A man crouches. His back is aflame and there are flying saucers over him.
Steven halted, his chest rising and falling. “He’s got my intersystemvidsender.” His small face twisted with rage and misery. “He better give it back!”
Earl came circling around from the right. In the warm gloom of evening he was almost invisible. “Here I am,” he announced. “What you going to do?”
Steven glared at him hotly. His eyes made out the square box in Earl’s hands. “You give that back! Or—or I’ll tell Dad.”
Earl laughed. “Make me.”
“Dad’ll make you.”
“You better give it to him,” Sally said.
“Catch me.” Earl started off. Steven pushed Sally out of the way, lashing wildly at his brother. He collided with him, throwing him sprawling. The box fell from Earl’s hands. It skidded to the pavement, crashing into the side of a guide-light post.
Earl and Steven picked themselves up slowly. They gazed down at the broken box.
“See?” Steven shrilled, tears filling his eyes. “See what you did?”
“You did it. You pushed into me.”
“You did it!”’ Steven bent down and picked up the box. He carried it over to the guide-light, sitting down on the curb to examine it.
Earl came slowly over. “If you hadn’t pushed me it wouldn’t have got broken.”
Night was descending rapidly. The line of hills rising above the town were already lost in darkness. A few lights had come on here and there. The evening was warm. A surface car slammed its doors, some place off in the distance. In the sky ships droned back and forth, weary commuters coming home from work in the big underground factory units.
Thomas Cole came slowly toward the three children grouped around the guide-light. He moved with difficulty, his body sore and bent with fatigue. Night had come, but he was not safe yet.
He was tired, exhausted and hungry. He had walked a long way. And he had to have something to eat—soon.
A few feet from the children Cole stopped. They were all intent and absorbed by the box on Steven’s knees. Suddenly a hush fell over the children. Earl looked up slowly.
In the dim light the big stooped figure of Thomas Cole seemed extra menacing. His long arms hung down loosely at his sides. His face was lost in shadow. His body was shapeless, indistinct. A big unformed statue, standing silently a fewfeet away, unmoving in the half-darkness.
“Who are you?” Earl demanded, his voice low.
“What do you want?” Sally said. The children edged away nervously. “Get away.”
Cole came toward them. He bent down a little. The beam from the guide-light crossed his features. Lean, prominent nose, beak-like, faded blue eyes—
Steven scrambled to his feet, clutching the vidsender box. “You get out of here!”
“Wait.” Cole smiled crookedly at them. His voice was dry and raspy. “What do you have there?” He pointed with his long, slender fingers. “The box you’re holding.”
The children were silent. Finally Steven stirred. “It’s my inter-system vidsender.”
“Only it doesn’t work,” Sally said.
“Earl broke it.” Steven glared at his brother bitterly. “Earl threw it down and broke it.”
Cole smiled a little. He sank down wearily on the edge of the curb, sighing with relief. He had been walking too long. His body ached with fatigue. He was hungry, and tired. For a long time he sat, wiping perspiration from his neck and face, too exhausted to speak.
“Who are you?” Sally demanded, at last. “Why do you have on those funny clothes? Where did you come from?”
“Where?” Cole looked around at the children. “From a long way off. A long way.” He shook his head slowly from side to side, trying to clear it.
“What’s your therapy?” Earl said.
“My therapy?”
“What do you do? Where do you work?”
Cole took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. “I fix things. All kinds of things. Any kind.”
Earl sneered. “Nobody fixes things. When they break you throw them away.”
Cole didn’t hear him. Sudden need had roused him, getting him suddenly to his feet. “You know any work I can find?” he demanded. “Things I could do? I can fix anything. Clocks, type-writers, refrigerators, pots and pans. Leaks in the roof. I can fix anything there is.”
Steven held out his inter-system vidsender. “Fix this.”
There was silence. Slowly, Cole’s eyes focussed on the box. “That?”
“My sender. Earl broke it.”
Cole took the box slowly. He turned it over, holding it up to the light. He frowned, concentrating on it. His long, slender fingers moved carefully over the surface, exploring it.
“He’ll steal it!” Earl said suddenly.
“No.” Cole shook his head vaguely. “I’m reliable.” His sensitive fingers found the studs that held the box together. He depressed the studs, pushing them expertly in. The box opened, revealing its complex interior.
“He got it open,” Sally whispered.
“Give it back!” Steven demanded, a little frightened. He held out his hand. “I want it back.”
The three children watched Cole apprehensively. Cole fumbled in his pocket. Slowly he brought out his tiny screwdrivers and pliers. He laid them in a row beside him. He made no move to return the box.
“I want it back,” Steven said feebly.
Cole looked up. His faded blue eyes took in the sight of the three children standing before him in the gloom. “I’ll fix it for you. You said you wanted it fixed.”
“I want it back.” Steven stood on one foot, then the other, torn by doubt and indecision. “Can you really fix it? Can you make it work again?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Fix it for me, then.”
A sly smile flickered across Cole’s tired face. “Now, wait a minute. If I fix it, will you bring me something to eat? I’m not fixing it for nothing.”
“Something to eat?”
“Food. I need hot food. Maybe some coffee.”
Steven nodded. “Yes. I’ll get it for you.”
Cole relaxed. “Fine. That’s fine.” He turned his attention back to the box resting between his knees. “Then I’ll fix it for you. I’ll fix it for you good.”
His fingers flew, working and twisting, tracing down wires and relays, exploring and examining. Finding out about the inter-system vidsender. Discovering how it worked.
Steven slipped into the house through the emergency door. He made his way to the kitchen with great care, walking on tip-toe. He punched the kitchen controls at random, his heart beating excitedly. The stove began to whirr, purring into life. Meter readings came on, crossing toward the completion marks.
Presently the stove opened, sliding out a tray of steaming dishes. The mechanism clicked off, dying into silence. Steven grabbed up the contents of the tray, filling his arms. He carried everything down the hall, out the emergency door and into the yard. The yard was dark. Steven felt his way carefully along.
He managed to reach the guide-light without dropping anything at all.
Thomas Cole got slowly to his feet as Steven came into view. “Here,” Steven said. He dumped the food onto the curb, gasping for breath. “Here’s the food. Is it finished?”
Cole held out the inter-system vidsender. “It’s finished. It was pretty badly smashed.”
Earl and Sally gazed up, wide-eyed. “Does it work?” Sally asked.
“Of course not,” Earl stated. “How could it work? He couldn’t—”
“Turn it on!” Sally nudged Steven eagerly. “See if it works.”
Steven was holding the box under the light, examining the switches. He clicked the main switch on. The indicator light gleamed. “It lights up,” Steven said.
