Mission: Earth "Disaster" (19 page)

"The tug! No arms! No armor!"

At that instant, alarms went throughout the area!

The screaming howl of them hurt my ears!

HELLER HAD BEEN SPOTTED!

Hisst looked for an instant like he was going to rush back into his office. Then he checked himself.

Suddenly he rushed forward toward the elevator. I raced after him.

I knew where he was going.

There is no fighter cover at Spiteos as it would be too obvious. But Lombar Hisst had a flying cannon of his own. It was buried deep in the castle, with a tunnel for immediate release into the air. It was the most armored, most heavily built flying cannon ever made. Its gun could knock down a city and no known projectile or beam could even dent its hide.

I raced after him.

I barely made it into the elevator. Down we went like a powered bomb. We were in the hangar in seconds. There sat the impregnable monster, black, big and ugly. Lombar leaped into it and I piled into the second seat.

Lombar was pushing buttons which opened the exits. The drives of the brute roared to life.

Heller, I exulted, you will shortly be the most dead spacer anybody ever heard of!

Here we come!

The tunnel walls were rushing by. Ahead I saw the stars.

We burst out upon a world of franticness.

The dull green moonlight fell upon a camp stirred up like bog beetles running madly everywhere.

Even through the window of the giant flying cannon I could hear the strident screaming of alarms.

Fifteen thousand men were pouring to their batteries of guns.

Lombar was climbing. The engines screamed. I looked wildly everywhere.

I could see no tug, no Heller, nothing!

He should be hovering over Spiteos to let the Countess off. But well away from it and looking down on it, I could see nothing.

That didn't mean he wasn't there. Absorbo-coat would not reflect any light or beam. But neither would it pass light and that tug should make a shadow against the desert sand, against the stars or moon.

All our screens were blank except for the ground below.

Then suddenly, there it was, directly above the camp! The tug! A black silhouette!

Abruptly, like a ring of blue electric flame, a thousand defense guns opened up!

Arcs of fire two miles long carved a savage geometric pattern in the sky. The apex of the two cones was the silhouette!

They must be missing!

It was still there!

The amount of fire redoubled from the ground.

Lombar, snarling so his teeth showed, turned the nose of the flying cannon in a deadly curve.

His fingers pressed the trips!

Our vessel bucked like a thing gone mad!

The screech of our missiles pierced my ears!

We must be missing!

There was no target burst of flame.

The silhouette was still there!

An illusion!

Heller was throwing a silhouette illusion of the tug above the camp!

He must be somewhere else!

I glanced out my window at Spiteos, over to our right. I could see it was very black there even with my flame-dazzled eyes.

I looked back at our viewscreens.

One was pointing at Spiteos.

There!

There was something there!

I looked closer.

A ladder! Lacking absorbo-coat, it was reflecting on our screen!

In the middle of the dangling ladder was a figure. That would be Krak!

"Lombar!" I screamed. "There! There! There!" I was pointing frantically.

He saw it.

He turned the ship.

With snarls he turned his gun controls to maximum barrage!

He pressed the trips.

The light blinded me. The savage burst almost seemed to tear the heavens up!

A second passed. Then two. Then three. I could see again.

Something was falling.

Down, down, down it went, plunging into the abyss. It had a mile to go.

It was not the tug.

It seemed that a body had been blasted! It was falling away! Frantically I looked at the heavens.

A shadow between us and the moon! "Lombar!" I screamed. "Up there!"

Oh, where was Heller now?

I quickly added it up.

Our barrage must have dislodged Krak and sent her falling to her death.

Heller would be frothing for revenge!

"Lombar!" I screamed. "Get away from here!"

The Chief of the Apparatus was looking savagely around. The lust to kill was over him like sheen. "Where is the insolent (bleepard)?" he howled. "Royal officer! Royal (bleep)! Let me at him!" he raved.

I felt a jolt.

It was as if we had run into a wall.

Yet we were two miles above the planet surface!

I looked anxiously at the throttles. They hadn't changed.

Yet we were slowing down!

Then suddenly we started up. We rose into the sky! We were in the grip of some awful force far beyond control!

The towing tractor beams!

Heller had us gripped like any other tow.

Those things could move billions of tons, thousands of these flying cannons.

Up, up we went and then began a sickening curve.

"What's happening?" shrieked Lombar.

"He's got us in the towing grips!" I cried. "Pour full throttle on and break out! DO IT QUICK!"

Lombar was looking all around. His face was getting wild.

We swung into the beginning of a circle. We were now heading obliquely at the ground.

"They've got me!" screamed Lombar, going white.

We hit the bottom of the arc and began to climb again, and all without our power. I was being pressed by centrifugal force against the side of my seat. We came around the top of the arc, the moon and stars whirring by.

Down we started once more.

Lombar was howling! He sounded like an animal!

Around we went and around and around. The tug must be pivoting in a small, tight circle. It was as if we were on the end of a mile of rope.

"Turn! Turn!" I cried. "Start shooting at the pivot point!"

Lombar hit his throttles. They made us go in the same direction we were being swung!

He hit his turn controls.

They didn't work!

Suddenly our motors died.

We were in a second field, as well, that held our engines paralyzed!

The whistling scream of air going by drove terror to my soul.

We were powerless in an awful thing. We were just a pellet in a whirling sling!

We came down the arc, pointing at the ground.

SUDDENLY THE GRIP WENT OFF!

Below us stretched the desert!

We had been released! We were hurtling down at an awful speed.

The ground, moonlit, was rushing up.

The rocks and sand and bushes were suddenly too plain!

WE CRASHED!

The impact must have knocked me out.

I came to in the sizzle of electric fire and the smell of smoke.

