by Ryder Stacy
“You’re right about there being no space stations, if you’re thinking of places designed specifically for human habitation and all that that implies. But what were built in the last days were Missile-Killing Super stations. MKS’s—giant orbiting battlewagons if you will. We were lucky enough to get hold of some hard disks from an Air Force computer system that one of our archeology field teams dug up. That collection of computer disks was one of the reasons that Shecter decided to give his full support to the observation program. For the disks gave us a thorough designation and function of all that U.S. Intel had learned of Soviet space gear. The disks were like Rosetta Stones enabling us to interpret all that junk up there.
“Humans did inhabit the fully automated MKS Wheels—but only tangentially—as troubleshooting crews. They were designed for space warfare—could shoot down anything from up there, anything targeted for the U.S. Or that was the idea!”
“Obviously it didn’t work quite right,” Rock commented. “The mutants that come out at night and howl in the mountains are testament to that.”
“There were two completed Wheels,” the scientist continued. “This one, the third, was only partially completed. The other two were shot down, broken up into debris during the war. This one escaped destruction. Only now it’s come to life. And just why—we’re not sure. But we don’t like it at all.”
“I can damned well see why you don’t like it. I don’t like it either,” Rockson commented as he peddled the bike to keep his angle up. The half-wheel was slowly moving across the star-jeweled sky like a curved sword ready to slice the Earth below. “It looks ominous as hell. Don’t tell me it can still do what it was designed for?”
“We believe—after computer analysis of all the data—that it is armed with functioning weaponry. And in fact with the additional supplies being shuttled into it by other ships—we think they’re building the wheel—extending it out to its full configuration.”
“You mean whoever these space bastards are, they could just aim down on us from the heavens—and take us out with a zap of laser—or one of these particle beams?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Pedersen replied coolly. “Ah, you’re about to lose them,” he said. “We only pick them up for about twenty-seven minutes every three hours. Just enough to really get all our tracking instrumentation going. We’ve been focusing only on this baby for a week now. You can see why. And why we’ve requested an emergency meeting of the Council. For according to our computer projections, that wheel will be complete within seventeen days, Rockson. And if it is—God help us all. Every man, woman and child in this city, this country, the whole damned planet for that matter, could be in mortal danger if the thing actually works. And we have no idea if they’re friend or foe. But somehow, I don’t think they’re friends.”
But Rockson didn’t have to be told that. Even without computer analysis—he knew they weren’t friends. Not with the scalpel shivers that traced itself around his spinal cord like lizards scampering in the cold darkness. He kept his eye glued to the huge tilted wheel that couldn’t quite get a full revolution going. No matter how hard it tried as it wobbled unevenly in a twisting orbit. He knew by the sheer darkness of the immense structure in space that it was evil. Darkly, hideously evil. And even as it disappeared completely from his view behind a high peak of Rocky Mountain granite, Rock knew that all other concerns of C.C. paled beside this one. The hand of some god was preparing to strike. And that god was a punishing one.
Three
The Century City Council Chamber crowd was as usual belligerent and sprinkled with enough curses to make a sailor blush. Century City was, if nothing else, democratic to the core, the snapping jaws screaming out their two cents. For every man and woman had the right to be heard in open debate on all important issues. Not just the elected Council members who made politicking a full-time vocation—but everyone. Which meant that sessions often lasted far into the night with debate rising to crescendo pitch. But Ted Rockson, for all the sound and fury, loved it more than than just about anything on this planet. For it was the free expression of people who were free to think and say what they wanted. The highest evolution of civilization on the planet. Freedom had always been something in many ways uniquely American, something much of the rest of humanity had never quite understood. That one was willing to die, to give one’s blood, one’s life, for this hooting and hollering gathering. When you come right down to it, a man has little else on this Earth but the thoughts in his head and the decisions he makes from them. Without the freedom to be yourself, there is nothing else.
Thus Rockson grinned as he made his way into the curved chamber as bushy-eyebrowed, bald Council President Wilcox, the newest elected President of the governing body, banged away with his gavel on the podium like he was trying to tenderize its shining hickory veneer.
“Order, come to order at once. You have your right to speak, but so does everyone else. If you continue to shout above the voice of your neighbor—so he or she can’t be heard when it’s their turn—then I’ll have to have the sergeant at arms escort you from the chamber.”
Wilcox’s admonitions and Rockson’s entrance quieted them down a bit as Rock brought out the best in them, made them their most civil. At least for the first few minutes. He nodded and made his greetings as he walked down one of the side aisles. Rock had fought alongside many of those gathered here, had told many of the widows that their men wouldn’t be coming home again. Century City was not a huge city. People knew each other, cared about one another. Thus he had to respect all their opinions. And they knew that.
Bonds forged in blood are the strongest of all.
“Come on Rockson, we’ve been hoping you wouldn’t make your usual de rigueur late entrance,” Wilcox shouted, moving his seat away so Rock could take the one next to him. The nine Council senators sat around a semicircular table set up on the stage at the front of the large curved auditorium/meeting hall. There had to be three thousand people packed into a space not meant to hold more than a thousand. And more waited in the halls listening to the debate over loudspeakers. For this particular meeting was of utmost concern to all. It involved the use of funds and energies at a time when things were tight, very tight.
