He found Haddix's weapon in his hand as the two soldiers charged down upon him. He fired once and blasted a hole in the first one's chest. Haddix was scrambling over the sand toward him, groping blindly, cursing. The second soldier swung his coil of rope like a flail, whipping it down across Alan's face. He felt blood flowing in a quick torrent from his nose. He held the atomic pistol in both hands as the soldier lifted the rope overhead again. The second blast of energy from Alan's weapon decapitated the soldier. The head tumbled away. The body took two steps toward Alan as if it could not believe this had happened, then pitched forward on the sand, staining the ochre with a deeper red.
Alan gagged but did not have time to be sick. He stood up and saw Haddix fleeing toward the escarpment which hid Red Sands. He fired once, but the range was too great, the wind too strong. Keifer and Laura were fighting for the second atomic pistol, Laura kicking him, raking his face with her fingernails and keeping him away from General Olmstead, who lay motionless on the sand. Keifer struck her brutally across the jaw with his fist, then turned, fired once in Alan's direction without aiming, and sprinted toward the escarpment.
Laura was unconscious. General Olmstead was unconscious or dead. Alan's limbs were like water. He knew Keifer would bring help. He had perhaps three minutes.
Somehow, he managed to drag Laura and her father inside the warp-ship. He slammed the outer airlock door, closed the inner door, staggered to the controls. Figures, tiny black dots against the barren ochre wilderness, were running toward the ship when Alan took it up into space under five G's acceleration.
Everything was going to be all right, he thought, and fainted.
Something cool was stroking his forehead, bathing the caked blood from his face. He was aware that his tunic and blouse had been removed, aware of a clean white bandage on his arm. Laura's face swam in and out of focus before him.
"Where are we?" he asked.
Laura did not answer.
He looked at the controls. Seventy five thousand miles out from Mars, heading toward Earth. Present speed, thirty eight miles per second, still increasing. He could feel the gentle acceleration pressure, probably one and a half G's, tugging at him.
"Are we being followed?" he asked Laura.
"No. I don't know. Please. Please!"
"What's the matter?"
"Dad. He's—dead. Alan, Keifer killed him." Laura was crying silently, her shoulder shaking with sobs, her eyelids closed tightly, the tears streaming from them down her cheeks. "He's—dead...."
Alan stood up and walked to where he had dragged General Olmstead's inert form. A hole in the General's tunic revealed the wound. There was no pulse beat in his wrist.
First my father, Alan thought. First Richard Tremaine. Now General Olmstead. They were on opposite sides, the one championing freedom for the Outworlds, the other opposing it. But there had been nothing violent about their disagreement. It had been a political battle, waged in the arena of politics. And when Richard Tremaine had been granted Equal Union for his people, General Olmstead had bowed graciously to Earth's decision. Under other circumstances, they could have been friends, Alan's dead father and Laura's.
Now they were dead.
Both struck down by Bennett Keifer.
Alan wondered if it were always that way. The bad people rising to the top, like scum on water, employing treachery and violence to achieve their ends.
"It will be more than a vendetta," he said out loud.
"What did you say?"
"I'm going to get Keifer. My whole life will stand still until I can get him. Not because he killed them, not entirely for that. Because of who he is and what he stands for and how he'll use treachery and violence like this for his own ends. Because Equal Union and parliamentary routine never satisfied a man like him and never will. Because he can stop the flow of water to Mars and watch his own people crying for water if it serves his purposes to incite them against Earth. I'll get him, Laura. I promise you that."
He wrapped General Olmstead's body in an old Federation flag which he found in a rear cabin of the warp-ship. "It isn't the globe and stars of Earth," he said softly, "but it's the Federation my father stood for, the real Federation."
Laura nodded. "Dad would have wanted it that way."
Alan carried his flag-draped burden to the airlock, placed it in the chamber, then stepped back and bolted the inner door. Laura stood silently for a moment with her head bowed while Alan recited what he could remember of the 23rd Psalm. Somehow, it cleaned some of the hatred from his system and left cold clear purpose in its place. The prayer was for his father too and all the free people who had ever died and would ever die fighting tyranny.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for Thou are with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me...."
Alan pulled the lever which controlled the outer door of the airlock. General Olmstead found his final resting place in the deep void of space where he had spent most of his life in the service of his fellow men.
CHAPTER VI
"Five hundred thousand miles out from Earth," Laura said, two weeks later.
"I still don't get it," Alan admitted. "They didn't even try to follow us. It's as if Keifer suddenly didn't care whether we escaped to Earth or not."
"Maybe he believes we're going to have our hands full trying to get Earth to repair the space-warp. Maybe he knows we won't be able to bother him or interfere with his plans."
But Alan shook his head, his brow creasing into a frown. "No that's not it. I just can't figure it." He walked to the fore viewport and gazed at the legions of stars against the black velvet immensity of space. In the upper right hand corner of the viewport he could see the Earth-moon system, the larger sphere pale green, mottled with white and brown, the smaller a dazzling white. He realized all at once that he had two homes. The Mars of his boyhood, the Earth and New Washington University, where he had spent his young manhood. He could never forsake one for the other. He was as much of Earth as he was of Mars, the verdant green richness of the one tugging at him with no less force than the arid, wild frontier of the other.
"See if you can get anything on the radio," he told Laura. The warp ship's receiver was a small one not meant for interplanetary distances, but Alan guessed it could pick up the more powerful Earth stations beamed to space through the Heavyside Layer.
The radio squawked and whistled, then they heard an announcer's voice faintly. "... of Alan Tremaine's Federation forces. All Earth is still shocked over Tremaine's ultimatum. The International Security Council has been meeting in closed session for two days now, with no announced decisions.
"Authoritative sources close to the Council say that President Holland has admitted the Earth is helpless. It has been known for more than a century that man's science was capable of building a cobalt bomb which, with a weight of perhaps four hundred tons, could poison all life on Earth with radioactivity.
