by Anthology
“The search rays. The kappa-light that penetrates all inorganic matter. Hurry!”
Far behind ruptured marble crashed, and the confined space echoed with the awed snarling of the human hunting-hounds. The passage dropped steadily, curved dizzily, leveled out. Twisted sharply—and ended against a rust-red wall!
“Hell!” Dunning gasped. “We’re cut off.” The clamor of the following helots was appallingly nearer. “We’re lost.”
“No,” Thalma cried, springing to a stance in front of the apparently impregnable barrier. “We’re saved.” She thrust the captured ray-gun into Dunning’s hand, gestured queerly with raised arms, as if in invocation to some strange god. “It’s the tunnel doorway. Eighteen inches of beryllo-steel. Once we’re past it, it will defy the rays for hours.”
Dunning whirled, crouched, his burning eyes on the angle that cut off view of the passage through which they had come. Pounding footfalls, shrill cries of the pursuers, made a fearful sound about him, and behind him Thalma’s voice went on.
“Its lock is worked by beams of invisible, infra-red light. Only Jarcka and I know the combination.” Thalma explained her fantastic actions. She was blocking off the guarding beams, one by one, with her waving arms. When she finished—
A green uniform hurtled around the corner Dunning watched, and toppled headlong to the impact of his beam. Another, and another, coming too fast to save themselves, met the same fate. The narrowness of the passage forced the pursuers into single file. The bodies of Dunning’s victims jammed the way. His position was unassailable—as long as his weapon’s charge lasted!
Behind him he heard a little exclamation of triumph, and the squealing of ponderous metal on metal. It told him the door was moving. His victims were piled across the corridor, a breast-high mound of contorted corpses that would hold the helots back for minutes.
“Jim!” There was sudden terror in Thalma’s voice. “Jim! The portal is jammed. It will not open!”
CHAPTER V
THE BOMB
Dunning’s tone was calm. “Try again. It must open.”
“No use. The electric eye responded to my gestures, and the door started to move, but something is in its gears, blocking it. I can do nothing.”
“Well, they’ll know they’ve been in a scrap before they get us,” he said grimly. “Hey—”
An ovoid object, black, fist-size, arced over the tangled bodies, hit the wall. Pounding footfalls sounded.
Horror struck at Dunning.
“Down, Thalma!” This thing was a bomb, an explosive grenade. He leaped to it, snatched it up, hurled it over the cadavers, far up the tunnel.
A tremendous detonation crashed about him. Consciousness left him for an instant, then flooded back. Every bone in his body ached, his head whirled, but he was alive. The glow induced by the kappa-light search beams was gone, and impenetrable darkness blanketed sight. “Thalma,” Dunning shouted, “Thalma!”
“Here, Jim,” a weak voice answered him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine as silk. And you, girl?” Dunning pulled himself to his feet and groped in the direction of the voice.
“I—I’m a bit dazed. But there aren’t any bones broken. Will we ever get out of here?” Sudden joy replaced the doubt in her accents. “Jim! I can feel the jamb against which the door rested. It’s open, Jim! The explosion must have blown it open. We can go on, now. We’re safe!”
“Great!” Dunning exclaimed. “And Marnota thinks we were killed! Otherwise he’d still be using the search-rays.”
“That’s right. He’s sure we’re out of his way at last. There’s a surprise coming to him. Now I wonder if I can get this barrier shut again.” Dunning heard Thalma moving in the darkness. “No. The shock must have damaged the photo-electric control. We shall have to trust to the debris to hold them back. Come on. I shan’t feel safe till we are well out of here.”
The footing rose, abruptly. Thalma’s fingers on Dunning’s arm sent an electric tingle through him.
“The end of the tunnel, Jim!”
He sensed that she was standing before some unseen barrier, again was going through the fantastic gyrations that opened locks in this fantastic world of the future. Abruptly there was a vertical line of light in front of him. It grew rapidly wider, filling the tunnel end. The light blinded Dunning’s eyes, so long used to darkness.
