(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "Affirmative," the psiman said. "A store ship docked there twenty hours before the attack. Among other things, it left newspapers containing the article."

  "Very good," I said calmly. "Send a general order to suspend all future activity with the planted releases. Send it by psimen only, no mention on any other Naval signaling equipment, there's a good chance now it might be 'overheard'."

  I strolled out slowly, in command of the situation. Keeping my face turned away so they couldn't see the cold sweat.

  It was a fast run to Udrydde where my billionaire's yacht, the Eldorado, was waiting. The dockyard commander showed me the ship, and made a noble effort to control his curiosity. I took a sadistic revenge on the Navy by not telling him a word about my mission. After checking out the controls and special apparatus with the technicians, I cleared the ship. There was a tape in the automatic navigator that would put me on the course mentioned in all the articles, just a press of a button and I would be on my way. I pressed the button.

  It was a beautiful ship, and the dockyard had been lavish with their attention to detail. From bow to rear tubes she was plated in pure gold. There are other metals with a higher albedo, but none that give a richer effect. All the fittings, inside and out, were either machine-turned or plated. All this work could not have been done in the time allotted, the Navy must have adapted a luxury yacht to my needs.

  Everything was ready. Either Pepe would make his move—or I would sail on to my billionaire's paradise planet. If that happened, it would be best if I stayed there.

  Now that I was in space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift.

  "Hold on there, sailor," I said to myself. Using my best admiral's voice. "Nothing has changed. It's still the best and only plan possible under the circumstances."

  Was it? Could I be sure that Pepe, flying his mountain of a ship and eating Navy rations, would be interested in some of the comforts and luxuries of life? Or if the luxuries didn't catch his eye, would he be interested in the planetary homesteading gear? I had loaded the cards with all the things he might want, and planted the information where he could get it. He had the bait now—but would he grab the hook?

  I couldn't tell. And I could work myself into a neurotic state if I kept running through the worry cycle. It took an effort to concentrate on anything else, but it had to be made. The next four days passed very slowly.

  When the alarm blew off, all I felt was an intense sensation of relief. I might be dead and blasted to dust in the next few minutes, but that didn't seem to make much difference.

  Pepe had swallowed the bait. There was only one ship in the galaxy that could knock back a blip that big at such a distance. It was closing last, using the raw energy of the battleship engines for a headlong approach. My ship bucked a bit as the tug-beams locked on at maximum distance. The radio bleeped at me for attention at the same time. I waited as long as I dared, then flipped it on. The voice boomed out.

  "... That you are under the guns of a warship! Don't attempt to run, signal, take evasive action, or in any other way...."

  "Who are you—and what the devil do you want?" I spluttered into the mike. I had my scanner on, so they could see me, but my own screen stayed dark. They weren't sending any picture. In a way it made my act easier, I just played to an unseen audience. They could see the rich cut of my clothes, the luxurious cabin behind me. Of course they couldn't see my hands.

  "It doesn't matter who we are," the radio boomed again. "Just obey orders if you care to live. Stay away from the controls until we have tied on, then do exactly as I say."

  There were two distant clangs as magnetic grapples hit the hull. A little later the ship lurched, drawn home against the battleship. I let my eyes roll in fear, looking around for a way to escape—and taking a peek at the outside scanners. The yacht was flush against the space-filling bulk of the other ship. I pressed the button that sent the torch-wielding robot on his way.

  "Now let me tell you something," I snapped into the mike, wiping away the worried billionaire expression. "First I'll repeat your own warning—obey orders if you want to live. I'll show you why——"

  When I threw the big switch a carefully worked out sequence took place. First, of course, the hull was magnetized and the bombs fused. A light blinked as the scanner in the cabin turned off, and the one in the generator room came on. I checked the monitor screen to make sure, then started into the spacesuit. It had to be done fast, at the same time it was necessary to talk naturally. They must still think of me as sitting in the control room.

  "That's the ship's generators you're looking at," I said. "Ninety-eight per cent of their output is now feeding into coils that make an electromagnet of this ship's hull. You will find it very hard to separate us. And I would advise you not to try."

  The suit was on, and I kept the running chatter up through the mike in the helmet, relaying to the ship's transmitter. The scene in the monitor receiver changed.

  "You are now looking at a hydrogen bomb that is primed and aware of the magnetic field holding our ships together. It will, of course, go off if you try to pull away."

  I grabbed up the monitor receiver and ran towards the air lock.

  "This is a different bomb now," I said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on the slowly opening outer door. "This one has receptors on the hull. Attempt to destroy any part of this ship, or even gain entry to it, and this one will detonate."

  I was in space now, leaping across to the gigantic wall of the other ship.

  "What do you want?" These were the first words Pepe had spoken since his first threats.

  "I want to talk to you, arrange a deal. Something that would be profitable for both of us. But let me first show you the rest of the bombs, so you won't get any strange ideas about co-operating."

