Collected short fiction, p.327
Collected Short Fiction, page 327
Beneath his military readiness, however, Chan Derron’s heart was thumping. He was proud of the uniform that had been his for less than a year. Fiercely proud of the golden insignia that he had already won in the amazing grim war with the cometeers. And he wanted desperately to know what was coming next. His breath caught, and he watched the lean dark face of Jay Kalam.
“I have ordered all of Admiral General Samdu’s fleet to assist with this assignment—it is important enough to justify that,” the commander was saying. “But the crucial duty is such that one ship—and one man, Captain Derron—must be trusted to carry it out.”
Chan Derron tried to swallow the little lump of eagerness in his throat. A commissioned captain of the legion—he mustn’t tremble like a wide-eyed cadet. After all, he was twenty-two. But the low-voiced question startled him:
“You know of Dr. Max Eleroid?”
“Of course,” he stammered. “—if you mean the geodesic engineer? The man who redesigned the geodyne, and invented the geopeller? At the academy, we studied his text on geodesy.”
“So you were an engineer?” The commander faintly smiled. “Dr. Eleroid,” he said, “is probably the greatest physical scientist living—although he has a dread of publicity. And he has just done something new.”
Chan Derron waited, wondering.
“THIS MORNING,” Jay Kalam said, “Eleroid came into this office, with an assistant behind him staggering under a box of equipment. He was frightened. He begged me to take him and his invention under the protection of the legion.
“The invention is the most important thing he has done, he said, and the most dangerous. He had decided not to work it out at all, he told me—until the System was placed in danger by the attack of the cometeers.
“He set out to complete it, then, as a weapon. It is a little too late for the war. But he says he is going to intrust it to the legion, as an adjunct to AKKA in the defense of mankind.
“Yesterday, anyhow, he found evidence that an intruder had been in his laboratory—that’s somewhere west, in the Painted Desert. And the spy has him baffled and very thoroughly scared. Only two people had been trusted with any details of his work, he said—his daughter and this assistant, Jonas Thwayne. He has no clue to the spy’s identity; but he gives him credit for being a remarkably clever man.
“That’s the background of the matter, Captain Derron. And here are your orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We are going to aid Dr. Eleroid with a field test of his invention—it has never been tested, he says, except on the minutest scale—and then, if the test is successful, he will leave it in the hands of the legion.
“You will go back aboard your cruiser, captain, and proceed at once to Rocky Mountain Base. There you will find awaiting you twenty workmen, with ata-motored excavating equipment, explosives and building materials. You will take them aboard, and then rise, without delay, in a course for the New Moon. You follow me, captain?”
“I do, sir.”
“When you have reached an altitude of two thousand miles,” Jay Kalam continued, “you will open this envelope and proceed to the spot designated inside.”
Chan Derron accepted a small, sealed green envelope, stamped in darker green with the wings of the legion, and put it in an inside pocket of his tunic.
“You will land at the designated spot, and disembark the workmen and equipment. At a point that you will select, working under your orders, they will dig an excavation twenty feet square and twenty feet deep, seal the walls and floor, roof it, provide it with a stair and a concealed door with a lock.
“This task must be completed by twelve noon, tomorrow, legion time. You will put the men and equipment back aboard the Corsair. The cruiser will return at once, under your first officer, to Rocky Mountain Base. And you, Captain Derron—”
Chan Derron caught his breath, as the commander suddenly rose.
“You will remain on guard, near the hidden door. You will keep your ultrawave communicator, emergency rations, and your barytron blaster and bayonet. You will stand guard while Dr. Eleroid and his assistant land, enter the hidden chamber, and test the invention.
“Finally, if the experiment is successful, Dr. Eleroid will deliver his apparatus and notes in your care, for the legion. You will call your cruiser to return, go aboard with Eleroid, the assistant, and the machine, and come back at once to Rocky Mountain Base. Is that all clear, Captain Derron?”
