by Earl
Kaine walked to the house, confused, still half stunned.
He looked once over his shoulder. Maybe he had dreamed the whole thing. But the wingless ship was solid, real. Thork was dragging his telescope inside the ship.
Kaine knew what he had to do. Not for another thousand years, the blue being had said. Not for another thousand years would Earth be discovered and exposed to some hideous, appalling rule by inhuman creatures.
His wife came out of her undisturbed slumber as he shook her shoulder. She opened sleepy eyes. Kaine spoke swiftly, explaining.
“No hysterics now!” he snapped fiercely, as she seemed ready to scream. He slapped her face twice, stingingly. “Sorry, dear. But you must keep calm. I’ll have to go with him, I can see that. Can’t tell what powers he has. While I’m gone, call the police. Get as many here as you can. Have them wreck the ship, and then wait for our return. Tell them it’s a dangerous maniac. Got it straight?”
He shook her and repeated the instructions, till she nodded dumbly, with without hysteria. Then he pressed her hand and went down again.
OUTSIDE, Thork met him before the door.
“I can’t use my space ship to observe your world closely. Do you have some sort of vehicle for traveling? Take me to a large city.”
Thork was wearing, in addition to his sealed helmet and voice-machine, a harness around his waist, outfitted with small boxes. He glanced doubtfully at Kaine’s coupe, but climbed in. Kaine shifted gears and tooled the car toward the highway. A mile down the road, shaking his head, Thork made him stop.
“What a frightfully noisy, vibrating contraption!” the blue alien snorted. “I’ll not ride another inch in it. Leave it here. We will—”
“Leave it here!” Kaine exploded. His jaw set. “Look here, Thork, you’re upsetting my life. I don’t know why I should guide you around in the first place. In fact, I won’t. I refuse!”
“You can’t refuse a Tharkyan,” Thork said mildly. “We are your rulers.”
“Damn you, I’ll break every bone in your ornery little body!” Kaine roared, his nerves snapping. A man could stand only so much of this maddening business. He clutched at the blue man—and grabbed nothing.
Thork had whisked away with incredible swiftness.
His voice came from behind Kaine.
“Watch your car!”
Kaine saw a shimmering violet beam jab from one of Thork’s belt-boxes. His car began to crumple, fantastically, and fall together like limp rags hanging on a frame. A moment later it had settled down to a heap of dusty smoke that swept away with the next puff of wind.
“You see?” prodded Thork’s voice warningly.
Kaine saw. He was in the hands of a being controlling forces of disintegration, space travel, and God knew what else. A million years of science! A million years of power and rule, among a million worlds. That was what the scrawny little blueskinned imp of a man represented!
“Let’s go on,” Kaine said hurriedly. “I’ll show you around New York City.”
He must gain time. He must think some way out of this appalling situation. Not just for himself. For the world! The police were no help. He sensed that now.
And then Kaine’s heart sank sickeningly.
“I heard you talking to your wife,” Thork announced blandly. “Police, eh? Come, we’ll go back immediately to welcome them.”
Thork grasped Kaine’s hand.
“Stay close to me and have no fear.” fie touched studs on the little belt-boxes.
They rose lightly in the air. Gravity control! Kaine choked, but Thork held his arm firmly. Borne by some unfelt, unseen force, they drifted over the road, back to the house.
A police squad had just arrived. They were large, powerful men, armed to the teeth for tackling a maniac. Thork chuckled, landing directly in front of the police.
Their reaction, as it might have been to any wild animal confronting them, was to shoot. Kaine dived away just before the first rattle of sub-machine guns. When he turned to look, Thork stood unharmed, surrounded by a faint green haze. It turned bullets aside.
Still chuckling, Thork pressed one of his studs. Soundlessly, the police fell, and turned to wisps of dust. They and their guns. It had all happened in swift, unbelievable seconds.
Thork turned to Kaine, holding his wife in his arms.
“I’ll look your world over myself. Then I’ll return to my headquarters and report your total armament. If there is resistance, we will quash it quickly. Within a year, your world will be under our dominance!”
He stiffened. “Stand back!” he warned.
