by Don Wilcox
Clip shouted, “Watch it, Bob, they’re heading for the guns.”
“Climb aboard, both of you, and I’ll follow as soon as I get rid of that flying torch.”
Bob groped along looking for something with which to strike. He could see the silhouetted figures of the queen and her party gathering around the protruding nose of a hunk of wreckage that contained an imbedded cannon. Bob reasoned that if the burning torch drifted across the top of the Yellow Jacket, it would show up as a perfect target. Otherwise there would be a few minutes’ wait for daylight before the slaves, could fire with any accuracy. He intended to meet that drifting torch halfway.
He picked up a straight steel beam and swung it like a giant baseball bat. He struck the torch—a burning human arm—and he remembered something Clip had once said about it. The burning object drove like a skyrocket. He watched it go straight for its mark.
The distant silhouette of the queen of the torch. Bob saw her dodge; he heard her scream; the torch—her own burning arm—skimmed the top of her head and ignited her. In an instant she was a queen of flames.
The slaves and Mogarr could be seen trying desperately to wrap her in coverings. She darted away from their touch. They leaped to try to catch her. She moved outward. Their efforts blundered, they struck her with something, and her flaming body spun outward, far out in the realm of objects floating lazily about the little planet. The burning arm had mysteriously attached itself again, fused with fire.
Her life must have gone at once, Bob thought, for she floated with a languid grace, like a statue that was fire and cloud and woman—in the fullest glory of queenliness she would ever attain. Would she remain a burning statue for hours, days or years? Would the dwarf and the remaining slaves worship her as a queen of flame? Bob wondered
Bob, Kay and Clip were far out in space before they recovered themselves sufficiently to discuss what had happened. Bound for the earth, three disappointed people, heartsick over the tragedy of Randy, they were nevertheless thankful that they had come through their awful ordeal alive and whole.
They talked of Steeple, and reasoned out, as best they could, what he must have attempted. He had seen much of the world of space; undoubtedly he had already known his way around this little private world of Dezeeta’s. Obviously he had known the tunnels, and had seen his chance to break away with the cool two billion dollars for himself. He may have had his hands on the money.
“We might have recovered it if we hadn’t shot him,” Clip said gloomily, “but on the other hand, we wouldn’t have lived to tell about it if we hadn’t shot first.”
Kay speculated moodily. “If he had got the money, what would he have done with it? Planted it on that pile of wreckage and picked it up later?”
“If he had got to the ship with it,” Bob said, “he’d have locked it in his own trunk, first thing, and then—say, do you suppose—”
They pried the locked trunk open and discovered they were carrying a cargo of two billion dollars, American currency.
“Well, that beats all. He brought it in here—he had a chance for a clean getaway—and he must have started back for something.”
“What?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Bob said. “Yes, maybe I can, now that I recall his hours of silence. You know, he must have had a lot of thoughts no one knew anything about.”
“He must have gone back for something more important to him than any of us would have guessed. But we should have, because a man like that has other dreams besides money, and the two billion dollars would have given him a wonderful sense of power.”
“You mean,” Kay said hazily, “that he had an impulse to kidnap someone to take along with him?”
“Someone, yes. We’ll never know who.”
“The queen, of course!” Kay said suddenly. “He’d been in this realm before, and all along he’d been scheming to come back some day and get her.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Bob said. “It may have been the queen’ he wanted. And again it may have been—” he cast a glance at Kay—“someone far more beautiful.”
THE BATTLE OF THE HOWLING HATCHET
First published in Amazing Stories, April 1952
“You alone can save Earth, Sanders,” they told him. “Without you, we’re lost!” But it so happened his name wasn’t Sanders . . .
You come out of your daze slowly, trying to remember. You know they’ve forced you into this machine, this tank that isn’t a tank. You know the guns of war are roaring around you and you’re supposed to do something about it. All you want to do is get to your typewriter, knock out your daily story, and go back to sleep.
A shell rips in front of you!
Your tank jumps like a pebble. Your head bumps the iron works above you, and your helmet crunches down over your face. The blast of fire outside your windows blinds you.
Voices are yelling at you through the phones: “Full speed ahead! This is it! Move it, move it!”
As if you know how to operate this contraption! There’s been a mistake. You’ve never been in one of these things before. All these gadgets are meaningless. You can stare at them, but you can’t do anything about them.
But they’re yelling at you to give her number ten, and in your bewilderment you reach out with a gloved fist and strike a button-shaped lever with the number ten on it. The button plunges in about four inches, and the lighted ten turns from green to red. And suddenly you’re moving forward, right square into the big shell hole.
“Great gory guns!” I yelled, trying to break out of this ghastly nightmare. Only it wasn’t a nightmare. The big machine was clanking and roaring all around me as I sat in the driver’s seat. My action had set the thing in motion, and I was in a state of utter confusion.
“That’s right. That’s perfect!” they yelled at me through the earphones. “Hit her hard, Steve. You can’t miss.” And another voice, an older, heavier voice, called: “Good luck, Stevie boy. We’ll see you in a few days—we hope!”
I shouted, “Hey, who do you think—ye gods! Where’m I going?”
