The Classic Sci-Fi Collection

by Ayn Rand

  “The world depends upon you, Lee. The invisible rays that destroyed every living thing from China to Australia—one-fifth of the human race—will fall upon the eastern seaboard of America when the moon is full again. That has been the gist of Axelson’s repeated communications.

  “We shall look to you to return, either with the arch-enemy of the human race as your prisoner, or with the good news that mankind has been set free from the menace that overhangs it.

  “God bless you, my boy!” The President of the United States of the World gripped Nat’s hand and stepped down the ladder that led from the landing-stage of the great interplanetary space-ship.

  * * *

  The immense landing-field reserved for the ships of the Interplanetary Line was situated a thousand feet above the heart of New York City, in Westchester County. It was a flat space set on the top of five great towers, strewn with electrified sand, whose glow had the property of dispersing the sea fogs. There, at rest upon what resembled nothing so much as iron claws, the long gray shape of the vacuum flyer bulked.

  Nat sneezed as he watched the operations of his men, for the common cold, or coryza, seemed likely to be the last of the germ diseases that would yield to medical science, and he had caught a bad one in the Capitol, while listening to the debate in the Senate upon the threat to humanity. And it was cold on the landing-stage, in contrast to the perpetual summer of the glass-roofed city below.

  But Nat forgot the cold as he watched the preparations for the ship’s departure. Neon and nitrogen gas were being pumped under pressure into the outer shell, where a minute charge of leucon, the newly discovered element that helped to counteract gravitation, combined with them to provide the power that would lift the vessel above the regions of the stratosphere.

  In the low roof-buildings that surrounded the stage was a scene of tremendous activity. The selenium discs were flashing signals, and the radio receivers were shouting the late news; on the great power boards dials and light signals stood out in the glow of the amylite tubes. On a rotary stage a thousand feet above the ship a giant searchlight, visible for a thousand miles, moved its shaft of dazzling luminosity across the heavens.

  Now the spar-aluminite outer skin of the ship grew bright with the red neon glare. Another ship, from China, dropped slowly to its stage near by, and the unloaders swarmed about the pneumatic tubes to receive the mail. The teleradio was shouting news of a failure of the Manchurian wheat crop. Nat’s chief officer, a short cockney named Brent, came up to him.

  “Ready to start, Sir,” he said.

  * * *

  Nat turned to him. “Your orders are clear?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Send Benson here.”

  “I’m here, Sir.” Benson, the ray-gunner in charge of the battery that comprised the vessel’s armament, a lean Yankee from Connecticut, stepped forward.

  “You know your orders, Benson? Axelson has seized the Moon and the gold-mines there. He’s planning to obliterate the Earth. We’ve got to go in like mad dogs and shoot to kill. No matter if we kill every living thing there, even our own people who are inmates of the Moon’s penal settlement, we’ve got to account for Axelson.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “We can’t guess how he got those gold-ships that returned with neon and argon for the Moon colonists. But he mustn’t get us. Let the men understand that. That’s all.”

  “Very good, Sir.”

  The teleradio suddenly began to splutter: A-A-A, it called. And instantly every sound ceased about the landing-stage. For that was the call of Axelson, somewhere upon the Moon.

  “Axelson speaking. At the next full moon all the American Province of the World Federation will be annihilated, as the Chinese Province was at the last. There’s no hope for you, good people. Send out your vacuum liners. I can use a few more of them. Within six months your world will be depopulated, unless you flash me the signal of surrender.”

  Would the proud old Earth have to come to that? Daily those ominous threats had been repeated, until popular fears had become frenzy. And Nat was being sent out as a last hope. If he failed, there would be nothing but surrender to this man, armed with a super-force that enabled him to lay waste the Earth from the Moon.

  Within one hour, those invisible, death-dealing rays had destroyed everything that inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon. The ray with which the liner was equipped was a mere toy in comparison. It would kill at no more than 500 miles, and its action was quite different.

