The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  He seemed certain that they were below him. Presently he dropped another gas-bomb, and another. And then Sylva stumbled and caught at something, and there was a crashing sound as a sapling wavered in her grasp.… And Thorn picked her up and fled madly. But billowing white vapor spouted upward before him. He dodged it, and the helicopter was just overhead and more smoke spouted, and more, and more.… They were hemmed in, and Sylva clung close to Thorn and sobbed.…

  * * * *

  Five thousand men, in a thousand grounded aircraft, shouted curses that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the half-heard whisper one may attribute to a phantom.

  The fog-vapor closed over Thorn and Sylva as Kreynborg grinned mockingly at the raging men without the dome of force. He swept the helicopter to a position above the last view of Thorn and Sylva, and the downward-beating screws swept away the foggy gas. Thorn and Sylva lay motionless, though Thorn had instinctively placed himself in a position of defense above her.

  The Fighting Force of the United Nations watched, raging, while Kreynborg descended deliberately into the area the helicopter-screws kept clear. While he searched Thorn’s pockets reflectively and found nothing more deadly than small pebbles which might strike sparks, and a small forked stick. While he grinned mockingly at the raging armed men and made triumphant gesticulations before carrying Sylva’s limp figure to the helicopter. While the little ship rose and swept away toward the rocket-plane.

  It descended and was lost to view. Thorn lay motionless on the earth. Seven-eighths of the fighting force of the United Nations was imprisoned within the space between two domes of force no matter could penetrate. A ring two miles across and ten miles in outer diameter held the whole fleet of the United Nations paralyzed.

  There was sheer panic through the Americas and Europe and the few outlying possessions of the United Nations.… And it was at this time, with a great fleet already half-way across the Pacific, that the Com-Pubs declared war in a fine gesture of ironic politeness. It was within half an hour of this time that the Seventh Combat Squadron—the only one left unimprisoned—dived down from fifty thousand feet into the middle of the Com-Pub fleet and went out of existence in twenty minutes of such carnage as is still stuff for epics.

  The Seventh Squadron died, but with it died not less than three times as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps where the very backbone of resistance to the red flag had been.

  * * * *

  It was twenty minutes before Thorn Hard stirred. His lungs seemed on fire. His limbs seemed lead. His head reeled and rocked. He staggered to his feet and stood there swaying dully. A vivid light, brighter than the sunshine, played upon him from the flagship of the fleet which now was helpless to defend its nation. Thorn’s befogged brain stirred dazedly as the message came.

  “Com-Pub fleet on way. Seventh Combat-Squadron wiped out. Nation defenseless. You are only hope. For God’s sake try something. Anything.”

  Thorn roused himself by a terrific effort. He managed to ask a question by exhausted gestures in the Watch visual alphabet.

  “Kreynborg took her to rocket-ship,” came the answer. “She recovered consciousness before being carried inside.”

  And Thorn, reeling on his feet and unarmed and alone, turned and went staggering up a hillside toward the rocket-ship’s position. He could only expect to be killed. He could not even hope for anything more than to ensure that Sylva, also, die mercifully. Behind him he left an unarmed nation awaiting devastation, with a mighty air fleet speeding toward it at six hundred miles an hour.

  As he went, though, some strength came to him. The fury of his toil forced him to breathe deeply, cleansing his lungs of the stupefying gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the rocket-ship. A visible gas was, of course, more consistent with the early pretense that the rocket-ship bore invaders from another planet. And Thorn became drenched with sweat, which aided in the excretion of the poisonous stuff. His brain cleared, and he recognized despair and discounted it and began to plan grimly to make the most of an infinitesimal chance. The chance was simply that Kreynborg had ransacked his pockets and ignored a little forked stick.

  Scrambling up a steep hillside with his face hardened into granite, Thorn drew that from his pocket again. Crossing a hill-top, he stripped off his coat.

