Forgotten Fiction

by Lloyd Eshbach

  The spectacle below them was one Clint would never forget. It seemed as though he were gazing directly into a white-hot hell! Miles In diameter the chasm was, and hundreds of feet deep; from their mile-high vantage point it looked like a gigantic cup filled with some cosmic witch’s flaming hell-brew. Around It the peaks of the cordillera, bathed In the awful brilliance, seemed to be drawing back as though in fear.

  Like a glowing planet revolving about an invisible sun, the giant sphere sped around the inner edge of the pit in a steadily growing circle. And in its wake flamed and ran a molten, streaming flood, tossing like waves of liquid fire. Green fire that changed to white, and flowed into the sphere!

  Now the lightning began to crash down Into the pit. blast after blast In a hail of insupportable brilliance—lightnings that thundered and roared, and that flashed into the ball of white, like destroying lances from heaven. And it began to shrink!

  Inexorably the blasts fell from the projector, hurtling downward In vast electrical sheets, pouring into the globe. Its whirling checked, and it began darting here and there, aimlessly. In panic, seeking a way of escape. Slowly its dazzling whiteness faded, slowly it assumed its normal emerald hue. And all the while it shrank!

  Up to the watchers drifted a curious sense of incredible fear, a sense of infinite, cosmic tragedy. It was only an Impression—but it was poignantly real and terribly depressing. It seemed as though that vast mass of light were living—and afraid! Back and forth it flashed, bewildered, helpless before destruction that poured down from above. There followed a period of numbed inactivity while it seemed to cower in its molten pit shrinking, steadily shrinking under the ceaseless lightning flow. It was as though it were gathering its energies for some tremendous effort—and suddenly the globe flashed upward!

  Like pent waters rushing over a broken darn-breast, a blinding ball of green Are leaped out of the chasm Into the sky. It passed the watchers in a hazy streak of speed, like a projectile from some inters planetary gun. An instant later there followed an Indescribable shriek, an awesome wail. Then a blast of choking heat swept over them; and a torrent of air thicker than water struck them and whirled them from their perch on the wall!

  For a sickening moment Clint spun through a vortex of twisting air; then, miraculously, he landed on his back with scarcely a jar, his eyes staring into the night-black sky. High above, almost beyond human vision, a faint emerald speck glowed for an Instant—then was gone—out into the void from whence it had come! And star-tipped, velvet darkness sank over the world.

  V

  DON ALFREDO CASTILLA looked up ruefully at his lightning projector, the morning sun gleaming down on a mass of twisted copper. That last blast of air had bent the great reflector almost double. He turned to Clint Morgan, his expression woebegone.

  “All that work for nothing.” he sighed. Then he shrugged. “It can be repaired, anyway, amigo mio.” he said, “and we can be glad that those coronium globes have gone back to the sun.”

  They were standing at the base of the lightning projector—Alfredo and Clint, Louisa still lay asleep in the stone building. Except for minor bruises the three had escaped injury in that last cyclonic rush of air.

  “Coronium globes?” Clint looked puzzled. “I’ve heard you call them coronium before this. What do you mean?”

  “I meant just that you see, several years ago an Indio from the highlands whom I had employed as arriero, one day brought me a little metal figure he had found on this very mountain. It was green! I tried to analyze it chemically, but it defied analysis. Finally, before the spectroscope It revealed itself to be coronium. the element supposedly found only in the sun’s corona!

  “Yesterday, while you, I am sorry to say, lay tied in the cave, I analyzed the light from that green globe in the valley—and it was the same! That Is why I feel so confident that the green things came from the sun.” He smiled apologetically. “The evidence, of course, is purely circumstantial.”

  “I have some of that strange metal,” Clint said slowly. Briefly he related his experience in the burial cave.

  When he concluded. Don Alfredo exclaimed. “Aha! Do you not see? Those metal figures were being drawn from beneath the surface by the magnetic pull of that great globe as It approached the earth! And their glowing—that too was caused by the sphere!”

  Clint drew his medallion from his pocket and surveyed it curiously. It was green, as green as when he found it, but that neon-like brightness had disappeared, and it was no longer warm to the touch. He nodded thoughtfully.

