“Need ’em,” said Guide. “Got to break that barrier. And don’t worry a minute. We’ll be right back. I like this place. Mars is too dry for good agriculture.”
“I’m afraid,” she said. “I have a terrible feeling that you may never come back. We’d . . . we’d perish here.”
“Think I’d let that happen?” said Guide heartily. “You’ve got the Asteroid. You can send her for help if we don’t make it. Even the ice-brains will respect you for being the first star colonists.”
“Oh why, why don’t you give up this mad vengeance!” she wept. “It will do no one any good! Haven’t enough men been killed? Here we have the stars. Don’t throw them away! Send a secret ship to land on Mars and bring off new colonists. But forget this war!”
Guide looked at her. She was very pretty, very frail. He had a weakness for pretty, frail women. But suddenly he straightened. “We’ll be back. Don’t you worry about that! We’ll be back!”
The flotilla returned on separate courses and rendezvoused behind the Moon. They were watchful, stealthy, filled with a high spirit but well knowing that the forces they faced were more than a match for their puny strength.
They were waiting for the Swift Voyage. It had had another destination and was to join them here.
The easy passage home had raised their morale to the heights. Even a major accident to one of the ships would not prevent the return of the majority to New Earth, a victorious return to a planet infinitely better than Mars or worn-out Earth.
And then the lookouts sung out the Swift Voyage and shortly Miller boarded the Bellerophon. His face was enraged.
“The dirty little devils! The dirty, stinking devils! You know what they’ve done?” He threw down his gloves with a bang. “Mars is smashed. There isn’t a building left on it. Cap City, Rangerhaven—they’ve been disintegrated!”
The other two captains stared at him.
“We took a scout, got right down close. And there’s nothing! Nothing! They butchered every colonist on the planet. They knocked apart every station. There isn’t a thing left. Not a dam, a radio tower, nothing!”
“You got right down close? Then they don’t even patrol it,” said Guide.
“Why should they,” said Miller bitterly, “when there isn’t even a sheep or a pig left on it to be patrolled!”
“That bad,” said Guide. And he squared up. “Standby to break the barrier!”
They slashed at Earth in a vengeful V, the barrier trips running high, their guns ready, set all three to level entire cities with their blasts. Their immediate target was Nordheim, capital city of Polaria.
From the Bellerophon came a signal: “Standby to fire.” And then, suddenly, inexplicably from that flagship came the countermand, “Wait.”
They slowed. They turned.
“Shift target!” barked Guide. “Our own fleet must have gotten here before it was destroyed. Shift target to New York.”
And they curved off, these three improvised warships, and rode the curve over the rim to North America and New York.
“Standby. Range coming up. Ready—” Thus cracked Guide’s voice. And then, “Wait!”
They sheered off and the Bellerophon detached herself and swept lower. Then before Cadette’s and Gederle’s incredulous eyes, Guide swooped in for a landing and came to rest, a tiny spot of silver on the plain far below. They hovered.
And then Guide’s voice asked them if they would land.
Guide was standing in the center of a grassy place when Cadette and Gederle came up. Guide was looking with weary wonder in his eyes at a plaque which stood, aged and unthinkably weathered, where New York’s many levels had once towered.
They could not read the plaque. The language on it was not Nordic nor any other American script. And it was not European or English.
Above them blazed the Sun, unmistakable, setting in a blaze of red clouds. About them crouched the fallen towers of a city long dead.
Above them blazed the Sun, unmistakable, setting in a blaze of red clouds. About them crouched the fallen towers of a city long dead.
And then stars began to show in the gathered dusk and Guide looked up to find new wonder there.
“Vega! That’s Vega, isn’t it?”
And Guide fished hurriedly through his kit for an infantry compass. He looked at it and he looked at where the Sun had set and he looked at the great, bright star.
“That’s Vega,” he said in a hushed voice. “And it is the North Star.”
For a long time they stood there, trying to assimilate what had happened, trying to understand. In them died the last heat of the battle they had sought to engage. They knew little enough about higher orders of astronomy. But every spaceman knew that once in every twelve thousand five hundred years Vega became Earth’s North Star.
That was their time factor, then. That was their time. And where was the enemy? Dead these mossy stones and ruins said, dead these thousands of years. And the atmosphere scouts they sent through the night at length came back to prove it.
Man had perished from the Earth millennia ago.
And Guide, sunk down on a fallen block of bleached granite, scratched in the sand with a stick. He nodded at last in slow and awful comprehension.
Cadette knelt and looked at the symbols and figures and then Gederle knelt down. They looked at one another.
“I was never much for school,” said Guide. “But they taught us once about this. Man must use it daily now and we all knew it well. It is the Einstein Relativity Equation. And few of us have ever considered that it had yet its second step. And yet that is common knowledge too.”
In the stillness of a quiet night, under far and lonely stars, they still knelt.
“As mass approaches the speed of light,” said Cadette, hushed, “it approaches infinity. And as mass approaches infinity, time approaches zero. It was only nine days back from Alpha. But in those nine days, six thousand years have passed by Earth.”