  Of course I had to show him the rest of the bombs, there was no getting out of it. The scanners in the ship were following a planned program. I made light talk about all my massive armament that would carry us both to perdition, while I climbed through the hole in the battleship's hull. There was no armor or warning devices at this spot, it had been chosen carefully from the blueprints.

  "Yeah, yeah ... I take your word for it, you're a flying bomb. So stop with this roving reporter bit and tell me what you have in mind."

  This time I didn't answer him, because I was running and panting like a dog, and had the mike turned off. Just ahead, if the blueprints were right, was the door to the control room. Pepe should be there.

  I stepped through, gun out, and pointed it at the back of his head. Angelina stood next to him, looking at the screen.

  "The game's over," I said. "Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight."

  "What do you mean," he said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught wise first. She spun around and pointed.

  "He's here!"

  They both stared, gaped at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared.

  "You're under arrest, crime-king," I told him. "And your girl friend."

  Angelina rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or faked, I didn't care. I kept the gun on Pepe's pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall.

  "What ... what will happen now?" He quavered the question. His pouchy jaws shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. I was not impressed by his acting since I could clearly remember the dead men floating in space. He stumbled over to a chair, half dropping into it.

  "Will they do anything to me?" Angelina asked. Her eyes were open now.

  "I have no idea of what will happen to you," I told her truthfully. "That is up to the courts to decide."

  "But he made me do all those things," she wailed. She was young, dark and beautiful, the tears did nothing to spoil this.

  Pepe dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders sh
ook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him.

  "Sit up, Pepe. I find it very hard to believe that you are crying. There are some Naval ships on the way now, the automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. I'm sure they'll be glad to see the man who...."

  "Don't let them take me, please!" Angelina was on her feet now, her back pressed to the wall. "They'll put me in prison, do things to my mind!" She shrunk away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Pepe, not wanting to have my eyes off him for an instant.

  "There's nothing I can do," I told her. I glanced her way and a small door was swinging open and she was gone.

  "Don't try to run," I shouted after her, "it can't do any good!"

  Pepe made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now and his face was dry of tears. In fact he was laughing, not crying.

  "So she caught you, too, Mr. Wise-cop, poor little Angelina with the soft eyes." He broke down again, shaking with laughter.

  "What do you mean," I growled.

  "Don't you catch yet? The story she told you was true—except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the battleship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, played me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hating myself and happy at the same time. Well—I'm glad now it's over. At least I gave her a chance to get away, I owe her that much. Though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocence act!"

  The cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me. "You're lying," I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it.

  "Sorry. That's the way it is. Your brain-boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth anyway. There's no point in lying now."

  "We'll search the ship, she can't hide for long."

  "She won't have to," Pepe said. "There's a fast scout we picked up, stowed in one of the holds. That must be it leaving now." We could feel the vibration, distantly through the floor.

  "The Navy will get her," I told him, with far more conviction than I felt.

  "Maybe," he said, suddenly slumped and tired, no longer laughing. "Maybe they will. But I gave her her chance. It is all over for me now, but she knows that I loved her to the end." He bared his teeth in sudden pain. "Not that she will care in the slightest."

  I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Navy ships pulled up and their boots stamped outside. I had captured my battleship and the raids were over. And I couldn't be blamed if the girl had slipped away. If she evaded the Navy ships, that was their fault, not mine.

  I had my victory all right.

  Then why did it taste like ashes in my mouth?

  It's a big galaxy, but it wasn't going to be big enough to hide Angelina now. I can be conned once—but only once. The next time we met things were going to be very different.

  THE END

  * * *

  Contents

  WALLS OF ACID

  BY HENRY HASSE

  Five millenniums have passed since the loathsome Termans were eliminated from the world of Diskra.... But what of the other planets?

  Braanol stirred, throbbed sluggishly once, then lay quiescent as his mental self surged up from the deeps of non-entity. And gradually he came to know that someone had entered the room. His room, far beneath the city.

  Now he could feel the vibra-currents through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought-life-force set his every convolution to pulsing.

  "To be once more aware! O gloriously aware!" the thought came fierce and vibrant. "Once more they have wakened me--but how long has it been?" Then curiously: "And what can they want this time?"

  The huge brain was alert now, with a supernal sense of keening. Tentatively he sent out a thought-potential that encompassed the room.

  "They are afraid!" he sensed. "Two have entered here, and they are afraid of me. I shall remedy that!"

  Braanol lowered his thought-potential to one-eighth of one magnitude, and felt his mind contact theirs. "Approach, my children," he said kindly. "You have nothing to fear from me! I take it you are the imperial messengers sent by her Supreme Magnificence, the Empress Alaazar?"

  He felt the fright slip from their minds. But they were startled.

  "The Empress Uldulla reigns now, fourth in the Royal line," came the thought. "Empress Alaazar died long ago!"

