THE HILL
The heavy cruiser Chicago hung motionless in space, thousands of miles
distant from the warring fleets of space-ships so viciously attacking
and so stubbornly defending Roger's planetoid. In the captain's sanctum
Lyman Cleveland crouched tensely above his ultracameras, his sensitive
fingers touching lightly their micrometric dials. His body was rigid,
his face was set and drawn. Only his eyes moved; flashing back and forth
between his instruments and the smoothly-running strands of spring-steel
wire upon which were being recorded the frightful scenes of carnage and
destruction.
Silent and bitterly absorbed, though surrounded by staring officers
whose fervent, almost unconscious cursing was prayerful in its
intensity, the visiray expert kept his ultra-instruments upon that awful
struggle to its dire conclusion. Flawlessly those instruments noted
every detail of the destruction of Roger's fleet, of the transformation
of the armada of Triplanetary into an unknown fluid, and finally of the
dissolution of the gigantic planetoid itself. Then furiously Cleveland
drove his beam against the crimsonly opaque obscurity into which the
peculiar, viscous stream of substance was disappearing. Time after time
he applied his every watt of power, with no result. A vast volume of
space, roughly ellipsoidal in shape, was closed to him by forces
entirely beyond his experience or comprehension. But suddenly, while his
rays were still trying to pierce that impenetrable murk, it disappeared
instantly and without warning: the illimitable infinity of space once
more lay revealed upon his plates and his beams flashed unimpeded
through the void.
"Back to Tellus, sir?" The _Chicago's_ captain broke the strained
silence.
"I wouldn't say so, if I had the say." Cleveland, baffled and
frustrated, straightened up and shut off his cameras. "We should report
back as soon as possible, of course, but there seems to be a lot of
wreckage out there yet that we can't photograph in detail at this
distance. A close study of it might help us a lot in understanding what
they did and how they did it. I'd say that we should get close-ups of
whatever is left, and do it right away, before it gets scattered all
over space; but of course I can't give you orders."
"You can, though," the captain made surprising answer. "My orders are
that you are in command of this vessel."
"In that case we will proceed at full emergency acceleration to
investigate the wreckage," Cleveland replied, and the cruiser--sole
survivor of Triplanetary's supposedly invincible force--shot away with
every projector delivering its maximum blast.
As the scene of the disaster was approached there was revealed upon the
plates a confused mass of debris; a mass whose individual units were
apparently moving at random, yet which was as a whole still following
the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts,
structural members, furniture, flotsam of all kinds; and everywhere were
the bodies of men. Some were encased in space-suits, and it was to these
that the rescuers turned first--space-hardened veterans though the men
of the _Chicago_ were, they did not care even to look at the others.
Strangely enough, however, not one of the floating figures spoke or
moved, and space-line men were hurriedly sent out to investigate.
"All dead." Quickly the dread report came back. "Been dead a long time.
The armor is all stripped off the suits, and all the generators and
other apparatus are all shot. Something funny about it, too--none of
them seem to have been touched, but the machinery of the suits seems to
be about half missing."
"I've got it all on the reels, sir." Cleveland, his close-up survey of
the wreckage finished, turned to the captain. "What they've just
reported checks up with what I have photographed everywhere. I've got an
idea of what might have happened, but it's so new that I'll have to have
some evidence before I'll believe it myself. You might have them bring
in a few of the armored bodies, a couple of those switchboards and
panels floating around out there, and half a dozen miscellaneous pieces
of junk--the nearest things they get hold of, whatever they happen to
be."
"Then back to Tellus at maximum?"
"Right--back to Tellus, as fast as we can possibly get there."
While the _Chicago_ hurtled through space at full power, Cleveland and
the ranking officers of the vessel grouped themselves about the salvaged
wreckage. Familiar with space-wrecks as were they all, none of them had
ever seen anything like the material before them. For every part and
instrument was weirdly and meaninglessly disintegrated. There were no
breaks, no marks of violence, and yet nothing was intact. Bolt-holes
stared empty, cores, shielding cases and needles had disappeared, the
vital parts of every instrument hung awry, disorganization reigned
rampant and supreme.
