Earth's Last Fortress Page 7
He grew aware that Mairphy was speaking. “You know”—the young man’s voice was thoughtful—“it’s just possible that it might be a good idea if you did try to see the captain. I’ll have to speak to Derrel before any further action is taken but—”
Garson sighed. He felt suddenly exhausted, mentally and physically, by the twisting course of events. “Look,” he said wearily, “a minute ago you stated it was absolutely impossible for me to see the captain; now it seems it might be a good idea and so the impossible becomes possible.”
A sound interrupted his words, a curious hissing sound that seemed to press at him. With a start he saw that men were climbing out of bed, groups that had been standing in quiet conversation were breaking up. In a minute, except for some three dozen who had not stirred from their beds, the manpower of that great room had emptied through a far door As the door closed, Mairphy’s tense voice stabbed at him:
“Quick! Help me out of bed and into my wheel chair. Damn this game leg of mine, but I’ve got to see Derrel. The attack must not take place until you’ve tried to see the captain. Quick, man!”
“Attack!” Carson began, then with an effort, caught himself. Forcing coolness through the shock that was gathering inside him, he lay back. He said in a voice that trembled, “I’ll help you up when you tell me what all this is about. Start talking. Fast!”
Mairphy sighed. “The whole thing’s really very simple. They herded together a bunch of skeptics—that’s us; it means simply men who know they are in another age, and aren’t superstitious about it, always potentially explosive, as the Planetarians well understood. But what they didn’t realize was that Derrel was what he was. The mutiny was only partially successful. We got the control room, the engine room, but only one of the arsenals. The worst thing was that one of the tentacles escaped our trap, which means that the Observer Machine has been informed and that battleships have already been dispatched after us. Unless we gain full control fast, we’ll be crushed; and the whole bunch of us will be executed out of hand.”
He continued, with a bleak smile, “That includes you and every person in this room, sick or innocent. The Planetarians leave the details of running their world in the hands of a monster machine called the Observer; and the Observer is mercilessly logical.” He shrugged, finished, “That’s what I meant by bad news. All of us are committed to victory or death. And now, quick! Help me get to Derrel and stop this attack!”
Garson’s mind was a swollen, painful thing with the questions that quivered there: skeptics, tentacles, mutiny…It was not until after Mairphy’s power-driven wheel chair had vanished through the same door that had swallowed the men, that he realized how weary he was. He lay down on the bed, and there didn’t seem to be a drop of emotion in him. He was thinking, a slow, flat, gray thought, of the part of that message that had come to him in the depersonalizing machine, the solemn admonishment: Take no unnecessary risks; stay alive!
What a chance!
11
The moon floated majestically against the backdrop of blank space, a great globe of light that grew and grew. He looked eagerly down at the side hidden from Earth and only vaguely photographed in his own day and age. Seen now, from space, he had a view of the relatively featureless surface. The Sea of Moscow and the great Soviet Mountains were still the most conspicuous objects, but in the central mass at this near distance, everything seemed rough and jagged, uneven.
For an hour the moon clung to size, but at last it began to retreat into distance. It was the gathering immensity of that distance that brought to Garson a sudden dark consciousness that he was again a tiny pawn in this gigantic struggle of gigantic forces.
He watched until the glowing sphere of moon was a shadowy pea-sized light half-hidden by the dominating ball of fire that was Earth. His immediate purpose was already a waxing shape in his mind, as he turned to stare down at Mairphy in his wheel chair. It struck him there were lines of fatigue around the other’s eyes. He said, “Now that the attack has been called off, I’d like to meet this mysterious Derrel. After which you’d better go straight to sleep.”
The younger man drooped. “Help me to my bed, will you?”
From the bed, Mairphy smiled wanly. “Apparently, I’m the invalid, not you. The paralyzer certainly did you no real harm, but the energy chopper made a pretty job of my right leg. By the way, I’ll introduce you to Derrel when I wake up.”
Mairphy’s slow, deep breathing came as a shock to Garson. He felt deserted, at a loss for action, and finally annoyed at the way he had come to depend on the company of another man. For a while, he wandered around the room, half aimlessly, half in search of the extraordinary Derrel. But gradually his mind was drawn from that undetermined purpose. He became aware of the men from other times and places.
They swaggered, did these boys. When they stood, they leaned with casual grace, thumbs nonchalantly tucked into belts or into the armpits of strangely designed vests. Not more than half a dozen of that bold, vigorous-looking crew seemed to be the studious type. Here were men of the past, adventurers, soldiers of fortune, who had mutinied as easily as, under slightly different circumstances, they might have decided to fight for, instead of against, their captors.
Was it bad psychology on the part of the Planetarians? That seemed impossible because they were superbly skillful in the art. The explanation, of course, was that intelligence and ability as great as their own, or nearly as great, had entered the scene unknown to them, and easily duped the men of the past who operated the spaceship.
Derrel!
