The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  “But that’s not it, sir!” cried the adjutant, his voice cracking. “We fired on them, but they didn’t run. Instead, they attacked in force. There were hundreds…thousands…of them. Many were killed, but the rest came on and on—”

  “Speak up, man!” shouted the General. “What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “This, sir. That the garrison was wiped out to the last man. The Sackies have taken our main stronghold in New York sector!” In the silence that followed the messenger’s words, General Harkrader turned and stared down into the streets below. When he turned again to face us he had become subtly an older man.

  “You see, McLeod?” he said.

  I saw. In Central Park Arsenal had been stored material sufficient to arm and maintain for an indefinite siege every able-bodied man in the New York area. With the winning of these weapons the Sackies ceased to be a rabble, became an army equaling the Corps in equipment, outnumbering us perhaps twenty to one.

  I said, “You were right, sir. But it’s too late to cry over spilt milk. What are we going to do now?”

  As if seeking answer himself, he turned and snapped on the video. After a few seconds the screen cleared to show the familiar newsroom of the FBC’s television studio. It was a scene of unreserved chaos and confusion. Forgotten was the traditional smoothness and urbanity of visual newscasting as a swarm of harassed reporters and analysts jockeyed for space in the equipment-cluttered studio, elbowing each other, sometimes bumping the cameras and making the image shake as their own sense of assurance must be shaking at this tense hour.

  Before our eyes a reporter tore from one teletype a late report, rushed it to the camera and read it to us:

  “Bulletin: Washington. Panic seized the erstwhile capital city of the United States today as Diarists rose in overwhelming numbers to occupy all points of military importance in this strategic sector.

  “Bulletin: London. A pitched battle rages in the ancient City of London today as hordes of Diarists pit their numerical superiority against the armaments and tactics of a beleaguered handful of Corpsmen. The Diarists now claim control of all terrain north of the Thames, and are advancing in force on the well-fortified Southwark district.

  “Bulletin: Rome. Sons of the Sign, arise! As we have done here, so can you do. Be forthright and brave. The Day has dawned—”

  The newscaster paled, stopped reading, hastily cast aside the Rome dispatch which provided self-evident proof that the Sackies held control of at least the Rome centers of news dissemination. He resumed:

  “Bulletin: Ottawa. The Governor-General of the Dominion has asked the local Diarist leader, Brother John Carstairs, for a truce. This request followed seizure by the cultists of every important warehouse and fortress in the sector.

  Bulletin: Moscow. Amid scenes reminiscent of the days of Soviet control, Corpsmen and Diarists today locked in a grim battle for control of this city’s vital Krem—”

  The screen shook suddenly, and the image fogged. A voice, cool and confident, overrode that of the newscaster.

  “Here’s the latest report, Brother. Let me give it to the public.”

  The image cleared. Fronting the camera stood a man clad in the loose sackcloth smock of the Diarist brotherhood. About the newsroom his armed followers rounded up the members of the video staff. The Sackie leader smiled, spoke squarely into the camera’s eye.

  “Bulletin: World Federation Headquarters, New York. The Day has dawned. Brothers of the Sign, under the inspiration of their sacred symbol, now control the major portion of this city, seat of the corrupt World Federation government.

  “We call upon all oppressed citizens to join us and celebrate the long-awaited Day. To Corpsmen and hirelings of the deposed government who will renounce their former allegiance, we offer full amnesty and Brotherhood in the Sign.

  “Further resistance is useless. We are prepared to subdue without mercy any who—”

  Harkrader snapped off the video.

  “Well,” he said heavily, “that’s it. A lifetime of building and planning overthrown in a single day. It seems we made a mistake, gentlemen. The always fatal error of underestimating our opponents.”

  The adjutant cried, “But there must be something we Can do, General! They can’t have won so final a victory. Not in so few hours!”

