The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (120 page)

Pam said, “If we beat the Enemy there’ll be no excuse for wars on Earth. There’ll be worlds enough to take all the surplus population anybody can imagine. There’ll be riches for everybody. Joe, what do you think the human race will do for you if, on top of finding new worlds for everybody, you cap it by defeating the Enemy with the globes?”

“I think,” said Burke, “that most people will dislike me very much. I’ll be in the history books, but I’ll be in small print. People who can realize they’re obligated will resent it, and those who can’t will think I got famous in a disreputable fashion. In fact, if we go back to Earth, I’ll probably have to fight to keep from going bankrupt. If I manage to get enough money for a living, it’ll be by having somebody ghostwrite a book for me about our journey here.”

Keller interrupted mildly, “It’s nearly time. We should watch.”

Holmes stood up jerkily. Pam and Sandy rose almost reluctantly.

They went out of the ship and through the metal door with rounded corners. They went along the long corridor with the seeming river of light-tubes in its ceiling. They passed the doorway of the great room which had held the globes. It looked singularly empty, now.

On the next level they passed the mess-halls and bunk-rooms, and an the third the batteries of grisly weapons which could hurl enormous charges of electricity at a chosen target, if the target could be ranged. They went on up into the instrument-room by the final flight of stairs.

They settled down there. That is, they did not leave. But far too much depended on the next hour or less for anybody to be truly still in either mind or body. Holmes paced jerkily back and forth, his eyes on the vision-screens that now relayed what the observer-globes with the globe-fleet saw.

For a long time they gazed at the emptiness of deepest space. The picture was of an all-encompassing wall of tiny flecks of light. They did not move. They did not change. They did not waver. The observer-globes reported from nothingness, and they reported nothing.

Except one item. There were fewer red specks of light and more blue ones. There were some which were distinctly violet. The globes had attained a velocity so close to the speed of light that no available added power could have pushed them the last fraction of one per cent faster. But they had no monstrous mass-fields to change the constants of space and let them travel more swiftly. The Enemy ships did. But there was no sign of them. There could be none except on such a detector as the instrument-room had in its ten-foot transparent disk.

Time passed, and passed. And passed. Finally, Burke broke the silence.

“Of course the globes don’t have to make direct hits. We hope! If they multiply the gravity-field that hits them and shoot it back hard enough, it ought to burn out the gravity-generators in the ships.”

There was no answer. Pam watched the screens and bit nervously at her nails.

Seconds went by. Minutes. Tens of minutes.…

“I fear,” said Keller with some difficulty, “that something is wrong. Perhaps I erred in adjusting the globes—”

If he had made a mistake, of course, the globe-fleet would be useless. It wouldn’t stop the Enemy. It wouldn’t do anything, and in a very short time the sun and all its planets would erupt with insensate violence, and all the solar system would shatter itself to burning bits—and the Enemy fleet would be speeding away faster than exploding matter could possibly follow it.

Then, without warning, a tiny bluish line streaked across one of the screens. A second. A third-fourth-fifth-twentieth-fiftieth—The screens came alive with flashing streaks of blue-green light.

Then something blew. A sphere of violet light appeared on one of the screens. Instantly, it was followed by others with such rapidity that it was impossible to tell which followed which. But there were ten of them.

The silence in the instrument-room was absolute. Burke tried vainly to imagine what had actually happened. The Enemy fleet had been traveling at thirty times the speed of light, which was only possible because of its artificial mass which changed the properties of space to permit it. And then the generators and maintainers of that artificial mass blew out. The ships stopped—so suddenly, so instantly, so absolutely that a millionth part of a second would have been a thousand times longer than the needed interval.

The energy of that enormous speed had to be dissipated. The ships exploded as nothing had ever exploded before. Even a super-nova would not detonate with such violence. The substance of the Enemy ships destroyed itself not merely by degenerating to raw atoms, but by the atoms destroying themselves. And not merely did the atoms fly apart, but the neutrons and protons and electrons of which they were composed ceased to exist. Nothing was left but pure energy—violet light. And it vanished.