  As a prelude to Earth’s surrender, Axelson demanded that World President Stark and a score of other dignitaries should depart for the Moon as hostages. Every ray fortress in the world was to be dismantled, every treasury was to send its gold to be piled up in a great pyramid on the New York landing-stage. The Earth was to acknowledge Axelson as its supreme master.

  * * *

  The iron claws were turning with a screwlike motion, extending themselves, and slowly raising the interplanetary vessel until she looked like a great metal fish with metal legs ending with suckerlike disks. But already she was floating free as the softly purring engines held her in equipoise. Nat climbed the short ladder that led to her deck. Brent came up to him again.

  “That teleradio message from Axelson—” he began.

  “Yes?” Nat snapped out.

  “I don’t believe it came from the Moon at all.”

  “You don’t? You think it’s somebody playing a hoax on Earth? You think that wiping out of China was just an Earth-joke?”

  “No, Sir.” Brent stood steady under his superior’s sarcasm. “But I was chief teleradio operator at Greenwich before being promoted to the Province of America. And what they don’t know at Greenwich they don’t know anywhere.”

  Brent spoke with that self-assurance of the born cockney that even the centuries had failed to remove, though they had removed the cockney accent.

  “Well, Brent?”

  “I was with the chief electrician in the receiving station when Axelson was radioing last week. And I noticed that the waves of sound were under a slight Doppler effect. With the immense magnification necessary for transmitting from the Moon, such deflection might be construed as a mere fan-like extension. But there was ten times the magnification one would expect from the Moon; and I calculated that those sound-waves were shifted somewhere.”

  “Then what’s your theory, Brent?”

  “Those sounds come from another planet. Somewhere on the Moon there’s an intercepting and re-transmitting plant. Axelson is deflecting his rays to give the impression that he’s on the Moon, and to lure our ships there.”

  “What do you advise?” asked Nat.

  “I don’t know, Sir.”

  “Neither do I. Set your course Moonward, and tell Mr. Benson to keep his eyes peeled.”

  * * *

  The Moon Colony, discovered in 1976, when Kramer, of Baltimore, first proved the practicability of mixing neon with the inert new gas, leucon, and so conquering gravitation, had proved to be just what it had been suspected of being—a desiccated, airless desolation. Nevertheless, within the depths of the craters a certain amount of the Moon’s ancient atmosphere still lingered, sufficient to sustain life for the queer troglodytes, with enormous lung-boxes, who survived there, browsing like beasts upon the stunted, aloe-like vegetation.

  Half man, half ape, and very much unlike either, these vestiges of a species on a ruined globe had proved tractable and amenable to discipline. They had become the laborers of the convict settlement that had sprung up on the Moon.

  Thither all those who had opposed the establishment of the World Federation, together with all persons convicted for the fourth time of a felony, had been transported, to superintend the efforts of these dumb, unhuman Moon dwellers. For it had been discovered that the Moon craters were extraordinarily rich in gold, and gold was still the medium of exchange on Earth.

  To supplement the vestigial atmosphere, huge stations had been set up, which extracted the oxygen from the s
ubterranean waters five miles below the Moon’s crust, and recombined it with the nitrogen with which the surface layer was impregnated, thus creating an atmosphere which was pumped to the workers.

  Then a curious discovery had been made. It was impossible for human beings to exist without the addition of those elements existing in the air in minute quantities—neon, krypton, and argon. And the ships that brought the gold bars back from the Moon had conveyed these gaseous elements there.

  * * *

  The droning of the sixteen atomic motors grew louder, and mingled with the hum of gyroscopes. The ladder was drawn up and the port hole sealed. On the enclosed bridge Nat threw the switch of durobronze that released the non-conducting shutter which gave play to the sixteen great magnets. Swiftly the great ship shot forward into the air. The droning of the motors became a shrill whine, and then, growing too shrill for human ears to follow it, gave place to silence.

