Disaster

  I crouched there thinking, what a strange thing to do. He wasn’t actually destroying anything at all. It seemed very impractical to me. Certainly not an Apparatus textbook procedure. He might be a Royal officer, but he would certainly never qualify for a real organization like ours. No explosions! What an oversight!

  Bathed and shaved and in fresh clothes, he came back to the flight deck. He fed the cat and then he fed me. He chained me back up to the pipe and sat down in the planetary-pilot chair. He buzzed Izzy and gave him a phone number and told him to ring it and, when he had the party, to hold the instrument close to the viewer-phone.

  Izzy told the party that someone wanted to speak with them. He put the telephone where he had been told.

  “This is Wister,” Heller said.

  “Oh! Oh, dear Wister—what a wonderful surprise! I will always be eternally grateful to you, you know.”

  MISS SIMMONS!

  “And I will always remember you,” said Heller. “Listen. I have something you will be very interested in. Did you know that every oil refinery in the world is registering as radioactive on Geiger counters?”

  “NO!”

  “Yes, it’s a fact. I think you should get field teams out at once and check it. Every time you go near one of them a Geiger counter will click its head off!”

  “GOOD HEAVENS!”

  “Will you check that for me?” said Heller.

  “Oh, good Lord! If that is true, Wister, the Antinuclear Protest Marchers in every land will rise in a howling storm!”

  “That’s what I hoped,” said Heller. “Demonstrations everyplace.”

  “Oh, you’ll have them, Wister. And thank you, thank you, thank you, you dear boy! THE (BLEEPARDS)!”

  She hung up.

  “Oy!” said Izzy.

  “Yes,” said Heller. “Double oy. The oil shares will go down like a rocket in reverse. When they get near bottom, sell. And use the cash for Maysabongo to exercise their contracts for every drop of oil in reserve in the US. Then in July, purchase every oil company in the world for a song.”

  “Oh, Mr. Jet, our every dream is coming true! I just hope Fate doesn’t intervene.”

  “I’ll try to see it doesn’t,” Heller said. “Bye-bye.

  “Now I’ll take care of the last small bit of this program and the mission will be done,” said Heller.

  “Done?” I cried aghast. “For Gods’ sakes, what more could you do?”

  “Oh, this last is just a little thing. The south pole has a tendency to wander over the sea. I have to give the globe a little tap to straighten up its rotation. Corky, take off for the planet Saturn now.”

  Saturn?

  My head was in a whirl indeed.

  All I could think of, really, was that he had just set motions in train which would utterly smash Octopus and all the other oil companies. Not even their massive control of news could quash the panic that would ensue. Rockecenter, unless I got loose, was through!

  I reviewed how I could remedy this catastrophe. Actually all I had to do was get Rockecenter to put a satellite killer onto that umbrella device, bomb the Empire State Building, atom-bomb the Republic of Maysabongo out of existence and announce to the waiting world that their refineries were NOT radioactive. Yes, I could handle this.

  But now for some mysterious reason we were heading for Saturn.

  HOW COULD I GET LOOSE?

  PART SIXTY-THREE

  Chapter 7

  Heller was dropping radiation shields again so we could pass once more through the magnetosphere. I could hear the planetary drives winding up higher and higher. I was chained very close to their partition just back of the flight deck and the sound began to hurt my ears.

  “I don’t think these auxiliaries are meant to run this fast,” I said fearfully.

  “Oh, stop worrying. They take this ship up to the brink of the speed of light. They sound just fine to me.”

  They would, I grated to myself. Oh, Gods, why did I ever get involved with anyone from the most insane corps of the Fleet, combat engineers? No wonder their average service life was only two years. Heller was long overdue, having gone three or more times that. And on top of that he was a speed maniac. “What’s the hurry?”

  “There’s no sense dawdling around. What with acceleration and braking, it will take us hours as it is.” He glanced at a readout that was whirring too fast for me to read. “Saturn, right now, is 782,617,819 miles away. It’s not at minimal distance. The closest it ever gets to Earth is about 740,000,000 miles.”

  “Why Saturn?” I said.

  Heller shrugged. He indicated the viewscreens with his hand. “You don’t see any comets, do you?”

  Comets? Saturn? Now I knew he was crazy.

  I made another try. “If you leave this fast, that other assassin ship is certain to spot our turbulence and even if they don’t get us on a scope, they’ll be waiting for our return.”

  “True. They won’t be able to follow us. They haven’t got the speed we have.”

  “No, no. You don’t understand. If we return, they’ll be lying in wait for us. They can find us even with the locators gone.”

  It had been on the tip of my tongue to say that this proved he should go to Voltar right now. That would put me home perfectly safe, as Lombar would have him grabbed on sight and I would be freed. But even as I opened my mouth to speak, a sledgehammer thought hit me.

