EMPIRE (21 page)

Craven did not reply, merely hunched closer over the controls, eyes watching flickering dials.

Greg jogged Russ’s elbow. “That must be the apparatus over there, in the corner of the room. That triangular affair. A condenser of some sort. That stuff they’re throwing at us must be super-saturated force fields and they’d need a space-field condenser for that.”

Russ nodded. “We’ll take care of that.”

His fingers moved swiftly and a transport beam whipped out, riding the television beam. Bands of force wrapped around the triangular machine and wrenched viciously. In the screen the apparatus disappeared . . . simply was gone. It now lay within the
Invincible’s
control room, jerked there by the tele-transport.

The flood of dazzling light reaching out from the
Interplanetarian
snapped off and the little green ameba things were gone. The shrill whistle of escaping air stopped as the eaten screens clamped down again, sealing in the atmosphere despite the holes bored through the metal plates.

In the television screen, Craven leaped from his chair, was staring with Stutsman at the place where the concentrator had stood. The machine had been ripped from a welded base and jagged, bright, torn metal gleamed in the control room lights. Snapped cables and broken busbars lay piled about the room.

“What happened?” Stutsman was screaming. They heard Craven laugh at the terror in the other’s voice. “Manning just walked in and grabbed it away from us.”

“But he couldn’t! We had the screen up! He couldn’t get through!”

Craven shrugged. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Probably he could clean out the whole place if he wanted to.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Russ, judiciously.

He stripped bank after bank of the other ship’s photo-cells from their moorings, wrecked the force field controls, ripped cables from the engines and left the ship without means of collecting power, without means of using power, without means of movement, of offense or defense.

* * * *

He
leaned back in his chair and regarded the screen with deep satisfaction.

“That,” he decided, “should hold them for a while.”

He hauled the pipe out of his pocket and filled it from the battered leather pouch.

Greg regarded him with a quizzical stare. “You sent the televisor back in time. You got it inside the
Interplanetarian
before Craven had run up his screen and then you brought it forward.”

“You guessed it,” said Russ, tamping the tobacco into the bowl. “We should have thought of that long ago. We have a time factor there. In fact, the whole thing revolves around time. We move the televisor, we use the tele-transport, by giving the objects we wish to move an acceleration in time.”

Greg wrinkled his brow. “Maybe that means we can really investigate the past, or even the future. Can sit here before our screen and see everything that has happened, everything that is going to happen.”

Russ shook his head. “I don’t know, Greg. Notice, though, that we got no screen response until the televisor came up out of the past and actually reached the point which coincided with the present. That is, the screen and the televisor itself have to be on the same time level for them to operate. We might modify the screen, even modify the televisor so that we could travel in time, but it will take a lot of research, a lot of work. And especially it will take a whale of a lot of power.”

“We have the power,” said Greg.

Russ moved the lighter back and forth over the tobacco, igniting it carefully. Clouds of blue smoke swirled around his head. He spoke out of the smoke.

“Right now,” he said, “we better see how Craven and our other friends are getting along. I didn’t like the way Stutsman was talking or the way he was swinging that gun around. And Chambers wasn’t anywhere in sight. There’s something screwy about the entire thing.”

“What
are we going to do now?” demanded Stutsman.

Craven grinned at him. “That’s up to you. Remember, you’re the master mind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things.” He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-out apparatus. “Well, there you are. Go ahead and run the joint.”

“But you will have to help,” pleaded Stutsman, his face twisted until it seemed that he was suffering intense physical agony. “You know what to do. I don’t.”

Craven shook his head. “There isn’t any use starting. Manning will be along almost anytime now. We’ll wait and see what he has in mind.”

“Manning!” shrieked Stutsman, waving the pistol wildly. “Always Manning. One would think you were working for Manning.”

“He’s the big shot out in this little corner of space right now,” Craven pointed out. “There isn’t any way you can get around that.”

Stutsman backed carefully away. His gun came up and he looked at Craven appraisingly, as if selecting his targets.

“Put down that gun,” said a voice.

Gregory Manning stood between Stutsman and Craven. There had been no foggy forerunner of his appearance. He had just snapped out of empty air.

Stutsman stared at him, his eyes widening, but the gun remained steady in his hand.

“Look out, Craven,” warned Greg. “He’s going to fire, and it will go right through me and hit you.”

There
was the thump of a falling body as Craven hurled himself out of his chair, hit the floor and rolled. Stutsman’s gun vomited flame. The spouting flame passed through Greg’s image, blasted against the chair in which Craven had sat, fused it until it fell in on itself.

“Russ,” said Greg quietly, “disarm this fellow before he hurts somebody.”

An unseen force reached out and twisted the gun from Stutsman’s hand, flung it to one side. Swiftly Stutsman’s hands were forced behind his back and held there by invisible bonds.

Stutsman cried out, tried to struggle, but he was unable to move. It was as if giant hands had gripped him, were holding him in a viselike clutch.

“Thanks, Manning,” said Craven, getting up off the floor. “The fool would have shot this time. He’s threatened it for days. He has been developing a homicidal mania.”

“We don’t need to worry about him now,” declared Greg. He turned around to face Craven. “Where’s Chambers?”

“Stutsman locked him up,” said Craven. “I imagine he has the key in his pocket. Locked him up in the stateroom. Chambers jumped him and tried to take the gun away from him and Stutsman laid him out, hit him over the head. He kept Chambers locked up after that. Hasn’t allowed anyone to go near the room. Hasn’t even given him food and water. That was three days ago.”

“Get the key out of his pocket,” directed Greg. “Go and see how Chambers is.”