  “Think,” Don Alfredo said, eying the disc in fascination, “this coronium—did It not seem strangely lifelike? May it not be that electricity is life—and that life, as electricity, may exist even on the sun? Oh. I know it sounds foolish—and I am but guessing, and a scientist should not guess—but how otherwise explain what we have seen? Perhaps that mountain of metal in the valley was at one time hurled to Earth from the sun. And. who knows, perhaps the globes were sent out by other beings of the sun to rescue their fellows, cast out from their giant world eons and eons ago?” He shrugged expressively and smiled his expansive smile. “Si, Senor, I know it is childish, this theorizing But one may use one’s imagination—is it not so?”

  Clint smiled. “I had others—but they were in my saddle pack, and that was on my chusco Pizarro.” His smile faded. “I’m afraid Pizarro has gone where all good horses go. We’ll soon see.” He whistled a single shrill note, then waited.

  And into the fortress ambled Pizarro, chewing a mouthful of ichu grass! He had lost his saddlebags somewhere, but otherwise seemed to be his normal, docile self. He trotted over to Clint and thrust his nose into his band, searching for barley. Clint grinned in pleased surprise and shook his head.

  “None this time, Pisano,” he said. The animal turned away with head bowed dejectedly.

  Clint addressed Castilla. “Perhaps the pack lies somewhere between the walls. Shall we search?”

  The Peruvian agreed. After a short search they found what was left of the saddlebags—only a heap of ashes with a fragment of strap lying at the edge. Evidently one of the Sun-things had approached Pizarro; and the little horse, fleeing had torn loose the pack. The glebe, seeking the coronium figures, had let him escape.

  As they moved back toward the stone house, Don Alfredo Castilla said casually. “I suppose you will be moving on now. Senor Morgan? Since you have no pock, and I no longer a mule, I shall give you my pack! It is better so than that it should lie here and rot!”

  Glint hesitated, his mind picturing the lovely face of Louisa Castilla. After all, he hardly knew her—and he should have time to get better acquainted.

  “Perhaps I could stay here a while and help you,” he suggested finally. “After all, I have no plans that cannot be changed.”

  Don Alfredo smiled a sincere welcome. “My wife and I will be glad to have you, amigo mio!”

  Clint Morgan stopped short. “Your—your what?”

  Don Alfredo looked at him with an amused twinkle in his eyes. “My wife! Did you, too, think like so many others that she was my daughter?” He laughed loudly in genuine amusement “Si, tenor—she is my wife.” He sobered. “Do you wonder now that I killed Gozano?

  Clint shook his head. He was beyond speech. “I believe I had better move on. Pizarro is never contented to stay at one place for any length of time—and I’m a lot like him. I guess.”

  VI

  IT WAS no more than a half hour later that Clint Morgan and his horse Pizarro were again on the trail, a wayworn, haggard footpath timidly creeping along the face of a cliff high above an enormous pit where once a mountain had been. He could see the silver length of the Urubamba winding up to the edge of the pit to leap over in a spectacular waterfall.

  He looked at Pizarro, and a slow smile curled the comers of his mouth. He had remembered something. Latin-American women, no matter how lovely they were in their youth, invariably developed blue-black mustachios as they approached middle age! Clint had never
fancied women with such hirsute decorations. He was better off with Pizarro and the whole South American continent for his playground.

  He whistled shrilly as he continued southward across the mountains, and his hand. In one pocket, idly fingered an ancient green medallion—a bit of metal that had come out of the sun.

  1950

  OVERLORD OF EARTH

  WHEN MAN FINALLY ACHIEVES WORLD PEACE, WHAT WILL HE DO ABOUT ANDREV?—STARTLING FEATURE—LENGTH FUTURE—SCIENCE NOVELET!

  Will men in their growing wisdom finally realize the stupidity of international slaughter and forget the so-called art of war? But when and if they do, might even then an Andrev appear—a master killer who might have discovered the secret of physical immortality and have lain in a hidden crypt for centuries, a product of an earlier, more violent day who waited patiently for the time when he would find matured mankind an easy prey for the bloodthirsty villainy?

