Wilson, you sold me out.
Wilson, you sold me out.
The man at the table tried to speak, tried to shriek, but his tongue and throat were dry and only harsh breath rattled in his mouth.
The pencil moved on mercilessly:
But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.
But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.
The pencil slowly lifted its point from the table and suddenly was gone, as if it had never been. Wilson, eyes wide and filled with terrible fear, stared at the black words on the cloth.
Wilson, you sold me out. But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.
Wilson, you sold me out. But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.
The music pulsated in the room, the hum of conversation ran like an undertone, but Wilson did not hear. His entire consciousness was centered on the writing, the letters and the words that filled his soul with dread.
Something seemed to snap within him. The cold wind of terror reached out and struck at him. He staggered from the chair. His hand swept the wine glass from the table and it shattered into chiming shards.
"They can't do this to me!" he shrieked.
There was a silence in the room a silence of terrible accusation. Everyone was staring at him. Eyebrows raised.
A waiterwas at his elbow. "Do you feel ill, sir?"
And then, on unsteady feet, he was being led away. Behind him he heard the music once again, heard the rising hum of voices.
Someone set his hat on his head, was holding his coat. The cold air of the night struck his face and the doors sighed closed behind him.
"I'd take it easy going down the step, sir," counseled the doorman.
An aero-taxi driver held open the door of the cab and saluted.
"Where to, sir?"
Wilson stumbled in and stammered out his address. The taxi droned into the traffic lane.
Hands twitching, Wilson fumbled with the key, took minutes to open the door into his apartment. Finally the lock clicked and he pushed open the door. His questing finger found the wall switch. Light flooded the room.
Wilson heaved a sigh of relief. He felt safe here. This place belonged to him. It was his home, his retreat....
A low laugh, hardly more than a chuckle, sounded behind him. He whirled and for a moment, blinking in the light, he saw nothing. Then something stirred by one of the windows, gray and vague, like a sheet of moving fog.
As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened, took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, a face that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fire of anger in the eyes.
"Manning!" shrieked Wilson. "Manning!" He wheeled and sprinted for the door, but the gray figure moved, too ... incredibly fast, as if it were wind-blown vapor, and barred his path to the door.
"Why are you running away?" Manning's voice mocked. "Certainly you aren't afraid of me."
"Look," Wilson whimpered, "I didn't think of what it meant. I just was tired of working the way Page made me work. Tired of the little salary I got. I wanted money. I was hungry for money."
"So you sold us out," said Manning.
"No," cried Wilson, "I didn't think of it that way. I didn't stop to think."
"Think now, then," said Manning gravely. "Think of this. No matter where you are, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, I'll always be watching you, I'll never let you rest. I'll never give you a minute's peace."
"Please," pleaded Wilson. "Please, go away and leave me. I'll give you back the money ... there's some of it left."
"You sold out for twenty thousand," said Manning. "You could have gotten twenty million. Chambers would have paid that much to know what you could tell him, because it was worth twenty billion."
Wilson's breath was coming in panting gasps. He dropped his coat and backed away. The back of his knees collided with a chair and he folded up, sat down heavily, still staring at the gray mistiness that was a man.
"Think of that, Wilson," Manning went on sneeringly. "You could have been a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. You could have had all the fine things these other people have. But you only got twenty thousand."
"What can I do?" begged Wilson.
The misty face split in a sardonic grin.
"I don't believe there's anything left for you to do."
Before Wilson's eyes the face dissolved, lost its lines, seemed to melt away. Only streaming, swirling mist, then a slight refraction in the air and then nothing.
Slowly Wilson rose to his feet, reached for the bottle of whiskey on the table. His hand shook so that the liquor splashed. When he raised the glass to his mouth, his still-shaking hand poured half the drink over his white shirt front.
Ludwig Stutsmanpressed his thin, straight lips together. "So that's the setup," he said.
Across the desk Spencer Chambers studied the man. Stutsman was like a wolf, lean and cruel and vicious. He even looked like a wolf, with his long, thin face, his small, beady eyes, the thin, bloodless lips. But he was the kind of man who didn't always wait for instructions, but went ahead and used his own judgment. And in a ruthless sort of way, his judgment was always right.
