other and arranged to hold the battle over the plains of Kansas, since that was about midpoint between their positions.

  ON the day appointed, Hall led his crusaders westward. All were large six-foot globes. A million potential lightning bolts moved quietly over the unsuspecting world of men. In aggregate, they represented a power that could have razed a dozen cities.

  They reached Kansas and watched the approach of the opposing army. Hall gasped when he saw the size of it. There were easily ten thousand!

  Dr. Rumanov, beside him, stammered : “Impossible! I cannot understand it. There haven’t been that many American criminals executed in the electric-chair!”

  Then Professor Hall knew.

  “Kard stops at nothing!” he hissed. “He has simply, in the past week, had his men go to Earth and pick up recruits from the underworld. Do you understand? He has simply had thousands more criminals electrocuted to swell his ranks! He has probably emptied every penitentiary west of the Mississippi. They outnumber us over three to one!”

  “No matter,” came Leon Kard’s tense mental-voice from just back of him. “He will not escape me!” And fifteen other men back of him were echoing the same thought.

  The two clouds of globes halted before one another. Kard’s voice hurtled across.

  “A fight to the finish, Hall!”

  “To the last electron!”

  The two clouds moved together, mingled, became one. Jagged lightning bolts began to leap from globe to globe. Those which failed to neutralize them by a sudden spin, were shattered, marking the death of one of the globe-lives. If both escaped the charge, they locked wills, straining motionlessly, like tangled wrestlers. When a will-force won, its victim suddenly exploded with a blinding light, dissolving into unsentient radiation. Enemy knew enemy by the call of “Kard!” or “Hall!” when meeting. In a few minutes, half the combatants were no more.

  The regions below, in a radius of a thousand miles, marveled at the sudden, stupendous electrical storm that had burst from a clear sky. Strange, hoarse mental voices and shrieks seemed to rain down from that incredible zone. Many thought the end of the world had come. No one knew what was in progress there above the clouds, nor would they have believed it if told.

  Hall was first to penetrate toward the center of the enemy horde, where he knew Kard would be lurking. He left behind him a trail of the blasted enemy, shattered by his strong will-force, whose touch was almost like the crash of a bomb. Then he was slowed by a massed group of adversaries who pumped lightning bolts in vain at his rapidly spinning globe. Momentarily he would stop spinning for a fraction of a second to send a bolt of will-force at them. One by one he picked them off, as a sharpshooter might pick off targets. But his sole, deadly purpose was to reach Kard—

  The tide of battle, at first in favor of the more numerous criminal horde, quickly turned the other way. By the very nature of their dull-witted, unintelligent minds, the criminals were no match for the normal intelligences against which they were pitted. And the new recruits, of the criminal class, so recently taken from mortal life, were too bewildered to put up much resistance, and were blasted in great numbers.

  When Hall did break through the “personal” guard that Kard had obviously put up for himself, the sight that met his “eyes” made him stop short. A dozen globe-shapes were surrounding one giant one. The latter was Kard, besieged by the minds whose mortal existence had been ended by him. Will-forces had leaped into play. For seconds the giant globe held out, and one by one the other globes burst into nothingness. Finally, only one globe remained opposing the giant one of Kard’s. The ether writhed at their struggle.

  “I am your murdered brother!” announced the smaller globe.

  “Leon!” gasped the larger.

  Even as Professor Hall leaped forward to help his ally, both globes burst into supernal, blinding light. Dr. Kard was no more!

  Hall poised there, telling himself this. He snapped to attention barely in time to spin and ward off a bolt from an enemy globe. Then he flung the full powder of his will-force at the other.

  Half incoherent words came to him just before the opposing globe puffed to formless light. “So long, perfesser! Guess you was a right guy after all! Put lilies on my grave—”

  “Limpy!” muttered the scientist.

  A MOMENT later, after blasting another of the enemy, a familiar voice came to him—Rumanov’s.

  “Victory for us, Hall! Barely a hundred of the enemy are left, and at least three hundred on our side. Shall we exterminate the criminals entirely?” He answered himself a second later. “Look—the remaining criminals are fleeing!”

  The battle quickly broke up. The escaping criminal globes scattered in all directions. Some few of Hall’s ranks pursued halfheartedly. The rest gathered in a group and “talked” excitedly among themselves about the glorious outcome.

  Hall spoke to them collectively. “You have done well,” he commended briefly. “Now go. Let there be peace in this life.”

  He called Dr. Rumanov and they rose high in the stratosphere.

  “With Kard out of the way,” said the latter, “we can carry out our plans.”

