armor. "Sometimes I think you're a potential Big Shot still, at heart."
They entered the palace donjon to find Mike chatting uncomfortably with
Hirokima Schmidzu, chairman of the Wildoatian board.
"So pleased," hissed the yellow man after introductions were completed.
"Have been hearing about your plan."
"Like it?" Sadie sounded unutterably bored as she surveyed her shining
self in a mirror.
"Regrettably not." Schmidzu was not in the least bored as he undressed
her with his slant eyes. "There is no substitute for honorable war."
"Too bad." The girl turned to Mike. "When do we start?"
In the dripping twilight ... that hour before ravening jitbugs make
outdoor life impossible ... the scamour hunters poured out of the gates
and into the softly-breathing jungle. Machetes in hand and Tommyguns
slung across their shoulders, about a dozen of the commandant's guests
spread out and moved forward warily. The chairman attached himself to
Sadie and Frank as they advanced.
Mike's gardeners had done a fair job of weeding out the most dangerous
plant-animals from the grounds. Nevertheless, their way was made
dangerous by roots which snaked out to grasp their ankles and by
sucker-lined branches which whipped at their throats.
They had progressed only a few hundred yards when Frank came upon a
panting slave girl entangled in a mass of carnivorous vines. While the
Japanese hissed disapproval, he defied the immutable laws of Wildoatia
by cutting her free. She stared at him as if he had committed a crime
and fled without a word of thanks.
"It is, shall we say, bad taste, to help Incors in distress," Schmidzu
expostulated.
"You'd talk differently if you were in a jam," flashed Sadie.
"Beg to differ. I would never be in what you call a jam. See." He held
out two gold-encrusted blades. "These Samurai swords. My honorable
grandsire used them to defend Tokyo in second World War. Gods protect
me through them."
They neglected to point out that Tokyo had not been defended.
* * * * *
By now, Mike's beaters had driven several scamours out of the lower
swamps. They heard the piteous "Gobble, gobble, gobble" of Wildoatia's
most dangerous reptile not far ahead. Rifles crashed to the right.
Someone screamed in the middle distance. Then a dead-grey head, with
eyes big as saucers, swayed out of the muck directly in their path!
Frank and Sadie fired together. The nauseating head jerked back, then
flicked forward on a scaly body equipped with a score of yardlong legs.
The thing embraced the girl lovingly. Taloned feet clawed at her armor.
A spiked tail wrapped about her in coil after slow coil.
"Gobble," moaned the scamour, showing its teeth in a wide smile before
they sought the girl's throat.
Frank sprang forward, swinging his machete with both hands.
"Beg to state," hissed Schmidzu, "laws of Wildoatia forbid aid to
another. Regret I must report this."
"Report and be damned," snarled Frank. Green ichor spurted under his
blows but the creature seemed not to notice. Sadie was frantically
squeezing the monster's throat to no avail. It forced its triangular
snout forward, inch by inch.
Bracing himself with feet wide apart, the spaceman put all his strength
into a blow aimed just below that horny carapace. The blade struck
home this time, sheering through flinty scales to the backbone. The
scamour's head fell backward and its coils loosened as it wailed like a
hurt child.
Another wail made Frank whirl. The board chairman had been attacked
by the creature's mate. Samurai swords sheared off several of the
creature's legs but proved pitifully inadequate in the hands of the
little Japanese. Instinctively the captain sprang to the rescue. Sadie,
white and shaken though she was, gripped his arm with fingers of steel.
"No!" she gasped. "No Frank! You mustn't."
"You help girl," screamed Schmidzu, struggling futilely. "You help me,
I not report, please!"
Frank did his best to respond, but Sadie clung to him until the scamour
dragged its suffocating victim out of sight.
"It was our only chance," the girl wept as they chopped off the first
scamour's head and turned back toward the palace with their trophy.
"That rat would have had us concentrated; you know it as well as I do."
"Yes," he agreed bitterly, "but it still was a foul thing to do."
Their spirits revived somewhat when they discovered that three other
hunters were missing ... and unmourned ... while the rest had returned
empty-handed.
"Nothing to it," Sadie assured their cheering admirers when they
reentered the keep. "We wanted to bring in another head, but the jits
were getting bad." She limped off to have her bruises dressed.
