v0.9 by the N.E.R.D's. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.
I
The S29A climbed steeply on a column of crooked fire In the machine. Morlake could feel the turbulent impulses of the gyroscopic stabilizers. But the flow of upward movement was as slick as oil, and the acceleration brought nothing more than a feeling like that of a hand squeezing the stomach.
At sixty miles above Kane Field he leveled off and put the new plane through its paces. After five minutes he turned on the radio and spoke softly.
'Morlake calling Gregory.'
'Yeah?' Laconically.
'She likes the climate.'
'How's the ultraviolet?'
'Blocked.'
'Cosmics?'
'Registering.'
'Good.' The engineering officer sounded satisfied. 'Until somebody figures out a way of blocking cosmic rays completely, we'll be satisfied with minimums. Speed?'
'About one banana.' That was code for seven hundred mph.
'Feel anything?'
'She's singing a lullaby.'
'Sweet, huh, at one banana. What do you think, generally?'
'Sadie's going to be with us for quite a while.'
'As smug as that, eh?' The engineer turned away from the mike. His voice, though still audible, grew tiny. 'Well, General, there you are. She ticks.'
'Ought to,' was the faint reply. 'We were beginning to sweat.
She cost four billion to develop.'
The engineer's voice had a grin in it. 'Where do we go from here? Mars? Or the moon?'
'Sadie is our top, boy. And we're lucky to have her. The new Congress is tired of our costly little experiment, and wants to reduce taxes. The new President thinks the development of weapons leads to war. He doesn't like war, and so in this year of 1979 - '
He must have thought better of what he intended to say. There was silence, though not for long. Gregory's faraway voice said, 'What next?'
'Dive,' said the general.
The engineer's voice approached the mike.
'Morlake.'
'I heard.'
'Okay. See if you can hit O'Ryan.'
Morlake grinned. The three test pilots of Kane Field played a game against the famous racist publisher. Each time they dived they chose as target the Star-Telegram building, which peered seventy storeys into the sky beside the flat, dead-looking waters of Lake Michigan. The idea was, if anything went wrong, they might as well take O'Ryan and his penthouse into hell with them. And they meant it too, after a fashion.
The plane began to shudder. At eighty miles the jets were silent and useless, and the hammerings of the rockets was a sharp sound carried by the metallic frame. The rockets were not meant to carry the load alone. All the smoothness was gone from his marvelous machine. Morlake paused for a final look at the universe.
It was tremendously, unnaturally dark outside. The stars were pinpoints of intense brightness, that did not twinkle or glitter. The sun, far to his left, was only approximately round. Streamers of flame and fire mist made it appear lopsided and unnatural. A quarter moon rode the blackness directly overhead.
The S29A, moving very slowly, not more than a hundred miles an hour, was over Chicago now. The city was lost in haze, quite invisible to the naked eye. But on the radar screen every building was etched, and there was no mistaking the Star-Telegram structure. Morlake waited until the hairline sights directed under his seat were touching the shadow of the building, and then he carefully tilted the nose of the plane downward.
He was in no hurry, but presently the front aiming device was pointed directly at the image on the radar screen. The speedometer was edged over to a thousand miles an hour when there was a dazzling bright flash in the sky behind and above him. Something big and hot as hell itself flashed past him, and began to recede into the distance below.
Morlake cringed involuntarily. He had time to think: a meteorite! Speed about fourteen hundred miles an hour. Below him, the bright flame fuzzed and winked out. He stared at it astounded, removed his foot from the accelerator; and then, there, twenty feet away, was the object. And it was not a meteorite at all.
Morlake gazed at the thing in blank horror, as the radio embedded in the cushions beside his ears clicked on, and Gregory's voice shouted:
'Morlake, we've just got word: New York, Washington, scores of cities destroyed in the last ten minutes by giant atomic bombs. Morlake - get away from Chicago with Sadie. She's our only working S29A. Morlake, you hear me?'
He heard, but he couldn't speak. He sat frozen to the controls, glaring at the atomic bomb twenty feet away.
* * *
After a blank period, Morlake stirred like a sick dog. His reflexes began to function in a dreamlike fashion. His eyes shifted heavily over the instrument board. Slowly, he grew aware that the world around was becoming brighter. A faint dawn glimmered in the distance to either side, and the blaze of light below was like a vast fire bowl into which the bomb and the ship were falling.
He thought: the flame that had seared his ship when the bomb first passed him - that must have been its forward rocket tubes slowing the thing, so that it wouldn't burn up from sheer speed in the thick atmosphere lower down.
The thought passed as though it had never been, as if the thin, shrieking wind building up outside had torn it from his brain. In its place, a formless mind stuff, seeking shape, pressed and quivered inside him. Plans too fleeting to be comprehended multiplied and coalesced. Impersonal plans involving death for his body. Impersonal, because the city below was not his city. No one in it knew him or cared about him, not even a secondary girl friend. He hated the place. Windy, dirty, wretched, miserable, hot in summer, cold in winter… No, there was nothing there, nothing at all. But the yeast of plans fermented with violence and direction.
'Morlake, damn your soul, answer me!'
Answer me, answer me, answer me! Over all the mad schemes that were now springing full-grown into his head, one took precedence. If he could deflect the bomb into the lake, five million people would have a chance for life.
He knew better. Even as he shoved his plane over on fingers of wan jetfire, and felt the metal frame jar against the bomb, he knew that the greater bombs needed only to fall into the vicinity of the cities. Direct hits were unnecessary.
But he pushed with the plane's vertical jets. His body shrank, expecting the blow of radiation. And at first nothing happened. There was not enough air to give power even to those superjets.
'Moorlake, for God's sake, where are you?'
He was too intent for words to reach him. He had a fear that he would push the plane too hard, and that the curved fuselage would roll itself away from the streamlined bomb. Delicate manipulation, touch, pressure, oh, so delicate.
The movement began slowly. He noticed it first on the hairline sighting device in front of him. O'Ryan was no longer directly below. At that instant of infinitesimal success, the bottom of the bomb flashed white fire. One burst only, but it jarred his precious contact. He felt his machine slip clear of the bomb, and with a shock he saw that his sights were once more pointing straight at the newspaper skyscraper.
The bomb had reacted to his pressure. It must be on a beam, and couldn't be diverted. Almost instantly, the bomb offered one more surprise. As he sat in a haze of uncertainty as to his next move, it sent a flare of light billowing over the S29A. Morlake shrank, and then the light was gone. He had no time to think about it, because - '
'Morlake, you damned idiot, save Sadie!'
Anger, despair, hate, frustration and the beginning of insanity - all were in that shout. Morlake would have ignored it too, would have been almost unaware, but at that split instant his gaze touched the altimeter. Twenty miles. Only twenty miles to Earth.
