The Best of Jack Williamson

by Jack Williamson

  The fourth projectile came nearer still. An appalling vibration battered him. He dropped flat. The deck quivered, like part of a monster animal dying. The concussion stunned him.

  He came to himself in the elevator. Its luxion walls were black. He fumbled in the dark for the controls. But the mechanism was dead. He flung himself into the dark emergency stair, and started running down the steps.

  Presently, he supposed, when those guns in distant space had found the Tower’s range exactly, the projectiles would come in salvos, instead of singly.

  The black stair was endless, and his descent became a blurred nightmare. Blast followed blast, until he no longer tried to count them. The concussions were shattering blows against his very sanity.

  Down and down, through dust and darkness. Once he tripped over something that felt like a body, and fell until a landing stopped him. His muscles jerked with fatigue. Stiff blood dried on his bruised temple.

  Somewhere there were levels where the walls still glowed dimly. It was part of the administrative offices of the Union, for he glimpsed floor after floor covered with identical unending rows of glass cubicles and telephore desks and business machines. The mob must have been here, for he saw scattered bodies of Goons and grays. But the living had fled.

  Still his numbed brain could function, in a disjointed way. For he realized that his bright dress pajamas would be a sure warrant of death, when he came down to the levels where the Preacher ruled. He stripped a gray-clad body, pulled the coarse garments over his own, and threw away the white toupee.

  Sometimes black panic blotted out all awareness. Fatigue became a drug that destroyed memory and sensation. But he kept on his feet. He kept moving. Because he didn’t want to die.

  There was another stratum of darkness. Then somewhere he found an elevator that worked. It dropped him into the damp chill of the drainage levels. The concussions were now muffled with hundreds of feet of earth. But still they struck and struck and struck, numbing clubs of death.

  Once he came to himself, and found that rubble had almost buried him. An air tube had caved above him. He dragged himself stiffly out of the debris. No bones were broken. He stumbled on. It was a long time before he realized that the bombardment had ceased.

  A burst of automatic fire crashed out of a dark crossway. He ducked for cover. But a heavy, bloodstained man in gray lumbered into the pale, cold light of the tin luxion tube strung along the roof, and covered him with a Goon automatic.

  “Halt, for Armageddon is at hand!”

  “Yea, Brother!” Kellon managed to respond with a dazed quotation from the Preacher. “And the Kingdom is come.”

  “Pass, Brother.” The man grinned at him, redly, and explained: “I am hunting engineers. I’ve killed seven.” Kellon was about to pass, when the gun moved ominously. “Wait, have you heard the news?”

  Kellon waited.

  “Admiral Hurd tried to trick the Preacher.” The red hunter chuckled triumphantly. “He was slain by the hand of God—and a well-flung knife. Now the Fleet is ours—if any ships are left, for they were last reported fighting one another.”

  Kellon’s throat was suddenly dry.

  “Selene—” he whispered. “What about Miss Captain du Mars?”

  “Forget those words of Satan, Brother.” The hunter licked his lips, with an unpleasant relish. “The harlot of Babylon is also dead. They say that she betrayed even the Antichrist, in the end. She was found with Hurd, aboard the Fleet. She took poison when he was killed, to escape the Preacher’s wrath. Hallelujah!”

  “Praise the Lord!” Kellon gasped hoarsely. “Good hunting, Brother.”

  He was sorry to learn of Selene’s death. Yet he was certain that she had wasted no pity on herself. She had played the game to the end, by her own hard rules. The possibility of failure had been taken into her calculations, equally with success. The poison she had ready was proof enough of that.

  Shock and bewilderment and fatigue made a black fog upon his mind. It was hard to remember what had happened. Hard to understand it. Like Selene, he had played by the rules that life had taught him. But now they no longer applied.

  Once he hid from a mob that came splashing along a dark tube. They had flaring torches. Their leader carried a woman’s head on a stake. They were singing the “Battle Hymn of God.”

