by Ryder Stacy
The ships spread further apart so the fire wouldn’t take any of the others out if they got hit.
“Fly, fly, you bastard!” Rock screamed wildly as he saw the huge Eiffel tower closing on the huge Wheel as white lasers shot out from everywhere on the Nazi donut, trying to track it. Suddenly one did hit the Tower and the huge slowly turning tower took a hit in one of its lower struts. The whole thing tipped violently to the side but the spheres acting as tugs got it straightened again after a few seconds by pouring on more power.
And now the Eiffel Tower came at the tremendous lit-up Wheel even faster, aiming right for the center, the command post of the wheel.
Killov stared into the hologram and saw the huge tower coming. It was real. There was no question about it. Even Colonel Heinrick by his side looked down and gasped out the word “Eiffel.”
“Get that thing,” Killov shouted hoarsely into the mike, his throat so dry he could hardly speak. “They’ve planted something in it. Explosives.” Beams shot all across the sky but somehow couldn’t quite track it. The systems were set to seek heat, and the tower was cold. And with a final burst of power the four Astro Frenchie tugs pushed the huge monumental structure like a spear right into the hub of the wheel, right in its dead center—out of which a dozen elevator spokes branched out to hold the Wheel together. Killov saw it coming and screamed out, “No! I won’t die! I can’t. The Earth is still—alive!”
The point of the Eiffel Tower bent as it slammed into the thick steel of the outer Wheel hub walls, and the top fifty feet of it snapped off, floating away. But then it went in, penetrating right through the two-foot-thick curved wall.
It was quite an incredible sight to see from Rockson’s vantage point as the immense tower sank into the Wheel’s command center, the shock tearing apart the “spokes” too.
It stabbed right through the steel and plastic mile-wide hub, slowing, but pushing on, the tower piercing through, then coming out the other side as the junk spheres kept driving on from the base, pulling it with a million guy-wires.
Reaching for the detonation controls of the smart bombs he had set in among the Frenchie explosives, armed for radio detonation, Rock prayed hard and turned the small dial. The entire center of the Wheel, with the Eiffel Tower embedded cleanly through it, suddenly disappeared in a blinding flash of white sparks.
It made the whiz kids and Rockson wince and turn their eyes for a second even from watching it on the video monitors. But within moments, the fiery explosion died down, though many smaller ones were popping up all over the place like Roman candles being launched from all around the body of the Wheel into the velvety purple blackness of space.
The entire Wheel was shattered, the command center severed from the spokes. Within seconds ten separate pieces of it went slowly floating off like the smashed spokes of a bicycle wheel hit by a Mack truck. Men could be seen pouring out of the twisted openings, some in spacesuits—most not—as the internal life support systems had been fully turned on. A Nazi armband caught for a second on the Dynasoar’s razor nose cone, then moved on.
“I’m taking us in,” Rajat shouted as he threw the Dynasoar into forward thrust. The rocket moved ahead about five miles from the disintegrating Wheel.
What was left of the Eiffel Tower was still somehow continuing to press on, even after it burst apart its target like it was an arrow going through a bulls-eye, and still flying forward searching for a tree to lodge in. Only there was no friction or gravity in space, so this “arrow” kept moving forward finding no resistence and slowing not an inch. The Eiffel Tower, with the smoking ruins of the junk ships whose crews had sacrificed their lives in its twisted frame along with it, headed, bent but proudly, toward the very furthest reaches of space.
But it had sure as hell done its damage. As the Dynasoar, on full thrust closed in, Rock opened up with his own assortment of firepower, shooting into the Nazi ships which danced through the debris all around the floating pieces of the “great” Wheel.
But the space Nazis were already demoralized and many ships merely tried to flee. Rockson sent out lasers, rockets, smart bombs and magnet mines—sent out every goddamned thing he could find to blow everything he could track to smithereens.
The rest of the junk spheres came in now, too, sweeping out of the blackness. It was an instant madhouse of Frenchie death beams and missiles soaring everywhere. He hardly knew where he was or who he was firing at. But whenever he saw something strike up toward the Dynasoar Rock swung the guns around and sent out a hail of some form of death unto the attacker.