Something was lying on my legs.

The entire front panel of the ship had come off and was pinning me in the remains of the seat.

The flying cannon was a crumpled thing.

I wondered that I had survived at all. But maybe I wasn't going to: Electrical fires were dancing all along the panel back, right below my face. At any moment they could flare up and incinerate me!

My hands were bare. I could not reach anything. But this was a matter of life or death. Barehanded, screaming at the pain, I beat them out.

The green moonlight would not let me see the agonizing burns of the flesh, as I lay in shadow.

A shaft was shining in.

It hit the face of Lombar. He was lying there, head back, pinned in place with snapped cables and conduits. They made it look like he was lying in a nest of snakes.

The hull was split apart and above the creak of cooling metal I could hear the desert sounds. I lifted my head. Far off, there was Spiteos against the pale green moon. They would come for us. They had seen the crash, most certainly. Lombar began to groan. He moved. He opened his eyes. I had moved and the moonlight was on my face. He looked at me and memory seemed to return. His eyes went slitted. "So you were part of the conspiracy to kill me!" he said.

"No, no! I came to warn you and save your life!"

"Conspiracy to kill! You came to set me up for Heller! The two of you have been in it thick, all the time!"

"NO!" I tried to hold up my hands. "I even kept you from burning to death!"

"And all this was a ruse! You pretended to come with a warning—me, whom the angels have chosen to be king! Just so you could get me into the air and Heller could shoot me down!"

"Oh, dear Gods, no! You've got it all wrong!"

"I know who my enemies are. They are everybody. And you chose this chance to sneak up on me when I was undefended!"

Far off I could see lights dancing across the desert. Those would be ground vehicles racing to the wreck!

Lombar saw them. "As soon as they get here, that will be the end of you, Soltan Gris!"

Oh, Gods. His paranoia had him in its grip. I didn't have a chance.

Frantically I pushed at the panel that had collapsed across my legs.

I looked up at the approaching lights. They were going brighter and dimmer as they plunged over the uneven terrain. They were only half a mile away. With strength I did not know I had, I wrenched again at the panel.

IT MOVED!

I reached out with my maimed hand to grasp the door latch. The whole side of the flying cannon fell off.

My foot was caught. Something was gripping the heel. I got my foot out of the boot.

With scrapes and tears, I moved my legs sideways.

I WAS FREE!

I leaped to the ground and ran!

Bushes whipped at my legs. Sharp rocks savaged my unshod foot. I could not go far in this condition!

My plight was extreme. Two hundred miles of impassable desert lay between me and Government City. A similarly uncross-able distance lay between me and the Blike Mountains. Nobody had ever passed through this devil-whipped desert afoot and lived to tell of it!

A dark line against the moonlit sand. A gully lined with bushes!

I plunged the few feet down the bank. I landed in agony at the bottom.

The sound of motors!

I turned around, raised myself and peered through the shrubs.

That wreck was awfully near. I thought I had gone much further!

Too late. The first vehicles were arriving. Dozens of them! Lights were playing everywhere!

Hysterically I glanced up and down the gully. I saw a large, flat stone. It lay close to a slit in the bank. I dived for it. I lay in the depression and pulled the flat stone over me. I balled up in the smallest ball I could.

A roaring voice came from the wreck. "Spread out and FIND HIM!"

The thud of running feet.

They were coming closer!

I could hear the snap and slap of guns and equipment as men ran.

More engines.

Somebody was racing around in a small ground tank. The clank of treads made the stone vibrate!

More vehicles were arriving.

I expected any moment somebody would lift the rock and I would come crawling out to be stamped upon.

Bootbeats were everywhere. They almost shook the ground.

To still my terror, I tried to think of something optimistic—like I would suddenly sizzle to a crisp and vanish. And then I did think of something: In their very numbers, they were obliterating all the tracks I might have made.

Hope trembled on the brink of my death from heart failure.

Would they miss me?

Minutes ticked away, each one an eternity.

A squad came by within feet of me. "He'd be a fool to come this way," an officer said. "Nobody can cross this desert on foot. He must have doubled back for Spiteos and we passed him in the cars."

Shouted commands and some vehicles took off in the direction of Spiteos, travelling slowly.

There was nobody in my area now. At least I heard no feet.

They were having trouble at the wreck. Some officer yelled, "This cable is wrapped around him twice. There's nothing here to cut it. Speed back to the repair shops and get the biggest pair of conduit slicers they have!"

A car roared off.

The din had diminished.

Curled in a ball, I knew I could not hold the position forever. I was far too tense. I wanted to stretch and let my nerve ends jangle. Cautiously I wriggled my arms out from underneath the stone. Nothing shot them off. Silently, I pushed the stone aside. The gully was deserted.

I wriggled up the bank and peered through the bushes.

There must be a hundred vehicles scattered around, some close to, some far from the wreck by at least a hundred feet.

Men were idling about, waiting.

A staff car arrived.

"Cutters?"

"No, they're coming."

It was a general of the Apparatus troops. He was looking into the wreck, probably at Lombar. "Sir, while we're waiting for equipment to cut you out, is there anything you would like me to do?"

"YES!" came Lombar's bellow from the twisted wreck. "Issue an immediate warrant for the arrest of Jettero Heller for attempting to murder me! Issue it to the Army, the Domestic Police! Otherwise we won't be able to get our hands on him!"

"Yes, sir. At once, sir. Get that going, Captain Bodkins. Anything else, sir?"

"Blito-P3! There must be plenty wrong there," roared Lombar. "Send a Death Battalion to that base with orders to search out any traitors that were confederates of Heller's or took his orders and exterminate them!"