“Right into the earth, Steve—right on your course, boy. Don’t fail us. Everything depends—”
I didn’t hear any more. The roar of the accelerating motors fairly deaf- toed me. I was thundering over the embankment into the shell hole. The dust and smoke were blinding.
My monster tank roared down into the depths of the pit, and plowed in!
My windows showed me the inner edges of the massive circular stone- cutting equipment that surrounded the front end of the machine. The atomic- powered augurs howled as they moved into the bank of earth and rock. I was riding into a hurricane of dust and flying stones, right into the earth!
Blackness engulfed me. Then headlights came on, and I could see the dizzy spinning of the augurs up ahead. My big cigar-shaped tank was eating its way into the mountainside like a redhot spike burning into a wall of soft pine. Daylight was already left behind. I was cutting a tunnel into the blackness of solid earth.
So this was the “Howling Hatchet” I had heard about a secret weapon for underground warfare. Atomic-powered and geared for disintegrating solid granite, it was supposed to be able to walk through mountains, leaving back of it a sealed tunnel of smoothly coated walls.
But how did I happen to be here? I, Bill Barth, the fledgling war correspondent. All I wanted out of this war was a chance to write up stories of the daily fighting, so the folks back home could know what the boys were going through. There’d been some mistake chucking me in here, calling me “Stevie!”
Against the “howl of the machine I tried to reassemble my thoughts. The last I could remember, before they’d slammed this door on me, was an explosion, then a hospital bed. But that was a long time ago . . . and my memories seemed so dim . . .
Against the howling, screaming noises of the machine, I kept shouting into the transmitter. But those voices that had yelled orders at me were out of reach. I might as well try to out- shout a volcano. I ca
lmed down and glared at the intricate instrument board before me. Its glinting little polished buttons and colored lights mocked me as the machine drilled deeper into the rock.
“They said I was on my course!” I mocked myself. My course! As if I had anything to do with it!
Suppose I should experiment with the controls and fail! I’d find myself stuck deep inside the earth with no way out. The temptation was to stop everything before I’d gone any farther. I could walk back, couldn’t I?
A backward glance showed me, beyond the long, dark, cylindrical, machinery-filled shaft, a spray of fire at the rear, blasting circular walls into rigid shape in my wake. Yes, if I could cut off the power, I might be able to get out and walk back through that freshly made tunnel—go back to them—tell them they’d made a mistake—I was the wrong man.
I snatched the little packet of papers that dangled from a knob. By the light of the flashing instrument board I could read the names on the credentials. Steven Thomas Sanders. Henry Longworth.
There were pictures of both men. The photo of Steven Sanders looked exactly like me!
So that was it. They’d ushered me out of the hospital into this. There must be an urgent errand ahead. It must all have been timed. Something was coming up that couldn’t wait. What?
All at once I was watching the arrow on a certain dial. It shone with narrow parallel lines four inches long, red and green lines, three lines. The arrow was rising very gradually. The colors were jumping rapidly.
A slight shadow came over my hands. I couldn’t look to see what caused it. I was fairly hypnotized by that one nervous arrow, creeping slowly toward a red illuminated zero. The great machine was grinding forward steadily, cutting its path out of that hard rock, so that a steady procession of raw cut circular walls glided back. Horror gripped me. I was riding into nowhere, yes, I must be riding toward something. The arrow was rising, pinpoint by pinpoint. An audible signal was sounding with a series of notes, each a little higher pitched than the last.
The shadow over my hand trembled. I reached to lever number ten and drew it back. Just a little. The scream of the grinding lowered to a sickening whistle. And I instantly regretted my action, with a vision of jamming to a stop amid a heap of broken rocks under the mountain. Rocks were bursting out into my headlights I struck number ten again and plunged forward with renewed fury.
Then it happened. And I saw, in a glimpse, what I was plowing into was not rock or dirt, but a great horizontal barrel of steel. It was moving square across my path—another “howling hatchet” like the one I was driving.
I crashed in through its sides. My motors whined and groaned, but I bored right in. The walls of steel tore open. The lighted interior was revealed for a split second before it all went dark.
In that flash I saw two men in helmets and tank suits, their arms flying up in terror.
I was bearing down on number ten, and my howling hatchet with its thousands of screaming teeth ate through the other machine—steel, fiber, flesh and bone. In the whirl of dust and fire I saw helmets, arms, straps of steel—everything flying, darting through the area of suction into the path of disintegration:
That was all. The mad tank carried me on into the blackness of the earth. The singing signal silenced, and the flickering arrow rode away from the red zero and blinked off.
“I’ve killed a fellow prowler,” I muttered to myself. “Who or what, I’ll never know.”
Then I was aware, suddenly, that the shadow across my hands was someone back of me, standing crouched, watching the instruments over my shoulder. I looked up and saw the face of a young man, framed in a tank helmet.
I had never seen him before, and I had never seen anyone so white, in such a cold sweat. He looked at me as if he wanted to speak and couldn’t. He pushed his helmet back and pressed his hand against his face.
“Well, Stevie, you did it. You’ve got through the first barrier and we’re still alive.”