The fever of his purpose burned out of him. Suddenly, he thought of Sadie as those desperate men at Kane Field were thinking of her. Sadie, the sleek, the gorgeous, Sadie of the high tail, the first of a fleet not yet built.
He spurted his forward jets. And saw the bomb sink below him. Instantly, it was gone into the mist. He began to turn, to try to pull her out of her dive. Three times he blanked out, and came to again, dizzy but alive. Finally, the plane was level. Morlake brought her nose up, and climbed on a long slant at an acceleration that clenched his body.
Behind him, below him, there was a glare as of a thousand times ten thousand suns. A supernal blaze it was, unmatched in the sidereal universe except by the unthinkable fires of a Nova-O sun at its moment of ultimate explosion.
* * *
Catastrophe for a continent! Forty million people in fifty major cities died in a space of not more than thirty minutes. It was later estimated that each of the bombs dropped generated flash heats of forty thousand billion degrees centigrade. Everywhere, the forces released were too great to be confined. The balance of a hemisphere was shaken. Earthquakes convulsed regions that had never known a tremor. And all that afternoon and night the ground settled and quivered with a violence that had not been parallel in the history of mankind.
By mid-afternoon of the first day, a stricken people had begun to rally and reintegrate. Senator Milton Tormey, recovering from food poisoning in Florida, brought together two aged, ailing Congressmen in a resort hotel, and the three issued a manifesto ordering a six-month period of martial law. In Berlin, General Wayne, commanding American forces in Germany, demanded that all countries in Europe and Asia open their borders to American planes. Delay or refusal would be construed as a confession of guilt, and would bring instant retaliation from secret American atomic bomb .bases and from the navy.
The national guard was called out. Radar and sonar stations were put on battle alert, and throughout the night hastily-armed men and women stared sleeplessly up into the skies, waiting for the paratroop armies that would surely arrive with the dawn to conquer a devastated nation.
Morning broke over the thousand horizons of America, and the sky and land were still untouched by alien sounds and alien purposes. The sun came up out of the east. People were able to look at their red-eyed neighbors, and to realize that the complete end of their world was not yet at hand. After a week the enemy had still shown no sign. It took a month for American plane patrols, fleets of planes and divisions of men to discover that no nation on Earth was organizing for war. Everywhere, peaceful scenes met the frenzied searchers. They retreated finally, reluctantly, from lands they had to summarily entered.
Day by day it grew clearer that the enemy had struck a mortal blow at Earth's most powerful nation. And he had done it so skillfully that he was going to get away with it.
* * *
Twice, Morlake, returning to base after his wild flight, made the sweep over Kane Field. The first time, he was past before he recognized the super-airfield. The second time he savored the desolation.
The surface buildings, the control towers, the markers, the lights were down. Planes in twisted heaps on the field and beyond. The wreckage spread into the distance southward as far as he could see! Planes and parts in every degree of destruction, sections of metal buildings, chunks of cement, of brick, of plastic and glass, and miles of splintered lumber. A giant had trodden this land.
Morlake settled his machine on its vertical jets, like a helicopter, near one of the underground entrances. As he came down, he saw a score of human figures sprawled almost at the mouth of the entrance. When he rolled nearer, they ceased to look so human. He glanced away quickly, and carefully guided his machine between them and the shelter.
A fierce wind was blowing as he climbed to the ground, but except for that, silence lay over the military air hub of the continent. He stepped gingerly over the wreckage of the underground entrance, and made his way down cracked steps. Plexiglass lights glowed in the upper corridors, untouched by the secondary violence that had raged through the corridors themselves.
Everywhere the walls were smashed. Ceilings had crashed down, and he could hear the remote thunder of loosened girders, and earth and cement, tumbling to form barriers in the depths of the supposedly impregnable chambers. Morlake fumbled past two such partial obstacles, came to a third that blocked his passage completely. Then, as the ceiling a few yards behind him rumbled ominously, he began his retreat to the surface.
He reached the open air, breathing hard, and forced himself out of pity to examine the less damaged bodies. All were dead. He floated around the field, landing a dozen times to search shells of buildings, and to peer into underground entrances. He found two men whose pulses flickered with faint life.
They failed to react to stimulants in his first aid kit, so he loaded them into the jet. Up in the air again, he turned on his radio, and at first the ether seemed silent. It was only when he turned the volume almost to full that a faraway voice scratched through to him. It kept fading out, but each time it came back in, so that he did not lose the continuity:
"… People in cities over fifty thousand are ordered to leave, but all merchants in those cities must remain in their stores. Repeat: merchants must remain. Those who leave without authorization will be shot… Sell your goods to anyone who comes in, rationing all customers… one suit, one blanket… Groceries, about two weeks' supply…
'People in cities or towns of less than fifty thousand, stay at home. Understand - stay at home!… Repeat emergency warning to people on Lake Michigan. A tidal wave is sweeping up from Chicago at a speed of approximately four hundred miles an hour. All shore towns will be destroyed. Wait for nothing. Leave at once!
'… Flash! London. Great Britain announces declaration of war against unknown enemy. Other countries following… '
Morlake's mind couldn't hold to the words. The selectivity was too poor, the voice a mere segment of a remote sound. And besides, the first stunned calm was slipping from him. He sat in his plane, thinking of millions of men and women whose bodies had been reduced not to ashes but to atoms… He was profoundly relieved when he reached his first destination, a small military airport near a sizable city in Iowa. The two men were rushed off to the local hospital. While his machine was being refueled, Morlake had a brief conference with three worried executive officers. They agreed that his best course was to fly to one of the secret bases. It was to them that he mentioned for the first time that he had seen the Chicago bomb.
All three men grew excited, and he had a hard time getting away. They were certain that experts would be able to make much of his experience.
It was some time before he was allowed to approach the secret field. His radio roared with alarms and warnings that he 'must leave at once.' He insisted that the commanding officer be informed of his presence, and finally he was permitted to set his machine down into a cavernous elevator, and was drawn underground.
He was ushered into the office of General Herrold, and at that time he made only a brief report. He told the general the circumstances under which he had seen the Chicago bomb, and paused, waiting for the flood of questions he expected.
For a long time the old man looked at him, but asked for no details. And Morlake was being ushered into his quarters on the next tier down before the meaning of the man's thin-lipped hostility penetrated. By God, he thought, he didn't believe me!
It was staggering, but it couldn't be helped. No matter how incredible it sounded, it was his duty to tell what had happened.
He wrote his report as best he could, then phoned the general's office that it was ready. After some delay he was told to remain in his quarters, that an officer would come for the report. That was chilling, but Morlake pretended to see nothing wrong. When the officer had come and gone with the document, Morlake lay down, conscious of unutterable weariness. But his brain was too active for sleep.
