An hour passed in silence. Then Harabond held up a hand and Guy turned
the instrument off. "So," he said to the Council, "you see that my
interest is for Ertene!"
"A man who is capable of developing an instrument such as this," said
Harabond, "is more than capable of distorting its output to his own
purpose!"
"But thought--" said Guy.
Harabond shook his head. "To think that Thomakein would plot this
way against Ertene is unbelievable. Were this charge brought by an
Ertinian, we might consider it valid. There is too much at stake to
believe a Terran, whose word has proven to be none too good."
"Use this thing for yourself," Guy directed. "Put technicians on it,
build several and prove that you cannot distort its output. Then
believe me."
"An instrument such as this would deprive all of us of our sacred
privacy. I direct that it be destroyed and that no research be
permitted along these lines," said Harabond. "As for the incredible
story I see--or was directed to witness--at the operation of this
machine, I can only shake my head. I reiterate, any man possessing
genius enough to build an instrument like this is more than capable
of making it perform to his will. Therefore its evidence will not be
allowed. And, furthermore, the Terran, Guy Maynard, will be charged
with the murder of Elanane!"
"But--!"
"Take him away!"
Guy was marched from the room before the same policemen that he had
summoned to bring Thomakein. As they passed the portal, Charalas
entered, shook his head in puzzlement and asked Thomakein what was this
all about?
"An incredible impersonation," said Thomakein, "plus the loss of a
loved leader," Guy heard him explaining as the door closed behind them.
* * * * *
Halfway across the rotunda between the buildings, the whine of sirens
climbed up the scale and shook the very ground with their power. It was
a frightening sound, and the men clinging to Guy's arms let go to look
around in wonder.
Guy might have run, but he was too stunned and bitter to react
properly. The very gall of Thomakein! The utter blindness of the
Council!
Guy envisioned the end of Guy Maynard's unhappy life at the end of a
rope--or according to the Ertinian plan of painless removal. He went
limp and beaten. He was licked. He was a poor pawn, and all that he
could do to sway the lives of worlds was to push in futility and fall
below them when they refused to move. It would have been better--
"Terrans!"
"The Space Patrol!"
"You summoned them!" snarled one captor.
"No--"
"Liar!"
"I swear not."
"We believe not!"
Down out of the clear sky came the Terran Patrol in battle formation.
With the precision that spoke volumes, the space pattern flowed from
the closed cylinder to a lenticular disk and the massed ships of the
task force sped across the city at fifty thousand feet.
"They've come for you!"
"No," swore Guy.
"They'll not get you!"
"We'd best give him," argued the other. "They'll fire!"
"They're firing."
"No, they're not," said Guy. "That's signaling."
"Either signaling or poor marksmanship," said the captor. "Nothing's
hit."
"Terra doesn't miss," said Guy.
From the ringed emplacements, the vortex projectors vomited their
toroids. Upward went the pattern of vortexes, and the Patrol broke
formation in an effort to elude the whirling toroids.
"Did you?" asked Charalas, coming up behind.
"Send for them? No."
"Your story is true?"
"I swear it!"
"Then what of them?"
The pattern of toroidal vortices went up and up, and caught Terran
ships, passed on, and left the Terran ships to fall inert. Pressor
beams cradled the falling ships and lowered them to ground. The rest of
the Terran Patrol drove inward on a slant, with the turreted AutoMacs
blazing purple at the snouts and the invisible beams cutting flaring
furrows across the city.
Another toroid went up before them, and pilots fought their controls to
divert the ships. The slow-moving vortex hovered, and the high-velocity
ships arrowed through the vortex in spite of the pilots. More pressor
beams caught the inert ships.
Torpedoes started to burst in the city, and with each explosion a
building leaped skyward in a mass of flame and dropped in ruin. The sky
crisscrossed with flaring beams, and the vortex projectors spewed forth
again and again, filling the air with death.
The Patrol drove high, hovered. They fenced with MacMillans on
automatic, and then fled precipitately as a super-sized toroid formed
and raced upwards.
"Beat 'em off."
Guy nodded.
Then he turned and slugged his nearest captor. He took the man's
MacMillan and faced the rest. "I'm leaving," he snarled.
He backed carefully away, keeping his back against the building. A
movement caught his eye, and Guy's quick hand dropped an Ertinian from
a high window. With the diversion, the other policeman reached for his
MacMillan, and Guy blasted the hand as it grabbed, and then drilled the
man behind him for trying to reach forward for it.
"I'm not fooling," snarled Guy. "And I'll take hostage. Charalas, come
along!"
"Me?" asked the aged man, stalling for time.
