Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Dirk helped him to his feet, where he tottered unsteadily.

  “Feel all right?” Dirk asked.

  Jan looked about at the fallen robots in astonishment. “How—”

  “No question yet,” Dirk said. “The most important thing is have you still got the other rod like this?” He showed Jan the silvery weapon with which he had knocked out the Martian robots.

  Jan fumbled uncertainly at his waist and finally pulled out the other weapon. Rapidly, Dirk explained its operation to him, then he glanced up and down the corridor.

  “We’d better head back the way we came,” he decided. “No point in going where they were taking us.”

  THEY had not traveled fifty feet down the corridor when they heard the ominous tramp of heavy feet booming toward them. Dirk halted and crouched against the wall. Suddenly, from the direction in which they were heading, a double column of robots appeared. They were emerging from an intersection of the corridor and marching directly for them, expressionless faces and grimly methodical stride, terrifying in their purposeful concentration.

  Dirk held his weapon ready and tersely ordered Jan to do the same. Against the overwhelming numbers they would have little chance, but all they could do was fight. He was on the verge of giving Jan the signal to start firing when Lee grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t!” she cried tensely.

  “Are you crazy?” he demanded. “Jan! Cut loose.”

  He wheeled toward the marching column of robots, his hand beginning to close on the handle of the slim weapon, when he noticed what Lee had seen from a distance.

  The robots were not coming for them, they were striding down the center of the corridor paying no attention to the three humans crouched against the wall.

  “Don’t you see?” Lee whispered. “They’re on some other inspection or duty. They won’t bother us unless they have been definitely sent after us. And that isn’t likely this soon.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Dirk muttered.

  The first of the robot column was abreast of them, but they passed by close enough to touch, without even turning their heads. Hardly daring to breathe Dirk flattered himself against the wall as the entire column filed past, striding jerkily on down the corridor, to disappear around a corner a moment later.

  “That’s a real break,” Dirk breathed. “We’re safe until someone of intelligence discovers those knocked-out guards.”

  They continued on, passing several columns of robots within a few minutes. Dirk glanced uneasily about,

  “This seems to be the main highway,” he muttered. “Let’s look for a side street.”

  They turned off at the next archway and after following this corridor for a few hundred feet they came to an open door. After a cautious glance into the room it led to, Dirk waved for Lee and Jan to follow him. Once inside he closed the door and set the time lock which fastened it.

  Then he turned to inspect the quarters in which they had taken refuge. For an instant he couldn’t believe his eyes as he gazed bewilderedly from wall to wall. The sight before him was not the most amazing he had seen in this Martian city, but it was easily the most unexpected.

  “WHAT’S the matter?” Lee asked gazing anxiously at him.

  Dirk was too busy drinking in the scene to answer. The walls of the long wide room were lined with weapons and, in special cases and on benches and racks in the center of the room were more weapons.

  But these were the weapons of 1948!

  There was the improved Garand rifle next to the old model Springfield. Bayonets and small arms were also in evidence. Under each weapon was a tiny glazed card with a small symbol stamped on it. In one corner of the room was a trench mortar, and a French 75 bulked largely in the opposite corner. Several glassed cases of hand grenades, tear gas bombs and other smaller implements were lined against the wall.

  It was obviously some sort of museum or trophy room. From the small store of arms on Earth at the time of the double invasion, the Martians must have selected these as representative of the civilization they were usurping.

  Dirk felt a strange nostalgia as his eyes traveled over the weapons, symbols in a sense, of the world from which he had been so abruptly transported.

  He was just opening his mouth to explain the display to Jan and Lee, when a sudden thunderous sound crashed through the room. Dirk could feel the floor tremble under the force of the impact.

  Lee’s eyes flew to the door.

  “Dirk,” she cried, “it’s breaking in.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Dirk Gives Battle

  DIRK wheeled, saw at a glance that Lee was not mistaken. The door, massive and solid, was already hanging queerly at the bottom. With every terrible blow it weakened perceptibly.