"Only as a last resort," cautioned Chambers, "do I want you to use the extreme measures you are so fond of using. If they should prove necessary, we can always use them. But not yet. I want to settle this thing in the quietest way possible. Page and Manning are two men who can't simply disappear. There'd be a hunt, an investigation, an ugly situation."
"I understand," agreed Stutsman. "If something should happen to their notes, if somebody could find them. Perhaps you. If you found them on your desk one morning."
The two men measured oneanother with their eyes, more like enemies than men working for the same ends.
"Not my desk," snapped Chambers, "Craven's. So that Craven could discover this new energy. Whatever Craven discovers belongs to Interplanetary."
Chambers rose from his chair and walked to the window, looked out. After a moment's time, he turned and walked back again, sat down in his chair. Leaning back, he matched his fingertips, his teeth flashing in a grin under his mustache.
"I don't know anything about what's going on," he said. "I don't even know someone has discovered material energy. That's up to Craven. He has to find it. Both you and Craven work alone. I know nothing about either of you."
Stutsman's jaw closed like a steel trap. "I've always worked alone."
"By the way," said Chambers, the edge suddenly off his voice, "how are things going in the Jovian confederacy? I trust you left everything in good shape."
"As good as could be expected," Stutsman replied. "The people are still uneasy, half angry. They still remember Mallory."
"But Mallory," objected Chambers, "is on a prison ship. In near Mercury now, I believe."
Stutsman shook his head. "They still remember him. We'll have trouble out there one of these days."
"I would hate to have that happen," remarked Chambers softly. "I would regret it very much. I sent you out there to see that nothing happened."
"The trouble out there won't be a flash to this thing you were telling me about," snapped Stutsman.
"I'm leaving that in your hands, too," Chambers told him. "I know you can take care of it."
Stutsman rose. "I can take care of it."
"I'm sure you can," Chambers said.
He remained standing after Stutsman left, looking at the door through which the man had gone. Maybe it had been a mistake to call Stutsman in from Callisto. Maybe it was a mistake to use Stutsman at all. He didn't like a lot of things the man did ... or the way he did them. Brutal things.
SlowlyChambers sat down again and his face grew hard.
He had built an empire of many worlds. That couldn't be done with gentle methods and no sure goal. Fighting every inch from planet to planet, he had used power to gain power. And now that empire was threatened by two men who had found agreater power. That threat had to be smashed! It would be smashed!
Chambers leaned forward and pressed a buzzer.
"Yes, Mr. Chambers?" said a voice in the communicator.
"Send Dr. Craven in," commanded Chambers.
Craven came in, slouchily, his hair standing on end, his eyes peering through the thick-lensed glasses.
"You sent for me," he growled, taking a chair.
"Yes, I did," said Chambers. "Have a drink?"
"No. And no smoke either."
Chambers took a long cigar from the box on his desk, clipped off the end and rolled it in his mouth.
"I'ma busy man," Craven reminded him.
Puckering lines of amusement wrinkled Chambers' eyes as he lit up, watching Craven.
"You do seem to be busy, Doctor," he said. "I only wish you had something concrete to report."
The scientist bristled. "I may have in a few days, if you leave me alone and let me work."
"I presume that you are still working on your radiation collector. Any progress?"
"Not too much. You can't expect a man to turn out discoveries to order. I'm working almost night and day now. If the thing can be solved, I'll solve it."
Chambers glowed. "Keep up the good work. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. You heard, I suppose, that I lost a barrel of money on the Ranthoor exchange."
Craven smiled, a sardonic twisting of his lips. "I heard something about it."
"I thought you had," said Chambers sourly. "If not, you would have been the only one who hadn't heard how Ben Wrail took Chambers for a ride."
"He really took you then," commented Craven. "I thought maybe it was just one of those stories."
"He took me, but that's not what's worrying me. I want to know how he did it. No man, not even the most astute student of the market, could have foretold the trend of the market the way he did. And Wrail isn't the most astute. It isn't natural when a man who has always played the safe side suddenly turns the market upside down. Even less natural when he never makes a mistake."
"Well," demanded Craven, "what do you want me to do about it? I'm a scientist. I've never owned a share of stock in my life."
"There's an angle to it that might interest you," said Chamberssmoothly, leaning back, puffing at the cigar. "Wrail is a close friend of Manning. And Wrail himself didn't have the money it took to swing those deals. Somebody furnished that money."