"You--and jump!" yelled Guy, sniping a swift shot at his feet. Guy
reached the parked police flier, pushed Charalas in, and then took off
on a screaming zoom upwards.
A MacMillan flared and missed, a vortex rolled upwards too slow by
half, another MacMillan missed, and then Guy was off and far away and
free once more. He grinned. They'd left him his personal thought-beam
instrument. They'd find it hard to run him down when he could read
their minds. He turned the gain a little lower so that they couldn't
read his, and he wondered whether the more powerful instrument would
really be destroyed now.
* * * * *
An hour later, along near the ocean's edge, Guy dropped the flier.
"Charalas," he said, offering a hand, "I'm sorry."
"You're in a real mess," said the neuro-surgeon.
"I know--but what's Ertene going to do now?"
He snapped on the flier-radio and caught Thomakein in the act of
speaking: "--obviously came at the call of the impostor. He was a high
official in the Patrol, and was working undercover here. People of
Ertene, we must reply! We may not hold up our heads until this insult
has been repaid. We now have a fine space fleet, thanks to the vortex
and the pressors, and the Terrans. Never could we have built such a
fleet here on Ertene; but it is now ours."
Guy growled and snapped Thomakein off.
"What are your plans?" asked Charalas.
"I'm going to drop you off here. Then I'm going somewhere."
"Where?"
"That's it. I don't know where. I'm barred from everything but Mars--I
might try there."
"You loved Ertene, didn't you?" asked Charalas.
Guy nodded. "Until I found out how blind they are. A fine thing! They
give credence to a plotter because his accuser is not of Ertene. And
this last--I hate them and him!"
"This last?"
"Thomakein dropped the barrier so that the Terrans would come to
investigate. He planned it all--and got his fleet ready-made."
"They came to fight--"
"They wouldn't have come if Thomakein hadn't started it all. Blame whom
you will, but Thomakein saw his plan start when he found me alive in
the _Mardinex_. My life has been just a pusharound for Thomakein for
nine years."
"You think Ertene will win?"
"Thomakein may be highly successful for a long time--but Terra will
win," said Guy. "Remember, Charalas, when you strike a rat, the rat
bites back. That slaughter of Terrans back there is just nasty enough
to make Terra completely mad. It happened before, on Mephisto III, and
when we cooled down to the mere screaming point, there wasn't a living
thing on Mephisto proper. Berserk, is the word for angry Terrans,
Charalas. And I say Beware."
"And you?"
"Me, I'd like to push something around. I'm getting sick of being a
pawn. I've reached the last straw, Charalas, and something's going to
be crowned. That utter murder of Terrans just about broke me, and if I
break completely, I'll take after Ertene single-handed."
"Slaughter?" asked Charalas.
"It was downright murder. If I only had an army."
"That's not murder. Ertene seldom kills."
"Look, Charalas, I'm in no mood for foolishness. I saw those ships come
down after the vortex hit them. Terrans do not scare stiff, Charalas,
they fight to the last."
"I know, but the vortex does not kill."
"The ... vortex ... does ... not ... kill?" repeated Maynard dully.
"No."
"It doesn't kill?" came the dazed repeat again.
"No. The vortex slows the life processes to almost zero, but not quite.
Several, repeated exposures will kill, of course, but two or three
aren't too dangerous to healthy people."
"What do they do to recover them?"
"Heat lamps, massage, and a shot of cuperenalin."
"I've got my army then," said Guy quietly. "I've got my army!" His
voice repeated the phrase, and his tone crescendoed from stunned
quietness to an exultant roar. "_I've got my men!_"
"I don't understand," said Charalas.
"I don't expect you to," smiled Guy. "Below here, in the ocean, is my
spacecraft. I'm leaving Ertene--but I'll be back. Oh, will I be back!
Terra needs some Ertinian love of leisure, and Ertene needs some of
Terra's ambition. As a team, they should get on fine!"
"What are you going to do?" asked Charalas in alarm.
"Terra pushed me around for trying to protect Ertene. Ertene shoved me
out for being Terran. They're both blindly unreasonable. I'm going to
play Kilkenny cats, Charalas."
"Play what?"
"The Kilkenny cats were tied by the tails and hung over a line. They
clawed each other to death. I'm going to break up this balance of power
in Sol, with Mars and Terra always running the main show, by hanging
Ertene in an orbit. Then there'll be three to treat with, plus the
minority on Venus, and they'll all be standing around with their hands
in one another's pockets. Mars will have to come off of her high horse
or lose her shirt when Terra and Ertene get together, and Terra will
have to listen to Mars if and when Ertene takes a notion to let Mars
into confidence. Ertene will have to play baseball with both Terra
and Mars or the Solarians will gang up in spite of themselves. And
eventually there'll be less isolationism around Sol, and we'll all be
better off. I'm going out to get me enough people to do the job--and
now I know where to get 'em!"