  That meant that the robot guards they had knocked out of commission had been discovered, that all of the robots had probably been put to the task of searching down the fugitives.

  “What can we do?” Lee asked quietly-

  Jan grabbed Dirk’s arm and pulled him around.

  “Look,” he yelled, “door, another door.”

  Dirk followed Jan’s pointing finger and saw another door in the opposite wall. It was closed, but it offered a chance.

  “I stay,” Jan said earnestly. “It will take them a little time to get past me,” he added grimly.

  “No soap,” Dirk snapped. “We all go, or we all stay. Right, Lee?”

  “Right,” Lee said.

  Jan shrugged and stepped to the door that promised them a retreat. One heavy tug and it was open and sunshine poured into the room.

  “Swell,” Dirk snapped, “now we—”

  “Dirk!” Lee screamed.

  Dirk had heard the crash too. He wheeled just as the heavy door fell inward and a half-dozen swiftly moving robots poured into the room.

  He whipped up his silver weapon and, from the corner of his eye, he saw that Jan had done the same. The first three robots spilled to the floor as the deadly, invisible rays destroyed some vital section of their mechanism.[4]

  But dozens more were spilling through the smashed door.

  Dirk swung Lee around and shoved her toward Jan.

  “Get through that door,” he shouted at her.

  “No,” she cried, “I want—”

  “Do what I tell you,” he shouted. He was already springing toward one of the glassed-in cases that housed the grenades. Smashing the glass with his fist he jerked out a grenade, pulled the pin and heaved it straight into the crowded mass of robots fighting their way into the room.

  It exploded with a detonating roar that almost ruptured his eardrums.[5]

  The force of its blast scattered robots like tenpins, smashing them back into the press still trying to jam into the room.

  GRABBING two more grenades Dirk leaped for the door which Jan was still guarding. He hooked an arm about Lee’s waist and jerked her through into the open. Jan was at his heels.

  The robots had methodically reorganized their ranks after the devastating effects of the grenade and now they were storming across the room toward the door through which Dirk and Jan and Lee had escaped.

  As they reached the door Dirk threw the second grenade. Its blast tore a hole in the floor next to the door arch. A rumbling thunderous noise trembled in the air for an instant, then a heavy section of wall caved in as the archway collapsed.

  The robots caught under the sliding section of wall were crushed and mangled into twisted metal frameworks. More important the cave-in had sealed the doorway with tons of practically impassable weight.

  “That gives us a breather for a while,” Dirk muttered gratefully. “Now where do we go from here?”

  They were in an angle formed by the walls of the building. The walls of the structure were a deep red and the building was the largest for as far as they could see. It was obviously the building they had attacked the day previous in the Saturn ship.

  “That puts us in just about the middle of the city,” Dirk decided.

 
They were on the edge of one of the magnificent avenues they had noticed from the air. To their right the land leveled down to a plateau in the middle of which was a solid square building, guarded by double lines of robots. There were no windows or apertures visible in the structure, but on its roof was a huge pinwheel, something like the elevator propeller of an autogyro, whirling at a blinding speed.

  Dirk’s eyes traveled over the building for an instant and then he snapped his fingers suddenly.

  “I’ll bet that’s the plant that distributes energy to the robots,” he said tensely. “Notice how well it’s guarded, yet there’s no way in or out of it. That must be it.”

  The three of them were standing in the shadow of the red structure, intently watching the isolated building in the middle of the plateau. The angle of the wall obstructed their view of the broad avenue and for this reason they didn’t see the mighty, silently rolling Martian tank until it appeared abruptly on top of them. It stopped dead in front of them, trapping them in the corner formed by the walls.

  Dirk shoved Lee behind him and pulled the last grenade from his pocket. With sickening clarity he realized how hopelessly futile would be a grenade against this monster tank.