It brought a vivid awareness of the immense vitality of the life that had spawned over Earth through the ages. Here were men come full-grown out of their own times, loving life, yet by their casual, desperate attempt at mutiny proving that they were not afraid of death.
One man was the responsible, the activating force.
Three times Garson was sure that he had picked out Derrel, but each time he changed his mind before actually approaching the stranger. It was only gradually that he grew aware of a lank man. The first coherent picture he had was of a tall, somewhat awkward looking individual with a long face that was hollow-cheeked. The man was dressed in a gray shirt and gray trousers. Except for a look of cleanness about him, he could have stepped out of a farmhouse.
The man half stood, half leaned, in an ungraceful way against the side of one of the hospital-type beds, and he said nothing. Yet, somehow, he was the center of the group that surrounded him. The leader! After a moment Garson saw that the other was surreptitiously studying him. That was all he needed. He surveyed the man openly. Before his searching gaze, the deceptive, farmerish appearance of the other altered.
The hollow cheeks showed suddenly as a natural screen that distorted the almost abnormal strength of that face. The line of jaw ceased to~ be merely framework supporting the chin, showed instead in all its grim hardness, like the blunt edge of an anvil. The nose was strong and sharp, the face as a whole long and thin.
Garson’s examination was interrupted. Somebody addressed the man as Mr. Derrel; and it was as if Derrel had been waiting for the words as for a signal. He stepped forward. He said in the calmest voice Garson had ever heard, “Professor Garson, do you mind if I speak to you”—he motioned forcefully yet vaguely—“over there?”
Garson was amazed to find himself hesitating. For nearly an hour he had had the purpose of finding this man, but now he realized he was reluctant to yield to the leadership of a stranger. It struck him sharply that even to agree to Derrel’s simple request was to place himself, somehow, subtly under the man’s domination.
Their eyes met, his own hard with thought, Derrel’s at first expressionless, then smiling. The smile touched his face and lighted it in a most charming fashion. His entire countenance seemed to change. Briefly, the man’s personality was so attractive that Garson’s resistance seemed immature, even childish.
Garson was startled to hear himself say, “Why, yes. What is it you wish?”
“Just a minute!” Garson’s voice was harsh in his own ears. “Are you trying to tell me your people sent that message?”
“I am!” The man’s face was almost gray-steel in color. “And to explain that our position is now so dangerous that your own suggestion that you see Captain Lanadin has become the most important necessity and the best plan.”
Strangely, it was that on which his mind fastened, not the revelation, but the mind picture of himself leaving the placid security of this room, delivering himself into the ruthless clutches of men from some other, more merciless past than his own—and to tentacles. Like a shadow overhanging every other emotion, he realized that the law of averages would not permit him to face death again without receiving it.
Slowly, the other thought—Derrel’s revelation—began to intrude. He examined it, at first half puzzled that it continued to exist in his mind. Somehow, it wasn’t really adequate, and certainly far from satisfactory as an explanation of all that had happened.
A message delivered into the black narrowness of a Glorious depersonalizing machine, hurtled across distance, through a web of Glorious defenses. From Derrel!
Garson frowned, his dissatisfaction growing. He stared at the man from slitted eyes; and saw that the other was standing in that peculiar easy-awkward posture of his, gazing at him coolly as if—the impression was a distinct one—as if waiting patiently for his considered reaction. That was reassuring, but it was far from being enough.
Garson said, “I can see I’ve got to be frank, or this thing is going to be all wrong. My angle goes like this: I’ve been building a picture in my mind, an impossible picture I can see now, of beings with tremendous powers. I thought of them as possibly acting from the future of this future but, whatever their origin, I had confidence they were superhuman and super-Glorious.”
He stopped because the long-faced man was smiling in a twisted fashion. “And now,” Derrel said wryly, “the reality does not come up to your expectations. An ordinary man stands before you, and your dreams of god-power interfering in the affairs of men becomes what it always was basically: wishful thinking.”
“And in its place is what?” Garson questioned coolly.
Derrel took up the words steadily. “In its place is a man who failed to take over a spaceship, and now faces death.”
Garson parted his lips to speak, then closed them again, puzzled. There was nothing so far but apparent honesty. Still, confession was far from being satisfactory explanation.
Derrel, his voice rich with the first hint of passion he had shown, said, “I’m not sure it was such a great failure. I was one man manipulating strangers who had no reason to fight—many of them invalids—and yet I won a partial success against the highly trained crew of a completely mechanized space cruiser, a crew supported by no less than four tentacles of this omniscient Observer.”
Stripped as the account was, it brought a vivid flash of what the reality of that fight must have been. Flesh-and-blood men charging forward in the face of energy weapons, dealing and receiving desperate wounds, overwhelming the alert and adequate staff of an armored ship, and four tentacles, whatever they were. Tentacle—a potent, ugly word with inhuman implications.
And still the picture was not satisfactory. “If you’re going to use logic on this,” Garson said at last, slowly, “you’ll have to put up with my brand for another minute. Why did you go in for mutiny in the first place under such difficult conditions?”
