by Eando Binder
He glared accusingly at them. Neither Paige nor Aronson could think of anything to say that would sound sensible. Tal’s face worked dangerously. “But I’ll show you how you have underestimated me. I’ll wipe out the Dorthians and then deal with your forces.”
Whirling, he screamed out the order to begin battle. Then he turned back, directing his aides to chain Paige and Aronson to a great boulder, out of range of the battle zone. Reena was brought up a moment later, and chained. Tal eyed the three of them.
“When we have won, I’ll deal with you. If we should happen to face defeat, our last shots will take you with us.”
He dashed away, to direct the struggle.
Paige looked at the girl. In the glow of moonlight, she was a picture of loveliness. Her eyes were on him, not hostile now, but in understanding—of a sort.
“Forgive me, Evan,” she murmured. “I see now what you planned. The presence of the Dorthian troops here shows your good intentions, however it turned out. You had hoped the Dorthian troops would get here first, to strike at Uldorn?”
Paige shook his head groaning.
“No. My plans are all shattered. I had hoped to pit Tal against the Martians. Now, instead, the Dorthians and Uldornians will decimate each other. When the Martians come, they will find little opposition. Don’t you understand, Reena, it’s the Martians who are to be feared. They come from another world, beyond the roof.”
Paige stopped. How could he explain this to the girl who still thought of earth’s surface as a huge cave, with a roof? The conception of another planet, hanging in space millions of miles away, could have no meaning to her. So he thought.
She was staring at him thoughtfully. “There is no…no roof?” she queried slowly.
Paige glanced at her hopefully. “None at all. Space goes on forever.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, as though assimilating that fact, once and for all. It was not less in degree than a person of upper earth having suddenly to believe that the sky was a roof.
“And these Martians you speak of—they come from another world, far away? From up there, many times farther than the greatest distance in Dorthia?”
Paige pointed to the fiery red speck of Mars following the moon. “From there they have come and from another world even more distant.”
“They are not human?” she whispered.
“They are monsters, ruthless beings who are killing off my people relentlessly.” He watched the girl. What effect was it having on her, if she believed?
She believed, now. He could see that in the dread and horror that darkened her eyes.
“My people,” she said suddenly, “should help your people, Dorthians and Uldornians alike.”
Paige choked. If this girl’s reaction were only a symbol, a token, of how all the albino people might react, if they once knew and understood. But then he turned bitter, defeated eyes on the battle raging between the two underworld factions.
“Your civilization fights a civil war,” he groaned, “while mine goes under.”
Chapter 17
They watched the battle.
It was fought under the dim light of the moon. But to the albino people, it was natural, like the battles fought underground in their sunless labyrinths.
Tal had deployed his men in a wide circle facing the cave mouth. Steady fire poured in, and steady fire returned. The Uldornians were at a tactical disadvantage. But on the other hand, Tal had remembered the advanced military maneuvers Paige had employed below. Sparky was commanding a regiment of Dorthians who probably misunderstood most of his orders, new to them.
A secret company of Uldornians crept to the side of the cave-mouth and attacked. When the Dorthians blindly flocked to resist, a second flanking group fell on their other side.
The battle raged on, while the moon slowly climbed the zenith. Paige foresaw already that, all else being equal, one or the other side would win by a slim margin, depending on luck. He ground his teeth helplessly, at the thought of human beings, albino or not, killing one another off, in the very world where an alien power wanted just that.
“Aronson,” he muttered, “I guess we’ve failed.”
“Hsst!”
It was a low warning from back of them, in the shadow of the boulder they were chained to. The crouching form of Sparky crept close, one eye cautiously on the guard who stood with back turned, watching the battle.
“Sparky,” breathed Paige. “How…”
“Hi, Sarge,” whispered Sparky, pressing his hand. His mouth twisted a little. “Deserted again—the Dorthians. Wanted to find you. Figure out something. This fight is crazy. We should be blasting at the Martians.”
“Yes,” Paige said brokenly. “After all my planning, and yours, we run up against this stupid, blind, senseless stone wall. The underworld people fight below, and now above, too. And the Martians, meanwhile, take over earth.”
Sparky’s face twisted convulsively. “Lord! How I’d like to get one more lick at the Martians.”
Paige laughed, a little wildly, bitterly. “You can, maybe. I think there’s an undamaged earth plane, a mile away.” He dismissed the thought. “But Sparky, can you free us?” Sparky was already aiming his Dorthian blast-pistol at a portion of the chain that held Reena. Three shots and the chain clinked apart. Reena stood free.
“Hurry,” whispered Paige.
Sparky sent two shots at Aronson’s chain. The guard turned, finally hearing. With a shout of alarm he ran forward, pistol upraised.
“Got to do it,” muttered Sparky, aiming at him.
But there was only a dull click from his weapon. “Used my shots,” he cried. “And I have no more charge-clips. Sarge, I’ve got to go. I’m deserting again.”
