Wandl the Invader
R >>
Raymond King Cummings >> Wandl the Invader
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11
I changed my way of direction, swung it to the plateau rocks ahead.
The arc of my flight was sharply bent as I went hurtling down. Over
me, I saw Snap use the same tactics. I tried to aim for where we had
left the girls and Molo. I could not see them down there amid the
starlit crags; and suddenly a wild apprehension filled me. How had we
dared leave them to Molo's trickery?
Then, ahead and below me, I saw the slight figure of one of the girls,
standing on a rock with arms outstretched to signal us. I changed my
ray to repulsion barely in time to avoid crashing. The landing flung
me in a heap. Twenty feet away, Snap came whirling down. We picked
ourselves up, saw Anita waving from the rock, and bounded to her.
The girls were safe. Venza sat intent, with unwavering watchful gaze
across the intervening space to where Molo had flattened himself
against his rock, not daring to move.
"Still got him," Venza exulted. "He wasn't willing to take any chances
with us. You did it, Snap?"
"I'm a motor-oiler if we didn't. Come on; got to get out of this.
They're after us! We wrecked the whole damn place, Venza. Wandl's a
normal planet now. No more of this accursed dislocation of Earth."
We learned later that our hope and our assumption that we had
irretrievably wrecked the entire gravity control system of Wandl was
proven to be a fact. Wandl was, in effect, a normal celestial body
now. The beams planted in Greater New York, Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar
still streamed across space. But there was no giant beam from Wandl to
seize them, and Wandl now could not move through space of her own
volition. Like Earth, and all other known planets, satellites, comets
and asteroids, she was subject now to all the normal natural laws of
celestial mechanics. We had done a thorough job of it.
Now I shoved at Snap. "No time to talk. You tow the girls; I'll take
Molo. Got to get to the _Star-Streak_."
I lunged over and seized Molo. "We did it. Now for your vessel! It
will be ill for you if she is not where you say she is."
"She will be there, Gregg Haljan."
He docilely put himself in position for me to hook my forearm under
his crossed, bound wrists and carry him. Snap rose up past us, towing
the girls. Over the nearby cauldron a figure mounted to gaze and see
the nature of this strange attacking enemy, and then sank back.
With Molo hanging to me, I mounted with my ray, following Snap and the
girls into the starlight, with the turmoil of the cauldron receding
until in a moment or so it was gone behind our horizon.
We headed now, not toward Wor, whence we had come, but over at an
angle to the side. Our great bounding arcs soon left the mountains
behind. We crossed the river, another portion of the forest, and came
over undulating lowlands.
It was a flight of under half an hour. The pursuit, if indeed anyone
followed us, remained below our little segment of curving horizon.
Everywhere there was evidence of the storm; the forest trees were laid
flat, strewn like driftwood over the area. The river had in several
places lashed over its banks. The lowlands were dotted thick with
globe-dwellings. Some were hanging awry on their stems; others were
pulled from their place, cracked and piled into a litter.
We kept well aloft. The surface scenes were only glimpses of wreckage,
moving lights and people. And there were areas which the wind had
seemingly spared.
The confusion from the storm was mingled now with the spreading alarm
from the gravity station; the sound of the danger siren there was
still audible behind us. As we advanced into what now seemed the
outskirts of a city like Wor, with a pile of solid-looking metal
structures ranging the horizon ahead, I saw a distant spaceship rise
up and wing away. Wandl was proceeding with the dispatching of her
space navy to oppose the distantly gathering ships of Earth, Venus,
and Mars. No doubt with the wrecking of the control station, the
masters of Wandl immediately recognized the paramount importance of
the coming battle.
The huge, globular, disc-like ship sailed high over us, rotating with
the impulse of its rocket-streams. In a moment it was lost in the
stars. And then another rose and followed it.
There were many human figures in the air around us now. I mounted
higher, and Snap with the girls followed me. The figures, intent upon
their own affairs, did not seem to heed us.
Molo's vessel lay alone upon a low metal cradle. No other ship was
near it; but half a mile away on both sides we could see others
resting on their stages. Lights were moving around and upon them, but
the _Star-Streak_ was dark and neglected.
We poised a thousand feet over her, and to one side. I saw her as a
long, low, pointed vessel, dead gray in color, longer than the
_Cometara_, and seemingly narrower, but very similar in aspect.
"Meka and I are supposed to be gathering our crew," said Molo. "No one
bothers with my vessel. Will you take me to Wor now to get Meka?"
