by Earl
I looked. A dozen wires had been blasted out of what seemed a main and vital unit of the complex mechanism.
Ruined! The ship’s drive mechanism was ruined, and with it my great plan. We had only killed off twenty aliens. There were 980 of them left. A formidable force. I could not storm up and wade into them all. Their combined hand-weapon bolts would eventually damage me, defeat me.
I might kill a hundred or two. Hundreds would be left. And the dome would be intact. Ship Two would land tonight, with reinforcements. In one crushing moment, all my carefully planned schemes had smashed.
“I’ve failed, Eve!” I groaned. “They’ll win, now. Our only hope was getting this ship into operation!”
“Can you repair it?” Eve suggested. “I’ll try to hold off any attack for a while—”
“Repair it?” I said hollowly. “Repair an engine I never saw or heard of before? I might—if I had enough time. But they won’t give us time.”
Hopelessly, we prepared to battle to the end. We heard the thunder of Sirian hooves, like a herd of buffalo, and they appeared at the far end of the hangar.
I ran forward and picked up Mog’s bolt-gun. I slipped three more from dead aliens and handed two to Eve. We stood shoulder to shoulder and fired. We blazed away, like two metal gunmen, with a pair of guns each, in a battle to the finish.
The first few Sirians that darted from the corridor went down with smoking holes blasted in their bodies by the lightning we hurled. It was no trick to us to handle the guns, and our aim was mechanically without error. Then they came thundering out in a body, at least a hundred of them, spreading in a semi-circle in the large space.
The lightning bolts lanced back and forth.
EVE and I, with our precise aim, picked them off like clay pigeons. But the last twenty surged near enough to blast us with a fusillade of shots. Some of our rivets cracked away. A frontal plate or two loosened. If our inner vitals were exposed, one shot within would short-circuit us and burn out our brains.
We divined Thorg’s desperate plan.
Knowing he was up against formidable metal beings who acted fast, he would destroy us fast. At any cost. Even if it took all his men, he would finish us. Better for Ship Two to arrive at a dome empty of Sirians and robots alike, rather than arrive at a dome held by the robots.
A wave of another hundred Sirians spilled out next.
Again Eve and I shot them down with our unerring swiftness. But again, appallingly, rivets flew loose and metal slowly weakened. One shot had clipped away one of my neckbolts, so that a flange dropped away. The next electrical bolt in there would bore into my neck-cables, run up the wires, and blast my brain.
“The next attack,” I told Eve somberly, “will get us. Earth is doomed after all!”
“If only Captain Taylor and his men had weapons and could attack from the rear!” Eve said hopelessly.
I started.
“Eve! The weapons are there—on the downed Sirians. Hurry, let’s gather them before the next attack!”
We ran among the dead and piled up a hundred bolt-guns. Enough to arm all the prisoners.
“Get these to the men,” I said to Eve. “Have them attack from the rear. Keep the Sirians occupied. Give me one hour if you can. One hour to repair that engine!”
Our plan was desperate, but simple.
When the next wave of aliens boiled out, two hundred of them this time, they withered before the thunder of an Earth tank’s gun. We had remembered the tank stored here. Eve was inside, with the bolt-weapons.
Guns spitting, she rumbled the tank forward, plowing through their ranks. The tank darted into the clear corridor back of them, knocking down the last few Sirians in the way. Then it churned madly down the hall, toward the prison.
“Good luck, Eve!” I shouted.
“Goodbye, Adam!” her voice drifted back, above the rumble of the engine.
CHAPTER VIII
Adam Link’s Reward
YES, goodbye it might be! I swung on the aliens with a snarl. They had forced me to separate from my mate. It always drove me beserk, when Eve was in danger. I would kill—kill—kill—
But only twenty stayed to duel with me. The remaining force, at an order, gave chase to Eve. They realized the threat she would be, at their backs.
Two guns blazing, I shot down fifteen of the twenty. Then my guns were empty. I did not waste time picking up fresh guns from among the dead. I waded into the last five, defying their bolts, like a metal madman. None had made a vital shot.