  “Yes,” returned Hall quietly, looking down over the world of living men like a benign spirit.

  ICE, F.O.B., MARS

&nbs
p; It sparkled like a giant diamond In the sunlight of space It Isn’t Easy to Liquidate Twenty Million Dollars’ Worth of Frozen Assets—on a Waterless World!

  WHEN you step off a space-liner at the edge of Canal City, you are immediately struck by the green beauty of Mars. The slope of the plateau leads your eye down to the wide sweep of Thyle II, an area as large as Europe. A sparkling lake lies in the center. Surrounding are trim groves of leafy trees, and great lush pastures in which Earth-transported cows and deerlike Martian zedas graze.

  Yes, Thyle II, and indeed most of Mars, is pastorally beautiful. Thousands of lakes are hemmed by thousands of such idyllic settings. The tall Martians take great pride in their landscaping and farms. They are a happy, industrious people.

  Earth people are flocking regularly, and in greater numbers, to that world, some to leave again with regretful sighs, others to stay permanently. Fully five million Earth people now inhabit that scenic serene planet.

  We on Earth have almost forgotten that two centuries ago Mars was a vast barren desert. It once gleamed red in terrestrial telescopes, where now it shines a wholesome green. We take present-day, thriving Mars for granted. But in Canal City, they don’t.

  In Canal City, Mars’ greatest metropolis, you see two statues of shining white stone. At every hour of the day you find Martians kneeling before the two stone figures, heads bowed. Once a year, a solemn procession winds from the city, groups about the pedestal, and sings the Song of Praise. It is an ancient song, older than man’s history on Earth, and, poured from a million throats, it is like a throbbing paean to the stars. It grips you and stirs your soul to the core.

  Do you know why those two statues stand there? Two Earthmen gazing eternally over a world other than their own. Yes, you’ve heard the story. But history tells a casual tale. It drones on page after page for thirty years of detailed incidents, but touches only lightly upon the first incident. The one that encompasses the whole saga.

  Here is the story of these two statues. Go back two centuries in time, to the year 2070. Live again an episode of the past, when Mars was a red, waterless world, its people doomed. . . .

  IT was a strange object that was being towed, or rather pushed, toward Mars.

  Roughly a hundred yards in diameter, it was a jagged sphere of crystalline matter that sparkled like a giant diamond in the sunlight of space. But it was infinitely more precious than diamond to the planet for which it was destined.

  It was ice—frozen water. Water for the dry canals of Mars! Water from the overflowing seas of Earth, for the red dust hollows and arid plains of a parched planet forty-five million miles away!

  The transparent, scintillant mass was held in the invisible, viselike grip of a tractor-beam. The powerful beam was being radiated from the hose of a space tug, formerly used to tow in stranded freighters. From the tug’s rear spouted the fierce tongues of atomic-power blasts, propelling the combined assemblage through the airless void. Earth had long since faded to the proportions of a star, and ahead the red spark of Mars brightened hourly.

  On board the tug, inside the captain’s cabin, two men were congratulating one another. Together they had developed the amazing project—water for arid Mars. One man was Dr. Ronald Baird, old and silvery-haired, who had originally conceived the idea and calculated orbital data. The other, Keith Drummond, forty and blustery, was captain and chief navigator of the tug.

  Drummond heaved a sigh of relief, rubbed his unshaven chin. Some of the strain and worry in his leathery face faded away. The past two months, involving the ship and its queer external cargo, had been a ceaseless grind for him.

  “So far so good,” he grunted, lighting a Venusian cigar. “We broke away from Earth cleanly, without splitting our little ice-cube. Now all we have to worry about is the maneuver at Mars.”

  Dr. Baird nodded absently, his eyes shining as he stared off at nothing. He had been silent for most of the time since leaving Earth.

  “I hope we’ve plotted that right,” pursued Drummond. “Because if we didn’t, thirty million tons of ice, Martian weight, are going to land in the wrong place. And we’ll miss our contract.”

  He frowned slightly at the scientist’s continued silence.

  “We wouldn’t want to miss that contract,” he went on in a practical tone. “Just think, Baird, what this means. Once we’ve landed this first shipment of ice, all the big financial groups in the System will break their necks to buy out our contract. We stand to make millions!”

  “Yes, millions!” echoed the scientist, breaking his silence. But he was still thoughtful. “Millions will be benefited. Millions of Martians.”

  “Martians?” rumbled Drummond. “I was talking about money.”

  Dr. Baird faced the spaceman. “And I’m talking about Martians, Captain,” he spoke softly. “I haven’t said much about it before, but this has been my dream—my goal! I lived on Mars, years ago, at a canal station. I saw the misery of the Martians. It’s a dry, dusty, hot world. They have to grub for bare existence. And all because they lack water!”