Kaine was advancing, slowly, grimly toward the grotesque being. Like a robot he came forward.
“You’ll probably kill me, Thork,” he grated. “But I’ve got to try to kill you. I’ve got to try it—”
The rest was a gurgling rattle as the ray of disintegration sprang over Kaine. Thork looked down at the wisps of dispersing matter, shaking his head. To Kaine’s wife he said:
“Tell your world it is no use to oppose us—as you have seen!”
He turned and entered his ship.
Emotionlessly, he rose in the air and soared away.
Kaine’s wife, beyond tears at the horrible sight she had witnessed, knelt down over the last wisps of her husband. The whole universe had suddenly dropped out from under her feet. From under Earth, in fact.
“What kind of dreadful world,” she whispered tonelessly, “will our child be born into?”
II
TERRY KAINE stood stiffly with Lon MacLean before Thork, the Tharkyan governor of Earth.
Two rugged sons of Earth. Terry Kaine was tall, lean-faced, with the strength of active youth. Lon MacLean was short, wiry, with sandy thin hair, spryer than his fifty years of age betokened. Space pilots, they had been together on many a run to Mars and Jupiter.
“Terry Kaine, Lon MacLean?” said the mechanical tones of the governor’s voice-machine. “What outlandish names! Well, you have been chosen to be this year’s Bearer of the Tax. The year—what is it in your calendar?—oh yes, 1965.”
Kaine let the older man acknowledge the mission. MacLean merely nodded stiffly.
The blue being eyed him. “Well, have you nothing to say?” he asked sharply. “It’s an honor, you know.”
“Yes,” MacLean said tersely.
“Yes master!” prompted the alien overlord, his owl eyes angered.
“Yes—master,” MacLean muttered reluctantly. He drew a defiant breath. “But it isn’t an honor. ’Tis no honor to bear the Tax—the mark of our subjugation to Tharkya!”
Terry Kaine swallowed a little. He had tried to kick MacLean, to stop him. The old fool! It was all right to talk rebelliously in private. But to fling those things right in-the face of the Tharkyan governor—dynamite!
The Tharkyan’s large eyes blazed now. Two of his four talon-like hands darted to a belt-stud. A ruthless, burning dis-ray would leap forth. MacLean didn’t cringe. Neither did Kaine. Earthmen were not the cringing sort.
The gnome-like alien moved his hands away, anger gone suddenly. Kaine could hardly believe it. Could you insult these overlords and get away with it? MacLean winked at him as though to say—“Outbluffed the lion in his den, didn’t we!”
Thork waved his four hands.
“Why must you Earthmen be so difficult?” he complained. “We are not cruel rulers. We have interfered little with your chosen way of life. Damn little!” The governor spoke English like a native, after twenty-five years, save for a slight hissing accent. “Why do you hate us so?”
“What do you expect?” MacLean snapped back. “No, you aren’t cruel rulers. But my people don’t like imposed rule of any sort. Ever study our history? No dictator lasted for long. You’ll never drive away our spirit of freedom. No, Thork, never in a million years!”
Thork glowered a little at the familiarity of using his name, but passed it by. Kaine released his breath. He had never suspected the old, loquacious Scot of this much downright fo
olhardiness.
“In what way have we imposed our rule?” Thork argued. “Outside of the Tax, which all colony-systems pay, and the regulation of interstellar trade, we do nothing to rub your fur the wrong way. Damn it, man, we’ve done you more good than harm. We’ve opened space to you, and given you ten times the science you puttered along with. Can you deny that?”
MacLean shook his head honestly.
“Ay, but we would have reached that point ourselves, in time. And further. Now you hold us back. We’re fitted in the mold you Tharkyans think best for the galaxy. But who are you to tell us what to do? Us and a million more intelligent races?”
“We are the oldest race,” Thork reminded.
“So what?” MacLean snarled. “You’re on the decline, whether you know it or not!”
“Careful!” the alien warned frigidly. Kaine shivered at the ice in his tone. “I’m not interested in your personal opinions. You’re an old, hard-headed malcontent, Lon MacLean. Your kind will die out in another generation.”