The man’s eyes flashed with contemptuous fire. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “Can you reasonably ask for more than the reality, which is that our position is desperate because we took risks? We took risks because”—he paused, as if gathering himself; then he continued tensely—“because I am of the race of Wizards, and we were masters of the Earth of our time because we were bold. As was ever the way with Wizards, I chose the difficult, the dangerous path; and I tell you that victory, with all that it means, is not yet beyond our grasp.” bi the queerest fashion, the glowing voice died. An intent expression crept into the man’s eyes. He tilted his head, as if listening for a remote sound. Garson shook the impression out of his mind, and returned to the thought that had been gathering while the other was speaking. He said coolly:
“Unfortunately, for all that emotion, I was trained to be a scientist, and I never learned to accept justification as a substitute for explanation.”
It was his turn to fall silent. With startled gaze he watched the tall, gawky figure stride at top speed along the wall. The Wizard man halted as swiftly as he had started, but now his fingers were working with frantic speed at a section of the wall. As Garson came up, the wall slid free; and Derrel half-lowered, half-dropped it to the floor. In the hollow space revealed, wires gleamed; and a silver, shining glow-point showed. Unhesitatingly, Derrel grasped at the white-hot looking thing, and jerked. There was a faint flash of fire, and when his hand came away the glow was gone.
Derrel stared at Garson grimly. “Those seeming wires are not wires at all, but a pure energy web, an electron mold that, over a period of about an hour, can mold a weapon where nothing existed before. Tentacles can focus that type of mold anywhere, and the mold itself is indestructible. But up to a certain stage the molded thing can be destroyed.”
Garson braced himself instinctively, as the other faced him squarely. Derrel said, “You can see that without my special ability to sense energy formations, there would have been tragedy.”
“Without you,” Garson interjected, “there would have been no mutiny. I’m sorry, but I’ve got the kind of mind that worries about explanations.”
Derrel gazed at him without hostility. He said finally, earnestly, “I know your doubts, but you can see for yourself that I must go around examining our rather large territory for further electron-mold manifestations. Briefly, we Wizards are a race of the past who developed a science that enabled us to tap the time-ways of the Glorious, though we cannot yet build a time machine. In many ways, we are the superiors of both the Planetarians and the Glorious. Our mathematics showed us that the time-energy cycle could not stand strains beyond a certain point. Accordingly, we have taken, and are taking every possible action to save the universe, the first and most important necessity being that of establishing a base of operations, preferably a spaceship.” He finished quietly, “For the rest, for the time being you must have faith. You must overcome your doubts, and go to see the captain. We must win this ship before we are overwhelmed. I leave you now to think it over.”
He whirled and strode off; and behind him he left partial conviction, mostly disbelief, but—Garson thought wryly—no facts. What a vague basis on which to risk the only life he had!
He found himself straining for sounds, but there was nothing except the idle conversation of the other men. The ship itself was quiet. It seemed to be suspended in this remote corner of the universe; and it at least was not restless. It flashed on in tireless, stupendous flight, but basically it was unhurried, isolated from mechanical necessities, knowing neither doubt nor hope, nor fear nor courage.
Doubt! His brain was an opaque mass flecked with the moving lights of thoughts, heavy with the gathering pall of his suspicion, knowing finally only one certainty: With so much at stake, he must find out more about the so-called Wizards of Bor. It would be foolish to make some move against the Planetarians, the hope of this war, on the glib say-so of anyone! But what to do? Where to find out?
The urgent minutes fled. There was the black, incredible vista of space. No answers offered there. There was lying in bed and staring at the gray ceiling; that was worse. Finally, there was the discovery of the library in a room adjoining the long dormitory; and that held suc
h an immense promise that, for a brief hour, even the sense of urgency faded out of him.
Only gradually did he become aware that the books were a carefully selected collection. At any other time, every word of every page would have held him in thrall, but not now. For a while, with grim good humor, he examined volume after volume to verify his discovery. At last, weary with frustration, he returned to his bed. He found Mairphy awake.
His mind leaped; then he hesitated. It was possible he would have to approach the .subject of Derrel warily. He said finally, “I suppose you’ve been through the library.”
Mairphy shook his head, eyes slightly sardonic. “Not that one. But on the basis of the two I have seen, I’ll venture to guess they’re elementary scientific books, travel books about planets, but no histories, and nowhere is there a reference to what year this is. They’re not even letting us skeptics know that.”
Garson cut in almost harshly, “These Planetarians are not such good angles as I thought. In an entirely different, perhaps cleverer way, this ship is organized to press us into their mold just as the Glorious used the de-person—”
He stopped, startled by the hard tenor of bis thoughts. At this rate he’d soon work himself into an anti-Planetarian fury. Deliberately, he tightened his mind. His job was not to hate, but to ask careful questions about Derrel.
He parted his lips, but before he could speak, Mairphy said, “Oh, the Planetarians are all right. If we hadn’t gone in for this damned mutiny, we’d have been treated all right in the long run, provided we kept our mouths shut and conformed.”