  It towered easily thirty feet in the air and was over a hundred feet long. Rocket exhausts were built into its sides like gills and its total effect was one of magnificent, irresistible power.

  The sound of a clamp releasing came to them. Then a small door close to the ground swung open.

  Dirk tensed, fingers taut on the pin of the grenade.

  But he never pulled that pin. For the strength flowed from his body in one unnerving instant as he recognized the small figure that stepped from the tank.

  “Morma-Ri!” Lee cried joyously.

  CHAPTER XII

  Morma-Ri to the Rescue

  THE small, serene Lama folded the excited girl in his arms and patted her shoulder gently. Dirk clasped his free hand fervently.

  “How did you get away from the cave?” he demanded. “We’d given you up for dead.”

  “A very great deal of luck is responsible for my being here,” Morma-Ri said calmly. “I was sleeping when the red Martian ship arrived and captured you. A robot creature clambered into the Saturn ship and flew it here. The robots paid not the slightest attention to me at the landing field. Later I found it comparatively simple to appropriate this machine after I had watched it being operated. I came here because I knew it to be the heart and pulse of the city. It was here I hoped to find you, but I was far from optimistic about doing so. Our situation here is extremely precarious, I might say.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Dirk said grimly. He pointed to the demolished wall at their back, and explained the meaning of the sounds which could be heard through it.

  “They’re digging and battering toward us every second,” he concluded. “Robots, hundreds of them, synthetically energized and damn near indestructible. It’s curtains when they break through.”

  “Can we do nothing but wait for them?” Morma-Ri inquired gently.

  “Nothing,” Dirk said, “unless you know some way we can blow up that building down in the plateau.” He pointed down at the square, heavily guarded structure. “That’s the source of the robot energy.”

  Morma-Ri gazed long and thoughtfully at the structure.

  “No,” he said softly, “I know of no method that would accomplish its destruction.”

  Very slowly, he turned and walked toward the monster tank.

  “Where are you going?” Lee asked. “Nowhere, my child,” he answered, smiling. “Nowhere at all.”

  When he reached the door of the tank he turned and faced them. A smile touched the corner of his lips, as if he were enjoying a private joke.

  “My children,” he said quietly, “I do what I must do and I do it without regret!” With a wave of his hand he stepped backward into the tank and slammed the door.

  “Dirk!” Lee screamed. “Stop him!”

  Already the mighty land tank, under the silent impetus of its rocket motors, was moving away.

  “It’s too late to stop him,” Dirk said.

  THE tank wheeled swiftly away from them and, with a sudden roar of power, plunged down the sloping hill that led to the heavily guarded structure, the source of the robot energy.

  Dirk’s arm tightened about Lee’s shoulder as he saw what Morma-Ri had in mind. In a suicidal sacrifice he was going to drive the huge, thundering tank into that building; that building which was the pulse and heart of this entire city.

  If he succeeded . . .

  Then Dirk saw the flashing space ships.

  By the dozens mighty bullet-swift ships were racing to intercept the charging land tank. These ships were different than the ones that Dirk had seen previously. The slim elongated bodies were flanged by two widely flaring fins. Yellow and red in color the ships had the appearance of giant manta rays. In the tapering snout of each ship a rectangular beacon light swung back and forth ominously.

  The huge roaring tank was half-way to its objective, gathering tremendous speed with every foot, when the space ships flashed from the sky above it. From the swinging beacon lights on each ship, rays of blinding light speared out, striking the ground on all sides of the tank with the force of lightning bolts. Smoke poured upward from the ground, ragged craters appeared magically under each stabbing blast, but the mammoth tank charged on, its great treads jerking it through and over the pock-like holes created by the ray weapons of the attacking ships.

  So absorbed was Dirk in the desperate race that he didn’t feel Jan’s tug on his arm until it was repeated a second time.

  “Look,” Jan cried. He was pointing to the section of the wall that had been demolished by the grenade. The robots were almost through the barricade that had been formed by the collapsed archway. In a matter of seconds they would be spilling out on them. Dirk saw this in a desperate glance. He jerked the slim rod weapon from his belt and waited grimly for the first of scale-covered robots to appear.

