SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  Messages were instantly dispatched to the transport fleets to mobilize on the Jersey shore, and there General Parsons, accompanied by his staff, at once repaired to assume personal command.

  At ten minutes before five, a dispatch from the admiral commanding stated that he was within striking distance of the enemy, whose fleet consisted of close to 1,400 men-of-war, convoying an enormous number of transports.

  The first gray streaks of dawn were suddenly obliterated. The chief of staff swirled from the instruments.

  “The enemy is within range, sir.”

  The next instant General Parsons pressed the key connecting with the district batteries. A moment later and the World trembled as if in the throes of a mighty earthquake. The batteries of twenty cities had opened fire, launching one hundred thousand tons of vast explosive full in the face of the advancing host. For two minutes Earth’s miniature volcanoes belched forth their deadly hail.

  “What is the effect of the fire?” Demanded the General.

  “Observers report heavy damage, sir,” replied the chief of staff, “a number of vessels sunk and many in apparent distress. The enemy is seeking refuge in a lower altitude and is already out of range of all batteries but New York’s.”

  One by one the batteries had ceased firing as their range was exhausted, until only the guns from New York continued the bombardment. General Parsons from the deck of his dispatch boat swept the scene before him with his glasses. The enemy had changed their formation. Their battleships were now above to cover their transports as they landed beneath them. Less than a mile and a half away Earth’s merchant ships, swarming with men, were drawn up on the qu vive for action, while, in a huge circle around the enemy, Earth’s men-of-war were sweeping with incredible speed, silently, grimly, waiting only the command that should launch them into a conflict of frightful carnage.

  As the Mercurian transports touched the ground preparatory to disgorging their men, General Parsons swung sharply round:

  “Order New York to stop firing and the fleet to attack from above,” was his quick, decisive command.

  Even as he spoke, in execution of his order, there was a lull as New York’s batteries became silent, another instant, and a continuous and steadily increasing roar as the guns of ship after ship of Earth’s navy came into action.

  The Mercurian admiral, seeing the damage that his transports would of necessity sustain from the battle raging over their heads, and secure in the belief that they were well able to take care of themselves until he could dispose of Earth’s navy, so heavily outnumbered by his own, fell into the trap that General Parsons had skillfully laid for him. And as if to remove any hesitancy from his mind, at that moment Earth’s fleet broke and fled incontinently. The enemy pursued them in hot haste.

  The moment General Parsons had been waiting for had arrived. If the enemy’s navy outnumbered his own, their transports were numerically inferior to Earth’s, an advantage he meant to utilize to the utmost.

  From where they had lain hidden in the rear, one hundred of the heaviest battleships of Earth’s navy rose like vultures, and swinging into line swept forward with irresistible ferocity upon the enemy’s troopships. The effect of the maneuver was fearful in its result. The battleships plowed through and through the densely packed transports, their heavy armor plate crushing vessel after vessel, transforming them into hideous, misshapen sepulchers. Once, twice, and again, with pitiless fury, the battleships dashed into the midst of the enemy throwing them into disastrous confusion, leaving behind them a havoc indescribable: a vessel torn in twain; an unrecognizable conglomeration of wreckage, from whose depths emanated the heart-rending shrieks of the dying, shrill out-cries of pain and terror, anguish and horror from tortured souls, and in fearful contrast the awful stillness of the mangled dead

  And now General Parsons had ordered a general-advance. The breaches made in the enemy’s ship ranks were speedily filled by Earth’s advancing transport line, so that before any considerable body of the Mercurian army had effected a landing, the Earthers were locked ship to ship with their adversaries, the crews and troops engaging in a hand-to-hand melee. In front and rear, on either flank, swarmed the remainder of Earth’s transports, welding the whole into one compact mass of bloody carnage.

  The strategy of the movement was apparent. In response to the urgent appeals for aid from the commander of the Mercurian army, the enemy’s fleet, now hotly engaged by the admiral commanding the Earth’s warships, made back to protect his transports. Finding it impossible to make any attack on his enemy without endangering his own army, the Mercurian admiral signaled his confrere to join him.

