The Best of Clifford D. Simak Page 8

  Scorio nodded. "Yeah, you're right."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Paris-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic ship that rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lights of eastern Europe.

  Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. There was nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and the other occupants of the ship... alone in the dark world that surrounded them.

  But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides the pilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the three stodgy traveling men who were his fellow passengers.

  Wilson's hair ruffled at the base of his skull, tingling with an unknown fear that left him shaken.

  A voice whispered in his ear: "Harry Wilson. So you are running away!"

  Just a tiny voice that seemed hardly a voice at all, it seemed at once to come from far away and yet from very near. The voice, with an edge of coldness on it, was one he never would forget. He cowered in his seat, whimpering.

  The voice came again: "Didn't I tell you that you couldn't run away? That no matter where you went, I'd find you?"

  "Go away," Wilson whispered huskily. "Leave me alone. Haven't you hounded me enough?"

  "No," answered the voice, "not enough. Not yet. You sold us out. You warned Chambers about our energy and now Chambers is sending men to kill us. But they won't succeed, Wilson."

  "You can't hurt me," said Wilson defiantly. "You can't do anything but talk to me. You're trying to drive me mad, but you can't. I won't let you. I'm not going to pay any more attention to you."

  The whisper chuckled.

  "You can't," argued Wilson wildly. "All you can do is talk to me. You've never done anything but that. You drove me out of New York and out of London and now you're driving me out of Paris. But Berlin is as far as I will go. I won't listen to you any more."

  "Wilson," whispered the voice, "look inside your bag. The bag, Wilson, where you are carrying that money. That stack of credit certificates. Almost eleven thousand dollars, what is left of the twenty thousand Chambers paid you."

  With a wild cry Wilson clawed at his bag, snapped it open, pawed through it.

  The credit certificates were gone!

  "You took my money," he shrieked. "You took everything I had. I haven't got a cent. Nothing except a few dollars in my pocket."

  "You haven't got that either, Wilson," whispered the voice.

  There was a sound of ripping cloth as something like a great, powerful hand flung aside Wilson's coat, tore away the inside pocket. There was a brief flash of a wallet and a bundle of papers, which vanished.

  The hostess was hurrying toward him.

  "Is there something wrong?"

  "They took..." Wilson began and stopped.

  What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across the world had robbed him?

  The three traveling men were looking at him.

  "I'm sorry, miss," he stammered. "I really am. I fell asleep and dreamed."

  He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner of his seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, high in the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin... stranded without money, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and the few personal effects in his bag.

  Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The plane was entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, was no place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They might think he was a spy. He might be cited for illegal entry. He might be framed by secret police.

  Terror perched on his shoulder and whispered to him. He shivered violently and drew farther back into the corner of the seat. He clasped his hands, beat them against his huddled knees.

  He would cable friends back in America and have them identify him and vouch for his character. He would borrow some money from them, just enough to get back to America. But whom would he cable? And with aching bitterness in his breast. Harry Wilson came face to face with the horrible realization that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the Solar System, was there a single person who was his friend. There was no one to help him.

  He bowed his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders jerking spasmodically, the sobs racking his body.

  The traveling men stared at him unable to understand. The hostess looked briskly helpless. Wilson knew he looked like a scared fool and he didn't care.

  He was scared.

  * * *

  Gregory Manning riffled the sheaf of credit certificates, the wallet, the passport and pile of other papers that lay upon the desk in front of him.

  "That closes one little incident," he said grimly. "That takes care of our friend Wilson."

  "Maybe you were a bit too harsh with him, Greg," suggested Russell Page.

  Greg shook his head. "He was a traitor, the lowest thing alive. He sold the confidence we placed in him. He traded something that was not his to trade. He did it for money and now I've taken that money from him."

  He shoved the pile of certificates to one side.

  "Now I've got this stuff," he said "I don't know what to do with it. We don't want to keep it."