Then they were all in too close together—Nazis and Frenchies—for rockets or laser fire. The Astro Frenchies and the Nazi fleet, with the separated pieces of the huge space wheel spinning among them still sending out its own firepower as well, all sort of mingled together. And it was time for phase two—hand-to-hand combat—or the space version anyway.
Out of the junk fleet came the insanely garbed Frenchie combat squads. They just appeared, clinging all over the sides of their crafts like roaches on a garbage bag, and threw out long steel cables with magnetic hooks. Within seconds they had attached themselves to many of the enemy vessels, or the sections of the broken-up Wheel itself, boarding the way they did when scavenging.
They pulled themselves over, hundreds of them, even as the airlocks of the enemy ships opened up and Nazis poured out in their distinctive all black spacesuits and helmets with red swastikas painted across their tops.
Then it was Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal and D-Day all rolled into one. Only a hundred miles above the Earth, in the silence of space. They went at it tooth and nail, with laser pistols, hatchets and swords, taking laser and small arms fire.
Spacesuits were ripped apart and men were frozen inside of them within three seconds as the frigid cold of space rushed in. Pressureless their cold blood boiled out of their eye sockets and became blood globules.
Bodies went flying off everywhere like so many bowling pins as the two enemy forces met head-on.
Rockson had just sighted up a big section of Wheel that was still functioning enough to be sending out a laser beam every few seconds when the Dynasoar took a hit from somewhere. The whole control cabin shook and Rajat screamed out, “We’re losing air! Get your space-helmets, throw them on.” He slammed a button on the panel and sirens rang out through the ship, “ATTENTION, EMERGENCY—PUT ON ASTRO SUITS, LIFE SUPPORT WILL FAIL WITHIN THIRTY SECONDS. REPEAT THIRTY SECONDS. ATTENTION, EMERGENCY—”
Rock reached over and grabbed his helmet where he had placed the thing on the floor while firing. All the men in the ship had their suits on as did he. Rock just prayed they had a chance to get the helmets on as well. He had barely snapped his helmet locks closed and thrown the oxygen on when he saw a huge gash appear in the side of the Dynasoar.
And suddenly he was looking out at space itself. And even as he tried to yell out a warning he was being sucked out of his seat, into the void, into the blackness where a million billion star eyes were winking at him madly.
Twenty-Seven
He was floating. Floating amidst the chaos of the universe, amidst the chaos of war. Men were flying by all around him, pieces of men, glowing metal shrapnel. Lasers, bullets, small anti-personnel missiles, all whizzed everywhere.
Rock searched around for the whiz kids who had been sitting next to him just a second before, but couldn’t see a trace of them. He couldn’t locate the Dynasoar either.
There was so much debris flying around it was like being in a tornado; hard to see much of anything. He used his jetpack to rocket toward a large piece of steel plating about twenty-by-twenty-feet and hid behind it using it as a shield against a hail of Nazi fire.
Though it was hard to know just what to shield himself from since debris and arms fire came from virtually every direction, he did his best. Below, he could see the great wheel’s flaming sections burst into even brighter flames as they hit the upper atmosphere, then were sucked down like turds into a swirling toilet, turning sw
iftly. They were glowing ever hotter as they exploded and broke down into smaller pieces.
Little of it would reach the Earth, Rock thought with some satisfaction. Even if he croaked right now—they had saved the planet from Killov’s insane wrath—for the moment. The Wheel was kaput. And Killov too. There was no way he could have survived that inferno. And yet—
And then before his eyes Rock saw the rest of the Nazi fleet turn tail and run. They’d had enough. Cheers rang out as the Astro Frenchies screamed their joy inside hundreds of bizarre helmets. Rock crawled out from behind the steel slab and saw the Dynasoar floating about three hundred yards off. It was in two pieces, each turning around each other in a circle, like two slow-footed dancers in a perfect pirouette. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t driving that baby home any time soon. It had just joined the junk belt.
The helmet radio crackled and Rock heard a familiar voice. “Anyone alivez out dere? This eez Louis XIV on le pearl ship—are you zere?”