"I will not."
Snap was drifting down with the girls. They were near us. His arm
waved at me with a gesture. And then came the muffled tone of his
voice: "Shall we drop down, Gregg?"
"Yes, but cautiously. Have your gun ready."
Molo protested, "I would like to take Meka with us, and a few of my
crew. You will have trouble handling the _Star-Streak_, just us three
men."
"We'll take our chances."
We dropped swiftly down upon the dark and vacant platform. The gray
hull of the _Star-Streak_ loomed beside us, her dome arched still
higher. An inclined catwalk went up to her opened deck-port.
"I'll go first," I said softly to Snap. "Come quickly after me. Watch
out: there might be someone on board."
Venza still clung to her weapon. Mine was in my hand as I lifted Molo.
And, ignoring the incline, bounded the thirty feet for the deck-port.
I landed safely, and stood Molo upon his feet. "Don't you move," I
admonished him sternly.
He stood docilely against the cabin wall of the superstructure. No one
here. We had thought there might easily be one or two workers on
board.
Snap and the girls came sailing, one after the other, and landed on
the deck beside me. We stood silent, alert. No one appeared from
within the cabin or from the lengths of the deck. Venza was watching
Molo with her weapon upon him. Snap and I had planned this boarding:
Anita and Venza to stay here and guard Molo while we searched the
ship, and inspected the controls. We started for the cabin door oval.
"Gregg!"
It was all the warning Snap could give. I was within the dim cabin,
but he, behind me, was still on the deck. I whirled to see a dozen
dark forms leaping from the roof of the cabin superstructure. Snap was
all but buried by them. These were not men of Wandl, but Molo's pirate
crew, Martians, Earthmen and Venusians. Snap's ray-gun spat as he went
down; one of the men dropped away. I saw Venza turn with startled
horror, as the huge figure of Meka leaped down upon her and Anita from
the roof.
For an instant, weapon in hand, I paused in the doorway. I could not
fire into the turmoil of that struggling group, so instead plunged
into it, striking with my fists.
Molo was shouting, "Do not kill them! I was ordered not to kill them!"
These men, so different from the insect-like workers and the brains of
Wandl, were solid in my grip; but we were all so weightless! I felled
one, but others gripped me, pounded me. A struggling mass of bodies,
arms and legs, we surged up to the superstructure roof and dropped
upon it. My weapon was gone. Half a dozen adversaries had me pinioned.
Down on the deck I saw that Venza had lost her weapon; Molo and Meka
were clutching her. Snap was fighting with several antagonists. Anita
was loose. She dove for the group in which Snap was struggling, hit
them, kicked and bounded upward, to be seized by two of my own
captors.
"Anita, don't fight! They'll kill you!"
I tried to break loose, but four huge Martians were holding me.
"Oh, Gregg!"
There was horror in Anita's voice. Snap had broken away. At the open
deck-port he stood, as though undecided what to do. The deck was
almost black around him; he was silhouetted against the outside
starlight. From almost at his side, in the darkness, a tiny bolt spat
upward at his head. His arms went wildly out; he tumbled backward. At
the top of the boarding incline his body seemed spasmodically to kick,
and the thrust whirled it down into the darkness.
The end of Snap! A pang went through me. Snap, my best friend!
Molo cursed the unknown man of his crew who had fired the shot. But
none would admit who did it.
"Get to your posts," Molo roared in Martian. "Enough of you are here.
Lash up the prisoners; we're launching away now." He thumped his
brawny sister as she passed him. "Well played, Meka!"
These wily Martians! Molo had planned that Meka was to gather the crew
and wait here at the ship for him and Wyk. If they returned with us as
captives, it would be here that they would come. But if by chance
things went adversely, Molo reasoned we would act just as we did; and
Meka and her men were lurking here in ambush, waiting for us.
All the many various ports swung shut. Anita, Venza, and I, with arms
and legs bound, were taken by Molo to the forward observation and
control room.
The ship was resounding with signals. The interior controls in the
hull-base raised the gravity-pull within the vessel to a strength
comparable to that of Earth. Within a few minutes the _Star-Streak_
lifted from the stage. Strange, weird Wandl fell away from us. We
slid upward through the atmosphere, following one of the globular
Wandl vessels, and headed into space toward the point where, a few
million miles distant, the ships of allied Earth, Venus, and Mars were
gathering.
17
"They are visible." Molo turned from the eyepiece of his
electro-telescope. "Do you want to see them, Gregg Haljan?"
