Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians)

by Don Pendleton

  “Are them Boobs, Tom?” asked a surprised and distant gunman.

  “Same damn thing! Machines, coming over here to run us out! Right, Zach?”

  “Right, is like same.”

  “Hey, Boob! ” someone yelled.

  The gunship became a riot of exultant sounds. Stel leaned low over Whaleman’s shoulder and said, “They’ll do better now, Zach. Now it’s a holy war.”

  “What is this holy war?”

  Blue smiled grimly. “A very old human preoccupation, Gunner. You can think of it as a hate war. Do you skronk hate?"

  Whaleman nodded. “Yes, this human has learned to skronk hate.”

  Hedge cried, “The core’s going nuts!”

  Whaleman glanced at Hedge’s instruments and hastily tattoed instructions into the power banks. Blue yelled, “Hey! I’m getting wave forms!”

  “Analysis!” Whaleman snapped.

  “Negative! They don’t analyze!”

  Stel warned, “Look at the tumble indicator!”

  Whaleman fought with a command circuit as a mechanized voice from his console announced, “Hazard, hazard. Isolation shield breached.”

  Whaleman turned to Hedge and snarled, “Scale Four!”

  “Skronk!”

  Blue said, “Okay, I’m getting a readout now. It’s a reverse sine!”

  “Hazard, hazard,” again announced the automat. “Fusion energies are present.”

  Whaleman whirled to Blue’s console and briefly studied the flickering display on the wave analyzer. “Anti-energy!” he said, alarmed.

  “What?” Blue cried.

  “Is anti-energy wave. Is cause fusion, not like same fission. Like same, earlier sabotage of Terra 10 control circuits. Yes, this is how.”

  “You mean anti-matter?”

  “No, mean anti-energy. Remember lesson? Energy cannot be destroyed. This is not like same, Blue. This is anti-energy.”

  “So?”

  “So ... lesson is maybe wrong. Is maybe possible, energy is destroyed by anti-energy. Like same, matter and anti-matter.”

  “God, I don’t understand that!” Blue replied dismally.

  A wheeling disc loomed up in the viewscreen. Stel moved instinctively, jerking back in a startled reaction to the sudden confrontation with an enemy craft at close range. An immediate salvo from several AGRAD batteries caught the challenger in a convulsive torque of opposition, the anti-gravity beams shredding through the mass of suddenly tortured metals; atomic structures lost their coalescing bonds, and the invading spacecraft began to melt and liquefy. As Stel watched in horrified fascination, the entire mass of metal pulled apart into shapeless jellylike blobs and, as deterioration progressed, into rapidly scattering vapors.

  “That’s h-horrible!” she gasped.

  “Is diffusion,” Whaleman explained. “Is AGRAD principle, is un-creation.” He was running his fingers along a row of command buttons. “Is like opposite, this anti-energy maybe. Is maybe opposite happen to Terra 10, this anti-energy penetration.”

  “You mean, it’ll contract us!” Blue exclaimed. “It’ll freeze us into a no-energy lump of contracted matter!”

  “Maybe not so!” The Gunner was extracting a readout from the analog. He gripped Stel’s hand and put a beeptone on the intercom to signal for attention. Then he announced, “Ho, Gunmen. Here are your Boobs, these stunts. Here is logic, pattern. Shift is—”

  Tom Cole interrupted the announcement. “They won’t read you, Zach. Let me explain what you mean. Listen, Reeves. Zach has their stunts figured. You listen to what he says, then you can make them stunt right into your gunsights. That right, Zach?”

  “Is right. This is pattern. Shift is starboard, two gunmarks...starboard, one gunmark. Next, is shift port one gunmark; port, three gunmarks; port, two gunmarks. Then repeating like same. This is pattern.”

  “So you boys know what to do!” Cole rumbled. “Set up a counter pattern. Bring the Boobs to your gunsights. Skronk?”

  An enthusiastic skronk chorus rang through the intercom.

  Whaleman had already returned his attention to Blue’s wave analyzer. Stel moved closer to the viewscreen, which was now showing multiple targets at increasingly closer ranges. The AGRAD batteries were now sending out sizzling diffusion beams with a stark effect. The foreground of the viewscreen was becoming obscured with the clouds of vaporized vehicles. The outer range, in the upper portion of the screen, was being constantly illuminated by the brilliant flashes of long-distance MAME strikes. Instantly, an adjacent screen became illuminated, revealing scattered targets slipping past on the gunship’s beams.