“Clear enough, sir,” said Chan Derron. “If you feel that one man is enough—”
“Samdu’s fleet will be on duty to see that there is no outside interference,” the grave commander assured him. “For the rest, we must rely upon secrecy, precision of action, and division of knowledge. Upon you, Captain Derron, rests the final responsibility.” His dark eyes stabbed into Chan’s. “This is as great a trust as the legion has ever given any man. But I know you will carry through.”
Chan gulped.
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“And that is all, captain.”
THE MATTER already appeared grave enough, perhaps. But Chan Derron was not used to being depressed by the details of his duty. The mystery surrounding this affair he found pleasantly exciting, and the faint hint of danger was like a tonic to him.
On his way back to the Corsair—the trim little geodesic cruiser that was his proud first command—he was humming a song. He had never been to the New Moon, then. But he had seen the artificial satellite, careering backward across the sky of Earth. And soon, with Commander Kalam trusting him with such important assignments as this, he should have a furlough earned—his heart leaped at the promise—on the gay New Moon.
Stridiog toward the vast spaceport that sprawled brown across the desert mesa beside the Green Hall’s slender spire, he kept time to the popular tune, whose age-hallowed sentiments ran:
“Where first we danced,
On the bright New Moon,
Where we romanced,
On the far New Moon,
I lost a million dollars—
But I found you, dear!”
He leaped aboard the slim, silver Corsair. He had expected this assignment to take him to some other planet. Two thousand miles toward the New Moon’s vividly entrancing face, however, when he came to open the sealed green envelope, the destination he read was back on Earth—a barren point of black granite on the southern polar ocean.
The Corsair dropped among shrieking birds. Chan selected a level spot on the highest flat ledge—a hundred feet above the gray unresting sea. The twenty workmen fell to. Humming atomic drills sliced into the living rock. A web of structural metal was flung across the pit. Rock debris was transformed into a six-foot roof of adamantine perdurolith.
Next day the cruiser departed, on the very stroke of noon. Left alone among the settling birds, that soon covered even the hidden door, Chan Derron shuddered to something colder than the bitter south wind.
Beyond this black pinnacle, and the green-white chaos that forever roared about its foot, the polar sea ran empty and illimitable. Low and yellowed in the gray northward sky, the sun glinted on the summits of a few icebergs. So far as they could tell him, he might have been the only man upon the planet. And a sudden bleak doubt rose in him, that even all Commander Kalam’s elaborate precautions against the unknown spy had been enough.
Once more, anxiously, he inspected his barytron blaster. Recently perfected to replace the old proton gun that had served so long, its atomic tube projected a powerful jet of “heavy” superelectronic particles. The holster served also as a stock for careful long-range work. A folding bayonet snapped out for use at close quarters.
Chan tried to find comfort in its fine, silent mechanism, in its chrominum trimness and its balanced weight. But the lonely wail of the bitter wind, the empty hostility of the cold sky and the ice-studded sea, set in his heart a queer tense apprehension.
HE SHOUTED with relief when the Bellatrix—long, bright flagship of Admiral General Hal Samdu—plunged down through a cloud of shrieking birds. Two men were put off, and a heavy wooden box. The Bellatrix leaped back spaceward. In seconds, it had vanished.
Chan Derron had never seen Dr. Eleroid. But he knew the scientist, now, from his portrait in the geodesic text. Eleroid was a big, slightly awkward, slow-moving man, with a red, rugged, genial face. But for his eyes, he might have been taken for a butcher or a barkeeper. His eyes, however, wide-set and seen through heavy lenses, possessed the magnetic power of genius.
He was still afraid. That was obvious from his anxious peering about the islet, from a sudden start when the white-cloaked assistant touched him, from the relief on his broad face when Chan strode to meet him.
“Glad to thee you, captain.” His deep soft voice had an occasional lisp. “Where ith the vault? We must hathen!”
Chan indicated the door, disguised with a slab of natural rock, and returned to help the small, perspiring assistant with the box. Dr. Eleroid watched it very anxiously, and lent his own strength to aid them on the narrow stair.
