“Sure,” he said, gently mopping the length of the mahogany bar. “Been a rocket ship here for two weeks. Outside the town. Two guys had it. They dropped in a couple of times for drinks. Husky customers. But they took off hours ago. Ain’t that right, Yank?” He turned to a blear-eyed, whiskered prospector near by. “You saw ’em go.”
“Shore did,” the other grunted. “Only there was five of ’em. Four big bruisers, and another that looked like he’d been through a meat-grinder.”
“What d’you mean?” Powell asked.
“All bandaged up, he was, like a mummy. They had to carry him on the ship.”
“Eberle!” the cameraman thought swiftly.
APPARENTLY the scientist had been captured—but by whom? If Dr. Max Owen were behind this plot, he had probably sent a rocket ship to Venus weeks in advance, and then ordered the abduction of Eberle on his own ship.
Why? Because Eberle’s secret was worth money, plenty of it. Propulsion faster and safer than rockets practically wrote its own price.
Remembering the robot he had seen on Owen’s televisor screen, Mike discarded that motive. There was somebody bigger than the electro-physicist behind this plot. A robot? Scarcely. But perhaps a robot controlled by someone who had made certain even his agents could not guess his identity.
“You know their destination?” Powell asked.
The prospector shook his grizzled head.
“Can’t say I do. How’s about standin’ me a drink, buddy?”
Mike and Hector left. Powell was in a quandary. The destination of the outlaw ship was vitally important. But how could he find this out?
There was one way. Powell sent Hector to purchase fuel for his craft and made a televisor call to North Polar City.
From there his message was relayed to one of the satellite ships revolving around Venus.
The ship reported that a rocket cruiser had taken off from the vicinity of Buena Torres five hours before. With the report, it gave a definite direction tangent. When Mike checked it, he discovered something he had least expected.
Mars was in opposition. For the ship to have chosen that particular course meant one of two things. Either it was flying blind into space, for a point outside the System—or it headed for Earth.
“Earth?” Mike asked himself. “What the devil for? They could’ve snatched Eberle before he took off and saved themselves a lot of time and trouble.”
It didn’t add up.
Venus was falling behind. Mike still had the choice of aiming for Earth or the unknown, unguessable point billions of miles away.
“Nuts,” he said impatiently. “Figure this out, Powell. The station reported rockets. That means a ship that can’t cruise much farther than you can. Well? Isn’t that any help?
“Of course it is, you dope. Whoever these guys are, they wanted a demonstration before they’d make a snatch. Sure; they’re cautious. Get it now? Besides, on Earth they’d have cops to contend with. And that snatch job they did down there”—he shook his head sadly—“I’m the only damned fool in the System who’d tangle with that weed. Nobody else’d go to the bother to find out.
“It’s Earth, Powell. Everything adds up now.”
That was his own opinion. Even Mike Powell could be wrong.
CHAPTER VI
Blackout in Manhattan
THE satellite station looked like an asteroid, hurtling above Earth’s air-blanket and revolving swiftly as it spun. It was sheathed completely in metal, sprayed on molten under pressure, and solidifying immediately in the chill of space. The tiny moon had taken years to ready, and even today, under the surface, work was still going on.
In spite of all the safety precautions, approaching a satellite station was dangerous work, even to a skilled pilot.
Sitting alertly at the control panel, Mike was conscious of his heartbeat and the pulse throbbing in his wrists. A fast approach would, of course, be fatal. He had to come in gingerly, on a long, looping arc.
Metal grated on metal. Powell felt a dragging clutch as giant magnets under the sheathing of the satellite took hold of the ship, gradually slowing it like an elastic band. He killed the rockets. Hector went tumbling end over end, bringing up against the compartment wall with a thud. He wasn’t hurt, however, and rose giggling.
Powell slid out of his seat as shifting magnets scraped the ship toward an airlock. Glancing through a port, he saw the Earth rising swiftly above the curved, foreshortened horizon. It was huge; despite himself Powell winced. A world so unstable—as though it might come crashing down at any moment! Not for the first time Mike decided that space traveling was a funny thing, and hard on the nerves!