Reaction to all the straining tensions of the day took the form of blank horror, of a frank disbelief in what his eyes had seen. Slowly, his emotions became more personal. He began to picture the possibilities of his own situation here, where a suspicious martinet was in command. Damn him, he thought in a fury. All the radar stations designed to spot bombs coming down near cities must have been destroyed. And that leaves only what I saw.
But what did this experience prove? It was the one major clue, so far, to the identity of the enemy. And it seemed valueless.
Weeks had still to pass before he would realize how tremendous a clue it really was.
II
'Order in the court.'
The hastily convened court-martial was about to begin.
'It is the intention of the prosecution,' said the judge advocate after the preliminaries were over, 'to bring evidence that will establish one or the other of two charges against Captain Morlake. The first charge is that he did not, as he has claimed, see an atomic bomb, and that, in fact, his purpose was to procure cheap notoriety for himself out of a nation's most profound agony. It is the opinion of the prosecution that, if the court finds him guilty of this charge, the penalties should be severe in proportion to the monstrousness of the disaster that has befallen our country.
'The second charge,' the judge advocate continued, 'is more serious. It assumes that Captain Morlake did, in fact, see the bomb, as he has stated, but that he has deliberately falsified his report, or else was grossly negligent in failing to observe the direction from which the bomb was coming.'
For Morlake, the deadly part was that he knew no one. He was not permitted to subpoena character witnesses from fields to which men he had known had been scattered. By the time the two rocket experts had testified, he recognized that he was doomed. Shortly after his arrest, when one of his guards had whispered that fully half the officers of the secret field had lost members of their families in the bombing, he realized what weight of emotion was against him. These men, twisted by disaster, could not feel, see, or think straight.
The crisis came swiftly after he himself was called to the stand.
'There is no doubt in your mind,' the judge advocate said, 'that what you saw was an atomic bomb?'
'It was an atomic bomb.'
'And it was coming straight down?'
'Yes, it was. Absolutely straight.'
'That was about how high above the ground?'
'At least seventy-five miles.'
Pause; then, gravely:
'Captain Morlake, you have heard experts testify that any bomb accurately aimed from any point on the Earth's surface would have been describing a parabolic curve of some kind at the height?'
'I have heard the witnesses.'
'And what do you conclude from their testimony?'
Morlake was firm. 'A short time ago I was convinced that our rocket science was superior to that of any other country. Now I know that we've been surpassed.'
'That is your sole comment on the death of forty million Americans. We have been surpassed.'
Morlake swallowed hard, but he controlled himself. T did not say that. The bomb was coming straight down.'
'Hadn't you better think that over, Captain?'
Insinuating words. He knew what they wanted. In the short time since the trial had been scheduled, the prosecution had had several bright ideas. The previous night they had come to him with drawings of hypothetical trajectories of bombs. Every drawing was on a map of the world, and there were three different points of origin illustrated. If he would agree that the bomb had been slanting slightly in any of the three directions, he would be a hero.
'You still have an opportunity, Captain,' said the judge advocate silkily, 'of being of great service to your country.'
Morlake hesitated miserably. 'I'm sorry,' he said at last, stiff with fear, 'but I cannot change my testimony. It was coming straight down.'
The sentence was thirty years, and he was lucky. Within a month of his trial men were being hanged from lamp posts, and sedition trials sprouted like weeds over a land that could not discover its attacker.
* * *
On the ninety-fourth morning, Morlake put on his fatigue suit as usual. He had only the vaguest sense of ever having done anything else, the routine was so much a part of him. On the way to breakfast he glanced at the bulletin board, where the day's work sheet had already been posted. Ploughing the east field. Planting potatoes in the valley. Repairing the east fence. Cleaning the stables. Transferring feed to a new barn.
It was the usual pattern, with only one thing missing. His own name was not attached to any one of the details. Immediately after breakfast he reported the omission to the day sergeant.
'Okay, you go along with the potato planting detail.'
Morlake went, telling himself that, if his name was ever again missing from the board, he would report to the office of the clerks who made up the work sheet.
It wasn't that the work hadn't been good for him. He had always been as hard as nails, and his internal muscles were so perfectly balanced and organized that, in all the army air forces, he had proved by actual test that he could withstand more acceleration than any other man.
And he felt better now, healthier, more awake, more alive, more appreciative of life. But he didn't like planting potatoes. The army farm used the old, primitive method of bending down to place each seed-spud by hand… By noon, he was sweating and tired.
The midday dinner was eaten in the field. Men squatted on the grass with their plates and cups. And the chatter took exactly the same form as on the day before, and the day before that, and so on back into infinity.
'The bombs…' 'Hey, did you hear what that new guy said the other day, about somebody staggering out of an undamaged basement in New York City?' 'Some character in the Middle West is saying that bombs could only have come from the moon…''… It's the Chinese, or I'll be dipped in… ' 'I'll put my money in Russia… ' 'Hell, if I was General Wayne in Berlin, I'd - '
The detail sergeant climbed lazily to his feet. 'Okay, generals, up and at those potatoes, before the bugs move in.'
The afternoon lengthened. About four o'clock a car detached itself from the haze that hid the farm buildings five miles to the north. It came lazily along a dirt road, disappearing behind trees and into gullies, but always it came into view again, each time nearer, and obviously as puzzling to the detail sergeant as to the prisoners. The sergeant and his corporal walked slowly toward the road as the car approached, and stood waiting for it.
Up, down, up, down - The remaining guards kept things moving. The ploughs whuffed and thudded through the soil folding the fresh dirt over the seed potatoes. The horses champed and swished their tails. One of them noisily passed water. Up, down, up, down - Morlake, sweating and breathing hard, alternated the rhythmic movement with glances at the nearing car and with his own thoughts.
Of the various articles and newspaper editorials that he had read in the farm library, only one, it seemed to Morlake, contained a sensible idea: the purpose of the bombing had not been to destroy the nation or conquer it, but simply to change its political character. With the vociferous, noisy, highly-educated, politically conscious people of, America's world-cities out of the way, power would revert to the isolationist agricultural communities. Every capitalistic state in the world would benefit from the markets from which American industry would have to withdraw. And the dozen Communist states had their own reasons for appreciating the end of American influence, in Europe, Africa and Asia.
If the enemy was not discovered for several years, it was likely that the elected representatives of cautious farm states would not dare to retaliate. Already, old prejudices were showing. The South reinstituted Jim Crowism. And there was no one to stop them.
Only three facts were known about the aggressor: he existed; he had left no clues in his own countries; and he had dropped his bombs straight down onto at least one city.