* * * * *
They dined on scamour steaks again that night. They drank explosive
gurka. They flirted outrageously with members of Mike's court. They
watched the unbelievably lovely gyrations of two Martian flying girls
who had been smuggled into Wildoatia at the risk of an interstellar
incident.
Sadie told riproaring stories of the days when she was one of the
toughest of the Incors. Then they danced square dances and sang cowboy
ballads of Earth's old West which were the current rage. Finally they
stumbled off to bed after having given Nirvana's commandant one of the
pleasantest evenings of his misspent life.
Mike appeared while they were still asleep the next morning and
reported that he had wangled them berths on the new ship.
"Took some pull," he boasted. "Ain't ten men in Wildoatia as could have
did it. Wouldn't have had a chance if Schmidzu hadn't gone and got
himself killed." He winked and added, "You'll have to have your faces
and fingerprints changed a bit, though. Captain Hans will check your
records seven ways from Sunday."
"Give Frank a pug nose like mine," Sadie directed when a plastic
surgeon appeared in answer to Mike's summons. "And how about making him
cross-eyed, too?"
"How about making her tongue-tied?" Frank retorted.
After much argument they compromised by altering the shape of Frank's
mouth, slanting his eyebrows and pushing back his hairline. Sadie
acquired a classic Greek profile; her freckles were eliminated and her
hair became glossy black. Skin grafts were implanted on each of their
fingertips.
"That should serve unless somebody examines your retina patterns," said
the surgeon two days later. "Your features can be changed back, in
time, but your fingerprints are permanently altered."
"Did I ever love _that_?" sighed Sadie when Frank's bandages were
removed at last.
"You could get a job in Hollywood," he admitted grudgingly as he
studied her in turn. "But confound it, I liked those freckles!"
They had kept the air waves to Venusport humming during their
confinement. There was the usual red tape to break, of course, but news
of the power source was so menacing that New Washington finally agreed
to the plan for a sub rosa test of strength--the Space Patrol against
the Big Shot ship at a spot somewhere between the orbits of Earth and
Venus.
"Now it's up to us," said Sadie as they packed for their trip north.
"How does it feel to have your head in a lion's mouth?"
"What if we can't accomplish anything when we get on board?"
"Then we're not the hellraisers we think we are.... Of course S.P.
can't lick 'em. It'll have to find a way of getting the drop on 'em....
Don't worry. It will only make you lose the rest of your hair."
* * * * *
Mike accompanied them on the supply plane which bore them toward the
Pole. He was in a bad mood. "I shouldn't ought have done it," he
groaned. "If they's been a leak.... If Hans gets suspicious about you
two, we'll be burned down. Only thing in our favor is that they're
desperately short of men up there."
The ship's ports were blacked out as she approached her destination.
They had no chance to determine the route. Finally they knew that
they had landed on water, but when they emerged that they were in a
pressurized hangar which had submerged into a huge chamber drilled in
solid rock.
"Shots?" barked Hans, surveying the prospective recruits when Mike
ushered them into the scientist's severely plain office.
"No." The commandant squirmed. "They're Incors, but they'd sell their
souls to make a stake."
"Incors! Always Incors!" The unhealed radium burn which covered the
whole side of the huge man's face flamed an angry red. "I need some
people up here that I can half-way trust. All these Incors you've been
sending me are dangerous. Already I've smashed two of their plans to
steal or smash the ship. What's the matter with you Shots? Yellow?"
"Now look here, Hans...."
"Yellow!" Hans whirled from Mike and glared at Frank.
"You're an astrogator, they tell me. We can use you if you're not
lying."
"Dave ..." Frank began.
"That's enough. We don't use last names up here. And you!" His one good
eye examined Sadie as if she were a bug. "Nurse, eh? Know anything
about radiation burns?"
"I was in the uranium mines, sir."
"Good. Your job's to help the doctors keep me on my feet a few months
longer. Haven't time to die just yet."
"How the _Champ_?" Mike changed the unpleasant subject.
"Just back from a swing beyond Jupiter." The big man's face lighted up
for the first time. "What a ship! Had her up to three quarters light
speed. She ran like a dream."
"Three quarters light speed," Frank gasped. "That's around one hundred
and forty thousand miles per second."
"She'd have done better, except that we started having some kind of eye
trouble ... sort of like seeing double. A damned queer feeling, I tell
you. Gives you the screaming meemies.... Well," he came back to normal,
"thanks for bringing me an astrogator, Mike. When do we move?"