Then the black, star-sprinkled sky and the vast globe of Earth were blotted out. The ship slid down an inclined runway that opened beneath it. Metal plates shifted back into place above. The vessel halted with a jar. Cool white light came in shafts through the ports.
Powell opened the door and stepped out, followed by Hector, into a vast triangular room, in which the floor sloped up to the metal roof. Already air had been pumped in to replace that lost into space.
At the port authority office, Powell signed clearance papers and showed his Summit Newsreels identification card. That done, the cameraman was given two tickets and told that the next car to Earth would leave soon.
An elevator took Powell and Hector to a huge waiting room that looked like the saloon of an ocean line. Powell described a parabola that ended at the brass rail.
“Sotch,” he said, “and a telephone.”
The bartender supplied both orders swiftly. Gulping the Scotch, Powell asked for the New York office of Summit.
During the brief wait, Hector nudged his companion’s arm and nodded significantly. Powell followed the Martian’s gaze.
“Hello?” the telephone said. “This is Summit Newsreels. What can I—”
“Have my bath ready,” Powell said crisply, and hung up. Then he turned to face Sue Clark and Lynn Plumb.
SUE was looking remarkably pretty, as usual. Her red hair curled attractively, and her green eyes might have looked like limpid forest pools to Powell if they hadn’t also resembled inquisitive gimlets. She wore a neat business suit, carried a small camera, and was backed by Plumb, whose plump, round face was creased in an unpleasant grin.
“Hello, Brain,” Sue said. “Have a nice trip?”
“Fancy meeting you here,” Powell smiled. “Have a drink on me?”
“If you’ve got any money. Minga-liqueur frappe. That ship you were following didn’t arrive, by the way.” Powell felt his heart thump down and bounce against his diaphragm.
“I don’t get it,” he said cautiously. “What ship are you babbling about?”
“The one you followed from Venus,” Plumb interjected. “We broke your code message to Summit. We have our—uh—facilities.”
“The ship cracked up in the Atlantic,” Sue added. “Three men bailed out when it hit the atmosphere. A gyro was waiting for them. Up above Maine somewhere. It went cloud-diving, and our men lost it.”
Powell’s thin face sagged. He was thinking hard. Unless Sue lied, he’d lost his quarry. The two thugs, with Eberle a captive, had escaped. What now? Go back to New York, apparently, and face Gwynn with the news of failure. Mike took a deep breath and ordered another drink. He felt far from well.
“A trip to Venus and back will look swell on your swindle sheet,” Plumb remarked. “Even my expense account wouldn’t stand that. Unless I brought back a scoop.”
Powell thought of his Mare Inferum shots and felt somewhat better.
“What are you doing here?” he asked the girl.
“Trailing you,” she said candidly. “You’re after something big. And I’m going to get in on it. Just try and lose me, Brain.”
Before Mike could answer, a gong announced the stratocar. He made for it, almost at a run.
In half an hour the car anchored on Long Island. The doors opened, and Powell, collecting Hector, stepped out, clutching
his precious cans of film.
“We’ll go up to the office,” he told the Martian in an undertone. “Sue won’t follow us there. We can escape through another entrance. Get a taxi.”
“Mr. Powell?” a quiet voice asked.
“Yeah?”
Two quietly-dressed, efficient-looking men had taken their places beside the cameraman. One of them cupped a gleaming badge in his palm.
“We’re from the IIB. We’ve orders to bring you to headquarters immediately.”
“Oh-oh,” Powell murmured. He glanced around. Hector had vanished into thin air. Sue and Lynn Plumb were near by, watching with signs of great interest.
There was nothing to do but consent. Mike did, annoyed at the loss of time and dignity. He hadn’t broken any particular law.
HE was still clutching his cans of film when he was ushered into the IIB offices in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper. The two guards, having done their duty, departed. Powell stood silent and looked around.
He was in a small, plainly furnished room, notable chiefly for a glass desk that filled almost half the space. Behind it sat a slim, dapper, white-haired man whose face, though lined and old, was keenly alive. This, Powell knew, was Thorpe Stackpole, the head of the IIB.
