The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (16 page)

He lifted one of the oil pumps in place and painstakingly tightened the bolts that held it.

“Picture it,” he said grimly. “Beasts as viceroys, already taking their pleasure. Caligulas, Neros, on viceregal thrones all over the continent.… And every man who shows promise, or shows signs of honor or courage or decency, either killed or sent mad or.…”

Paula was watching his face closely.

“I think,” she said soberly, “that there is something worse.”

Bell was silent for an instant.

“For me,” he said bitterly, “it is. Before The Master dares to make his coup public, he must be sure that there will be no foreign interference. So, he must establish a deputy in Washington. A relatively few chosen men, completely enslaved, could hold back our Government from any action. Leaders in Congress, and members of the Cabinet, working, in defense of The Master because his defeat would mean their madness.… He would demand no treason of them at first. He would require simply that he should not be interfered with. But his plans include the appointment of deputies in the United States later on. I don’t think he can subdue America. I don’t think so. But he could—and I think he would—send whole cities mad. And if you think of that.…”

He was silent, working. A long, long time later he swung on the propeller. The motor caught. He throttled it down and watched it grimly. The motor warmed up to normal, and stayed there.

“It will run,” he said coldly. “Those two plugs in the crankcase may come out at any time. I’ve tightened them a little. They’d worked loose from the vibration. But—well.… That Service man was heading for Asunción. He’d been found out. They probably shot him down in mid-air after he’d gotten away. His plane may be crashed anywhere in the jungle within a mile or so. And I’ve two bearings on the
fazenda
where Ribiera went, now. One from Asunción through here and one from Rio. I want to go back there tonight and dump burning gasoline on the buildings, to do enough damage to disorganize things a little. Then I’m going to try to make it to a seaport. We can stow away, perhaps.”

He shut off the motor.

“We’ll start at dusk. There’ll be lights there. This report says it’s nearly a city—of slaves. We want the darkness for our getaway.”

Paula looked at the sky.

“We have three hours,” she said quietly. “Let us cook and eat. You must keep up your strength, Charles.”

She said it in all seriousness, with the air of one who has entire confidence and is merely solicitous. And Bell, who knew of at least three excellent reasons why neither of them should survive until dawn—Bell looked at her queerly, and then grinned, and then took her in his arms and kissed her. She seemed to like it.

And they lunched quite happily on
piranha
and
pacu
—which is smaller—and drank water, and for dessert had more
piranha
.

* * * *

The long afternoon wore away slowly. It was hot, and grew blistering. Insects came in swarms and tormented them until Bell built a second and larger smudge fire. But they fastened upon his flesh when he went out of its smoke for more wood.

They talked, as well as they could for smoke, and looked at each other as well as they could for smarting eyes. It was not at all the conventional idea of romantic conversation, but it was probably a good deal more honest than most, because they both knew quite well that their chance of life was small. A plane whose motor was precariously patched, flying over a jungle without hope of a safe landing if that patched-up motor died, was bad enough. But with the three nearest nations subservient to The Master, whose deputy Ribiera was, and all those nations hunting them as soon as they were known to be yet alive.…

“Would it not be wise, Charles,” asked Paula wistfully, “just for us to try to escape, ourselves, and not try—”

“Wise, perhaps,” admitted Bell, “but I’ve got to strike a blow while I can.” He was staring somberly at the little plane, fast upon a mud bank, with the tall green jungle all about. “The deputies and all their slaves have their lives hanging by a thread—the thread of a constant supply of the antidote to the poison that’s administered with the antidote. The deputies—Ribiera, for instance—don’t realize that. Else they wouldn’t dare do the things they do. But let them realize that the thread can be broken, and what their slaves would do to them before they all went mad.… You see? Let them learn that a blow has been struck at the center of all the ghastly thing, and they’ll be frightened. They’ll be close to mutiny through sheer panic. And there may be slip-ups.”

It was vague, perhaps, but it was true. The subjection of the poisoned men and women was due not only to terror of what would happen if they disobeyed the deputies, but to a belief that that thing would not happen if they did obey. If Bell could do enough damage to the
fazenda
of The Master to shake the second belief, he would have shaken the whole conspiracy. And a conspiracy that is not a complete success is an utter failure.

It was close to sunset when they heard a droning noise in the distance. Bell went swiftly to the cockpit of the plane and searched the sky.

“Don’t see it,” he said grimly, “and it probably doesn’t see us. We’re all right, I suppose.”

But he was uneasy. The droning noise grew to a maximum and slowly died away again. It diminished to a distant muttering.

“What say,” said Bell suddenly, “we get aloft now? We’ll follow that damned thing home. It’s going from Asunción to that place we want to find. This is on that route. Whoever’s in it won’t be looking behind, and it’s close to darkness.”

Paula stood up.

“I am ready, Charles.”

Bell swung out on the floats and tugged at the prop. The motor caught and roared steadily. While it was warming up, he stripped off the rest of his shirt and tore it into wide strips, and tied the rags in the handles of the gasoline tins in the two cockpits.

“For our bombs,” he explained, smiling faintly. “You’ll want to wear your chute pack, Paula. You know how to work it? And we’ll divide the guns and what shells we have, and stick them in the flying suit pockets.”

He made her show him a dozen times that she knew how to pull out the ring that would cause the parachute to open. She climbed into the front cockpit and smiled down at him. He throttled down the motor to its lowest speed and shoved off from the mud bank. Clambering up, while the plane moved slowly over the water under the gentle pull of the slow-moving propeller, he bent over and kissed her.

“For luck,” he said in her ear.