  "Why not send it to Chambers?" suggested Russ. "He will find the passport and the money on his desk in the morning. Give him something to think about tomorrow."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Scorio snarled at the four men: "I want you to get the thing done right. I don't want bungling. Understand?"

  The bulky, flat-faced man with the scar across his cheek shuffled uneasily. "We went over it a dozen times. We know just what to do."

  He grinned at Scorio, but the grin was lopsided, more like a sneering grimace. At one time the man had failed to side-step a heat ray and it had left a neat red line drawn across the right cheek, nipped the end of the ear.

  "All right, Pete," said Scorio, glaring at the man, "your job is the heavy work, so just keep your mind on it. You've got the two heaters and the kit."

  Pete grinned lopsidedly again. "Yeah, my own kit. I can open anything hollow with this rig."

  "You got a real job tonight," snarled Scorio. "Two doors and a safe. Sure you can do it?"

  "Just leave it to me," Pete growled.

  "Chizzy, you're to pilot," Scorio snapped. "Know the coordinates?"

  "Sure," said Chizzy, "know them by heart. Do it with my eyes shut."

  "Keep your eyes open. We can't have anything go wrong. This is too important. You swoop in at top speed and land on the roof. Stand by the controls and keep a hand on the big heater just in case of trouble. Pete, Max and Reg will go to the lockdoor. Reg will stay there with the buzzer and three drums of ammunition."

  He whirled on Reg. "You got that ammunition?"

  Reg nodded emphatically. "Four drums of it," he said. "One solid round in the gun. Another drum of solid and two explosive."

  "There's a thousand rounds in each drum," snapped Scorio, "but they last only a minute, so do your firing in bursts."

  "I ain't handled buzzers all these years without knowing something about them."

  "There's only two men there," said Scorio, "and they'll probably be asleep. Come down with your motor dead. The lab roof is thick and the plane landing on those thick tires won't wake them. But be on your guard all the time. Pete and Max will go through the lockdoor into the laboratory and open the safe. Dump all the papers and money and whatever else you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the plane and take off. When you're clear of the building, turn the heaters on it. I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don't leave even a button unmelted. Get it?"

  "SURE, chief," said Pete. He dusted his hands together.

  "Now get going. Beat it."

  The four men turned and filed out of the room, through the door leading to the tumbledown warehouse where was hidden the streamlined metal ship. Swiftly they entered it and the
ship nosed gently upward, blasting out through a broken, frameless sky-light, climbing up and up, over the gleaming spires of New York.

  Back in the room hung with steel-cloth curtains, alone, Scorio lit a cigarette and chuckled. "They won't have a chance," he said.

  "Who won't?" asked a tiny voice from almost in front of him.

  "Why, Manning and Page..." said Scorio. and then stopped. The fire of the match burned down and scorched his fingers. He dropped it. "Who asked that?" he roared.

  "I did," said the piping voice.

  Scorio looked down. A three-inch man sat on a matchbox on the desk!

  "Who are you?" the gangster shouted.

  "I'm Manning," said the little man. "The one you're going to kill. Don't you remember?" "Damn you!" shrieked Scorio. His hand flipped open a drawer and pulled out a flame pistol. The muzzle of the pistol came up and blasted. Screwed down to its smallest diameter, the gun's aim was deadly. A straight lance of flame, no bigger than a pencil, streamed out, engulfed the little man, bored into the table top. The box of matches exploded with a gush of red that was a dull flash against the blue blaze of the gun.

  But the figure of the man stood within the flame! Stood there and waved an arm at Scorio. The piping voice came out of the heart of the gun's breath.

  "Maybe I'd better get a bit smaller. Make me harder to hit. More sport that way."

  * * *

  Scorio's finger lifted from the trigger. The flame snapped off. Laboriously climbing out of the still smoking furrow left in the oaken table top was Greg Manning, not more than an inch tall now.

  The gangster laid the gun on the table, stepped closer, warily. With the palm of a mighty hand he swatted viciously at the little figure.

