“We can see the Tower top from the window here,” Lanning said. “All one has to do in case of trouble is to focus the binocular-sight and press the button.”
He turned as the robot came back, carrying the instrument in its arms. Lanning took it, snapped three collapsible legs into position, and then set down the boxlike affair before the centre window.
“If the window is closed you need not worry,” he said, fitting the power plug into a socket in the wall. “The beam passes through glass. There! Simple enough!” He nodded to the binocular sights on the top. “Our simple little weapon to save the whole planet blowing asunder. I wish the rest of the problem were as easy.”
“I’ll take the first shift at the screen,” Peter offered.
“Then I shall rest and relieve you at two in the morning,” Lanning said. “And you, Miss Holmes?”
“I’ll carry on from when you finish, Mr. Lanning.”
“Good! I shall stay until six a.m. Relieve me then, Miss Holmes.”
With a nod Lanning left the room, and Peter grinned as the girl stood looking at him.
“You go and get some rest: have to be up to scratch to take over.”
“All right...Peter.”
His eyes followed her admiringly as she went out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SIEGE
It was around two in the morning and Peter was dozing in spite of himself, when suddenly a vision in the screen brought him from mere bleary contemplation of it to alertness. Around him the lights in the great room were extinguished to improve the view in the scanning plate. Now he saw something—a light, a mere pinprick moving up the Tower towards the summit. It took him a moment or two to realize it was the elevator rising from below to the top.
He watched earnestly. The Moon had set now; there was only starlight, but he could faintly descry a dim figure carrying a torch. After a moment or two spent in leaving the elevator the figure. became visible on top of the Tower itself, obviously exploring the cover.
Peter did not hesitate. He got up hurriedly, adjusted the binocular-sights on the radio-annihilator, then telescopically viewed the dim looming bulk of the Tower in the distance. He depressed the firing switch. There was a faint whirring. He repeated the dose twice more to make sure, then went back and looked into the screen. The figure had vanished, and the torch with it.
A sound behind him made Peter jump. It was the doors opening and shutting. Through the dim gloom on the room, right on time, stalked the tall figure of Mark Lanning.
“All well, Excellence?” he inquired, leaning over Peter in the darkness.
“Anything but! I just blew somebody off the Tower top!”
“What! You did—?”
Peter related the incident briefly, and the scientist frowned in the starlight and then peered into the televizor.
“Well, I do not know whom it could have been, Excellence, but you did the right thing. Evidently the unknown fell from the Tower top to his death. One thing is in our favour. The elevator is at the top of the shaft and cannot be lowered from below. Only the person it carries can move it. That should stop further investigation from ground level, anyway. No doubt we shall find out soon enough whom you hit.”
Peter nodded. “I don’t quite say I like unvarnished murder of this sort, but I suppose it’s the only way—one life lost to save many.... Well, I’d better go and get some sleep.”
Lanning murmured agreement and settled before the screen. Yawning, Peter went into his bedroom, tumbled on the bed just as he was and fell asleep immediately.
It was daylight when he awoke; when he returned into the main room after the usual robot curriculum of washing, shaving, and dressing, he found Alza seated at the instrument in the bright morning sunshine. Breakfast was ready and waiting for him.
“Anything happen?” he asked the girl. and she shook her blonde head. :
“You had all the excitement, Peter,” she replied. “Quiet all through Mr. Lanning’s shift, and it’s been the same with me.”
“Have some breakfast?” Peter invited, settling down.
“I’ve had mine, thanks—an hour ago, while I kept my eye on the screen.”
Peter nodded and commenced the meal, exchanging small talk with the girl meanwhile. He had hardly finished and seen the table cleared before Mark Lanning entered with unusual haste.
“Good morning,” he greeted briefly. “Excuse my hurrying in like this, Excellence, but from my suite I happened to see three men from the engineering section enter the building. I fancy they are seeking an audience with you....” He glanced at Alza. “Have the robots take the televizor and annihilator into the next room, Miss Holmes. It is as well that no one but ourselves see the instruments. We shall have to risk taking our attention from the Tower for a moment or two.”