We were in the forward control and observation turret of the
_Star-Streak_, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself.
Unobtrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-faced
fellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian from
the underworld of Grebhar, a member of the _Star-Streak's_ pirate
crew.
We were some ten hours out from Wandl. A group of four of the globular
Wandl ships were with us, strung in a line some ten thousand miles to
our left. We had been heading diagonally toward Mars. Some fifteen
other Wandl vessels were ahead and others following.
We were no more than fifteen million miles from Mars when Molo sighted
the allied ships. "Will you observe them, Gregg Haljan?"
I moved to take his place at the 'scope-grid, with the gaze of Anita
and Venza upon me. They sat huddled together on a low bench against
the back curve of the circular turret.
It was dim here, with little spots of instrument lights, and the
radiance coming in the glassite plates of the encircling dome. The
loss of Snap had put a grim look upon the girls. They were dispirited,
docile with Meka. They had hardly had a word with me. I think that all
of us had about given up hope during those hours. Molo had consulted
me several times with his policies of navigation.
But I saw no chance to trick him. He was indeed, far more experienced
than I, and more skillful, in celestial mechanics. I worked with him.
I learned the operation and the handling of the _Star-Streak_, which
was not greatly different from the _Cometara_ or the _Planetara_.
Poor Snap! He and I had planned to capture and navigate this
_Star-Streak_. We could have handled her. There were, I gathered, some
fifteen men aboard her now, but no more than two or three were engaged
at the navigating mechanisms. Even they could be dispensed with at
times, for the ship's controls were all automatic, handled directly
from the forward turret.
I learned too, something, though not much, of the _Star-Streak's_
weapons. They were similar to those of the allied ships, since Molo in
equipping his pirate craft had seized upon all the best he could find
of the three worlds.
The _Star-Streak_, during this flight toward Mars, was in close
communication with the Wandl craft. There was a giant vessel, the Wor,
off to our left now. It carried the brain master in command of the
Wandl forces. Molo took his orders from the Wor, but since his
equipment and his weapons were so wholly different, the _Star-Streak_
was set apart.
"I can do what I like," Molo told me. "With my own judgement I can
act; you shall see."
"You've had plenty of experience, Molo."
"Have I not! The terror of the starways, your world called me." He
chuckled vaingloriously. "I must justify it now."
"Act, do not talk," Meka commented sourly. "Children with toys make
speeches like that, and then the toys get broken."
"Fear not, sister. Never again will the _Star-Streak_ come to grief."
And now I gazed through the 'scope at the waiting allied ships. They
were lying some eight million miles off Mars. I gazed and saw the
poised little group. There were perhaps fifty of them. The majority
were Martian, long, low and very sharp-ended, and dull red in color.
The wider Earth and Venus ships were silvery and drab. I could
distinguish the several different types of craft in this hastily
assembled fleet: many converted commercials like my ill-starred
_Cometara_; a few rakish police ships; and about a dozen of the long,
narrow supermodern warships. It was their first voyage into battle.
They had only been built these past few years, by peaceful governments
that protested there never again would be another war!
The little fleet was lying waiting for us. It was being augmented by
occasional other ships from Mars. They saw us coming now. The radiance
of a Benson curve-light enveloped them, with a shaft toward us. The
image of them shifted over a million miles to one side.
Molo laughed when he saw it. "Protecting themselves already! But we
are not going to attack them there."
The first tactics of the Wandl commanders surprised me. We swung away
from the course to Mars and headed diagonally toward Earth and Venus.
Earth was the nearer to us, with Venus some forty million miles beyond
her. For hours we turned in that sweeping curve. Then with our Wandl
convoy following, we headed for Earth. I could not help admiring the
way the _Star-Streak_ was handled. She turned more sharply than the
Wandl craft; and before our next meal, we were leading them all.
Would the allied ships follow us? It was immediately apparent they
were coming; but from their poised position, hours of attaining
velocity would be needed. The other allied vessels approaching from
Venus and Earth checked their flight and turned after us. We passed
within five or six hundred thousand miles of several of them.
I found now that some twenty other Wandl ships, leaving Wandl after
us, had headed directly for Earth. We were all together presently, the
_Star-Streak_ and nearly fifty Wandl ships, gathered close to one side
of the Moon. The allies, about a hundred of them, were strung through
space, scattered, with varying velocities and flight direction, but
most of them endeavoring to get between the Moon and Earth.