Unfortunately, the one man who believed the third item was Robert Morlake, and so far his sole thought was that the bombs must have been launched from the moon… Morlake smiled wryly. He could imagine himself trying to convince other men that they must go to the moon to find out the name of their enemy.
'Morlake!'
Morlake straightened slowly and turned. It was the corporal who had gone with the sergeant to the car. In the near distance, the machine was turning noisily around. Morlake saluted.
'Yessir?'
'You're wanted at the office. You weren't supposed to come out on a detail this morning. Come along.'
Five minutes later, Morlake knew that he was being presented with an opportunity to escape.
* * *
What had happened Morlake discovered gradually. On the East Coast, General Mahan Clark, ranking staff officer surviving, declared martial law on the afternoon of the bombing. For three months he worked eighteen to twenty hours a day to integrate the shattered armed forces and to organize the country. Railway, telephone and telegraph lines were repaired, and the postal services resumed. Priorities and rationing were instituted, and an industrial census taken.
At the end of seventy days he had a picture of the country's resources. By the eightieth day, industries that needed each other's products were being coordinated on a vast scale. Troops patrolled cities and towns; a national curfew was put into effect; severe penalties were invoked against mobs and mob leaders. Mass hangings of known Communists ceased. People with foreign accents were still being molested, but the cases grew more isolated daily.
From the eighty-fifth to the eighty-eighth day, the general took a holiday, during which time he played dice, ate, rested and slept, and listened only to emergency reports. Back at his headquarters, he moved into a new office.
'From now on,' he told reporters, 'I'll delegate all except a minimum of administrative work. I will devote my attention to picking up technical matters at the highest level. I'm an engineer, not a politician. What I want to know is, what the hell happened to our advanced stuff on the day of the bombing? Where is it, and who's alive that knows something about it?'
Late in the afternoon of the ninety-first day, he looked up bleary-eyed from a mass of papers, and called in an adjutant.
'There's a report here that S29A was scheduled for a test flight on B-day. Was the test made? If so, what happened?'
Nobody knew until the following morning, when a lieutenant produced a report from Field R3 in Texas that the S29A had landed there a few hours after the destruction of its base, Kane Field, ninety-two days before.
'Who the hell,' said Clark, 'is the misbegotten incompetent in charge of R3? Herrold? Oh!'
He subsided. He had once been under Herrold's command, and one observed certain amenities with former superiors.
Later, though, he remarked to a ranking officer: 'Herrold is an old fool. If a man under him has twice as much sense as another, he can't tell the difference. Drive, ability, leadership - he can't see them.' He scowled. 'Well, the best best, I suppose, is to have the machine brought here. Inform Herrold, will you?'
The order for the plane caused a turmoil in the upper officialdom of Field R3. No one there could fly the ship.
'It's a special plane,' an air force major explained to General Herrold. 'I remember that the man who was to test it had to go to the factory and learn all kinds of preliminary things before he was even allowed to warm her jets. The difficulties, I understand, derive from an intricate combination of rocket and jet drives.'
'Oh!' said General Herrold. He thought about it for some minutes; then, 'It wouldn't take you long,' he suggested, 'to learn to fly it, would it?'
The big man shrugged. 'I've been flying jets for years - ' he began.
He was interrupted. 'Uh, Major Bates,' Herrold said, 'the officer in question, Captain Robert Morlake, is in prison for a most heinous offence. It would be a grave setback for discipline if he were freed merely because he can fly a plane. Accordingly, I shall have him brought here, and no doubt he can teach you to fly the plane in a day or so. I want you to hold no conversations with him except on purely technical matters. You will carry a gun, and remember that the plane is more valuable than the man.'
Bates saluted. 'I'll handle him, sir,' he said confidently.
* * *
The moment the S29A was high enough, Morlake zipped her over into a power dive. Behind him, Major Bates clawed for the nearest handhold.
'Hey!' he yelled. 'What the hell do you think you're doing?'
Morlake wasn't sure. He had decided at the moment he was sentenced to virtual life imprisonment that he would not accept the verdict of the court. But exactly what was going to happen now he didn't know.
'Now, look, Morlake,' Bates said in a voice that trembled slightly, 'this is not going to get you anywhere. There's hardly any fuel in the tanks.'
That was why he had wasted no time. Morlake said nothing, but sat blank-brained, awaiting events. The day was clear as glass, the Earth below plainly visible. It looked closer than it was.
'For God's sake, man!' the other's nerve was tottering badly. 'You swore you still stood by your oath of allegiance to the United States.'
Morlake broke his silence. T do.'
'Then what - '
T happen to be the only man who knows how to find the enemy. If I let myself stay locked ,up, I'd be violating my oath.'
It sounded wild even to Morlake. It probably seemed pure insanity to Bates. And Morlake did not fool himself. He felt emotional about this. It was not reasoned, objective, what he was doing. He had a three-months' taste of a life sentence at hard labor, and the passionate beliefs he held, his justification for this, were rooted as much in horror of his fate as in patriotism.
The bomb had come straight down. If, as the experts maintained, it couldn't have come from Earth, then it had come from the moon. Since that was not an idea to which Americans would take easily, it was up to the one man who knew the facts to persuade them.
His thoughts ended. He jumped, as he saw that the ground was really rushing toward him now. Behind him:
'Morlake, for God's sake, what do you want?'
'Your gun.'
'Do you intend to kill me?'
'Don't be a fool. Hurry.'
The Earth was a huge valley, with rearing hills no longer looking so flat. Morlake felt the gun shoved past his shoulder. He snatched at it, shouting:
'Get back! Back, away from me!'
He knew that would be hard, like climbing the side of a house. But he, waited while the sweating officer fumbled away from his seat. He could hear the man cursing with fear. And his own heart was pounding, his body rigid, when at last he came out of his dive, and began to climb toward the black regions of the stratosphere.'
The stars were as bright as jewels before he leveled off and began his race with the diminishing supply of fuel. At the machine's most economical speed, thirty-five miles a minute, he sped through the darkness above an ocean of light.
He had two intermingled hopes: that he would be able to reach
Kane Field and that he would find it deserted. The first hope was
realized as the field swam into view in the distance. The second ended
in dismay, as he saw that the entire area swarmed with men, with
tractors, cranes, trucks and piles of
material.
Morlake came down from behind a low hill some distance from the nearest group of workers.
'Get out!' he said to Bates.
'I'll see you hanged for this!' the big man snarled. But he got out. He did not move off immediately nor did Morlake. There was a prolonged silence, then:
'Tell them,' Morlake said, 'that I'm taking the plane because - because - ' He paused. He felt a desperate desire to justify himself. He went on, 'Tell them the top speed of Sadie is sixty-seven miles a minute, and that she can climb eighty miles in seven minutes plus, but tell them' - he hesitated, for if his words were given publicity, the unknown enemy would read them also - 'tell them not to waste any more time building duplicates of Sadie. She isn't fast enough, she can't go high enough to reach the men who dropped the atomic bombs. And that's why I'm taking her. Because she's only a second-rater, and therefore worthless. Goodbye.'