So saying, Sparky scuttled away as fast as he could, with his limp. The guard fired several times into the darkness beyond the boulder, then gave up and turned back. Reena, though free, had not left, her hand resting on Paige’s arm.
She was sharing his fate, but Paige said nothing. What did it mean now? Tal would win, take them below, and warn King Luth against the campaign in the upperworld, convinced now that Paige had planned a trap.
Paige cursed, and looked up at the garnet speck of Mars, that seemed like a mocking red eye. Faintly, through the roar of battle, he heard a low drone from the opposite direction. The beating of a jet engine lifting an earth plane into the air. Sparky had found the plane intact. He was off to have his last lick at the Martians. He would not let mocking fate make him a deserter of duty a fourth time.
Paige reviled fate, and wished he were with Sparky.
The red eye of Mars glared down gloatingly on the battle. Slowly Tal was winning out, driving the Dorthians back into the cave-mouth where he would gain strategic positions and cut them to pieces.
“Dr. Aronson,” Paige said again, “we’ve failed.”
A hissing whine snaked through the upper air.
Paige started, ears alert. Was it the drone of jets or the throbbing beat of rockets?
It was both…
An earth plane streaked across the moon’s face. Hounding after it drummed a fleet of seven Martian ships, rocket jets flaming brilliantly. The lone earth ship shot up suddenly, in a power-climb. Daringly, madly, it swooped over the Martian ships, raking them with machine-gun fire, a wasp against seven deadly eagles. One Martian ship swung out of line, wobbled, and then flopped earthward in flames.
Again the jet plane swooped, guns chattering. Another Martian ship plummeted down like a comet. Paige stared in disbelief. It was the most amazing exhibition of flying and fighting he had ever thought possible. Who could that wizard flyer be?
A gasp tore from Paige’s throat.
“Sparky,” he screamed. “Give ’em hell, Sparky.”
It was all clear now. Sparky ha
d flown to the nearest Martian base, probably at Cincinnati, and charged down from the sky, speaking a challenge with bullets. The Martian fleet had given chase. By some miracle, Sparky had out-flown the superior Martian craft and led them here.
“Give ’em hell, Sparky,” Paige shrieked again.
But the end was inevitable. The Martian ships spread, darted at him from all angles. Three Martian neutron-beams struck at the same time. The little earth ship changed into a riddled, broken bit of debris that rained to the ground.
“That was Sparky?” gasped Aronson, horrified. “He’s dead.”
“Yes, but he died happy,” Paige said. “He got in his last lick at the Martians.”
“Brave little man,” murmured Reena. “But why did he do it?”
Paige knew why. His eyes glowed in anticipation.
Now the remaining five Martian ships circled, observing. Then suddenly a singing, iridescent beam stabbed down. Where it struck, a geyser of dirt and rock shot up. The beam ran along the edge of the Uldornian forces, plowing a furrow of destruction. It seemed like a warning, to discontinue whatever was being done below. It was an imperious command.
The battle between the albino forces died. Amazed at what the unknown third power had done, a temporary truce sprang into being. One of the Martian ships spiraled lower and landed, a hundred yards back of the Uldornians.
Paige trembled. For this Sparky had given his life, to bring the Martians here quickly while they were still pondering the absence of the missing patrol ship, and before the albino battle had finished and ended all chance of Martian interference.
Tal came running up from the battlefront, pausing beside Paige. They all watched as the cabin of the strange craft opened and figures emerged. They strode forward, a dozen forms with glinting weapons in their hands.
As they drew near, the moonlight revealed them clearly. A concerted gasp arose from the throats of Tal and all the albino men who could see. Even Dr. Aronson gulped, for he had never seen the Martians before.
They were tall, thick-chested, thin-legged, built in the travesty of man. They were ridiculously like old men who had not exercised properly. But their faces inspired horror. They were not human, by any stretch of imagination. Large eyes with purple irises, flat bestial noses, and lips from which protruded fang-like teeth, topped by a feathery wool of dank green hair. Evolution had given them a large brain-case, larger than man’s, but something had placed the stamp of utter pitilessness in their features. They carried with them as they neared an aura of merciless cruelty. Whatever world had spawned them beyond the solar system, they were closer to devils than men.
Paige shuddered, as well as the others, though the sight of these other-worldly creatures was nothing new to him. The foremost alien spoke, in a piping, precise English. “You destroyed our patrol ship this afternoon. You sent one of your own ships to raid our nearest base. Like other groups of earthlings, you have come down from the hills, most likely, and are armed. You have been hidden back there in the cave practicing battle tactics. You bravely but foolishly think of fighting against us to the last?”
It was a question. Paige thought rapidly. Whispering swiftly to Aronson to translate for the benefit of the albino men, he answered the Martian commander.
“Yes. What else would you have us do?”
The Martian made a magnanimous gesture.
“A few weeks ago we would have exterminated you without wasting time talking first. But our High Command has instituted a new order. All humans left are given the choice, if they surrender, to become slaves.”