"As we all have known since last Wednesday, this is precisely what Tremaine has in mind. The cobalt bomb is actually a hydrogen bomb with a layer of cobalt isotope surrounding it. While radioactive cobalt tritium from the H-bomb trigger is quickly dispersed and rendered harmless because the half-life of tritium is so short, radioactive cobalt can spread through the Earth's upper atmosphere on the jet-stream, raining lethal gamma rays from pole to pole.
"It is this terrible force which Alan Tremaine has threatened to unleash on the Earth."
"That's a lie!" Laura cried. "You are not even there. It's Keifer, using your name."
Alan nodded grimly. "He couldn't give such an ultimatum himself. The Outworld people wouldn't listen. But if they believe it's my decision...."
The commentator was saying: "... brief review of the points of Tremaine's ultimatum. One, unconditional surrender of all remaining Earth forces on the Outworlds. Two, repair of the space-warp bringing water from Venus to Mars. Tremaine claims Earth broke the warp, but the government has denied this right along. It is believed Tremaine is instilling hatred for Earth in the Federation peoples with this diabolical lie. Three, total independence for the Outworlds. Four, Tremaine threatens that if the first three conditions are not complied with by tomorrow night, twenty-three hundred hours Greenwich Time, he will unleash the cobalt bomb.
"Since Tremaine's Federation has sundered the space-warp itself, Earth is unable to comply with the second of Tremaine's points. While radar defenses are being alerted on a planet-wide basis, an unmanned rocket with a cobalt-bomb warhead, approaching the Earth at interplanetary speeds, could not be stopped. The Earth government has continued its hourly appeal to Tremaine not to destroy the civilization which has carried mankind out to the planets. So far, Tremaine has not responded."
"He—he wouldn't dare," Laura said as Alan shut the radio. But her voice lacked conviction.
"He might, Laura. He just might do anything. The radioactivity wouldn't last forever. Keifer might be planning to wait until it's dispersed, then return to Earth and extend his plans for empire there. All life would die, but he could replant crops, bring his hand-picked leaders to settle with him, and govern the solar system as a small totalitarian state."
"But I thought he wanted to take over Earth and all its people."
"He might figure they won't listen to him. If they do, he takes over. If they don't, he goes through with his ultimatum. Either way, he has Earth."
"But Alan. Five billion people...."
"I'm going down there," Alan said. "I've got to find out all the details."
"Alan, they'll kill you! They think it'syourultimatum, your cobalt bomb."
"If anyone can stop Keifer, I can. The Federation is loyal to me."
"They won't listen to you. They won't let you talk. They'll kill you."
"My father died for what he believed," Alan said. "So did your father. As long as there's a chance, I've got to go down there. Keifer's ultimatum is set for tomorrow night."
Impulsively, Laura took his hands and squeezed them. "I won't let you throw your life away. I can't lose you now, Alan. I can't. I...."
Alan tilted her chin with his hand and looked into her eyes. Her lips were trembling. She was going to cry, he thought. "Darling," he said, "you've got to listen. I love you. I ... I think I was falling in love with you on the Mars liner, before all this started to happen. I never had a chance to tell you. I'm telling you now."
"Then you can't...."
Their lips came together, gently at first, then fiercely, as if this were their first kiss of love and perhaps their last. "Oh, Alan. Yes, Alan. I love you. So you can't...."
"No," Alan told her quietly. "I've got to. Once a great poet of Earth put it so clearly, so much better than I could ever say it. How did it go? Something about 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov'd I not honor more.' Do you think for a minute we could live with ourselves or ever look each other in the eye again if we let this happen without trying to stop it?"
"I'm begging you, Alan. They will kill you as soon as you set foot on Earth."
"I said I'm going down there. I am going. But not before I convince you." He spoke long and persuasively. He told her about other lovers, everywhere, about the men and women of Earth, the five billion helpless people who had a right to live their own lives too and fall in love and marry, about the hundreds of millions of Outworlders whose minds and hearts would be fettered by Bennett Keifer if he had his way, about how a man had this double allegiance all his life, to the people he loved and to freedom and democracy and the ideas in which he believed. How the one allegiance might make a man think of an island somewhere or a small asteroid where the rest of the world wouldn't matter but how the other allegiance always brought him back to the crowded places, the dangerous places.
Laura kissed him again, sobbing, clinging to him. When finally he let her go, she whispered so low he hardly could hear the words: "You are right, Alan. It's your duty to go."
"Whatever happens, Laura, I love you."
"Keep telling me that all the time, Alan. I don't want to hear anything else. I'm going with you."
He smiled, then shook his head. "You're going to Earth all right. But you're going where you'll be safe."
Then Alan took the ship down, watching the great green globe of Earth swelling up toward them and then the wondrous sight of the continents swimming into view and the vast blue-green seas and the white cottony puffs of cloud formations and wondering if he soon would be saying goodbye to Laura for the last time.
It was night in New Washington. Outside, you could hear the familiar street sounds, the jet-cars rushing by, the muted talk of people after the theater down the street closed for the night, the gentle sighing of wind in the trees which spanned the avenue.
Inside the fraternity lodge, everything was quiet. New Washington students were studying in their small rooms; some of them had already retired. Bill Graham, who had been Alan's room-mate in the good days, said: "You know I want to believe you, Alan. We've been friends ever since we started through college together."
"All I want you to do is watch Laura. Don't let her out of your sight."
"But everyone says you gave Earth the ultimatum."
"Would I be here now if I did? I'm trying to prevent it, Bill. You've got to believe me."
"All I have to do is watch her?"
"Yes. I'm going straight to the President if I can. Something's been bothering me about this ultimatum of Keifer's all along. Now I think I know what it is. I think we have a chance to stop him, Bill. Just a chance, but we can try."
"What about your ship? How did you get through the radar net?"
Alan smiled grimly. "I remembered your registration number, Bill. I had to give it to them. They'll think it was your ship."