The girl got to her feet, quickly and the robots promptly obeyed her orders. They had hardly moved the apparatus into an adjoining room before the radio signaller flashed.
Peter switched it on. “Yes?”
“A deputation seeks audience with you, Excellence—from the engineering section.”
“Send them in,” Peter replied, as Lanning nodded; then there was a pause until three men were shown in by the guard.
They came forward slowly, attired in overalls, caps in their hands. The tallest of them stepped forward as Peter raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“I’m Blackstone, head foreman of the engineers, Excellence,” he explained. : “I’m here to report an accident—at least I think it must have been an accident. Mr. Renshaw, our Chief Engineer, was found battered to a pulp at the base of the Grand Tower this morning. And since the Tower elevator is at the top it looks as though he must have fallen from the Tower summit.”
“What was he doing up there?” Lanning asked curtly. “I never gave him any such order.”
“I think he went up of his own volition, sir,” Blackstone said, shrugging massive shoulders. “When we—my two colleagues and I—came on the night shift the Chief told us that he suspected somebody was trying to interfere with the Task by fixing something at the Tower top contrary to Ijax’s orders. So I believe he went to look for himself. He didn’t come back. When we left for home this morning we made a point of going past the Tower and...we found his body.”
Lanning shrugged. “Since he evidently suffered from delusions regarding the safety of the Task he deserved all he got. Thanks for reporting it, though.”
“That isn’t all, sir,” Blackstone went on. “I came here to ask you—or else you, Excellence—to have men landed from helicopters on the Tower top to release the elevator. Also, I’d like your assurance that you’ll make the usual inquiry into the cause of Mr. Renshaw’s death. That’s the custom...isn’t it?”
“Normally, yes,” Lanning assented, as Peter hesitated in doubt. “But in this case it is clear that Renshaw acted outside his normal line of duty and I shall ask both His Excellence and the Governing Council to ignore all inquiry. As for the stranded elevator, the Tower work is finished and there is no need for the elevator to be returned to the ground. I will decide when that is necessary. That is all, Blackstone. You can go.”
The foreman hesitated a moment. an ugly twist on his big mouth; then without even bothering to give the usual bow of respect he swung away and motioned hi» colleagues to follow him.
“Now what?” Peter asked seriously, as the doors closed.
“Trouble,” Lanning answered, his face grim. “There is nothing to stop Blackstone repeating his information to the Governing Council, and it has authority over me. I’m merely head scientist. Should the Council decide to institute an inquiry, things will get difficult.”
“Can’t I stop it as the figurehead?” Peter demanded. “I’ve asked you before if I’m just an ornament, or something.”
“Your authority, Excellence, is similar to that of a monarch in olden times, whose Parliament did all the acting and he merely performed lip service. You cannot do anything—and I am afraid that the killin
g of the Chief Engineer is going to start a good deal of unpleasantness. Still, it had to be,” Lanning shrugged. “Evidently, he kept a check on our movements somehow, suspicious from the very moment he took over the preparation of that spaceship of ours.”
“Which ship I’m afraid we shan’t get in a hurry now,” Peter muttered. “You’ve no idea how it’s progressing, I suppose?”
“I have not inquired. Things are volcanic enough without adding anything.”
Lanning turned away and recovering the televizor and annihilator from the next room, fixed them both back in position, then he sat down to watch the screen again moodily.
Peter made no comment and neither did Alza. All three of them had the uneasy feeling that something was brewing and that the task of trying to save humanity from itself was going to prove a great deal harder than any of them had imagined.
Then the normal visiphone on the desk glowed. Peter picked the instrument up and the square face of President Valroy of the Governing Council became visible on the viewing-plate.