Paige gave the appearance of one considering the offer. Back of him, the albino men were utterly silent, hushed. Then Paige asked another question.
“We have been isolated from the rest of earth. How many humans are left?”
It tore his soul to bring it out, but he had to know. And he wanted the albino men to hear.
“About one-half of the former earth population,” returned the Martian expressionlessly. “We have killed off two billions of you humans. The remaining we offer life, as our slaves.”
Tal and the nearby albino men stood stunned, as Aronson’s whispered translation came to them. The whisper grew and rustled through all the ranks behind. It leaped the gap between the Uldornian and Dorthian forces, those that had lately been about to engage in hand-to-hand struggle.
Two billion humans destroyed!
The crushing revelation seemed to sweep over the scene like a living force.
“Is there any resistance in other parts of earth?” Paige pursued.
The Martian answered without hesitation, with the air of one who does not need to hide anything.
“Yes, in various sectors, your people hold out. It is almost admirable. But stupid. They are doomed. West of your Rockies, fifty million people battle us. We are daily bombing all their cities and pushing back their armies.”
He made a sharp gesture. “That is all. What is your decision?”
The answer did not come from Evan Paige. It came from Tal Rithor.
He had been standing like a statue, nostrils flaring, his breath coming in short, hard gasps. Deliberately, his arm flung up and then down.
The battle signal!
Almost in one volley, the weapons of the albino men spoke, as though only will-power had kept them before from shooting down the repulsive monsters at first sight. The attack was totally unexpected, to the confident Martians. Six of them fell corpses. The other six fired back, with their rustling kill-beams. In another moment they, too, fell dead.
Retaliation came instantly, from above. Broad rays of explosive neutrons hurtled down, cutting swaths of death among the albino men.
Paige leaned back against the rock, sick. He thought it was all over. But Tal was leaping back and forth, yelling commands. Cannon swiveled into the sky. A weapon spoke back at least the equal of the Martians’, in fact superior, for the atom-crushing ray had no known limit to its range, far outstripping the enemy’s kill-beams. The enemy, not given to night fighting, were aiming blind. The albino men, in their element under dim radiation, found their marks.
Four of the Martian ships crashed down in flames. One drummed away to call for stronger forces. Soon a mighty fleet would wing back to wipe out the defiant band of humans at the mouth of Mammoth Cave.
Paige imparted that knowledge to Tal. He went on, explaining the truth of what earth’s upper surface was. If Reena had finally understood, he must, too.
Tal stood listening.
The dawn of understanding came into his eyes. He said nothing. Quietly he came forward and struck off their chains himself. A vast hush had come over the albino men. Tal strode toward the mouth of Mammoth Cave, toward the Dorthian forces. Halfway there he stopped, threw down his weapons. Then he spoke, his voice ringing through the still night air.
“Soldiers of Dorthia and Uldorn. We can no longer fight each other. This is a strange, new world up here—one we didn’t know existed, inhabited by another part of the human race. But it belongs to the human race; not to monsters from another world. Where or what that other world is or can be, I’m not yet sure. I only know that people like us are threatened with extinction, up here. I will speak now for King Luth and say that all the army and forces of Uldorn pledge themselves to fight the alien invaders.”
As though it had been rehearsed, the Dorthian commander came forward, throwing his arms at Tal’s feet.
“I say the same in behalf of the Kal of Dorthia.”
And the cheer that rose from all the men’s throats in both armies was hurled out in defiance to the unspeakable enemy from another world.
Paige knew that the greatest moment in the history of the human race was enacting itself.
A buried portion of mankind, grown great and strong, would take up the crusade, would fight for a world they ha
d never seen before, but which was theirs by heritage. Already, like an echo from the future, Paige could hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet, as the legions from below came into the light of the sun.
An army millions upon millions strong would arise out of the depths to confront and drive back the Martians who thought their bloody task done. The Martians would sneer at first, as they wiped out the first few regiments, till the albino army learned of the new conditions and warfare.
The aliens would at first create fearful havoc among the underworld armies with their rocketships—until these were gone, smashed out of the sky. Then inexhaustible hordes of marching men from the underworld legions would sweep across the land, across every land on Earth, pushing the enemy before them. Time did not matter. The day would come when the last alien was killed, freeing a world and saving half the upper-world humans, if nothing more.
Tramp, tramp, tramp!
The Earth itself would shake with their heavy tread, as her sons from below stormed up, to win back a world.
TRAMP! TRAMP! TRAMP!
And leading this army of revenge from below would be the ghost of Sparky Donovan. He had deserted again—deserted life. But in death itself he would be getting in his lick at the Martians once more.
Tal Rithor now stood before Paige and Reena, in each other’s arms, and he smiled wanly, but sincerely. This was a new Tal, who had crawled out of the shell of the old, a Tal who had viewed the upper world and knew that it was good.
“You two will be a token, in marriage, of the union of mankind above and below,” he said.
He added simply, “We will win.”
“We will win,” agreed Evan Paige.