And then there were vague forms about him, many hands seizing him. Thalma screamed. Dunning grunted, jerked. He couldn’t break the grips that held him. He was helpless! Caught! After all they had gone through they were caught! Marnota had outwitted them. He must have known all along of this tunnel.
“Salom!” It was Thalma’s voice, strangely joyous. “Jarcka! Let him go. He’s my friend. He saved me.”
The hands dropped. A circle of men, stalwart, clad in flowing, pastel-hued cloaks, hemmed in the girl and himself.
Each was armed with a ray-tube and the face of each was alight with a peculiar exaltation.
“Salom!” Thalma was speaking to one of them, tall grave-countenanced, grey-haired, the evident leader. “How did you know to come and meet me? How did you know I would be here?
“We didn’t,” the man replied. “We thought you lost. We were determined that Marnota should not live till tomorrow to claim your estates. We were going through the tunnel to raid his lair. To surprise and slay him.”
“Thalma.” Another spoke, shorter, his stern visage seamed with anxiety and grief. “Marnota broadcast a report that you had been killed in an explosion of your stratocar. Ran, too, has disappeared. Do you know anything of him?”
Thalma turned to him, and there was compassion, pity, in her eyes.
“Ran is dead, Jarcka. He gave his life for me, when Marnota attempted to murder me.”
Jarcka staggered, as if a physical blow had struck him, and then was straight, stalwart as before.
“It is high time to put an end to Marnota’s crimes. Let us proceed, Salom.”
A sigh gusted through the group. They started toward the tunnel entrance. Thalma barred their way.
“Stop! You cannot go through. The tunnel is blocked.”
“But you have come through it.”
Thalma told them what had happened. When she had finished there was silence for a moment. Then Salom made a hopeless gesture.
“It was our last, desperate hope. Now America is lost indeed. Tomorrow morning Marnota will appear in court to demand immediate title to your half of the company. Under the law it must be given him and—” Again his gesture took the place of words.
“Tomorrow! Where, Salom?”
“In the Federal Court, before judge Layton. Layton is on our side, but he is bound by the law. He will have to—”
“You forgot that I am alive. The law is on our side now.”
“Marnota will defy the law. He will not retreat now. He has the power—and he will use it.”
“No!” Thalma’s clear voice rang out, and she was living flame in that dim chamber, her face aglow with a light that was somehow blinding. “He has the power. But we have right on our side. Salom. Jarcka. Take me to a safe hiding place. We have all night to think. To plan. We shall find a way to defeat him.”
“Impossible,” someone muttered. “He is too powerful.”
“Oyez, oyez, oyez. The court is open!” In ten centuries the immemorial formula had not changed. On the wall above the long, ornately carved bench still was pictured the ancient representation of the blindfolded goddess, with her balanced scales. The justice, in his high-backed chair, still wore the ancient black robes. Judge Layton was a short, slender man, stooped a little under the weight of his years and learning. His jaw was grim-set as he surveyed the scene below him.
The row upon row of chairs that filled the courtroom were occupied, every one, by hard-visaged men who wore the green of Marnota’s cohorts. Each held, ready in his hand, the black cylinder of his ray-gun, and the eyes of each was fastened immovably on the countenance of his master.
Marnota sat at the counsel table, his bearing that of a monarch deigning to appear before his subjects. There was an aura of power, of dominance, about him, and in the sharp blackness of his eyes there was a glow of triumph. Overflowing the seat beside him, the flabby, bulging contours of him gross and sensual, was Rants, head of the Adams Company’s legal forces.
At the other end of the long table Salom sat, his face an imperturbable mask. Save for the clerk of the court at his desk, and a single attendant policeman contrasting ludicrously with Marnota’s armed display, he was alone. He seemed the leader of a forlorn hope, checking for the last of innumerable times the disposition of the enemy and his sparse preparations for battle.