“Say something into it.”
Steven spoke into the box. “Hello! Hello! This is operator 6-Z75 calling. Can you hear me? This is operator 6-Z75. Can you hear me?”
In the darkness, away from the beam of the guide-light, Thomas Cole sat crouched over the food. He ate gratefully, silently. It was good food, well cooked and seasoned. He drank a container of orange juice and then a sweet drink he didn’t recognize. Most of the food was strange to him, but he didn’t care. He had walked a long way and he was plenty hungry. And he still had a long way to go, before morning. He had to be deep in the hills before the sun came up. Instinct told him that he would be safe among the trees and tangled growth—at least, as safe as he could hope for.
He ate rapidly, intent on the food. He did not look up until he was finished. Then he got slowly to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
The three children were standing around in a circle, operating the inter-system vidsender. He watched them for a few minutes. None of them looked up from the small box. They were intent, absorbed in what they were doing.
“Well?” Cole said, at last. “Does it work all right?”
After a moment Steven looked up at him. There was a strange expression on his face. He nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, it works. It works fine.”
Cole grunted. “All right.” He turned and moved away from the light. “That’s fine.”
The children watched silently until the figure of Thomas Cole had completely disappeared. Slowly, they turned and looked at each other. Then down at thebox in Steven’s hands. They gazed at the box in growing awe. Awe mixed with dawning fear.
Steven turned and edged toward his house. “I’ve got to show it to my Dad,” he murmured, dazed. “He’s got to know.Somebody’sgot to know!”
Eric Reinhart examined the vidsender box carefully, turning it around and around.
“Then he did escape from the blast,” Dixon admitted reluctantly. “He must have leaped from the cart just before the concussion.”
Reinhart nodded. “He escaped. He got away from you—twice.” He pushed the vidsender box away and leaned abruptly toward the man standing uneasily in front of his desk. “What’s your name again?”
“Elliot. Richard Elliot.”
“And your son’s name?”
“Steven.”
“It was last night this happened?”
“About eight o’clock.”
“Go on.”
“Steven came into the house. He acted queerly. He was carrying his inter-system vidsender.” Elliot pointed at the box on Reinhart’s desk. “That. He was nervous and excited. I asked what was wrong. For awhile he couldn’t tell me. He was quite upset. Then he showed me the vidsender.” Elliot took a deep, shaky breath. “I could see right away it was different. You see I’m an electrical engineer. I had opened it once before, to put in a new battery. I had a fairly good idea how it should look.” Elliot hesitated. “Commissioner, it had beenchanged. A lot of the wiring was different. Moved around. Relays connected differently. Some parts were missing. New parts had been jury rigged out of old. Then I discovered the thing that made me call Security. The vidsender—it reallyworked.”
“Worked?”
“You see, it never was anything more than a toy. With a range of a few city blocks. So the kids could call back and forth from their rooms. Like a sort of portable vidscreen. Commissioner, I tried out the vidsender, pushing the call button and speaking into the microphone. I—I got a ship of the line. A battleship, operating beyond Proxima Centaurus—over eight light years away. As far out as the actual vidsenders operate. Then I called Security. Right away.”
For a time Reinhart was silent. Finally he tapped the box lying on the desk. “You got a ship of the line—withthis?”
“That’s right.”
“How big are the regular vidsenders?”
Dixon supplied the information. “As big as a twenty-ton safe.”
“That’s what I thought.” Reinhart waved his hand impatiently. “All right, Elliot. Thanks for turning the information over to us. That’s all.”
Security police led Elliot outside the office.
Reinhart and Dixon looked at each other. “This is bad,” Reinhart said harshly. “He has some ability, some kind of mechanical ability. Genius, perhaps, to do a thing like this. Look at the period he came from, Dixon. The early part of the twentieth century. Before the wars began. That was a unique period. There was a certain vitality, a certain ability. It was a period of incredible growth and discovery. Edison. Pasteur. Burbank. The Wright brothers. Inventions and machines. People had an uncanny ability with machines. A kind of intuition about machines—which we don’t have.”
“You mean—”
“I mean a person like this coming into our own time is bad in itself, war or no war. He’s too different. He’s oriented along different lines. He has abilities we lack. This fixing skill of his. It throws us off, out of kilter. And with the war….
“Now I’m beginning to understand why the SRB machines couldn’t factor him. It’s impossible for us to understand this kind of person. Winslow says he asked for work, any kind of work. The man said he could do anything, fix anything. Do you understand what that means?”
“No,” Dixon said. “What does it mean?”
“Can any of us fix anything? No. None of us can do that. We’re specialized. Each of us has his own line, his own work. I understand my work, you understand yours. The tendency in evolution is toward greater and greater specialization. Man’s society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it. Continual complexity makes it impossible for any of us to know anything outside our own personal field—I can’t follow the work of the man sitting at the next desk over from me. Too much knowledge has piled up in each field. And there’s too many fields.
“This man is different. He can fix anything, do anything. He doesn’t work with knowledge, with science—the classified accumulation of facts. Heknowsnothing. It’s not in his head, a form of learning. He works by intuition—his power is in hishands, not his head. Jack-of-all-trades. His hands! Like a painter, an artist. In his hands—and he cuts across our lives like a knife-blade.”
“And the other problem?”
“The other problem is that this man, this variable man, has escaped into the Albertine Mountain range. Now we’ll have one hell of a time finding him. He’s clever—in a strange kind of way. Like some sort of animal. He’s going to be hard to catch.”
Reinhart sent Dixon out. After a moment he gathered up the handful of reports on his desk and carried them up to the SRB room. The SRB room was closed up, sealed off by a ring of armed Security police. Standing angrily before the ring of police was Peter Sherikov, his beard waggling angrily, his immense hands on his hips.
“What’s going on?” Sherikov demanded. “Why can’t I go in and peep at the odds?”
“Sorry.” Reinhart cleared the police aside. “Come inside with me. I’ll explain.” The doors opened for them and they entered. Behind them the doors shut and the ring of police formed outside. “What brings you away from your lab?” Reinhart asked.
Sherikov shrugged. “Several things. I wanted to see you. I called you on the vidphone and they said you weren’t available. I thought maybe something had happened. What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you in a few minutes.” Reinhart called Kaplan over. “Here are some new items. Feed them in right away. I want to see if the machines can total them.”
“Certainly, Commissioner.” Kaplan took the message plates and placed them on an intake belt. The machines hummed into life.
“We’ll know soon,” Reinhart said, half aloud.
Sherikov shot him a keen glance. “We’ll know what? Let me in on it. What’s taking place?”