MACLEAN clenched his fists, but Kaine tugged him back.
“Hold your temper, Lon,” he whispered. “This isn’t getting us anything.”
Thork turned to Kaine.
“I’m rather interested in you, Terrance Kaine,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago your father and I met, the first Tharkyan and first Earthman. I was forced to kill him, as you know. You were born soon after. In atonement, I’ve given you the best of Tharkyan training, in space-nautics and all its science. I believe you will some day be important, in leading your people to cooperation with Tharkya. I’ve appointed you Bearer of the Tax, so that you may see our home-world and its great civilization. We shall have a talk when you return. Don’t listen to MacLean too much. But I think you’ll see through his petty mouthings.”
MacLean growled, but craftily said nothing. Kaine knew he wanted nothing more than to see Tharkya for himself, home of their overlords.
Kaine diplomatically said: “I’ll form my own conclusions.”
Thork nodded, pleased. “You don’t hold your father’s death against me?” Kaine shook his head, despite MacLean’s slight curl of the lips.
“Sensible man,” Thork commanded. “I think you realize my problems, on a larger scale. I was appointed the governorship of this solar system, as reward for discovering it. It hasn’t been easy. Earth resisted for months, at first. It wasn’t till we finally stamped out that stubborn rebel—what was his name?”
“Hitler,” MacLean supplied.
“Hitler!” Kaine echoed softly, for the name was honored. Whatever he had been before the advent of Tharkya, he died a hero in Earth’s history. His great military machine had fought to the last against Tharkya’s super-weapons. His legions of planes had broken themselves against Tharkya’s adamant phalanxes. Men still talked of that final moment, when the British Navy and German Air Force together had made a final desperate raid against the Tharkyan base in Africa. Every ship and plane went down—and Tharkya had won. The Red Army and the Italian and Japanese units were destroyed in a week. The American Navy had gone down with the British.
“Yes, Hitler,” Thork nodded. “Few worlds gave us the battle he did. But that is all in the past. Since then, my aim has been to treat Earth fairly. Earth is better off in the great economic union of the Milky Way Galaxy. Can’t you people ever see that?”
“We see only one thing,” MacLean grunted. “Eventual liberty.”
Thork laughed, harshly now.
“Tharkya has ruled in the Galaxy for a million years. In that time, no revolt has ever seriously threatened us. We’ll rule for another million years. A billion! We have energon.”
Terry Kaine felt suddenly hollow inside.
Yes, they had energon. Tons and tons of it, stored on their home-world. Enough to blast every world to dust, if they wished. And each year, from each colony-system, they gained another gram of it. It was the Tax. The universal tribute paid by all the subjugated worlds to mighty Tharkya.
“Here it is,” Thork said, handing over a small box. “I know you’ll deliver it without fail, for you know the penalty.”
Kaine felt more hollow inside.
He had seen movies of what happened on a world, over in space sector B-44, that failed to deliver its Tax. A frightful hundred-mile wide dis-ray criss-crossing over cities and fields, leaving them smoking ruins. It had been like a whip applied to the whole planet, till half of it lay torn and smoldering. The surviving half of the four-legged citizens of that world had been allowed to take up where they left off—as obedient servants of all-powerful Tharkya.
MacLean took the box.
“We’ll deliver it,” he promised. “But nevertheless, it is not an honor!”
“Stubborn to the last,” Thork sighed. “You know the instructions. The automatic pilot will take over beyond Pluto. If you tamper with it, you’ll never reach Tharkya, the Tax will not be delivered, and your world will be scourged. Understand?”
MacLean nodded grimly and wheeled, with Kaine. They left the presence of Thork, Governor of Earth.
III
AN hour later, without fanfare, their space ship glided from Earth. MacLean took the ship into space, piling on velocity past the asteroids, and out toward Pluto. A born engineer, he sat at the controls with a begrudging smile.
“Well, me lad,” he chirped, “we’re on a blessed long run. Fifty thousand light-years. Ah, but this is a sweet engine!”
He cocked his ear, listening to its throaty-purr.