  The actions this devil had just set in train spelled utter ruin for Rockecenter.

  If I went home and left that mess, Lombar Hisst would have me exterminated so slowly it would take months. It would be quite different if I could come galloping in and cry “I had to return so I could save your life,” or something like that. I had no excuse whatever to go back except that I had been captured. Lombar wouldn’t like that.

  No, I must think of some way to get free and undo the fiendish and diabolical work of Heller. I could not go back and leave Earth with no Rockecenter, clean air, cheap fuel and happy riffraff. Heller a total success? It was unthinkable!

  I crouched down and thought harder.

  He told the cat and the tug to keep an eye on me and went aft.

  Earth, seen on the scopes, was dwindling like a ball thrown away. I realized suddenly that we were going to go through the asteroid belt with, to all intents and purposes, no pilot. It froze my wits.

  Then I saw the time-sight dial slowly turn all by itself. It spooked me. Was this tug really some sort of a ghost? I couldn’t figure out where its voice came from and Heller had even stopped using a microphone to speak to it.

  Oh, more than ever, I made up my mind, I had to get off this thing.

  But even more than that, I had to warn Rockecenter before it was too late. Even now that (bleeped) Faht Bey might be turning Black Jowl loose. Supposing I should go back to Voltar and simply tell Lombar, “Well, my friend, I have just had the whole Earth base seized.” Yes, there was no doubt of it. Lombar would react, and not favorably at all.

  How the HELLS could I get out of this mess?

  Some time later we began to brake and perhaps a half an hour after that, Saturn was in view.

  I had never seen the planet before. It was immense. We were coming in at an angle to the rings and I stared at those strange circles. The outer two were very bright and the one nearest us seemed thinner.

  Heller came back to the flight deck.

  The tug had slowed now almost to a stop. “I’ll take over, Corky,” Heller said.

  “Sir, could I warn you that the gravity is very strong. I am continuing to brake. We are also quite near one of its moons and a new volcano seems to be erupting on it.”

  Heller looked at it and it was a colorful sight. But then, the whole place was colorful: The planet itself was yellowish but near its equator seemed pastel green and there were patches of reddish brown. But it looked very dangerous.

  “You’re not going to try to land on it,” I said.

  Heller snorted. “The surface is gas. Be quiet while I fig
ure this out.”

  I had no faintest notion what he was figuring out. He was passing a scope down the outermost ring. It seemed to be made up of thousands, millions, billions of massive particles tumbling in slow motion, a circular parade.

  Heller put the tug quite close to the outermost ring and traveling with the rotation of the whole body at the same speed so that we appeared motionless except for the tiny movement of the stars beyond in the black sky. I was surprised that I could see star motion at all. This planet must be rotating on its axis more rapidly than Earth.

  “Corky, turn your traction beams on. Full power. We’re going to take too big a bite and then shed some if we have to cut it down in size.”

  “Bite of what?” I said.

  “Ice,” said Heller. “Those particles are ice. It will never miss a few billion tons.”

  “We came all the way out here for ice?” I said.

  “Certainly. We could have gotten some from a comet if one had happened to be handy, but actually this is purer stuff. We don’t want too many stones.”

  “What in heavens’ names are you going to do with it?” I said.

  “Use it to tap the poles straight, of course,” said Heller. “You don’t want the poles drifting over water again. It would flood Earth.”

  “You mean you are adding water to stop flooding?” Good Gods, now I knew he was insane.

  “A few billion tons of water is nothing. Water is awfully heavy stuff. What we’re taking wouldn’t even make a small mountain. Lock on, Corky.”

  The vibrations of the traction engines were added to the whine of gravity coils.

  “Escape velocity is twenty-two miles per second,” said Corky. “I recommend we do half a planetary rotation. That’s five hours and seven minutes.”

  “All right,” said Heller. “Carry on.”

  The Will-be Was time-drives went on with a fearful initial roar in the center of the ship.

  Heller was watching a rearward screen. At first there was very little change in the outermost ring, to which we were lying very close. Then I saw a hairline gap. As the seconds turned to minutes it began to widen.

  Very, very fractionally, the planet face began to move rearward.

  About fifteen minutes later, I said, “We’re going to leave a hole in that ring.”

  “It’ll fill in,” said Heller. “Proportionately speaking, we’re taking almost nothing.”

  He thought it was nothing. The whole sky behind us seemed to be filled with ice!

  “Some astronomer on Earth is going to see this,” I said.

  “Oh, I doubt it. And if he did, he’d just think it was some new comet.”

  “Well, the last assassin ship is going to see it, and they’ll know better.”

