Empire

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.

"It's Manning!” shrieked Pete. “He's watching us!"

Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.

"Do something!” screamed Max. “You damn fool, do something!"

"I can't,” moaned Chizzy. “The ship is out of control."

It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reserve power far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream… it was tops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerful than the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.

"Manning's got us!” squealed Pete. “We came out to get him and now he has us instead!"

The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against its plates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel and hear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greater pace through the tenuous atmosphere.

The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon and the brush-stroke mountains far below.

Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, down into the saw-teeth of the mountains.

"We're falling!” yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.

But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspended above a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.

"That's Manning's laboratory,” whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.

The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over, drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and screamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast of heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines… but the ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.

Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began clawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were only two men in the cabin with him-Reg and Max. Pete had gone!

"He just disappeared,” Max jabbered. “He was standing there in front of us. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke. Then he was gone."

Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, no heat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind had become disembodied.

Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on a light. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split-second before, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.

It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, a laboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery, lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illumination white as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.

Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile on his lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. The smiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!

With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights came up and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heat that sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemed to strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with a flare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into the gangster's body.

His finger released its pressure and the gun dangled limply from his hand. He moaned with the pain of burns upon his unprotected face and hands. He beat feebly at tiny, licking blazes that ran along his clothing.

Manning was still smiling at him.

"You can't reach me, Pete,” he said. “You can only hurt yourself. You're enclosed within a solid wall of force that matter cannot penetrate."

A voice came from one corner of the room: “I'll bring Chizzy down next."

Pete whirled around and saw Russell Page for the first time. The scientist sat in front of a great control board, his swift, skillful fingers playing over the banks of keys, his eyes watching the instrument and the screen that slanted upward from the control banks.

Pete felt dizzy as he stared at the screen. He could see the interior of the ship he had been yanked from a moment before. He could see his three companions, talking excitedly, frightened by his disappearance.

His eyes flicked away from the screen, looked up through the skylight above him. Outlined against the sky hung the ship. At the nose and stern, two hemispheres of blue-white radiance fitted over the metal framework, like the jaws of a powerful vise, holding the craft immovable.

His gaze went back to the screen again, just in time to see Chizzy disappear. It was as if the man had been a mere figure chalked upon a board… and then someone had taken a sponge and wiped him out.

Russ's fingers were flying over the keys. His thumb reached out and tripped a lever. There was a slight hum of power.

And Chizzy stood beside him.

Chizzy did not pull his gun. He whimpered and cowered within the invisible cradle of force.

"You're yellow,” Pete snarled at him, but Chizzy only covered his eyes with his arms.

"Look, boss,” said Pete, addressing Scorio, “what are you doing here? We left you back in New York."

Scorio did not answer. He merely glared. Pete lapsed into silence, watching.

Manning stood poised before the captives, rocking back and forth on his heels.

"A nice bag for one evening,” he told Russ.

Russ grinned and stoked up his pipe.

Manning turned to the gangster chief. “What do you think we ought to do with these fellows? We can't leave them in those force shells too long because they'll die for lack of air. And we can't let them loose because they might use their guns on us."

"Listen, Manning,” Scorio rasped hoarsely, “just name your price to let us loose. We'll do anything you want."

Manning drew his mouth down. “I can't think of a thing. We just don't seem to have any use for you."

"Then what in hell,” the gangster asked shakily, “are you going to do with us?"

"You know,” said Manning, “I may be a bit old-fashioned along some lines. Maybe I am. I just don't like the idea of killing people for money. I don't like people stealing things other people have worked hard to get. I don't like thieves and murderers and thugs corrupting city governments, taking tribute on every man, woman and child in our big cities."

"But look here, Manning,” pleaded Scorio, “we'd be good citizens if we just had a chance."

Manning's face hardened. “You sent these men here to kill us tonight, didn't you?"

"Well, not exactly. Stutsman kind of wanted you killed, but I told the boys just to get the stuff in the safe and never mind killing you. I said to them that you were pretty good eggs and I didn't like to bump you off, see?"

"I see,” said Manning.

He turned his back on Scorio and started to walk away. The gangster chief came half-way out of his chair, and as he did so, Russ reached out a single finger and tapped a key. Scorio screamed and beat with his fists against the wall of force that had suddenly formed about him. That single tap on the great keyboard had sprung a trap, had been the one factor necessary to bring into being a force shell already spun and waiting for him.

Manning did not even turn around at Scorio's scream. He slowly paced his way down the line of standing gangsters. He stopped in front of Pete and looked at him.

"Pete,” he said, “you've sprung a good many prisons, haven't you?” “There ain't a jug in the System that can hold me,” Pete boasted, “and that's a fact."

"I believe there's one that could,” Greg told him. “One that no man has ever escaped from, or ever will."

"What's that?” demanded Pete.

"The Vulcan Fleet,” said Greg.

Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose in those eyes. “Don't send me there! Send me any place but there!"

Greg turned to Russ and nodded. Russ's fingers played their tune of doom upon the keyboard. His thumb depressed a lever. With a roar five gigantic material energy engines screamed with thrumming power.

Pete disappeared.