"As soon as the Boss sets a date with New Washington."
"I'll be ready." Hans escorted Mike to the door, then growled at the
recruits: "Come along. I'll show you your quarters. You won't need them
much; we work sixteen hour shifts here ... and I mean work!"
* * * * *
Frank spent the next month in a fever of toil. Hans was a slavedriver
who enforced discipline on Shots and Incors alike, even though he had
to break heads to do so. All life in the spacious undersea laboratory
revolved around the thousand-foot-long, comb-shaped vessel which rested
on its cradle beneath a dome reaching almost to the surface of the
ocean. Within her silver skin lay the crooked aspirations of Wildoatia.
"Look at her," the leader crooned on one occasion. (Frank had been
given a clean bill by Security and was being taken on an inspection
trip.) "She'll reach Far Centaurus some day ... but I won't be on her."
He caressed the bulging stern plates. "In here is a standard set of
peroxide jets to take her through atmosphere. I hate the clumsy things.
Wish I had time left to solve that problem of radiating heat from a
compact pile when it's not operating in space.... Look up there!"
They craned their necks, as at a skyscraper. "That battery of rockets
projecting from what is now her side uses the new fuel. She travels
broadside on after blast-off."
They took an elevator to the control room amidships.
"Designed the equipment myself." Hans beamed at the banks of quadrants,
verniers and sky-encompassing viewplates. "Five years of hard work it
took ... to pay off United Stars for this burn!"
They toured the engine room where a compact, heavily shielded pile
stood ready to change tall stacks of pig iron ingots into unlimited
power. Then they inspected the comfortable crew's quarters.
"What about armament, sir," Frank probed at last.
"There are guided missiles which can seek and find targets thousands
of miles away. They can be equipped with either fission or
disintegrating war heads. Both go dead after a certain period; can't
have a disintegrator bumping into some planet and blowing it sky high.
For really high speed operations, guided missiles won't be much good,
of course, except in a stern chance. Then we'll depend mainly on the
mine fields we spread behind us. Come on. Might as well show you the
stuff." He started down an odd companionway which had steps both on one
wall and on the floor. Then he staggered and leaned heavily against a
bulkhead.
"Better go get that cursed nurse," he panted. "This burn...."
Frank found Sadie in the hospital and hurried her toward the ship.
"How long will the Old Man keep going?" he asked.
"A month or so, if he's careful.... I hope the Patrol stalls a bit."
"Then what?" He took a chance on patting her hand.
"We may get our chance. The Second is a dope."
"Have you made any contact with that Underground agent?"
"Not a chance. Hans has spy rays rigged up everywhere."
"Same here. Well, keep your funny chin up, Sadie.... There's your
patient.... And try to get more rest; you look peaked."
They found Hans walking blindly in a circle, gave him a sedative and
helped him back to his room. Then they parted silently with a quick
handclasp.
* * * * *
Frank went back to plotting orbits to every planet and satellite, as
well as perfecting combat maneuvers. His math was rusty, so he spent
long hours at his desk and found little time to make friendships with
his shipmates to be. The other technicians were also a hardworking
lot, far different from the roistering Big Shots who ran the planet.
Hans had handpicked them and they were wise, ambitious and hard ...
driven by a grim selfishness which made the astrogator quail. When, for
self-protection, Sage aped their mannerisms and ways of thinking, he
found himself growing as viciously efficient as a crouching tiger.
The only real acquaintance he made, among that crowd of automatons, was
the foppish son of an Argentine who had escaped from the debacle which
struck his country during the Atomic War. His name was Carlos and he
warmed slightly when he found that Frank had picked up his beloved ...
and outmoded ... Spanish language while working on the Sahara project.
Carlos was second in command and obviously dreamed of supplanting
Hans. He was a complete egomaniac. But Frank could discern no outward
disloyalty to Wildoatia.
Of course the patrolman discussed the details of his work with half a
dozen technicians, but the person he warmed to was one of the few women
in the lab. She was a radar operator who had been cashiered from a mail
packet for some disgraceful episode on Mars. Blonde and good-looking in
a stocky way, she answered to the name of Greta, wore her harness with
an air, swore like a trooper, smoked cigars, drove her subordinates
until they dropped, and worshipped money as her only God. For some
reason she took a fancy to "Dave" and overlooked many of his early
errors while damning others for less serious mistakes.