"I never imagined such a mess," the captain said, after a long and
silent study of the objects. "If you have a theory to cover _that_,
Cleveland, I would like to hear it!"
"I want you to notice something first," the expert replied. "But don't
look for what's there--look for what _isn't_ there."
"Well, the armor is gone. So are the shielding cases, shafts, spindles,
the housings and stems ..." the captain's voice died away as his eyes
raced over the collection. "Why everything that was made of wood,
bakelite, copper, aluminum, silver, bronze, or anything but steel hasn't
been touched, and every bit of that is gone. But that doesn't make
sense--what does it mean?"
"I don't know--yet," Cleveland replied, slowly. "But I'm afraid that
there's more, and worse." He opened a space-suit reverently, revealing
the face; a face calm and peaceful, but utterly, sickeningly white.
Still reverently, he made a deep incision in the brawny neck, severing
the jugular vein, then went on, soberly:
"You never imagined such a thing as _white_ blood, either, but it all
checks up. Someway, somehow, every atom of free or combined iron in this
whole volume of space was made off with."
"Huh? How come? And above all, _why_?" from the amazed and staring
officers.
"You know as much as I do," grimly, ponderingly. "If it were not for the
fact that there are solid asteroids of iron out beyond Mars, I would say
that somebody wanted iron badly enough to wipe out the fleet and the
planetoid to get it. But anyway, whoever they were, they carried enough
power so that our armament didn't bother them at all. They simply took
the metal they wanted and went away with it--so fast that I couldn't
trace them with an ultra-beam. There's only one thing plain; but that's
so plain that it scares me stiff. This whole affair spells intelligence,
with a capital 'I', and that intelligence is anything but friendly. I
want to put Fred Rodebush at work on this just as fast as I can get
him."
He stepped over to his ultra-projector and put in a call for Virgil
Samms, whose face soon appeared upon his screen.
"We got it all, Virgil," he reported. "It's something
extraordinary--bigger, wider, and deeper than any of us dreamed. It may
be urgent, too, so I think I had better shoot the stuff in on an
ultra-beam and save some time. Fred has a telemagneto recorder there
that he can synchronize with this outfit easily enough. Right?"
"Right. Good work, Lyman--thanks," came back terse approval and
appreciation, and soon the steel wires were again flashing from reel to
reel. This time, however, their varying magnetic charges were so
modulating ultra-waves that every detail of that calamitous battle of
the void was being screened and recorded in the innermost private
laboratory of the Triplanetary Service.
Eager though he naturally was to join his fellow-scientists, Cleveland
was not impatient during the long, but uneventful journey back to Earth.
There was much to study, many improvements to be made in his
comparatively crude first ultra-camera. Then, too, there were long
conferences with Samms, and particularly with Rodebush, the nuclear
physicist, who would have to do much of the work involved in solving the
riddles of the energies and weapons of the Nevians. Thus it did not seem
long before green Terra grew large beneath the flying sphere of the
_Chicago_.
"Going to have to circle it once, aren't you?" Cleveland asked the chief
pilot. He had been watching that officer closely for minutes, admiring
the delicacy and precision with which the great vessel was being
maneuvered preliminary to entering the Earth's atmosphere.
"Yes," the pilot replied. "We had to come in in the shortest possible
time, and that meant a velocity here that we can't check without a
spiral. However, even at that we saved a lot of time. You can save quite
a bit more, though, by having a rocket-plane come out to meet us
somewhere around fifteen or twenty thousand kilometers, depending upon
where you want to land. With their drives they can match our velocity
and still make the drop direct."
"Guess I'll do that--thanks," and the operative called his chief, only
to learn that his suggestion had already been acted upon.
"We beat you to it, Lyman," Samms smiled. "The _Silver Sliver_ is out
there now, looping to match your course, acceleraction, and velocity at
twenty two thousand kilometers. You'll be ready to transfer?"
"I'll be ready," and the Quartermaster's ex-clerk went to his quarters
and packed his dunnage-bag.