"Holy Mac!" Bill Graham cried. "Then they'll think I—"
"If Keifer wins, we'll all be dead tomorrow night anyway. It was the only thing I could do Bill. I had to get through."
Bill Graham chuckled softly, as if it all were very funny. But he reached out and shook Alan's hand. "I'll watch her, Alan."
Alan nodded, turned to Laura and kissed her quickly without saying goodbye. That way, he thought, he had to see her again....
Everything was so normal on the streets of New Washington, it almost made Alan think the Federation uprising, the death of his father and Laura's father, Keifer's ultimatum to Earth—all were part of some wild, impossible dream. The boys and girls were walking hand in hand. The old men were walking their dogs or taking their evening constitutionals or stopping on street corners to talk with their friends. The theater marquees were gay and well-lighted. It was only when you studied the faces and saw the lines of worry, the furrowed brows, the thoughtful, furtive looks, only when you listened to the conversations and heard "Tremaine's ultimatum" ... "nothing we can do" ... "helpless" ... "he wouldn't dare" ... "I'm going to pretend nothing's wrong and just go right on living till tomorrow night" ... "what else can you do?" ... "dear God, what else?" ... it was only then that you knew.
Alan took a bus to the center of the city and fell in with a group of reporters converging on the White House. One of them was saying, "About time they let us in on this. That International Security Council hasn't uttered a peep since the ultimatum, but they've been meeting continuously."
"Ought to make a few banner headlines," another man said.
"So what? After tomorrow night, there won't be any more headlines—or anything. If I could just get that Tremaine here, how I'd love to choke the life out of him with these two hands."
"You and about five billion other people."
They entered the White House grounds. Ahead of them, the stately white building was ablaze with light. Guards were stationed at all the entrances.
The reporters began to queue up in single file as two uniformed men examined their credentials. His heart pounding, Alan let the line carry him forward. All the doors were guarded. If he could not get in this way, he could not get in at all.
Finally, he was saying: "Adams, New York Times."
"Your press card, Mr. Adams?"
"I left it at the hotel."
The guard shook his head. "Sorry. You'll have to get it."
"I don't want to miss the press conference."
The guard looked up and shouted, "Anyone else from the New York Times here?"
A man behind Alan nodded.
"You know this fellow?"
The man studied Alan, then shrugged. "Don't think so. I never forget a face."
"He says he's from the Times."
"The devil he is."
"Who are you?" the guard asked Alan.
For answer, Alan shoved him out of the way and plunged inside the building. His feet pounded a loud tattoo on the polished marble floor as he sprinted down the corridor. There were shouts and the pounding of more feet behind him. He followed an arrow which pointed straight ahead above the words PRESS ROOM. He climbed a broad marble staircase. The voices were louder behind him, the click-clacking feet closer.
Breathing harshly, he charged through the doorway to the press gallery. He stopped in his tracks.
The International Security Council was assembled in special session, ready to meet the reporters and their questions. Alan recognized the faces, the gaunt, weary but somehow intensely warm features of President Holland, the other faces, all grave and tired, about the horseshoe-shaped table.
The guards sprinted up behind Alan, pinning his arms to his sides.
The Secretary General of the International Security Council, seated at President Holland's right, looked up and said, "What is the trouble here?"
"Begging your pardon, sir," the first guard explained, "this man has no proper identification."
President Holland glanced up at Alan, the deep-set eyes studying him. "I've seen that face before," he said. "I don't know where, but I'm sure I've seen him."
"Come on, bud," the guard told Alan. "You're going to answer some questions downstairs." He led Alan back toward the door.
Wrenching his arms free, Alan ran back toward the horseshoe-shaped table. The eyes of the ministers of all the federated Earth states were on him. He took a deep breath and said, "Gentlemen, I am Alan Tremaine."
CHAPTER VII
Alan remembered only vaguely what happened then. Side-arms were whipped out by the guards. One dignified member of the Council lunged across the table, dignity forgotten, and tried to slap Alan. The reporters, sensing something important when Alan had broken away from the guards downstairs and plunged inside the White House, had entered the room. Now the television cameras were grinding. There was not a friendly face in the room.
"Listen to me!" Alan shouted. He could not make himself heard over the babble of excitement in the room. He pounded on the table and cried, "You've got to listen! Do you think I came here to die with all of you and all Earth tomorrow night? Do you?"
The guards held him again, one of them wrenching his right arm up and back painfully. The members of the Security Council were grim-lipped and silent. One of them restrained the Minister from France, who was still trying to get at Alan. "You ... you are the worst traitor since Judas Iscariot," the Minister from France told Alan.
"I never sent that ultimatum," Alan shouted. "I wouldn't be here if I did. Are you going to listen to me?"
There was an angry murmuring from the horseshoe-shaped table. A reporter broke away from his companions and swung his fist awkwardly at Alan's face. "You have that coming," he said, "from five billion Earthmen."
Even the members of the Council seemed to approve. Some of them stood up and came around the table toward Alan menacingly. Laura's words screamed inside Alan's skull—they'll kill you.
"Stop!" President Holland's firm voice boomed across the room. "Are we all animals here? Tremaine has the right to speak. With the Earth about to die, are we not even going to clutch at straws? Tremaine knows we can keep him here until tomorrow night, yet he came. I want to hear him. I will hear him if I have to do it alone."
The Ministers assumed their places at the table sheepishly. The television cameras panned closer to Alan. He could sense it: five billion people were watching him.
He talked rapidly. He didn't know how long they would listen. He told them how he had gone to Mars to take his father's place, told them how Richard Tremaine, then Eugene Talbrick had been murdered in cold blood by Bennett Keifer because he favored violence and complete dissolution of the union and they did not. He told them how Keifer still intended to use the name of Tremaine because Alan's father had been loved by the Outworlders and respected by the government of Earth. He told them how General Olmstead had been taken and eventually killed. They were listening now. Still doubtful, but listening. He could sense that some of the hostility had gone from them. They were weary now, and without hope in their eyes.