  CHAPTER 1

  KERRY KORD crouched in utter blackness, sensing rather than seeing the other eighteen men in the belly of the glider. Only Glenn Bodey, squatting at his back, strapped with him in the two-man parachute, could he definitely identify. Minutes before, the motor of the giant tow-plane had been killed, and Kerry knew that the fleet of twenty-five gliders must be in the vicinity of the “Overlord’s Throne”.

  Inhaling deeply, Kerry touched the emergency ’chute release with his left hand and his Ghormley automatic with his right. A matter of minutes now. Despite rigid self-control, he could feel his heartbeat quicken, and a constriction high in his chest made breathing difficult. He rose to his full six-foot height; felt Bodey’s broad form rising with him.

  “Cold up here,” the latter growled heavily. “I could do with a little heat.”

  “It’ll be warmer shortly,” Kerry commented. “much warmer—very shortly.”

  That was how it had been since their take-off from their hidden base in the ruins of New York City—small talk—trivial complaints—leading up to indirect admission of the tension that gripped all of them.

  Soon the waiting would be ended. Soon they would actually attack the stronghold of the world dictator—the self-styled “Overlord.” Soon they would know whether they would live or die—whether humanity would remain enslaved or would be free.

  In his mind’s eye Kerry again saw the final assembly of The Remnant. Saw grim-faced, gray-clad hordes stalking through dank tunnels, littered with the silt and rubbish of decades, to meet in what had once been the terminus of a vast net of subway tubes, the heart of the transportation system of Earth’s greatest metropolis. The Remnant of Earth’s freemen—the comparative few of all mankind who refused to yield to Andrev, the Overlord—had chosen instead to live almost as beasts among the ruins of once mighty cities.

  He saw again the close-packed, waiting thousands facing the high platform upon which had stood the Chief, Janothan Hardinger, stiffly erect in the trim, gray synthane of The Remnant, sharply visible in the beams of a battery of floodlights. Behind him had sat the Ten, the scientists, councilors and strategists of The Remnant. And all about the platform, in motionless rank upon rank, arranged with military precision, had stood five hundred men in lustreless black—Kerry Kord among them.

  He heard again the final ringing words of the Chief. “We need not die—and we shall not die! Men will again be free! Our plans have been made; our preparations are complete.

  “You have been summoned to learn your part in our plan for freedom. What that plan is we may not say—but upon each of you and the successful completion of your individual assignment depends the liberty of humanity. Each of you will be armed. Each of you will be fitted with a uniform of the Overlord’s Guard. Each of you will be assigned to a city and a man or woman in that city. And that individual must die!”

  Hardinger’s hand had indicated the ranks of the men in black. “Upon these men falls the greater task of the destruction of the Overlord himself. They are the pick of all The Remnant—and they shall not fail!

  “A week from today is the anniversary of man’s enslavement, the Overlord’s ‘Liberation Day’. There will be carousing and riotous celebration, as there always has been, and when it is at its height, when midnight mantles the Himalayan peak they call the Overlord’s Throne, we strike—for freedom!”

  AT LAST that hour was at hand! His hour, he hoped, when he would destroy the life of the one being he truly hated. The slayer of his father, once one of the Ten, and the greatest scientist of his day.

  Kerry’s thoughts veered to Andrev, the Overlord, and his angular features tightened savagely. Murderer, sadist, spoiler of a civilization. Product of an earlier, more violent day who, so the tale was told, had discovered the secret of physical immortality, and had lain in a crypt for three hundred years, to awaken and enslave a world. Men in their growing wisdom had finally realized the stupidity of international slaughter and had forgotten the so-called art of war. Andrev, steeped in the foul knowledge of a century—the twentieth—redolent with wars, had found the new age easy prey. And, whether or not he was immortal, he had ruled Earth for a hundred years, yet physically had not changed at all.

  Above everything, Andrev must not escape! He would be sought out—and would be found where masses of his satellites were assembled. For the Overlord was never alone . . . was afraid to be alone! Afraid, with a maddening, unbalancing fear born of his centuries in the tomb. Centuries, it was whispered, when his body had been as though dead, while his mind was alert, awake, and utterly—alone.

