The spirit of the Leader rides with us, thought the destroyer's
commander. The very force of his will has caused those fools below to
leave their beam on. And they are members of the race that seeks to
dictate terms to the Leader! So ignorant they are, so unenlightened.
They are unfit to rule. By the great god Zabir--nay, not by that false
god, but by the Leader, we are the only ones fit to rule and we shall!
"_Andrakalarn marsti virki!_" he shrilled into the intercommunication
tube.
The moment of reckoning--in twelve minutes!
Meanwhile Charleston's spaceyacht was following the destroyer down the
strange layer of wild winds in Venus' stratosphere. Some time before he
had reached out a pudgy hand to turn on his infrared view-plates and
the destroyer stood out sharply on the visual grid.
"Damn it!" the fat millionaire was thinking, "no state of war exists.
Why should that Martian blast the patrol ship and tear away my
broadcast antenna with a torp?"
The air was extremely rough. The yacht pitched and yawed, and with the
pitching and yawing Charleston found his daughter Ginny at his side.
"Pater, what is wrong?" she queried in a post-deb voice.
"There's a des--" Jimmie started.
"Harrrrumph!" Charleston burst.
Jimmie was squelched.
"Just following another ship down which acts kind of peculiarly,"
explained the millionaire. "Wish I could report him to the Authority.
Can't, though, a--er--meteor tore away the antenna!"
"Why are you swerving your course?" Unquestionably Ginny knew her
rocketships.
"Winds are pretty bad. Seem to be coming full force from the southeast
if you can trust the compass. Had to tack around to counteract their
force." Charleston of course couldn't admit that his infrareds didn't
allow for variable headwinds and compass deviations and therefor
weren't as dependable as the Authority's beams.
But his daughter could.
"Why don't you switch onto the Authority frequency? The beam's on 65
megacycles in case you're interested."
Charleston harrrrumphed again but reached out to switch on the receiver.
Immediately he started receiving the steady hum of the on-course
signal, broken at 30 second intervals by the keying of P V,
identification signal of the base station. A minute later he heard the
dash-dot signifying N, meaning that he was to the left (and in his case
presumably to the north) of his course. Keying in the port jets he
swung to the right and received the on-course signal again. He noticed
with satisfaction that the destroyer had done likewise.
"Ginny," he admitted weakly, "this radio range business is quite _the_
business. Of course the Charleston infrareds--"
"_Of course!_" smiled the daughter.
It was Charleston's turn to be squelched.
Suddenly the range signals were interrupted by the beam operator's
voice:
"PV, Pali-Vanyi. Notice to all spacemen. Due to the unusually adverse
weather conditions at surface, the north-south landing beams will be
left on permanently until further notice. PV, Pali-Vanyi."
Ten minutes had passed since Ward had begun rotating the goniometer.
Ten minutes and Charleston and the destroyer were fifty degrees off the
true course. Almost south-south-west of the field now and gradually
bearing more to the south.
But Charleston did not know and he was praising the facilities of the
Authority and remarking about how wonderfully his infrareds would
work in conjunction with said facilities. The future of his invention
(well, he had backed it!) took on a rosy hue. He would revolutionize
interplanetary travel; he would simply make it easier.
V
Slowly Silvy Ward rotated the flat, indexed dial of the goniometer.
Eighty-nine degrees gone. One more degree. The destroyer should be at
the south of the field now, coming in unknowingly over the blacked-out
metropolis. Soon he should hear the thunder of its rockets. Were his
computations wrong? Did the destroyer have improved compasses and other
directional finding instruments which it was using instead of relying
on the beam? If not, why did he not hear it coming out of--
A chill swept over him. What was that far, thin thunder throbbing
across the night? The destroyer! And that other, higher pitched roar?
The Patrol had said that there were two unlisted ships coming in!
Who was in that other ship? If he could only warn them without the
destroyer catching the signal! But, dear God, he couldn't!