"Manning?" asked Craven.
"What do you think?"
"If Manning's mixed up in it," said Craven acidly, "there isn't anything any of us can do about it. You're bucking money and genius together. This Manning is no slouch of a scientist himself and Page is better. They're a combination."
"Youthink they're good?" asked Chambers.
"Good? Didn't they discover material energy?" The scientist glowered at his employer. "That ought to be answer enough."
"Yes, I know," Chambers agreed irritably. "But can you tell me how they worked this market deal?"
Craven grimaced. "I can guess. Those boys didn't stop with just finding how to harness material energy. They probably have more things than you can even suspect. They were working with force fields, you remember, when they stumbled onto the energy. Force fields are something we don't know much about. A man monkeying around with them is apt to find almost anything."
"What are you getting at?"
"My guess would be that they have a new kind of television working in the fourth dimension, using time as a factor. It would penetrate anything. Nothing could stop it. It could go anywhere, at a speed many times the speed of light ... almost instantaneously."
Chambers sat upright in his chair. "Are yousureabout this?"
Craven shook his head. "Just a guess. I tried to figure out what I would do if I were Page and Manning and had the things they had. That's all."
"And what would you do?"
Craven smiled dourly. "I'd be using that television right in this office," he said. "I'd keep you and me under observation all the time. If what I think is true, Manning is watching us now and has heard every word we said."
Chambers' face was a harsh mask of anger. "I don't believe it could be done!"
"Doctor Craven is right," said a quiet voice.
Chambers swung around in his chair and gasped. Greg Manning stood inside the room, just in front of the desk.
"I hope you don't mind," said Greg. "I've been wanting to have a talk with you."
Craven leaped to his feet, his eyes shining. "Three dimensions!" he whispered. "How did you do it?"
Greg chuckled. "I haven't patented the idea, Doctor. I'd rather not tell you just now."
"You will accept my congratulations, however?" asked Craven.
"That's generous of you. I really hadn't expected this much."
"I mean it," said Craven. "Damned if I don't." Chambers was on his feet, leaning across the desk, with his hand held out. Greg's right hand came out slowly.
"Sorry, I really can't shake hands," he said. "I'm not here, you know. Just my image."
Chambers' hand dropped to the desk. "Stupid of me not to realize that. You looked so natural." He sat back in his chair again, brushed his gray mustache. A smile twisted his lips. "So you've been watching me?"
"Off and on," Greg said.
"And what is the occasion of this visit?" asked Chambers. "You could have held a distinct advantage by remaining unseen. I didn't entirely believe what Craven told me, you know."
"That isn't the point at all," declared Greg. "Maybe we can get to understand one another."
"So you're ready to talk business."
"Not in the sense you mean," Greg said. "I'm not willing to make concessions, but there's no reason why we have to fight one another."
"Why, no," said Chambers, "there's no reason for that. I'll be willing to buy your discovery."
"I wouldn't sell it to you," Greg told him.
"You wouldn't? Why not? I'm prepared to pay for it."
"You'd pay the price, all right. Anything I asked ... even if it bankrupted you. Then you'd mark it down to loss, and scrap material energy. And I'll tell you why."
A terriblesilence hung in the room as the two men eyed one another across the table.
"You wouldn't use it," Greg went on, "because it would remove the stranglehold you have on the planets. It would make power too cheap. It would eliminate the necessity of your rented accumulators. The Jovian moons and Mars could stand on their feet without the power you ship to them. You could make billions in legitimate profits selling the apparatus to manufacture the energy ... but you wouldn't want that. You want to be dictator of the Solar System. And that is what I intend to stop."
"Listen, Manning," said Chambers, "you're a reasonable man. Let's talk this thing over without anger. What do you plan to do?"
"I could put my material engines on the market," said Greg. "That would ruin you. You wouldn't move an accumulatorafter that. Your Interplanetary stock wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. Material energy would wipe you out."
"You forget I have franchises on those planets," Chambers reminded him. "I'd fight you in the courts until hell froze over."
"I'd prove convenience, economy and necessity. Any court in any land, on any planet, would rule for me."
Chambers shook his head. "Not Martian or Jovian courts. I'd tell them to rule for me and the courts outside of Earth do what I tell them to."