“We’re in trouble. For twenty-four hours the machines haven’t given any reading at all. Nothing but a blank. A total blank.”
Sherikov’s features registered disbelief. “But that isn’t possible.Someodds exist at all times.”
“The odds exist, but the machines aren’t able to calculate them.”
“Why not?”
“Because a variable factor has been introduced. A factor which the machines can’t handle. They can’t make any predictions from it.”
“Can’t they reject it?” Sherikov said slyly. “Can’t they just—justignoreit?”
“No. It exists, as real data.Therefore it affects the balance of the material, the sum total of all other available data. To reject it would be to give a false reading. The machines can’t reject any data that’s known to be true.”
Sherikov pulled moodily at his black beard. “I would be interested in knowing what sort of factor the machines can’t handle. I thought they could take in all data pertaining to contemporary reality.”
“They can. This factor has nothing to do with contemporary reality. That’s the trouble. Histo-research in bringing its time bubble back from the past got overzealous and cut the circuit too quickly. The bubble came back loaded—with a man from the twentieth century. A man from the past.”
“I see. A man from two centuries ago.” The big Pole frowned. “And with a radically different Weltanschauung. No connection with our present society. Not integrated along our lines at all. Therefore the SRB machines are perplexed.”
Reinhart grinned. “Perplexed? I suppose so. In any case, they can’t do anything with the data about this man. The variable man. No statistics at all have been thrown up—no predictions have been made. And it knocks everything else out of phase. We’re dependent on the constant showing of these odds. The whole war effort is geared around them.”
“The horse-shoe nail. Remember the old poem? ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse the rider was lost. For want—’”
“Exactly. A single factor coming along like this, one single individual, can throw everything off. It doesn’t seem possible that one person could knock an entire society out of balance—but apparently it is.”
“What are you doing about this man?”
“The Security police are organized in a mass search for him.”
“Results?”
“He escaped into the Albertine Mountain Range last night. It’ll be hard to find him. We must expect him to be loose for another forty-eight hours. It’ll take that long for us to arrange the annihilation of the range area. Perhaps a trifle longer. And meanwhile—”
“Ready, Commissioner,” Kaplan interrupted. “The new totals.”
The SRB machines had finished factoring the new data. Reinhart and Sherikov hurried to take their places before the view windows.
For a moment nothing happened. Then odds were put up, locking in place.
Sherikov gasped. 99-2. In favor of Terra. “That’s wonderful! Now we—”
The odds vanished. New odds took their places. 97-4. In favor of Centaurus. Sherikov groaned in astonished dismay. “Wait,” Reinhart said to him. “I don’t think they’ll last.”
The odds vanished. A rapid series of odds shot across the screen, a violent stream of numbers, changing almost instantly. At last the machines became silent.
Nothing showed. No odds. No totals at all. The view windows were blank.
“You see?” Reinhart murmured. “The same damn thing!”
Sherikov pondered. “Reinhart, you’re too Anglo-Saxon, too impulsive. Be more Slavic. This man will be captured and destroyed within two days. You said so yourself. Meanwhile, we’re all working night and day on the war effort. The warfleet is waiting near Proxima, taking up positions for the attack on the Centaurans. All our war plants are going full blast. By the time the attack date comes we’ll have a full-sized invasion army ready to take off for the long trip to the Centauran colonies. The whole Terran population has been mobilized. The eight supply planets are pouring in material. All this is going on day and night, even without odds showing. Long before the attack comes this man will certainly be dead, and the machines will be able to show odds again.”
Reinhart considered. “But it worries me, a man like that out in the open. Loose. A man who can’t be predicted. It goes against science. We’ve been making statistical reports on society for two centuries. We have immense files of data. The machines are able to predict what each person and group will do at a given time, in a given situation. But this man is beyond all prediction. He’s a variable. It’s contrary to science.”
“The indeterminate particle.”
“What’s that?”
“The particle that moves in such a way that we can’t predict what position it will occupy at a given second. Random. The random particle.”
“Exactly. It’s—it’sunnatural.”
Sherikov laughed sarcastically. “Don’t worry about it, Commissioner. The man will be captured and things will return to their natural state. You’ll be able to predict people again, like laboratory rats in a maze. By the way—why is this room guarded?”
“I don’t want anyone to know the machines show no totals. It’s dangerous to the war effort.”
“Margaret Duffe, for example?”
Reinhart nodded reluctantly. “They’re too timid, these parliamentarians. If they discover we have no SRB odds they’ll want to shut down the war planning and go back to waiting.”
“Too slow for you, Commissioner? Laws, debates, council meetings, discussions…. Saves a lot of time if one man has all the power. One man to tell people what to do, think for them, lead them around.”
Reinhart eyed the big Pole critically. “That reminds me. How is Icarus coming? Have you continued to make progress on the control turret?”
A scowl crossed Sherikov’s broad features. “The control turret?” He waved his big hand vaguely. “I would say it’s coming along all right. We’ll catch up in time.”
Instantly Reinhart became alert. “Catch up? You mean you’re still behind?”
“Somewhat. A little. But we’ll catch up.” Sherikov retreated toward the door. “Let’s go down to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee. You worry too much, Commissioner. Take things more in your stride.”
“I suppose you’re right.” The two men walked out into the hall. “I’m on edge. This variable man. I can’t get him out of my mind.”
“Has he done anything yet?”
“Nothing important. Rewired a child’s toy. A toy vidsender.”
“Oh?” Sherikov showed interest. “What do you mean? What did he do?”
“I’ll show you.” Reinhart led Sherikov down the hall to his office. They entered and Reinhart locked the door. He handed Sherikov the toy and roughed in what Cole had done. A strange look crossed Sherikov’s face. He found the studs on the box and depressed them. The box opened. The big Pole sat down at the desk and began to study the interior of the box. “You’re sure it was the man from the past who rewired this?”
“Of course. On the spot. The boy damaged it playing. The variable man came along and the boy asked him to fix it. He fixed it, all right.”
“Incredible.” Sherikov’s eyes were only an inch from the wiring. “Such tiny relays. How could he—”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Sherikov got abruptly to his feet, closing the box carefully. “Can I take this along? To my lab? I’d like to analyze it more fully.”
“Of course. But why?”
“No special reason. Let’s goget our coffee.” Sherikov headed toward the door. “You say you expect to capture this man in a day or so?”
“Killhim, not capture him. We’ve got to eliminate him as a piece of data. We’re assembling the attack formations right now. No slip-ups, this time. We’re in the process of setting up a cross-bombing pattern to level the entire Albertine range. He must be destroyed, within the next forty-eight hours.”