  “Wrong again,” sighed Harkrader. “Our strength was never in numbers. It lay in the fact that only we had weapons. Once they took the Arsenals—Simpson?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Gather the men of Fedhed. I want to talk to them. At once, please.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The adjutant saluted and left. Harkrader stared at me somberly.

  “I’m going to turn them loose, McLeod. There’s no use in their being slaughtered in a hopeless cause. The best we could hope for would be a delaying action-then heaven knows what retribution for our stubbornness.”

  “And you, sir?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. What does it matter? My life work, my career, ended today. They will execute me, I suppose. I cannot say I care. I am an old man. Within my lifetime I have seen strong sovereign nations fight innumerable bloody wars—to no conclusion. I have seen men devise a plan for peaceful living, and I have watched that plan go awry. Now this. What will come of it, I do not know. I do not greatly care.

  “But you are young. What will you do?

  “I am a Corpsman,” I said.

  “You were a Corpsman. The Corps is dead.”

  “I am a Corpsman,” I repeated, “bred and trained on the Island. I will carry on.”

  “Not from here, McLeod. I am surrendering Fedhed.”

  “There are other places. Secret places. Forts the Sackies never dreamed of.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish. Order what you need in the way of supplies or transportation facilities. That much I can give you.”

  “But first,” I said. “I must return to Long Island. Frisbee warned me this was coming. He is not with us, but he is not with them, either. And he knows something—something great and important that he would not tell me. It is my duty to go back and learn his secret.”

  “Frisbee!” said Harkrader. “By Jove, yes! Frisbee. You’ve got something there, McLeod. He may be our last hope. Lieutenant—give me fifteen minutes, and then I’ll go with you.”

  “It would be an honor, sir,” I told him.

  Thus it was that a quarter-hour later Harkrader and I, in a gyro with Corporal Babacz again at the controls, took off from the roof of the Federation Headquarters on the first leg of a journey which was to carry us farther then our minds in their wildest imaginings could ever have conceived.

  CHAPTER IV

  Our landing at Frisbee’s refuge was in strange contrast to our first visit there. Then the only one to meet us had been Dana. This time the poising of our gyro for vertical descent brought running to the field so startling a number of people that I could hardly believe my eyes.

  It was a motley group. The only thing its members, of whom there were at least fifty, appeared to have in common was youth. All, with the exception of the scientist himself, were of my own generation.

  There similarity ended, diversity began. About half were young women or girls. A part of these were dressed in normal street clothes, others wore laboratory smocks, still others were clad—like the majority of men—in grease-stained jumpers. Those men who were not in work clothes were garbed variously in executives’ day-briefs, technicians’ pileproofs, or similarly designed garments for special jobs. I noted two or three wearing portions of the distinctive rubberized suits used by divers for work in shallow submarine depths.

  Harkrader glanced at me in frowning bewilderment.

  “You didn’t mention anything like this, McLeod.”

  “I didn’t see anything like this yesterday.”

  “Maybe,” sugge
sted Babacz, “the old man is mixed up with the Sackies, after all?”

  “I don’t believe so. I have no idea where these people came from. But you’ll notice they don’t wear the smocks of the Brotherhood.”

  Our tricycle gear touched ground; Babacz halted the fans as the gyro bounced and settled. Instantly a solid wall of determined young bodies hemmed us in. A voice asked, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  There was a movement through the crowd, and Frisbee appeared.

  “It’s all right, Warren,” he said quietly. “I know these men. They are not our enemies.”

  “They’re Corpsmen, Professor,” called one angrily. “All Corpsmen are our enemies.”

  “Man’s greatest enemy,” replied Frisbee in his calm, classroom manner, “is his animal instinct toward herd action. I will take care of this. The rest of you will please return to your tasks. And hurry! Remember that every minute, every second, is precious now.”