I stared at him. “Have you been there all this time?”
“I was back in the bunk when we started.”
“And you knew I was sitting here, helpless—”
“Nothing helpless about you, Stevie.” He tried to grin, but the scared look made his lips quiver. “I’ve been watching you ever since you saw him coming.
“I was too paralyzed to talk. I figured it was all up with us. I didn’t know what in the world you could do. He was dead on our path. He figured on a suicide smash—a small price to pay to prevent him from getting there first. At first I thought you meant to outrun him—and that’s what he thought, too. But then I saw it couldn’t be done. And it was too late for a dodge. It sure looked like death for all of us. But you had a trick up your sleeve, Stevie. I might have known.”
“A trick, you call it?” I thought I would faint.
“The way you suddenly throttled down. More perfect timing I never hope to see. But the real trick was the way you played the grain of the rock in your favor. He tried to retard, too, but the way the rock lay, he ate right on ahead like a drill through rotten wood. By the time he’d retarded, you’d smashed on, full speed, and caught him broadsides. So—well, he’s now neatly molded into our walls, what’s left of him.”
“So—”
“So I congratulate you, Stevie.”
My hand was so limp I couldn’t lift it. But he gripped it for a handshake and ended by saying the sweetest words I ever heard: “Now that that’s over, Stevie, I guess I can take over the controls for awhile.”
For many minutes I watched over his shoulder I followed the movements of his clever fingers and swiftly memorized his every move. Then I began to ask him questions.
“Can you stop the machine and start it again with no danger of stalling?”
“If I can’t I ought to be shot, a many times as you’ve shown me.”
He thought I was questioning him to test his knowledge. To him I was Stevie.
“I’m asking for information,” I said bluntly.
He gave me a look that said, “Tell that to the Marines.” He went on ploughing through the earth, and a long black tunnel formed back of us. The howl and whine of the drills, screwing into solid stone, filled the inside of the machine with a ceaseless uproar. Most of the time he kept going full blast.
“I don’t figure we’ve got much time to waste,” he said. “You certainly don’t mean to put me through and those tests again, Stevie.”
“Excuse my embarrassment,” I said, “but I’m not Stevie. I’ve never been in one of these cussed things before, and I’m asking for information.”
“My lord, Steve!” He gave me a look of disgust.
“But I’m telling you, Hank, it’s all new to me.”
“Steve, you’ve pulled some dillies ia your day—”
“I’m not Steve!”
“You’ve pulled some sharp ones, but this takes the cake. Not Steve! I’d know you in hell. I’d know you by your voice. I’d know you by the way you move that right shoulder. Not Steve! Oh, yeah?”
“I tell you I’m not! Dammit, what do I have to prove to show I got in here purely by accident?”
“How did you know my name was Hank?”
“You’ve got it printed across the back of your jacket. Besides, I looked into that batch of identifications m the envelope. Your photo is there with the name Henry Longworth.”
“Did you overlook your own photo?”
“I found someone by the name of Steven Thomas Sanders. I will say this: he looks like me. They must have got us mixed in the hospital.” Hank Longworth turned and glared at me, his eyes narrowed. “Did you ever hear of Banalog?”
“What’s a Banalog?”
“It’s not a whatsa, it’s a who. It’s the person that helped you invent this howling hatchet. Only Banalog, unfortunately, happened to belong to the enemy, and when this cussed war began, you and Banalog found yourselves on opposite sides. And now, Stevie, you’ve got the painful duty of fighting your fellow inventor. Does that ring a bell?”
“It might to Stevie, whoever he is. But it’s all Greek to me. I’m Bill Barth, the war correspondent.”
Hank Longworth groaned and bore down on the number ten lever. We had removed our helmets and earphones during our talk. Now, the increased speed and higher screams of the rocks against our metal teeth caused us to put on our gear again. Our conversation through the intercom was brief and brittle. Hank was angry. He thought I was trying to play some hoax on him, and he couldn’t understand it. We were pressed for time, our assignment ahead would mean life or death. How could we fritter away our energies playing games?
“How do you operate the guns on this thing?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he bit back sarcastically.
“If I’m going to be any help to you, you’d better teach me.”
“You don’t know what a gun is.
You never heard of a gun.”
“What’s this compartment marked eggs?”
“I suppose you never heard of an egg?”
“I never heard of one in a tank?”
“Eggs are something you put in a nest. At the proper time they hatch.”
“Is that why they call this the howling hatchet?”
“You ought to know. You named it. Banalog wanted to call it the boring bazooka, and I guess that’s the only time you and Banalog ever quarreled, isn’t it?”
“I never heard of Banalog.”
“The military big-shots took up your quarrel, if you remember,” Hank said, giving me the deep drill of his eye. “They finally agreed with you. It’s not a bazooka. It doesn’t blow through the earth. It has to hack its way with its battery of mechanical hatchets. As fast as the mass breaks up, it disintegrates, except—”
“Go on, I’m listening,”
“You’re testing me.”
“I’m asking for information.”
“The elements needed are automatically retained. The machine automatically takes in what it needs to form a concrete tunnel back of it. The water supply is continually replenished—”