  "I am truly grieved!" Braanol flashed to them. "Alaazar--may she rest in peace--did not neglect me! How well I remember her interest in the stories I could tell, stories of the Diskra of old when we sent men out to glorious adventures on the other planets! Aye! Five millenniums ago it was that we achieved space travel. In those days--"

  Braanol ceased in his reminiscences, aware that these two were trying to get their thoughts through to him.

  "That is why we have come! The Empress Uldulla, too, wishes a story. The story of the first space-flight from Diskra, and the events that brought it about. And of how you--"

  "Aye! Of how I came to be as you see me now! I shall be delighted, my children, to tell it again. But first, prepare the trans-telector so that it may be recorded faithfully."

  Braanol directed them to a machine on the far side of the room, and instructed them as to its operation. Soon the hundreds of tiny coils were humming, and a maze of tubes fed out of the machine, on which would be recorded Braanol's every thought. For a moment he paused, gently swaying, pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale green liquid. Then he began his story.

  * * * * *

  Your Supreme Beneficence! When the imperial messengers came to me, bringing the communication with which you deigned to address my decrepit solitude, it was like a glorious ray of light come to illumine the deepening darkness of my declining years!

  It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your Exalted Command. Five millenniums, aye, even more, have passed, since those who were part of that segment of history into which you inquire, have become but drifting dust. Only within the feeble memory of your humblest servant is there any record of it.

  Five millenniums! Aye! That was truly the golden period of our beloved Diskra--not that our period under Your Serene Effulgence is not golden indeed! But in that day all Diskra was under the glorious rule of Palladin. His city on the scarlet shores of our central sea was the wonder of us all. Aye! We had a sea then, where there is now but desert.

  The intelligent planets were three: our own Diskra, of course, fourth from the sun. And nearest the sun, Mirla, that fiery globe, where life apes the quality of our own salamander, existing by necessity near the flames. And second from the sun Venia, the cloud-capped world, where life exalts the virtues of the fish. Of the third planet, Terra, we then knew little.

  Our cities faced the sun in those days, towering in polychromatic splendor. Height was no obstacle then, for we had wings--wings! Think of it, O Beneficence! No need had we of clumsy, metal vessels. But all that has changed. Now no whirr of wings disturbs the air, and our formi-tectural splendors rise within. The history of this change is what Your Supreme Exaltation would know. This, then, is the record.

  With the rule of Palladin was born the age of science, not so much due to the intellects of that day, as through the driving urge of ultimate necessity. For Palladin had a brother, Thid. He was unfortunately a mutant. Whereas our features were delicate and quite regular, Thid's were gross and stamped with power. His royal head was too large and cumbersome, and instead of our slender waists, he was almost asymmetrical in shape. In short--no member of our fairer, royal sex could look upon him with aught but horror. And it was because of this that he was dietetically conditioned for the realm of science.

  It was a mistake. As the years passed, the loneliness of his virtual exile tended to derange Thid's prodigious mind! Aye, prodigious--and dangerous in his manic-depressive state. Then one day Palladin called an emergency meeting of
the Inner Council. I, Braanol, was a member of that Council.

  "It has come to my attention," Palladin said, "that Thid has been carrying on certain dangerous experiments! Experiments of a sort that could well be inimical to us--to our very existence!"

  We well knew to what Palladin referred. But Thid was his brother, one of the Imperial ones. No one dared speak.

  "Why was I not made aware of it sooner?" Palladin demanded sternly. "You, Braanol! You knew of it?"

  "Yes, your majesty." I was frightened. "I beg to explain--I have tried to dissuade him--"

  Palladin's visage became less stern, as though he understood our reluctance in this matter. "True," he said. "Thid is my brother. He must be mad! And I tell you now: if he has gone as far in this experiment as I suspect, I shall not hesitate to apply the only remedy dictated by efficiency--death! Have him brought to me at once."

  But Thid was nowhere to be found. He had learned of Palladin's anger, and had fled into the Diskran desert where the abhorred Termans dwelt in myriads despite all our effort to eradicate them. These Termans were soft-bodied, subterranean creatures with an obstinate life-force, and we had long realized that they might one day be a menace to us.

  So into the desert our Thid fled, spurred by the knowledge that his life was forfeit. For a time, he was naturally thought dead. Who could survive unprotected the extremes of heat and cold? And if by a miracle he triumphed over the elements, how survive the appalling enmity of the Termans, whose rudimentary brains conceived no mercy?

  Nevertheless, startling bits of rumor began to drift in to our city; rumors that Thid had been seen, leading hordes of gigantic Termans across the desert wastes!

  We laughed, of course, for caravaneers are ever the prey of sun mirages, and legends are dear to their souls. A legend was begun concerning Thid. Arriving caravans vied with each other in fantastic reports. Some had seen him with immense hordes of the repulsive Termans. Still others had discovered subterranean labyrinths being built by the Termans under his command, and had barely escaped with their lives. And still we laughed, blessed by the constant climate on the shores of our sea, and the beneficent rule of our Exalted Palladin.