Gregstraightened and backed from the desk. "I hate to ruin a man. You've worked hard. You've built a great company. I would be willing, in return for a hands-off policy on your part, to hold up any announcement of my material energy until you had time to get out, to save what you could."
Hard fury masked Chambers' face. "You'll never build a material energy engine outside your laboratory. Don't worry about ruining me. I won't allow you to stand in my way. I hope you understand."
"I understand too well. But even if you are a dictator out on Mars and Venus, even if you do own Mercury and boss the Jovian confederacy, you're just a man to me. A man who stands for things that I don't like."
Greg stopped and his eyes were like ice crystals.
"You talked to Stutsman today," he said. "If I were you, I wouldn't let Stutsman do anything rash. Russ Page and I might have to fight back."
Mockery tinged Chambers' voice. "Am I to take this as a declaration of war, Mr. Manning?"
"Take it any way you like," Greg said. "I came here to give you a proposition, and you tell me you're going to smash me. All I have to say to you, Chambers, is this—when you get ready to smash me, you'd better have a deep, dark hole all picked out for yourself to hide in. Because I'll hand you back just double anything you hand out."
"Oneof us will have to watch all the time," Greg told Russ. "We can't take any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and we have to be ready for him."
He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning beside the bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles of the laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed.
The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger ship spearing down toward the airport south of them.
"With the port that close," said Russ, "we'll get a lot of signals."
"I ordered the Belgium factory to rush work on the ship," said Greg. "But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight and wait. As soon as we have the ship we'll start in on Chambers; but until we get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive."
He studied the scene in the screen. The ship had leveled off, was banking in to the port. His eyes turned away, took in the laboratory with its crowding mass of machinery.
"We don't want to fool ourselves about Chambers," he said. "He may not have the power here on Earth that he does on the other planets, but he's got plenty. Feeling the way he does, he'll try to finish us off in a hurry now."
Russ reached out to the table that stood beside the bank of controls and picked up a small, complicated mechanism. Its face bore nine dials, with the needles on three of them apparently registering, the other six motionless.
"What is that?" asked Greg.
"A mechanical detective," said Russ. "A sort of mechanical shadow. While you were busy with the stock market stunt, I made several of them. One for Wilson and another for Chambers and still another for Craven." He hoisted and lowered the one in his hand. "This one is for Stutsman."
"A shadow?" asked Greg. "Do you mean that thing will trail Stutsman?"
"Not only trail him," said Russ. "It will find him, wherever he may be. Some object every person wears or carries is made of iron or some other magnetic metal. This 'shadow' contains a tiny bit of that ridiculous military decoration that Stutsman never allows far away from him. Find that decoration and you find Stutsman. In another one I have a chunk of Wilson's belt buckle, that college buckle, you know, that he's so proud of. Chambers has a ring made of a piece of meteoric iron and that's the bait for another machine. Have a tiny piece off Craven's spectacles in his machine. It was easy to get the stuff. The force field enables a man to reach out and take anything he wants to, from a massive machine to a microscopic bit of matter. It was a cinch to get the stuff I needed."
Russ chuckled and put the machine back on the table. He gestured toward it.
"It maintains a tiny field similar to our television field," he explained. "But it's modified along a special derivation with a magnetic result. It can follow and find the original mass of any metallic substance it may contain."
"Clever," commented Greg.
Russ lit his pipe, puffed comfortably. "We needed something like that."
The red light on the board snapped on and blinked. Russ reached out and slammed home the lever, twirled dials. It was only another passenger ship. They relaxed, but not too much.
"I wonderwhat he's up to," said Russ.
Stutsman's car had stopped in the dock section of New York. Crumbling, rotting piers and old tumbledown warehouses, desertedand unused since the last ship sailed the ocean before giving way to air commerce, loomed darkly, like grim ghosts, in the darkness.
Stutsman had gotten out of the car and said: "Wait here."
"Yes, sir," said the voice of the driver.
Stutsman strode away, down a dark street. The televisor kept pace with him and on the screen he could be seen as a darker shape moving among the shadows of that old, almost forgotten section of the Solar System's greatest city.
Another shadow detached itself from the darkness of the street, shuffled toward Stutsman.
"Sir," said a whining voice, "I haven't eaten ..."
There was a swift movement as Stutsman's stick lashed out, a thud as it connected with the second shadow's head. The shadow crumpled on the pavement. Stutsman strode on.