He glanced at the huge, bronze entrance portal, at the small door behind the bench that led to Layton’s chambers. And, finally at two screened openings in the ceiling, openings that Dunning might have identified, had he been present, as the voice outlets for the communication system of this twenty-fourth century world.
“The matter of the settlement of the estate of Thantala of the House of Adams.” Judge Layton’s voice was thin and quavering. “Any motions?” Ranta rose with a mock bow.
“Your Honor.” His mellow accents filled the great chamber. “I appear for Marnota of the House of Adams, brother of the decedent and his sole surviving kin. We move that the title to all property of the estate be vested in us.”
Salom was on his feet.
“Your Honor, I appear to oppose this motion.”
“Representing whom?”
“Representing Thalma of the House of Adams, daughter of the decedent.”
A little rustle passed through the great room.
“I object,” Ranta thundered. “Thalma of the House of Adams is dead. No attorney can represent a dead person?”
Salom’s voice remained calm and low. “I submit, your Honor, that the death of my client has not been proved before the court. The presumption is, therefore, that she continues to live. I move that the guardianship of Marnota of the House of Adams over the body and goods of my client, as set up by the decedent’s will, be declared at an end, and that title to the property of the estate be vested in my client.”
Ranta riposted, quickly.
“We have submitted affidavits from several persons who state definitely that a stratocar, in which Thalma of the House of Adams was known to be, was seen by them to explode in the air above the Pacific Ocean. We have the affiants in court and are ready to produce them.”
Judge Layton turned again to Salom.
“That seems to settle the matter, counselor. Do you demand that these witnesses be placed on the stand?”
“That will not be necessary, your Honor. I can prove the existence of my client to the court’s satisfaction.”
“I defy you to,” Ranta roared. “You cannot prove what is not true!”
Salom’s voice never rose.
“I can prove Thalma of the House of Adams to be alive.”
The lawyer turned, and pointed to the massive entrance doors. As if his gesture were a signal, they started to swing slowly open. Eternity seemed to pass as the space between the huge bronze leaves widened. Salom’s quiet words thudded into a deathly silence.
“Your Honor, Thalma of the House of Adams.”
A slim figure stood in the aperture. The paleness of Thalma’s set face matched her white garment. Only her eyes were alive, darkly grey, as they sought and held Marnota’s gaze.
The crack of the judge’s gavel cut short a rising murmur.
“The motion of Marnota of the House of Adams is denied. I grant—”
“Stop!” Marnota’s cry cut short the words. He was on his feet. As if at an unvoiced command his helots had also risen. “I’ve had enough of this farce. What you grant or deny is no concern of mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and your law have no power over me. My men have surrounded the White House, have invested every army barracks, every police headquarters, in the nation.” He raised his right arm high above his head: “When my arm drops, the signal will be flashed, and the government whose law you administer will be at an end. From now on I am the law!”
“Marnota!” Thalma’s voice rang sharply from the door. “Marnota! You will never give that signal!”
The bronze doors clanged, shutting her out. Swift action exploded in the courtroom. Salom, with agility beyond his years, lifted himself over the barrier, and leaped to the little door behind the judge’s seat through which Layton, the clerk and the lone attendant had already darted. A roaring sound filled the chamber.
At first like the growling of some vast impending cataclysm, it shot higher and higher in pitch. In seconds it was a shrill scream, slashing at the nerves of the imprisoned Marnota and his helots, invading their quivering brains with needling pain. Then there was no longer any appreciable sound. But Marnota, feeling thin agony whipping through his body, knew that the vibrations still kept on, high above the upper limit of human hearing.
At the great bronze door, at the smaller exit through which Salom had escaped, frantic knots of green-clad men worked with their ray-tubes to force an escape. Some, deprived of reason by the searching torture of the unheard sound, clawed maniacally at the unyielding metal. A pandemonium of curiously muffled shouts burst out.