In other words, Frank found himself getting nowhere with his plan to
sow dissension among the crew. As in early stages of the three great
wars, they were frantically loyal to their brutal ideals and leaders.
If there had been rivalry involved, the spacemen felt he might have
accomplished something. This idea, plus a longing to look at Sadie,
caused him to pay a visit to the director. The latter, now but a bloody
caricature of himself, still maintained his iron rule from a hospital
bed.
"Sir," he proposed, fixing his eyes on the nurse instead of on the
thing propped up in bed, "I've found that the _Champ_ needs another
trial run. Her controls aren't properly calibrated for close work among
the planets."
"The devil you say!" Hans rose painfully on one elbow. "I calibrated
them myself."
"There's an error of half a degree in the...."
"I know, dumbkopf. It won't bother us when we move against those S.
P. tubs. Leave well enough alone; I can't make such a trip again. And
I don't trust a single one of you congenital doublecrossers out of my
sight. Now get back to work. I'm busy." He turned almost blindly to a
mass of bloodstained papers spread over the bed.
6
A week later the word spread like lightning through the lab. Hans had
died, screaming. His screams were not due to pain. (Radiation burns are
almost painless.) They were torn out of him by the knowledge that he
could not live to direct the test of strength with United Stars. The
cream of the jest was that, as the director breathed his last, word was
flashed from Nirvana that the duel would begin "somewhere in space" at
2400 sideral time, July 14--just three days away.
Carlos called a war council immediately after the funeral. Present
were Fritz, previously the second mate; the radiation-scarred chief
engineer; two shifty-eyed deck officers; Greta, and Frank.
"I don't understand these orders," the Spaniard raged, twisting his
moustache as if trying to tear it out by the roots. "They tell me to
blast off at 2400, but they don't name the battle area. This is another
New Washington trick. Do they expect me to search the universe for
those confounded Space Patrol tubs?"
"The S.P. ships have just about enough range to get from the Moon to
Venus, or vice versa," Fritz volunteered. "They carry very little air.
We can cruise around until they exhaust their supplies, then shoot 'em
like ducks." He licked his thick lips.
"I can get a radar fix on them in no time," said Greta from within her
cloud of cigar smoke. "Don't be disturbed, sir." Her eyes were cold.
"Oh!" Carlos struggled to hide his chagrin. "Dismissed. Get the ship
ready for blast-off."
Shortly afterward, loudspeakers blared throughout the lab. Men ran in
all directions. Food and other perishables not already aboard began to
be loaded with hysterical speed.
At midnight on the fourteenth, the _Champ_ nosed her way through the
watertight lock of her caisson, climbed like leviathan through the
miledeep cloud layer of Venus and, dripping water from her splendid
sides, leaped into the ebony sky. On the bridge, Carlos, Fritz, Frank
and Greta crouched over their instruments as the shadowy planet sank
beneath them. Frank's heart was throbbing as he sought wildly for some
method of stopping the invincible monster. He could shoot Carlos....
He could jam the throttle.... He could.... A glance at four robot-like
soldiers who guarded the doors showed him the impossibility of doing
anything whatsoever; he was trapped.
"She's running perfectly, sir," intoned Fritz, his water-blue eyes
fixed on the leaping indicators. "Peroxides working perfectly.
Approaching speed of sound."
"Sonic it is, mister." Carlos' voice shook ever so slightly. As if in
answer, the _Champ_ shook, too, as she hit the turbulence. They clung
to their padded seats for a moment as she rolled and plunged, then
relaxed as the barrier was pierced and the thinning atmosphere whined
more and more faintly along her sides.
"Stratosphere clear," Frank sang out. "On orbit."
"Hard fix on the Moon, sir." This from Greta.
"On orbit. Radar fix on the Moon. Get set for turnover." Carlos slid
the throttle quadrant forward. Bells jangled throughout the hull.
Like a seal the ship obeyed her helm. The bulkhead, on which they
were seated, slowly became the left wall of the control room while
the true floor assumed its rightful place and their chairs swivelled
automatically. Otherwise, except for the shift of stars outside the
ports, they scarcely knew that the _Champ_ had attained broadside-on
position.
"Space drive position," called Fritz. "Cut peroxides."
"Peroxides cut." The commander's hands flew over the controls. "Atomics
warming up."