Sherikov nodded absently. “Of course,” he murmured. A preoccupied expression still remained on his broad features. “I understand perfectly.”
Thomas Cole crouched over the fire he had built, warming his hands. It was almost morning. The sky was turning violet gray. The mountain air was crisp and chill. Cole shivered and pulled himself closer to the fire.
The heat felt good against his hands.His hands.He gazed down at them, glowing yellow-red in the firelight. The nails were black and chipped. Warts and endless calluses on each finger, and the palms. But they were good hands; the fingers were long and tapered. He respected them, although in some ways he didn’t understand them.
Cole was deep in thought, meditating over his situation. He had been in the mountains two nights and a day. The first night had been the worst. Stumbling and falling, making his way uncertainly up the steep slopes, through the tangled brush and undergrowth—
But when the sun came up he was safe, deep in the mountains, between two great peaks. And by the time the sun had set again he had fixed himself up a shelter and a means of making a fire. Now he had a neat little box trap, operated by a plaited grass rope and pit, a notched stake. One rabbit already hung by his hind legs and the trap was waiting for another.
The sky turned from violet gray to a deep cold gray, a metallic color. The mountains were silent and empty. Far off some place a bird sang, its voice echoing across the vast slopes and ravines. Other birds began to sing. Off to his right something crashed through the brush, an animal pushing its way along.
Day was coming. His second day. Cole got to his feet and began to unfasten the rabbit. Time to eat. And then? After that he had no plans. He knew instinctively that he could keep himself alive indefinitely with the tools he had retained, and the genius of his hands. He could kill game and skin it. Eventually he could build himselfa permanent shelter, even make clothes out of hides. In winter—
But he was not thinking that far ahead. Cole stood by the fire, staring up at the sky, his hands on his hips. He squinted, suddenly tense. Something was moving. Something in the sky, drifting slowly through the grayness. A black dot.
He stamped out the fire quickly. What was it? He strained, trying to see. A bird?
A second dot joined the first. Two dots. Then three. Four. Five. A fleet of them, moving rapidly across the early morning sky. Toward the mountains.
Toward him.
Cole hurried away from the fire. He snatched up the rabbit and carried it along with him, into the tangled shelter he had built. He was invisible, inside the shelter. No one could find him. But if they had seen the fire—
He crouched in the shelter, watching the dots grow larger. They were planes, all right. Black wingless planes, coming closer each moment. Now he could hear them, a faint dull buzz, increasing until the ground shook under him.
The first plane dived. It dropped like a stone, swelling into a great black shape. Cole gasped, sinking down. The plane roared in an arc, swooping low over the ground. Suddenly bundles tumbled out, white bundles falling and scattering like seeds.
The bundles drifted rapidly to the ground. They landed. They were men. Men in uniform.
Now the second plane was diving. It roared overhead, releasing its load. More bundles tumbled out, filling the sky. The third plane dived, then the fourth. The air was thick with drifting bundles of white, a blanket of descending weed spores, settling to earth.
On the ground the soldiers were forming into groups. Their shouts carried to Cole, crouched in his shelter. Fear leaped through him. They were landing on all sides of him. He was cut off. The last two planes had dropped men behind him.
He got to his feet, pushing out of the shelter. Some of the soldiers had found the fire, the ashes and coals. One dropped down, feeling the coals with his hand. He waved to the others. They were circling all around, shouting and gesturing. One of them began to set up some kind of gun. Others were unrolling coils of tubing, locking a collection of strange pipes and machinery in place.
Cole ran. He rolled down a slope, sliding and falling. At the bottom he leaped to his feet andplunged into the brush. Vines and leaves tore at his face, slashing and cutting him. He fell again, tangled in a mass of twisted shrubbery. He fought desperately, trying to free himself. If he could reach the knife in his pocket—
Voices. Footsteps. Men were behind him, running down the slope. Cole struggled frantically, gasping and twisting, trying to pull loose. He strained, breaking the vines, clawing at them with his hands.
A soldier dropped to his knee, leveling his gun. More soldiers arrived, bringing up their rifles and aiming.
Cole cried out. He closed his eyes, his body suddenly limp. He waited, his teeth locked together, sweat dripping down his neck, into his shirt, sagging against the mesh of vines and branches coiled around him.
Silence.
Cole opened his eyes slowly. The soldiers had regrouped. A huge man was striding down the slope toward them, barking orders as he came.
Two soldiers stepped into the brush. One of them grabbed Cole by the shoulder.
“Don’t let go of him.” The huge man came over, his black beard jutting out. “Hold on.”
Cole gasped for breath. He was caught. There was nothing he could do. More soldiers were pouring down into the gulley, surrounding him on all sides. They studied him curiously, murmuring together. Cole shook his head wearily and said nothing.
The huge man with the beard stood directly in front of him, his hands on his hips, looking him up and down. “Don’t try to get away,” the man said. “You can’t get away. Do you understand?”
Cole nodded.
“All right. Good.” The man waved. Soldiers clamped metal bands around Cole’s arms and wrists. The metal dug into his flesh, making him gasp with pain. More clamps locked around his legs. “Those stay there until we’re out of here. A long way out.”
“Where—where are you taking me?”
Peter Sherikov studied the variable man for a moment before he answered. “Where? I’m taking you to my labs. Under the Urals.” He glanced suddenly up at the sky. “We better hurry. The Security police will be starting their demolition attack in a few hours. We want to be a long way from here when that begins.”
Sherikov settled down in his comfortable reinforced chairwith a sigh. “It’s good to be back.” He signalled to one of his guards. “All right. You can unfasten him.”
The metal clamps were removed from Cole’s arms and legs. He sagged, sinking down in a heap. Sherikov watched him silently.
Cole sat on the floor, rubbing his wrists and legs, saying nothing.
“What do you want?” Sherikov demanded. “Food? Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Medicine? Are you sick? Injured?”
“No.”
Sherikov wrinkled his nose. “A bath wouldn’t hurt you any. We’ll arrange that later.” He lit a cigar, blowing a cloud of gray smoke around him. At the door of the room two lab guards stood with guns ready. No one else was in the room beside Sherikov and Cole.
Thomas Cole sat huddled in a heap on the floor, his head sunk down against his chest. He did not stir. His bent body seemed more elongated and stooped than ever, his hair tousled and unkempt, his chin and jowls a rough stubbled gray. His clothes were dirty and torn from crawling through the brush. His skin was cut and scratched; open sores dotted his neck and cheeks and forehead. He said nothing. His chest rose and fell. His faded blue eyes were almost closed. He looked quite old, a withered, dried-up old man.