He went on, "I still think more than half the Outworlders would rally behind me. Maybe I don't deserve their faith, but they remember my father who spent his whole life and finally died in their cause. Let them know I'm here. Beam it to the Outworlds. Tell them I renounce Keifer as a traitor to his own people and to the Earth that spawned them. I'll talk if you want. I'll go on the air."
"Fool!" cried the Minister from France bitterly. "Even if it would work, what does it matter? Tomorrow we all die."
"There's a chance you won't," Alan said. "I'm coming to that. To bring you up to date, I landed on Earth a few hours ago and left General Olmstead's daughter with a friend at the PBT Fraternity House of New Washington University. You can check everything I said with her."
"You said there was a chance...."
"Yes. When did Keifer give his ultimatum?"
"Forty eight hours ago."
"That's what I figured. Unless the cobalt bomb was on its way to Earth for at least eight or ten days, it couldn't reach here from Mars or Venus by tomorrow night!"
"Then you mean it's all a bluff?" the Secretary General demanded, hope springing into his eyes.
"No," Alan admitted. "It's no bluff. Two weeks ago, Keifer shut the flow of water through the space-warp from Venus to Mars. Now I realize why. He did it partly to get the people of Mars behind him when he issued his own ultimatum. He didn't want a revolution on his hands. But he did it for another reason, too.
"Gentlemen, if you know your astronomy, you'd know that a fairly rare astronomical event has happened. Venus, Earth and Mars are all in conjunction on the same side of the sun. To put it another way, Venus, with the shortest, fastest orbit, has overtaken the Earth's orbital position with respect to the sun. That's known as the synodic year. Earth has likewise overtaken slower Mars, so the three planets are lined up...."
"Imbecile!" screamed the Minister from France. "Here you stand, giving us astronomical puzzles, while Earth hovers on the brink of disaster."
"It's important," Alan said patiently. "Venus, Earth and Mars are in a line right now, Venus and Earth separated by some twenty-eight million miles, Earth and Mars by less than forty million. What I'm saying is this: Keifer didn't block Venusian water from the space-warp merely to rally the Outworlders behind him when he claimed you were responsible. He did it because the space-warp now passes within a couple of hundred thousand miles from Earth. He did it because he intends to transport the cobalt bomb here through the space-warp. I say that's the only way he can get it here in time!"
President Holland stood up, his face white, excitement in his eyes. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it's possible. We'll check the data with the New Washington Naval Observatory at once. If what you say is true, Tremaine...."
"It almost has to be true, sir. Keifer will need a launching site for his cobalt bomb after he takes it from the space-warp, but I have a hunch you'll find when you call the observatory that the moon's orbital position at this time passes within a few hundred miles of the space-warp. I say Keifer will launch his cobalt bomb at the Earth from the moon."
Now the reporters suddenly friendly, were asking Alan so many questions that President Holland had to drag Alan away from them. A special jet took Alan, the President and a few advisors to the Naval Observatory, where Alan's theory was confirmed. One of the astronomers told President Holland jubilantly, "All you have to do is send a fleet out to where the space-warp intersects the orbit of the moon and...."
"How can we?" President Holland groaned. "We've dispatched almost all our ships to Mars, Venus and the Jovian moons to help put down the Outworld insurrections. We're left with a few obsolete, ancient ships."
"It doesn't matter," Alan said. "Keifer's in the same boat. His own ships have to defend the Outworlds. He'll only have a small fleet there, if any. He's depending on surprise, don't you see? Even if your ships couldn't get through, I'd have a chance. I'm Alan Tremaine. Tremaine. The Outworlders still think I'm in charge. They'll have to let me through."
"You'll leave at once," President Holland told him. "In the three hours since you've been here, Alan Tremaine, you've given us new hope." He placed his hand on Alan's shoulder, looking at him long and searchingly. "All Earth must put its hope in you now. We don't have time to check your story thoroughly. We can't. Tremaine, never did so many people put their fate so completely in one man's hands as all Earth is putting its fate in yours. If you're lying, if you're telling the truth but wrong in your theory, life on Earth perishes. All life, Tremaine."
"I've got to be right, sir," Alan told the President. "I've got to."
President Holland smiled. "I'm tired, Tremaine. We're all tired, but we've got to go on. What ships we have will be ready to leave in an hour."
An hour, Alan thought. Now was the time to say goodbye to Laura. Now, with Earth solidly behind him. Now he could tell her of his hopes for the future, which did not seem so bleak. He must see her before he blasted off for the final reckoning with Keifer.
No sounds came from the fraternity house in New Washington University. He called Bill Graham's name, but heard nothing. "Laura?" he said. "Laura, where are you?" The place seemed completely deserted.
"Alan Tremaine, is that you?" He whirled—and grinned. Mrs. Moriarity, the fraternity house mother, stood below him on the stairs.
"I thought I recognized your voice, young man. My hearing isn't so good anymore."
"Where's Bill Graham?"
"Upstairs, I suppose. He had some visitors before, Alan. Two men. I ... I didn't like them. I didn't think Bill would have such friends. And Alan, they came downstairs with a lady. A woman! She must have been in Bill's room. There was an awful rumpus up there, then they came down. I'm going to give Bill Graham a talking to, you can bet."
Alan rushed upstairs without answering. Mrs. Moriarity was still talking, her voice carrying up from below. "How did you like your trip to Mars, Alan? I meant to ask you." Her own small world went on. The bigger world hadn't mattered for years, still didn't matter, even now.
Bill Graham's room was a shambles. Furniture turned over, the desk on its side, the bed....
Bill Graham was on the floor. He lay with his hands in front of his face. His final gesture had been an instinctive one of protection. Half his face had been sheared away horribly by an atomic blast.
Laura was gone.
Final reckoning with Keifer, Alan thought. Bill Graham. Happy-go-lucky. A big kid who hadn't quite grown up yet. Give you the shirt off his back. Now he was dead.