He waved his hand. The vertical jets hissed with power. The machine reared slowly; then the rockets fired several bursts, and the ground began to flow below like a tremendously swift river. Morlake headed over the hills, straight toward a place where there had once been pipes leading up from an underground fuel tank. Men were working there amid a tangle of twisted metal, but some order had already been established. He landed.
A foreman, a slim, rugged-looking young man, came over, and said, 'Sure, we've got all the fuel you want. None of the tanks were busted by the earthquakes. Roll her over this way.'
He was in no hurry, but talkative, curious. While his men attached piping to the tanks Morlake indicated, he asked pointed questions, which Morlake answered or evaded with a laugh. He knew how to talk to this kind of man, and the only trouble was that out of the corner of one eye, he saw Bates come into sight over the hill, and flag down a truck. The truck headed swiftly toward Morlake. When it was a third of a mile away, Morlake climbed into the plane.
'Thanks,' he said.
The foreman waved cheerfully. 'Give my regards to the general.'
The truck was tooting its horns madly as the S29A became airborne.
Morlake's sense of exultation did not last long. He had enough fuel to fly around the Earth. But his problem was to convince the people in authority that only by continuing the abandoned moon project could they ever again hope to be free of danger. Where, how would he start? What ought his pattern of action to be?
When he came right down to it, he hadn't really given that much thought.
III
Nine bullet-proof cars drew up before General Clark's headquarters one day some ten months after the bombing. There was a scurrying of men from the first four and the last four. Everywhere guns showed prominently, as the guards drew a cordon around the center car. As soon as the maneuvers were completed, a flunky hurried forward and graciously opened the door of the big machine. Then he moved back.
Senator Tormey stepped out. He frowned as he saw that no one had yet come out of the general's office to meet him. Then as the general himself appeared in the doorway, a smile wreathed the handsome though heavy face, and he walked over and shook hands with the officer.
'Got all the Morlake stuff ready to show me?' he asked.
'All ready,' Clark nodded. 'I'd have invited you to see it before if I'd known you were interested.'
Tormey took that as an apology. He had come a long way in the past four months. On B-day he had called for martial law, to last for six months, and had then found the army was not prepared to turn the government over to him at the specified time. The available press and radio echoed with the senator's protests. He had no ambitions himself, but it was time for the government to be returned to the civilians. As the ranking survivor of the Congress, it was his duty - and so on. And so on and so on.
That was the beginning. And as army ruthlessness, as personified by tens of thousands of officers, had as usual alienated ninety percent of the population, the senator was soon riding a crest of protest meetings, of which the army, in the person of General Clark, finally took cognizance.
The senator was invited to headquarters, and taken into the confidence of the military. He became a habitual member of General Clark's dice club, and his advice was sought on every important administrative problem. It was the army's bid for civilian support, and it seemed to work.
'This way,' said General Clark, 'to what we call the Morlake room.'
It was a small room. There was a desk and a chair in it, and a filing cabinet. On one wall was a huge map of North America, with pins stuck into it. The red pins indicated that Robert Morlake had definitely been seen in those areas. The green pins meant that he had 'almost certainly' been in the vicinity. The yellow pins were rumours, and the blue pins represented points at which a plane resembling S29A had been observed. Each pin was numbered and the numbers referred to a card index file, which contained a synopsized history of the hunt for Robert Morlake. The index itself was based on files and documents, which were kept in a cabinet beside the map.
'At first,' General Clark explained, 'Morlake's idea seemed to be to contact old friends of his. On the second day after refueling at Kane Field, he approached the residence of Professor Glidden in California… '
* * *
After watching Glidden Grove one whole day, Morlake got up at dawn and walked two miles to where the low, long building of Dr Glidden's research institute spread beside the banks of a winding stream. A caretaker was puttering beside the open door of a stucco, Hollywoodish laboratory. He answered Morlake's query curiously:
'Dorman? He lives with the professor, I guess the cook will be up by this time. That's the house, over there.'
It was a glassed, tree-sheltered bungalow. As Morlake strode along a walk lined with towering shrubs, a woman emerged from a side path that led up from the creek, and they almost collided.
It was the woman who was startled. Morlake said nothing. Ninety-four days on the prison farm had frozen his nerves.
The woman was dark-haired and blue-eyed; she wore a wrap-around dressing gown and a bathing cap. 'Mr Dorman,' she echoed. 'Oh, you mean the secretary.' Her manner became indifferent. 'Probably still in bed. It's a habit of people like that to sleep until it's time to punch the clock.'
Her tone was carelessly contemptuous. Morlake, who had been about to pass on politely, paused for a second look. She was not the world's most beautiful woman, but it seemed to him that he had never seen a more passionate face. Her lips were full and sensuous, her eyes large and bright, her manner immensely assured.
'Aren't you a little early,' she asked, 'for visiting the helo?'
She was irritating, and Morlake didn't like her at all. 'May I by any chance,' he asked, 'be speaking to Professor Glidden?'
The remark pleased her, for she laughed. She stepped confidently up to him, and hooked her arm in his. She said, 'I'll ask the cook which room is your friend's. You musn't mind me too much. I like to get up when the birds start singing, and it makes me cross to have to wait five hours before there's anybody to talk to. I'm the physical type. Immense energy; and the only reason my brain is any good at aE is because I never worry. Do you know anything about endocrinology?'
'Never heard of it,' said Morlake, truthfully.
'Thank God,' said the woman. She added. 'I've been swimming in the old swimming hole - enlarged by damming, cemented into a pool, and improved by a ten thousand dollar heating system for cool days and nights. Just a little gadget of the professor's, hot and cold running water. Would you like to know all the local gossip? I've only been a guest twenty-four hours, but I already know everything there is to know here.'
Morlake didn't doubt it. He was beginning to be fascinated. It cost him an effort to keep his mind to his purpose. The woman said, 'The world is absolutely wretched, detestable and incorrigible. Here it is little more than three months after B-day, and -'
'After what?'
'Bomb day. That's what the army calls it. You can't go on saying "the day the atomic bombs were dropped," or "day of the catastrophe." You can't even expect people to remember that B-day was July 17th, can you?'
She did not wait for an answer, for they had reached the house.
'Wait here,' she said. Til slip into my bedroom, and open the living room door for you.'