“Now as I was saying, before being so rudely interrupted,” Wilcox went on, taking advantage of the momentary lull in the noise. “As far as I can see, we can sum up the two main factions that I sense exist here tonight in Council Chambers as follows—those who believe that with the recent nuke bombing of Ice Mountain, and the destruction of so much of its underground power conduits, that all energies should be put into resurrecting and rebuilding as many of our facilities as possible—and getting our factories which produce the Liberator Rifle Series back into full swing so that we may continue to arm the other Freefighting cities—”
Screams of Yahoo! and Right On!
“Versus—” he went on quickly, running his hand over his nearly bald head that had but a few random strands of dark black hair, greased straight across the scalp as if painted on. “Those who feel that defense comes first. That when threats exist to our survival, all other efforts must be stopped and that threat responded to immediately. Is that at least a fair representation of the situation?” Wilcox asked the crowd.
As soon as he had done it, he knew it was a big mistake. For a hundred voices spoke up at once, each objecting to what Wilcox was saying as not including their own special interests.
“If I could,” Rock said without raising his voice. The place quieted down. The Doomsday Warrior was not someone you really thought of trying to shout above. They all let their pounding hearts calm a touch as they listened to his slow and carefully spoken words.
“Now I know I’m usually identified with the military faction of the Council—the hawks as it were, always trying to get more dough for our endless missions out there. And most of the time just what the hell it is we’re doing out there is not all that clear to you back here breaking your backs to make the weapons
, the medicines, to grow the food that supports us. And before I go on, I just want to say, that for all the fighting men of C.C. we are aware of and appreciate your efforts. And I mean that sincerely. But tonight in all honesty, after what Dr. Pedersen here showed me earlier, I feel I must speak out with urgency that this effort be funded. I don’t even know how the hell we can do anything about this monstrous weapon in the sky but—”
“Rock, I don’t even know if everyone knows the full situation,” Wilcox said. “The debate began before all the facts had been reported. Dr. Shecter—”
Rock looked down to his right, not having noticed the sudden arrival of the head of the entire science section of Century City, the genius behind their hidden city. C.C. had been little more than a backward cave before he took over the R&D of the place nearly forty years earlier. After that it had been one discovery after another. If there was still a Nobel Prize, which there wasn’t, Shecter would have won several by now.
“Thank you Council President Wilcox,” Shecter began slowly, as he leaned his tall thin figure forward in the chair at the end of the table, gazing out over a blur of faces. “I’m honored to be here tonight to address this meeting of the—” Many of the crowd groaned audibly. The good doctor, as much as he was appreciated by all, had a way of going on far too long in a backwoodsy way that either made you love him or infuriated you no end. But tonight anyway, Shecter got to the good stuff fast.
“Rock is right. The Wheel, which many of you have thus far only heard rumors of, is a danger greater than even he realizes.” Shecter turned around dramatically, pulled a laser-light transmitter from his sleeve and aimed behind himself. He focused it on the stage curtain. A large schematic diagram suddenly fell down from the rafters above where lights and ropes and whatnot were placed.
The audience as well as the Council member looked on wide-eyed. On the huge ten-by twenty-foot piece of stretched synth-canvas was the depiction of the wheel that Rock had just seen. Only it was sectioned out in grids, broken down to the smallest detail. And it looked absolutely filled with firepower, like a porcupine with too many quills. The thing bristled with high tech antennas, domes, barrels, firing tubes . . .
“It’s as mean as it looks,” Shecter went on, as he rose on the bionic legs—his own invention—that had been grafted onto him—the real ones taken out by an artillery shell nearly a year and a half earlier. His slightly bouncing gait as the pneumatic legs rose slightly on their computerized shock absorbers was hardly noticed. He walked the few yards to the hanging diagram and pointed up at it with a sear-light beam that clearly illuminated a six-inch spot of blue light that was clear to all in the chamber.
“This wheel is the most powerful war weapon ever devised by the sick mind of man,” Shecter said, shaking his head with both awe and disgust. “The laser emplacement here,” he pointed with the blue beam, “consists of a dozen batteries with a dozen tubes each. They’re powered to be able to send out billions of solar units in a concentrated beam with an accuracy of nano-inches. And that’s from twenty thousand miles up, mind you. Here, is the Particle beam armory, consisting of nearly a hundred units, each capable of firing spits of pure black energy—ten a second—indefinitely. Any one of those streams of antimatter could take out the side of a mountain, e.g., the one that sits above us as we talk.” Heads turned and looked upward. It was hard not to, the unfinished ceiling was nothing but twisted granite. A billion tons of it must have rested right above their shoulders.
“And here,” he went on, “is the atomic missile systems. We’ve counted a hundred and fifty launching tubes, but we have reason to believe these chambers are refillable and that more lie in storage below. Are you all starting to get the picture?” Shecter asked the crowd, moving on with his light beam before any of them could answer. He had the dramatic center and he wasn’t about to relinquish it to anyone. “The Wheel when completed will be five miles in diameter. It can maneuver in space going up and down in orbit, or can geo-synchronize so it’s resting right above one spot and can direct a withering concentration of firepower into a few square miles.”