How? Alan thought of it briefly and vaguely. It hardly mattered. It seemed impossible, too—but other things were more important. Except for Bill Graham and Alan, only the reporters, guards and Ministers at the Security Council meeting had known where Laura was. Alan had told them.
There was a traitor among them.
The traitor had come here and taken Laura, killing Graham when he tried to prevent it.
Laura was bound for the moon, Keifer's final trump card.
Alan shook his fist impotently, then slammed it down on the overturned desk.I'm coming, Laura, he thought.
I'm coming, Bennett Keifer.
CHAPTER VIII
"Six ships," President Holland told Alan at the New Washington Spaceport. "That's all we could make ready in time, Tremaine. Six battered line ships, out of commission for five years. It's all we had."
"I'm sorry, sir," a man in the uniform of a four star general told the President. "We sent all our power to the Outworlds."
"You couldn't do anything else, General," President Holland said. "We had received no ultimatum then. It seemed incredible Keifer or anyone would dare attack the Earth."
"I'll get through," Alan said.
Flood lights stabbed out across the dark field, criss-crossing it with brilliant beams of light. Ground crews scurried like insects caught in their glare, fueling the six spaceships, checking them, trying to accomplish an extensive reconditioning job in minutes.
Soon the spacecrews were jogging out on the field in bulky blast suits, small gleaming figures in the light of the floods. On one of the ships Alan saw the blue and gold symbol of the Outworld Federation, freshly painted, side by side with the globe and stars of Earth.
"You're blasting off for the good people of the Federation as well as for the Earth," President Holland explained. "We've radio'd the Outworlds and told them. We don't know the effect, if any."
"Keifer will have his hands full," Alan said. "I hope."
The jogging figures of the spacemen had separated into six groups of half a dozen men each, one group for each of the battered old ships.
"There's a launching site at the old, abandoned Terra Mines in Tycho Crater on the moon," President Holland told Alan. "If you don't get Keifer at the space-warp and stop him there, you'll probably find him in Tycho."
President Holland and the four star general were walking across the dark field with Alan now, toward the lead ship, standing on its tail in the glare of the flood lights. "All Earth is blasting off with you, Tremaine," the President said.
He shook hands solemnly with Alan. So did the General. Alan closed the airlock door behind him, heard a plopping sound as the airtight rubberoid fabric of the circular door gripped the hull and sealed it. The spacemen were at their stations, not talking, not smoking. Waiting.
Through the viewport, Alan watched President Holland and the General trotting out of the blast-off area.
Alan walked into the control room, past the grim, silent crew, each man stationed at his obsolete equipment. Half a dozen overage ships, with Earth's fate in the balance.
And Laura up there somewhere.
"Let's go," Alan said.
The rocket engines whined and shrieked into life. Alan and the pilot strapped themselves into blast chairs. The roar was deafening. Alan could feel his face contorted by eight G's pressure as the ancient spaceship blasted off. Then, his muscles bunched in agony, he blacked out.
Dazzling white with reflected sunlight but pock-marked with craters, shadowed with deep valleys and gorges, sundered by great rock faults, puckered with vast bleak mountain ranges the moon swept up at them.
"That reporter wants to see you now, Mr. Tremaine," the pilot told Alan.
"I haven't time for—what? What reporter?"
"The one President Holland sent along to cover the story for Earth."
"He didn't tell me—" Alan began, then shrugged. The reporter would be a nuisance, but it hardly mattered. "No interviews now," Alan said. "Tell him we're not going to land on the moon—yet. Tell him we're looking for the space-warp."
Gem-bright, unblinking, the stars of space gleamed through the viewport. Star-maps were spread on the floor of the small control cabin, crew members pouring over them. Somewhere out there, space should look different. Somewhere, starlight should be cut off by a narrow band of blackness—the space-warp. They had to find it, and they had to hurry. It made good sense to tell the Outworlders Alan had denounced Bennett Keifer as a traitor, for some of them might not fire on Alan's six small ships. But it also presented a danger: Keifer would probably abandon the hour of his ultimatum and rush ahead with his plans. They had mere minutes to find the space-warp. Perhaps already it was too late.
With the pilot taking over, Alan kneeled on the floor and studied the star-maps, calling out grid-coordinates while a man at the viewports checked them against space itself. Soon his head was swimming with the multitudes of white dots on the blueprint paper, with the white graph lines, the swarms of stars. "Sixteen-eleven," he said, "Deneb, Vega, Altair.... Sixteen-twelve, Pollux, Procyon, Sirius...."
"Check ... check...."
"Seventeen, one, Achernar, Canopus...."
"Check...."
Check,check, CHECK!
"Nineteen, three, Capella, Regulus, Alpha Centauri.... Nineteen, four...."
"Hold it! Wait a minute, Mr. Tremaine. If you draw a line from Capella through Regulus to Centauri, what else should you cross?"
Alan looked at his map. "You come close to Castor and Pollux, close to Cancer, you cross the constellations Crater and Corvus."
"Not out here, you don't."
Then Alan was running to the viewport. Between bright, unblinking Regulus and even brighter Alpha Centauri was—nothing. A hole in space. A long, narrow path of intense, unbroken blackness.
"That's it!" Alan shouted. He felt like laughing, like pounding the man's back, like dancing a jig. They had found the space-warp.
Alan ran to the pilot chair, swinging the small ship around almost ninety degrees. In the rear viewscreen he could see the five other ships wheeling about and following.
And something else—in front of them. Specks moving across the firmament in tight formation, growing.
Keifer's fleet.
He counted fifteen ships, each larger and with more firepower than his own, guardians of the space-warp, rocketing down toward them from where Corvus should have been, from the hole in space behind which the constellation Crater hid.
Alan flicked his radio toggle to the on position, said into it: "This is Alan Tremaine calling the Outworld fleet. Tremaine calling! Do you hear me?"