Then there was nothing at all. What was left of the globe-fleet went hurtling uselessly onward through space. It would go on and on and on. It would reach the edge of the galaxy and go on, and perhaps in thousands of millions of years some one or two or a dozen of the surviving spheres might penetrate some star-cloud millions of millions of light-years away.

In a pleased voice, Keller said, “I think everything is all right now.”

And Sandy went all to pieces. She clung to Burke, weeping uncontrollably, holding herself close to him while she sobbed.

On Earth, of course, there was no such eccentric jubilation. It was observed that crawling red sparks in the gravity-field detectors winked out. As hours and days went by, it was noticed that the solar system continued to exist, and that people stayed alive. It became evident that some part of the terror some people had felt was baseless. And naturally there was much resentment against Burke because he had caused so many people so much agitation.

Within two weeks a fleet of small plastic ships hurtled upward from the vicinity of Earth’s north magnetic pole and presently steadied on course toward the fortress asteroid. Burke was informed severely that he should prepare to receive the scientists they carried. He would be expected to cooperate fully in their investigations.

He grinned when Pam handed him the written sheet.

“It’s outrageous!” snapped Sandy. “It’s ridiculous! They ought to get down on their knees to you, Joe, to thank you for what you’ve done!”

Burke shook his head.

“I don’t think I’d like that. Neither would you. We’d make out, Sandy. There’ll be a colony started on that world the matter-transposer links us to. It ought be fun living there. What say?”

Sandy grumbled. But she looked at him with soft eyes.

“I’d rather be mixed up with—what you might call pioneers,” said Burke, “than people with reputations to defend and announced theories that are going to turn out to be all wrong. The research in this fortress and on that planet will make some red faces, on Earth. And there’s another thing.”

“What?” asked Sandy.

“This war we’ve inherited without doing anything to deserve it,” said Burke. “In fact, the Enemy. We haven’t the least idea what they’re like or anything at all about them except that they go off somewhere and spend a few thousand years cooking up something lethal to throw at us. They tired out our ancestors. If they’d only known it, they won the war by default. Our ancestors moved away to let the Enemy have its own way about this part of the galaxy, anyhow. And judging by past performances, the Enemy will just stew somewhere until they think of something more dangerous than artificial sun-masses riding through our solar systems.”

“Well?” she demanded. “What’s to be done about that?”

“With the right sort of people around,” said Burke meditatively, “we could do a little contriving of our own. And we could get a ship ready and think about looking them up and pinning their ears back in their own bailiwick, instead of waiting for them to take pot-shots at us.”

Sandy nodded gravely. She was a woman. She hadn’t the faintest idea of ever letting Burke take off into space again if she could help it—unless, perhaps, for one occasion when she would show herself off in a veil and a train, gloating.

But it had taken the Enemy a very long time to concoct this last method of attack. When the time came to take the offensive against them, at least a few centuries would have passed. Five or six, anyhow. So Sandy did not protest against an idea that wouldn’t result in action for some hundreds of years. Argument about Burke’s share in such an enterprise could wait.

So Sandy kissed him.

*

ATTENTION SAINT PATRICK

(Originally Published in 1960)

President O’Hanrahan of the planetary government of Eire listened unhappily to his official guest. He had to, because Sean O’Donohue was chairman of the Dail—of Eire on Earth—Committee on the Condition of the Planet Eire. He could cut off all support from the still-struggling colony if he chose. He was short and opinionated, he had sharp, gimlet eyes, he had bristling white hair that once had been red, and he was the grandfather of Moira O’Donohue, who’d traveled to Eire with him on a very uncomfortable spaceship. That last was a mark in his favor, but now he stood four-square upon the sagging porch of the presidential mansion of Eire, and laid down the law.

