Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy
which would bring life to a dying planet.
Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly
rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns
in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen
of fate--and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and
watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The
shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his
right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a
ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so
overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the
almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing
darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming
minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi
Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted
up--draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining
them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819,
relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to
shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis'
dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were
asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis'
which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen,
these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For
Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had
been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged
himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone
recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something
else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with
surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer
and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was
heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his
back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so
that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it
convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you
setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since--"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship
that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars--the
escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming
in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his
shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again.
Jobs for all the bums in this town--even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear
his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again,
huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio
man--no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit
of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and
then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on
his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
* * * * *
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any
plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody
he had ever known--an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a
beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for
the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the
face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and
almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray
cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage
floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself.
He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and
distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
"_Huh?_ Why, yeh--I guess so--"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his
daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish
crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made
frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger
fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out,
past the blue-and-gold-lit _meloderge_ that was softly pouring out its
endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on
them. They kept walking--so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath,
long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If
you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a
chance. For a come-back, Ryd--a chance to live again.... My name--you
can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the
tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with
his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his
eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow
shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn
good one, too--I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the
physique for Mars--I might just have made it _then_, but I thought the
plant was going to open again and--"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning
actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine.
And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its
full economic independence--and domination. For power is--power; and
there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two
in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the
Power Company of North America--the main plant by Dynamopolis itself,
that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down
outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in
this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few
men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn
them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't
have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old
kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
* * * * *
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him
squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far
from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet
Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile
twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd--you mean nothing at all to me as an
individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am
working--the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and
sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after
they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered
their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to
be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor
capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such
ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are
you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian
cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said
simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had
heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The
power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in
the arm--no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis.
It will turn the wheels and light the cities and--"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up
slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't
you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a
passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes--but with what a price! It's the thirty
pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have
sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and
vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable
conflict, they're selling us out--making Earth, the first home of man,
a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great
Martian land-owners? _Do you?_" He paused out of breath; then finished
venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper
than robots--cheap as _slaves_!"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you
want _me_ to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was
once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're
going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell--isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
"_We_ can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there
are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing
certainly--if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by
this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as
_We_ never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing,
desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and
panclasm--that was _We_.
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with
an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the
monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to
lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with
which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they
had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his
volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to
placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever
happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and
whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the
gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he
pointed as Ryd had known he would--toward where a pale man-made dawn
seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.