  Dimly, he tried to understand what had turned human beings into such frightful things. Of course, the rule of the Union had been a heavy burden, but he remembered signing many measures for the relief of the masses. Melkart, he remembered, said that he was three generations late.

  It was twenty years since Kellon had felt the wet chill of the drainage levels. But suddenly the last secret meeting of the New Commonwealth party seemed only yesterday. This intricate maze of dripping tunnels remained as familiar as if he had never left it.

  Reeling to his burden of fatigue, he found a little niche that he had dug long ago in the side of a shaft above a drainage pump. He slept for a long time, and woke staring at the even marks of his drill still visible in the damp sandstone.

  It gave him a curious and surprising pleasure to see that evidence of the old strength and skill of his hands. For it was a long time since he had even dressed himself completely without some aid.

  He was hungry, but still the far past served him. He climbed, by a way he had known, to the freight levels. Traffic had ceased. He saw no Goons or workmen. In most sections, only a few pale emergency lights were glowing.

  A few other looters were busy. He avoided them. Presently, he found a wrecked electric truck, and loaded his gray pockets from its cargo of hydroponic oranges and tinned imitation beef. He ate, and cached what was left in the little cave.

  It was dawn of the second day when he came up a sloping freight ramp, into the tangled weeds and rusting metal and time-dulled luxion masonry of the long-abandoned Saturn Docks.

  He was searching for his son.

  It was five years, now, since their quarrel. He couldn’t be sure that Roy would want to see him. But the bright shadow of Selene was no longer between them. He was lonely, and Roy was all he had left.

  If his Tower had been the brain of the Union, the spaceport had been its pulsing heart. Remembering the great batteries on the militechnic reservation, he hoped that refugees from the bombarded city might have gathered here, to make a last defense upon the natural fortress of the mesa.

  Eagerly, he pushed through the weeds toward the Venus Docks. Stumbling in the dim early light, he came upon a new mountain of fresh black earth and broken stone. The heart went out of him. He climbed wearily to the summit of the shell-built ridge.

  Beyond, where the busy Venus Docks had been, was only a wide black chasm. Bitter fumes stung his nostrils. But it was more than the explosive reek that blurred his eyes with tears.

  Chaos met him. The shell-torn mesa looked desolate as the crater-pitted Moon. Outside the Saturn Docks, scarcely any familiar structure was even a recognizable ruin. Death had plowed deep. Only a few twisted scraps of metal even hinted that docks and cradles and ships had ever existed.

  Miles away, on the rough field of dark debris where the militechnic reservation had been, he saw a fallen cruiser. All the stern was gone, as if the magazine had exploded. The plates still glowed with red heat over the battery rooms, and smoke lifted a sharp thin exclamation point against the gloomy sky.

  Sadly, he recognized the Technarch’s lines.

  Beyond the dead ship, Sunport was burning. A terrible red dawn glowed all across the east. But the low sky overhead remained dark with smoke from the conflagration. Hours dragged on, as he searched for the ruin of the unitronics laboratory where Roy had worked. But the Sun didn’t rise.

  It must have been noon when he came to what was left of the laboratory. Hope ebbed out of him, when he saw the shattered ruin of the dead luxion walls. For the old building had been directly hit.

  A huge, yet-smoking pit opened where the left wing had been. The roof was torn off the massive gray walls. Th
ey were banked high with debris. It seemed impossible that anybody could have survived, in all the building.

  “Who comes?”

  Kellon whirled, startled. Behind him, a big man had risen silently from behind a mound of rubble. The labor number printed across the front of his gray overalls showed that he had been a dock worker. He carried a stubby automatic rifle.

  “Steve Wolfe.” Cautiously, Kellon answered with his old party name. “Freight handler.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Engineer Roy Kellon,” he said desperately. “I have a message for him. He worked in the unitronics lab. Do you know him? Was he hurt?”