Sherikov waved one of the guards over. “Have a doctor brought up here. I want this man checked over. He may need intravenous injections. He may not have had anything to eat for awhile.”
The guard departed.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Sherikov said. “Before we go on I’ll have you checked over. And deloused at the same time.”
Cole said nothing.
Sherikov laughed. “Buck up! You have no reason to feel bad.” He leaned toward Cole, jabbing an immense finger at him. “Another two hours and you’d have been dead, out there in the mountains. You know that?”
Cole nodded.
“You don’t believe me. Look.” Sherikov leaned over and snapped on the vidscreen mounted in the wall. “Watch, this. The operation should still be going on.”
The screen lit up. A scene gained form.
“This is a confidential Security channel. I had it tapped several years ago—for my own protection. What we’re seeing now is being piped in to Eric Reinhart.” Sherikov grinned. “Reinhart arrangedwhat you’re seeing on the screen. Pay close attention. You were there, two hours ago.”
Cole turned toward the screen. At first he could not make out what was happening. The screen showed a vast foaming cloud, a vortex of motion. From the speaker came a low rumble, a deep-throated roar. After a time the screen shifted, showing a slightly different view. Suddenly Cole stiffened.
He was seeing the destruction of a whole mountain range.
The picture was coming from a ship, flying above what had once been the Albertine Mountain Range. Now there was nothing but swirling clouds of gray and columns of particles and debris, a surging tide of restless material gradually sweeping off and dissipating in all directions.
The Albertine Mountains had been disintegrated. Nothing remained but these vast clouds of debris. Below, on the ground, a ragged plain stretched out, swept by fire and ruin. Gaping wounds yawned, immense holes without bottom, craters side by side as far as the eye could see. Craters and debris. Like the blasted, pitted surface of the moon. Two hours ago it had been rolling peaks and gulleys, brush and green bushes and trees.
Cole turned away.
“You see?” Sherikov snapped the screen off. “You were down there, not so long ago. All that noise and smoke—all for you. All for you, Mr. Variable Man from the past. Reinhart arranged that, to finish you off. I want you to understand that. It’s very important that you realize that.”
Cole said nothing.
Sherikov reached into a drawer of the table before him. He carefully brought out a small square box and held it out to Cole. “You wired this, didn’t you?”
Cole took the box in his hands and held it. For a time his tired mind failed to focus. What did he have? He concentrated on it. The box was the children’s toy. The inter-system vidsender, they had called it.
“Yes. I fixed this.” He passed it back to Sherikov. “I repaired that. It was broken.”
Sherikov gazed down at him intently, his large eyes bright. He nodded, his black beard and cigar rising and falling. “Good. That’s all I wanted to know.” He got suddenly to his feet, pushing his chair back. “I see the doctor’s here. He’ll fix you up. Everything you need. Later on I’ll talk to you again.”
Unprotesting, Cole got to his feet, allowing the doctor to take hold of his arm and help him up.
After Cole had been released by the medical department,Sherikov joined him in his private dining room, a floor above the actual laboratory.
The Pole gulped down a hasty meal, talking as he ate. Cole sat silently across from him, not eating or speaking. His old clothing had been taken away and new clothing given him. He was shaved and rubbed down. His sores and cuts were healed, his body and hair washed. He looked much healthier and younger, now. But he was still stooped and tired, his blue eyes worn and faded. He listened to Sherikov’s account of the world of 2136 AD without comment.
“You can see,” Sherikov said finally, waving a chicken leg, “that your appearance here has been very upsetting to our program. Now that you know more about us you can see why Commissioner Reinhart was so interested in destroying you.”
Cole nodded.
“Reinhart, you realize, believes that the failure of the SRB machines is the chief danger to the war effort. But that is nothing!” Sherikov pushed his plate away noisily, draining his coffee mug. “After all, warscanbe fought without statistical forecasts. The SRB machines only describe. They’re nothing more than mechanical onlookers. In themselves, they don’t affect the course of the war.Wemake the war. They only analyze.”
Cole nodded.
“More coffee?” Sherikov asked. He pushed the plastic container toward Cole. “Have some.”
Cole accepted another cupful. “Thank you.”
“You can see that our real problem is another thing entirely. The machines only do figuring for us in a few minutes that eventually we could do for our own selves. They’re our servants, tools. Not some sort of gods in a temple which we go and pray to. Not oracles who can see into the future for us. They don’t see into the future. They only make statistical predictions—not prophecies. There’s a big difference there, but Reinhart doesn’t understand it. Reinhart and his kind have made such things as the SRB machines into gods. But I have no gods. At least, not any I can see.”
Cole nodded, sipping his coffee.
“I’m telling you all these things because you must understand what we’re up against. Terra is hemmed in on all sides by the ancient Centauran Empire. It’s been out there for centuries, thousands of years. No one knows how long. It’s old—crumbling and rotting. Corruptand venal. But it holds most of the galaxy around us, and we can’t break out of the Sol system. I told you about Icarus, and Hedge’s work in ftl flight. We must win the war against Centaurus. We’ve waited and worked a long time for this, the moment when we can break out and get room among the stars for ourselves. Icarus is the deciding weapon. The data on Icarus tipped the SRB odds in our favor—for the first time in history. Success in the war against Centaurus will depend on Icarus, not on the SRB machines. You see?”
Cole nodded.
“However, there is a problem. The data on Icarus which I turned over to the machines specified that Icarus would be completed in ten days. More than half that time has already passed. Yet, we are no closer to wiring up the control turret than we were then. The turret baffles us.” Sherikov grinned ironically. “EvenIhave tried my hand at the wiring, but with no success. It’s intricate—and small. Too many technical bugs not worked out. We are building only one, you understand. If we had many experimental models worked out before—”
“But this is the experimental model,” Cole said.
“And built from the designs of a man dead four years—who isn’t here to correct us. We’ve made Icarus with our own hands, down here in the labs. And he’s giving us plenty of trouble.” All at once Sherikov got to his feet. “Let’s go down to the lab and look at him.”
They descended to the floor below, Sherikov leading the way. Cole stopped short at the lab door.
“Quite a sight,” Sherikov agreed. “We keep him down here at the bottom for safety’s sake. He’s well protected. Come on in. We have work to do.”
In the center of the lab Icarus rose up, the gray squat cylinder that someday would flash through space at a speed of thousands of times that of light, toward the heart of Proxima Centaurus, over four light years away. Around the cylinder groups of men in uniform were laboring feverishly to finish the remaining work.
“Over here. The turret.” Sherikov led Cole over to one side of the room. “It’s guarded. Centauran spies are swarming everywhere on Terra. They see into everything. But so do we. That’s how we get information for the SRB machines. Spies in both systems.”