“We never broke the wall of light,” said Guide, bitterly, clenching his hands. “We only approached within fractions of 186,000 miles per second.”
“Time stood still for us,” said Gederle. “We’re probably the last men alive. It’s a good thing we planted—”
Suddenly chilled and hushed, as one man they stared upward at the cold, far stars.
Overhead, their colony and their women were already—six thousand years dead.
Strain
Strain
IT was unreasonable, he told himself, to feel no agony of apprehension. He was in the vortex of a time whirlwind and here all stood precariously upon the edge of disaster, but stood quietly, waiting and unbreathing.
No man who had survived a crash, survived bullets, survived the paralyzing rays of the guards, had a right to be calm. And it was not like him to be calm; his slender hands and even, delicate features were those of an aristocrat, those of a sensitive thoroughbred whose nerves coursed on the surface, whose health depended upon the quietness of those nerves.
They threw him into the domed room, and his space boots rang upon the metal floor, and the glare of savage lights bit into his skull scarcely less than the impact from the eyes of the enemy intelligence officer.
The identification papers were pushed across the desk by his guard and the intelligence officer scanned them. “Hmmm.” The brutish Saturnian countenance lighted and became interested. The slitted eyes flicked with satisfaction from one to the other of the two captured officers.
“Captain Forrester de Wolf,” said the man behind the desk. “Which one of you?”
He looked steadily at the Saturnian and was a little amazed to find himself still calm. “I am he.”
“Ah! Then you are Flight Officer Morrison?”
The captain’s companion was sweating and his voice had a tremor in it. His youthful, not-too-bright face twitched
. “You got no right to do anything to us. We are prisoners of war captured in uniform in line of combat duty! We treat Saturnians well enough when we grab them!”
This speech or perhaps its undertone of panic was of great satisfaction to the intelligence officer. He stood up with irony in his bearing and shook Captain de Wolf by the hand. Then, less politely but with more interest, bowed slightly to Flight Officer Morrison. The intelligence officer sat down.
“Ah, yes,” he said, looking at the papers. “Fortunes of war. You came down into range of the batteries and—well, you came down. You gentlemen don’t accuse the Saturnians of a lack in knowing the rules of war, I trust.” But there was false candor there. “We will give you every courtesy as captured officers: your pay until the end of the war, suitable quarters, servants, good food, access to entertainment and a right to look after your less fortunate enlisted captives . . .” There was no end to the statement. It hung there, waiting for an additional qualification. And then the intelligence officer looked at them quickly, falsely, and said, “Of course, that is contingent upon your willingness to give us certain information.”
Flight Officer Morrison licked overly dry lips. He was young. He had heard many stories about the treatment, even the torture, the Saturnians gave their prisoners. And he knew that as a staff officer the Saturnians would know his inadvertent possession of the battle plan so all-important to this campaign. Morrison flicked a scared glance at his captain and then tried to assume a blustering attitude.
Captain de Wolf spoke calmly—a little surprised at himself that he could be so calm in the knowledge that as aide to General Balantine, he knew far more than was good to know.
“I am afraid,” said the captain quietly, “that we know nothing of any use to you.”
The intelligence officer smiled and read the papers again. “On the contrary, my dear captain, I think you know a great deal. It was not clever of you to wear that staff aiguillette on a reconnaissance patrol. It was not clever of you to suppose that merely because we had never succeeded in forcing down a G-434 such as yours that it could not be done. And it is not at all clever of you to suppose that we have no knowledge of a pending attack, a very broad attack. We have that knowledge. We must know more.” His smile was ingratiating. “And you, naturally, will tell us.”
“You go to hell!” said Flight Officer Morrison, hysteria lurking behind his eyes.
“Now, now, do not be so hasty, gentlemen,” said the intelligence officer. “Sit down and smoke a cigarette with me and settle this thing.”
Neither officer made a move toward the indicated chairs. Through Morrison’s mind coursed the crude atrocity stories which had been circulated among the troops of Earth, stories which concerned Earth soldiers lashed to anthills and honey injected into their wounds; stories which dealt with a courier skinned alive, square inch by square inch; stories about a man staked out, eyelids cut away, to be let go mad in the blaze of Mercurian noon.
Captain de Wolf was detached in a dull and disinterested way, standing back some feet from himself and watching the clever young staff captain emotionlessly regard the sly Saturnian.
The intelligence officer looked from one to the other. He was a good intelligence officer. He knew faces, could feel emotions telepathically, and he knew exactly what information he must get. The flight officer could be broken. It might take several hours and several persuasive instruments, but he could be broken. The staff captain could not be broken, but because he was an intelligent, sensitive man he could be driven to the brink of madness, his mind could be warped and the information could thus be extracted. It was too bad to have to resort to these expedients. It was not exactly a gentlemanly way of conducting a war. But there were necessities which knew no rules, and there was a Saturnian general staff which did not now believe in anything resembling humanity.