Morlake did not wait. The moment she disappeared around the corner, he followed. It had taken him a minute to catch on, but he was too conscious of danger to be fooled by a fast-talking woman. She had recognized him, and she would probably telephone the police before opening the front door. There were three patio doors along the side and all of them were unlocked, but only the third one opened into an unoccupied room.
He knew it was possible that the woman had snatched up a gun in passing, but he was beyond that kind of fear… The situation in the living room was ideal for melodrama. She was at the phone, her back to him, saying urgently, 'Keep trying! There must be an answer!' Morlake put his hand over the mouthpiece, and took the receiver from her instantly acquiescent fingers. For a long moment the woman sat frozen,and then slowly she turned and looked at him, her eyes widened.
Morlake did not replace the receiver, but stood there holding it tightly. He said in a monotone:
'How did you recognize me?'
She shrugged. 'Newspaper pictures all over the house. Your friend, Dorman, talking about you, saying he can't believe you're guilty. But you are, aren't you? I've seen desperate men before.'
Where? Morlake wondered, but all he said was, 'Who were you phoning?'
'The police, of course.'
Answering that required no thought.
'The police would have replied - ' he began. And then he stopped, as the operator's voice sounded from the earphone. He jerked the instrument up. 'Yes,' he said. 'Hello.'
'The party the lady called does not answer,' trilled the female voice.
Morlake said, 'Are you sure you have the right number?' Beside him the woman gasped. Before he could guess her intention, she reached down, snatched the cord, and, with a jerk that must have jarred her body, tore the wires out of the box…
* * *
In the Morlake room at supreme headquarters, General Clark paused in his narrative. Senator Tormey said slowly:
'Who was the woman? Did you find out?'
The officer shook his head. T can't remember the alias she used at Glidden Grove, but that name and a dozen others that she employed are all in the index there.' Clark motioned toward the cabinet.
'You think she was after Morlake?'
'Definitely.'
'How did she happen to be at that particular spot within two days after Morlake's escape?'
'That,' said the general, 'was what worried Morlake. Then and there he abandoned his plan to approach old friends of his, and attempt, through them, to build up the nucleus of his organization. He realized that he had been forestalled by a group that had anticipated his plans and made a thorough , study of his life history. When we came on the scene we found that virtually every friend he ever possessed had been under surveillance on that morning. A hundred different methods were used to gain intimate access to the different people in-
'How do you account for their preparation?' The senator was standing with closed eyes.
'It is our opinion,' said Clark, 'that they intended to rescue him from the prison farm and kill him.'
'But how did they know about him?'
The general hesitated. 'Our theory there is a little wild, but the men who have gone over Morlake's written statement and court-martial evidence grew interested in the flare of light that enveloped the plane immediately after the bomb had rebuffed Morlake's attempt to throw it off course. We think that light was used to take a television picture of the S29A.
* * *
It was Morlake who broke the silence in the living room of Professor Glidden's bungalow.
'Where is your car?' he said.
The woman seemed resigned. 'I'll get my car keys, and drive you back to your plane. I suppose that's where you're heading.'
He went with her, conscious that he could trust no one, now that he knew. And that there wasn't time to talk to Dan Dorman, or to ask the questions he had intended to ask Dan's employer, Professor Glidden. He had come to Dan first of all, because of his connection with the world-famous physicist. Depressing to be here at the spot, and realize that he had to leave without having accomplished anything.
Ten minutes later, the woman parked the car a hundred feet from where Sadie was drawn up under trees. 'It's a pretty plane,' she said. 'How fast can it go?'
'Just over a hundred miles a minute,' said Morlake carelessly. 'Get out.'
'W-what?' She must have thought he was going to kill her, for she turned pale. 'Please,' she begged, 'I'm as innocent as you are. I know nothing.'
Morlake gazed at her curiously, but he said nothing. Let her sweat for a minute. He didn't have time to question her, and so he couldn't judge how deeply she was involved. Not that it would have made any difference. He was neither judge nor executioner. He locked the car doors, then slipped the keys into his pocket. He saw that the woman had regained control.
'It's only two miles,' she said. T ought to get there before breakfast. Goodbye and - good luck.'
He sent the plane straight up until the world was black, and stars were points of light above him. Then he flashed out over the Pacific, and, turning, came back in, coasting over trees straight into a deep arroyo. His new hiding place was less than half a mile from Manakee, California, the town four miles from Glidden Grove, where the telephone exchange must be located.
A bus coming along the nearby highway made his trip easy, and enable him to inquire about the location of the exchange… There were three girls at the switchboard. One of them, a washed-out looking blonde, said:
'Something went wrong with the line, so I drove in. Did you get the party?'
'Yep, I got her, then I couldn't get you.'
Another woman! Morlake felt a thrill, then a sharp anxiety. It was as he had feared. The connection had been established. He hesitated, but there was no drawing back.
'Will you call again?'
'Sure. Got the number?'
Morlake was as ready for that as he could be. 'Let me see. Hmm, can't think of it offhand. But I have it here somewhere.'
As he began to search aimlessly through his pockets, he saw that she was examining her notebook. She looked up.
'Never mind, I wrote it down. Lucy Desjardins, 476 Hartford Street, Crestolanto 9153.'
For a moment Morlake could only trust himself to nod; then it was time to speak again.
'Just a moment,' he said.
'Yes?'
'Did the party, uh, say anything, when you couldn't get her through to me?'
'Yeah, she said it didn't matter or something like that.'
'Oh!' said Morlake. 'In that case don't bother.' He mustered a laugh. 'She's a damned touchy woman. I don't want to get her down on me again.'
He went out, perspiring but momentarily relieved and jubilant. The feeling didn't last long. The woman had said it didn't matter. That meant she had understood. The gang would be swinging into action.
He hailed a cruising taxi, and had it take him to the suburbs. As soon as it was out of sight, he raced along the highway and across the fields to his machine. The moment he was inside the cockpit, he turned on the radar, and waited.
At first there was nothing. The sky was empty, except for a haze of immensely high clouds. After thirty-seven minutes, a shadow darkened the screen. It was too far away, too high to form a clear image. But it was unmistakable, and it moved along with great speed at a height of about a hundred and twenty-five miles.
Morlake kept spinning his radio dial, and suddenly it caught and stopped, as a voice said:
'… Got away, looks like. We've been east and north and south, and out over the water, and there's not a sign of anything moving. His machine; must be capable of far greater speed than we believed.'
The answering voice was faint. 'Don't give up. Take nothing for granted.'
A third voice broke in loudly. 'Hey, who's that talking? This is army station Miklaw. Identify yourself.'
There was a faint laugh from the nearest voice, then silence.
