The Best of E E 'Doc' Smith

by E E 'Doc' Smith

  But Costigan was no tyro in the art of dirty fighting. Few indeed were the maiming tricks of foul combat unknown to even the rank and file of the highly efficient under-cover branch of the Triplanetary Service; and Costigan, a Sector Chief, knew them all. Not for pleasure" sportsmanship, nor million-dollar purses did those secret agents use Nature's weapons. They came to grips only when it could not possibly be avoided" but when they were forced to fight in that fashion they went in with but one grim purpose-to kill, and to kill in the shortest possible space of time. Thus it was that Costigan's opening soon came. The pirate launched a vicious coup de sabot, which Costigan avoided by a lightning shift. It was a slight shift" barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two powerful hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap. Closed and twisted viciously, in the same fleeting instant. There was a shriek" smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its carefully predetermined mark-the pirate was out, definitely and permanently.

  The struggle had lasted scarcely ten seconds, coming to its close just as Bradley finished blinding and deafening the robot. Costigan picked up the projector, again donned his spy-ray goggles, and the two hurried on.

  "Nice work, Chief-it must be a gift to rough-house the way you do," Bradley exclaimed. "That's why you took the live one?"

  "Practice helps some, too-I've been in brawls before" and I'm a lot younger and maybe a bit faster than you are," Costigan explained briefly, penetrant gaze rigidly to the fore as they ran along one corridor after another.

  Several more guards, both living and mechanical" were encountered on the way, but they were not permitted to offer any opposition. Costigan saw them first. In the furious beam of the projector of the dead pirate they were driven into nothingness, and the two officers sped on to the room which Costigan had located from afar. The three suits of Triplanetary space armor had been locked up in a cabinet; a cabinet whose doors Costigan literally blew off with a blast of force rather than consume time in tracing the power leads.

  "I feel like something now!" Costigan, once more encased in his own armor, heaved a great sigh of relief. "Rough-and-tumble's all right with one or two, but that generator room is full of grief, and we won't have any too much stuff as it is. We've got to take Clio's suit along we'll carry it down to the door of the power room" drop it there, and pick it up on the way back."

  Contemptuous now of possible guards, the armored pair strode towards the power plant-the very heart of the immense fortress of space. Guards were encountered, and captains-officers who signaled frantically to their chief, since he alone could unleash the frightful forces at his command, and who profanely wondered at his unwonted silence-but the enemy beams were impotent against the ether walls of that armor; and the pirates, without armor in the security of their own planetoid as they were, vanished utterly in the ravening beams of the twin Lewistons. As they paused before the door of the power room, both men felt Clio's voice raised in her first and last appeal, an appeal wrung from her against her will by the extremity of her position.

  "Conway! Hurry! His eyes-they're tearing me apart! Hurry, dear!" In the horror-filled tones both men read clearly-however inaccurately-the girl's dire extremity. Each saw plainly a happy, carefree young Earth-girl, upon her first trip into space, locked inside an ether-wall with an over-brained, under-conscienced human machine -a superintelligent, but lecherous and unmoral mechanism of flesh and blood, acknowledging no authority, ruled by nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges of his desires and passions! She must have fought with every resource at her command. She must have wept and pleaded, stormed and raged" feigned submission and played for time-and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play would be done, the horrible grey-brown face would be close to hers-she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and attacked that hideous face with the fury of a tigress.

  Costigan bit off a bitter imprecation. "Hold him just a second longer, sweetheart!" he cried, and the power room door vanished.

  Through the great room the two Lewistons swept at full aperture and at maximum power, two rapidly-opening fans of death and destruction. Here and there a guard" more rapid than his fellows, trained a futile projector-a projector whose magazine exploded at the touch of that frightful field of force, liberating instantaneously its thousands upon thousands of kilowatt-hours of stored-up energy.