The translucent globe that was the control turret reposed in the center of a metal stand,an armed guard standing at each side. They lowered their guns as Sherikov approached.
“We don’t want anything to happen to this,” Sherikov said. “Everything depends on it.” He put out his hand for the globe. Half way to it his hand stopped, striking against an invisible presence in the air.
Sherikov laughed. “The wall. Shut it off. It’s still on.”
One of the guards pressed a stud at his wrist. Around the globe the air shimmered and faded.
“Now.” Sherikov’s hand closed over the globe. He lifted it carefully from its mount and brought it out for Cole to see. “This is the control turret for our enormous friend here. This is what will slow him down when he’s inside Centaurus. He slows down and re-enters this universe. Right in the heart of the star. Then—no more Centaurus.” Sherikov beamed. “And no more Armun.”
But Cole was not listening. He had taken the globe from Sherikov and was turning it over and over, running his hands over it, his face close to its surface. He peered down into its interior, his face rapt and intent.
“You can’t see the wiring. Not without lenses.” Sherikov signalled for a pair of micro-lenses to be brought. He fitted them on Cole’s nose, hooking them behind his ears. “Now try it. You can control the magnification. It’s set for 1000X right now. You can increase or decrease it.”
Cole gasped, swaying back and forth. Sherikov caught hold of him. Cole gazed down into the globe, moving his head slightly, focussing the glasses.
“It takes practice. But you can do a lot with them. Permits you to do microscopic wiring. There are tools to go along, you understand.” Sherikov paused, licking his lip. “We can’t get it done correctly. Only a few men can wire circuits using the micro-lenses and the little tools. We’ve tried robots, but there are too many decisions to be made. Robots can’t make decisions. They just react.”
Cole said nothing. He continued to gaze into the interior of the globe, his lips tight, his body taut and rigid. It made Sherikov feel strangely uneasy.
“You look like one of those old fortune tellers,” Sherikov said jokingly, but a cold shiver crawled up his spine. “Better hand it back to me.” He held out his hand.
Slowly, Cole returned the globe. After a time he removed the micro-lenses, still deep in thought.
“Well?” Sherikov demanded. “You know what I want. I want you to wire this damn thing up.” Sherikov came close to Cole, his big face hard. “You can do it, I think. I could tell by the way you held it—and the job you did on the children’s toy, of course. You could wire it up right, and in five days. Nobody else can. And if it’s not wired up Centaurus will keep on running the galaxy and Terra will have to sweat it out here in the Sol system. One tiny mediocre sun, one dust mote out of a whole galaxy.”
Cole did not answer.
Sherikov became impatient. “Well? What do you say?”
“What happens if I don’t wire this control for you? I mean, what happens tome?”
“Then I turn you over to Reinhart. Reinhart will kill you instantly. He thinks you’re dead, killed when the Albertine Range was annihilated. If he had any idea I had saved you—”
“I see.”
“I brought you down here for one thing. If you wire it up I’ll have you sent back to your own time continuum. If you don’t—”
Cole considered, his face dark and brooding.
“What do you have to lose? You’d already be dead, if we hadn’t pulled you out of those hills.”
“Can you really return me to my own time?”
“Of course!”
“Reinhart won’t interfere?”
Sherikov laughed. “What can he do? How can he stop me? I have my own men. You saw them. They landed all around you. You’ll be returned.”
“Yes. I saw your men.”
“Then you agree?”
“I agree,” Thomas Cole said. “I’ll wire it for you. I’ll complete the control turret—within the next five days.”
Three days later Joseph Dixon slid a closed-circuit message plate across the desk to his boss.
“Here. You might be interested in this.”
Reinhart picked the plate up slowly. “What is it? You came all the way here to show me this?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you vidscreen it?”
Dixon smiled grimly. “You’ll understand when you decode it. It’s from Proxima Centaurus.”
“Centaurus!”
“Our counter-intelligence service. They sent it direct to me. Here, I’ll decode it for you. Save you the trouble.”
Dixon came around behind Reinhart’s desk. He leaned overthe Commissioner’s shoulder, taking hold of the plate and breaking the seal with his thumb nail.
“Hang on,” Dixon said. “This is going to hit you hard. According to our agents on Armun, the Centauran High Council has called an emergency session to deal with the problem of Terra’s impending attack. Centauran relay couriers have reported to the High Council that the Terran bomb Icarus is virtually complete. Work on the bomb has been rushed through final stages in the underground laboratories under the Ural Range, directed by the Terran physicist Peter Sherikov.”
“So I understand from Sherikov himself. Are you surprised the Centaurans know about the bomb? They have spies swarming over Terra. That’s no news.”
“There’s more.” Dixon traced the message plate grimly, with an unsteady finger. “The Centauran relay couriers reported that Peter Sherikov brought an expert mechanic out of a previous time continuum to complete the wiring of the turret!”
Reinhart staggered, holding on tight to the desk. He closed his eyes, gasping.
“The variable man is still alive,” Dixon murmured. “I don’t know how. Or why. There’s nothing left of the Albertines. And how the hell did the man get half way around the world?”
Reinhart opened his eyes slowly, his face twisting. “Sherikov! He must have removed him before the attack. I told Sherikov the attack was forthcoming. I gave him the exact hour. He had to get help—from the variable man. He couldn’t meet his promise otherwise.”
Reinhart leaped up and began to pace back and forth. “I’ve already informed the SRB machines that the variable man has been destroyed. The machines now show the original 7-6 ratio in our favor. But the ratio is based on false information.”
“Then you’ll have to withdraw the false data and restore the original situation.”
“No.” Reinhart shook his head. “I can’t do that. The machines must be kept functioning. We can’t allow them to jam again. It’s too dangerous. If Duffe should become aware that—”
“What are you going to do, then?” Dixon picked up the message plate. “You can’t leave the machines with false data. That’s treason.”
“The data can’t be withdrawn! Not unless equivalent data exists to take its place.” Reinhart paced angrily back and forth. “Damn it, I wascertainthe man was dead. This is an incredible situation. He must be eliminated—at any cost.”
Suddenly Reinhart stopped pacing. “The turret. It’s probably finished by this time. Correct?”
Dixon nodded slowly in agreement. “With the variable man helping, Sherikov has undoubtedly completed work well ahead of schedule.”
Reinhart’s gray eyes flickered. “Then he’s no longer of any use—even to Sherikov. We could take a chance…. Even if there were active opposition….”
“What’s this?” Dixon demanded. “What are you thinking about?”
“How many units are ready for immediate action? How large a force can we raise without notice?”