  He traveled at the highest speed he could maintain, though it seemed painfully deliberate. An hour after he had started, he was picking up small round pebbles wherever he saw them in his path. By the time the tall, bulbous tower was in sight he had picked up probably sixty such pebbles, but no more than ten of them remained in his pockets. They, though, were smooth and round and even, perhaps an inch in diameter, and all very nearly the same size. And he carried a club in his hand.

  He went down the last slope openly. The television lenses on the tower would have picked him out in any case, if Kreynborg had repaired the screen. He went boldly up to the rocket-ship.

  “Kreynborg!” he called. “Kreynborg!”

  He felt himself being surveyed. A door came open. Kreynborg stood chuckling at him with a pocket-gun in his hand.

  “Ha! Just in time, my friend! I haff been fery busy. Der Com-Pub fleet is just due to pass in refiew abofe der welcoming United Nations combat-squadrons. I haff been gifing them last-minute information and assurance that der domes of force are solid and can hold forefer. I haff a few minutes to spare, which I had intended to defote to der fair Sylva. But—what do you wish?”

  “I’m offering you a bribe,” said Thorn, his face a mask. “A billion dollars and immunity to cut off the outer dome of force.”

  Kreynborg grinned at him.

  “It is too late. Besides being a traitor, I would be assassinated instantly. Also, I shall be Commissar for North America anyhow.”

  “Two billion,” said Thorn without expression.

  “No,” said Kreynborg amusedly. “Throw away der club. I shall amuse myself with you, Thorn Hardt. You shall watch der progress of romance between me and Sylva. Throw away der club!”

  The pocket-gun came up. Thorn threw away the club.

  “What do you want, if two billion’s not enough?”

  “Amusement,” said Kreynborg jovially. “I shall be bored in this inner dome, waiting for der air fleet to starfe. I wish amusement. And I shall get it. Come inside!”

  He backed away from the door, his gun trained on Thorn. And Thorn saw that the continuous-fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the red room in which he had once awakened. Sylva gave a little choked cry at sight of him. She was standing, desperately defiant, on the other side of the induction-screen area on the floor. There was a scorched place on the floor where Thorn had shorted that screen and the bar of metal had grown red-hot. Kreynborg threw the switch and motioned Thorn to her.

  “I do not bother to search you for weapons,” he said dryly. “I did it so short a time ago. And you had only a club.…”

  Thorn walked stiffly beside Sylva. She put out a shaking hand and touched him. Kreynborg threw the switch back again.

  “Der screen is on,” he chuckled. “Console each other, children. I am glad you came, Thorn Hardt. We watch der grand refiew of der Com-Pub fleet. Then I turn a little infention of mine upon you. It is a heat-ray of fery limited range. It will be my method of wooing der fair Sylva. When she sees you in torment, she kisses me sweetly for der prifilege of stopping der heat-ray. I count upon you, my friend, to plead with her to grant me der most extrafagant of concessions, when der heat-ray is searing der flesh from your bones. I feel that she is soft-hearted enough to oblige you. Yes?”

  He touched a button and the repaired television-screen lighted up. All the dome of mountains and sky was visible in it. T
here were dancing motes in sight, which were aircraft.

  “I haff remofed all metal-work from that side of der room,” added Kreynborg comfortably, “so I can dare to turn my back. You cannot short der induction-screen again. That was clefer. But you face a scientist, Thorn Hardt. You haff lost.”

  A sudden surge of flying craft appeared on the television screen. The grounded fleet of the United Nations was taking to the air again. In the narrow, two-mile strip between the two domes of force it swirled up and up.… Kreynborg frowned.

  “Now, what is der idea of that?” he demanded. He moved closer to the screen. The pocket-gun was left behind, five feet from his finger-tips. “Thorn Hardt, you will explain it!”

  “They hope,” said Thorn grimly, “your fleet can make gaps in the dome to shoot through. If so, they’ll go out through those gaps and fight.”

  “Foolish!” said Kreynborg blandly. “Der only weapon we haff to use is der normal metabolism of der human system. Hunger!”