The next instant he settled down at the controls, glanced a last time at the instruments, and gave the motor the gun.

The plane lifted soggily but steadily and swept up-stream toward the rolling water of the
raudal
, which tumbled furiously about an obstacle half of stones and shallows, and half of caught and rotting tree trunks. It rose steadily until the trees dropped away on either side and the jungle spread out on every hand. It rose to a thousand feet and went roaring through the air to northward, while Bell strained his eyes for the plane on ahead.

It was ten minutes or more before he sighted it, winging its way steadily into the misty distance above the jungle. Bell settled down to follow. The engine roared valorously. For half an hour Bell watched it anxiously, but it remained cool and had always ample power. Paula’s head showed above the cockpit combing. Mostly she looked confidently ahead, but once or twice she turned about to smile at him.

The sun seemed high when they rose from the water, but as it neared the horizon its rate of descent seemed to increase. They had been in the air for no more than three-quarters of an hour when it was twice its own disk above the far distant hills. Almost immediately, it seemed, it had halved that distance. And then the lower limb of the blaring circle was sharply cut off by the hill crests and the sun sank wearily to rest behind the edge of the world.

It seemed as if a swift chill breeze blew over the jungle, in warning of the night. The trees became dark. A shadowy dusk filled the air even up to where the plane flew thunderously on. And then, quite abruptly, stars were shining and it was night.

Bell remembered, suddenly, and switched on the radio as an experiment. The harsh, discordant dashes sounded in his ears through the roaring of the motor. A beam of short waves was being sent out from his destination. While he was on the direct path the monotonous signals could be heard. When they weakened or died he would have left the way.

But they continued, discordant and harsh and monotonous, while the last faint trace of the afterglow died away and night was complete, and a roof of many stars glittered overhead, and the jungle lay dark and deadly below him.

For nearly half an hour more he kept on. Twice he switched on the instrument board light to glance at the motor temperature. The first time it appeared a little high. The second time it was normal again. But there was little use in watching instruments. If the motor failed there was no landing field to make for.

A sudden faint glow sprang into being, many miles ahead. The pinkish glare of many, many lights turned on suddenly. As the plane thundered on the glow grew brighter. An illuminated field, for the convenience of messengers who carried the poison for The Master to all the nations which were to be subjected.

The glow went out as Bell was just able to distinguish long rows of twinkling bulbs, and he saw the harsher, fiercer glow of floodlights. He reached forward and touched Paula’s shoulder. Conversation was impossible over the motor’s roar. Her hand reached up and pressed his.

Then he saw other lights. Bright lights, as from houses. Arc lights as from storage warehouses, or something of the sort. A long, long row of lighted windows, which might be dormitories or perhaps sheds in which The Master’s enslaved secretaries kept the record of his victims.

The earth flung back the roaring of the little plane’s motor. Bell had but little time to act before other planes would dart upward to seek him out. He dived, and the wing tip landing lights went on, sending fierce glares downward. Twin disks of light appeared upon the earth. Sheds, houses, a long row of shacks as if for laborers. A drying field, on which were spread out plants with their leaves turning brown. A wall about it.…

“The damned stuff,” said Bell grimly.

He swept on. Jungle, only jungle. He banked steeply as lights flicked on and off below and as—once—the wing tip lights showed men running frantically two hundred feet below.

Then a stream of fire shot earthward, and Bell held up his hand and arm into the blast of the slip stream. It blew out the blaze that had licked at his flesh. He stared down. The gas can had left a trailing stream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All that stream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earth and seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onward by the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. An incredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying yard was burning.

Bell laughed shortly, and flung over another of his flaming bombs, and another, and the fourth.…

* * * *

He climbed for the skies, then, as rectangles of light showed below and planes were thrust out of their lighted hangars. Four huge conflagrations were begun. One was close by a monster rounded tank, and Bell watched with glistening eyes as it crept closer. Suddenly—it seemed suddenly, but it must have been minutes later—flame rushed up the sides of that tank, there was a sudden hollow booming, and fire was flung broadcast in a blazing, pouring flood.

“Their fuel tank!” said Bell, his eyes gleaming in the ruddy light from below. He shut off his landing lights and went upward, steeply. “I’ve played hell with them now!”

A thousand feet up. Two thousand. Two thousand five hundred.… And suddenly Bell felt cold all over. The instrument board! The motor was hot. Hot! Burning!

He shut it off before it could burst into flames, but he heard the squealing of tortured, unlubricated metal grinding to a stop. He leveled out. It was strangely, terribly silent in the high darkness, despite the roaring of wind about the gliding plane. The absence of the motor roar was the thing that made it horrible.

“Paula,” said Bell harshly, “one of those plugs came out, I guess. The motor’s ruined. Dead. The ship’s going to crash. Ready with your parachute?”

It was dark, up there, save for the glare of fires upon the under surface of the wings. But he saw her hand, encarmined by that glare, upon the combing of the cockpit. A moment later her face. She turned, light-dazzled, to smile back at him.

“All right, Charles.” Her voice quavered a little, but it was very brave. “I’m ready. You’re coming, too?”

“I’m coming,” said Bell grimly. Below them was the city of The Master, set blazing by their doing. If their chutes were seen descending.… And if they were not.… “Count ten,” said Bell hoarsely, “and pull out the ring. I’ll be right after you.”

He saw the slim little black-clad figure drop, plummetlike, and prayed in an agony of fear. Then a sudden blooming thing hid it from sight. Thick clouds of smoke lay over the lights and fires below.

Bell stepped over the side and went hurtling down toward the earth in his turn.