  Through the delicately adjusted, complex mechanisms the destroying beams tore. At their touch armatures burned out, high-tension leads volatilized in crashing, high-voltage arcs" masses of metal smoked and burned in the path of vast forces now seeking the easiest path to neutralization, delicate instruments blew up" copper ran in streams. As the last machine subsided into a semi-molten mass of metal the two wreckers" each grasping a brace, felt themselves become weightless and knew that they had accomplished the first part of their program.

  Costigan leaped for the outer door. His the task to go to Clio's aid-Bradley would follow more slowly, bringing the girl's armor and taking care of any possible pursuit. As he sailed through the air he spoke.

  "Coming, Clio! All right" girl?" Questioningly, half fearfully.

  "All right" Conway." Her voice was almost unrecognizable, broken in retching agony. "When everything went crazy he ... found out that the ether-wall was up and ... forgot all about me. He shut it off ... and seemed to go crazy too ... he is floundering around like a wild man now ... I'm trying to keep ... him from ... going downstairs."

  "Good girl-keep him busy one minute more-he's getting all the warnings at once and wants to get back to his board. But what's the matter with you? Did he... hurt you, after all?"

  "Oh, no" not that-he didn't do anything but look at me-but that was bad enough-but I'm sick-horribly sick. I'm falling ...I'm so dizzy that I can scarcely see ... my head is breaking up into little pieces ... I just know I'm going to die, Conway! Oh ... oh!"

  "Oh, is that all!" In his sheer relief that they had been in time" Costigan did not think of sympathizing with Clio's very real present distress of mind and body. "I forgot that you're a ground-gripper-that's just a little touch of space-sickness. It'll wear off directly ... All right, I'm coming! Let go of him and get as far away from him as you cant"

  He was now in the street. Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred feet above him was the tower room in which were Clio and Roger. He sprang directly towards its large window, and as he floated "upward" he corrected his course and accelerated his pace by firing backwards at various angles with his heavy service pistol, uncaring that at the point of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction erupted. He missed the window a trifle, but that did not matter-his flaming Lewiston opened a way for him, partly through the window, partly through the wall. As he soared through the opening he trained projector and pistol upon Roger, now almost to the door" noticing as he did so that Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-bracket upon the wall. Door and wall vanished in the Lewiston's terrific beam, but the pirate stood unharmed. Neither ravening ray nor explosive shell could harm him-he had snapped on the protective shield whose generator was always upon his person.

  When Clio reported that Roger seemed to go crazy and was floundering around like a wild man, she had no idea of how she was understanding the actual situation; for Gharlane of Eddore, then energizing the form of flesh that was Roger, had for the first time in his prodigiously long life met in direct conflict with an overwhelming superior force.

  Roger had been sublimely confident that he could detect the use, anywhere in or around his planetoid, of ultra-wave. He had been equally sure that he could control directly and absolutely the physical activities of any number of these semi-intelligent "human beings."

  But four Arisians in fusion-Drounli, Brolenteen, Nedanillor, and Kredigan-had been on guard for weeks. When the time came to act, they acted.

  Roger's first thought, u
pon discovering what tremendous and inexplicable damage had already been done, was to destroy instantly the two men who were doing it. He could not touch them. His second was to blast out of existence this supposedly human female, but no more could he touch her. His fiercest mental bolts spent themselves harmlessly three millimeters away from her skin; she gazed into his eyes completely unaware of the torrents of energy pouring from them. He could not even aim a weapon at her! His third was to call for help to Eddore. He could not. The sub-ether was closed; nor could he either discover the manner of its closing or trace the power which was keeping it closed!

  His Eddorian body, even if he could recreate it here, could not withstand the environment-this Roger-thing would have to do whatever it could, unaided by Gharlane's mental powers. And, physically, it was a very capable body indeed. Also, it was armed and armored with mechanisms of Gharlane's own devising; and Eddore's second-in-command was in no sense a coward.