They set the box down in the middle of the bare, square concrete room. The assistant was rubbings at red wheals on his thin hands. Suddenly he began to sneeze, and covered his face with his handkerchief.
Max Eleroid gestured imperatively to ward the stair. “You are to stand guard, captain.” His voice was hoarse with tension. “We’ll lock the room. I’ll call you, by ultrawave, when we are done.” His trembling hand touched Chan Derron’s arm. “Keep a vigilant watch, captain,” he begged. “For the thafety of the Thystem may be at stake.”
The massive door thudded shut. Chan moved a little away, and the birds settled over it again. Rock and sky and sea were empty as before. The south wind was more biting, the northward sun feebler. Pacing back and forth, he shuddered again.
His apprehension, he was trying to tell himself, was silly—when something touched him. At first he thought that only a bird had brushed him. Then he felt the fatal lightness of his belt. His hand flashed in a well-trained gesture for his blaster. And he found that it was gone!
He stared around him, bewildered. Rock and sky and sea were ominously vacant as ever. What could have happened to the weapon? The screaming birds mocked his sanity. This meant danger—the operation of some unknown and hostile agency. But what was he to do? Samdu’s guarding fleet must be somewhere beyond that bleak gray sky. He would call the admiral—
But his own call was already humming from the little black disk of the ultrawave communicator, that hung by its cord from his neck. He touched the receiver, key, slapped it to his ear.
“Help!” It was Max Eleroid. “Thith man—” The lisping voice was queerly muffled, choked. “Thith man . . . he ith not—”
An odd little purring hum came out of the communicator, and then it was silent.
II.
THE SAME strange message was picked up by the fleet. When the Bellatrix landed, Chan Derron was found staggering aimlessly about the rock.
“My blaster’s gone!” he stammered to Hal Samdu. “If it hadn’t been taken, I might have been able to cut a way in, in time to help.”
“Where is your vault?” demanded the rugged old spaceman. His huge, ugly face was ashen gray, and the anxious gestures of his great scarred hands had already set all the stiff white mass of his hair on end. “We’ll break it open.”
Chan pointed out the scarcely visible seam.
“It’s locked.” His voice trembled with the dread of the hour that he had waited. “Eleroid locked it, on the inside. I tried it, after he called. You’ll have to cut through the perdurolith.”
“Then we will—if we can!” Hal Samdu’s battered hands clenched, in tortured indecision. “If only old Giles were here! He has a gift for locks. But he’s off on Phobos, beyond the Sun, eating and drinking himself to death at John Star’s board!”
His rugged head shook, baffled.
“I don’t know—”
“We can’t delay,” cried Chan Derron. “You have hand blasters. With them, we can cut a way through. And without danger—”
His voice dropped into the abyss of incredulity.
For the huge legionnaire had bent and seized the rugged projecting knob of rock that served as a disguised handle for the great pivoted door, as if he would break the lock with his own unaided muscles. And the door swung, smoothly.
Hal Samdu straightened, stared grimly at Chan.
“Locked, eh?”
Chan Derron stepped dazedly back, and a black wind of terror blew cold about his heart.
“It was locked!” he gasped. “I tried it!”
But a cold deadliness of doubt glittered abruptly in the blue eyes of the admiral general. His big hand deliberately hauled out his own barytron blaster, and covered the weaponless Chan.
“Hold him, men,” he commanded. “I’m going below.”
And Hal Samdu and his officers went down into the small, square, concrete chamber. In the garish light of the tube still burning against the ceiling, they found Dr. Max Eleroid and the man in white. They were both sprawled still, and the slighter body of the assistant was already stiffening into the rigor of death.
Rivulets and pools of darkening blood stained the white new concrete. Both men had been stabbed. And the weapon, still protruding from the back of Dr. Max Eleroid, was a service barytron blaster of the legion design—holster stock and bayonet locked in place.
