It was a deep drop to the courtyard below and as she scouted her chances here she was startled to see that a group of guardsmen were gathering alertly at the gate below. But there were other windows and, without moving fast enough to attract Ole Doc’s attention, she made her way to the next. The drop was no better nor was there a balcony and here were more guardsmen being posted. There was something about the way they handled their weapons and looked at the house which gave her to understand that they intended something against this room.
“My dear,” said Ole Doc, beckoning.
She looked wide-eyed at the guardsmen and then at Ole Doc in a between-two-fires hysteria of mind. She held herself to calmness finally, the legendary repute of the Soldier of Light winning, and came back to the bed.
“There are guardsmen all around us,” she said, half as a promise of reprisal if anything happened to her. Ole Doc paced to the window and looked out. He saw the troop gathered at the gate and in a burst of indignation, so obvious was their intent there, threw open the leaded pane and started to ask them what they meant.
Instantly a blaster carved a five-foot section off the upper window. A piece of melted glass hit Ole Doc on the neck and he swore loud enough to melt the remaining sash. But he didn’t just stop swearing. His right hand was traveling and at almost the instant that the burn struck, his blaster jolted and jolted hard.
Three guardsmen went down, slammed back against the gate by the force of fire, the last of them spinning around and around. Ole Doc never saw him fall. Ole Doc was back and under cover just as five more battle sticks went to work on the window. A big piece of ceiling scored up and curled brown to fall with a dusty crash an instant later.
Giotini evidently had known there would be moments like this. He had big rayproof shutters on each window which closed from inside. Ole Doc got them shut and barred and they grew hot to the touch as people below wasted ammunition on them.
Patricia Dore made nothing of this. It had occurred to her that perhaps these guards had set out to rescue her, for she had been fed a great deal of circulating library in her youth and she had an aberrated idea of just how much men would do for one woman. Just as she was getting a dramatic notion about aiding outside to get this Soldier who was obviously now no Soldier at all—for nobody ever fired on the UMS—Ole Doc told her to get out of the way and sit down and she obeyed meekly.
Ole Doc looked at the metal case, noted the meter readings and then looked at the girl. She thought he was surveying her for the kill but she flattered herself. Ole Doc was simply trying to think and it is easier to think when one has a pretty object on which to fasten the eyes.
His own helmet, with its ship-connected radio, had been left in the generalissimo’s car. No other communication of orthodox type was at hand. He grabbed up a bundle of sheets, revealing a rather gruesome sight, wadded them into a ball, saturated them with alcohol from his gear, opened a shutter partly and looked cautiously out. There was a summerhouse which the wad would just reach and he launched it. He was so quick that he had drawn and fired into it and shut the shield before he got fire back. A moment later, when he peered through the slits, he saw that the blankets were on fire and busily igniting the summerhouse. There were enough roses around there to make a very good smudge. But whether Hippocrates would see it and if he saw it whether or not he would know it for what it was, Ole Doc could not possibly guess.
He went back to the cabinet. A small meter at the top was tick-tick-ticking in a beg to be valved off.
He threw the switches and the yowl of the dynamo stopped, making a sudden and oppressive silence in the room which hurt the girl’s ears. Ole Doc peered into the view plate, looked grim and sat down on the naked bed with the cadaver.
He began to scribble on the white porcelain top of the box, making all manner of intricate mathematical combinations, thumbing them out and making them once more. He had figured all this once on a particularly boring trip between Center and Galaxy12 and he had written it all down neatly and with full shorthand explanation just where it should have been—on his cuff. And he had torn off the cuff and given it to Hippocrates. And Hippocrates had up and burned the whole lot of them. Ole Doc swore, forgetting the girl, who held her ears and, hearing swearing, was sure now that this could be no real Soldier of Light, Savior of Mankind and pale and mournful patter of suffering little children.
A thundering had begun now on the outer door and Ole Doc had to get up and double bar that. Giotini had certainly been justified in making this room strong. Unless they blew up the whole palace, they weren’t likely to get in.
He figured harder, getting his thumb entirely black with smudges of erasures, reworking the equations frantically.
Far off, there began a mutter of heavy cannon and he jerked up his head listening intently. The weaker rattle he knew for the Morgue’s battery. Hippocrates must be holding a powwow with them in his favorite way—and this made the chances of rescue from that quarter very, very slim.
“What’s got into them people?” demanded Ole Doc of the metal box.
He erased once more and began again, making himself assume a very detached air. There was a sonic equation, a simple, embracing equation which, when he got it back again—
The girl saw how hard he was working and decided she had an opportunity to slide out the door on the side which, so far, did not seem to be attacked. She raised the bar, touched the knob and instantly was engulfed in a swirl of guardsmen.
Ole Doc came up, took three steps across the bed and fired. The flare and flash of his blaster lit up the room like summer lightning and the screams which greeted it were a whole lot louder than thunder. One guardsman went down, sawed in half. Another tangled up with the first, stood in quivering shock and then rolled out of the way to let the man behind him take one full in the face.
The girl was curled up in terror just inside the door. One shot furrowed two inches above her head and another turned the knob which she still touched so hot that it burned her. Her dress began to smolder at the hem from a ricochet.