Another man lounged in a comfortable leather chair. He wore baggy tweeds and smoked a pipe. He had a sunburnt, strong face, an unruly thatch of wiry brown hair, and glacial blue eyes that seemed almost electric in their piercing gaze. And this, Powell also knew, was Joseph Somerset, the IIB’s most capable man.
He had filmed Somerset in the past. The man was an interplanetary figure, a gang-buster, courageous to the point of foolhardiness, a perfect machine for battling crime. He had cleaned up Marspole City in a whirlwind campaign that lasted scarcely three weeks; he had wiped out some of the worst thugs on Venus.
Only recently Somerset had returned with his biggest prize, the scalp of the biggest and smartest crook on three worlds, a man known only as the Spacehawk. For years the Spacehawk had gone uncaptured, pirating ships and heading innumerable rackets. Then Joseph Somerset had taken a trained crew and set off into space. A fortnight later he returned alone in the Spacehawk’s battered ship, bandaged and nearly dead, but triumphant.
If Somerset and Stackpole were interested, it meant something big. Powell started to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake in getting into this game in the first place.
“Sit down,” Stackpole said. The cameraman obeyed uncomfortably, and waited. For a few moments no one spoke. Then Stackpole nodded at Somerset, who took the pipe out of his mouth.
“We just want some information, Powell. We think you can help us. You sent a message to your company from Venus; we intercepted it and checked back on your activities. It looks like you’re investing a gang that’s interested the IIB for some time.”
“A gang?” Powell said.
“It’s something more than that. Lately there’ve been signs of a supercriminal organization stemming from New York. We thought the Spacehawk might be at the head of it. But he’s dead, and this big racket still goes on. It’s got plenty of ramifications, everything from big-time looting and government secrets to sabotage and plain murder.
“But it’s an organized racket, a big one, and a scientific one. Eberle invented a new space drive. Apparently his ship could run rings around a rocket vessel. You know what that’d mean to a pirate, I think.”
“Yeah,” the cameraman said. “I’m beginning to understand a lot. Maybe I can help you. I’ll tell you all I know, anyway.”
“Just a minute,” Stackpole suggested. He moved his foot slightly. “Want to record this. Dictaphone. Go ahead, please.”
POWELL told his story from start to finish, holding back nothing. The others made few interruptions, save to clarify points obscure in their own minds. Finally there was a pause.
Stackpole broke it. “Dr. Max Owen, eh? The electro-physicist. Where is he now, Somerset?”
“New York,” the agent said laconically. “Got here an hour ago.”
“Yes. He has an office here. Well, I’d like to see those films of yours, Powell. Your Venus shots. I want to see Eberle’s ship. How about it?”
“I’ll have ’em developed right away.”
“How soon?”
Powell calculated swiftly. “Half an hour.”
“Good. Where?”
“At Summit. Ask for me.”
Stackpole rose, ending the interview. “Good enough. And thanks for your help.”
Somerset waved his pipe at the camerman and turned toward the desk. Powell let himself out, took the elevator down, and emerged on Fifth Avenue, his thoughts a turmoil. This was big. Bigger than he’d thought. He chuckled as he recalled how Gwynn had almost insisted on keeping him in New York to shoot monstrous births and lunatics. Freak stuff, good for a laugh or a shudder from the audience, but without the news value the IIB name would carry.
“Hello, Brain,” said a familiar voice. “Did they let you go?”
Powell sighed. Sue again. And Lynn Plumb at her side. Afternoon sunlight gilded the girl’s red hair. It also made her squint, but she still looked pretty.
“I’m going to the office,” Powell observed. “They won’t let you in there. So you might as well scram. I’m busy.”
“We’ll stick around.” Plumb grinned. “Let me get a taxi for you.”
He turned toward the crowded street and gestured. A cab slid in toward the curb. It stopped—and then abruptly was swept forward while brakes screamed!