In due time the long, slender body of the rocket-plane came into view,
creeping "down" upon the space-ship from "above," and Cleveland bade his
friends goodbye. Donning a space-suit, he stationed himself in the
starboard airlock. Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened,
and he glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket-plane
which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking her terrific speed to
match the slower pace of the gigantic sphere of war. Shaped like a
toothpick, needle-pointed fore and aft, with ultra-stubby wings and
vanes, with flush-set rocket ports everywhere, built of a lustrous,
silvery alloy of noble and almost infusible metals--such was the private
speedboat of Triplanetary's head man. The fastest thing known, whether
in planetary air, the stratosphere, or the vacuous depth of
interplanetary space, her first flashing trial spins had won her the
nickname of the _Silver Sliver_. She had had a more formal name, but
that title had long since been buried in the Departmental files.
Lower and lower dropped the speedboat, her rockets flaming ever
brighter, until her slender length lay level with the airlock door. Then
her blasting discharges subsided to the power necessary to match exactly
the _Chicago's_ acceleration.
"Ready to cut, _Chicago_! Give me a three-second call!" snapped from the
pilot room of the _Sliver_.
"Ready to cut!" the pilot of the _Chicago_ replied. "Seconds! Three!
Two! One! CUT!"
At the last word the power of both vessels was instantly cut off and
everything in them became weightless. In the tiny airlock of the slender
plane crouched a space-line man with coiled cable in readiness, but he
was not needed. As the flaring exhausts ceased Cleveland swung out his
heavy bag and stepped lightly off into space, and in a right line he
floated directly into the open port of the rocket-plane. The door
clanged shut behind him and in a matter of moments he stood in the
control room of the racer, divested of his armor and shaking hands with
his friend and co-laborer, Frederick Rodebush.
"Well, Fritz, what do you know?" Cleveland asked, as soon as greetings
had been exchanged. "How do the various reports dovetail together? I
know that you couldn't tell me anything on the wave, but there's no
danger of eavesdroppers _here_."
"You can't tell," Rodebush soberly replied. "We're just beginning to
wake up to the fact that there are a lot of things we don't know
anything about. Better wait until we're back at the Hill. We have a full
set of ultra screens around there now. There's a couple of other good
reasons, too--it would be better for both of us to go over the whole
thing with Virgil, from the ground up; and we can't do any more talking,
anyway. Our orders are to get back there at maximum, and you know what
that means aboard the _Sliver_. Strap yourself solid in that
shock-absorber there, and here's a pair of ear-plugs."
"When the _Sliver_ really cuts loose it means a rough party, all right,"
Cleveland assented, snapping about his body the heavy spring-straps of
his deeply cushioned seat, "but I'm just as anxious to get back to the
Hill as anybody can be to get me there. All set."
Rodebush waved his hand at the pilot and the purring whisper of the
exhausts changed instantly to a deafening, continuous explosion. The men
were pressed deeply into their shock-absorbing chairs as the _Silver
Sliver_ spun around her longitudinal axis and darted away from the
_Chicago_ with such a tremendous acceleration that the spherical warship
seemed to be standing still in space. In due time the calculated
midpoint was reached, the slim space-plane rolled over again, and, mad
acceleration now reversed, rushed on toward the Earth, but with
constantly diminishing speed. Finally a measurable atmospheric pressure
was encountered, the needle prow dipped downward, and the _Silver
Sliver_ shot forward upon her tiny wings and vanes, nose-rockets now
drumming in staccato thunder. Her metal grew hot; dull red, bright red,
yellow, blinding white; but it neither melted nor burned. The pilot's
calculations had been sound, and though the limiting point of safety of
temperature was reached and steadily held, it was not exceeded. As the
density of the air increased so decreased the velocity of the man-made
meteorite. So it was that a dazzling lance of fire sped high over
Seattle, lower over Spokane, and hurled itself eastward, a furiously
flaming arrow; slanting downward in a long, screaming dive toward the
heart of the Rockies. As the now rapidly cooling greyhound of the skies
passed over the western ranges of the Bitter Roots it became apparent
that her goal was a vast, flat-topped, conical mountain, shrouded in
violet light; a mountain whose height awed even its stupendous
neighbors.
