"And how about our pal, Brenner-Hughes-Morgan?"
"You leave me out of this!" snapped Morgan.
"Sorry," said Farradyne with a smile. "I didn't mean to include you,
Walter."
Carolyn said, in a self-confident voice, "Brenner is one of us. He is
just as willing to die for our cause as--" She suddenly remembered
the truckmen present, who were probably as puzzled as men can be over
the trend of conversation. But she didn't have to finish. Farradyne
realized with a start that the enemy culture and training must include
a high degree of blind patriotism which demanded that the agent in
danger of discovery must be ready to eliminate his discoverer even
though it cause the death of both of them. The Semiramide--
A searchlight swept across the lake and its light, refracted downward
from the waves, caught Farradyne's eye. He left them in the salon
and raced up the stairs to the control room. Through the astrodome,
distorted by the water, Farradyne could see the headlamps of a big
truck. The searchbeam crossed the water again and flashed ever so
briefly on the slender rod of the antenna. The truck paused in its
course, the beam swept the woody shore and stopped; the truck turned
toward something in the woods and rumbled off through the trees.
The radio music died again. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to
bring you a very startling program. John Bundy, our special events
newscaster, has joined the forces scouring the Lake Superior region
for Charles Farradyne. Inasmuch as an early arrest is expected, and
possibly a running gun battle, John Bundy will take the air with an
on-the-spot account. Come in, John Bundy!"
"Hello, this is John Bundy! Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar and
radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench
knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the northwoods for
the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived
at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to Farradyne's
operations, according to the description given to us by the arrested
truck driver. Sand and mud from Miss Hannon's shoes correspond to that
district.
"Flying above us now are eight squadron bombers carrying heavy depth
charges because Farradyne is believed to be hiding his spacecraft in
the waters of the Lake. A submarine from the Great Lakes Geodetic
Survey has been hastily equipped with some ranging sonar from the War
Museum at Chicago and is seeking the submerged spacecraft. It--"
There came a distant crash in the radio and seconds afterward the
Lancaster resounded with the thunder of an underwater explosion.
"One of the depth charge patterns has been dropped," explained Bundy
excitedly. "Perhaps this is--no, it's not. Sorry. Just a hope, but the
submarine has just covered the explosion area and reported only an
underwater mountain peak instead of a hidden spacecraft. No place will
be left unsearched--"
A thin, pure ping of a pitch so high it was on the upper limit of
Farradyne's ability to hear came and lasted for less than a tenth of
a second. It came again in about twenty seconds, repeating at like
intervals again and again. The interval dropped; the volume of the ping
increased noticeably until the singing tinkle, something like tapping a
silver table knife on Haviland china, was coming fast.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
Farradyne looked above. Circling there were skytrails of jet bombers
making loops in the sky. There came another flash of the searchbeam
against the antenna.
Ping! Abruptly the pinging changed in tone. It became frequency
modulated so that it rose in a chirp, and Farradyne knew that the
submarine was coming closer.
_Norma! Get through, wherever you are!_
Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds
later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook
the ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water
oozed through the ceiling of the astrodome.
The pinging came louder.
Underwater bursts ricocheted and flashed and hurled their gusts of
force against the spacer, buffeting the Lancaster.
Farradyne's hands hung above his controls. He could escape this
holocaust; all he had to do was to blast free from the water, make
a brief run for it, and then come down hard on the enemy ultradrive
toggle-bar and his Lancaster would virtually disappear right under the
guns of the squadrons that sought him. He could hide in space for a day
or a week and return after Norma explained.
But this was wrong. To be sure he had the enemy equipment in his hold
and enemy agents in his salon who could explain the science behind the
device. Eventually it could be reproduced--but only if there were time.
For Farradyne realized that his act had been the first overt move that
could start the First Interstellar War--but the enemy would not permit
Sol to take the second move. Once their secret was out the starships
would hover over Sol's planets with their loads of mercurite and it
would be slavery or death. He would land to find a ruined Sol and a
few remnants of humankind reduced to savagery. The only result would be
the locating of a mercurite stockpile and a blow of retaliation.
And then someday, another sentience would come to visit the stars and
find only the smouldering ruins of two systems that could neither live
with each other nor permit each other to have supremacy.
Another bouncing crash shook the Lancaster.
The radio was rambling on and on as John Bundy gave the world a blow by
blow description of the first action made toward its ultimate death.
"--and to those people who have stood out against the expenditure of
monies for arms and training, I say they should witness this attack
upon an enemy of society. Yes, warfare is dead, but the conflict goes
on against evil and ruthlessness, and only by preparedness of strength
and preparedness of mind--to be as ruthless as the fiends that bore
from within--can mankind combat his own weaknesses.
"They are evacuating the area now. Farradyne is trapped and unless he
surrenders within the next half hour, atomic weapons will be used. We
may never learn the thoughts of the mind that has directed the decay of
the moral fiber of our people. We may never know why a man, given the
opportunities that many finer men have been denied, chose as his life's
work--"
Carolyn laughed hysterically and Farradyne went below for a look.
Morgan and Roberts fell upon him and hauled him down the stairs. They
pinned him to the deck and held him there. Carolyn stood above him.
"We don't mind dying," she said, "in order to take you with us! You and
your money and your paid agents and your bribed officials! Permit you
to surrender? To stand mock trial and be acquitted? Never!"
The Lancaster shook with the throb of depth charges.
Farradyne struggled against his captors. He'd been as blind a fool as
he had ever been, to let them sit there without taping them separately.
"Let me up!" he stormed. "Let me up so we can escape this bombing--"
"Shut the hell up!"
Farradyne struggled.
There was a blasting roar that stunned them all; it shook the Lancaster
viciously. The trickle of water through the astrodome was covered by
the ear-splitting thunder, but less shockingly loud as the Lancaster
hiked into the open air and braved the fire of the squadrons.