IV
For Morlake, hiding, waiting, planning, in the arroyo near Manakee, time passed slowly. It was a strangely sad period, one man alone wondering how he could convince a nation that he was right and their leaders were wrong. Ghosts of forty million dead adults and children haunted his dreams, but already the fact that they had existed was a shadowy fact in his mind. To him, who had no family, and who had had the experience of friends dying in a war, death was not the ogre that it was to those who had never been trained to face it.
Far more real than the death that had struck was the knowledge that but there somewhere on the surface of the Earth, cunning devil-men were waiting for the slightest hint that their identity had been discovered, that, to save themselves, they must be prepared to rend the entire Earth.
Their leaders would deny all accusations, would charge a conspiracy, and, with the tremendous advantage of control of the moon, would be able to launch bombs toward any target at will.
Morlake quailed at the picture, and knew that his new plan to seek out the gang must parallel and complement his greater purpose of forcing a reluctant people to crawl up from the caves of fear into which their minds had collapsed, up to the special bravery or imagination that would be needed for the conquest of space.
At dawn, on this third morning in the arroyo, Morlake made sure the radar screen was blank, and then flew in a great circle around the Capistrano radar station of the army, to Crestolanto. He spent all that day watching 476 Hartford
Street. It was a plain two-story structure, and during the morning it showed no sign of hie. About mid-afternoon, a woman came out of the front door and walked to the nearby market. It was not the woman who had been visiting Professor Glidden's home, but a slim, distinguished-looking young woman with hair slightly graying at the temples.
When she had come back, he wrote a letter to General Clark, describing what he intended to do. He mailed the letter shortly after dark, and then he waited for black night. It was half past nine by his watch when he crawled through a window, and moved stealthily toward the living room, where a light was visible through a partly open door.
* * *
Senator Tormey asked, 'And then what happened?'
General Clark shook his head. 'We have no direct information.'
He pointed to a red pin rooted in a small West Coast city.
'There, Morlake made one of his four attempts to interest the general public. According to our reports, a woman did all the preliminary advertising for a lecture Morlake intended to give. According to our information, it was this second woman. The lecture was a flop. About a dozen people turned up, most of them old women, who thought it was a new religion, in which the moon had been proved to be heaven.'
'Then it would appear that Morlake and this, uh, nameless woman joined forces.'
'Never,' said the general, 'have I had reports of a bolder couple. They were quite cautious at first. Now they're absolutely fearless.'
The senator was silent. He wore contact lenses, behind which his intense blue eyes gleamed with alert fires.
General Clark walked to a window, and gazed out past the formal park toward the distant blue of hills. Without looking around he said:
'Last night you asked me about Morlake, and I invited you to come here. This is in line with the army's policy of cooperating with elected representatives of the people. As you know, we intend to permit the congressional elections in 1982 and so the country will resume its normal democratic functioning. What you do not know is that, though the elections will be held as scheduled, the announcement about them was made with the intention of lulling the enemy.'
From behind him, Tormey said slowly, T don't think I understand.'
The general turned to face the bigger man. 'When Morlake escaped with S29A, I received a garbled account of what had happened. It was so garbled, in fact, the loss of the plane so important, that I flew to Texas by jet, saw the court-martial papers of Morlake, and began to realize what tremendous information had been bottled up. Naturally, I relieved Herrold of his command instantly, and by the end of the week we had the information which I have described. Better still, our radar station at Capistrano saw the image of the enemy spaceship which was searching for Morlake, and so we had definite evidence that what he stated in his letter was correct.
'When Capistrano saw it, the spaceship was about two hundred miles up. They couldn't estimate the speed, but it was terrific'
He went on matter-of-factly.
'Normally, we might have paid no attention to such a report. So many, many reports come in hour after hour to all military districts. But at this time, on the basis of Morlake's written statement to General Herrold, our experts'decided that they had narrowed the possible origins of the bombs to three:
'Two of them were the likeliest points on Earth. If we decided on either of these, we'd have to assume that our men or our instruments for detecting radioactivity were at fault. We rejected these possibilities because the piles necessary for the creation of vast quantities of radioactive materials could not escape detection. That left the third alternative, which assumed the bombs to be of extraterrestrial origin. I accordingly ordered the resumption of the moon project, which - as you know - had actually completed nearly thirty ships when Congress cut off its funds.'
Senator Tormey said gravely, T regret that I had something to do with that cut-off, but it was a matter of too much deficit spending.'
'Unfortunately,' said the general, 'one of the storage places for the spaceships was in Georgia, and that entire base was destroyed by a direct hit. Twenty-two spaceships were destroyed. However, there is another storage area - it would be unwise for me to tell you where it is.'
'Perhaps I could inspect them,' said the senator. 'How many ships are there?'
'Five.'
'That many?' Tormey sounded impressed.
'They'll be operational next week,' sad General Clark.
The senator made a strange sound. It was not a word, and he did not repeat it. Instead, he walked unevenly to a chair and sat down.
'General,' he mumbled at last, 'you make me dizzy. You mean that all this uproar about Morlake has been unnecessary?'
'Very necessary.' Clark was deadly serious. 'His desperate efforts to, get us to do something made it look as if we were paying no attention to him. We even ridiculed Morlake's propaganda. Personally, I think Morlake caught on, but right now I'd give a lot to have a talk with him. The time had come for coordinated action.'
The senator said blankly, 'But this means war.'
'We'll smash them in one day,' Clark said coldly. 'No one else has dared to mobilize, for fear of rousing our suspicion. We'll put a million men into their cities overnight. We'll execute every man who had anything to do with the bombing of this country. For once, no one will have an excuse.'
'And all this in about two weeks?'
'Possibly less.'
There was a long silence. At last the senator climbed to his feet.
'It seems kind of funny after that, to talk of social activity, but are you still having your crap game tonight?'
'We don't dare change our habits now.'
'How many will be there?'
'Six, besides yourself.'
'Wonder if I could bring along a young friend of my wife's?'
'Why, sure. Which reminds me. When is your lady coming down here?'
Tormey smiled. 'Couldn't tell you. She thinks I ought to retire from politics, and therefore she won't establish an official residence. She's pretty much of a traveler.'
They parted on that note.
'Gentlemen,' said Senator Tormey, 'this is my friend, Morley Roberts.'
There was a grunting response. Morlake sat down, and watched the dice bounce briskly from the far end of the table. He did not look immediately at General Clark, but concentrated on making his first bet. Presently, he picked up his winnings for the roll, and pressed his arm ever so lightly against the gun in his shoulder holster. It was still there, ready for the crisis which ought to come in a few minutes.
He lost twice in a row, and then won three times on his own roll. As he gave up the dice finally, he took his first look at General Clark. A pair of eyes as sharp as his own met that one searching glance. The general said casually: 'So it's me you're here to contact, Roberts?' Morlake brought his hand to the edge of the table, with the fingers held slightly downward and barely touching the surface. From there it was one foot to his gun.