* * * * *
There was a moment when they were weightless and oddly uncomfortable,
as though falling from a great height. Then they returned to normal
with the first faint pulse of the new drive. Beneath their feet,
translucent ports in the floor turned ruddy, then blazed with an
unholy, growing splendor.
"One microsecond deviation from orbit." This from Frank.
Carlos made a quick adjustment. The telltale on the softly-glowing sky
chart centered itself.
"On orbit," the astrogator amended.
"On orbit it is!" The perspiring Commander smoothed his rumpled hair
and nervously adjusted his moustache. "Take over, mister. We've half an
hour before the tubes are hot enough to start revving up to speed. I
must inspect the ship. Come on, Dave."
They found the decks in shining order, with each crew member standing
stiffly at his post. The only damage from turnover had been a slight
shift in a secondary radar antenna caused by a backdraft from one of
the stern jets.
"Greta and I can fix that, sir," Frank suggested.
The operator appeared, swearing her usual blue streak, after Carlos
called her on the intercom. The profanity still burned Frank's ears
through his helmet mike after they had wriggled into bulky spacesuits,
attached tools to hooks on their belts and clumped to an airlock.
"All right, lubbers," the Amazon snarled through the open face plate of
her helmet at crewmen assigned to operate the door. "Get the lead outa
yer pants. Open 'er up."
With hatred in their eyes, the others leaped to obey. The inner
door clanged shut. As the pressure dropped, their articulated suits
expanded with loud pops. Moments later, the outer door slid away
and they clambered up an iron ladder and onto the hull. Their breath
spurting into space as jets of ice particles, they used magnetized
shoes and gloves to creep like beetles along the smoothly welded plates.
As they worked together at the tedious repair a project began to form
in Frank's mind. Perhaps it was the giddy reeling of the heavens about
the ship. Perhaps the compressed air he breathed was too rich in
oxygen. Whatever the cause, he reached the blinding conclusion that
Greta must be the Underground's Agent 542.
It all fitted together. She had a key position on board; she had been
kind to him. Now they were outside the ship and out of range of the spy
rays. Here was his chance....
"Greta," he whispered through the intercom.
"Yeh?" Her helmet swivelled toward him.
At that moment all hell broke loose!
Up from the Venusian cloud blanket only a few miles below spurted
a shower of golden sparks. All else forgotten, he blinked at them
while his heart began pounding. They could only be ... they were
the little globular ships of the Space Patrol. Travelling at four
or five G's--much faster than the speed which the _Champ_ had yet
attained--they started closing in. Ahead of them, he knew, would be
probing their fission torpedoes.
"Smart!" He heard Greta's voice in his ears. "I've got to hand it to
'em." She started scrabbling toward the airlock, cursing bitterly.
"Not smart enough," he answered, his heart sinking. "The _Champ_ will
accelerate and escape them within a few minutes. Then she'll circle
and...."
"That's what you think, bud. Feel the hull."
* * * * *
Carlos was well aware of the danger, evidently. The great ship strained
and heaved under them. Almost at Frank's feet a plate started its
seams. The truth struck him like a blow. The _Champ_ was not built for
close quarters maneuvering. Her mass was so great ... her skeleton was
relatively so weak ... that she was physically incapable of dodging the
flexible patrol boats. And, since her tubes were still comparatively
cool, she did not have the power to outdistance them.
"Come on S.P. Come on, you sons of guns," he whooped, staggering
to his feet as a torpedo caromed into one of the _Champ's_ jets and
glanced off to explode harmlessly several miles away.
"You stinking Pumper!" He ducked as the words ripped through the phone.
The bullet meant for his brain whined against the side of his helmet.
"Luring me out here when I shoulda been gettin' a fix...."
There was no time to shift his shoes. He flung himself sidewise and
just managed to grab the radar operator's wrist as she fired again.
The gun spiralled into darkness and they were fighting breast to breast.
Greta was strong as an ox; she got a grip on his air hose and wrenched
at the connection. He jammed an elbow into her well padded solar
plexus. As she relaxed with a grunt he reached down and tore her
magnetized boots from the skin of the ship.
"Now, my lady...."
She smashed her helmet down upon his in an effort to break its glass
front and suffocate him. With all his remaining strength he untangled
her arms from his neck and hurled her into space. A scream rattled his
earphones ... died slowly into silence!