"Go back to Earth, Tremaine. We don't want to kill you."
"I'm flying the flags of Earth and the Federation. If you listen to me, it still isn't too late for Equal Union. I denounce Bennett Keifer as a traitor to Earth and the Outworld Federation, as my father would have done."
"Go back to Earth, Tremaine."
Alan shook his head, then scrambled the radio frequency to his small fleet's band. "Flagship calling," he said. "We're heading for the warp. Hold off the Federation fleet at all costs."
And, to the pilot: "Take her in, Stan. I'm getting into spacegear."
Five obsolete ships against the Federation's bigger fleet. A sixth ship to reach the warp and hover there while Alan explored. The odds against them seemed tremendous, but Alan brushed them from his mind. Swiftly, he climbed into a bulky spacesuit, inflating it while one of the crew secured the glassite helmet over his head. He tested the suit radio, secured a set of personnel jets to his shoulders, then clomped into the airlock with an atomic rifle, slamming the ammo pan into place in the breech. He stood impatiently at the outer door of the airlock, looking through the small viewport into space. Spinning in a great wheel formation, the three-dimensional equivalent of the ancient naval maneuver called crossing the T, the Federation fleet spun toward them.
Out to meet it—five ships, darting like silver midges at the giant wheel.
All at once, energy erupted searingly before his eyes as the fleets met. Two ships in the Federation wheel darkened and fell, tumbling end over end, out of rank. But one Earth ship was blown to pieces. If the rate of attrition continued....
He didn't think about it. He spun the mechanism which controlled the outer airlock door and pulled himself out on the hull of the ship. The battle formations were drifting behind him now. Ahead—the black tube of the space-warp.
Pointing himself toward the blackness, Alan fired his shoulder jets.
Here along the vast track of the warp, a station hung in space. As it swelled up toward him, Alan could make out three tiny figures, three men in spacesuits, watching him.
Space erupted violently about him as two of the figures raised atomic rifles to their shoulders and fired. Switching his jets on and off, Alan darted erratically through space to present a difficult target.
He was a hundred yards from the warp-station now. Overhead, his flagship was hovering on the sunward side of the station, casting a huge black shadow across it. Aiming carefully, Alan fired his own atomic rifle.
One of the figures collapsed on the surface of the station. The second was still firing at him. The third, unarmed, was watching. Alan swung quickly around to the dark side of the small globe, strapped the rifle to his shoulders, alighted on his hands and cartwheeled upright. Without pausing for breath, he unstrapped the rifle, held it ready at his hip and sprinted around the station.
Two heads bobbed into view on the incredibly close horizon. Alan and the Federation soldier fired simultaneously. Alan could feel the heat of the blast through his spacesuit. Before his eyes, his glassite helmet fused. A bare slit remained for him to see through.
But the second Federation soldier had fallen.
"I'm unarmed!" the third man screamed over his suit radio.
Alan recognized Captain—no, Major—Haddix's voice. "Lead me to the warp, Major," he said. "No tricks."
Seconds later, Alan was following the spacesuited figure across the smooth black surface of the warp-station. He passed one of the fallen soldiers, a gash torn in the fabric of his spacesuit. The body and head had swelled horribly against the suddenly unequal pressure. The thing inside the suit did not look human.
Major Haddix stopped at the brink of the space-warp, waiting for Alan with his back to the pit.
"Has the bomb come through yet?" Alan demanded.
Major Haddix made a lewd gesture, but his face paled behind the glassite helmet when Alan raised the atomic rifle and calmly began squeezing the trigger.
"Wait! I'll tell you. Don't point that thing...."
"Talk, damn you."
"It's already on the moon, Tremaine. Keifer changed his plans when he knew you were coming. But take it from me, you don't have a chance."
"What about General Olmstead's daughter?"
"She's with him, I think. Listen, Tremaine. Go easy. I'm only a professional soldier. I do what I'm told."
At that moment, a second shadow darted across the surface of the warp-station. Instinctively, Alan looked up. A Federation ship had come to do battle with the Earth ship hovering there, flashing by it and unleashing a salvo of raw energy. The Earth ship was swinging around to bring its own atomics to bear....
And then Haddix was upon him, clawing for the atomic rifle. They struggled there at the lip of the space-warp, the weapon between them. Slowly, Alan felt himself being forced around, felt nothing but space below his left foot as he tried to step back. Immediately behind him was the warp, and instant, horrible death if he fell in.
Haddix's gauntletted fist struck his glassite helmet, jarring him. Alan swung his arms wildly for balance, then remembered his personnel jets and switched them on, pivoting around at the same instant. Borne aloft by his shoulder rockets, Alan and Haddix spun dizzily over the abyss.
It was Haddix's own blind fury that killed him.
He swung his fists at Alan, trying to shatter the already damaged glassite helmet. He forgot that Alan alone wore the jets.
Alan watched the figure tumbling below him, head over heels, slowly, as in a dream. Haddix's voice came to him once over the radio in a hideous scream. Then the spacesuited form was swept into the warp, where it twisted, was bent and broken....
Overhead, the Earth ship hovered. Far away, the gutted hulk of the Federation craft which had come to challenge it was drifting off into space. Alan jetted for the Earth ship.
Hands lifted the helmet from his head, deflated and unfastened the spacesuit. "How are the others making out?" Alan gasped.
"They're gone. All gone. Five ships, five brave crews...."
"And the Federation?"
"Three ships left."
"Can we beat them to the moon?"
"We can try."
Just then the reporter joined Alan and the two crewmen in the companionway. "You'll reach the moon, all right," he said.
He was pointing an atomic pistol at them.
CHAPTER IX
Cold and lifeless, the surface of the moon expanded before them. The six man crew of the spaceship sat in the control cabin. Alan was at the controls. The reporter stood at the door, facing them with his back to the companionway. The atomic pistol was unwavering in his hand.