  “You worry too much,” said Heller.

  “I’m almost dead from worry,” I said. “Why don’t you let me lie down in a bunk and sleep?”

  He ignored me.

  Time ticked on. The vast amount of ice was creeping further and further from the ring and planet face. The Will-be Was drives droned and pounded.

  The tug was right. It did take more than five hours to pull that huge mass free of Saturn’s gravity and into space.

  It was traveling faster and faster now, glaring white in the light of the distant sun, sharply outlined against the ink of space.

  Heller and the tug calculated the course for Earth.

  Whatever else was wrong and whatever else I had to solve, one fact was clear as terror to me. The assassin ship couldn’t possibly miss us. And it was lying in wait.

  PART SIXTY-THREE

  Chapter 8

  The giant Will-be Was time-drives thundered in the diminutive hull, the traction motors whined. Billions of tons of silvery ice were dragged for millions and millions of miles across the ink of space. Once during the voyage it had gotten up to half the speed of light. Then the tug had turned around and braked it for a while, reducing its speed. Now we were in front of it once more, the bulk of the distance behind us, traveling at a much slower velocity but still far out and beyond the orbit of Earth’s moon.

  Heller was busy calculating things like Earth rotation and its coordinates in its orbit around the sun. He adjusted speed a couple of times and then seemed satisfied with the angle of approach.

  Earth had ceased to be just another bright spot and was assuming shape. The shadow of its twilight zone was now becoming very plain.

  Heller waited until we were about four times the orbit of the yellowish moon away from Earth and then put his clipboard down. We and the ice mass were traveling very fast.

  “Check these figures, Corky,” and he read them off. “How does that strike you?”

  “Well, sir, it isn’t going to strike ME. The mass will hit the north pole of the planet at an angle of thirty-three degrees in the direction southward on east longitude 36.5. By gyroscopic precession, it will tend to shift the spin of the internal core slightly and move the magnetic poles closer to the Earth’s axis.”

  “And your conclusion on the effect of this?” said Heller.

  “It will cure the tendency of the southern pole to wander over the water, thus melting the place and causing continental submergences. The liability is that it will probably hit some polar bears.”

  “Thank you. Please verify the approach again.”

  “Well, sir, I think it will require a final downward twitch of six million foot-pounds of thrust just before we disengage at the top of the planet’s atmosphere. There will otherwise be a slight cushion effect. What about the polar bears, sir? Should I send out a warning?”

  “They’re extinct,” said Heller. “There isn’t any life worth mentioning at the north pole.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will amend my survey data. Sir, my 124th subbrain is reading red. There is some magnetic turbulence straight ahead about half a million miles from the planetary surface. It is on viewscreen thirteen.”

  There it was! A coil of disturbance.

  THE ASSASSIN SHIP!

  It was rising far above the Earth’s surface to meet us!

  “Blast,” said Heller. “I didn’t expect him this soon.” He picked up a microphone. He spoke into it. “Calling Apparatus vessel.”

  There was no answer. He verified that he was on Apparatus intership frequency, limited range. “This is Tug One, the Prince Caucalsia, Exterior Division. I have a tow. I do not wish to be interfered with.”

  There was no answer.

  Heller tried again, “Apparatus vessel, this is Jettero Heller, Grade Ten, Voltar Fleet, operating under orders of the Grand Council. You are directed to reverse your course and forego interference with this tow.”

  No answer! And there should have been. We were returning to the planet, and leaving it was all they were supposed to prevent.

  And then it dawned on me that that assassin pilot and his mate had also received orders to kill Heller!

  The ship just kept on coming right up to meet us.

  “Oh, blast!” said Heller. “I can’t abandon this tow! That crazy idiot is going to cause a catastrophe!”

  He had hung up the mike. He switched all controls to manual. I expected him to disengage from the ice mass so we could flee.

  He didn’t! The bullheaded idiot was going to go on with his project!

  We didn’t even have a gun!

  The assassin ship was coming very fast now on the screens. Heller flipped up the viewport covers. There the deadly vessel was! Slightly to our left. Very visible to the eye: he was so contemptuous that he hadn’t even switched his silver coating off.

  Except for turbulence, we ourselves must be invisible to him. But he had us spotted by the nearness of the tow behind us.

  Heller reached for our overhead, adjusted a dial and threw a switch. He put a thumb on the firing panel. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. We didn’t have a real cannon.

  Abruptly, about a thousand yards ahead of us, another ship appeared!

  It rattled me.

  It looked just
like Tug One!

  The second barrel he had put up there!

  It was obviously an electronic-illusion projector, so common in Voltar celebrations and displays.

  To the assassins, it must have looked like the tug had simply turned its silver coat on!