  The big man made no immediate reply. His keen eyes studied Kellon over the level gun. Puzzled and impatient, Kellon kicked uneasily at a bomb-tossed stone. At last, as if he had reached some decision, the guard nodded.

  “I think you’ll do. Come along, and I’ll let you talk to Tom Pharr.” He pointed with the gun toward a gap in the shattered wall. “Roy Kellon is here,” he added, “but you will find it hard to deliver any message right now. Because he is buried under a thousand tons of rock.”

  Kellon walked ahead, through a maze of ruined rooms and roofless passages. He heard voices and the muffled clink of tools. Abruptly, his guide brought him upon a surprising scene.

  A cracked, unroofed wall inclosed a long rectangle. It was piled deep with broken rock and debris, flung from the crater where the other wing had been. But scores of men and women were toiling desperately to move the rubble. They had half uncovered a long, mirror-bright torpedo shape. The guard hailed a slim young man in gray, who appeared to be in charge of the excavation.

  “Pharr! Here’s another man for you.”

  The slim youth came to meet them. Kellon knew him. He had seen him here at the laboratory when he came to beg Roy to give up his research. But his face showed no recognition, and Kellon was glad of it.

  “Refugee?” Pharr asked quickly. “You don’t like the Preacher? You want to leave Sunport?” Kellon scarcely had time to nod. “Are you willing to go to space?”

  “I am.” Kellon felt bewildered. “But I was looking for my . . . for Engineer Roy Kellon. Is he all right?”

  “He’s aboard the Nova.” Tom Pharr jerked a hurried thumb at the half-buried torpedo. “He’ll be all right—if we can get him uncovered before the Preacher’s fanatics get wind of us.”

  “That?” Puzzled, Kellon nodded at the bright spindle. “A spaceship?”

  “Interstellar cruiser,” Pharr explained swiftly. “We’ve been working on it, for years. It was almost ready to test. When the bombardment started, Roy tried to get it into space. The shell caught him.

  “Lucky I was in the city—trying to find a crew. I got back in a glider, after the bombardment. I’ve been collecting refugees to dig him out.” His quick eyes ran over the busy scores. “We’ll save a tiny seed of civilization—if we get away.”

  Pharr’s lean face betrayed faint worry.

  “Some damage to the Nova. But Roy signaled that he is making repairs. Expects to be able to take off, as soon as we can get it uncovered. There’s fuel enough for Venus or Mercury. But we’ll have to find dynodes and supplies for the interstellar flight.”

  Eagerly, Kellon echoed, “Interstellar?”

  Bright enthusiasm burned all the fatigue from Tom Pharr’s face.

  “Roy believes every star has planets of its own. Won’t matter so much if dark ages come to Earth. Because we and our children will be sowing the seed of mankind across the stars.” His intense eyes peered at Kellon. “Want to sign for the voyage?”

  Kellon gulped in vain to speak. This was something more than a chance to escape the chaos of a crumbling world. Tom Pharr’s quiet, brief words had painted a new vision, suggested a new purpose. He nodded mutely.

  “Then get to work.”

  Kellon went to help a man and a girl who were trying to roll a raw new boulder away from theNova. It was queerly comforting to be accepted as a member of this busy, efficient group. Never before had he quite realized how lonely the boss had been.

  As the hours went on, he was scarcely conscious of fatigue. He wasn’t much concerned with the blood that presently began to ooze from his soft, uncalloused hands. There was time for only a few brief words, but he began to feel an eager interest in these new companions.

  A curiously assorted group. Burly dock hands in gray. A few young cadets who had survived the destruction of the militechnic college. A dozen veterans who had escaped from the Outstation in a life tube, when it was blown up. Engineers, white-collar workers, servants, grays.

  But their one intense purpose had fused them all into a single unit. Class distinction was gone. Kellon noticed a pretty girl, in low-cut dance pajamas. She looked a little like Selene du Mars. But she was serving soup to a line of hungry stevedores in gray.