This was the day! I call it that: a routine of meals which Meka grimly
served us in the turret, and a little sleep when she took the girls
below and I lay on the turret floor. I wondered who was in command of
this allied force, and did not learn until afterward that it was
Grantline. The _Cometara_ had fallen upon the Moon Apennines, not very
far from where my old _Planetara_ still lay, near the base of
Archimedes. But Grantline and a few of his companions, with their
powered suits, had struggled free from the gravity pull of the
wreckage; and a few hours later, a ship out from Earth picked them
up.
Grantline, on one of the Earth police ships, commanded the fleet now,
and he afterward told me in detail how he endeavored to conduct his
forces in the battle, thus enabling me to describe it from both
viewpoints. He had been cruising toward Mars when he saw us make the
turn. He thought a landing upon Earth might be planned and hastened
all his ships into the area between the Moon and Earth to cut us off.
But that was what Wandl wanted. The Wandl ships, with the
_Star-Streak_ among them, made a complete slow circuit of the Moon. It
took another day. Molo said very little to me in explanation of the
Wandl tactics, but I could see that the object was to lure Grantline
into following. A few of the allied ships did follow us around, but
not many. The rest stayed carefully guarding the line between the Moon
and Earth.
There had been no encounter yet between the hostile ships. The huge
distances involved in the engagement must be kept in mind. The gravity
rays from the Wandl ships were only a slight disturbing element at
such a long distance; Grantline's Zed-rays and Benson curve-lights
were defensive only. For offence, Grantline's electronic guns and
other weapons were of varying range, but none for such distances as
these.
Wandl seemed unwilling to begin the battle, and Grantline was cautious
as well. He did not know what weapons these strange globular vessels
would use; his only experience had been our encounter with the
whirling discs.
Then, at the end of the second day, came the first clash. The
_Star-Streak_, and all the Wandl ships, were again clustered on the
Earth side of the Moon; they were hovering perhaps twenty thousand
miles above its surface. Grantline's force was a hundred thousand
miles off, toward Earth. One of the Wandl ships came tentatively
forward, and Grantline sent one of the new-style warships to meet it.
They encircled each other. Both were cautious, but there was a passing
within fifty miles. The Earth ship fired her bolts. The insulated
barrage of the Wandl ship withstood them. There was a shower of ether
sparks close to the ship, and a reddening of the hull, but nothing
more. It seemed that the electro-barrages of the Wandl and allied
ships were very similar in nature, an aura of electro-magnetism,
enclosing the ship like a curtain fifty feet away, absorbed the
electronic stream of the enemy bolt. The Wandl ship flung no bolts;
she loosed a score of the whirling discs during the passing. They were
of varying sizes, but similar to those which cut and wrecked the
_Cometara_; in this instance, the Grantline ship was able to destroy
each of them as it came close.
This was the first encounter. The Earth warship went back to its
squadron and the Wandl vessel rejoined its fellows. It had fired no
bolts. Grantline suspected now what afterward proved to be the fact:
these Wandl vessels were not equipped with long-range electronic guns.
The Wandl defensive tactics were necessary; they feared a widespread
encounter. They were hovering in a compact group, covering a five
hundred mile area, over the Moon surface. Their purpose was not yet
apparent, but Grantline saw now that one of the Wandl ships was
dropping down and landing on the Moon. It skimmed the Apennines and
landed not far from Archimedes.
What was that for? Grantline noticed that the lowering,
closely-gathered Wandl fleet tried to mask the landing. And their
gravity-rays, with repulsive force, darted out to impede the Grantline
vessels should they try to advance.
This Earthward hemisphere of the Moon was now largely in shadow, but
Grantline's Zed-ray magnifiers showed the vessel on the Moon.
Apparatus was being unloaded. It seemed, down there on the rocky Moon
plain in the foothills of the Apennines, that some extensive,
elaborate base was being prepared.
It was for this the hovering Wandl fleet was waiting, holding off from
conflict until this Moon base was ready. When Grantline reached that
conclusion, he ordered all his vessels forward to a general attack.
18
During this time, on the _Star-Streak_, as we and the Wandl fleet made
that preliminary circuit of the Moon, an incident occurred which
changed everything for me. I had noticed several times as we gathered
in the _Star-Streak's_ forward turret, that Venza and Anita were eying
me. Their expressions were furtive, but I realized that they were
trying to attract my attention.