Alone in the control room with Stutsman, Greg looked at him.

“I have a score to settle with you, Stutsman,” he said. “I had intended to let it ride, but not now.”

“You can’t touch me,” blustered Stutsman. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

“You’re bluffing. You’ve got a lot of tricks, but you can’t do the things you would like me to think you can. You’ve got Chambers and Craven fooled, but not me.”

“It may be that I can offer you definite proof.”

Chambers staggered over the threshold. His clothing was rumpled. A rude bandage was wound around his head. His face was haggard and his eyes red.

“Hello, Manning,” he said. “I suppose you’ve won. The Solar System must be in your control by now.”

He lifted his hand to his mustache, brushed it, a feeble attempt at playing the old role he’d acted so long.

“We’ve won,” said Greg quietly, “but you’re wrong about our being in control. The governments are in the hands of the people, where they should be.”

Chambers nodded. “I see,” he mumbled. “Different people, different ideas.” His eyes rested on Stutsman and Greg saw sudden rage sweep across the gray, haggard face. “So you’ve got him, have you? What are you going to do with him? What are you going to do with all of us?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it,” said Greg. “I’ve principally been thinking about Stutsman here.”

“He mutinied,” rasped Chambers. “He seized the ship, turned the crew against me.”

“And the penalty for that,” said Greg, quietly, “is death. Death by walking in space.”

Stutsman writhed within the bands of force that held him tight. His face contorted. “No, damn you! You can’t do that! Not to me, you can’t!”

“Shut up,” roared Chambers and Stutsman quieted.

“I was thinking, too,” said Greg, “that at his order thousands of people were mercilessly shot down back in the Solar System. Stood against a wall and mowed down. Others were killed like wild animals in the street. Thousands of them.”

H
e moved slowly toward Stutsman and the man cringed.

“Stutsman,” he said, “you’re a butcher. You’re a stench in the nostrils of humanity. You aren’t fit to live.”

“Those,” said Craven, “are my sentiments exactly.”

“You hate me,” screamed Stutsman. “All of you hate me. You are doing this because you hate me.”

“Everyone hates you, Stutsman,” said Greg. “Every living person hates you. You have a cloud of hate hanging over you as black and wide as space.”

The man closed his eyes, trying to break free of the bonds.

“Bring me a spacesuit,” snapped Greg, watching Stutsman’s face.

Craven brought it and dropped it at Stutsman’s feet.

“All right, Russ,” said Greg. “Turn him loose.”

Stutsman swayed and almost fell as the bands of force released him.

“Get into that suit,” ordered Greg.

Stutsman hesitated, but something he saw in Greg’s face made him lift the suit, step into it, fasten it about his body.

“What are you going to do with me?” he whimpered. “You aren’t going to take me back to Earth again, are you? You aren’t going to make me stand trial?”

“No,” said Greg, gravely, “we aren’t taking you back to Earth. And you’re standing trial right now.”

Stutsman read his fate in the cold eyes that stared into his. Chattering frightenedly, he rushed at Greg, plunged through him, collided with the wall of the ship and toppled over, feebly attempting to rise.

Invisible hands hoisted him to his feet, gripped him, held him upright. Greg walked toward him, stood facing him.

“Stutsman,” he said, “you have four hours of air. That will give you four hours to think, to make your peace with death.” He turned toward the other two. Chambers nodded grimly. Craven said nothing.

“And now,” said Greg to Craven, “if you will fasten down his helmet.”

The helmet clanged shut, shutting out the pleas and threats that came from Stutsman’s throat.

* * * *

Stutsman
saw distant stars, cruel, gleaming eyes that glared at him. Empty space fell away on all sides.

Numbed by fear, he realized where he was. Manning had picked him up and thrown him far into space . . . out into that waste where for hundreds of light years there was only the awful nothingness of space.

He was less than a speck of dust, in this great immensity of emptiness. There was no up or down, no means of orientation.

Loneliness and terror closed in on him, a terrible agony of fear. In four hours his air would be gone and then he would die! His body would swirl and eddy through this great cosmic ocean. It would never be found. It would remain here, embalmed by the cold of space, until the last clap of eternity.

There was one way, the easy way. His hand reached up and grasped the connection between his helmet and the air tank. One wrench and he would die swiftly, quickly . . . instead of letting death stalk him through the darkness for the next four hours.

He shivered and his hand loosened its hold, dropped away. He was afraid to hasten death. He wanted to put it off. He was afraid of death . . . horribly afraid.

The stars mocked him and he seemed to hear hooting laughter from somewhere far away. Curiously, it sounded like his own laughter. . . .

* * * *

“I’ll
make it easy for you, Manning,” Chambers said. “I know that all of us are guilty. Guilty in the eyes of the people and the law. Guilty in your eyes. If we had won, there would have been no penalty. There’s never a penalty for the one who wins.”

“Penalty,” said Greg, his eyes half smiling. “Why, yes, I think there is. I’m going to order you aboard the
Invincible
for something to eat and to get some rest.”

“You mean to say that we aren’t prisoners?”

Greg shook his head. “Not prisoners,” he said. “Why, I came out here to guide you back to Earth. I hauled you out here and got you into this jam. It was up to me to get you out of it. I would have done the same for Stutsman, too, but . . .”

He hesitated and looked at Chambers.

Chambers stared back and slowly nodded.

“Yes, Manning,” he said. “I think I understand.”

Chambers
lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.

“I wish you could see it my way, Manning,” he said. “There’s no place for me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I tried and failed. I’m just a has-been back there.”