  Nat set the speed lever to five hundred miles an hour, the utmost that had been found possible in passing through the earth’s atmosphere, owing to the resistance, which tended to heat the vessel and damage the delicate atomic engines. As soon as the ether was reached, the speed would be increased to ten or twelve thousand. That meant a twenty-two hour run to the Moon Colony—about the time usually taken.

  He pressed a lever, which set bells ringing in all parts of the ship. By means of a complicated mechanism, the air was exhausted from each compartment in turn, and then replaced, and as the bells rang, the men at work trooped out of these compartments consecutively. This had been originated for the purpose of destroying any life dangerous to man that might unwittingly have been imported from the Moon, but on one occasion it had resulted in the discovery of a stowaway.

  Then Nat descended the bridge to the upper deck. Here, on a platform, were the two batteries of three ray-guns apiece, mounted on swivels, and firing in any direction on the port and starboard sides respectively. The guns were enclosed in a thin sheath of osmium, through which the lethal rays penetrated unchanged; about them, thick shields of lead protected the gunners.

  He talked with Benson for a while. “Don’t let Axelson get the jump on you,” he said. “Be on the alert every moment.” The gunners, keen-looking men, graduates from the Annapolis gunnery school, grinned and nodded. They were proud of their trade and its traditions; Nat felt that the vessel was safe in their hands.

  The chief mate appeared at the head of the companion, accompanied by a girl. “Stowaway, Sir,” he reported laconically. “She tumbled out of the repair shop annex when we let out the air!”

  * * *

  Nat stared at her in consternation, and the girl stared back at him. She was a very pretty girl, hardly more than twenty-two or three, attired in a businesslike costume consisting of a leather jacket, knickers, and the black spiral puttees that had come into style in the past decade. She came forward unabashed.

  “Well, who are you?” snapped Nat.

  “Madge Dawes, of the Universal News Syndicate,” she answered, laughing.

  “The devil!” muttered Nat. “You people think you run the World Federation since you got President Stark elected.”

  “We certainly do,” replied the girl, still laughing.

  “Well, you don’t run this ship,” said Nat. “How would you like a long parachute drop back to Earth?”

  “Don’t be foolish, my dear man,” said Madge. “Don’t you know you’ll get wrinkles if you scowl like that? Smile! Ah, that’s better. Now, honestly, Cap we just had to get the jump on everybody else in interviewing Axelson. It means such a lot to me.”

  Pouts succeeded smiles. “You’re not going to be cross about it, are you?” she pleaded.

  “Do you realize the risk you’re running, young woman?” Nat demanded. “Are you aware that our chances of ever getting back to Earth are smaller than you ought to have dreamed of taking?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” the girl responded. “And now that we’re friends again, would you mind asking the steward to get me something to eat? I’ve been cooped up in that room downstairs for fifteen hours, and I’m simply starving.”

  Nat shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. He turned to the chief mate. “Take Miss Dawes down to the saloon and see that Wang Ling supplies her with a good meal,” he ordered. “And put her in the Admiral’s cabin. That good enough for you?” he asked satirically.

  “Oh that’ll be fine,” answered the girl enthusiastically. “And I shall rely on you to keep me posted about everything that’s going on. And a little later I’m going to take X-ray photographs of you and all these men.” She smiled at the grinning gunners. “That’s the new fad, you know, and we’re going to offer prizes for the best developed skeletons in the American Province, and pick a King and Queen of Beauty!”

  * * *

  “A radio, Sir!”

  Nat, who had snatched a brief interval of sleep, started up as the man on duty handed him the message. The vessel had been constantly in communication with Earth during her voyage, now nearing completion, but the dreaded A-A-A that prefaced this message told Nat that it came from Axelson.

  “Congratulations on your attempt,” the message ran, “I have watched your career with the greatest interest, Lee, through the medium of such scraps of information as I have been able to pick up on the Moon. When you are my guest to-morrow I shall hope to be able to offer you a high post in the new World Government that I am planning to establish. I need good men. Fraternally, the Black Caesar.”