Guy grinned at Charalas, stepped to the high bluff over the ocean, and
dived.
* * * * *
The _Loki_ emerged from the ocean an hour later. It went high and
arrowed into the sky, and it was out of sight in seconds. Charalas
wondered if followers would come, certainly the detectors would be
running full power and would catch this ship and register it as
nonconforming to the licensed ships of Ertene.
But the followers did not come, and Charalas realized that Guy Maynard
was once a high officer in the Terran Patrol, and that he was more than
familiar with the technical details of such a small craft. Charalas
grinned, and wondered which one of Ertene's destroyed ships was now
being detected in action again, and not being recorded because of
matrices that eliminated unwanted alarms.
But Charalas wondered most about Guy's future plans. How and what was
he going to do--and alone, too!
"Also unarmed," added Guy to himself. "Nice to know you, Charalas.
And if you'll wonder about me for a week, I'll appreciate it. Bet the
Ertinian land forces are on the prod right now--and you'll be found
directly. No matter, I can take care of Guy Maynard from here."
Guy nosed the _Loki_ cautiously toward the moon of Ertene. Their
synthetic sun, dimming a bit now that the unbounded energy-intake was
cut, shone full and bright upon one side, and Guy wasted precious
minutes circling to the dark side.
It was mostly wasteland, yet Guy went die-straight to the
half-concealed emplacement.
With callousness born of necessity, Guy rammed the dome and the _Loki_
was flung away in the out-rush of air. Guy set his grapples, and
literally tore the building apart, brick by brick, and then hooked
onto the great vortex projector and lifted it high into the sky. He
returned for the power equipment and took that also. He thanked his
lucky star that the _Loki_ was a Terran ship and not one of the less
agile Ertinian jobs. The fact that it was fitted with everything but a
set of turret-mounted MacMillans made Guy jump up and down in glee. He
recalled the game of hide-and-seek of a couple of years ago, and knew
that the _Loki_ could take it.
He set the _Loki_ down on a barren plain on the side away from Ertene,
and donned space garb. Welding the vortex projector on the top of
the _Loki_ made a strange-looking spacecraft, but streamlining was
unimportant in space anyway. He hooked girder after girder on the huge
parabolic reflector, welding them securely to his hull. He fitted the
supply cables with air-tight bushings through the walls, and then
spent several hours fitting up a series of relays to a thumb-button on
the pilot's levers.
His detector rang as he was finishing, and Guy poked the drive control
without waiting to see the nature of the approaching ship.
He grinned as he arrowed away from Ertene, because he knew that no
matter whose ship it was, it was against him. They'd given him the
time he needed, and if he managed to get through the next phase, they
would never be able to stop him again. No one would ever collect the
price that was upon his head--a double price, one in Solar coin, one in
Ertinian.
His detector rang again, and Guy saw a small Terran ship approaching.
Its turrets jerked forward, and Guy's thumb hit the button. The _Loki_
bucked to avoid the discharge of the AutoMacs, but the velocity of the
Terran was too high to swerve. It ran into the floating vortex and went
dead, at full velocity, on and on into the nothing of the sky. It was
picked up later by Ertinians, who added it to their captured fleet.
And Guy, knowing that his life might control the future of billions of
lives, hardened. Friend or foe, all must fall before him until he had
reached the end of this phase of his life. If he fell, the Solar System
itself might never recover from the outcome of his failure.
For Maynard, knowing his Terrans, his Martians, and also his Ertinians,
could have pointed out the moves of the next five years on the fingers
of his hand--and no one alive could have denied him.
* * * * *
From ten thousand miles above, Guy looked at Mephisto III. "Two or
three aren't dangerous," muttered Guy, repeating Charalas' statement.
"Please God it be three with no danger, for they will have had two!"
His thumb pressed the button, and the vortex formed, whirled, and
then went racing forward in a boiling toroid of energy. It spread as
it went, widening swiftly and encompassing the entire moon before it
wrapped itself about the ground, closing like a monstrous blanket on
the far side in curlers of lightnings and fire. The vortex died, and
Mephisto III was again lifeless. Guy dropped quickly, and landed the
_Loki_ on the same spaceport that he had created from the hard ground
years ago. He looked about him at the supplies and the ships lying
mute, and shuddered at the bodies that lie a-sprawl. Then he smiled
wryly and apologized mentally. There were but few of the big guns of
the Terran Patrol present--but they would be a good nucleus.
For now, though, Guy had work to do.