  But Roger, while not exactly a ground-gripper, did not know how to handle himself without weight; whereas Costigan, given six walls against which to push, was even more efficient in weightless combat than when handicapped by the force of gravitation. Keeping his projector upon the pirate, he seized the first clue to hand-a long, slender pedestal of metal-launched himself past the pirate chief. With all the momentum of his mass and velocity and all the power of his good right arm he swung the bar at the pirate's head. That fiercely-driven mass of metal should have taken head from shoulders, but it did not. Roger's shield of force was utterly rigid and impenetrable; the only effect of the frightful blow was to set him spinning, end over end, like the flying baton of an acrobatic drummajor. As the spinning form crashed against the opposite wall of the room Bradley floated in, carrying Clio's armor. Without a word the captain loosened the helpless girl's grip upon the bracket and encased her in the suit. Then, supporting her at the window, he held his Lewiston upon the captive's head while Costigan propelled him towards the opening. Both men knew that Roger's shield of force must be threatened every instant-that if he were allowed to release it he probably would bring to bear a hand-weapon even superior to their own.

  Braced against the wall, Costigan sighted along Roger's body towards the most distant point of the lofty dome of the artificial planet and gave him a gentle push. Then, each grasping Clio by an arm, the two officers shoved mightily with their feet and the three armored forms darted away towards their only hope of escape-an emergency boat which could be launched through the shell of the great globe. To attempt to reach the Hyperion and to escape in one of her lifeboats would have been useless; they could not have forced the great gates of the main airlocks and no other exits existed. As they sailed onwards through the air, Costigan keeping the slowly-floating form of Roger enveloped in his beam. Clio began to recover.

  "Suppose they get their gravity fixed?" she asked, apprehensively. "And they're raying us and shooting at us!"

  "They may have it fixed already. The undoubtedly have spare parts and duplicate generators, but if they turn it on the fall will kill Roger too, and he wouldn't like that. They'll have to get him down with a helicopter or something, and they know that we'll get them as fast as they come up. They can't hurt us with hand-weapons, and before they can bring up any heavy stuff they'll be afraid to use it, because we'll be too close to their shell.

  "I wish we could have brought Roger along," he continued, savagely, to Bradley. "But you were right, of course-it'd be altogether too much like a rabbit capturing a wildcat. My Lewiston's about done right now, and there can't be much left of yours-what he'd do to us would be a sin and a shame."

  Now at the great wall, the two men heaved mightily upon a lever, the gate of the emergency port swung slowly open, and they entered the miniature cruiser of the void. Costigan, familiar with the mechanism of the craft from careful study from his prison cell, manipulated the controls. Through gate after massive gate they went, until finally they were out in open space, shooting towards distant Tellus at the maximum acceleration of which their small craft was capable.

  Costigan cut the other two phones out of circuit and spoke, his attention fixed upon some extremely distant point.

  "Samms!" he called sharply. "Costigan. We're out ... all right ... yes ... sure ... absolutely ... you tell 'em" Sammy, I've got company here."

  Through the sound-discs of their helmets the girl and the captain had heard Costigan's share of the conversation. Bradley stared at his erstwhile first officer in amazement, and even Clio had often heard that mighty, half-mythical name. Surely that bewildering young man must rank high, to speak so familiarly to Virgil Sammy, the all-powerful head of the space-pervading Service of the Triplanetary League!

  "You've turned in a general call-out," Bradley stared, rather than asked.

  "Long ago-I've been in touch right along," Costigan answered. "Now that they know what to look for and know that ether-wave detectors are useless, they can find it. Every vessel in seven sectors, clear down to the scout patrols, is concentrating on this point, and the call is out for all battleships and cruisers afloat. There are enough operatives out there with ultra-waves to locate that globe, and once they spot it they'll point it out to all the other vessels."

  "But how about the other prisoners?" asked the girl. "they'll be killed" won't they?"

  "Hard telling," Costigan shrugged. "Depends on how things turn out. We lack a lot of being safe ourselves yet."

  "What's worrying me mostly is our own chance," Bradley assented. "They will chase us, of course."

  "Sure, and they'll have more speed than we have. Depends on how far away the nearest Triplanetary vessels are. But we've done everything we can do, for now."

