Last Conflict

by John Russell Fearn

  “Eleanor!” Lanning leapt up and seized her hand.

  She smiled—that slow, confident smile. Then the Master spoke.

  “Eleanor Lanning, I understand you disapprove of my leadership?”

  “Entirely!” Eleanor faced Konda steadily.

  “Eleanor!”

  “The Master asked my opinion, and I have given it,” Eleanor said simply. “In fact, Konda, I loathe everything you stand for. There will come a day when—”

  “Be silent,” Konda interrupted. He snapped a switch, and the conversation on the terrace was played back into the shadowy gloom.

  “Yes, I said all that,” Eleanor admitted, when it was over.

  “You realise just how much you have broken the law?”

  Eleanor nodded. “Yes, I do. But I would sooner die a speaker of truth than live a liar. If there were only one man or woman with character and courage in this despot-crushed world, you would no longer rule millions from this desk.”

  “Eleanor!” Bruce Lanning groaned.

  “I mean that for you too, Bruce,” she said, turning. “It is said that one cannot overthrow this dictatorship. One man can because one man became dictator. If it comes to a choice of characters, the Master is the stronger because he got what he set out for. Somewhere, someday, there must rise one strong enough to break him—”

  Melicot’s acid voice broke in: “Schedule 19, Ruling 22. Anybody who speaks in condemnation of the supreme authority exercised by He Who Rules shall suffer the full penalty of the law. The penalty is death.”

  Konda stood up. “You have heard the sentence, Eleanor Lanning. It will be exacted at dawn tomorrow.” He motioned the guards.

  “You can’t do it!” Lanning screamed. “You can’t condemn my wife like that, just to satisfy your damned, stinking laws! I’ll break you for this, Konda! I’ll tear the blasted city in pieces to get you—”

  “Bruce....” It was Eleanor’s quiet voice. She laid a hand on his arm. Konda did not stop her. Deep down in his cast-iron soul there was a vague admiration for her serenity.

  “Bruce, I knew after what I said that it would be the end. But I would rather die than live any longer in the hell that Konda has made of this world. Even Konda cannot forever separate us. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “No! No!” Lanning flung out a protecting arm but the blow of a guard sent him reeling back. Dazed, he shook himself, watching as the girl was led from the office. Then, like a tiger, he swung back on Konda. Melicot had already melted into the shadows.

  “I’m going to stop this, Konda! My wife shall not die! You hear? You can’t get away with it! Just because her opinion doesn’t happen to conform to regulations!”

  Konda gazed like a snake. “Eight weeks’ suspension, Astronomer Lanning, then you can return to your post. You tried to prevent your wife’s foolish utterances whilst on the terrace, and that weighs in your favour. Your life shall be spared. You may go.”

  “You bet I’ll go! And I’ll give you all-fired hell before I’m through!”

  Lanning went, but with, the deep inner consciousness of having spoken useless words. Konda was supreme.

  * * * *

  Cooling from anger, grief descended upon Lanning. Grief and helpless fury. He wandered the pedestrian-ways instead of going back to the apartment. And he knew that all the time he was watched. Sometimes the watcher was human; at other times he could sense the faint static bristling through his scalp which denoted a television beam fixed upon him from headquarters—watching and recording every move.

  Once he pondered committing suicide as he gazed down from the mile-high ramparts into the bowls of light below. But where would be the good of that? Before he could have fallen any distance automatic nets would have thrust out from the building face to save him. Suicides were almost unknown in Governopolis. Konda took good care of his workers. He needed them. Surgery, too, could rapidly put things right in the case of a self-inflicted injury....

  So Lanning wandered again, stunned nearly into amnesia by the tragedy that had descended upon him. Every time he paused he found he was in a different part of the city and not quite sure how he had got there. As before, his wanderings were not interfered with. As long as he made no attempt to end his life he was safe. Safe! What a mockery!