Ole Doc was still coming, still firing. He nailed his fourth and fifth man, liberally sprayed the hall, ducked a tongue of lightning and got the door shut by the expedient of burning a body which blocked it in half. He fixed the bar.
“Now where did you think you were going?” he demanded. “Here. Listen to this.” And he turned on a big radio beside Giotini’s bed, flipping the cog switches for stations. But there was only one on, which was just then announcing. “Sometimes,” said Ole Doc, “I almost think Hippocrates was right!”
Then he went back to the case and tried to pick up the threads of his computations. Suddenly he had it. It all came back and lay there in a scrawl looking at him.
It was the basic formula of cellular memory transmission in the neurosonic range, derived from the highest harmonic of nerve cell frequency and computable in this form to calculate the bracket of particular memory types as transmitted from sonic reception to audiosonic recording cells. It was the retention frequency of audio memory.
As the nerve cell does not live long and as it is very liable to putrefaction, Ole Doc considered himself fortunate to find as much of Giotini’s brain intact as he had.
He began to work with a disk recorder and mike, setting up a tangle of wires which would have done credit to a ham operator, back on Earth. The thunder was beginning at the front door again.
Vaguely through his preoccupation filtered the radio behind him. “. . . the complete depopulation of this planet is a certainty. No slightest signal has come from there since ten this morning at which time the recording you have just heard was taken. There is no government bulletin on this. Dr. Glendenning of the generalissimo’s staff states that the disease is so virulent that it is probably capable of a clean sweep of the Planet Hass. Gasperand then remains the only populated planet in this system and a rapid survey this morning showed that the continent of Vargo and our present location alone contain any surviving beings. It is momentarily expe
cted—”
Ole Doc looked back to his work and worked even harder. The efforts at the door grew louder and more violent.
At long last, Ole Doc made a playback, nodded and beckoned to the girl. Patricia came with great reluctance.
“You should be interested in this,” said Ole Doc. “It remarks an advance of science. I have taken Giotini’s brain, preserved it and have taken from it its various memories in the audio range. Now if you will listen—”
She listened for about three seconds, her eyes saucer big with horror, and then she screamed loud enough to drown radio and battering and gunfire.
Ole Doc went to the door. “Hello out there!”
The thundering stopped.
“Hello out there,” said Ole Doc. “It is necessary that I speak with Lebel. You’re not going to get in here and if you keep at this too long, my relief ship will come down on you with enough guns to blow the whole planet out of orbit. Let me speak to Lebel!”
There was a very long pause and then Lebel was heard on the other side of the door. “Well? Are you going to come out and give yourself up?”
“No,” said Ole Doc, “but I have built a set to communicate with my base. Unless you parley you will be a hunted man through all the stars. I have something of considerable interest to you.”
“I doubt it,” said Lebel.
“Come here,” said Ole Doc to the girl. “Tell him what you have seen and heard.”
“It’s horrible!” she said. “I won’t!”
“Oh yes you will!” said Ole Doc. “Tell him.”
“He cut out Giotini’s brain!” she cried. “He put it in a machine and he made it talk and he’s got records in here of him talking! It’s horrible!”
Her weeping was the only sound for several long moments. Then Lebel, with a strangely constricted throat, said, “You . . . you made a dead man talk?”
“Stay right there,” said Ole Doc, “and you’ll hear about it.” He brought up his recorder and promptly turned it on full blast.
“My spies tell me I have not long to live because Lebel has plans against me. I should never have trusted him. They say he is going to cause the death of everyone in this entire system. I have watched him lately. It seems certain to me that assassination is near. I am going to take what precautions I can but he is a devil. I should never have hired him. He is plotting to overthrow everything I have done—”
“Want to hear more?” said Ole Doc.
It was very silent on the other side of the door. The bar hinges were very well oiled. The record kept on going and suddenly Ole Doc jerked the panel in and as quickly shut it again. The bars clanged in place.
Lebel sprawled ignominiously on the floor and Ole Doc’s heel was unkind in the side of his neck. He was a big man but a stamp like that knocks the largest flat and, sometimes, kills them quite dead.
Ole Doc leaned over and knocked Lebel out with his gun butt before that unworthy could stir.
When Lebel tried to sit up he was so swathed with satin strips for binding that he could not stir. He was also choking on a gag. He felt uncomfortable.
“Now,” said Ole Doc with a gruesome grin, “let’s get down to cases. There is only one thing which could cause death in the fashion I have seen today and that is by extreme fear. Do you follow me?”
Lebel glugged and struggled. Ole Doc thoughtfully fingered the edge of a scalpel and cut off a neat lock of Lebel’s mustache.
“You are either flying over the planets or ground patrolling with some instrument to cause that fear,” said Ole Doc. “And that instrument is obvious to me. Why is it? Because the helmet you insisted I use had sound filters in it alive only in the upper range. Therefore it is a sonic weapon. It killed only a limited number of the people it was directed at, therefore it cannot be a common supersonic weapon. That makes it subsonic, something new and impossible to trace as such.