While not artificial, the Hill had been altered markedly by the
engineers who had built into it the headquarters of the Triplanetary
Service. Its mile-wide top was a jointless expanse of gray armor steel;
the steep, smooth surface of the truncated cone was a continuation of
the same immensely thick sheet of metal. No known vehicle could climb
that smooth, hard, forbidding slope of steel; no known projectile could
mar that armor; no known craft could even approach the Hill without
detection. Could not approach it at all, in fact, for it was constantly
inclosed in a vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame through which
neither material substance nor destructive ray could pass.
As the _Silver Sliver_, crawling along at a bare five hundred miles an
hour, approached that transparent, brilliantly violet wall of
destruction, a light of the same color filled her control room and as
suddenly went out; flashing on and off again and again.
"Giving us the once-over, eh?" Cleveland asked. "That's something new,
isn't it?"
"Yes, it's a high-powered ultra-wave spy," Rodebush returned. "The light
is simply a warning, which can be carried if desired. It can also carry
voice and vision...."
"Like this," Samms' voice interrupted from a speaker upon the pilot's
panel and his clear-cut face appeared upon the television screen. "I
don't suppose Fred thought to mention it, but this is one of his
inventions of the last few days. We are just trying it out on you. It
doesn't mean a thing though, as far as the _Sliver_ is concerned. Come
ahead!"
A circular opening appeared on the wall of force, an opening which
disappeared as soon as the plane had darted through it; and at the same
time her landing-cradle rose into the air through a great trap-door.
Slowly and gracefully the space-plane settled downward into that
cushioned embrace. Then cradle and nestled _Sliver_ sank from view and,
turning smoothly upon mighty trunnions, the plug of armor drove solidly
back into its place in the metal pavement of the mountain's lofty
summit. The cradle-elevator dropped rapidly, coming to rest many levels
down in the heart of the Hill, and Cleveland and Rodebush leaped lightly
out of their transport, through her still hot outer walls. A door opened
before them and they found themselves in a large room of unshadowed
daylight illumination; the office of the Chief of the Triplanetary
Service. Calmly efficient executives sat at their desks, concentrating
upon problems or at ease, according to the demands of the moment;
agents, secretaries, and clerks, men and women, went about their wonted
tasks; televisotypes and recorders flashed busily but silently--each
person and machine an integral part of the Service which for so many
years had been carrying an ever-increasing share of the load of
governing the three planets.
"Right of way, Norma?" Rodebush paused before the desk of Virgil Samms'
private secretary. She pressed a button and the door behind her swung
wide.
"You two do not need to be announced," the attractive young woman
smiled. "Go right in."
Samms met them at the door eagerly, shaking hands particularly
vigorously with Cleveland.
"Congratulations on that camera, Lyman!" he exclaimed. "You did a
wonderful piece of work on that. Help yourselves to smokes and sit
down--there are a lot of things we want to talk over. Your pictures
carried most of the story, but they would have left us pretty much at
sea without Costigan's reports. But as it was, Fred here and his crew
worked out most of the answers from the dope the two of you got; and
what few they haven't got yet they soon will have."
"Nothing new on Conway?" Cleveland was almost afraid to ask the
question.
"No." A shadow came over Samms' face. "I'm afraid ... but I'm hoping
it's only that those creatures, whatever they are, have taken him so far
away he can't reach us."
"They certainly are so far away that we can't reach them," Rodebush
volunteered. "We can't even get their ultra-wave interference any more."
"Yes, that's a hopeful sign," Samms went on. "I hate to think of Conway
Costigan checking out. There, fellows, was a real observer. He was the
only man I have ever known who combined the two qualities of the perfect
witness. He could actually see everything he looked at, and could report
it truly, to the last, least detail. Take all this stuff, for instance;
especially their ability to transform iron into a fluid allotrope, and
in that form to use its atomic--nuclear?--energy as power. Something
brand new, and yet he described their converters and projectors so
minutely that Fred was able to work out the underlying theory in three
days, and to tie it in with our own super-ship. My first thought was
that we'd have to rebuild it iron-free, but Fred showed me my error--you
found it first yourself, of course."