  And each time he paused he seemed to see one of the giant city clocks slicing off more of the night hours. Slowly the summer dawn began to creep over the eternally wakeful city, and he was drawn by an irresistible impulse to the vast grey façade of the city prison—there to wait, dispirited and hag-ridden, outside the walls.

  Upon the stroke of four a.m. he saw the telltale light signal wink and expire on the prison roof, the sole announcement to the unheeding millions that one of their number was dead.

  “Eleanor...,” Lanning whispered, his eyes unashamedly blurred with tears. “Eleanor...!”

  The City, merciless and unfeeling. absorbed Bruce Lanning into its matrix thereafter. It assimilated him completely, threw him out afterwards as indigestible, branded its brutal machine-stamp upon him as he moved from place to place in a half-waking nightmare. Deprived of his work, without any amenities, he became one of the drifters that must always lie back of a titanic monster of power like Governopolis.

  He did not know why he tried to keep himself alive—and yet he did. Without realising it he drifted down to the lowest regions where the scum of outcast workers survived, those for whom the City no longer had any use and who were left to starve or die as circumstance dictated. Konda had his reasons for this. too. To let them rot and starve there just beyond the City was a good example to other workers if they ever thought of rebellion. Even enslavement was better than the pitiless struggle waged against death in the dark sombre alleys of the City’s backwaters.

  Then one night light came back into Lanning’s hammered brain. It was rekindled by a few words from the man who had trailed around with him in the past weeks—a shoddy, old, bitter man with cavernous eyes and a consumptive cough.

  “They finished the solar power plant today, Lanning.”

  “They—finished—the—plant?” Lanning said the words haltingly “Finished the—” He stopped. The words had sunk in. It suddenly linked him up with the past. The solar power plant! Eleanor!

  “How long did it take?” he asked deliberately

  “Eight weeks, but it’s finished.”

  Lanning looked down at his hands, as though he had never seen them before. He inspected his torn and ragged clothing felt at his bristling stubble.

  “Crawford,” he said at length, “my punishment is over. I am entitled to go back there— There!” He jerked his head to the infinite blaze of light and power. “I was suspended.”

  “I know. I heard.” Crawford coughed sepulchrally. “You can go back, take orders, and do as you’re damn well told.”

  “But at least I can live,” Lanning breathed. “Not rot in this stinking backwater. Isn’t that worth something?”

  Crawford spat. “I’d sooner die than work anymore for Konda. He threw me out, so I stay out. Rotting maybe, but out! And you are still willing to obey him after he had your wife executed? I just can’t believe that.”

  “She died because she spoke the truth.” Lanning got up. “Yes, because she dared to stand alone in this godless emptiness and denounce Konda to his face. There was courage, Crawford—courage such as this world hasn’t seen for generations. I was not worthy of her. It was right for her to be taken away from me. But now— Now I’m changed.”

  “You’re going to get revenge? Can’t be done.”

  “She said that one man—” Lanning spoke half to himself. “One man—and she meant it for me. One man to free the world! Yes, Crawford, I’m going back to take up my old job, praying to God I shall not be such a coward as I once was. Then one day—”

  He straightened up. “I have to get myself in order. The past died in these eight weeks of hell. For me there is only the future....”

  * * * *

  So Lannin
g reported for duty again, and with the impartiality of the law his social security was restored to him. He returned to being a cog in the Council machine, but he knew he was eternally watched. The mark of suspicion was upon him—but he did nothing to nurture that suspicion.

  That he had returned for vengeance there was no doubt, but to want it and achieve it were as apart as the galaxies. All he could do was wait for an opportunity and keep his mouth shut. At least he had a better chance in the Council than in being a drifter.

  He made his astronomical reports with religious exactness, came and went from and to his coldly empty apartment every day, never made mistakes and never appeared rebellious. But it was noticed that he never smiled. Never.

  Then, little by little, some of the things he had predicted for the solar magnetiser began to occur. At intervals there were showers of brickbats upon the city. In some parts of the world the showers were heavy enough to inflict considerable injury and damage. It then became part of his work to predict the paths of the meteor streams. When he had the prediction complete the magnetiser was switched off to allow the meteor fields to stream past unattracted.