  Lee’s scream jerked him about.

  Wheeling, Dirk saw that one of the mighty flaring-finned space ships had scored a direct hit on the tank in which Morma-Ri was riding. The long stabbing bolt of white hot energy had speared the front of the tank, melting its metal shell as if it were butter.

  Lee covered her face with her hands and turned blindly to him, sobbing.

  Dirk felt a sick, helpless feeling flooding over him. For Morma-Ri to sacrifice himself was one thing, but to throw his life away futilely, uselessly, accomplishing nothing, that was infinitely worse.

  He tossed a look over his shoulder and saw that the first robots were emerging from the debris and wreckage of the wall. Jan was waiting for them, his slim weapon spraying the silent rays of death across their path.

  DIRK risked one more glance down the sloping plateau and hope flamed in him again. For the mangled, blistered tank was still moving, gathering speed with a thrilling surge of power. Miraculously, Dirk realized, the blast had not killed Morma-Ri nor destroyed the vital mechanism of the tank. Ships were flashing down at it, stabbing at it with vicious bursts, but it roared on, bucking and lurching, gathering momentum like an avalanche.

  It seemed to know a charmed path between the devastating bolts of searing light-heat that flashed from the snouts of the desperately attacking ships.

  It was only yards from its objective, when Jan bellowed hoarsely in his ear.

  “Turn—”

  The rest of the words were drowned out in the drumming rush of feet that sounded behind him. Wheeling, Dirk had only time to throw an arm about Lee before the charging horde of robots swept over them, crushing them to the ground with sheer irresistible weight.

  Jan was down too, the silver weapon knocked from his hand.

  It was the end.

  Dirk struggled desperately against the robot creatures swarming over him, but he knew the fight was hopeless. It was only an instinct that made him lash out again and again at the green ro
bots.

  Then through the confusion of sound beating against him, a vast muffled roar swelled in his ears, driving all other sounds away like chips before a wave. The ground beneath him trembled mightily and from the very skies above terrific electrical detonations churned the atmosphere into a maelstrom of furious turbulence.

  Stunned by the magnitude of the incredible explosion Dirk crouched helplessly, his arm still about Lee’s waist, too dazed to move. There was a heavy weight pressing limply on his back, and when he moved slightly it rolled off and crashed lifelessly to the ground beside him.

  It was a robot. Dazedly, Dirk raised himself on one elbow and glanced around. Strewn about him were robots, dozens and dozens of motionless robots, sprawled in twisted, grotesque heaps.

  Glancing down to the plateau Dirk saw a huge cavernous hole, where once had been the powerhouse which supplied the robots of Mars their synthetic life. There was no evidence of the tank, but the shattered remains of hundreds of crashed space ships were visible on the broad expanse.

  After the mighty cataclysm of sound a silence, hushed and oppressive, settled on them. Dirk helped Lee to her feet, the scuffling of their shoes sounding strangely loud in their ears.

  “He did it,” he said softly. “He gave his life that we might have a chance to live.”

  “Oh, Dirk!” Lee sobbed.

  “No time for tears, yet,” he said gently. “We still have a job to do. A damn big job.”

  WHEN Jan was on his feet Dirk led them cautiously through the passage way that the robots had blasted through the wall. There was still Thogar, the huge-headed Martian, to deal with. Dirk had not seen any other Martians in evidence, but it was certainly probably that they would meet them soon. With the destruction of their robot servants they would have to fight themselves.

  In the museum room, lined with Earth weapons a century and a half old, Dirk paused, studying the armaments intently. His eye ranged from wall to wall, case to case, mentally discarding weapons unsuitable for attack against Thogar and any of his type they might meet. But it was on a slightly raised dais, in the most prominent section of the room, that he saw an object that brought an incredulous exclamation to his lips.