“Excellence...,” President Valroy acknowledged briefly, merely as a point of courtesy. Then: “I have just received a deputation concerning the death of Chief Engineer Renshaw, about which of course you know. Am I to understand that you do not sanction an inquiry or examination of Grand Tower to discover how Renshaw met his death? Am I to understand First Scientist Lanning concurs with that view?”
Peter hesitated, then his jaw set.
“Yes, you do understand just that!” he retorted—and Lanning raised his eyebrows at the suddenly aggressive tone. “I’m not stuck here as just a glorified yes-man from the Twenty-First Century, Mr. President! I’m damned well sick of beating around the bush. You put me as the figurehead and I’m going to say what I think—and tell you what I order! That Tower spells death to everybody on the Earth, and so does the Task as well! Renshaw died because of inquisitiveness, and for no other reason! My order is that you forget all about the whole thing!”
The President smiled acidly. “As President of the Council, Excellence, I shall order an inquiry forthwith and have the Tower thoroughly examined. I am in a position to override your authority when the case warrants, and this us one of those occasions!”
The instrument went dead and Peter slammed it down savagely. He met Lanning’s pale eyes as he turned. The scientist gave him a rather troubled smile.
“Whilst I admire your Twenty-First-Century toughness, Excellence, I must say that I don’t think you have done us much good! In fact I think we had better prepare for trouble and that very soon.”
Getting up he turned to the robots and issued orders. Peter waited with Alza beside him to see what happened next. In a few minutes the robots were back bearing two instruments that were obviously the offensive weapons of which Lanning had spoken.
“I think,” Lanning explained, “we may have to face a siege. If so, we will. But we must save that Tower!”
He sat down again at the screen and before very long a new sound came into the quietness outside—the soft whirring of several helicopter screws. It became louder. Peter and the girl raced to the windows just in time to see four exploring helicopter planes go speeding towards the Tower.
“That’s what they think!” Peter breathed, and he flung himself before the radio annihilator and focused the sights. Four times he pressed the button viciously and four planes went plummeting to destruction one after the other.
“Right?” Peter glanced at Lanning and the scientist nodded.
But it was only the beginning. More planes came—and again they were defeated. There was an interval, then heavier machines took up the job, flying in from different parts of the city. They came thick and fast, so that Peter could not possibly take care of all of them, though Lanning before the televizor was quite sure no man landed on the Tower. Nonetheless it had probably been photographed.
This done the planes winged away one by one and for an hour there was comparative peace, presumably while the pilots placed their findings before the President. Then, towards midday, there was the sound of voices coming ever nearer down the corridor outside. Fists banged on the doors a second or twp after Peter had dashed across and locked them.
“Come out of there, Lanning! And you too, Excellence!” It was the unmistakable voice of Blackstone, high in anger. “We’ve found out that you’ve covered up the Tower top and we all know Ijax said it must be free to the sky! You’re trying to stop us having our reward for the Task! Come out, before we smash the door down....”
“Not if I know it,” Peter muttered, swinging round one of the projector-like defensive mechanisms the robots had brought in. The massive doors quivered under the onslaught of a battering ram. Alza hurried across to the second defensive weapon, examined it quickly, then squatted before it. Her grey eyes were bright as they peered through the sights.
“Good girl!” Peter whispered. “It’s something to know you’re not the milk-and-roses variety— Here they come!” he broke off, as the doors suddenly smashed inwards under the final impact.
He pressed the button on his instrument. From it, to his surprise, there stabbed a blinding ray of electrical energy. It struck the swarming, vengeful mob clean in the midst, dropping men and women like skittles. Then Alza added her own share and with twin beams of tearing energy biting corrosively into them the others fell back. Burned, maimed, and blinded, they reeled into the corridor again over the fallen bodies of their colleagues.
“Follow ’em up,” Peter gasped out, perspiration wet on his face as he pushed the terrible instrument slowly along before him.