I picked up one and flung him to the ground as pulp. The second I bowled over and stamped on. I tore the head of the third from its trunk. I punched the fourth so hard my alloy fist sank half-way into his chest. The fifth and last I flung over my head against the wall, with a wet thud.
I was free from attack, for the time being.
I listened at the door. Faintly, I heard the joyous shouts of Taylor’s men, drifting down from the halls above. Eve had reached them, killed the guard, yanked open the bars, and distributed the weapons. Already their barks sounded. And the tank’s rumble resumed, as a spearhead formed behind it.
We had a rear-attack fighting force now!
I calculated the possibilities. Less than a hundred humans against 600 aliens. The Sirians would win, of course. The tank might confound them for a while, but they would barricade it off in some corridor and force the charging Earthmen to fight hand-to-hand. In the narrow hallway, with bolts sizzling thickly, Eve too would be doomed . . .
But it would give me time now to look at the engine. Repair it, if possible.
I ran back, and looked the damage over.
I must make another fantastic statement here. I had never seen a space ship before, or even dreamed of one, I knew absolutely nothing of its principle or intricate design, fashioned by alien minds.
Yet in one hour I knew its essential features.
One hour I was free from molestation. The armed and freed Earthmen were putting up a heroic battle. Thorg knew he had to wipe out this armed menace in his midst, before he could come after me.
I could hear the sounds of battle. The triumphant, joyful shouts of the Earthmen, as as last they struck back at the aliens. Captain Taylor’s voice was loudest of all, deploying his men in the corridors, sniping, charging, withdrawing, doling out his men’s lives for the largest possible price. And for the longest slice of precious time. The tank’s rumble sounded periodically, as it was used to spearhead a sortie, or to cover a strategic retreat.
Humans and robots, united again, were making history under the dome.
One hour they gave me.
One hour in which I examined 5000 engine parts, wires, condensers, tubes, spark-chambers. And then I knew. Knew that the dozen wires Mog’s one vital shot had destroyed should be replaced and hooked up in such and such a manner. Wire I took from a bolt-gun’s coil. I made the last connection. I slipped the thought-helmet over my skull.
Would it work? Or would all those humans go down for nothing?
EVEN as I adjusted the helmet with feverish haste, the battle sounds died. The shouts of men trailed to dying echoed. They had spilled their blood, to the last man, buying an hour with their lives.
And Eve! The tank’s rumble was absent. It had been wrecked. Had a bolt finally ripped into Eve’s battered metal body and blasted within? No sound from her. She was gone, too!
Savagely, I commanded the engine to come to life. Obediently, a hum rose back of the panels, as mighty forces came to life and awaited their metal Aladdin’s next wish. I began to give the mental order.
“Adam! Adam!”
It was Eve’s voice, far down the corridor! Her metal feet pounded, louder and louder. Hooves pounded after her. The last 500 of the Sirians pursued her, to finish the battle underground where it had started.
Eve’s flying metal form burst from the corridor. Sirians followed, blazing away. A hail of lightning sparkled against her alloy plates. Eve stumbled half-way to the ship. She was badly hurt. A
lightning-bolt spanged against the back of her skull, where metal had oxidized away under heat.
Eve fell with a crash and lay still. I was there in two huge bounds. I swept up her limp form. It was silent, lifeless. She had paid the price, too, along with Taylor and his men.
I would not wish to describe my feelings of that moment. Earth was saved, but the universe had turned dark, to me.
I ran back to the ship’s controls.
“Rocket tubes fire!” I commanded the engine. “Rear and front together, at equal rate!”
Instantaneously, livid flame shot from the multitude of drive tubes. With equal forces from back and front, the ship itself did not move. But all the hangar was filled with a dense, choking, poisonous exhaust gas. This had been my plan.
I turned to watch. With savage satisfaction, I saw all the Sirians racing forward stop, stumble, and claw at their throats. By the dozens they dropped, then hundreds, as the clouds of gas billowed over them. They had lungs. The lungs filled with vapors that choked out their lives. The 500 aliens died in their tracks.