  Rosslin’s quiet tones came over the intercom. “AGRADs One, Three, Five, targets abeam ... Gunner, suggest stabilize gunship ... quadrant assignments now required.”

  “Skronk, affirmative!” Whaleman replied. He turned to Hedge and snapped, “Secure tumble!”

  “Skronk . .. tumble secured.”

  “Stabilized,” Blue reported.

  The tumbling motion of Terra 10 was arrested, and with it, a dangerous decrease of her forward velocity.

  Hedge warned, “Scale Four’s not gonna hold her without that tumble.”

  Rosslin was instructing the gunmen. “Assume quadrant defense assignments. Odd-sector AGRADs, you have corridor-penetration targets!”

  Additional target viewscreens were beginning to illuminate. Stel murmured, “A lot of them are getting through.”

  “Don’t worry, Zach,” Tom Cole’s voice boomed through, “We’ll mop them up. They won’t get far past us!”

  “Worry is wave energies,” Whaleman muttered. He was punching out instructions to the digital computer. “Blue, report penetration level.”

  “Level 10 at the skin, and building. Level is 1,000 at the outer perimeter, so we’re still keeping most of it out. What’s the danger limit?”

  “This is interrogation,” the Gunner replied, as he fed the information into the digital. He punched the command button and turned a level gaze toward Blue, awaiting the automated report.

  The robot whirrled, “Tolerance level is 100 units per cubic centimeter of tifusion mass. Energy decay rate through isolation shield is at group 5 ratio.”

  Whaleman commented to Blue, “This is answer. Danger limit at skin is Level 25.”

  Stel gasped, “Look at the third screen, Zach! They’ve hit one of their own ships! ”

  A nearby hurtling disc had apparently stunted into the fire zone of a following enemy ship and had become caught in the strange energy radiation. Under an instant annihilation of energy, the individual atomic structures of the alien craft immediately “caved-in” with an instantaneous compression of matter, and the entire structure of the huge mass was reduced in a twinkling to a supercontracted ball of heavy matter too small to be seen in the viewscreen.

  Awed, Hedge said, “What the ... ?”

  “Terra 10 could become like same,” Whaleman commented tensely. “Plus all humans aboard, compressed into a one-foot sphere. His glance flicked to Blue. “Report wave level.”

  “Level 16, and still building.”

  “Rosslin, report gunnery score!”

  Forty-two targets destroyed, Gunner. Penetrations now negative. Sixteen targets remain in Zone Three defense, twenty-two in Zone Four, forty-six in Zone Five plus beyond.”

  “Good shooting,” Whaleman snapped. “All AGRADs, depress to absolute range minimum. Lock-on steady fire. Core ... give me Scale Maximum. Initiating tumble.”

  “It won’t take Scale Max!” Hedge protested. “Not for more’n a few seconds!”

  “Risk is necessary, gamble necessary, maybe we diffuse anti-energy buildup.”

  Hedge sighed and moved his controls to full range. The giant sphere began to tremble and throb, and once again went into polar rotation. All AGRAD batteries were sizzling continuously, the beams arcing together into the near-space surrounding the gunship. With polarities reversing furiously, the gleaming sphere’s tumble was accelerating into a dizzying spin, as related to
the targets in the viewscreens of the command cabin. Explosive energies were interacting along the outer edges of the shield, now spinning like a huge pinwheel, with tremendous ion clouds leaping into thousand-mile towers all about the gunship.

  Hedge cried, “We’re in Red Emergency!”

  “Hold on Max!” Whaleman commanded.

  Stel dropped to her knees beside Whaleman’s chair, her eyes held hypnotically to the awe-inspiring scene on the screens.

  Blue let out a happy squawk and exclaimed, “Level 0 and dropping!”

  “Report arrival at Level 5!” the Gunner instructed him.

  “We’re tearing through! Level 8 ... 7 ... ”

  “Red Emergency Runaway!” Hedge yelled.

  “ ... 6 ... 5 ... ”

  “Scale down to Core Optimum!” Whaleman commanded Hedge.