  Reluctantly, not without some grumbling and ominous backward looks, the group split and sifted away, leaving only Frisbee and his daughter. Dana wore stained denim overalls, and her bronze hair was caught in a faded kerchief. But she was beautiful. Her hands were oil-stained, and there was a smudge of carbon black on her nose, but I found her breath-taking in her loveliness. She smiled at me, and I could tell that she, too, was remembering that moment in the garden.

  Frisbee said, “You are Harkrader. It’s been a long time since we met, John.”

  “Thirty years, Professor,” said Harkrader. “I graduated with the class of fifty-seven.”

  He used the old term quite instinctively and without seeming to know he had done so. Frisbee had that curious effect on the people. He retained an aura of the old days.

  “Yes. That was a good class. One of the last free classes. In it were men of bright promise. Yourself… Harry Sanders… Lou Chauvenet… Aaron Jablonski…”

  I listened, appalled and yet in awe. If these had been Harkrader’s classmates, it had indeed been a year of great, if oddly various, men. All the names were famous—or infamous. Harold Sanders was permanent Chairman of the World Health Commission. Louis Chauvenet, renowned for his astrogational research, had for a decade blazed new trails toward spaceflight, and with the disappearance of his ill-fated Luna expedition in 1978, had become a legend. Aaron Jablonski had died with his stubborn little army of Loyalists at Cincinnati in the Nationalist Rebellion of 1973-4.

  “Men of bright promise,” repeated Frisbee. “I fear we shall not soon again see classes like that.” He shook his head sadly. “This is an evil day, John. The long twilight has ended, and darkness falls.”

  “You’ve heard the news, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “We heard nothing while flying here,” I interposed. “Are the Diarists successful everywhere?”

  “Almost everywhere. A few cities, some of the more remote garrisons, hold out. But the movement snowballs as the Brothers gain arms and converts. They hold airports now, and are flying reinforcements and supplies to stubborn sectors.”

  “Paris has fallen,” said Dana, “and Berlin, and Fort Wainwright in the Philippines. The Diarists control all South America from Tierra del Fuego to the Gulf, excepting only the supply depot in the Matto Grasso. Asia is—”

  “The Island?” I demanded. “They have not yet taken the Island?”

  “Which island?”

  Frisbee smiled at his daughter.

  “To an I-man, my dear, there is only one Island.”

  “St. Thomas,” I elucidated. “Intelligence G.H.Q.”

  “Oh—in the Virgins? No. We heard no report from there.”

  I smiled grimly. “You won’t. The Sackies planned well but futilely. We still have a few aces up our sleeves.”

  Frisbee glanced shrewdly at me from beneath silvered brows. “Such as—”

  “Well manned garrisons,” I told him proudly, “in places the world doesn’t even suspect. Antarctica, Van Diemen’s Land—no need to name them. But I think the Sackies will start chanting a different hymn when the plutes begin to fall.”

  “Plutes!” cried Frisbee. “Plutonium bombs? But you can’t do that! Atomic warfare was outlawed more than twenty years ago!”

  “In warfare between powers. But this is different This is world revolt against a recognized authority. The end justifies the means.”

  “You fools!” roared the physicist. “You stupid and arrogant damned fools! Don’t you realize the authority of your government has been challenged because it is dictatorial and venal? Because men would rather die than live under such restrictions as you have placed on them?”

  “Would you rather see a world governed by religious fanatics? Madmen in sackcloth who worship a comet?”

  “I’d rather see such a world than no world at all!” Frisbee ran shaking fingers through his hair. “I dislike the Diarist rebellion and its precepts, but I was prepared to accept it for a time as the lesser of evils. Now the choice is out of my hands. Out of the hands of all men.”

  “You’re getting excited over nothing,” I said. “In a few days the revolt will be brought under control—”

  “In a few days,” cried the scientist, “the Earth on which we live may no longer exist! McLeod—did it never occur to your precious Intelligence that the conspirators, too, may have atomic weapons?”