Zero-one-two-zero! Over against the Hump Portiz was attending the
portable landing beam transmitter. An ultra-high frequency beam was
shooting up uni-directionally at the glide angle of a ship coming in
for a landing from the west. A normal landing was to the south where
the main runways lay; this descent--no landing there!--must be to the
east and the five thousand foot Hump along whose base the boundary
lights were ablaze in the dense fog. From the air they would present
the aspect of an illumined city....
Ward cried out to Wagner:
"The destroyer is overhead. They're getting the station location marker
signal. Listen--"
They could hear the blasting of jets as the ship swerved around to the
east, to the direction which its occupants doubtless thought was south.
It would be catching the glide path beam now and dropping down toward
what appeared to be the city!
The second ship was coming in over the range station. It, too, was
swerving....
"That must be the ship out of Earth," Wagner cried.
"If we could only warn them!" Ward said hopelessly. "We don't even know
whose ship it is. It may be the Director coming to the convention."
Yes, the Director of Earth might be up there dropping toward certain
doom.
Ward leaped to the shortwave transceiver. Simultaneously, it burst into
life.
"Portiz calling Ward."
"Yes?"
"Sounds as if there's a large ship dropping in towards the mountain.
What're your orders?"
"Leave the beam on and get to hell out of there. You've only got about
two minutes!"
Silence. Sixty seconds of silence broken only by the receding thunder
of the two ships.
* * * * *
Underjets flaring redly, making rosy-hued the fog, the destroyer
eased down toward the lights which told its commander that here lay
Pali-Vanyi. Down, down on the glide path beam.
Commands spat from the commander's fleshless mouth.
"Ready at the bomb racks--_Unload!_"
Keying in the rear underjets he zoomed the ship.
The concussion of the unleashed bombs tore across the night, shattering
ten thousand windows in nearby Pali-Vanyi. Martians in dehydrated
chambers drowned as the heavy fog poured in; Earthmen choked and grew
ecstatically oxy-drunk; Venusians leaped in hordes out into their
natural element to see the flames licking against the Hump.
"We have destroyed the city!" the Martian commander cried, for in the
churning chaos of atomic bomb explosions no details can be seen. "The
Leader will bless us. He will--
"_Oh, Zabir, Holy Father of the Deserts, what looms ahead? A mountain
here? Oh, Zabir, no! Blast all underjets! Blast!_
"Zabir, Blessed Father--"
The great destroyer's jets flamed futilely. It ground in against the
Hump, splitting like a pod. From its halved entrails flames roared
forth to further bloody the swirling tortured fog. The sound of the
crash reverberated against the range station.
[Illustration: _There was a spatter of brilliance as it crashed into
the hill. "Hurry with the warning," he called._]
Simultaneously Ward cut in the microphone and screamed over the beam
frequency:
"_Climb, ship of Earth, climb. You're on the Hump!_"
Peering out into the crimson-hued fog to the east, Ward saw spitting
jet flames swerving upward, sweeping up and over in an Immelmann turn
to safety.
"Ship of Earth," Ward continued, "proceed about fifteen miles west,
make a one-hundred-eighty degree turn and come in for a normal landing.
The beam courses were reversed because of an emergency; we are now
correcting the variations."
Ward cut the microphone in again.
"PV, Pali-Vanyi. Notice to all spacemen: Due to an emergency the range
was rotated ninety degrees counter-clockwise during the past half hour.
Any ships following the western leg into PV should be on the southern
leg. Come into the field from the south and swing around for normal
landings in accordance with regulations. The beam is now in normal
operation."
Silvy Ward arose, began to stretch his tired, slender body, and then he
glimpsed the chronometer. It was within seconds of zero-one-three-zero.
"Wagner, have you got that keyer fixed?"
"Watch!" Wagner grinned at him.
There was a whir. The interlock cam relay in the device started to
turn, keying out its message across some fifty million miles of space,
a message which beyond a shadow of a doubt was crackling some moments
later in the receivers of the two earth cruisers at perihelion, telling
them that they were on their trajectory course and all was well.
The televisorphone buzzed urgently. Quickly Ward snapped it on.
Portiz' face appeared on the grid.
"Everything under control?"
"Yes. And where in the devil are you?"
"Gasuki's. I needed a drink after those bombs landed on my tail."