Greg sucked in his breath. "He isn't very sociable tonight."
Stutsman ducked into an alley where even deeper darkness lay. Russ, with a delicate adjustment, slid the televisor along, closer to Stutsman, determined not to lose sight of him for an instant.
The man suddenly turned into a doorway so black that nothing could be seen. Sounds of sharp, impatient rappings came out of the screen as Stutsman struck the door with his stick.
Brilliant illumination sprang out over the doorway, but Stutsman seemed not to see it, went on knocking. The colors on the screen were peculiarly distorted.
"Ultra-violet," grunted Greg. "Whoever he's calling on wants to have a good look before letting anybody in."
The door creaked open and a shaft of normal light spewed out into the street, turning its murkiness to pallid yellow.
Stutsman stepped inside.
The man at the door jerked his head. "Back room," he said.
Thetelevisor slid through the door into the lighted room behind Stutsman. Dust lay thick on the woodwork and floors. Patches of plaster had broken away. Furrows zigzagged across the floor, marking the path of heavy boxes or furniture which had been pushed along in utter disdain of the flooring. Cheap wall-paper hung in tatters from the walls, streaked with water from some broken pipe.
But the back room was a startling contrast to the first. Rich, comfortable furniture filled it. The floor was covered with a steel-cloth rug and steel-cloth hangings, colorfully painted, hid the walls.
A man sat under a lamp, readinga newspaper. He rose to his feet, like the sudden uncoiling of springs.
Russ gasped. That face was one of the best known faces in the entire Solar System. A ratlike face, with cruel cunning printed on it that had been on front pages and TV screens often, but never for pay.
"Scorio!" whispered Russ.
Greg nodded and his lips were drawn tight.
"Stutsman," said Scorio, surprised. "You're the last person in the world I was expecting. Come in. Have a chair. Make yourself comfortable."
Stutsman snorted. "This isn't a social call."
"I didn't figure it was," replied the gangster, "but sit down anyway."
Gingerly Stutsman sat down on the edge of a chair, hunched forward. Scorio resumed his seat and waited.
"I have a job for you," Stutsman announced bluntly.
"Fine. It isn't often you have one for me. Three-four years ago, wasn't it?"
"We may be watched," warned Stutsman.
The mobster started from his chair, his eyes darting about the room.
Stutsman grunted disgustedly. "If we're watched, there isn't anything we can do about it."
"We can't, huh?" snarled the gangster. "Why not?"
"Because the watcher is on the West Coast. We can't reach him. If he's watching, he can see every move we make, hear every word we say."
"Who is it?"
"Greg Manningor Russ Page," said Stutsman. "You've heard of them?"
"Sure. I heard of them."
"They have a new kind of television," said Stutsman. "They can see and hear everything that's happening on Earth, perhaps in all the Solar System. But I don't think they're watching us now. Craven has a machine that can detect their televisor. It registers certain field effects they use. They weren't watching when I left Craven's laboratory just a few minutes ago. They may have picked me up since, but I don't think so."
"So Craven has made a detector," said Greg calmly. "He can tell when we're watching now."
"He's a clever cuss," agreed Russ.
"Take a look at that machine now," urged Scorio. "See if they're watching. You shouldn't have come here. You should have let me know and I would have met you some place. I can't have people knowing where my hideout is."
"Quiet down," snapped Stutsman. "I haven't got the machine. It weighs half a ton."
Scorio sank deeper into his chair, worried. "Do you want to take a chance and talk business?"
"Certainly. That's why I'm here. This is the proposition. Manning and Page are working in a laboratory out on the West Coast, in the mountains. I'll give you the exact location later. They have some papers we want. We wouldn't mind if something happened to the laboratory. It might, for example blow up. But we want the papers first."
Scoriosaid nothing. His face was quiet and cunning.
"Give me the papers," said Stutsman, "and I'll see that you get to any planet you want to. And I'll give you two hundred thousand in Interplanetary Credit certificates. Give me proof that the laboratory blew up or melted down or something else happened to it and I'll boost the figure to five hundred thousand."
Scorio did not move a muscle as he asked: "Why don't you have some of your own mob do this job?"
"Because I can't be connected with it in any way," said Stutsman. "If you slip up and something happens, I won't be able to do a thing for you. That's why the price is high."