  To Lanning it simply meant that his postulations were correct. Nothing more. He had been justified in his warnings, but he was not avenged. Not yet.

  Storms came next, stirred up by the onslaught of electronic streams upon the higher planes of the atmosphere. In six nights out of seven, as the heat of the summer gave way to the coolness of the autumn, there were rolling thunderstorms over monstrous Governopolis. Lightning exploded itself in random bolts at the mile-high towers with their huge insulator-caps. Rain descended in a flood from the raging, tortured heaven. The world over, radio became impossible at such times, despite the unceasing influence of the static-eliminator plants....

  These were the nights that Lanning loved. Perched high in the major observatory, he was alone, the rest of the staff being isolated in other parts of the building. Here he could watch the furious blaze of the storm around the giant dome of warpless glass, could feel at one with the fury because it had something in common with his own tortured soul. On such nights as these he could imagine the spirit of Eleanor abroad. Her name now was like a timeless echo. A bold, magnificent woman who had died because she had spoken the truth.

  “Truth!” Lanning whispered, his eyes fixed on the tumult. “Truth—and vengeance! A bridge between! I am that bridge!”

  Lightning crackled violet fire.

  “If only there were one man—!” screamed the wind.

  “Konda! Konda! KONDA!” crashed the thunderbolts.

  “I shall be waiting....” A faint, clear thread of remembrance.

  “Vengeance!” Lanning breathed, his face wet with the fury of his emotions. “Yes, there shall be vengeance! Eleanor!” He tore the safety-window open and yelled into the wind and rain. “Eleanor, do you hear me? You shall be avenged. I am the bridge!”

  Then he turned away, cold and calm, and fastened the window. These moods were common now. Perhaps he was half mad: he did not know. And slowly the storm began to die away. The stars winked into view. Lanning calmed then settled himself in the chair of the giant telescope to make his nightly charts.

  It was quite by chance that the huge instrument was turned on the eastern heaven, and since Earth had shifted since the last observation the instrument was not trained on the previous night’s field but upon the orbit of Nemesis, the massive meteorite-comet which made a round trip in something like seventy-seven years. First appearing at the beginning of the previous century, having been somehow diverted from the outer deeps of the Solar System, it had pursued its journey regularly, always coming near to but never touching Earth.

  But this time! Lanning stared, and stared. The sweeping tail of Nemesis was different. It was foreshortened, and it had never been foreshortened before.

  Lanning found his hand trembling on the controls. This meant something big. Suddenly he deserted his chair and hurried over to the files concerning the visitor. Hurriedly, tensely, he waded through spectro-heliographs, plates, mathematical computations. No doubt about it! Nemesis was off course! But why? What cosmic accident had caused this thing?

  Back of his mind Lanning knew what had caused it, but he did not dare just then to give his imagination free rein. It seemed impossible that Fate had given him such a supreme chance to prove himself right.

  All that night he remained at the telescope, spent the next day making calculations; then when the next night came—clear and calm for a change—he went to work again. Swinging the giant instrument to where the comet should appear, if following its normal orbit, he found no trace of it! Tensely, he swung back to the position of the previous night. Nemesis was still there, a trifle larger, deep yellow in colour, and the tail had gone.

  Stunned. Lanning stared at the unbelievable. It could only mean one thing. Nemesis had turned right off her course and the tail was now invisible because it was streaming right out behind her and could not be seen from Earth. Nemesis was hurtling towards Earth from outer space, inexorably drawn, and there was a reason for that, too.

  With the dispassionate calm of the true astronomer, shelving for the time his personal hates and bitterness, Lanning went to work. When he had all his notes complete—and it took him a week, during which time Nemesis had grown enormously—he gathered them up and left the observatory.

  Dawn had just broken. He took the quiet routes that led to Drayton Konda’s headquarters. The Master always reached his desk at dawn, and had just arrived when Lanning was shown in to him.

  “Well, Astronomer Lanning?”

