The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  “Darl, Mac, they’ve broken through! The Mercs have broken through!” The brown plain was a blood-spattered battlefield. Here and there little groups of the green men, braver than the rest, fought with spanner and hammer and whatever improvised weapon they may have found. “Come on, give ’em hell!” The three Earthmen dashed out, weapons in hand. But friend and foe were so intermingled that they could not use the devastating ray of their hand-guns. The fighting Venusians were vanishing under a tossing sea of yellow imps. And still the dwarfs poured forth from the mine entrance.

  A blue form towered, far back, where all green had vanished, and only Mercurians were left. The Martian’s beak opened in a rattling call. A group of hundreds of pigmies suddenly left the main fight, and came forward with short, swift steps. They dashed straight for the Earth trio and cut them off from the Venusians they were running to aid.

  Side by side the three fought. Their weapons grew hot in their hands as the beams cut great swaths in the seething ranks. The attackers halted, gave back, then surged forward again as the roar of their alien commander lashed them on.

  The Earthmen faced the frenzied throng. A cleared circle was still around them. Beyond, the Venusians were all down. The Mercurian mob was closing in, the Terrestrians’ rays had lost half their range. In moments now the ray-guns would be exhausted.

  “The plane!” Darl shouted. “Back to the plane, it’s our only chance.”

  The gyrocopter that could carry them aloft, out of the rout, was fifty feet away. They fought through to it and reached it just as the last faint charge flashed from Mac’s tube. Jim was at the controls, Darl smashed his useless projector into the chattering face of a dwarf that had leaped on the Scot’s shoulders and dragged Angus into the cockpit.

  The overloaded flier zoomed to the landing at the lofty air-lock’s manhole and hovered as Darl and Angus slipped home the hooks that held it to the platform. “The spy has the Dome,” Jim grunted, “but by God, he hasn’t got us. We’ll be safe in the lock up here, till help comes. And then—”

  “Safe is it?” Angus broke in. “Mon, luik ye what those bairns fra hell are up to the noo.”

  A yellow tide was rising about the base of each of the latticed steel arches that vaulted to the Earthmen’s refuge. On every side the dwarfs were climbing, were swarming up the walls in numbers so great that they concealed the metal beneath. Up, up they came, slowly but surely. And right in the center of the plain, ankle-deep in the torn fragments of the murdered Venusians, was the Martian, directing the attack.

  Jim groaned. “I might’ve known he’d never let us get away. It’s slow bells for us, I guess. Hey, where’s Darl?”

  “Gone weethin. No, guid losh, he’s here!”

  Darl appeared, his features pale and drawn, carrying an armful of ray-guns. “Grab these,” he snapped. “We’re not licked yet.”

  “Licked, hell!” Jim’s roar reverberated. “We’ve just begun to fight!” The Scot was silent, but the battle light shone in his eyes. In another moment the Terrestrians were kneeling, were raking the roof girders as the mounting Mercurians came within range. Each had two ray-guns in his hands, and a little pile of extra tubes beside him. They fought silently, wasting not a single blast.

  Six white rays flamed through the misty, humid air, and striking the teeming girders, swept them clean. A greasy, horrible smoke cloud gathered along the shell and drifted slowly down, till the concrete blocks from which the steel framework sprang were hidden in a black pall. Fighters, these three, true ITA men who had left memories of their battle-prowess on more than one wild planet! Gaunt-bodied demi-gods of war, they hurled crackling bolts of destruction from their perch at the Dome top. By hundreds, by thousands, the Mercurian pigmies vanished in dark vapor, or plunged, blackened corpses, into the fog that billowed below.

  One by one the tubes were discharged and tossed down at the seething mob. The heaped weapons dwindled, and still the climbing hordes renewed themselves, came on in endless mounting streams to sure destruction. The open tunnel vomited forth a torrent of gibbering dwarfs. From the uttermost burrows of the planet the pigmies were flooding in at the call of the Martian who stood scatheless beneath and lashed them on with the strange dominance he held over them. The Earthmen fought on, endlessly, till they were sick of killing, nauseated with slaughter. And still the snouted, red-eyed imps came on.