Rock let a grim smile flicker across his face as he came out of hiding and searched around for the Frenchie’s scavenger ship. But he couldn’t see it through the dense fog of steel and wires and human pieces that spun everywhere. It was like being inside one of those glass Christmas balls that you shake and there’s a blizzard. This was a blizzard of death. He tried to swim through the junk watching out for anything with jagged edges. One slice and he knew he was through out here.
It took nearly an hour before the French pearl ship picked him up. Rock dragged himself exhaustedly out of the airlock with a desperate look on his face. “My men—are they—” he gasped out at Louis XIV, grabbing his suit as the stubbly face opened the door.
“Zey are all herez ahead of vous, Rockson,” the Frenchie said, slapping him on the back. “Lostez only a few de your men, je thinkez. Vous are a worker de miracles. Zank you, zank you. From all of us Space Junkers we zank you from zee bot-tum des our hearts.”
Louis was all over Rock’s face with kisses and had to be forced to stop.
“Rock,” Chen exclaimed happily as he rushed up from the back of the main space sphere that led the chain of Louis XIV’s space friends’ spheres. The thing had fought well in combat. And the Frenchie felt not a little pride on that score. “We’re all accounted for except—Jenkins and Murdoch. And—”
“And who?” Rock asked, expecting the worst.
“Rajat. They can’t find a trace of him. Don’t know if he was blown up—or is still out there in the middle of nowhere. But—”
“Un minute,” Louis XIV said, resting his gloved hand on Rock’s shoulder. “We’re getting un message now. Zey will patchez us in.” Suddenly they could all hear the staticy words over the ship’s PA.
“Calling Dynasoar Strike Force, calling Space Strike Force, this is Rajat.”
“My God,” Rock said, grabbing his helmet and yelling into the inset mike. “Where the hell are you? They’ve been scouring the place and can’t find a—”
“I’m far off now. I would estimate about twenty thousand miles. I—I—was thrown out of the ship at high speed by the explosion. It’s weird, Rock, it ripped my lower suit apart, so my body is completely frozen—paralyzed. But left just enough of my lungs still heated and moving and my helmet functioning with oxygen and warmth—that I’m still somehow alive. I’m dead—but I’m still alive!”
“Rajat,” Rock said haltingly, “We’ll find you somehow, I swear.” Even as he spoke the words he glanced over at Louis XIV who was shaking his head slowly to indicate no. No—there was no way they could go out into the blackness of space that surrounded them and find the lad. If it was near, perhaps. But at that distance—no. And Rock knew the truth without a word being uttered.
“No, Rock, I know you can’t find me now,” Rajat chuckled with the same mischievous giggle he had always had. “I’m lost out here. Lost in Space.” He giggled again. “We used to watch those shows in C. C. Remember, Connors?”
“I remember Rajat,” the other whiz kid said as he stood at Rockson’s side, his spacesuit and helmet splattered with someone’s blood, not his own.
“It’s beautiful out here,” Rajat said in a whisper. “So many stars all around me. I can hear them singing almost, calling to me. I can’t move my arms or anything but I’m in a slow spiraling orbit, so I keep revolving and I get to see the entire cosmos. And my eyes—my mind, they are still functioning. Oh, it is so beautiful; I feel tears coming to my eyes. They’re singing, the stars are singing.”
“Rajat!” Rock said hoarsely. “We will remember you always back on Earth, back in C. C. You saved mankind. Without you, we never would have had a—”
“Do not mourn for me, Rock,” Rajat chucked again though his voice was much weaker now. Yet it was filled with a powerful joy that they could sense even from twenty thousand miles. “I am a Hindu, and a spirit worshipper. Out here I can feel them all, Vishnu, Siva, Kali—all waiting for me, their loving spiral nebulae arms reaching out with knowledge and love.
“I shall be reborn. Reborn into star fire and space dust. Love! Give my love to, love—”
Suddenly there was a loud clicking of static and then nothing. They looked at each other and not a man could say a word. Nor was there an eye dry even among the toughest of them.