And there was nothing else in the bare, bright-lit room.
The long wooden box and whatever it must have contained were gone!
Staggering and gasping for breath, as if he had been stricken also, Hal Samdu came back up the stair, carrying in his great quivering hand the blaster with a thin red drop trembling on the point of the bayonet.
He thrust it into Chan’s bewildered face.
“Captain, do you know this weapon?”
Chan examined it.
“I do,” he gulped hoarsely. “I know it by the serial number, and by my initials etched into the butt. It is mine.”
Hal Samdu made a choking, furious sound.
“Then, Derron,” he gasped, “you are under arrest, in the name of the legion. You are charged with insubordination, gross neglect of duty, treason against the Green Hall, and the murder of Dr. Max Eleroid and his assistant, Jonas Thwayne. You will be held in irons, without bail, for trial by court-martial before your superior officers in the legion. And God help you, Derron!”
Chan was swaying, paralyzed. A great, far wind roared in his ears. The black rock, and the white ships crowded upon it, and this menacing circle of menacing men in green, all spun into dimness. But he clung grimly to awareness.
“But I didn’t do it,” he gasped. “I tell you, sir, this can’t be . . . real—”
But icy jaws of metal had already snapped on his wrist, and the great ruthless voice of Hal Samdu was roaring at him: “Now, Derron, what did you do with Eleroid’s invention?”
WHAT did you do with Eleroid’s invention? . . . What did you do with Eleroid’s invention? . . . WHAT DID YOU DO WITH ELEROID’S INVENTION? . . . WHAT DID YOU DO—
Chan Derron heard that question a million times. It was shouted at him, sobbed at him, whispered at him, shrieked at him. He ate it with prison food, and breathed it with dank prison air. It was beaten into him with men’s hard fists, and burned into his soul with the blaze of atomic lights.
He was commanded to answer it, threatened, reasoned with, pleaded with, tricked, drugged, flung into solitary, starved, promised freedom and riches, picked to mental shreds by the psychologists and psychiatrists—and threatened again.
Of course he couldn’t answer it.
Because of that fact alone he was kept alive, when he hungered with his whole soul for the freedom of death.
The court-martial did indeed, when at last the torture of the trial was ended, return a triple sentence of death, on two counts of murder and one of treason. But that was commuted by Commander Kalam, the day he embarked on the great research expedition to the green comet, to life imprisonment at hard labor in the legion prison on Ebron—the asteroid called “Devil’s Rock.”
Chan heard it, in his cell of pain, with a sense of sick futility. He knew that he would not be allowed to die, any more than he was let live, until that question was answered. And the great, grim prison on the asteroid, as he had foreknown, brought him no escape from it.
The person—even the person of a convicted criminal—was legally safeguarded by certain laws of the Green Hall. And the tradition of the legion was all against cruel and unusual methods. But the safety of the Green Hall was a greater end than the letter of its laws, and the tradition of the legion demanded absolute efficiency toward that end, regardless of all else.
The court-martial had found perfect circumstantial evidence that Chan Derron, tempted to abandon his duty by the hope of whatever vast and unknown power lay in Max Eleroid’s invention, had killed the scientist and his assistant, and then, failing to escape with his reward, had somehow disposed of it. The case was absurdly simple. There was only that one question. The whole scientific organization moved as ruthlessly to extract the answer from Chan as if it had been the juice in a grape. Therein the legion failed—but only because the answer was not in him.
Chan was two years in the prison on Ebron.
Then he escaped.
For two years more the legion hunted him.
III.
“NO.” Jay Kalam lifted weary eyes from the documents stacked before him, on his long desk in the tower of the Green Hall. “Tell Gaspar Hannas I can’t talk to him.” His voice was dull with fatigue. “Not tonight.”
For he was deadly tired. In command of the great research expedition to study the sciences and the arts of the half-conquered comet, he had spent three strange, exhausting years among those scores of amazing worlds beyond the barrier of green.