  Jim snatched up his last two ray-guns. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that Darl was using but one, the other, his last, was thrust into the chief’s belt. He wondered at this, but a new spurt of yellow above the oily fog wiped the question from his lips. “Swallow that, you filthy lice! Hope you like the way it tastes!” His guns spouted death.

  “I’m through!” The call came at last from McDermott. “Me too!” Jim Holcomb hurled his final, futile tubes down at the blue figure of the Mars man. A moment’s hush held the trio. Then Jim flexed his great hands. “Well, these’ll take care of a couple more o’ them before I check in.”

  “No you don’t,” Darl barked, his face a graven image. “Inside with you. The lock will hold ’em off.”

  “Yeah? Look.”

  Thomas swung in the direction Jim was pointing. Rising above the murk, something glinted in the pale light. On the furthest upright a clumped group of climbing savages were struggling to drag up one of the welding machines, a long black hose snaking from its cylindrical bulk.

  “They’ll cut through the steel in fifteen minutes with that. The bloody bugger ain’t missin’ a trick.”

  “Inside, I tell you.” Darl’s crisp tone of command brooked no denial. The three crowded into the cool recesses of the manmade aerie. Angus slammed the steel door shut. Even if by some miracle the Dome wall should be pierced and the air in the main vault dissipated into outer space, this air-tight compartment hung from the hemisphere’s roof would remain, a last refuge, till the atmosphere within had become poisonous through the Earthmen’s slow breathing. But the Martian had anticipated Darl’s final move. The oxy-hydrogen jet of the welding machine the dwarfs were hoisting would make short work of their final defense.

  From the conning-tower above Ran-los called excitedly. Through all the long battle the Venusian had remained steadfast at the peri-telescope, scanning the vacant terrain outside, and the heavens. As Darl and Jim dashed for the stairs Mac ran after them, crying out, “What did he say, mon?”

  “Space ship in sight,” Darl flung over his shoulder as he reached the upper landing.

  “Praise be! Noo the haythan weel get his desairts!”

  “Yeah, maybe—if it’s an Earth ship. But we won’t be here to see it.”

  Jim’s red head was bending over the peri-telescope view-screen. “She’s still thirty thousand miles away. Give her a speed of fifteen per second—she’ll have to slow up to land, can’t make it under forty-five minutes. By then we’ll be in little pieces. It took me ten minutes to burn through the barrier when I rescued Darl, and it won’t take the Mercs any longer to get at us.”

  Darl was very sober as he looked on with narrowed eyes. Against a background of velvet black, gold spangled, the slim space-traveler showed. The sun’s rays caught her, and she was a tiny silver fish in the boundless void.

  “Luik ye, mon, luik ye!” Angus, fairly dancing with excitement, elbowed Darl aside. “She’s from Airth, richt enow!” At the nose of the oncoming flier a rapid succession of colored lights had flashed, the recognition signal that should give her safe access to the Dome. Again there was a coruscation of coded flashes. “She’s a battle cruiser, what’s mair!” the Scot exclaimed.

  Darl sprang to the keyboard that manipulated the signal lights from the Dome’s roof. “No use,” he said, after a short while. “The Martian has cut off the current from the dynamos. I can’t warn the ship.” He made a hopeless gesture.

  Jim looked at him wonderingly. “Warn ’em? What for? Even if we are all dead when she reaches here, at least she’ll clean up the Mercs, and retake the Dome for Earth.”

  “
Don’t you see it? When the Mars man has once blasted his way in here and disposed of us, he’ll be ready for the space ship. Her captain can’t suspect anything wrong. He must have left Earth at the time of the ultimatum, and would easily get here before any ship could be sent out from Mars. He’ll come on till he’s within range of the beam-thrower, and the Martian will aim, press the trigger and the Earth ship and her crew of a half a thousand brave lads will be star-dust.”

  “Oh God!” Jim was white-faced. “Isn’t there anything we can do? Maybe if he doesn’t get our all-clear signal he’ll sheer off.” This was clutching at straws.

  “Why should he? He must know how short-handed we are, and will simply think we’re not on watch, or that our signal lights are out of order. Matter of fact, if he were at all suspicious he should be alternating his course right now—and he hasn’t. Look.”