Powell caught his breath as he felt the solid rock of Manhattan’s foundation shudder beneath his feet. There was a sudden outburst of sound—auto horns, shouts, screams, curses, rising in a mounting threnody throughout the city.
Sue was hurled into his arms. The two swayed perilously, trying to keep their balance. Plumb was smashed against the wall of the building.
“Earthquake!” Powell gasped. For a second he almost believed it. But then his gaze swept up beyond the rocking skyscrapers to the cloudless stretch of blue; he looked for a brief moment at the Sun—
And then the Sun vanished!
CHAPTER VII
The Lost City
OR, to put it another way, New York vanished. An army pilot flying his gyro across the island battled with his controls as a furious gale blasted in from the Atlantic. The hurricane tore at aircraft and swept them inland. It tore off wings and sent helicopters plummeting down to destruction.
The army pilot fought his stick while the world spun dizzily outside the windows. He had a flashing, chaotic vision of the soaring skyscrapers of Manhattan rushing up toward him; then the wind bore him eastward.
Above the shriek of the blast came a deep, grinding roar, like the clashing of titanic gears. The concussion nearly deafened him. Sick and giddy, he drove his ship into the teeth of the gale, pitching and swaying in the turmoil, and finally won his battle. The plane righted; the pilot breathed again.
He glanced out of the window and let out an incredulous shout. Cold with amazement, he looked from side to side in baffled disbelief.
Then he looked again at the place where Manhattan Island should have been. New York wasn’t there any more. From the Hudson to the East River, from the Battery to Westchester, had disappeared.
A flat, featureless expanse of white—a gleaming smooth plateau—had taken the city’s place. Its palisades towered fifty feet above sea level. It followed the contour of the coast where the wharves had been. Riverside Park was gone. Central Park was gone. The New York side of the Washington Bridge was a tangled mass of wreckage. Tumultuous maelstroms of bubbles marked the courses of the Hudson and East River tunnels. Blackwell’s Island, Ward’s Island, and Randall’s Island were still there, but the Harlem River wasn’t.
An irregular white plateau, some two by sixteen miles, stretched on the eastern seaboards where America’s greatest city had been a few minutes before.
The army pilot got his breath again and dived toward the gleaming mystery. His was one of the first
planes to land upon it. The wheels could get little purchase on the smooth, shining surface; there was almost no friction. But eventually the gyro skidded to a halt.
The pilot got out. Gingerly he stepped down, with a vague feeling of insecurity as his feet touched the solid surface. But the white sheet of—was it metal?—bore his weight without difficulty. The pilot stamped his feet, but there was no echo. He knelt and touched the surface of the plateau with his palm.
It was perfectly smooth and slightly cold. It felt exactly like porcelain. But, obviously, it wasn’t.
Planes were arriving constantly. Men stood around in scattered groups, glancing up at the sky as though expecting to see New York drifting down from the void. Faced with an incredible enigma, they talked vaguely and without result.
A well-dressed, plump, bald-headed man trotted toward the army pilot, attracted by the uniform.
“Eh? What’s this?” he demanded angrily. “What the devil’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” the pilot shrugged. “The Island—”
“But New York! I’ve got to get back to my office! I’ve an appointment!”
“Buddy,” said the army pilot, with a touch of grim humor, “I got a hunch you aren’t going to keep it. Not today, anyhow!”
“But—but where’s New York? Where’s New York?”
THE Sun had definitely vanished.
Powell remained frozen, glaring up at a sky that had, in a split second, turned from deep blue to pale, misty white. Light still bathed the city. But it seemed to be diffused from all that depthless, strange expanse that couldn’t be the sky and yet couldn’t be anything else.
The roaring gale that blasted through the canyons between the skyscrapers tore at him, sent him, clinging to Sue, into the shelter of a doorway. The girl was making small, frightened noises. Plumb hurtled in beside them.
The three cowered there, watching a street that had gone mad. A grinding, clashing vibration deafened them, and a sense of frightful vertigo—a swift sidewise motion as though the whole island was sliding into the Atlantic.
Collected Fiction Page 119