"It wouldn't do any good to make the ship non-ferrous unless you could
so change our blood chemistry that we could get along without
hemoglobin, and that would be quite a feat," Cleveland agreed. "Then,
too, our most vital electrical machinery is built around iron cores.
We'll also have to develop a screen for those forces--screens, rather,
so powerful that they can't drive anything through them."
"We've been working along those lines ever since you reported," Rodebush
said, "and we're beginning to see light. And in that same connection
it's no wonder that we couldn't handle our super-ship. We had some good
ideas, but they were wrongly applied. However, things look quite
promising now. We have the transformation of iron all worked out in
theory, and as soon as we get a generator going we can straighten out
everything else in short order. And think what that unlimited power
means! All the power we want--power enough even to try out such hitherto
purely theoretical possibilities as the neutralization of the inertia of
matter!"
"Hold on!" protested Samms. "You certainly can't do _that_! Inertia
is--_must_ be--a basic attribute of matter, and surely cannot be done
away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything
like that, Fred--I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too."
"Don't worry about us, Chief," Rodebush replied with a smile. "If you
will tell me what matter is, fundamentally, I may agree with you.... No?
Well, then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to
do a lot of things that nobody on the Three Planets ever thought of
doing before."
Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be
interrupted by the voice of the secretary.
"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Samms, but some things have come up that you
will have to handle. Knobos is calling from Mars. He has caught the
_Endymion_, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has
finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He
trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, and he
won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from
Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that
dope line. But Knobos is on now--what do you want him to do about the
_Endymion_?"
"Tell him to--no, put him on here, I'd better tell him myself," Samms
directed, and his face hardened in ruthless decision as the horny,
misshapen face of the Martian lieutenant appeared upon the screen. "What
do you think, Knobos? Shall they come to trial or not?"
"Not."
"I don't think so, either. It is better that a few gangsters should
disappear in space than that the Patrol should have to put down another
uprising. See to it."
"Right." The screen darkened and Samms spoke to his secretary. "Put
Milton and Fletcher on whenever they come in." He turned to his guests.
"We've covered the ground quite thoroughly. Goodbye--I wish I could go
with you, but I'll be pretty well tied up for the next week or two."
"'Tied up' doesn't half express it," Rodebush remarked as the two
scientists walked along a corridor toward an elevator. "He probably is
the busiest man on three planets."
"As well as the most powerful," Cleveland supplemented. "And very few
men could use his power as fairly--but he's welcome to it, as far as I'm
concerned. I'd have the pink fantods for a month if I had to do only
once what he's just done--and to him it's just part of a day's work."
"You mean the _Endymion_? What else could he do?"
"Nothing--that's the hell of it. It had to be done, since bringing them
to trial would mean killing half the people of Morseca; but at the same
time it's a ghastly thing to order a job of deliberate, cold-blooded,
and illegal murder."
"You're right, of course, but you would ..." he broke off, unable to put
his thoughts into words. For while inarticulate, man-like, concerning
their deepest emotions, in both men was ingrained the code of the
organization; both knew that to every man chosen for it THE SERVICE was
everything, himself nothing.
"But enough of that, we'll have plenty of grief of our own right here."
Rodebush changed the subject abruptly as they stepped into a vast room,
almost filled by the immense bulk of the _Boise_--the sinister
space-ship which, although never flown, had already lined with black so
many pages of Triplanetary's roster. She was now, however, the center of
a furious activity. Men swarmed over her and through her, in the orderly
confusion of a fiercely driven but carefully planned program of
reconstruction.
"I hope your dope is right, Fritz!" Cleveland called, as the two
scientists separated to go to their respective laboratories. "If it is,
we'll make a perfect lady out of this unmanageable man-killer yet!"