“It’s one of the Tharkyan’s best ships of the small-tonnage class,” Kaine agreed. “Engine capacity of 1,000 spacions per cubic inch. And 5,000 chronons per second.”
“Spacions! Chronons!” MacLean grumbled. “Damned new-fangled nonsense. When I used to drive trucks in the old days, it was horsepower—something a man could ken.”
“It’s simple enough,” Kaine grinned. “Spacions are the discrete particles of space. Chronons of time. The engine develops enough horsepower to handle bunched quantities of both. Since spacions and chronons are the essence of space and time, the engine literally eats up distance in negligible time. Light-years become mile posts.”
MacLean was not that casual about it. He watched the speed-dial with fresh wonder. Light-years were beginning to click by at an increasing pace. The automatic pilot had taken over. Already behind them the sun and its planets had faded into a lightless background. They were going far faster than light.
“I still liked the old days better,” MacLean muttered. “When a man could see where he was going.”
“The old days!” Kaine looked at the Scot with a sudden new interest. “You actually lived, for twenty-five years, in the world prior to the coming of the Tharkyans!”
“Ay, lad, and it-was a different world. A freer, better life, without any blueskinned devils lording it over us.”
“But you had no space travel,” Kaine said thoughtfully. “No atomic-power machines in the factories. And you had quite a bit of war, which the Tharkyans have banned.”
“But dang it,” MacLean returned, “at least the human race was making its own bed. Now we’re told what to do, what crops to raise, what gadgets to manufacture, how many children to have. It makes my blood boil!”
“Scientific control,” Kaine said. “Everything is figured out for the best benefit of all. We’ve got to admit it, Lon.”
“Must we go through all that again?” MacLean groaned. “Terry, lad, have you forgotten you’re an Earthman, not Tharkyan?” His voice turned a little unfriendly. “You even care nothing that your father was murdered, in cold blood, by this Thork!”
Kaine was silent. No, not exactly. But he had never known his father. Only one thing at times stirred a deep, resentful anger. His mother had died, a year later, heart-broken. And insane.
KAINE shrugged. “Of course, they’ve had to be rather ruthless and autocratic at times. But it’s for the best.”
“For whose best?” MacLean exploded. “Tharkya’s! They control all
interstellar trade. The best of everything goes to them, so that they can live an easy, rich life. Worst of all, the energon Tax. Millions of our people laboring year after year at that same task. A gram each year, for the coffers of Tharkya. Is that right, that they gain all that energon which rightly belongs to the separate worlds?”
“Energon!” Kaine murmured. He picked up the box, opening it. He wanted to see this miraculous substance. A small sealed vial lay in cotton. He picked it up and held it to the light. Only a few grayish crystals rattled within.
“Saints, don’t!” MacLean gasped, backing away. “If you drop it, we’ll be blown to atoms!”
Kaine laughed.
“Rubbish! That’s a popular misconception. I’ve read all about the stuff. It’s as stable as sand, in this form, and just as harmless.” But his tone was half awed. “Energon!” he breathed. “Crystallized energy.”
MacLean came close, doubtfully, and looked at it curiously.
“Another one of those Tharkyan brain-twisters. What is it exactly, lad?”
“Energons are particles of pure energy. In your day, up to 1940, Earth scientists knew of protons and neutrons, the building blocks of matter. Also electrons, the units of electricity. And photons, the particles of light. Tharkyan science has gone much further. Everything in the universe reduces to ultimate particles. Space to spacions, time to chronons, and energy to energons.”
“And food to foodions, I suppose,” MacLean growled. “They’re too almighty smart to suit me. But where does this energon come from?”
“From matter,” Kaine supplied. “Einstein proved that matter held energy, fifty years ago. Matter is the ‘ore’ of energy, as pitchblende is the ore of radium. And like radium, energon is scarce, only infinitely more so. Millions of tons of matter have to be worked and reworked for a year to get out a gram of crystallized energy.”
“And millions of people have to do the dirty work on those millions of tons,” MacLean observed. “All for the benefit of Tharkya! Terry, that gram of energon belongs to Earth. Why should Tharkya get it?”