  In response to this command the vessels not already disabled rose slowly, while Earth’s ships clung to them like barnacles, fighting desperately for a mastery that spelled their very existence.

  Above the battling transports as they rose was a scene beyond the power of man to pen. Fighting with unparalleled savagery, Earth’s navy was pressing the attack with splendid brilliancy.

  The huge engines of destruction rushed at each other with terrific speed, to recoil from the shock battered and stunned and helpless, to reel and turn and sink in hideous gyrations from the dizzy height, crushing themselves into unrecognizable shapes on the ground beneath.

  And above the roaring and flashing of the guns, the wild, hard, pitiful cries of the dying, came the deeper toned note of nature’s protest as peal on peal of thunder shook the air. Across a sky now turned to inky blackness, great forked tongues or lightning leaped and twisted and turned, lighting up in awful splendor a ghastly hell of unutterable chaos.

  With the advent of the transports, the Mercurian line of battle was thrown into disorder. General Parsons, with the advantage his superiority of numbers gave him, had cleverly maneuvered to force them into the midst of the enemy’s battleships.

  The admiral commanding Earth’s fleet, now joined by the detachment that had already done such gallant service with General Parsons, swept down upon the confusion. Above, below, on either side the Earthers swarmed, picking out their antagonists to pour a withering fire upon them. Desperately the Mercurian admiral struggled to withdraw his ships and reform his line of battle. The transports blocked every move. Most of the enemy’s troopships were now in General Parsons’ hands, and in their vast numbers and stubborn disregard for life were hemming in and separating the Mercurian men-of-war from each other. As these huge fighting machines in their fury turned upon their puny antagonists to sweep them from their path, another and ever after that another transport would take the place of its disabled mate; now rising in the air above to allow themselves to fall crashing full across a warship’s deck, now ramming from below and now from either side, until here and there, succumbing to the attack, a mighty battleship, wounded, disabled, battered and stricken, heeled slowly over and pitching forward went hurling Earthwards; a testimony of the indomitable valor of General Parson’s command.

  Again and again, with bewildering rapidity, General Parsons would withdraw from the attack to allow Earth’s fleet to dash into the fray. Again and again the same tactics were employed and with each onslaught the savage fury was redoubled, the slaughter multiplied a hundredfold.

  All through that awful day and into the still more fearsome night the conflict waged with unabated vigor. In its trail across the American continent the storm-blown fleets scattered blood, tributes to the grim earnestness of war.

  There in the drear recess of a mountain canon, or perchance upon a wide and desolate plain, a once proud ship had fallen. And as its poor frame quivered in the throes of death, so its imprisoned dead joined with it as sacrificial offerings upon the dear altar of patriotism.

  Here full across a city street, or mayhap upon the roofs of houses, settling where they had plunged in headlong flight, lay queer ghostly shapes well befitting their new use as casements for the dead. Hideously twisted walls of pale phosphorescent metal that in the night-light shimmered balefully; things that once had vaunted proudly th
eir planet’s flag.

  The people huddling together in little knots and crowds, exposed to the storm that beat them pitilessly, gazed upon the scene that passed above their heads with a fear that blanched men’s faces to a ghastly white, while women sobbed and moaned in a delirium of fright. The children clinging at the knees sought comfort from the nameless dread that paralysed their very lips, and seeking comfort, found in their mothers’ faces a cause for terror beyond any they had ever known.

  And, as if in mockery of the mimic show of man, the battle of the elements grew apace until the watchers drew back with shuddering, soul-sick awe before the manifestation of Almighty Heaven’s wrath, and turning from it, ran, hiding their eyes to shut out the terror that gripped their souls, and with trembling, bated breath prayed God to bring the dawn.