He said steadily: 'General, you're a smart man, but you haven't figured it quite right.'
There was an undertone in his voice, the beginning of tension, the beginning of deadly intent. Like darkness blotting out day, the atmosphere of the room changed. Some of the officers looked at each other, puzzled. Senator Tormey said: 'It's getting warm in here. Uh. I'll call one of my guards and have him open the windows wider.'
'Iil do it sir.' Morlake was on his feet, without waiting for acquiescence.
He examined the windows, and, as he had expected, the 'glass' was a bullet-proof plastic. What he did then was rooted in a profound discovery he had made during the previous six months: the discovery that if you say you w;ll do something and then go and do something similar, no one will notice the difference - for a while.
Without a qualm, he closed and locked the three windows, and then he returned to the table. The dice rolled whitely against the background of the green cloth. Senator Tormey won from several of the officers. As he was raking it in, General Clark said:
'Morley Roberts. The name is familiar, but it is the face that makes a better identification. Suppose we change the name around a little, and say Robert Morlake, former Captain army air forces, court-martialed, thirty years at hard labor. Am I getting warm?'
The general's voice went up, 'Wait, gentlemen!' The men at the table froze, two with their chairs pushed back, one with a hand under his coat. The senator was the first to relax. He was sitting at the side of the table, and he hummed a small tune under his breath. Clark said softly:
'You came here tonight as the guest of Senator Tormey. I presume he knows who you are.'
'I'm sure,' Morlake said, 'that the senator must have recognized me, but you will know better than I if he's made inquiries about me in the last two days. But now I'd better hurry. Gentlemen, this is a dangerous moment, not because of me directly - I'm only a catalytic agent -but because my appearance gave a certain person an opportunity to carry out a previously conceived plan.
'It was my intention,' Morlake went on, 'that he should use me for this purpose so that I might use him for mine.
'A brief case history is in order: Picture a wealthy congressman, unscrupulous and with unlimited ambitions. It is very easy for him to think of himself as a man of destiny, frustrated by the stupidity of others. Having become senator, he discovered in two successive presidential campaigns that he had no chance to become chief of state. His wife began to realize shortly after she married him in 1974 that his rage at his failure was irrational, his lust for revenge completely unbalanced. But she didn't guess at the meaning of his schemes nor at the purpose of the organization he set up in the South until B-day; the total violence and hate in the man - she told me - was concealed by a superficial courtesy and a courtly manner. As you know, he was in a safe place on B-day - very fortuitous. Afterward, his main opposition was the army. It was clever of him to authorize martial law - which would have been done anyway. It was clever because he was later able to use it in his propaganda.'
Morlake paused, and smiled to relax his eyes, to loosen his body, because the moment had come.
'His big opportunity came - it seemed to him - when I appeared on the scene, as guest of his wife. He saw it as his chance to kill General Clark and his staff, and throw the blame on me. I, of course, the highly publicized escaped army convict, would also be found dead, and - '
Morlake broke off. He said. "What's the matter, Senator, has your nerve gone? You're not going to go down Hke a weakling, are you?'
The sweat was almost a mask on the heavy face. Tormey brought his hand up, and put it in his vest pocket. He fumbled for a long moment. Morlake said:
T see, Senator, that you're activating your little radio, calling your agents outside.'
As if to punctuate the words, there was a crash of bullets on the window. Everybody except Morlake jumped. Morlake said tantalizingly, 'Too bad.'
He reached across the table, and snatched a tiny instrument from the senator's vest pocket. The man grabbed angrily at his hand, but he was too slow.
'Hmm,' said Morlake. 'One of the printed variety.'
With a visible effort, the other man straightened. 'Never heard such nonsense,' he snarled. 'You've arranged this drama with bullets against the window. If you think such a simple scheme is going to work against me, you're - '
He stopped. His eyes, staring straight into Morlake's, widened. He must have realized that his denials were meaningless here, that the plans already boiling in his mind, to use the radio and the press, his control of the party, of the country, his skill at propaganda - all that meant nothing to this deadly young man. He had not even time to cry out in sudden terrified realization of his fate.
* * *
The two shots that Morlake fired broke the big man's lungs. Tormey slumped over on the table, then slid down to the floor. Morlake paid no attention to the armed officers in the room. They could have shot him as he knelt beside the dying man, but his very helplessness was his safeguard. They watched, their bodies rigid, and they must have been restrained, too, by the knowledge that he had acted with remorseless logic.
Morlake neither saw nor worried. The senator's eyes were open and staring widely. There was blood on his lips.
'Senator, what is the name of the enemy?'
That got them. General Clark came closer. An officer who had gone to calm the guards at the door half turned back into the room. Even Senator Tormey stiffened.
'You can go to hell,' he muttered.
Morlake said, 'Hurry, man, you've only got a minute - a minute.'
The horror of that struck deep. The thick face twisted. 'Die!' the senator mumbled. 'Why - I'm going to die.' The idea seemed to grow on him. He struggled, gasping for breath, then subsided. He lay so still for a second that he looked dead. His eyes opened wearily. He looked up, and mumbled:
'Was that my wife… at Crestolanto, in that house?'
Morlake nodded. 'She used your organization. She received all California reports. That enabled her to locate me no matter which local agent saw me first. She had decided that if I came to Crestolanto she would ask me to help her. It was she who toured the country with me for all those weeks.'
General Clark dropped down beside Morlake. 'Senator,' he said, 'for God's sake, the name of the country, the enemy?'
The dying man looked at him with the beginning of a sneer on his lips.
'We got even with you nigger lovers, didn't we?' he said. He laughed a satanic laughter, that ended hideously in a gush of blood. Slowly, the big head grew limp, the eyes though still open took on a sightless glare. A dead man lay on the floor.
The two men, Clark and Morlake, climbed to their feet. Morlake said in a low voice, 'Gentlemen, you have your answer.' He saw they still did not comprehend what he had suspected for long now.
General Clark was grim. 'When I think we've been giving him our inmost secrets for months - ' He choked, and held out his hand. 'Thanks.'
Morlake said nothing. His first sharp sense of victory was yielding to an intense gloom. He grew aware that the older man's penetrating gaze was on him. Clark misread his expression.
'I know what's ailing you,' Clark said. 'But you're wrong. We have spaceships.' He described the planned attack on the moon.
Morlake nodded, but his depression remained. Such an attack would be necessary, to locate the launching sites of the bombs, and to find out where and how in America Tormey and his group obtained them. But that was incidental. He accepted Tormey's last words literally.
The first atomic war had been, not an international, but a civil war. And now that Tormey was dead, the gang would scatter. A gang of race-prejudiced Americans.
The war was over. Irrevocably.