The engines roared with thunderous throats, a roar that seemed to drown the laboratory in solid waves of sound. A curious refractive effect developed about the straining hulks as space near them bent under their lashing power.

Months ago Russ and Greg had learned a better way of transmitting power than by metal bars or through conducting beams. Beams of such power as were developing now would have smashed atoms to protons and electrons. Through a window in the side of the near engine, Greg could see the iron ingot used as fuel dwindling under the sucking force.

The droning died and only a hum remained.

"He's in a prison now he'll never get out of,” said Greg calmly. “I wonder what they'll think when they find him, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a heat gun. They'll clap him into a photo-cell and keep him there until they investigate. When they find out who he is, he won't get out-he has enough unfinished prison sentences to last a century or two."

For Pete was on one of the Vulcan Fleet ships, the hell-ships of the prison fleet. There were confined only the most vicious and the most depraved of the Solar System's criminals. He would be forced to work under the flaming whip-lashes of a Sun that hurled such intense radiations that mere spacesuits were no protection at all. The workers on the Vulcan Fleet ships wore suits that were in reality photo-cells which converted the deadly radiations into electric power. For electric power can be disposed of where heat cannot.

Quailing inside his force shell, Scorio saw his men go, one by one. Saw them lifted and whisked away, out through the depths of space by the magic touch upon the keyboards. With terror-widened eyes he watched Russ set up the equations, saw him trip the activating lever, saw the men disappear, listened to the thunderous rumbling of the mighty engines.

Chizzy went to the Outpost, the harsh prison on Neptune's satellite. Reg went to Titan, clear across the Solar System, where men in the infamous penal colony labored in the frigid wastes of that moon of Saturn. Max went to Vesta, the asteroid prison, which long had been the target of reformers, who claimed that on it 50 per cent of the prisoners died of boredom and fear.

Max was gone and only Scorio remained.

"Stutsman's the one who got us into this,” wailed the gangster. “He's the man you want to get. Not me. Not the boys. Stutsman."

"I promise you,” said Greg, “that we'll take care of Stutsman."

"And Chambers, too,” chattered Scorio. “But you can't touch Chambers. You wouldn't dare."

"We're not worrying about Chambers,” Greg told him. “We're not worrying about anyone. You're the one who had better start doing some."

Scorio cringed.

"Let me tell you about a place on Venus,” said Greg. “It's in the center of a big swamp that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. It's a sort of mountain rising out of the swamp. And the swamp is filled with beasts and reptiles of every kind. Ravenous things, lusting for blood. But they don't climb the mountain. A man, if he stayed on the mountain, would be safe. There's food there. Roots and berries and fruits and even small animals one could kill. A man might go hungry for a while, but soon he'd find the things to eat.

"But he'd be alone. No one ever goes near that mountain. I am the only man who ever set foot on it. Perhaps no one ever will again. At night you hear the screaming and the crying of the things down in swamp, but you mustn't pay any attention to them."

Scorio's eyes widened, staring. “You won't send me there!"

"You'll find my campfires,” Greg told him, “if the rain hasn't washed them away. It rains a lot. So much and so drearily that you'll want to leave that mountain and walk down into the swamp, of your own free will, and let the monsters finish you."

Scorio sat dully. He did not move. Horror glazed his eyes.

Greg signed to Russ. Russ, pipe clenched between his teeth, reached out his fingers for the keys. The engines droned.

Manning walked slowly to a television control, sat down in the chair and flipped over a lever. A face stared out of the screen. It was strangely filled with anger and a sort of half-fear.

"You watched it, didn't you, Stutsman?” Greg asked.

Stutsman nodded. “I watched. You can't get away with it, Manning. You can't take the law into your own hands that way."

"You and Chambers have been taking the law into your hands for years,” said Greg. “All I did tonight was clear the Earth of some vermin. Every one of those men was guilty of murder… and worse."

"What did you gain by it?” asked Stutsman.

Greg gave a bitter laugh. “I convinced you, Stutsman,” he said, “that it isn't so easy to kill me. I think it'll be some time before you try again. Better luck next time."

He flipped the switch and turned about in the chair.

Russ jerked his thumb at the skylight. “Might as well finish the ship now."

Greg nodded.

An instant later there was a fierce, intolerably blue-white light that lit the mountains for many miles. For just an instant it flared, exploding into millions of brilliant, harmless sparks that died into darkness before they touched the ground. The gangster ship was destroyed beyond all tracing, disintegrated. The metal and quartz of which it was made were simply gone.

Russ brought his glance back from the skylight, looked at his friend. “Stutsman will do everything he can to wipe us out. By tomorrow morning the Interplanetary machine will be rolling. With only one purpose-to crush us."

"That's right,” Greg agreed, “but we're ready for them now. Our ship left the Belgium factories several hours ago. The Comet towed it out in space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours The Comet will be here to pick us up."

"War in space,” said Russ, musingly. “That's what it will be."

"Chambers and his gang won't fight according to any rules. There'll be no holds barred, no more feeble attempts like the one they tried tonight. From now on we need a base that simply can't be located."

"The ship,” said Russ.