  Minutes now—perhaps seconds—and the men from the past would be attacked by an army recruited from the pages of history. “Paratroopers” had figured in wars in Andrev’s age—and “paratroopers” would destroy the head and heart of the Overlord’s system! Invisible, black-clad paratroopers raining from a midnight sky . . .

  Momentarily a red light winked over the heads of the waiting men. The signal. A rustle of synthane swished through the silence. Then a great door slid aside in the wall of the glider and a blast of frigid air whipped through the opening.

  “Jump position!” Kerry barked. “Two and two. Remember your instructions.” He was talking to fill in the gap before the actual leap into the dark. “We’ll try to land on the flying field in front of the Star Tower. If we miss it, we get there as fast as we can. We join the wedge that blasts its way into the Tower—then, unless Andrev is blasted in the first assault—and if intelligence knows anything, he won’t be. for he’ll run at the first sign of trouble—we hit for the top of the Tower, blasting everyone before us.”

  Kerry’s words came faster. Time was running out. “If I get mine, Bodey takes over. If he goes, Gill is in command. If Gill goes—you know the order. Only—get—through!”

  Again that flash of red! And the first pair of men leaped into the night—a night now aglow with the light that rose from the Overlord’s citadel. On the heels of the first, the second pair—the third—split seconds between jumps, the cords attached to the rod overhead automatically opening the ’chutes . . . Kerry and Bodey took their place in the line, the last to jump save the pilot who would abandon the glider and follow . . .

  With a rush of thin, icy air, Kerry and his partner plummeted toward the Himalayan plateau far below. Automatically Kerry counted, his finger gripping the emergency pull—one-and-a-two—he felt the wrench and jar under his arm-pits, the thud against the back of his padded cap as the folds of black synthane ballooned above them. Heard Bodey’s sardonic, “Nice view—but too blamed cold for comfort.” He grinned a tight, strained grin and looked downward.

  Brilliantly lighted, the Overlord’s Throne lay like a jeweled mosaic among snow-capped peaks. As the plateau leaped skyward, details appeared. Parklike expanses of precisely trimmed green formed the setting for glittering buildings of metal and plastic, neon-tubed and garish, where the tyrant government of Earth held sway. One great structure of glistening steel in the center of the plateau stood out by virtue of its shape, a perfect six-pointed star, the symbol of the Over
lord. Crimson lights flooded the top of the famous Star Tower which held the Council Hall of Andrev and his lieutenants.

  CURIOUSLY Kerry peered into J the sky around him. As far as the eye could see, he and Bodey were alone in the blackness. So perfectly were the others concealed by their lustreless black that they defied detection. He heard Bodey’s voice thinly in his ears:

  “Nice night for a murder!”

  Kerry made no comment. Skillfully he maneuvered the ’chute toward the giant structure. A great flying field surrounded the tower, a field where Andrev’s followers landed when they came to report to the Overlord. That was the destination of two hundred of them—the very heart of things, where they hoped to find the tyrant. Another hundred would seek the communication center—fifty more, supply headquarters, and so on, completely covering the plateau. The wind caught the ’chute and swept it toward the Star Tower . . . closer . . . now to swerve . . .

  To Kerry’s taut senses came a shrill, thin whine, mounting in a swift crescendo. He’d been waiting for that—a powerful robot plane diving out of the blackness with a four-ton cargo of destruction—plummeting toward the quarters of the Overlord’s Guard. Seconds after the first faint sound, it struck with a mighty roaring blast that rolled thunderously over the mountains, and an angry, lurid mass of smoke and flame plumed skyward. A direct hit, Kerry exulted, as fragments of stone and metal and plastic rained earthward. That would help—plenty!

  With startling suddenness a hail of bursting shells flared toward them from batteries of concealed anti-aircraft guns—and simultaneously the lights of the Overlord’s Throne winked into blackness! Kerry’s eyes bored through the dark, broken only by shell blasts and the red glow of the burning building. They had expected this, of course—automatic detectors had picked them up and automatic defenses had been tripped into motion. One of the secrets Andrev had brought from the past. It didn’t change things at all—if bursting shell fragments didn’t blast them out of the sky. Their plan provided for this. Once they’d landed . . .