The deadly ship was off to our left. It was turning.
IT FIRED!
The shot was well above the illusion.
IT FIRED AGAIN!
The shot was below the illusion.
ANOTHER SHOT!
Flame burst right in the middle of the illusion tug!
Heller threw a switch.
The illusion vanished!
For a breathless span of time I thought we had gotten away with it.
If we had luck, the flying cannon would now turn away and depart for the planetary surface, thinking it had done its job.
Please go, I prayed silently. Please be fooled and leave us alone.
Suddenly I realized what was wrong. He must have seen that no debris had resulted from the shot! Either he or his instruments thought that he had missed!
He was turning, and even though he was ten miles to our left, I could almost look down his cannon barrel. His instruments had found our turbulence again!
A FLASH!
The tug bucked.
WE WERE HIT!
Suddenly the Will-be Was main drives shrieked into a high whine.
It was as if a slingshot had been released and we were the pellet!
We vaulted across the black sky in a sickening cartwheel.
Corky’s voice: “Damage! Damage! Our traction engines are disabled! We have lost our tow!”
The planet’s distant surface was hurtling up at us.
Heller’s hand slapped the throttles of the main drives shut. He yanked the planetary auxiliaries wide open.
We were braking at full throttle!
The Earth steadied to the same size for three consecutive seconds and then again began to grow smaller.
Heller was cuffing the controls around.
We faced now toward the vast white bulk of the tow.
An explosion bloomed off to our right.
The assassin ship was firing.
It was now visible to the right of the tow.
With the auxiliaries, Heller jinked toward the explosion spot.
Another explosion flashed to our left.
“Blast him,” said Heller. “He’s a better gunner!” He was sluing to the left.
I knew then that we were up against the lead assassin pilot. Yes, he was the better gunner. He was an expert at killing ships that sought to flee battle. This unarmed, unarmored tug would be nothing for him.
The flying cannon was near the hurtling mass of ice.
Heller made the tug leap far to the right.
A shot exploded just where we had been a split second before.
Heller dived. He hauled up suddenly. And just where we would have gone, fire bloomed!
“He’s too good,” said Heller. “And he’s only firing at turbulence!”
We shifted skyward. The assassin ship was only a mile away. I saw its cannon wink.
Heller’s hand closed on his firing pin.
An illusion of the tug appeared to the right of the flying cannon, between it and the ice tow.
The assassin ship turned toward it!
On other screens I could see that we were hurtling down at the top of Earth, the battle traveling at the dizzy speed of advance of that ice mass.
The cannon fired!
The shot went through the illusion and sprayed thousands of tons of ice about.
Heller maneuvered the tug.
The illusion seemed to be closing on the flying cannon.
The assassin pilot fired again. More ice tonnage flew.
The illusion seemed to be broadwise to the other vessel. It seemed to be closing with it sideways!
The flying cannon must have thought that all it had to do was push its muzzle against the tug and shoot.
It charged the illusion!
Heller twitched his controls.
The illusion must be blanking off the entire forward view of the assassin ship! But we were seeing it sidewise.
The flying cannon instruments and viewers must have been all involved with the illusion. He was depending on instruments and otherwise flying blind!
The assassin ship hurtled at its target!
Heller shifted the illusion to keep the assassin ship’s nose headed at it and the instruments concentrated on it.
Suddenly I realized that the illusion was penetrating the edge of the ice mass!
The assassin ship made one more charge.
A HUGE GOUT OF ORANGE AND GREEN FIRE!
The flying cannon had plowed straight into the ice mass and exploded!
Ice and flaming chunks of debris made a sphere of their own, close beside the racing mass of frozen water.
Billions and billions of tons of ice were hurtling straight at Earth, out of control.
PART SIXTY-THREE
Chapter 9
Oh, Lords,” said Heller, “there it goes without its last correction!”
He was looking at the ice mass. Then he looked at the planetary surface. Through the viewports I could make out what must be Canada and Greenland and, over the curve, what must be Sweden, Finland and the north edge of European Russia.
“Quickly, Corky. Damage?”
“Nothing internal,” the tug said. “The aft cable ends of the traction beams are totally fused. One mustn’t even turn the traction motors back on or they’d explode.”
“Time to repair?” said Heller anxiously.
“You don’t have the tools aboard.”