We had no opportunity to speak secretly. Molo or Meka, or that
rat-faced guard, were always too near us; and Molo kept me busy with
computations of our course.
We rounded the Moon. We gathered with the Wandl fleet some twenty
thousand miles above the lunar surface, and I watched that ship
descend and land. Like Grantline, I wondered what for. Molo gave me no
hint. I saw, through his 'scope, bloated figures in pressure suits
unloading mechanisms. They seemed to be placing huge contact-discs in
a circle on the lunar rocks. It was reminiscent of the Wandl gravity
station, and the contact-beam which Molo had planted in Great-New
York.
Then at last the girls had an opportunity to whisper to me. A swift
phrase came from Anita. "Gregg! Snap is alive. Hiding on board."
I gasped. Snap alive?
"Planning to rescue us. You and he can capture the _Star-Streak_!"
"Anita! Tell me how."
"No more now! Our room below--he's near it. He spoke to us."
No more. She moved away from me. But it was enough. Snap alive! I
recalled that when he fell beside the ship, no one had bothered to go
down after the body, and at that time the hull-ports were open.
After a time Meka took the girls below. I sat with Molo, gazing down
at the dark and gloomy surface of the Moon. I had finished the
mathematical work Molo had given me. My thoughts were with Anita and
Venza, down in their cabin now with Meka. Perhaps even now Snap was
joining them.
I hardly heard Molo's low, muttered curses, as he set his lenses for a
slight alteration of our slow circular course among the Wandl fleet.
"That fellow at my gravity-shifts acts like a nitwit. He has them
disarranged."
It snapped me to sudden alertness. "Something wrong, Molo? Nonsense!"
"These men of my crew answer my controls too slowly. They should jump
when my signals come."
The plates suddenly shifted normally, but there had been an interval
of delay. Molo was puzzled and annoyed. My heart pounded as I wondered
if he would investigate. But he did not.
"You had better sleep, Haljan. Take advantage now; we shall have
action presently. Did you figure our emerging curve?"
I shoved my computations across the table to him. "There."
"You are quick, Haljan."
"We should emerge from the Moon's shadow in about two hours."
"But I will not hold that course. We're staying close near here with
the other vessels, but I want some velocity always. Take your sleep,
Haljan."
I stretched on the narrow floor mattress. The turret was silent.
I was aroused from a doze by Molo's activities in the turret. The
girls and Meka were still below. The ever-silent Venusian, squatting
in the turret corner, still had his gun upon me.
I saw that Grantline's ships, over a wide fan-shaped spread, were
advancing.
And presently we were engaged in the soundless turmoil of battle. I
cannot relate more than fragments, things I saw and experienced,
during six or more hours of bursting electronic light and puffs of
darkness in that spread of battle area within the Moon-shadow. It was
a silent battle of crossing lights, ships a thousand miles apart,
gathering velocity with great tangential curves; passing each other in
a second; sweeping a thousand miles apart again; turning and coming
back. A hundred engagements.
The _Star-Streak_ was very fast, very mobile, and, unlike all the
other Wandl ships, had the allies' own weapons to use against them. I
saw now why they called Molo the terror of the starways!
We swept into the shadowed battle area. Over all its thousand-mile
spread were the radiant Wandl gravity-beams, disturbing and impeding
the course of Grantline's ships. There was the luminous gleam of
projectile rockets, like little comets, soundless, launched by the
Wandl craft, and the radiance of the rocket-streams which all the
vessels were using now for close maneuvering; the glare of Grantline's
searchlight bombs and his white search-beams to disclose the deadly
whirling discs which the weapons of his vessel must seek out and
destroy. A chaos of silent light, stabbed here and there with
Grantline's darkness bombs, bombs of limited local range which
exploded in space and which, for a few minutes duration, absorbed all
light-rays, giving a temporary effect of darkness.
And then wreckage! Broken, leprous Wandl vessels whose barrage at
close range had been smashed by Grantline's guns; torn and littered
allied ships, struck by the huge exploding comet-projectiles and the
whirling discs; airless hulks, and scattered fragments which no longer
resembled a ship at all but only a hull plate or a torn segment of
dome. And little drifting blobs, the survivors in pressure suits who
had leaped from the wreckage; little blobs ignored, whirled away or
drawn forward as by chance the sweeping gravity-beams fell upon them;
tiny derelicts, floating stormtossed until the Moon's attraction
caught and pulled them down, or a whirling disc cut through them, or
the distant aura of a bolt shocked them to a merciful death.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11