  I stared at him, dry-lipped. The thought had never occurred to me, I freely acknowledged—not until that moment. Now suddenly I realized what could happen if by any chance he were right. In my second year of training as a cadet we were taken to the Safety Zone around what used to be the Oak Ridge experimental station, and were shown the results of the catastrophe there. That pile had exploded some nine years before, but the terrain for a thirty mile diameter about the gigantic crater was still violently radioactive.

  I answered, “But—but they can’t. Atomic materiel is on the proscribed list. Only the Federation—”

  “Nonsense!” rapped Frisbee. “Uranium and plutonium are hard, perhaps impossible, to get, it’s true. But those are not the only radioactive minerals, McLeod. Thorium…actinium…phoebium1… All these are equally as potent a source of atomic energy as the commonly used elements. With what do you think I have conducted my experiments, built my—”

  He stopped abruptly as Dana cried, “Dad!” But what had been said was beyond recall. I picked him up swiftly.

  “Yes—your experiments. What have you built?”

  Dana said, “Kerry, let’s go up to the house? I’m a little tired, and it’s so hot here in the sun—”

  “What, Doctor?”

  “Why do you want to know?” flared Dana. “So you can report it to your cold-blooded superiors on the Island? Well, we’ll not tell you. It’s our secret, and—”

  “Dana, my dear,” interposed Frisbee. “If you don’t mind? Thank you. McLeod, it had not been my intention to let you in on our secret. But my careless tongue has already betrayed me, and perhaps it does no harm. Tell me—had you not guessed, in a wide sense, what we are doing here?”

  “Frankly, sir, no. My information was that you had gathered a considerable amount of construction material and a certain amount—we do not know how much—of active ores. I satisfied myself yesterday that you were not a Diarist. So I assume you have been conducting some private experiments with atomic force. Further than that—”

  “Why make you waste time and words?” asked Frisbee. “The answer is quite simple. We have utilized atomic energy, McLeod. But not as a means for destruction. We are using the power of the atom as a drive.”

  “Drive?”

  “Yes. That which my followers have built here, the creation with which we had planned to escape this Earth and a despotic rulership, is—a spaceship!”

  “Spaceship!” I cried. And I looked at Hark—

  * * * *

  Here again it is
necessary to apologize for a break in the continuity of Kerry McLeod’s narrative, as relayed via the hand of Frank Grayson.

  There seems to be no day-to-day correlation between these two men’s lives. According to the attested record, only four days elapsed between the conclusion of this segment and Frank Grayson’s next period of hypnosis. But there appears to be an interval of almost two weeks in the world of Kerry McLeod.

  Obviously, I cannot explain the conversion of the three Corpsmen to Frisbee’s cause. Events of which there exist no record must have had much to do with such a change. However, the text provides ample evidence that a growing personal interest in Dana Frisbee may have influenced McLeod.

  As usual, the narrative resumes abruptly. The scene of the following portion is the interior of Frisbee’s covertly constructed spacecraft:

  * * * *

  —assorted instruments, the usage of which I could only surmise. The massive control panel, with its banks of keys and levers, made that of the most complex jet-plane look simple as a child’s toy. A bucket-shaped pressure seat was centrally mounted before the controls. Just above this pilot seat were six vision plates, each about two feet square. They formed a cross shape, with four squares in a vertical line and the other two as wings jutting from the second panel.

  “For universal vision,” explained Dr. Frisbee. “We cannot get by with mere peripheral vision, as can aviators of earthbound machines. In space we must be able to spot danger coming at us from any direction.”

  “How do they read?” I asked.

  “The vertical plates reflect the images of topside, fore, below, and aft. The wings mirror starboard and port. I fear there isn’t much to see just now—”

  He smiled whimsically. The crossbar showed only the dull gray of lapping lake waters, as did the pane at the bottom. The topmost plate shone yellow-green as the sunlight filtered through the waters above us, and schools of darting minnows passed briefly before our vision and vanished. It was a striking reminder of where we were. Harkrader voiced a query for the three of us.