The gangster's eyes slitted. "If the papers are worth that much to you, why wouldn't they be worth as much to me?"
"They wouldn't be worth a dime to you."
"Why not?"
"Because you couldn't read them," said Stutsman.
"I can read," retorted the gangster.
"Not the kind of language on those papers. There aren't more than two dozen people in the Solar System who could read it, perhaps a dozen who could understand it, maybe half a dozen who could follow the directions in the papers." He leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at the gangster. "And there are only two people in the System who could write it."
"What the hell kind of a language is it that only two dozen people could read?"
"It isn't a language, really. It's mathematics."
"Oh, arithmetic."
"No," Stutsman said. "Mathematics. You see? You don't even know the difference between the two, so what good would the papers do you?"
Scorio nodded. "Yeah, you're right."
TheParis-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic ship that rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lights of eastern Europe.
Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. There was nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and the other occupants of the ship ... alone in the dark world that surrounded them.
But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides the pilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the three stodgy traveling men who were his fellow passengers.
Wilson's hair ruffled at the base of his skull, tingling with an unknown fear that left him shaken.
A voice whispered in his ear: "Harry Wilson. So you are running away!"
Just a tiny voice that seemed hardly a voice at all, it seemed at once to come from far away and yet from very near. The voice, with an edge of coldness on it, was one he never would forget.
He cowered in his seat, whimpering.
The voice came again: "Didn't I tell you that you couldn't run away? That no matter where you went, I'd find you?"
"Go away," Wilson whispered huskily. "Leave me alone. Haven't you hounded me enough?"
"No," answered the voice, "not enough. Not yet. You sold us out. You warned Chambers about our energy and now Chambers is sending men to kill us. But they won't succeed, Wilson."
"You can't hurt me," said Wilson defiantly. "You can't do anything but talk to me. You're trying to drive me mad, but you can't. I won't let you. I'm not going to pay any more attention to you."
The whisper chuckled.
"You can't," argued Wilson wildly. "All you can do is talk to me. You've never done anything but that. You drove me out of New York and out of London and now you're driving me out of Paris. But Berlin is as far as I will go. I won't listen to you any more."
"Wilson," whispered the voice, "look inside your bag. The bag, Wilson, where you are carrying that money. That stack of credit certificates. Almost eleven thousand dollars, what is left of the twenty thousand Chambers paid you."
With a wild cry Wilson clawed at his bag, snapped it open, pawed through it.
Thecredit certificates were gone!
"You took my money," he shrieked. "You took everything I had. I haven't got a cent. Nothing except a few dollars in my pocket."
"You haven't got that either, Wilson," whispered the voice.
There was a sound of ripping cloth as something like a great, powerful hand flung aside Wilson's coat, tore away the inside pocket. There was a brief flash of a wallet and a bundle of papers, which vanished.
The hostess was hurrying toward him.
"Is there something wrong?"
"They took ..." Wilson began and stopped.
What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across the world had robbed him?
The three traveling men were looking at him.
"I'm sorry, miss," he stammered. "I really am. I fell asleep and dreamed."
He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner of his seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, high in the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin ... stranded withoutmoney, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and the few personal effects in his bag.
Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The plane was entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, was no place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They might think he was a spy. He might be cited for illegal entry. He might be framed by secret police.
Terror perched on his shoulder and whispered to him. He shivered violently and drew farther back into the corner of the seat. He clasped his hands, beat them against his huddled knees.
He would cable friends back in America and have them identify him and vouch for his character. He would borrow some money from them, just enough to get back to America. But whom would he cable? And with aching bitterness in his breast, Harry Wilson came face to face with the horrible realization that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the Solar System, was there a single person who was his friend. There was no one to help him.
He bowed his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders jerking spasmodically, the sobs racking his body.
The traveling men stared at him unable to understand. The hostess looked briskly helpless. Wilson knew he looked like a scared fool and he didn't care.
Hewasscared.
Gregory Manningriffled the sheaf of credit certificates, the wallet, the passport and pile of other papers that lay upon the desk in front of him.
"That closes one little incident," he said grimly. "That takes care of our friend Wilson."
"Maybe you were a bit too harsh with him, Greg," suggested Russell Page.
Greg shook his head. "He was a traitor, the lowest thing alive. He sold the confidence we placed in him. He traded something that was not his to trade. He did it for money and now I've taken that money from him."