  If the Master was surprised at the early call he did not show it, but his steely eyes had curiosity in them.

  Lanning said briefly: “When you first erected the solar power plant, sir, I warned you of danger. You refused to listen. I forecast the doom of the world. That doom—is coming!”

  Konda’s face was expressionless. “Explain yourself.”

  “A meteorite-comet, Nemesis by name, has been swung aside from her normal path of seventy-seven years circuit. The reason for that is the immense force field generated by your power station reaching out into space. You are using magnetism. This meteorite has a large percentage of magnetic oxide of iron, instantly drawn by magnetism, far more so than by gravitation, which is not magnetism. It has been caught in the field of your magnet and is heading straight for Earth. Its speed is seven thousand miles a minute: its size, half that of the moon. Its gas envelope is highly poisonous. Here are the official records.”

  Konda took them, studied them, then tightened his lips.

  “I will give orders for the power station to be cut off instantly and so free this thing whilst it is still far away.”

  “That will avail exactly nothing!” Lanning smiled icily. “It is in a fixed path now and on the opposite side from the sun. It is making a beeline for Earth and nothing can stop it hitting us. The damage is done!”

  “We could go underground,” Konda mused. “That way we could withstand the impact.”

  “Its speed, when it reaches here, will be in the region of eight thousand miles a second,” Lanning stated. “You have eight days in which to get below—no more. Even if you could do it, it wouldn’t save you. I warned you, Konda, that too much power would break you one day. Now it’s my turn! I shall tell the people of the world what your blind ambition has brought upon them! The end of the world! Some of them may still be able to escape to another planet.”

  “I think not,” Konda said slowly. “The people shall know nothing of this. That you have come to me first with the information saves the situation. They shall know nothing!”

  “You can’t do it, Konda! When the comet becomes visible in the next night or two explanations will be demanded from you, the Master!”

  “And if the Master is not here?” Konda asked softly.

  “What?” Lanning stared at him. “You can’t mean—you’re going to desert Earth?”

  “My life is more valuable than tha
t of the worker. If this planet is doomed, I shall move to one that is not. I have the mastery of every planet in the System—don’t forget that. I owe you a debt, Astronomer Lanning, for bringing this matter to my notice.”

  “So you’ll make good your escape and leave the millions who’ve sweated and died for you? This is one time you won’t get away with it—”

  “Lanning, you’re becoming a nuisance,” Konda said, a ray gun suddenly in his hand. “It is time to be rid of you, but not in a way that anybody can know what happened to you. If inquiry is made, you have simply become deranged and been removed. I shall withdraw all other astronomers from duty before the threat of Nemesis can be fully ascertained. I shall not even entrust you to an executioner, because he may talk. You shall go into space, amongst those beloved stars of yours—to die!”

  “Now wait a minute!” Lanning snapped. “All right, I’m half mad. I want revenge for the death of my wife—all right again. But duty to humanity comes first. There may yet be a way to avert this catastrophe. Fleets of space machines firing neutron guns could perhaps explode this comet before it strikes us—its metallic core, anyway. The gas we would have to provide against. Or you might arrange counter-attractors on other planets to draw it aside and neutralise its danger. There are many things—”

  “You said eight days, Lanning. There is not the time. Besides, I have never considered it wise to trifle with the cosmos. If I cannot be certain of beating it I allow it full play.”

  Konda got up suddenly. “Walk!” he commanded. “It is a favourable moment for your departure, before the staff gets here. Walk!”

  Lanning clenched his fists, wondering which was best—space-death as Konda had planned for him, or the sudden death of the flame-gun. Finally he walked. Life is not an easy thing to sell as long as there is a spark of hope left....

  With the gun in his back he walked the still deserted galleries in the fresh morning air, ascended the spiral stairway, and finally reached the private spacedrome on top of the executive building. Konda motioned him to a one-man flyer. He climbed in and sat down in the control chair. Before he realised what had happened manacles snapped into position around wrists and ankles. He raised a startled face.