  “Skronk!”

  “Wave energies negative!” Blue cried triumphantly.

  “AGRADs cease fire!”

  Subgunner Rosslin immediately reported, “All targets receding.”

  “They’re running out!” Tom Cole crowed. “They’re turning tail and running!”

  Whaleman was busily punching an interrogation into the master computer.

  “All systems now optimum,” he reported a moment later. “Prepare for wobble turn, starboard. Terra 10 also turns tail. This skirmish is ended.”

  “Skirmish?” an intercom voice gasped. “Hell ... skirmish?”

  “Subgunner, interrogate all guns. Institute automated maintenance program and standby. Blue, maintain vigil. Report any indications enemy regrouping.”

  Terra 10 was executing a sweeping turn across the galactic corridor and stabilizing into an easy tumble. A beeptone began sounding on the Command Communicator, and Whaleman moved quickly to admit the call.

  “Well done, Terra 10,” proclaimed a voice from Moonbase. “Andro Point Two reports, enemy in full retreat. Well done.”

  “All is not done,” Whaleman murmured. He de-energized the communicator and spoke into the gunnery intercom. “Next battle line, Tom Cole, is Board Island.”

  “What’s the plan, Zach?” Cole boomed back.

  “Plan now is give Reevers voice at Board Island. What Director will not listen to Reevers now? This Reevercraft has saved Solana.”

  “I dunno,” Blue murmured in mild protest. “For a Reever, Terra is still the land of the Boobs.”

  Whaleman smiled. “No, this is change now. Hedge, stand by for warp into solar envelope. Squadrons can now defend this slot.”

  “We’re going back right now?” Stel inquired worriedly.

  “Yes. Guns of Terra 10 talked for Solana. Now Solana must talk for man.”

  “I dunno,” Blue repeated, rubbing his forehead. “We better keep these guns tuned up ... just in case.”

  Hedge quietly reported, “Core is ready for supergrav lock-on.”

  “Skronk.” Whaleman’s fingers moved swiftly along the command buttons. “Coming up on warp out. Standby for corridor shift. Affirmative. We have warp.”

  “Warps,” Blue sighed, “are the story of mankind.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Fools

  Squadroneer Mark Bond-Durant stepped out of the DDO and walked woodenly along the passageway toward the Chamber of Directors. A full scale Corporate Congress was in session, and his presence had been requested by the Defense Director. The Squadroneer knew the subject of discussion in that chamber—knew it and hated it—and he was making his approach in the manner of a man moving toward his doom.

  He paused at an intersection and looked about him, as though expecting to see something which was not there. Then he heard the sounds of soft boots approaching along another corridor. He smiled and moved on to that intersection, arriving just as a large group of Defense Commanders trooped into view. One of the big men raised a hand in greeting.

  “Ho, Squadroneer. Instructions?”

  Bond-Durant replied, “Instructions like same-earlier. Standby.”

  “Gunner Whaleman has arrived?”

  “Soon. Standby and escort Gunner to chamber.”

  “Skronk.”

  The Squadroneer hesitated, flicking his eyes about in a quick count of the assembled troop, and said, “Twenty maybe is enough.”

  “More come,” the Commander replied. “Maybe fifty total.”

  Bond-Durant nodded his head, went on along the passageway, and entered the chamber. This had been the scene of Whaleman’s demonstration exercises of Terra 10’s firepower ... such a short time earlier, the Squadroneer was thinking. Such a triumph. Now—how much had changed.

  The chamber was filled. The directors occupied a large circular table at the center. Managers and proxy-holders, numbering in the hundreds and representing all divisions of the Solan Corporation, were tiered in rings of ascending seats above and around the directors. Traditionally, the Chairman of the Board was represented by his communications automat which occupied a prominent place at the council table. Bond-Durant took a chair behind the Defense Director and sat at stiff attention.

  An angry discussion was underway, with Johns-Fielding doing much of the speaking and his voice quivering with outrage.

  “ .... and the official position of DDO is that this is a most shabby and shameful treatment for a hero of Solana. The DDO absolutely protests any motion toward a vote before Gunner Whaleman is given an opportunity to testify!”

  The Chairman’s automat whirred, “The DDO’s protest is duly recorded and denied. Certification of proxies will now begin.”