Both the girl and he kept low and wriggled themselves forward, never relaxing fire. The mob driven out of range at last, Peter reduced the fallen bodies to dust as rapidly as a jet of water blasts dirt from a pathway. Then he switched off and motioned Alza to do the same. Staggering through the smoke and stench of burned flesh, he slammed the doors shut again.
“Seal them,” Lanning instructed. “The locks are gone so that is the only way. Turn your energy gun on to the division down the centre. The two metals will run into each other.”
Peter nodded and obeyed orders. The metal of the two doors flowed and fused inextricably under the searing flame. Then he switched off and nodded.
“That ought to show ’em! As for you, Alza, you’re a hundred per cent revelation.”
“It’s a change from years of doing nothing,” she shrugged. “I deplore the loss of life, but the fate of all humanity is at stake.... But I’m wondering what is going to happen next.”
She swung round as Lanning dived suddenly to the radio-annihilator. He sighted, pressed the button, then went back to the televizor.
“Four men climbing the Tower’s external metalwork to the top,” he explained, glancing across. “Or rather four men were climbing.”
There was a pause, a feeling of sombre tension and expectancy of things to come. War had been declared, and none knew it better than these three. Nor was the next phase long in developing. Offensive aircraft made their appearance, and the moment they did so Lanning jumped up from his chair and pressed a button on the wall-panel. At almost the same instant a colossal impact rocked the entire building and he, Peter, and Alza were hurled across the floor.
“Atom bomb,” Lanning said, getting up again slowly. “Since this building houses high members of the intelligentsia, it is fortunately prepared to withstand attack. When I closed that switch I covered the building in a dome of deflective energy. The idea was planned long ago in case of attack by an alien power. The dome should keep us safe from any external onslaught. However it blocks radio waves, so that we shall have to use the annihilator sights to watch the Tower and raise the shield if it becomes necessary to pick anybody off. That is all that we can do.”
Peter helped the girl to her feet, and they hung on to whatever support they could find as shock after shock made the building quake to its foundation.
“Evidently they are determined to wipe us out completely if they can,�
�� Lanning observed drily. “That will be by no means so easy as they think.”
He went back to the radio-annihilator and sat betide it; from then on it seemed hell broke loose. The enraged Governing Council threw everything they had got at the building, and failed completely to pierce the dome of energy guarding it. Since the generating plant for the dome was in the building itself, no outsiders could get through the dome to stop it; and those inside—what few the mob had spared—knew what would happen if the dome failed and so made no effort to interfere.
So the siege began.
Ever and again, as parties tried to climb up the Tower or planes flew over it. Lanning saw them in the annihilator-sights, raised the dome momentarily, and struck the enemy down.
The day passed, the night came—and then day again. They took it in turns to eat and sleep. Fortunately they had everything they needed in the building, could hold out for years if necessary. They were very much in the same position as a single man with a rifle guarding a pass against an army of ten thousand.
Eye-weary, tired from strain, their watch over the covered Tower never relaxed. Hours, minutes, days, nights—they were all inextricably mixed up. Now and again new attacks were made, and failed. Once, two breakdown-helicopters tried to move the cover only to go crashing to destruction before they could even lower their cables.
Then suddenly, one night as the full Moon tailed high in the sky, a deadly quiet settled. After the noise, confusion, and nerve strain that had existed for the past week of siege it seemed impossible to realize.
“There is only one explanation,” Lanning said, glancing up at the electric clock. “Everybody has gone to listen to Ijax in the Temples! I would give a great deal to know what Shaw has to say. Earth should have been blown to bits two nights ago.”
Peter and Alza stared out at the full Moon riding high over the tall buildings.
“Two nights more and we’ll have done!” the girl breathed. “For this time, anyway....”
They fell silent again, waiting for the moment when the people would leave the Temples and the attack would resume—but surprisingly enough it did not. The quietness remained throughout the night, nor by day was there any sign of hostile activity.
Slaves of Ijax Page 10