  Nat whirled about. Madge Dawes was standing behind him, trying to read the message over his shoulder.

  “Spying, eh?” said Nat bitterly.

  “My dear man, isn’t that my business?”

  “Well, read this, then,” said Nat, handing her the message. “You’re likely to repent this crazy trick of yours before we get much farther.”

  And he pointed to the cosmic-ray skiagraph of the Moon on the curved glass dome overhead. They were approaching the satellite rapidly. It filled the whole dome, the craters great black hollows, the mountains standing out clearly. Beneath the dome were the radium apparatus that emitted the rays by which the satellite was photographed cinematographically, and the gyroscope steering apparatus by which the ship’s course was directed.

  Suddenly a buzzer sounded a warning. Nat sprang to the tube.

  “Gravitational interference X40, gyroscopic aberrancy one minute 29,” he called. “Discharge static electricity from hull. Mr. Benson, stand by.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Madge.

  “It means I shall be obliged if you’ll abstain from speaking to the man at the controls,” snapped Nat.

  “And what’s that?” cried Madge in a shriller voice, pointing upward.

  * * *

  Across the patterned surface of the Moon, shown on the skiagraph, a black, cigar-shaped form was passing. It looked like one of the old-fashioned dirigibles, and the speed with which it moved was evident from the fact that it was perceptibly traversing the Moon’s surface. Perhaps it was travelling at the rate of fifty thousand miles an hour.

  Brent, the chief officer, burst up the companion. His face was livid.

  “Black ship approaching us from the Moon, Sir,” he stammered. “Benson’s training his guns, but it must be twenty thousands miles away.”

  “Yes, even our ray-guns won’t shoot that distance,” answered Nat. “Tell Benson to keep his guns trained as well as he can, and open fire at five hundred.”

  Brent disappeared. Madge and Nat were alone on the bridge. Nat was shouting incomprehensible orders down the tube. He stopped and looked up. The shadow of the approaching ship had crossed the Moon’s disk and disappeared.

  “Well, young lady, I think your goose is cooked,” said Nat. “If I’m not mistaken, that ship is Axelson’s, and he’s on his way to knock us galley-west. And now oblige me by leaving the bridge.”

  “I think he’s a perfectly delightful character, to judge from that message he sent you,” answered Madge, “and—�
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  Brent appeared again. “Triangulation shows ten thousand miles, Sir,” he informed Nat.

  “Take control,” said Nat. “Keep on the gyroscopic course, allowing for aberrancy, and make for the Crater of Pytho. I’ll take command of the guns.” He hurried down the companion, with Madge at his heels.

  * * *

  The gunners stood by the ray-guns, three at each. Benson perched on a revolving stool above the batteries. He was watching a periscopic instrument that connected with the bridge dome by means of a tube, a flat mirror in front of him showing all points of the compass. At one edge the shadow of the black ship was creeping slowly forward.

  “Eight thousand miles, Sir,” he told Nat. “One thousand is our extreme range. And it looks as if she’s making for our blind spot overhead.”

  Nat stepped to the speaking-tube. “Try to ram her,” he called up to Brent. “We’ll open with all guns, pointing forward.”

  “Very good, Sir,” the Cockney called back.

  The black shadow was now nearly in the centre of the mirror. It moved upward, vanished. Suddenly the atomic motors began wheezing again. The wheeze became a whine, a drone.

  “We’ve dropped to two thousand miles an hour, Sir,” called Brent.

  Nat leaped for the companion. As he reached the top he could hear the teleradio apparatus in the wireless room overhead begin to chatter:

  “A-A-A. Don’t try to interfere. Am taking you to the Crater of Pytho. Shall renew my offer there. Any resistance will be fatal. Axelson.”

  And suddenly the droning of the motors became a whine again, then silence. Nat stared at the instrument-board and uttered a cry.

  “What’s the matter?” demanded Madge.