“Because of the war we’re mobilized on a twenty-four hour basis. There are seventy air units and about two hundred surface units. The balance of the Security forces have been transferred to the line, under military control.”
“Men?”
“We have about five thousand men ready to go, still on Terra. Most of them in the process of being transferred to military transports. I can hold it up at any time.”
“Missiles?”
“Fortunately, the launching tubes have not yet been disassembled. They’re still here on Terra. In another few days they’ll be moving out for the Colonial fracas.”
“Then they’re available for immediate use?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Reinhart locked his hands, knotting his fingers harshly together in sudden decision. “That will do exactly. Unless I am completely wrong, Sherikov has only a half-dozen air units and no surface cars. And only about two hundred men. Some defense shields, of course—”
“What are you planning?”
Reinhart’s face was gray and hard, like stone. “Send out orders for all available Security units to be unified under your immediate command. Have them ready to move by four o’clock this afternoon. We’re going to pay a visit,” Reinhart stated grimly. “A surprise visit. On Peter Sherikov.”
“Stop here,” Reinhart ordered.
The surface car slowed to a halt. Reinhart peered cautiously out, studying the horizon ahead.
On all sides a desert of scrub grass and sand stretched out. Nothing moved or stirred. To the right the grass and sandrose up to form immense peaks, a range of mountains without end, disappearing finally into the distance. The Urals.
“Over there,” Reinhart said to Dixon, pointing. “See?”
“No.”
“Look hard. It’s difficult to spot unless you know what to look for. Vertical pipes. Some kind of vent. Or periscopes.”
Dixon saw them finally. “I would have driven past without noticing.”
“It’s well concealed. The main labs are a mile down. Under the range itself. It’s virtually impregnable. Sherikov had it built years ago, to withstand any attack. From the air, by surface cars, bombs, missiles—”
“He must feel safe down there.”
“No doubt.” Reinhart gazed up at the sky. A few faint black dots could be seen, moving lazily about, in broad circles. “Those aren’t ours, are they? I gave orders—”
“No. They’re not ours. All our units are out of sight. Those belong to Sherikov. His patrol.”
Reinhart relaxed. “Good.” He reached over and flicked on the vidscreen over the board of the car. “This screen is shielded? It can’t be traced?”
“There’s no way they can spot it back to us. It’s non-directional.”
The screen glowed into life. Reinhart punched the combination keys and sat back to wait.
After a time an image formed on the screen. A heavy face, bushy black beard and large eyes.
Peter Sherikov gazed at Reinhart with surprised curiosity. “Commissioner! Where are you calling from? What—”
“How’s the work progressing?” Reinhart broke in coldly. “Is Icarus almost complete?”
Sherikov beamed with expansive pride. “He’s done, Commissioner. Two days ahead of time. Icarus is ready to be launched into space. I tried to call your office, but they told me—”
“I’m not at my office.” Reinhart leaned toward the screen. “Open your entrance tunnel at the surface. You’re about to receive visitors.”
Sherikov blinked. “Visitors?”
“I’m coming down to see you. About Icarus. Have the tunnel opened for me at once.”
“Exactly where are you, Commissioner?”
“On the surface.”
Sherikov’s eyes flickered. “Oh? But—”
“Open up!” Reinhart snapped. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll be at the entrance in five minutes. I expect to find it ready for me.”
“Of course.” Sherikov noddedin bewilderment. “I’m always glad to see you, Commissioner. But I—”
“Five minutes, then.” Reinhart cut the circuit. The screen died. He turned quickly to Dixon. “You stay up here, as we arranged. I’ll go down with one company of police. You understand the necessity of exact timing on this?”
“We won’t slip up. Everything’s ready. All units are in their places.”
“Good.” Reinhart pushed the door open for him. “You join your directional staff. I’ll proceed toward the tunnel entrance.”
“Good luck.” Dixon leaped out of the car, onto the sandy ground. A gust of dry air swirled into the car around Reinhart. “I’ll see you later.”
Reinhart slammed the door. He turned to the group of police crouched in the rear of the car, their guns held tightly. “Here we go,” Reinhart murmured. “Hold on.”
The car raced across the sandy ground, toward the tunnel entrance to Sherikov’s underground fortress.
Sherikov met Reinhart at the bottom end of the tunnel, where the tunnel opened up onto the main floor of the lab.
The big Pole approached, his hand out, beaming with pride and satisfaction. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Commissioner. This is an historic moment.”
Reinhart got out of the car, with his group of armed Security police. “Calls for a celebration, doesn’t it?” he said.
“That’s a good idea! We’re two days ahead, Commissioner. The SRB machines will be interested. The odds should change abruptly at the news.”
“Let’s go down to the lab. I want to see the control turret myself.”
A shadow crossed Sherikov’s face. “I’d rather not bother the workmen right now, Commissioner. They’ve been under a great load, trying to complete the turret in time. I believe they’re putting a few last finishes on it at this moment.”
“We can view them by vidscreen. I’m curious to see them at work. It must be difficult to wire such minute relays.”
Sherikov shook his head. “Sorry, Commissioner. No vidscreen on them. I won’t allow it. This is too important. Our whole future depends on it.”
Reinhart snapped a signal to his company of police. “Put this man under arrest.”
Sherikov blanched. His mouth fell open. The police moved quickly around him, their gun tubes up, jabbing into him. He was searched rapidly, efficiently.His gun belt and concealed energy screen were yanked off.
“What’s going on?” Sherikov demanded, some color returning to his face. “What are you doing?”
“You’re under arrest for the duration of the war. You’re relieved of all authority. From now on one of my men will operate Designs. When the war is over you’ll be tried before the Council and President Duffe.”
Sherikov shook his head, dazed. “I don’t understand. What’s this all about? Explain it to me, Commissioner. What’s happened?”
Reinhart signalled to his police. “Get ready. We’re going into the lab. We may have to shoot our way in. The variable man should be in the area of the bomb, working on the control turret.”
Instantly Sherikov’s face hardened. His black eyes glittered, alert and hostile.
Reinhart laughed harshly. “We received a counter-intelligence report from Centaurus. I’m surprised at you, Sherikov. You know the Centaurans are everywhere with their relay couriers. You should have known—”
Sherikov moved. Fast. All at once he broke away from the police, throwing his massive body against them. They fell, scattering. Sherikov ran—directly at the wall. The police fired wildly. Reinhart fumbled frantically for his gun tube, pulling it up.
Sherikov reached the wall, running head down, energy beams flashing around him. He struck against the wall—and vanished.