  * * * *

  Thorn reached into his pocket. Kreynborg was regarding the screen absorbedly. Through the haze of flying dots which was the United Nations fleet, a darkening spot to westward became visible. It drew nearer and grew larger. It was dense. It was huge. It was deadly. It was the Com-Pub battle-fleet, nearly equal to the imprisoned ships in number. It swept up to view its helpless enemy. It came close, so every man could see their only possible antagonists rendered impotent.

  Such a maneuver was really necessary, when you think of it. The Com-Pub fleet had encountered one combat-squadron of the United Nations fleet, and that one squadron, dying, had carried down three times its number of enemies. It was necessary to show the Com-Pub personnel the rest of their enemies imprisoned, in order to hearten them for the butchery of civilians before them.

  Kreynborg guffawed as the Com-Pub fleet made its mocking circuit of the invisible dome. And Thorn raised his head.

  “Kreynborg!” he said grimly. “Look!”

  There was something in his tone which made Kreynborg turn. And Thorn held a little forked stick in his hand.

  “Turn off the induction-screen, or I kill you!”

  Kreynborg looked at him and chuckled.

  “It is bluff, my friend,” he said dryly. “I haff seen many weapons. I am a scientist! You play der game of poker. You try a bluff! But I answer you with der heat-ray!”

  He moved his great bulk, and Thorn released his left hand. There was a sudden crack on Kreynborg’s side of the room. A pebble a little over an inch in diameter fell to the floor. Kreynborg wavered, and toppled and fell. Three times more, his face merciless, Thorn drew back his arm, and three times Kreynborg’s head jerked slightly. Then Thorn faced the panel on which the induction-screen switch was placed. Several times he thrust his hand through the screen and abruptly drew it back with pain, in an attempt to throw the switch. At last he was successful, and now he walked calmly across the room and bent over the motionless Kreynborg.

  “Skull fractured,” he said grimly. “All right, Sylva.”

  He went through the narrow doorway beyond, picking up the pocket-gun as he went. There was a noise of whining machinery. Now Thorn was emptying pellets into the mechanism that controlled the dome of force. There was a crashing of glass. It stopped. There were blows and thumpings. That noise stopped too.

  Thorn came back, his eyes glowing. He flung open the outer door of the rocket-ship, and Sylva went to him.

  He pointed.

  Far away, the Fighting Force of the United Nations was swirling upward. Like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree-stump, they went up in a colossal, twisting spiral. Beyond the domes and above them. The domes existed no longer. Up and up, and up.… And then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy. Vengefully, savagely, with all the fury of men avenging not only what they have suffered, but also what they have feared, the combat-squadrons of the United Nations fell upon the invaders. Green hexynitrate explosions lighted up the sky. Ear-cracking detonations reverberated among the mountains. There was battle there, and death and carnage and utter destruction. The roar of combat filled the universe.

  Thorn closed the door and looked down at Kreynborg, who breathed stentorously, his mouth foolishly open.

  “Our men will be back for us,” he said shortly. “We needn’t worry.” Then he said, “Huh! He called himself a scientist, and he didn’t know a sling-shot when he saw one!”

  But then Thorn Hard dropped a weapon made of a forked stick and strong elastic from his chute-pack, and caught Sylva hungrily in his arms.

  SPACE PLATFORM (1953)

  This acknowledgment is necessary if I am to say thanks to some experts to whom I am indebted. There is Captain Charles Benjamin, who read over the aviation parts of this book with pursed lips and a belligerent attitude toward questionable statements of fact or observation. There is Dr. John Drury Clark, whose authoritative knowledge of rocket fuels was the basis for admitted but not extravagant extrapolation on my part. There is the crew of a four-engined transport ship, who argued over my manuscript and settled the argument by a zestful, full-scale crash-landing drill—repeat, “drill”—expressly to make sure I had described all the procedure just right. There is Willy Ley, whom I would like to exempt from responsibility for any statement in the book, while I acknowledge the value of personal talks with him and the pleasure anybody who has ever read his books will recognize. And there is Dr. Hugh S. Rice of the Hayden Planetarium, who will probably be surprised to find that I feel I owe him gratitude. They are in great part responsible for the factual matter in this book.