Chief Thorg was among them. I watched him curl to the ground, double up, and die in agony. I gazed down at Eve’s dead form. His death soothed, perhaps by a millionth part, the blind agony within me.
I let the rockets blast out for fifteen minutes, filling the whole dome with its poisonous vapors. No being could be alive now. No last lurking Sirian who might be at some watch station.
Only Adam Link was alive now, without lungs to be seared.
I commanded the engine to stop.
Then I sat before Eve, in the dead quiet.
HOURS later I arose. It was night now. Ship Two was due to arrive, If my metal face could have showed it, I was grinning within. A deadly, ghastly grin.
The beacon light shone that night, guiding to Earth the space ship that had plummeted across the gulf of space from Sirius.
The mighty craft lowered from the clouds, rockets drumming. It dipped in salute. Within were 1000 yelling, cheering, rejoicing Sirians, eager to step out on the planet they were to conquer.
I was at a gun. The mighty ship was limned clearly by the searchlight.
“Fire-fire—fire—fire!”
My eyes moved like a raking machine-gun along the length of the ship. The gun thumped in unison, blowing gaping holes in the craft. It broke in gyrating shreds. Horned figures spilled out and fell to the dome.
When the rain of debris had ceased, all was quiet again. Ship Two had arrived.
But no more would.
With my shoulder against one support of the giant long-range radio, I shoved. The framework toppled, bringing the entire machine down with a crash. I stamped all its parts to bits.
Then I looked up, out of the slide-roof, singling Sirius out of the starry hosts. I laughed. Two robots had dealt that mighty sun a staggering blow.
No, one robot.
I went below, again. I picked up Eve’s dead form and held it in my arms. Then I gave commands to the engine.
With a powerful bellow, the rear rockets burst forth. The gigantic craft rammed forward, like a caged lion. Its sharp prow plowed through thin partitions, as through cheese.
“Faster! Faster!” I commanded.
Like a great battering ram, the ship speared for the central power-room of the dome. The nose crunched against the protecting walls, broke them down. The atomic-power generator they had used hummed busily in the center, still automatically gushing untold energy into the storage coils.
The ship plowed into the whole unit, cracking screens. Unleashed energy leaped forth.
“We will be together, Eve,” I said. “Even in death.”
The cosmos blew up. A million megawatts of raging fury expended itself in one titanic explosion.
The mind of Adam Link blinked out. I wished it so, following Eve into the unknown.
OUT the mind of Adam Link blinked into being again. I was alive!
“Eve, how can this be?” I stammered.
We were sitting up, staring around. We were at the edge of a broken cliff. Ocean-waves were dashing against the new cliff shore. The explosion had not only blown the dome to atoms, but it had severed the entire headland from its matrix. No sign remained of the dome’s former site. It was all washed over by lapping, swirling waters.
And we were alive, at the edge of the shism!
One thing had survived with us, from the dome. The blunt prow of the space ship. It had been blown up and away, integrally, with two unconscious metal forms flattened against it. We had landed, with freakish gentleness, in soft sand.
“The prow,” Eve said, “was probably designed to withstand head-on collision with any but the largest meteors in space. It held up and saved us.”
I nodded—and then suddenly stared at Eve, aghast.
“You’re dead!” I gasped. “Eve, you’re dead—”
“Seemed dead, perhaps,” Eve corrected. “The bolt singed my brain, knocking me unconscious. Evidently this jar jolted me back to my senses.”
I arose, then, hammering my metal fists against my metal chest. Like a metal Tarzan, I gave a bellow of pure triumph. I shook my fist up at the star Sirius.
“Set you back on your heels, didn’t I?” I shouted. “In all the universe, no creatures can stand up against Adam Link—”
My legs crumpled suddenly. The chest-beating had loosened a wire within, short-circuiting my locomotor center. I collapsed and sprawled on the ground, helpless.
“Good for you,” Eve chided as she took off my chest plates and worked over me. “You bragging fool! It was more luck than brains.”