He shoved the pile of certificates to one side.
"Now I've got this stuff," he said, "I don't know what to do with it. We don't want to keep it."
"Why not send it to Chambers?" suggested Russ. "He will find the passport and the money on his desk in the morning. Give him something to think about tomorrow."
Scoriosnarled at the four men: "I want you to get the thing done right. I don't want bungling. Understand?"
The bulky, flat-faced man with the scar across his cheek shuffled uneasily. "We went over it a dozen times. We know just what to do."
He grinned at Scorio, but the grin was lopsided, more like a sneering grimace. At one time the man had failed to side-step a heat ray and it had left a neat red line drawn across the right cheek, nipped the end of the ear.
"All right, Pete," said Scorio, glaring at the man, "your job is the heavy work, so just keep your mind on it. You've got the two heaters and the kit."
Pete grinned lopsidedly again. "Yeah, my own kit. I can open anything hollow with this rig."
"You got a real job tonight," snarled Scorio. "Two doors and a safe. Sure you can do it?"
"Just leave it to me," Pete growled.
"Chizzy, you're to pilot," Scorio snapped. "Know the coordinates?"
"Sure," said Chizzy, "knowthem by heart. Do it with my eyes shut."
"Keep your eyes open. We can't have anything go wrong. This is too important. You swoop in at top speed and land on the roof. Stand by the controls and keep a hand on the big heater just in case of trouble. Pete, Max and Reg will go to the lockdoor. Reg will stay there with the buzzer and three drums of ammunition."
He whirled on Reg. "You got that ammunition?"
Reg nodded emphatically. "Four drums of it," he said. "One solid round in the gun. Another drum of solid and two explosive."
"There's a thousand rounds in each drum," snapped Scorio, "but they last only a minute, so do your firing in bursts."
"I ain't handled buzzers all these years without knowing something about them."
"There's only two men there," said Scorio, "and they'll probably be asleep. Come down with your motor dead. The lab roof is thick and the plane landing on those thick tires won't wake them. But be on your guard all the time. Pete and Max will go through the lockdoor into the laboratory and open the safe. Dump all the papers and money and whatever else you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the plane and take off. When you're clear of the building, turn the heaters on it. I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don't leave even a button unmelted. Get it?"
"Sure, chief," said Pete. He dusted his hands together.
"Now get going. Beat it."
The four men turned and filed out of the room, through the door leading to the tumbledown warehouse where was hidden the streamlined metal ship. Swiftly they entered it and the ship nosed gently upward, blasting out through a broken, frameless skylight, climbing up and up, over the gleaming spires of New York.
Back in the room hung with steel-cloth curtains, alone, Scorio lit a cigarette and chuckled. "They won't have a chance," he said.
"Who won't?" asked a tiny voice from almost in front of him.
"Why, Manning and Page ..." said Scorio, and then stopped. The fire of the match burned down and scorched his fingers. He dropped it. "Who asked that?" he roared.
"I did," said the piping voice.
Scorio looked down. A three-inch man sat on a matchbox on the desk!
"Who are you?" the gangster shouted.
"I'm Manning," said the little man. "The one you're going to kill. Don't you remember?"
"Damn you!" shrieked Scorio. His hand flipped open a drawer and pulled out a flame pistol. The muzzle of the pistol came up and blasted. Screwed down to its smallest diameter, the gun's aim was deadly. A straight lance of flame, no bigger than a pencil, streamed out, engulfed the little man, bored into the table top. The box of matches exploded with a gush of red that was a dull flash against the blue blaze of the gun.
But the figure of the man stoodwithin the flame! Stood there and waved an arm at Scorio. The piping voice came out of the heart of the gun's breath.
"Maybe I'd better get a bit smaller. Make me harder to hit. More sport that way."
Scorio'sfinger lifted from the trigger. The flame snapped off. Laboriously climbing out of the still smoking furrow left in the oaken table top was Greg Manning, not more than an inch tall now.
The gangster laid the gun on the table, stepped closer, warily. With the palm of a mighty hand he swatted viciously at the little figure.
"I got you now!"
But the figure seemed to ooze upright between his fingers, calmly stepped off his hand onto the table. And now it began to grow. Watching it, Scorio saw it grow to six inches and there it stopped.