  Silence fell, and Costigan cut in Clio's phone and came over to the seat upon which she was reclining, white and stricken-worn out by the horrible and terrifying ordeals of the last few hours. As he seated himself beside her she blushed vividly, but her deep blue eyes met his grey ones steadily.

  "Clio, I . ..we... you ... that is," he flushed hotly and stopped. This secret agent, whose clear, keen brain no physical danger could cloud; who had proved over and over again that he was never at a loss in any emergency, however desperate-this quick-witted officer floundered in embarrassment like any schoolboy; but continued, doggedly: "I'm afraid that I gave myself away back there, but ..."

  "We gave ourselves away, you mean," she filled in the pause. "I did my share, but I won't hold you to it if you don't want-but I know that you love me, Conway!"

  "Love you!" the man groaned, his face lined and hard, his whole body rigid. "That doesn't half tell it, Clio. You don't need to hold me-I'm held for life. There never was a woman who meant anything to me before, and there never will be another. You're the only woman that ever existed. It isn't that. Can't you see that it's impossible?"

  "Of course I can't-it isn't impossible at all." She released her shields, four hands met and tightly clasped, and her low voice thrilled with feeling as she went on: "You love me and I love you. That is all that matters."

  "I wish it were," Costigan returned bitterly, "but you don't know what you'd be letting yourself in for. It's who and what you are and who and what I am that's griping me. You, Clio Marsden, Curtis Marsden's daughter. Nineteen years old. You think you've been places and done things. You haven't. You haven't seen or done anything-you don't know what it's all about. And whom am I to love a girl like you? A homeless space hound who hasn't been on any planet three weeks in three years. A hard-boiled egg. A trouble-shooter and a brawler by instinct and training. A sp ..." he bit off the word and went on quickly: "Why, you don't know me at all, and there's a lot of me that you never will know-that I can't let you know! You'd better lay off me, girl" while you can. It'll be best for you" believe me."

  "But I can't, Conway, and neither can you," the girl answered softly, a glorious light in her eyes. "It's too late for that. On the ship it was just another of those things, but since then we've come really to know each other, and we're sunk. The situation is o
ut of control, and we both know it-and neither of us would change it if we could, and you know that, too. I don't know very much, I admit, but I do know what you thought you'd have to keep from me, and I admire you all the more for it. We all honor the Service, Conway dearest-it is only you men who have made and are keeping the Three Planets fit places to live in-and I know that any one of Virgil Samms' assistants would have to be a man in a thousand million ..."

  "What makes you think that?" he demanded sharply. "You told me so yourself, indirectly. Who else in the three worlds could possibly call him "Sammy?" You are hard" of course, but you must be so-and I never did like soft men, anyway. And you brawl in a good cause. You are very much a man, my Conway; a real" real man, and I love you! Now, if they catch us, all right-we'll die together" at least!" she finished, intensely.

  "You're right, sweetheart, of course," he admitted. "I don't believe that I could really let you let me go, even though I know you ought tp," and their hands locked together even more firmly than before. "If we ever get out of this jam I'm going to kiss you, but this is no time to be taking off your helmet. In fact, I'm taking too many chances with you in keeping your shields off. Snap 'em on again-they ought to be getting fairly close by this time."

  Hands released and armor again tight, Costigan went over to join Bradley at the control board.

  "How are they coming, Captain?" he asked.

  "Not so good. Quite a ways off yet. At least an hour" I'd say, before a cruiser can get within range."

  "I'll see if I can locate any of the pirates chasing us. If I do it'll be by accident; this little spy-ray isn't good for much except close work. I'm afraid the first warning we'll have will be when they take hold of us with a tractor or spear us with a needle. Probably a beam, though; this is one of their emergency lifeboats and they wouldn't want to destroy it unless they have to. Also, I imagine that Roger wants us alive pretty badly. He has unfinished business with all three of us, and I can well believe that his "not particularly pleasant extinction" will be even less so after the way we rooked him."