"You were at the Security Council meeting," Alan said bitterly. "You're working for Keifer. You sent those men to kidnap Laura. Then, in the confusion at the spacefield, you claimed the President had designated you to cover the story for Earth, and—"
The reporter nodded. "A man's a fool not to join the winning side while he can. You'll take this ship down in Tycho crater. You'll land near the old Terra Mines dome. They'll drag you in through the domelock with a tractor beam. You'll be able to watch them launch the bomb to Earth."
Jagged, pock-marked and buried in its mantle of pumice, the surface of the moon sped by below them. Dark, sombermaria, the broad deep valleys of the moon, appeared, were reached and left behind. Rills cut tortuously across the moonscape; rays like molten gold radiated from some of the craters.
Finally, the great ringwall of Tycho crater flashed into view. At one side, just inside the ringwall of the crater and more than two-score miles from the lonely central peaks, the glassite dome which had housed Terra Mines in the early days of space travel could be seen.
Alan brought the spaceship down on its tail, its rocket exhaust blasting the pumice below with blistering heat.
There was still time, Alan thought.
But they were helpless.
He wondered if, in decisive moments, history was full of such traitors—men like the reporter who would soon bring civilization on Earth, life on Earth, to an end when he returned Alan and his crew over to Keifer's Federation forces within the dome. He shrugged—then wondered also how strongly a man had to believe to forfeit his life for a principle.
For if he tried anything, the reporter would kill him.
If he didn't, you could count the time remaining for Earth in hours.
Abruptly, he slapped his hand across the firing lever, heard the surge of sudden power at the same moment that the ship rocked and plunged moonward on its side. There were shouts behind him in the cabin. There was a split-second of confusion.
Alan spun around and dove across the room for the reporter. The man had fallen and was just climbing to his feet when Alan reached him. He must have decided there was no time to fire. Instead, he hurled the heavy weapon at Alan.
It struck his shoulder, fell away. Then he was on the reporter, reaching for his throat, choking him, strangling.... Hands dragged him clear.
"He's unconscious," someone said. "Lay off, Tremaine."
There was a lurch as tractor beams from the dome caught and held the spaceship. They were tugged through the domelock but all were heavily-armed with atomic rifles and pistols when the ship came to a stop inside.
Another ship lay on its side within the half-mile-in-diameter dome. A dozen men stood about, waiting for them to be delivered like sheep.
Alan led his men outside into the cool, canned air of the dome. Their concentrated fire was unexpected and deadly, dropping the Federation men where they stood. Three or four of them managed to crawl behind the second ship, from where they returned the fire. One of Alan's men fell.
"Quick!" Alan cried. "Three of you cut around the front of the ship. Stan and I will slip around the tail rockets."
Without waiting for an answer, he led the pilot through a fierce barrage of atomic pellets toward the rear of the spaceship. As the missiles struck the ground on all sides of them, they exploded violently, kicking up man-tall geysers of luna pumice.
"You're covered from both sides!" Alan shouted, poking his head cautiously around the rocket tubes. His answer was a stream of atomic pellets, which struck the tubes and fused them. Ignoring the deadly fire, Alan plunged on, feeling the kick of his own atomic rifle as he triggered shot after shot blindly ahead of him.
There were two men left alive back there, standing back to back, trembling, their hands high over their heads.
"Where's Keifer?" Alan barked at them.
One pointed vaguely outside the dome. "The central mountains," he said.
"What are you talking about?"
"A shipload of technicians brought the bomb there from the space-warp. That's where Terra Mines had its launching equipment. Honest. I swear it's the truth."
"Is Keifer there too?"
"Yes. With the girl. They went out in one of Terra Mines' old luna tanks to watch the launching."
"When is it?"
"Half an hour, maybe less," the Federation soldier said. "You couldn't stop them. You'll never get there in time."
"Is there another tank?"
The soldier nodded, pointed across the pumice to a squat green vehicle with caterpillar treads. Alan was already running for it and calling over his shoulder. "Stay here. If the remaining Federation ships try to come down, use the dome-guns on them. Stan, you come with me."
The pilot sprinted after him. Together they entered the moon tank, which was not airtight. They found Terra Mines spacesuits inside, the ancient, long-unused type that looked like deep sea suits. The tank's rocket engine sputtered and caught. The tank lumbered toward the domelock and through it while they donned the spacesuits.
Then they were bouncing soundlessly across the airless surface of Tycho crater, leaving the dome far behind them. Earth was above them in the sky, in the quarter-phase. You could see part of North America reflecting sunlight. Blue-black, the Pacific Ocean was in shadow.
Ahead loomed the central mountains of Tycho crater, biting into the black sky, saw-toothed, for fifteen thousand feet. On labored the moon tank, climbing now, its old engine whining a protest against the steep grade, the sound echoing strangely inside the vehicle because outside in the luna vacuum it could not be heard at all. They crossed the first peak of the range, looked down on a great cauldron in the rock, a crater within the crater, a mile across.
At one end was a Federation spaceship, standing on its tail rockets and pointing up at the sky like a gleaming needle.
At the other end was the launching platform, massive, indistinct in the gloomy shadows of the mountains. On the platform, partially out of shadow, rested the cobalt bomb, big as a small spaceship.
Another tank sped toward them across the uneven moonscape. Two men were perched atop it in red spacesuits, firing already although they were still out of range.
Alan tapped Stan on the shoulder, told the pilot he was going outside. He slipped through the hatch and climbed on top of the lurching tank, squatting there and slamming a fresh ammo pan into his atomic rifle.
The trip across the crater had consumed ten minutes of the time left for Earth. What remained—twenty minutes? Twenty-five?
Suddenly, the moon tank shuddered beneath Alan's feet. They had come within range sooner than he had expected. He felt himself hurled away, and tumbled across the rocks as the tank burst briefly into flame, devouring in seconds the oxygen stored in the fuel tanks. With an eerie, noiseless blast, the tank exploded.