  Johns-Fielding had turned panicky eyes toward his aide. Bond-Durant solemnly shook his head in a negative response to the unspoken question of those eyes. The Director spluttered, “I do not wish that my protest be merely recorded. The delay will be minimal. The Gunner is enroute to Board Island at this very moment.”

  “The DDO is out of order and is warned against further disruptive tactics. Certi—”

  “Be damned with your warnings!” Johns-Fielding replied emotionally, shocking even himself. “DDO demands a poll of directors.”

  An uneasy stir at the council table greeted the Defense Director’s outburst. The Chairman’s automat whirred as its logic banks analyzed the request, then responded with, “Is there a second to the DDO’s motion for a poll?”

  A quiet voice from Johns-Fielding’s right nervously said, “Technology seconds the motion for a poll of directors. Technology wishes to state an interest in the innovations in the Terra 10 command systems.”

  Another director half rose from his seat, noisily cleared his throat, and stated, “Personnel also wishes to record a seconding of the DDO motion. Personnel wishes to record an interest in the human systems recently incorporated into Terra 10.”

  Johns-Fielding shot a glance of relief and triumph to his aide. Bond-Durant smiled back and tipped his head in a silent salute. The Defense Director got to his feet and began the polling.

  The vote came out eight to four in favor of delaying the indictment against Gunner Whaleman. The Director for Communications delivered a statement.

  “Communications moves that the interim period be used for a discussion of the second telepic received from Andro Point Two.”

  Johns-Fielding snapped, “Defense seconds that motion,” then he turned to Bond-Durant and whispered, “I forgot to tell you about that, Mark. We got a thirty-foot picture a short while ago, same source.”

  “Thirty feet?” the Squadroneer hissed.

  Johns-Fielding nodded. “Quite involved, difficult to decipher. We believe it to be a history of their world, pictorialized, and an apology for the invasion. We were going over it when this idiotic business over Whaleman came up.”

  “Idiotic is not a word strong enough,” Bond-Durant replied coldly. “Is treachery.”

  “Well don’t worry. He’s not going to get away with it. He didn’t have the guts to try it on his own. Thought he’d get a corporate indictment, called in all the proxies, tried to force a quick vote. He’s slipping, the ol
d man’s slipping. He didn’t count on all this adulation for Whaleman. I guess it’s been a long time, Mark, since the human race had itself a full blown hero. The old man forgot how much power a—” He broke off and swung around quickly as the Chairman’s automat began whirring into speech.

  “Motion is denied. Discussion of telepic is not in order.”

  “The motion has been seconded,” Johns-Fielding protested.

  “The motion is out of order, invalid and therefore cannot be seconded. We will commence with the certification of proxies. Gunner Whaleman may be heard if he is present when certification has been completed.”

  The Defense Director was on his feet and shouting— “DDO maintains that a discussion of the second telepic from Andro Two is valid for this congress. The telepic bears directly on the incident involving Gunner Whaleman and is certainly pertinent to the subject of this congress.”

  “The Chair has ruled and the DDO is out of order.”

  “This entire corporation is out of order if a vote is even taken on this insane indictment of a man who saved our world from certain destruction! As for the telepic, the Chair is well aware of the content of that message. The attacking ships were sent by renegade elements bent on the destruction of all mankind, and perhaps even of all lifeforms everywhere. The actions of Gunner Whaleman and his valiant crew were the only impediment to those horrendous aims. Without these brave men, Mr. Chairman, there would be no congress at Board Island at this time. There would be no Board Island, Mr. Chairman—and there would be no Solan Corporation! By what madness do we punish the man who saved us all?”

  A loud murmuring arose in the chamber, drowning out the impotent clicks of the Chairman’s automat. A loud screech erupted from the instrument, signalling for order.

  When quiet had been restored, the automat whirred, “There is no question of the Gunner’s service to Solana, but the execution of this service in no way provides an immunity against prosecution of insubordinate actions. The service was his program, and entails no reward. The disservice, direct insubordination to the Corporate Board, does entail a penalty. Can the DDO guarantee that further aberrant behavior by Gunner Whaleman will always have such fortunate results? By what madness, Mr. Director, does the Corporate Board applaud reversionary characteristics in those programmed to defend the Solar System from its enemies?”