  Melkart’s dictum came back to him. Sunport was dead, because it had lost the purpose that created it. But this desperate, tattered little group was still somehow a vital entity. Because, as the old historian would have put it, they shared a destiny.

  Night fell again. Still Sunport was burning. Smoke blotted out the stars. The eastward horizon was a wall of terrible red. Lightless towers stood against it, broken and truncated by the space bombardment, like monuments of some dead gigantic race.

  They worked on without resting. Now and again, a clatter of auomatic fire told them that the guards were fighting some intruder. It was midnight when they reached the valves of the Nova. Roy Kellon came out, with an arm in a sling, to inspect the battered hull.

  Kellon stood back in the shadows, too weary to call out. His breath came faster, and his throat ached suddenly. Roy looked lean and strong; those were his mother’s eager gray eyes.

  “Come aboard,” he called. “I think she’ll do. I’ve patched up the damage in the power room. We can make Venus for repairs and supplies—and then the stars!”

  Kellon followed the shuffling line of weary men and women through the valve. Roy was standing in the light, inside. His lean face lit with astonished pleasure, and he put out his good hand.

  “Why, father!” he whispered. “I’m so glad!”

  “Good to see you, Roy.” Kellon blinked and tried not to choke. “Now I understand what you tried to tell me once—about the importance of those other planets.” He gulped, and hesitated. “But—I’m an old man, Roy. If ... if you need the space for younger men and women—I’ll stay.”

  “Nonsense, boss!” Roy gripped his hand. “Tickled. Just so we get away before the Preacher comes.”

  “Forget the boss!’ Kellon grinned and blinked again. “But we’ll be loading supplies on Venus. You’ll find that I’m a hell of a good foreman on a cargo gang.”

  The skirmishing guards retreated aboard. The valves were sealed. Anxiously, Roy cut in theNovas untested drive. She lifted silently, swifter than any unitron vessel had ever been. The burning city slipped beneath its dark shroud of smoke. Ahead were the stars.

  "With Folded Hands"

  • • •

  Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he first met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block—his wife usually had the car—and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.

  The wall wasn't any common brick or stone, but something sleek and bright and strange. Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and surprised at this glittering obstruction—it certainly hadn't been here last week.

  Then he saw the thing in the window.

  The window itself wasn't any ordinary glass. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:

  Two Rivers Agency HUMANOID INSTITUTE

  The Perfect Mechanicals "To Serv
e and Obey, And Guard Men from Harm."

  His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and ordinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.

  Underhill sold androids—when he could. His next consignment was due tomorrow, and he didn't quite know how to meet the bill.

  Frowning, he paused to stare at the thing behind that invisible window. He had never seen a humanoid. Like any mechanical not at work, it stood absolutely motionless. Smaller and slimmer than a man. A shining black, its sleek silicone skin had a changing sheen of bronze and metallic blue. Its graceful oval face wore a fixed look of alert and slightly surprised solicitude. Altogether, it was the most beautiful mechanical he had ever seen.

  Too small, of course, for much practical utility. He murmured to himself a reassuring quotation from the Android Salesman: "Androids are big—because the makers refuse to sacrifice power, essential functions, or dependability. Androids are your biggest buy!"

  The transparent door slid open as he turned toward it, and he walked into the haughty opulence of the new display room to convince himself that these streamlined items were just another flash effort to catch the woman shopper.

  He inspected the glittering layout shrewdly, and his breezy optimism faded. He had never heard of the Humanoid Institute, but the invading firm obviously had big money and big-time merchandising know-how.

  He looked around for a salesman, but it was another mechanical that came gliding silently to meet him. A twin of the one in the window, it moved with a quick, surprising grace. Bronze and blue lights flowed over its lustrous blackness, and a yellow name plate flashed from its naked breast:

  HUMANOID

  Serial No. 81-H-B-27

  The Perfect Mechanical "To Serve and Obey, And Guard Men from Harm."