“Pardon me, Dr. Shecter,” Rockson spoke up as the science boss stepped back. “The thing I saw in the telescope was only half-constructed. What is this diagram of exactly?”
“You’re absolutely right, Rock,” Shecter went on. “This is not the actual Wheel that’s up there. This is the schematic for it. The way it should—and will look—when completed. At the rate they’re building the damn thing, it won’t be all that long.”
“But who is it?” a man yelled out from the crowd, unable to contain his curiosity.
“Yes, who?” Shecter replied, banging one fist into the palm of his other hand. “We can’t figure that one out. Our scope doesn’t get a high enough resolution to identify the markings on the sides of the ships. We’re trying computer imaging—but so far, no go. The technology necessary to be carrying all this out, and the scientific know-how of those involved, I find almost impossible to believe. I wouldn’t have thought there were that many people on the whole planet capable of comprehending the advanced astrophysics, space docking, all that. I can’t imagine who it is. We know President Zhabnov is too stupid, as are his scientists, who spend their time making better food processors and radioactive particle filters for their air conditioners.”
The citizens of the city hooted derisively. The slovenliness and lazy cowardice of the occupying forces was legendary.
“And Premier Vassily back in the Kremlin is too ill and has his hands full of too many other problems to, we believe, be able to finance this whole venture. It’s the not knowing that makes it worse in a way. There’s no way of accurately assessing the danger.”
“Killov,” Rockson said almost in a whisper.
“What was that?” Shecter shouted across the table.
“Col. Killov, I feel it in my bones,” Rock said, addressing them all. “I thought he was dead. I was the man who saw him disappear inside a volcano that exploded. But I must have been wrong—somehow I feel his dark presence in all this. Can see those fingers turning that blasted wheel up there.”
“No man could survive the explosion of the New Mount Fuji volcano, Rock,” Shecter said. “The temperatures in there reach that of melting steel. Even the Skull couldn’t have survived, God rest his filthy soul,” Shecter said, crossing himself like one would for a vampire. He had encountered the KGB colonel only once, and it had affected him like no other event in his life. He prayed the little drug-crazed murderer was dead. He had to be dead.
“Well, ultimately it’s irrelevant who’s doing it,” Council President Wilcox said, taking back the speaker’s role as he saw that the science boss was basically done. “Just that it’s being done. We know it’s none of the Free cities. We would have been contacted. Besides, aside from Eisenhowerville, we’re the most technologically advanced city in the entire country. And we can’t come close to carrying out whatever the hell’s going on up there. Whoever it is, we must assume, until it’s proven otherwise, that they are a threat to us, are our enemies. And I believe, as President of this chamber, it is my profound duty to inform all of you that I believe this is the greatest threat that Century City has ever faced. For there is no defense against such a thing. And once it’s fully functioning, they will very possibly be able to pick up our infrared signals—heat that the city gives up no matter how well we try to disguise it—and target us. It could all be over in the wink of an eye.”
The debate was long and loud even after the show and tell presentation and Shecter’s, as well as Wilcox’s and Rockson’s, strong advocacy of meeting the threat. Times were hard in C.C. People were tired of sleeping on hard beds, eating refried hydroponic beans over and over, filling the subterranean world with scents beyond compare. Tired of living in rags half the time, of having no chance of rest, of cessation of their endless battle. But, in the end, they knew what the vote had to be. If they were just cinders smoking on the ground it would hardly matter what any of them believed.
The vote was 175 to 24 with a single abstention. To fund whatever response the combined scientific and military authorities found appropriate. And to do so post haste.
Four
“Well, we’ve got the commitment for Council funds and man hours,” Dr. Shecter said, addressing six of his top scientists, Rath the Intel chief, and Rockson. They sat around a magnesium-synth table in Shecter’s conference office on one of the lower levels. “Now, I have my own ideas on the subject—but I want you, each of you specialists in your own fields, to give Rock and me the benefit of your opinions. Thatcher, you first. You’ve been in charge of compiling info on all possible existing missile and other space systems still existent in the U.S.”
“If any,” Rawlings of R&D added in a skeptical whisper.
Rock, too, found it hard to believe, even with the evidence, that men were carrying out such high tech missions in space. But above all things Rockson was a realist, and he would throw any theory of his, no matter how sacred a cow, right out the cavern window when he saw that there was a better way to explain the facts.
Thatcher stated, “Sir, we have located what we believe are six still functioning missile launch sites—and I use those words in the theoretical sense, since much of our info is based on hearsay, captured cannibals, or mountain bandits. Plus, of course, the various tapes and books we’ve recovered from the ruins of several bombed out missile complexes. Four of these places are missile sites themselves, equipped with up to two or three projectiles each. It’s possible that some of these missiles are of the E Class—space missiles made in the last days to be fired right up into the exosphere. Antisatellite missiles. Unmanned of course.”