EVE was right. But when a grey ship nosed over the horizon, at dawn, I ran to shore eagerly, to meet its launch.
Joe Trent stepped to shore, with the battleship’s captain and fleet-commander.
“Adam Link!” Trent greeted. “How did you do it? You blew the dome up somehow?”
“I did,” I returned proudly. “Sabotage with a capital S. You see, I rammed their space ship smack into the atomic-power unit and—”
Trent and the others listened, puzzled.
“Space ship? Atomic-power unit? What are you talking about?”
“The aliens,” I said. “The aliens who built the dome—”
“Yes, of course, the aliens,” Trent nodded. “But which aliens? All Europeans are aliens, naturally. Tell us, was it the foreign power we expected it was?”
“Don’t you understand—” I began, but Eve shook her head at me. I knew what she meant. There was not one stick or stone left of the dome. Adam and Eve Link had seen the aliens, but no other eyes except the eyes of men now dead.
My voice ground to a stop. Trent and the others were patiently waiting to hear which foreign power had been so close to invading America.
“It was Nazi Germany,” I said. “But the danger is over now. They won’t try again.”
Trent stepped forward, taking my hand.
“I thank you, Adam Link, in behalf of America! You will get the Congressional Medal of Honor for this!”
“Of course,” I murmured. “But the medal will never be recorded in the. records of the country for the truth . . .”
“The world would never believe!” Eve whispered.
Perhaps it is better that they do not.
THE END
SPACE HITCH-HIKER
When you get closer than a mile to a meteor—you’re close. Here’s the story of a highballing space dog that missed one by ten feet—and came back to tell the tale!
“YOU know, Dongee,” I said to my Martian relief driver, “there isn’t nothing more monotonous than this job of driving a trailer truck through space.”
It’s the truth. Four hours you drive. Four hours you rest or sleep. A dozen lunch and gas stops between Earth and Mars. Nothing else to do or see, except listen to the rockets and count the stars. And once in a while you veer off when the Bolideometer clicks for a bolide or meteor swarm ahead. Some job, eh? But everybody’s got to make a living, so what the hell?
>
“Hear me, Dongee?” I said, feeling like talking.
“Uh,” Dongee grunted, which surprised me. A Martian don’t talk much, as anyone knows. I bet this Dongee didn’t let out more than ten grunts since leaving Earth. But he was a good relief driver, so I had no kick.
But suddenly he let out another grunt. The Bolideometer clicked and lighted up.
We read the dial and saw it was a small comet, due to cross our course in two minutes. Wonderful things, them Bolideometers. In the old days, without them, you never knew when a comet or meteor was going to stare you right in the face, coming lickety-split, and if you were quick, you lived. Nowadays, the Bolideometer gave you the warning before the dangerous object was even visible.
When the comet showed up, with a short tail streaming behind it, Dongee was ready with his camera. Yeah, he was a candid camera fiend. He bent his long, bean-pole body almost in a loop to get an angle shot like they all do, the dopes. He held the camera steady with three of his hands, and clicked it with the fourth. Then his leathery moon face split in a wide crack, which was a grin.
“Good snap?” I asked.
“Uh!” Dongee said, and went to sleep.
An hour later I put on the reverse-blast brakes and slanted down toward PeeWee Station, the last gas stop before Mars. It’s only a whistle-stop meteoroid, with an airdrome and a concession selling eats and rocket gas. No more life to it than an outpost on Pluto. But it was a break in the monotony, anyway. I had an hour’s time, on my schedule, to land and stretch my legs.
I eased down to the parking lot, with plenty of under jetting. The job I was driving was a trailer, loaded to the gills with salt. Yeah, salt is worth its weight in gold on Mars, where the oceans they used to have all dried up ages ago, and the salt beds blew away as dust.
I plunked my trailer truck down in the sand yard so easy it didn’t wake Dongee. So I had to shake him and ask if he wanted to eat. He blinked open one eye and then shut it, waving three hands. That was no. These Martians can go days without food. Besides, they’re tighter than a Scotchman.