Heller watched the ice mass. I knew he must be considering some idiotic move like trying to butt it. Butt billions of tons of loose ice? We’d just get buried in it.
He looked at Earth again. “That’s going to miss the north pole! Is there no way to give it downward deflection?”
“Bombs. We don’t have bombs,” said Corky. “My thirty-fourth subbrain says you could butt the planet. But this conflicts with my purpose to protect you from harm. All we would do is explode. The relative mass of our impact and the planet mass are incompatible. Correction. Incomparable. Sir, you are now approaching the magnetosphere and have your pilot antiradiation plate open. Please close it.”
Heller didn’t move. He was looking down at the top of Earth and the hurtling mass of ice. “Oh, Lords,” he breathed.
The vast, glistening expanse of ice was closing rapidly. It now had about a hundred thousand miles to go. We were pacing beside it. Our digitals read three hundred miles a second, eighteen thousand miles a minute. Another clock was running backwards: It said there was 5.555 minutes to go.
Heller drew a long sigh. He looked over at the ice. He looked at the planet surface. He looked at his instruments.
“Well, it’s a good thing we had it slowed down,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
He worked the controls and we drew off.
The great ice mass raced ahead. It was plunging at an angle toward a spot beyond the north pole.
It was going to strike a glancing blow but it would be a blow all the same.
The seconds ticked by into minutes.
I knew the TV would be alive. I wished he would turn it on. This thing would have been spotted within the last hour. There must be bulletins every minute on this “comet” that had suddenly appeared up in the sky. It must be eyeball visible from northern Canada and maybe even England now.
It was closing with ferocious speed, fifteen times that of the average meteorite. It certainly was not on target for the north pole! It was going to miss it and hit at a flatter angle.
Sweden and Finland? No, they were slightly to the right of it.
It was daylight where it was going to hit. And it was going to strike land.
Heller shifted the tug closer and to the left.
The ice mass struck the upper atmosphere. Racing, it began to change its form. At thirty miles a second it had not long to go.
It missed Finland.
It seemed to be spreading out, its mass tumbled by the resistance of air.
Ahead of it I could see now what appeared to be a large inland lake, blue in the brown of Russ
ia. Some of it would hit that lake.
In slow, slow motion as it appeared from on high, it was racing down the last few miles.
IT STRUCK!
It seemed to generate an enormous flash like electricity!
An instant later, the mass seemed to have quadrupled in size! A piece of it had hit the lake!
Like a scythe it was sweeping onward!
Traveling at a low angle, it was leveling everything in its path.
MOSCOW!
One second there was a city.
The next, there was only jumble!
The scythe swept on!
Waves of cloud were racing ahead, southward. They were growing less and less as they progressed toward the Black Sea.
Dust and debris were settling below.
And then I saw what it had done.
The recoil had flattened Leningrad.
Everything that was European Russia had been leveled!
That whole nation was no more!
I moaned.
There went all of Rockecenter’s uranium profits, with the removal of the threat of atomic war!
Oh, Gods, was I in trouble now!
PART SIXTY-FOUR
Chapter 1
If I went home now, the second Lombar heard about this he would have me exterminated.
There was no doubt of that in my mind now. If ever I needed to be brilliant and think fast, it was NOW, NOW, NOW!
Heller was sitting there in the pilot seat. He seemed to be praying.
We were holding at about three hundred miles above Russia. From this point I could see Turkey on the horizon to the south.
Suddenly, at long last, I had an idea!
“Oh, God of peoples,” said Heller, “forgive me.”
I took immediate advantage of his mood, although I certainly couldn’t understand why anybody would be sorry about wiping out a hundred million riffraff. “The tug is disabled,” I said. “You cannot go directly home.”
“It’s just the towing equipment,” he said. “I could probably make it.”
“No, no,” I said. “You shouldn’t put yourself at risk.”
“Are you recommending all of a sudden that I go to the Earth base?”
I tried to keep the gleam out of my eyes. I had the whole plan now. It was audacious beyond belief.
“I have certain information,” I said. “It is very vital to you. If I divulge it, will you give me your word as a Royal officer to take me home and turn me over there for trial?”
“If it’s worth anything,” he said.
“Oh, it is!” I said. “You saw that that assassin pilot wanted to kill you, even though he knew who you were.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“You’ll be interested to know that at the Earth base they think you are a spy who was sent down to kill them. They will try to execute you on sight.”