“Gentlemen,” said the intelligence officer, looking at his cigarette and then at his long, sharp nails, “we have no wish to break your bodies, wreck your minds and discard you. That is useless. You are already beaten. The extraction of information is, with us, a science. I do not threaten. But unless we learn what we wish to learn we must proceed. Now, why don’t you tell me all about it here and now and save us this uncomfortable and regrettable necessity?” He knew men. He knew Earthmen. He knew the temper of an officer of the United States of Earth, and he did not expect them to do anything but what they did—stiffen up, become hostile and angry. But this was the first step. This was the implanting of the seed of concern. He knew just how far he could go. He smiled at them.
“You,” he continued, “are young. Women doubtless love you. Your lives lie far ahead of you. It is not so bad to be an honored prisoner, truly. Why court the possibility of broken bodies, broken minds, warped and twisted spirits? There is nothing worth that. Your loyalty lies to yourselves, primarily. A state does not own a man. Now, what have you to say?”
Flight Officer Morrison glanced at his captain. He looked back at the intelligence officer. “Go to hell,” he said.
There were no blankets or bunks in the cell and there was no light save when the guard came, and then there was a blinding torrent of it. The walls sloped toward the center and there was no flat floor but a rounded continuation of the walls. The entire place was built of especially heat-conductive metal and the two prisoners had been stripped of all their clothes.
Captain de Wolf sat in the freezing ink and tried to keep as much of himself as possible from contacting the metal. For some hours a water drop had been falling somewhere on something tinny, and it did not fall with regularity; sometimes there were three splashes in rapid succession and then none for ten seconds, twenty seconds or even for a minute. The body would build itself up to the next drop, would relax only when it had fallen, would build up for the expected interval and then wait, wait, wait and finally slack down in the thought that it would come no longer. Suddenly the drop would fall—a very small sound to react so shatteringly upon the nerves.
The captain was trying to keep his thoughts in a logical, regulation pattern despite the weariness which assailed him, despite the shock of chill which racked him every time he forgot and relaxed against the metal. How hot was this foul air! How cold was this wall!
“Forrester,” groped Morrison’s voice.
“Hello”—startling himself with the loudness of his tone.
“Do— Is it possible they’ll keep us here forever?”
“I don’t think so,” said the captain. “After all, our information won’t be any good in any length of time. If you are hoping for action, I think you’ll get it.”
“Is . . . is this good sense to hold out?”
“Listen to me,” said the captain. “You’ve been in the service long enough to know that if one man fails he is liable to take the regiment along with him. If we fail, we’ll take the entire army. Remember that. We can’t let General Balantine down. We can’t let our brother officers down. We can’t let the troops down. And we can’t let ourselves down. Make up your mind to keep your mouth shut and you’ll feel better.”
It sounded, thought the captain, horribly melodramatic. But he continued: “You haven’t had the grind of West Point. A company, a regiment or an army has no thought of the individual. It cannot have any thought, and the individual, therefore, cannot fail, being a vital part of the larger body. If either of us breaks now, it would be like a man’s heart stopping. We’re unlucky enough to be that heart at the moment.”
“I’ve heard,” said Morrison in a gruesome attempt at jocularity, “that getting gutted is comfortable compared to some of the things these Saturnians can think up.”
The captain wished he could believe fully the trite remark he must offer here. “Anything they can do to us won’t be half of what we’d feel in ourselves if we did talk.”
“Sure,” agreed Morrison. “Sure, I see that.” But he had agreed too swiftly.
The sho
ck of the light was physical and even the captain cowered away from it and threw a hand across his eyes. There was a clatter and a slither and a tray lay in the middle of the cell, having come from an unseen hand at the bottom of the door.
Morrison squinted at it with a glad grin. There were several little dishes sitting around a big metal cover of the type used to keep food warm. Morrison snatched at the cover and whipped it off. And then, cover still raised, he stared.
On the platter a cat was lying, agony and appeal in its eyes, crucified to a wooden slab with forks through its paws, cockroaches crawling and eating at its skinned side.
The cover dropped with a clatter and was then snatched up. The heavy edge of it came down on the skull of the cat, and with a sound between a sigh and a scream it relaxed, dead.
Gray-faced, Morrison put the cover back on the dish. The captain looked at the flight officer and tried to keep his attention upon Morrison’s reaction and thus avoid the illness which fought upward within him.
The light went out and they could feel each other staring into the dark, could feel each other’s thoughts. From the captain came the compulsion to silence; from Morrison, a struggling but unspoken panic.
. . . they could feel each other staring into the dark, could feel each other’s thoughts. From the captain came the compulsion to silence; from Morrison, a struggling but unspoken panic.
One sentence ran through Captain de Wolf’s mind, over and over. “He is going to break at the first chance he has. He is going to break at the first chance he has. He is going to break at the first chance he has. He is—”
Angrily he broke the chain. How could he tell this man what it would mean? Himself a Point officer, it was hard for him to reach out and understand the reaction of one who had been until recently a civilian pilot. How could he harden in an hour or a day the resolution to loyalty?
It was a step ahead, a tribute to De Wolf’s understanding, that he realized the difference between them. He knew how carefully belief in service had been built within himself and he knew how vital was that belief. But how could he make Morrison know that fifty thousand Earthmen, his friends, the hope of Earth, might die if the time and plan of the attack were disclosed?