  At last the morning broke, and with it came the beginning of the end. The enemy’s last sullen stand was all but over, their resistance almost done. Suddenly, even as the Earthers’ cheers acclaimed the hour of victory, a little dispatch boat rose high in the air, turned rapidly, and made with all speed for Washington. Upon her deck the surgeons were bending anxiously over the unconscious form of General Parsons.

  Hours later the weary physicians sighed in relief. The General’s eyes opened to glance questioningly at the faces around him.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  They took his hands and pressed them. The surgeon-general stooping over him whispered the one word: “Victory!”

  General Parsons’ countenance lighted up for an instant with a gleam of joy. Then he turned his head away. The features that had been set in inexorable determination in the battle softened with infinite sadness; the eyes that had so sternly viewed the frightful slaughter, brimmed with tears.

  “At what a cost,” he murmured.

  “Oh, God! At what a cost.”

  Three months later in the circular chamber that occupied the eastern wing of the Edifice of Deliberations, the Council of Earth were seated. Upon the table before them was spread an official document.

  The Head, Mr. Sasoa, was speaking:

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “you are here assembled to pass upon the proposed treaty with Mercury as prepared by our commissioners. You are familiar with the contents. Those points insisted upon by our delegates have been ceded to us. Will you ratify this treaty? Will you vote for peace or war?”

  General Parsons rose slowly to his feet.

  “Most Honorable Head, and Gentlemen,” he said, quietly, “I vote for peace.”

  The honorable member on his left, and after him in rotation each member of the council, rose, and in solemn tones repeated the general’s formula:

  “I vote for peace.”

  In the silence that followed, Mr. Sasoa drew the document toward him, then the scratching of his pen proclaimed the ratification of the “Second Treaty of Washington.”

  THE LAST DAYS OF EARTH

  George C. Wallis

  When the idea for this anthology arose this was the first story that came to mind. It struck me that it epitomised the steampunk imagery, for although the story is set 13 million (yes, million) years in the future, the couple — who happen to be the last two humans alive — are still staunchly Victorian. It is full of wonderful ideas about the future, but ideas clearly limited by the technology of the day. And yet it is a potent story and one that I feel packs as big a punch now as it did when it first appeared in 1901.

  George C. Wallis (1871-1956) was a printer turned cinema manager who produced a fair quantity of boys’ books and science fiction from at least 1896 to 1947, a career thus equalling that of H. G. Wells’s in span if not in influence. He was, though, the only Victorian writer of science fiction who also contributed to both the American and British science fiction genre magazines of the twenties and thirties. His last book was a lost-race novel, The Call of Peter Gaskell (1947). — M.A.

  A MAN AND A WOMAN sat facing each other across a table in a large room. They were talking slowly, and eating — eating their last meal on earth. The end was near; the sun had ceased to warm, was but a red-hot cinder outwardly; and these two, to the best of their belief, were the last people left alive in a world-wilderness of ice and snow and unbearable cold.

  The woman was beautiful — very fair and slight, but with the tinge of health upon her delicate skin and the fire of intellect in her eyes. The man was of medium height, broad-shouldered, with wide, bald head and resolute mien — a man of courage, dauntless purpose, strenuous life. Both were dressed in long robes of a thick, black material, held in at the waist by a girdle.

  As they talked, their fingers were busy with a row of small white knobs let into the surface of the table, and marked with various signs. At the pressure of each knob a flap in the middle of the table opened, and a small glass vessel, with a dark, semi-liquid compound steaming in it, was pushed up. As these came, in obedience to the tapping of their fingers, the two ate their contents with the aid of tiny spoons. There was no other dining apparatus or dinner furniture upon the table, which stood upon a single but massive pedestal of grey metal.

  The meal over, the glasses and spoons replaced, the table surface clean and clear, a silence fell between them. The man rested his elbows upon his knees and his chin upon his upturned palms. He did not look at his fair companion, but beyond her, at a complicated structure projecting from the wall. This was the Time Indicator, and gave, on its various discs, the year, the month, the day, the hour and the instant, all corrected to mean astronomical time and to the exact latitude and longitude of the place. He read the well-known symbols with defiant eyes. He saw that it was just a quarter to thirteen in the afternoon of Thursday, July 18th, 13,000,085 A.D. He reflected that the long association of the place with time-recording had been labour spent in vain. The room was in a great building on the site of ancient Greenwich. In fact, the last name given to the locality by its now dead and cold inhabitants had been Grenijia.