As the myriad cells of tortured bodies shattered into dissolution under the inexorable, destroying vibrations that unceasingly poured out of the communication discs in the ceiling, cylinders dropped from palsied hands, legs crumpled. The courtroom was a tremendous shambles of writhing, dying humanity.
The invisible, inaudible, vibration of vengeance kept on. Marnota, still holding himself erect by the force of the tremendous, twisted will that had been his undoing; his face empurpled by the bursting capillaries of his skin, his eyes dark pools of torment; glared through a blurring haze the heaving, dying mass that had been the flower of his army. He strove to speak, but the cords of his throat refused his bidding. Slowly, with a defiance still radiant from his pain-wracked form, he slid to the floor. The arm that was to have given the signal for flashup flung out, quivering—There was not the least stirring of any form in all that crowded room.
Thalma’s eyes held no jubilance, nor Dunning’s as they stood in the doorway of that courtroom that was a tomb. After a while they turned silently away.
“Just what happened, Thalma? I know that you arranged with your secret adherents to have some kind of machinery connected with the communication system that led into the courtroom and turned on at your cue. But I can’t understand how it could have done—that.”
The girl’s voice was very very weary.
“Some time in the twentieth century it was discovered that bacteria in milk could be killed by using sound waves above the upper limit of audibility. This process was extended to other foods, but when it was attempted to cure disease by the method, it was found that while the pathogenic bacteria were killed by the vibrations, the patient, also, was killed, or injured.
“What we did was simply to connect the sound-sterilization machinery of the Central Milk Plant with the communication system of the courtroom, and turn the tremendously amplified vibrations into the courtroom.”
Jim Dunning was silent again for long minute.
“You’re safe now, Thalma, and all the great power of the Adams Company is yours,” he said finally. “You can carry out all your father’s plans, unhindered, and make this country a paradise.”
The girl’s voice was very soft.
“If it hadn’t been for you that could not have come to pass. I should still be—lost in time.” Silence, again; and at last she spoke. “It’s a great responsibility, Jim. Will you help me?”
In the grey eyes that looked into his Dunning read something that thrilled him. He knew that the world was theirs—for always.
LOST IN THE FUTURE
John Victor Peterson
Albrecht and I went down in a shuttleship, leaving the stellatomic orbited pole-to-pol
e two thousand miles above Alpha Centauri’s second planet. While we took an atmosphere-brushing approach which wouldn’t burn off the shuttle’s skin, we went as swiftly as we could.
A week before we had completed man’s first trip through hyperspace. We were now making the first landing on an inhabited planet of another sun. All the preliminary investigations had been made via electronspectroscopes and electrontelescopes from the stellatomic.
We knew that the atmosphere was breathable and were reasonably certain that the peoples of the world into whose atmosphere we were dropping were at peace. We went unarmed, just the two of us; it might not be wise to go in force.
We were silent, and I know that Harry Albrecht was as perplexed as I was over the fact that our all-wave receivers failed to pick up any signs of radio communication whatever. We had assumed that we would pick up signals of some type as soon as we had passed down through the unfamiliar planet’s ionosphere.
The scattered arrangement of the towering cities appeared to call for radio communications. The hundreds of atmosphere ships flashing along a system of airways between the cities seemed to indicate the existence of electronic navigational and landing aids. But perhaps the signals were all tightly beamed; we would know when we came lower.
We dropped down into the airway levels, and still our receivers failed to pick up a signal of any sort—not even a whisper of static. And strangely, our radarscopes failed to record even a blip from their atmosphere ships!
“I guess it’s our equipment, Harry,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem to function in this atmosphere. We’ll have to put Edwards to work on it when we go back upstairs.”
We spotted an airport on the outskirts of a large city. The runways were laid out with the precision of Earth’s finest. I put our ship’s nose eastward on a runway and took it down fast through a lull in the atmosphere ship traffic.
As we went down I saw tiny buildings spotted on the field which surely housed electronic equipment, but our receivers remained silent.