  I think I may add, though, that I worked on it too.

  —Murray Leinster

  * * * *

  1

  There wasn’t anything underneath but clouds, and there wasn’t anything overhead but sky. Joe Kenmore looked out the plane window past the co-pilot’s shoulder. He stared ahead to where the sky and cloud bank joined—it was many miles away—and tried to picture the job before him. Back in the cargo space of the plane there were four big crates. They contained the pilot gyros for the most important object then being built on Earth, and it wouldn’t work properly without them. It was Joe’s job to take that highly specialized, magnificently precise machinery to its destination, help to install it, and see to its checking after it was installed.

  He felt uneasy. Of course the pilot and co-pilot—the only two other people on the transport plane—knew their stuff. Every imaginable precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged. It would be—it was being—treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He’d seen the pilot gyro assembly made. He’d helped on it. He knew how many times a thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He’d have liked to be back in the cargo compartment with it, but only the pilot’s cabin was pressurized, and the ship was at eighteen thousand feet, flying west by south.

  He tried to get his mind off that impulse by remembering that at eighteen thousand feet a good half of the air on Earth was underneath him, and by hoping that the other half would be as easy to rise above when the gyros were finally in place and starting out for space. The gyros, of course, were now on their way to be installed in the artificial satellite to be blasted up and set in an orbit around the Earth as the initial stage of that figurative stepladder by which men would make their first attempt to reach the stars. Until that Space Platform left the ground, the gyros were Joe’s responsibility.

  The plane’s co-pilot leaned back in his chair and stretched luxuriously. He loosened his safety belt and got up. He stepped carefully past the column between the right- and left-hand pilot seats. That column contained a fraction of the innumerable dials and controls the pilots of a modern multi-engine plane have to watch and handle. The co-pilot went to th
e coffeepot and flipped a switch. Joe fidgeted again on his improvised seat. Again he wished that he could be riding in back with the crates. But it would be silly to insist on perching somewhere in the freight compartment.

  There was a steady roaring in the cabin—the motors. One’s ears got accustomed to it, and by now the noise sounded as if it were heard through cushions. Presently the coffeepot bubbled, unheard. The co-pilot lighted a cigarette. Then he drew a paper cup of coffee and handed it to the pilot. The pilot seemed negligently to contemplate some dozens of dials, all of which were duly duplicated on the right-hand, co-pilot’s side. The co-pilot glanced at Joe.

  “Coffee?”

  “Thanks,” said Joe. He took the paper cup.

  The co-pilot said: “Everything okay with you?”

  “I’m all right,” said Joe. He realized that the co-pilot felt talkative. He explained: “Those crates I’m traveling with—. The family firm’s been working on that machinery for months. It was finished with the final grinding done practically with feather dusters. I can’t help worrying about it. There was four months’ work in just lapping the shafts and balancing rotors. We made a telescope mounting once, for an observatory in South Africa, but compared to this gadget we worked on that one blindfolded!”

  “Pilot gyros, eh?” said the co-pilot. “That’s what the waybill said. But if they were all right when they left the plant, they’ll be all right when they are delivered.”

  Joe said ruefully: “Still I’d feel better riding back there with them.”

  “Sabotage bad at the plant?” asked the co-pilot. “Tough!”

  “Sabotage? No. Why should there be sabotage?” demanded Joe.

  The co-pilot said mildly: “Not quite everybody is anxious to see the Space Platform take off. Not everybody! What on earth do you think is the biggest problem out where they’re building it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” admitted Joe. “Keeping the weight down? But there is a new rocket fuel that’s supposed to be all right for sending the Platform up. Wasn’t that the worst problem? Getting a rocket fuel with enough power per pound?”