“I don’t have to examine your broadcaster to know that it must be a ten-to-thirteen-cycle note, below the range of human hearing. Sensing something which they could not locate or define, people were terrified by it, for nothing frightens like the unknown. It probably has a strength of about a hundred and fifty decibels; stronger would literally tear their eardrums and brains loose.
“It was on when I found that girl because enough of it got through to your guards and yourself to make you extremely nervous, even if you did know what it was, and you fell back to your basic fear of being assassinated. So you gave your weapon away.
“Glandular disruption in your targets often caused heart failure, adrenal poisoning and other fatal reactions all very solidly from fear, and there is no inquest when people are merely scared to death. The larger percentage of the populace is deserting or has deserted this system by means of passenger ships. You have probably helped finance that exodus as a public benefactor while your staff doctors ran about yelling news of a ‘disease.”’
Lebel glugged and struggled, angry.
“Now as to why,” said Ole Doc, slowly passing the scalpel a reluctant inch away from Lebel’s jugular vein, “that is very, very simple. You want to knock off every living person or drive him away from the planets of this system. That will leave you and your guards alone in possession. You heard that the UMS was deeded all the revenue of Fomalhaut. You discovered that after you had murdered Giotini. Any government you could fight. You were afraid to fight us in any but the strictly legal field.
“You depended upon the law of salvage which says that ‘any planet deserted by her populace shall become an object of salvage to whomever shall take possession.’ You thought you would have us there. You would own a rich planetary system by your own galactic title, breaking Giotini’s deeds of ownership and therefore his will.
“You got suspicious of me when you saw the law books in my kit. You were frightened by your own weapon which was even then turned on somewhere in the vicinity and you acted irrationally, scared by self-induced fear. Then you reached the palace and got calm and started to play the game out once more. But advisers got the better of you, probably because they were newly in from areas where your fine terror weapon was working, and you became unbalanced enough to actually tackle a Soldier of Light.
“A long time ago a fellow you wouldn’t know, named Shakespeare, talked about an engineer being hoist by his own petard. You have somebody on your staff who has done that, to himself and to you. I heard mention of a ‘Dr.’ Glendenning who is in your pay. He is probably no doctor but a renegade sound engineer. But let that pass. When I take off this gag you are going to sing out to cease all activity and begin instant rescue of anyone left alive anywhere in this system. Understand?”
Lebel mocked him with his eyes. Ole Doc shrugged and went for a hypo needle, dipped it in a bottle and came back.
Holding up the dripping point, very shiny and sharp, Ole Doc said, “This contains poison. It is a fine poison in that it deprives a man of his reason gradually. There is no known antidote, save one I carry.”
He jabbed the needle through Lebel’s pants and drove the fiery liquid home. Lebel leaped and nearly broke the point off.
Ole Doc stood back with satisfaction. He went and filled the needle with another fluid. “This is the antidote. If not administered in ten minutes, you will be beyond all recovery.”
With this cheerful news, Ole Doc went over to the window, humming a grim tune, and stood there looking out a slit, needle upright and dripping.
Heels banging the floor brought him back. “Why,” he said, “only one minute has gone by! Are you sure you want to give the order?”
Agony was registered on Lebel’s face. Ole Doc removed the gag.
“Guard!” howled Lebel. “This madman will kill me! Recall all planes. Cease operations! Stop the agents! Rescue whoever you can! Quick, quick!”
There was an instant’s hesitation outside the door but Lebel drove them to it again with renewed orders. “He knows all about it. The patrols from Hub City will come! Obey me!”
Bootbeats wen
t away from there then and Ole Doc could relax. He could hear shouts outside the palace and turmoil within. They were carrying out orders but they were also running for their lives. They had played for their shares in a great empire and they had failed.
Ole Doc unloosed Lebel’s bonds while the generalissimo regarded him incredulously.
“Go ahead,” said Ole Doc, “get up. I am not sure what is going to happen to you finally, not sure at all. But right now I am going to pay back something of what the people in these worlds have suffered. You’re a fine, big fighter. You weren’t shot with anything more serious than yellow fever vaccine, the burningest shot I know. Now put up your fists!”
There was a renewed turmoil outside the palace gates. It was occasioned by a big golden ship, clearly marked with the ray rods of pharmacy, setting itself down with a smoking wham directly in the street. The vessel was charred here and there but serviceable still, and about the maddest gypsummetabolism slave in several galaxies pressed the grips on the main battery.
The palace gates caved in, the metal curling like matches turned to charcoal. The palace doors sizzled down into piles of slag and puddles of brass. A luckless company of guardsmen trying to get away from there rounded the turret at the courtyard’s end, got scorched by the flames and heat and made it away with the diverted guns taking their heels off as they ran.
Then Hippocrates, girded around like a pirate and bristling with rage, stepped down from the air lock and marched across the yard, walking tough enough to crack paving blocks. He jumped the glowing pools and stalked with horrible appetite into the palace proper.
A guard, running away with a handful of jewelry without knowing of any place to run, was suddenly hauled up by his belts, suspended two feet off the floor and banged into a pillar. The jewelry fell in a bright shower and rolled away. Hippocrates banged him again.
“Where is my master?” roared Hippocrates.
Ole Doc Methuselah Page 19