  Seemingly motionless, but really splitting the ether with terrific speed, the warship was coming straight on to garrison the beleaguered post. She had never wavered from her straight course for the Dome. The little group was silent, watching the help that was coming at last, coming too late.

  From below there came a thunder of sound. Jim slid down the stairs. An irregular disk on the wall was glowing cherry-red from the heat of the blow-torch without, and the metal was quivering under the Mercurian’s sledge-hammer blows. “Darl’s right,” he almost sobbed as he gazed helplessly. “They’ll be through in no time. The Dome’s gone, we’re gone, the space ship’s gone!”

  “Let me pass, Jim.” Thomas’ quiet voice sounded behind him. Holcomb turned. His leader was in a space suit, the helmet still unfastened.

  “Blazes! Where the devil are you going?”

  “Here, cover me with this till I reach the gyrocopter, then get back quick, and seal the air-lock.” Darl thrust into Jim’s hand the ray-gun he had previously reserved. “There’s only one way to kill off the Martian and his mob. I’m taking it.”

  Suddenly Jim Holcomb understood. “No, Darl, no—you can’t do it! Not you! Let me go! I’m just a dumbhead. Let me go!”

  “Thanks, Jimmy, but it’s my place.” Darl’s voice was low, and very calm. “I was in charge, and I lost the Dome. If I can save the boys on the ship, and you two, it’s the least I can do. Good-by, old man. Give my regards to Earth.”

  Thomas’ face was gray-white. The thick bandages that still swathed him, Jim glimpsed them through the open neckpiece of the suit, gave him the semblance of a mummy. The helmet clicked shut. Swallowing a lump that rose in his throat, Jim pulled open the door. A wave of Mercurians surged in, to be seared into nothingness by his weapon. He was in the doorway, his ray sweeping the platform clear.

  Darl was out now, stepping into the flier that still hung by its hooked moorings. Jim caught a flash of blue and looked up. The Martian was hanging to a girder just above, his green tube pointing straight at Darl. A white ray spurted from Jim’s gun. The Martian’s weapon and the hand that held it vanished in the sizzling blast. The plane was loose! Jim leaped inside the air-lock, slammed the steel door shut, clamped it, and sprang for the quartz peer-hole.

  Darl’s gyrocopter was diving on a long slant for the Dome wall. Faster and faster it went, till all Jim could see was a white streak in the smoky dimness. And now he could see the vast interior, the teeming plain, the dwarf-festooned girders and roof-beams. He stood rigid, waiting breathlessly. Then the plane struck—fair in the center of a great panel of quartz. The wall exploded in a burst of flying, shattered splinters. A deafening crash rocked the Dome.

  Jim clung to his port-hole, tears rolling down his cheeks, unashamed. The plane, and Darl, vanished. Jim saw the black smoke masses whirl through the jagged hole in the Dome’s wall as the air burst out in a cyclonic gust. He saw the vast space filled with falling Mercurians, saw a blue form plunge down and crash far below. He knew that in all that huge hemisphere, and in the burrows beneath it, there was no life save himself, and Angus, and the faithful Ran-los. For only in this compartment that clung to the roof of the Dome was there left air to breathe. And, from the void beyond, the silver space ship sped on toward Mercury, sped on to a safe landing that, but for Darl Thomas’s sacrifice, would have been her doom.…

  Guided by Jim and Angus, a party of men from the battle-flier, equipped with oxygen respirators, went to the aid of Darl. They dug him out from under his crumpled plane and the piled splinters of quartz. His metal was dented and twisted, but unpierced. They carried him tenderly to the space ship, and carefully set him down. The ship’s physician listened long with his stethoscope, then looked up and smiled.

  “He’s alive,” the doctor said, “just barely alive. The thick padding of bandages must have saved him from the full shock of the crash. They’re hard to kill, these ITA men. I’ll be able to bring him around, God willing.”

  WHEN THE SLEEPERS WOKE

  “Prepare for battle!” The command crackled in Allan Dane’s helmet. “Enemy approaching from southeast! Squadron commanders execute plan two!” Allan settled back in the seat of his one-man helicopter, his broad frame rendered even bulkier by the leather suit that incased it. He was tensed, but quiescent. Action would be first joined sixty miles away, and his own squadron was in reserve.