  Drummond stared. It was the first time the scientist had spoken of their project as anything other than a great engineering and commercial venture.

  “Well, of course,” conceded Drummond, half grumpily, “it has its altruistic angle—”

  “Water is the chief necessity of life,” Baird was murmuring. “Blessed with its abundance on Earth, we take it for granted. On Mars, where its supply is limited, life is a cruel burden. The Martians slave at their canals from birth to death, tapping the trickling streams from their poles. And they are a patient, uncomplaining people, unenvious of more fortunate Earth and Venus. They need the water more than we need their money.”

  DRUMMOND knew all that himself, of course. It was just that he hadn’t looked at it in that light, as one, on Earth, didn’t often brood about the underprivileged. The scientist’s words only vaguely stirred him.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” he growled, knocking cigar ashes into a tray. “This is strictly a commercial venture, Baird. You know that. We have to figure profits and losses, like in anything else. Even Columbus expected cash returns on his trip, spices and jewels from the East. Why did the first rocket ship go to the Moon if not to pick up diamonds that the Palomar telescope saw sparkling along the rims of craters?” Drummond waved his cigar.

  “Now this thing of ours. The Martians can’t carry it through, without aspace marine. The Earth Government is too busy to bother with it. The quickest and best angle is the commercial one. We buy and sell. Things’ll hum and the Martians will get their water. That’s the only way to look at it!”

  Drummond was annoyed to feel that, somehow, his words were sounding empty. Had he been trying to convince himself, rather than the scientist? He went on quickly.

  “Now you leave everything in my hands, Baird. You’ve done your part, figuring this whole thing out, in your mind, years ago. I’m going to see that you get your reward, in cold hard cash. And at the same time the Martians will be benefited, just as you want. Satisfactory?”

  The scientist smiled and sighed.

  “Okay,” he said. “I couldn’t have done a thing without your practical, steady hand in the first place, Drummond. It would have remained a dream, and an insane one at that, in my mind. You’re the doctor, Captain, from now on.”

  He turned away, to stare thoughtfully out of the port at Mars.

  GRUMBLING to himself, Drummond turned back to his built-in desk and began tapping at the comptometer bolted thereon. Losing himself in a mass of calculations, he soon forgot the scientist’s veiled stab at his cold business outlook.

  Hours later, he had summed up the total approximate cost of the shipment of ice, F. O. B. Mars. Professional accountants could be hired later for the exact figures. He had considered every item—fuel for the tug, food and tanked air, crew’s wages, tractor-beam power, depreciation. And it didn’t add up to such a high figure, at that. Their whole expense for the water was less than a cent a gal
lon.

  Two things made the delivered product an economic possibility. One was the cheapness of atomic-power fuel. As a matter of fact, as Drummond had read in the Astronaut Journal, it had cost more in obsolete gasoline fuel, in the 20th century, to run an airplane from New York to Los Angeles, than it did now to blast a rocket ship to Mars. Cheaper now, in 2070, to go 45 million miles, than 3,000 miles in 1940!

  “As for the cargo,” Drummond chuckled to himself, “water is the cheapest thing on Earth!”

  He turned. Dr. Baird was still standing at the port, staring out at the diamond-hung curtain of space.

  “Look here, Baird,” the captain called, displaying his sheet of computations. “This’ll make the financiers fight like wolves. Charging the Martians a dollar a gallon, they can net a million per Earth-Mars opposition, with only one tug in operation. With each added tug, double the net and more. They’ll outbid each other sky-high trying to buy out our contract.” The scientist smiled bitterly.

  “And for ten years,” he whispered, “I tramped the rounds of their offices, trying to get backing. They all laughed and sneered. I was a crackpot.” His bitterness, foreign to his nature, vanished quickly. “Thank God I met you, Drummond, two years ago. You were the only one that listened. You’ve made my dream come true!”

  Drummond reddened a little in embarrassment, and coughed.

  “Glad I did listen,” he said gruffly. “Those fool financiers forgot that a tractor-beam, made large enough, could move a mountain.” He arose and began pacing excitedly. “We’ll make them pay!” he promised grimly. “You put half your life into this, and a personal fortune of ten thousand dollars. I’ve put in my tug and five thousand. We’re in debt, aside from that, to the tune of twenty-five thousand, developing the tractor-beam for our purpose. But we’ll sell out for ten million, and royalties! I’ve been waiting for this day. And I guess you have, too, more than me!”

  The scientist showed no elation.