“I’ve been here three days.” he told the president sternly, while his granddaughter looked sympathetic, “and I’m of the opinion that there’s been shenanigans goin’ on to keep this fine world from becoming’ what it was meant for—a place for the people of Eire on Earth to emigrate to when there was more of them than Erin has room for. Which is now!”

“We’ve had difficulties—” began the president uneasily.

“This world should be ready!” snapped Sean O’Donohue accusingly. “It should be waitin’ for the Caseys and Bradys and Fitzpatricks and other fine Erse people to move to and thrive on while the rest of the galaxy goes to pot with its new-fangled notions. That’s the reason for this world’s very existence. What set aside Erin on Earth, where our ancestors lived an’ where their descendants are breathin’ down each other’s necks because there’s so many of them? There was no snakes there! St. Patrick drove them out. What sets this world apart from all the other livable planets men have put down their smelly spaceships on? There’s no snakes here! St. Patrick has great influence up in Heaven. He knew his fine Erse people would presently need more room than there was on Earth for them. So he’d a world set aside, and marked by the sign that no least trace of a serpent could exist on it. No creature like the one that blarneyed Mother Eve could be here! No—”

“Our trouble’s been dinies,” began the president apologetically.

But he froze. Something dark and sinuous and complacent oozed around the corner of the presidential mansion. The president of Eire sweated. He recognized the dark object. He’d believed it safely put away in pleasant confinement until the Dail Committee went away. But it wasn’t. It was Timothy, the amiable six-foot black snake who faithfully and cordially did his best to keep the presidential mansion from falling down. Without him innumerable mouse-sized holes, gnawed by mouse-sized dinies, would assuredly have brought about its collapse. The president was grateful, but he’d meant to keep Timothy out of sight. Timothy must have escaped and as a faithful snake, loyal to his duty, he’d wriggled straight back to the presidential mansion.

Like all Eire, he undoubtedly knew of the pious tradition that St. Patrick had brought the snakes to Eire, and he wasn’t one to let St. Patrick down. So he’d returned and doubtless patrolled all the diny tunnels in the sagging structure. He’d cleaned out any miniature, dinosaurlike creatures who might be planning to eat some more nails. He now prepared to nap, with a clear conscience. But if Sean O’Donohue saw him—!

Perspiration stood out on President O’Hanrahan’s forehead. The droplets joined and ran down his nose.

“It’s evident,” said the chairman of the Dail Committee, with truculence, “that we’re a pack of worthless, finagling’ and maybe even Protestant renegades from the ways an’ the traditions of your fathers! There is been shenanigans goin’ on! I’ll find ’em!”

The president could not speak, with Timothy in full view. But then what was practically a miracle took place. A diny popped out of a hole in the turf. He looked interestedly about. He was all of three inches long, with red eyes and a blue tail, and in every proportion he was a miniature of the extinct dinosaurs of Earth. But he was an improved model. The dinies of Eire were fitted by evolution—or Satan—to plague human settlers. They ate their crops, destroyed their homes, devoured their tools, and when other comestibles turned up they’d take care of them, too.

This diny surveyed its surroundings. The presidential mansion looked promising. The diny moved toward it. But Timothy—nap plans abandoned—flung himself at the diny like the crack of a whip. The diny plunged back into its hole. Timothy hurtled after it in pursuit. He disappeared.

The president of Eire breathed. He’d neglected that matter for some minutes, it seemed. He heard a voice continuing, formidably:

“And I know ye’ll try to hide the shenanigans that’ve destroyed all the sacrifices Earth’s made to have Eire a true Erse colony, ready for Erse lads and colleens to move to and have room for their children and their grandchildren too. I know ye’ll try! But unless I do find out—not another bit of help will this colony get from Earth! No more tools! No more machinery that ye can’t have worn out! No more provisions that ye should be raisin’ for yourselves! Your cold-storage plant should be bulgin’ with food! It’s near empty! It will not be refilled! And even the ship that we pay to have stop here every three months, for mail—no ship!”