Alan scrambled forward across the rocks. Somehow, he had managed to hold his atomic rifle. He wondered if the mechanism had been damaged by his fall.
He didn't have time to think about it. The other tank, now less than fifty yards away, was coming toward him. He fired once, forced to reveal his position. A spacesuited figure fell from the tank, but another climbed up through the hatch to join the man still kneeling there.
The tank was thirty yards away now, still coming.
Concealed partially behind an out-cropping of rock, Alan fired again, saw a second figure tumble off the roof of the tank, rolling down a steep incline. The third man was returning his fire, but wildly. At the last moment he tried to scramble within the hatch, but his glassite helmet exploded as one of Alan's pellets caught it.
The tank was upon him, its caterpillar treads rolling soundlessly across the rock. Flinging his rifle out of the way, Alan dove between the two great treads and clung there. He could feel the jagged rocks cutting into his spacesuit, scraping it, weakening the fabric. In seconds, the fabric would rupture.
There was a hatch on the under-belly of the tank. Dragged along, Alan held on with one hand and pried at the hatch with the other. He was bruised and shaken by the rocks.
The hatch swung clear.
Alan chinned himself into the tank. A spacesuited figure sat over the controls. Another one was staring at Alan through the glassite helmet of a modern spacesuit.
It was Laura.
He didn't know if she would recognize him through the visor of his ancient suit. She screamed, "Alan! Look out!"
Keifer was rising from the controls, plunging toward him. Alan met him half way over the open hatch, grappled with him there. In Keifer's hand was an atomic pistol. He couldn't bring it down to bear on Alan, but was beating him across the head with it, the sound of metal striking metal booming in Alan's ears. If his helmet had been glassite, he thought, Keifer could have killed him.
He lost his footing and slipped, spread-eagling over the open hatch. Keifer fell on him, pushing, trying to force him through. "You can't stop the bomb," he said, his voice cold and metallic over the suit radio. "It's all automatic now."
For answer, Alan swung his metal-shod fists at Keifer's glassite helmet. He felt himself slipping. In seconds, Keifer's weight would drive him through the hatch. He pounded the glassite helmet above him. Blindly, he kept on pounding it. His legs were slipping, dangling through the hatch over the jagged rocks. The slightest rip in the fabric of his suit would bring instant death.
All at once, a crack appeared in Keifer's helmet, running from crown to chin. Alan struck again with his right fist. The crack became a hole. Keifer opened his mouth to scream, but then his face was swelling, bloated—became a shapeless thing which no longer could fit within the helmet.
Trembling, Alan stood up and rushed to the control. He saw that Laura was already heading the moon tank back toward the launching platform. He had a few seconds in which to play....
The tank lurched to a stop beside the platform.
Hand over hand, Alan was climbing the scaffold. He reached the platform with the tank's atomic rifle strapped across his shoulders. Half a dozen technicians were preparing to leave.
"Shut it off!" Alan shouted. "Don't launch that bomb!"
"We can't stop it now. The mechanism is set."
"I'll kill you if I have to."
"We can't, don't you understand? The bomb will be launched in five minutes—no, four minutes and fifty seconds now. Once set, it's fully automatic. We didn't want to set it. Keifer made us do it. You're Alan Tremaine, aren't you?" the technician asked. "We're on your side, Tremaine. Most of the Outworlds are, ever since Earth's broadcast. But Keifer came here with a hard core of his followers in a small fleet and—"
"Never mind the talk. Can't you render the bomb harmless?"
The technician shook his head within the glassite helmet.
Overhead, the quarter-phase Earth was shining brightly, waiting helplessly.
"It's the radioactive cobalt that will do the damage," Alan said. "An atomic trigger for the hydrogen bomb, a hydrogen trigger for the cobalt, right?"
"Essentially, yes."
"Then strip off the cobalt, you fools!"
"Three minutes," someone said. "We've got to get out of here. The after-burners of the launching charge will cremate us."
"It can be done," one of the technicians told Alan, "but I don't think you have the time."
"How, man? Tell me how!"
"Use your rifle. There's a seam running around the bomb. See? See it. If you can cut around the whole seam, the cobalt should fall away in two hemispheres. A hydrogen bomb alone would be launched at Earth, but it should fall harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean."
"Two minutes, forty seconds."
The technicians moved about uneasily. Two of them began to climb down the scaffold. The rest remained to watch Alan. They would save the Earth or perish with him.
Alan raised his atomic rifle to his shoulder, aimed at the thin welded seam about the huge bomb, and began to fire. At first there was nothing. The pellets hit the bomb, which could only be triggered by an atomic implosion at its core, and exploded there.
"A minute and a half," someone said, his voice hoarse over Alan's suit radio.
The seam was widening, became a gap a foot across. Alan continued firing, the rifle slapping back against his numb shoulder. The crack spread around the circumference of the bomb.
"One minute to blast-off!"
Alan fired his last volley, stood there in despair. He had run out of ammunition.
The cobalt outer skin of the bomb shook, spread apart, fell away in two equal hemispheres. The technicians were plunging down the scaffold, Alan right behind them. They tumbled inside the moon tank.
Laura didn't have to be told. The tank bounced away at full speed.
Behind them, a brilliant flash lit the lunar sky. For a moment, Alan could see the hydrogen bomb streaking Earthward, a silver speck against the blackness. Then it was gone. It was a vast trigger now, and nothing more. Harmlessly, it would explode in the Pacific Ocean, like dozens of tests which had been conducted there.
The Outworlds would agree to Equal Union now. Alan knew that. The technician had told him. They had never liked the war. They were ready to rally behind his name. There would be some ugliness between Earth and the Outworlds for a time, because of what had almost happened. But it would pass.
The Lunar Mines dome loomed ahead of them. The domelock opened to admit them.
"I wish we were inside already," Laura said, "where there's some air."
"What for?" Alan asked her.
"So I can take off this helmet and kiss you."
Nothing would suit Alan better. Now, at last, they were inside. He took off his helmet.