  Over New York and its bay the American air fleet was in motion. Suddenly movement ceased, and the formation froze. Ten flying forts were each the apex of a far-spread cone, axis horizontal, whose body was the fanned back-ranging of its squadron of a thousand helicopter planes. The cones bristled oceanward from the sea-margin of New York, their points a fifty-mile arc of defiance, their bases tangent to one another, almost touching the ground at their lower edges, then circling upward for ten thousand feet. From van to rear each formation was five miles in length.

  Behind and above, the main body of the fleet sloped in echeloned ranks, hiding the threatened city with an impenetrable terraced wall of buzzing helios and massive forts. Up, back, up, back, the serried masses reached, till the rearmost were twenty-five thousand feet aloft. And farther behind, unmoving on their six-mile level, were the light ’copters of the reserve. Dane gazed down that tremendous vista to the far-off front line, and swore softly. Just his luck to be out of the scrap: the enemy would never penetrate to these northern out-skirts of New York.

  “Men of the fleet!” General Huntington’s voice sounded from his flagship, the Washington. Somehow its gruffness overrode the mechanical quality of the intra-fleet radio transmission. Almost it seemed he was there in the tiny cabin. “Reports have at this moment been received that our attack fleets have been everywhere successful. Our rocket ships have destroyed Tokyo, Addis Ababa, Odessa, Peiping and Cape Town, and are now ranging inland through enemy territory.”

  Even through the double leather of his helmet a roar came to Allan. He felt his craft vibrate to the exultant cheers of the fleet. His own mouth was open, and his throat rasping.…

  “But”—the single syllable choked the surge of sound—“London, Paris, and Berlin have fallen to the enemy.” The words thudded in the pilot’s ear-phones. “San Francisco is being attacked. Communication with New Orleans has failed. The enemy are in sight of Buenos Aires—” The general broke off, and Allan sensed dully that there was other news, news that he dared not give the fleet.

  The gruff voice changed. “Men of the fleet, New York is in our charge. The enemy is upon us, the battle is commencing. The issue is in your hands.”

  Pat on his last word, a dark cloud spread along the south-eastern horizon. From the spear-heads of the cone formations great green beams shot out across the sea. Orange flame flared in answer, all along the black bank that was the enemy fleet. Where the green beams struck the orange blinked out, and the blue of sky showed through. And the American ships were as yet untouched. A great shout rose to Allan’s lips—that they had the range on the enemy, and the attack defeated before it was well begun.

  But was it? Swift as the American rays scythed destruction along the enemy line, the gaps filled and lethal orange l
eaped out again. Now the black cloud was piling up, was rising till it was a towering curtain against the sky. On it came, like some monstrous tidal wave. Great rents were torn through it by the stabbing beams of the flying forts, holes where ships and men had been whiffed into dust by the hundred. But the attack came on.

  Now all the great defensive cones burst into an emerald blaze as the smaller ships loosed their bolts. And from the terraced slope of the supporting fleet a hundred steel ovoids lumbered forward to meet the threat. All the vast space between the hosts, mountain-high from the sea’s surface, was filled with dazzling light, now green, now orange, as the conflicting beams crossed and mingled. There were gaps in the advancing curtain that did not fill, but the defending cones were melting away, were disappearing, were gone.

  “Flight ZLX prepare for action!” Dane’s eyes flicked over the gages, checking in routine precaution. He started when he saw the V of the chronometer’s hands. Only six minutes had passed since the battle’s start—it seemed hours. And already the reserve was being called on! He was suddenly cold. Out there, over the bay, the enemy forces had ceased their advance. The American first line cones were gone—true enough, but the support fleet was still intact. Some new element had entered the battle, visible as yet only in the Washington’s powerful television view-screens. The flight adjutant’s voice again snapped a command:

  “Direction vertical. Thirty thousand feet. Full speed. Go!”

  Dane jerked home his throttle. The battle shot down, and his seat thrust up against him. Something hurtled past, blurred by the speed of its descent. The plane rocked to a sudden detonation, and Allan fought to steady it. Then he had reached the commanded height. At sixty thousand feet the helio vanes were useless, only the power of the auxiliary rocket-tubes maintained his altitude.