  From the time machine, the man’s gaze went round the room. He noted, with apparently keen interest, all the things that were so familiar to him — the severely plain walls, transparent on one side, but without window-frame or visible door in their continuity; the chilling prospect of a faintly-lit expanse of snow outside; the big telescope that moved in an airtight slide across the ceiling, and the little motor that controlled its motions; the electric radiators that heated the place, forming an almost unbroken dado round the walls; the globe of pale brilliance that hung in the middle of the room and assisted the twilight glimmer of the day; the neat library of books and photo-phono cylinders, and the tier of speaking machines beneath it; the bed in the further corner, surrounded by yet more radiators; the two ventilating valves; the great dull disc of the Pictorial Telegraph: and the thermometer let into a vacant space of floor. On this last his glance rested for some time, and the woman’s also. It registered the degrees from absolute zero; and stood at a figure equivalent to 42º Fahrenheit. From this tell-tale instrument the eyes of the two turned to each other, a common knowledge shining in each face. The man was the first to speak again.

  “A whole degree, Celia, since yesterday. And the dynamos are giving out a current at a pressure of 6,000 volts. I can’t run them at any higher efficiency. That means that any further fall of temperature will close the drama of this planet. Shall we go tonight?”

  There was no quiver of fear nor hint of resentment in his voice, nor in the voice that answered him. Long ages of mental evolution had weeded all the petty vices and unreasoning passions out of the mind of man.

  “I am ready any time, Alwyn. I do not like to go; I do not like the risk of going; but it is our last duty to the humanity behind us — and I must be with you to the end.”

  There was another silence between them; a silence in which the humming of the dynamos in the room below seemed to pervade the whole place, thrilling through everything with annoying audibility. Suddenly the man leaned forward, regarding his companion with a puzzled expression.

  “Your eyela
shes are damp, Celia. You are not crying? That is too archaic.”

  “I must plead guilty,” she said, banishing the sad look with an effort. “We are not yet so thoroughly adjusted to our surroundings as to be able to crush down every weak impulse. Wasn’t it the day before yesterday that you said the sun had begun to cool about five million years too soon for man? But I will not give way again. Shall we start at once?”

  “That is better; that sounds like Celia. Yes, if you wish, at once; but I had thought of taking a last look round the world — at least, as far as the telegraph system is in order. We have three hours’ daylight yet.”

  For answer, Celia came and sat beside him on the couch facing the disc of the Pictorial Telegraph. His left hand clasped her right; both were cold. With his right hand he pulled over and held down a small lever under the disc — one of many, each bearing a distinctive name and numeral.

  The side wall became opaque; the globe ceased to be luminous. A moving scene grew out of the dullness of the disc, and a low, moaning sound stole into the room. They looked upon a telegraphically-transmitted view of a place near which had once been Santiago, Chili. There were the ruins of an immense white city there now, high on the left of the picture. Down on the right, far below the well-defined marks of six successive beach-lines, a cold sea moaned over an icy bar, and dashed in semi-frozen spray under the bluff of an overhanging glacier’s edge.

  Out to sea great bergs drifted slowly, and the distant horizon was pale with the ice-blink from vast floes. The view had scarcely lasted a moment, when a great crack appeared on the top of the ice-front, and a huge fragment fell forward into the sea. It overturned on the bar, churning up a chaos of foam, and began to drift away. At the same instant came the deafening report of the breakage. There was no sign of life, neither of man nor beast, nor bird nor fish, in that cold scene. Polar bears and Arctic foxes, blubber-eating savages and hardy seals, had all long since passed away, even from the tropic zone.