Twenty-Eight
The next day.
“You’re sure this will work?” Rock asked over the helmet mike to Louis XIV whose pearl ship hovered about a hundred yards away. They had given Rock and his men one of the spheres of the garbage craft, modified for atmosphere re-entry with parachutes attached all over the whole thing. Easy enough—just guide it in a perfect trajectory, wait until you feel the walls about to explode from heat and pressure—then pull the chutes to stop the fall. The old-fashioned way of returning to Earth.
Yet the Astro Frenchies had performed a few miracles already. Not the least of which was Rock finding McCaughlin up and around when he got back inside the ship. The treatment had worked. The swelling was gone, the redness back in his cheeks. And an appetite as big as a house that a dozen helpings of the Frenchie iron-gruel wouldn’t assuage.
But now, inside the junk ball with Rock and Connors at the controls, the single whiz kid was having his difficulties trying to figure out the exact descent path on an old Macintosh computer—the only thing the Astro Frenchies could dig up to give them from their collection of junk. With the Dynasoar gone, Connors was on his own. And though he was smart, Rajat had been the driving force behind the duo. He and Rockson would just have to fake it.
“Well, I guess this is it,” Rock said as Connor tilted the wheel of the strange craft, Louis XIV had gone over the steering at least ten times. It wasn’t like they had a hell of a long way to fly. Rock had asked the junk fleet commander to join them, to bring the fleet down. “Think of it—grass, dirt beneath your feet, blue skies above your head.”
“To you, these are things wonderful,” Louis XIV had laughed, “mais for us, we, Le Space Rats—no way. Now havez whole new collection scroungez through. We are settez pour another hundred years.”
“We’d better move,” Connors said nervously, he wasn’t use to operating without the constant interaction with Rajat. “We’re got to come in at just the right angle—they call it an atmosphere keyhole. Don’t make it—and the door gonna slam in our faces. We’d burn up.”
“Let’s do it to it,” Rock replied firmly. As the garbage-ball began descending into lower orbit, the Doomsday Warrior sat at the console and pushed various levers and buttons that Connors yelled out for him to engage. The thirty-foot sphere of wired and welded junk began glowing almost as soon as they dropped below the Van Allen Belt.
There was a sudden tumbling motion like they were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And suddenly they were in the atmosphere rapids. And the ship was shaking and twisting all over the place as it grew instantly hot inside the craft. All the men were in their spacesuits, strapped into makeshift couches taken from wreckage. The twelve surviving Freefighters could see the walls start
to glow all around them. It didn’t look good. Rock had a hard time with his dials. The heat came right through his gloves.
“We’re coming in too fast already, I can feel it,” Connors said as he tried to slow and change their angle of descent. “Pump more juice into her reverse engines—that button there—I need more power!”
Rock hit the thing and the junkball suddenly moved even faster as the glow on the walls went from red to orange.
“It’s not working,” Connors yelled. “Some malfunction.” Then they could see the whole Earth below them tumbling up all blue and revolving every which way so it was hard to focus or see clearly what was happening.
Connors aimed the ship as much as he could, lining it up with the 47-degree angle of descent that the Mac had calculated was necessary for survival. It was like bouncing a stone along a pond, getting just the right angle so the sphere bounced off the heavier air and skidded its way along—instead of sinking. Only they were bouncing at ten thousand miles an hour.
Theoretically, the junk ship was supposed to hold together, but as none of the Astro Frenchies had ever gone down to Earth—or at least those who had had never returned—who could say?
Rock sat back in his seat and held his breath as the world rushed up at them ever faster in the tiny curved glass cockpit window (that had been taken from an astronomical orbit-scope). The walls were almost white-hot now, and there was a sour smell in the air like that of a steel foundry.
“We can’t take much more, I’m going to slam the whole system into reverse—maybe that will bring the retro-rockets in line—they’re wobbling. You pop the chutes as soon as you feel us slow.”
“You got it, Connors,” Rock said, throwing his hands over the chute releases. They had four of them. Four parachutes built into the outer skin of junk. God help them if they failed—meaning tore—at this speed.