"What are you?" he breathed.
"I told you," said the little image. "I'm Gregory Manning. The man you set out to kill. I've watched every move you've made and known everything you planned."
"But that isn't possible," protested Scorio. "You're out on the West Coast. This is some trick. I'm just seeing things."
"You aren't seeing anything imaginary. I'm really here, in this room with you. I could lift my finger and kill you if I wished ... and maybe I should."
Scorio stepped back a pace.
"But I'm not going to," said Manning. "I have something better saved for you. Something more appropriate."
"You can't touch me!"
"Look," said Manning sternly. He pointed his finger at a chair. It suddenly grew cloudy, became a wisp of trailing smoke, was gone.
The gangster backed away, eyes glued to the spot where the chair had vanished.
"Look here," piped the little voice. Scorio jerked his head around and looked.
The chair was in Manning's hand. A tiny chair, but the very one that had disappeared from the room a moment before.
"Watch out!" warned Manning,and heaved the chair. The tiny chair seemed to float in the air. Then with a rush it gathered speed, grew larger. In a split second it was a full-sized chair and it was hurtling straight at the gangster's head.
With a strangled cry Scorio threw up his arms. The chair crashed into him, bowled him over.
"Now do you believe me?" demanded Manning.
Scrambling to his feet, Scorio gibbered madly, for the six-inch figure was growing. He became as large as the average man, and then much larger. His head cleared the high ceiling by scant inches. His mighty hands reached out for the gangster.
Scorio scuttled away on hands and knees, yelping with terror.
Powerful hands seemed to seize and lift him. The room was blotted out. The Earth was gone. He was in a place where there was nothing. No light, no heat, no gravitation. For one searing, blasting second he seemed to be floating in strangely suspended animation. Then with a jolt he became aware of new surroundings.
He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in a great laboratory that hummed faintly with the suggestion of terrific power, that smelled of ozone and seemed filled with gigantic apparatus.
Two men stood in front of him.
He staggered back.
"Manning!" he gasped.
Manning grinned savagely at him. "Sit down, Scorio. You won't have long to wait. Your boys will be along any minute now."
Chizzycrouched over the controls, his eyes on the navigation chart. Only the thin screech of parted air disturbed the silence of the ship. The high scream and the slow, precise snack-snack of cards as Reg and Max played a game of double solitaire with a cold, emotionless precision.
The plane was near the stratosphere, well off the traveled air lanes. It was running without lights, but the cabin bulbs were on, carefully shielded.
Pete sat in the co-pilot's chair beside Chizzy. His blank, expressionless eyes stared straight ahead.
"I don't like this job," he complained.
"Why not?" asked Chizzy.
"Page and Manning aren't the kind of guys a fellow had ought to be fooling around with. They ain't just chumps. You fool with characters like them and you got trouble."
Chizzy growled at him disgustedly, bent to his controls.
Straight ahead was a thin sliver of a dying Moon that gavebarely enough illumination to make out the great, rugged blocks of the mountains, like dark, shadowy brush-strokes on a newly started canvas.
Pete shuddered. There was something about the thin, watery moonlight, and those brush-stroke hills....
"It seems funny up here," he said.
"Hell," growled Chizzy, "you're going soft in your old age."
Silence fell between the two. The snack-snack of the cards continued.
"You ain't got nothing to be afraid of," Chizzy told Pete. "This tub is the safest place in the world. She's overpowered a dozen times. She can outfly anything in the air. She's rayproof and bulletproof and bombproof. Nothing can hurt us."
But Pete wasn't listening. "That moonlight makes a man see things. Funny things. Like pictures in the night."
"You're balmy," declared Chizzy.
Pete started out of his seat. His voice gurgled in his throat. He pointed with a shaking finger out into the night.
"Look!" he yelled "Look!"
Chizzy rose out of his seat ... and froze in sudden terror.
Straight ahead of the ship, etched in silvery moon-lines against the background of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face.
It was as big and hard as a mountain.
Theship 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."
Somethinghad 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 GregoryManning 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.
Hiseyes 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. Hemerely glared. Pete lapsed into silence, watching.
Manningstood 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.
Thedroning 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-widenedeyes 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'seyes widened, staring. "You won't send methere!"
"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 atelevision 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. TheComettowed it out in space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours theCometwill 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.