“I could figure that out for myself,” he said.
“But you don’t know this,” I replied. “There is a secret way to get in.”
He looked at me, puzzled. But I knew I had him. If I could just get him to the outer gate of the villa and ring that bell, he would be shot down. And even if that missed, I could get him to my secret room and sound the alarm there, and when we went down that tunnel the assembled base personnel would riddle him!
“And why should I want to sneak in?” said Heller.
And here came the very cream of my idea! “Give me a piece of paper and a pen.”
He did. I wrote on it and folded it.
“The information on this is so vital to you it will change your whole life. Promise me that if I give you this sheet and you act on it, you will return me to Voltar.”
He thought a moment. “For trial,” he said. “I will promise that.”
“Good enough,” I said. And I handed him the paper.
He opened it. He went white as a sheet!
I had had the idea that would end all ideas. I had written:
THE COUNTESS KRAK IS ALIVE
IN A CELL AT THE EARTH BASE
What an inspiration—especially since she was dead! What genius to use a corpse to lure someone in!
And if we got that far, I had that planned, too. Somewhere between here and there, I would secure a weapon. He would see her body and in that moment when his attention was off me, I would kill him, for he would be in shock.
I was so bemused by my cleverness I did not hear what he said. He had to repeat it. “You are lying!”
“No,” I said. “I am telling you the truth. Some information came to us that her plane would be sabotaged by some terrorists, and we picked her up at Rome airport and flew her to the base. She is alive and well, though, of course, in detention.”
He did not say anything for a while. He was obviously in shock. Oh, how well this was working out!
“You’d better have some proof of this,” he said.
I had that all worked out, too. I had my wallet. I opened it. I handed him a piece of paper. It was the Squeeza credit card—her card with the Empire State Building address written on the back of it.
He looked at it. He recognized it. His hands were shaking.
He could hardly talk. Then he said, “All right. We will go.”
I was nearly delirious with joy—hard put to keep it from showing on my face.
I could get him now. Of that I was sure. And then I could somehow wipe out his power company, Chryster, Ochokeechokee and blow up the Empire State Building and Izzy before those options could function. There would be repercussions with Rockecenter, but I could say proudly, “All is well, for I killed the man and your empire is intact.” I would be restored to favor. I could release Black Jowl. And I still would become the next Chief of the Apparatus.
And all in all, I was absolutely amazed at my own genius. Whoever before had used a dead woman as a lure? Only a brilliant Apparatus officer would ever think of that!
PART SIXTY-FOUR
Chapter 2
I think that Heller was dazed a bit, not only by my pretended news concerning the Countess Krak but also because of the destruction the assassin pilot had angled the tug into.
We had to wait for sunset. He would not let me turn the TV on. I was very sure it was full of juicy bulletins concerning the demise of Russia. Rockecenter’s PRs would be rushing the media to blare how he insisted upon vast relief expeditions. But nobody need bother. There was little if anything left alive in European Russia. Probably Sweden would just move in to pick up any loot left lying around and annex the place. The so-called satellite countries would throw off the yoke and probably right this minute were murdering the Russian troops who had kept them in line and fattened off them. World power had certainly shifted. Rockecenter must be going crazy trying to figure out how to keep international tensions up now. I said as much.
“They can’t blame any other nation,” Heller said. “Every astronomer in the northern hemisphere plainly saw what they thought was a natural cataclysm. The planet won’t destroy itself with atomic war now and that’s the only benefit from this. So shut up. I don’t want to hear about it.”
He was doing some calculations but his mind was not on it and his eyes kept straying to the sun indicator as we hovered there, five hundred miles above Turkey.
The tug spoke up about midafternoon. “My thirty-third subbrain has calculated that the inner core of the planet will now spin slightly more true to the axis. It will take many years longer to achieve because the blow was so glancing. I have the figures. Do you want them?”
“No,” said Heller, his eyes upon the clock.
About six, with shadows growing long below, Heller went aft. He returned later to the flight deck. He was dressed in black. He had a kit bag over his shoulder.
He unchained me and took me to an engineer’s quarters. He let me pick out some of the Antimanco engineer’s clothes which were still hanging there.
While I was still changing, he went to the crew’s galley to get me something to eat.