“Down!” Reinhart shouted. He dropped to his hands and knees. All around him his police dived for the floor. Reinhart cursed wildly, dragging himself quickly toward the door. They had to get out, and right away. Sherikov had escaped. A false wall, an energy barrier set to respond to his pressure. He had dashed through it to safety. He—
From all sides an inferno burst, a flaming roar of death surging over them, around them, on every side. The room was alive with blazing masses of destruction, bouncing from wall to wall. They were caught between four banks of power, all of them open to full discharge. A trap—a death trap.
Reinhart reached the hall gasping for breath. He leaped to his feet. A few Security police followed him. Behind them, in the flaming room, the rest of the company screamed and struggled, blasted out of existenceby the leaping bursts of power.
Reinhart assembled his remaining men. Already, Sherikov’s guards were forming. At one end of the corridor a snub-barreled robot gun was maneuvering into position. A siren wailed. Guards were running on all sides, hurrying to battle stations.
The robot gun opened fire. Part of the corridor exploded, bursting into fragments. Clouds of choking debris and particles swept around them. Reinhart and his police retreated, moving back along the corridor.
They reached a junction. A second robot gun was rumbling toward them, hurrying to get within range. Reinhart fired carefully, aiming at its delicate control. Abruptly the gun spun convulsively. It lashed against the wall, smashing itself into the unyielding metal. Then it collapsed in a heap, gears still whining and spinning.
“Come on.” Reinhart moved away, crouching and running. He glanced at his watch.Almost time.A few more minutes. A group of lab guards appeared ahead of them. Reinhart fired. Behind him his police fired past him, violet shafts of energy catching the group of guards as they entered the corridor. The guards spilled apart, falling and twisting. Part of them settled into dust, drifting down the corridor. Reinhart made his way toward the lab, crouching and leaping, pushing past heaps of debris and remains, followed by his men. “Come on! Don’t stop!”
Suddenly from around them the booming, enlarged voice of Sherikov thundered, magnified by rows of wall speakers along the corridor. Reinhart halted, glancing around.
“Reinhart! You haven’t got a chance. You’ll never get back to the surface. Throw down your guns and give up. You’re surrounded on all sides. You’re a mile, under the surface.”
Reinhart threw himself into motion, pushing into billowing clouds of particles drifting along the corridor. “Are you sure, Sherikov?” he grunted.
Sherikov laughed, his harsh, metallic peals rolling in waves against Reinhart’s eardrums. “I don’t want to have to kill you, Commissioner. You’re vital to the war: I’m sorry you found out about the variable man. I admit we overlooked the Centauran espionage as a factor in this. But now that you know about him—”
Suddenly Sherikov’s voice broke off. A deep rumble had shaken the floor, a lapping vibrationthat shuddered through the corridor.
Reinhart sagged with relief. He peered through the clouds of debris, making out the figures on his watch. Right on time. Not a second late.
The first of the hydrogen missiles, launched from the Council buildings on the other side of the world, were beginning to arrive. The attack had begun.
At exactly six o’clock Joseph Dixon, standing on the surface four miles from the entrance tunnel, gave the sign to the waiting units.
The first job was to break down Sherikov’s defense screens. The missiles had to penetrate without interference. At Dixon’s signal a fleet of thirty Security ships dived from a height of ten miles, swooping above the mountains, directly over the underground laboratories. Within five minutes the defense screens had been smashed, and all the tower projectors leveled flat. Now the mountains were virtually unprotected.
“So far so good,” Dixon murmured, as he watched from his secure position. The fleet of Security ships roared back, their work done. Across the face of the desert the police surface cars were crawling rapidly toward the entrance tunnel, snaking from side to side.
Meanwhile, Sherikov’s counter-attack had begun to go into operation.
Guns mounted among the hills opened fire. Vast columns of flame burst up in the path of the advancing cars. The cars hesitated and retreated, as the plain was churned up by a howling vortex, a thundering chaos of explosions. Here and there a car vanished in a cloud of particles. A group of cars moving away suddenly scattered, caught up by a giant wind that lashed across them and swept them up into the air.
Dixon gave orders to have the cannon silenced. The police air arm again swept overhead, a sullen roar of jets that shook the ground below. The police ships divided expertly and hurtled down on the cannon protecting the hills.
The cannon forgot the surface cars and lifted their snouts to meet the attack. Again and again the airships came, rocking the mountains with titanic blasts.
The guns became silent. Their echoing boom diminished, died away reluctantly, as bombs took critical toll of them.
Dixon watched with satisfaction as the bombing came to an end. The airships rose in a thickswarm, black gnats shooting up in triumph from a dead carcass. They hurried back as emergency anti-aircraft robot guns swung into position and saturated the sky with blazing puffs of energy.
Dixon checked his wristwatch. The missiles were already on the way from North America. Only a few minutes remained.
The surface cars, freed by the successful bombing, began to regroup for a new frontal attack. Again they crawled forward, across the burning plain, bearing down cautiously on the battered wall of mountains, heading toward the twisted wrecks that had been the ring of defense guns. Toward the entrance tunnel.
An occasional cannon fired feebly at them. The cars came grimly on. Now, in the hollows of the hills, Sherikov’s troops were hurrying to the surface to meet the attack. The first car reached the shadow of the mountains….
A deafening hail of fire burst loose. Small robot guns appeared everywhere, needle barrels emerging from behind hidden screens, trees and shrubs, rocks, stones. The police cars were caught in a withering cross-fire, trapped at the base of the hills.
Down the slopes Sherikov’s guards raced, toward the stalled cars. Clouds of heat rose up and boiled across the plain as the cars fired up at the running men. A robot gun dropped like a slug onto the plain and screamed toward the cars, firing as it came.
Dixon twisted nervously. Only a few minutes. Any time, now. He shaded his eyes and peered up at the sky. No sign of them yet. He wondered about Reinhart. No signal had come up from below. Clearly, Reinhart had run into trouble. No doubt there was desperate fighting going on in the maze of underground tunnels, the intricate web of passages that honeycombed the earth below the mountains.
In the air, Sherikov’s few defense ships were taking on the police raiders. Outnumbered, the defense ships darted rapidly, wildly, putting up a futile fight.
Sherikov’s guards streamed out onto the plain. Crouching and running, they advanced toward the stalled cars. The police airships screeched down at them, guns thundering.
Dixon held his breath. When the missiles arrived—
The first missile struck. A section of the mountain vanished, turned to smoke and foaming gasses. The wave of heat slapped Dixon across the face, spinning him around. Quickly he re-entered his ship and took off,shooting rapidly away from the scene. He glanced back. A second and third missile had arrived. Great gaping pits yawned among the mountains, vast sections missing like broken teeth. Now the missiles could penetrate to the underground laboratories below.