  "I got you now!"

  But the figure seemed to ooze upright between his fingers, calmly stepped off his hand onto the table. And now it began to grow.

  Watching it, Scorio saw it grow to six inches and there it stopped.

  "What are you?" he breathed.

  "I told you," said the little image. "I'm Gregory Manning. The man you set out to kill. I've watched every move you've made and known everything you planned."

  "But that isn't possible," protested Scorio. "You're out on the West Coast. This is some trick. I'm just seeing things."

  "You aren't seeing anything imaginary. I'm really here, in this room with you. I could lift my finger and kill you if I wished... and maybe I should."

  Scorio stepped back a pace.

  "But I'm not going to," said Manning. "I have something better saved for you. Something more appropriate."

  "You can't touch me!"

  "Look," said Manning sternly. He pointed his finger at a chair. It suddenly grew cloudy, became a wisp of trailing smoke, was gone.

  The gangster backed away, eyes glued to the spot where the chair had vanished.

  "Look here," piped the little voice. Scorio jerked his head around and looked.

  The chair was in Manning's hand. A tiny chair, but the very one that had disappeared from the room a moment before.

  "Watch out!" warned Manning, and heaved the chair. The tiny chair seemed to float in the air. Then with a rush it gathered speed, grew larger. In a split-second it was a full-sized chair and it was hurtling straight at the gangster's head.

  With a strangled cry Scorio threw up his arms. The chair crashed into him, bowled him over.

  "Now do you believe me?" demanded Manning.

  Scrambling to his feet, Scorio gibbered madly, for the six inch figure was growing. He became as large as the average man, and then much larger. His head cleared the high ceiling by scant inches. His mighty hands reached out for the gangster.

  Scorio scuttled away on hands and knees, yelping with terror.

  Powerful hands seemed to seize and lift him. The room was blotted out. The Earth was gone. He was in a place where there was nothing. No light, no heat, no gravitation. For one searing, blasting second he seemed to be floating in strangely suspended animation. Then with a jolt he became aware of new surroundings.

  He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in a great laboratory that hummed faintly with the suggestion of terrific power, that smelled of ozone and seemed filled with gigantic apparatus.

  Two men stood in front of him.

  He staggered back.

  "Manning! he gasped.

  "Manning grinned savagely at him. "Sit down, Scorio. You won't have long to wait. Your boys will be along any minute now."

  * * *

  Chizzy crouched over the controls, his eyes on the navigation chart. Only the thin screech of parted air disturbed the silence of the ship. The high scream and the slow, precise snack-snack of cards as Reg and Max played a game of double solitaire with a cold, emotionless precision.

  The plane was near the stratosphere, well off the traveled air lanes. It was running without lights, but the cabin bulbs were on, carefully shielded.

  Pete sat in the co-pilot's chair beside Chizzy. His blank, expressionless eyes stared straight ahead.

  "I don't like this job," he complained.

  "Why not?" asked Chizzy.

  "Page and Manning aren't the kind of guys a fellow had ought to be fooling around with. They ain't just chumps. You fool with characters like them and you got trouble."

  Chizzy growled at him disgustedly, bent to his controls.

  Straight ahead was a thin sliver of a dying Moon that gave barely enough illumination to make out the great, rugged blocks of the mountains, like dark, shadowy brush-strokes on a newly started canvas.

  Pete shuddered. There was something about the thin, watery moonlight, and those brush-stroke hills...

  "It seems funny up here," he said.

  "Hell," growled Chizzy, "you're going soft in your old age."

  Silence fell between the two. The snack-snack of the cards continued.

  "You ain't got nothing to be afraid of," Chizzy told Pete. "This tub is the safest place in the world. She's overpowered a dozen times. She can outfly anything in the air. She's rayproof and bulletproof and bombproof. Nothing can hurt us."

  But Pete wasn't listening. "That moonlight makes a man see things. Funny things. Like pictures in the night."

  "You're balmy," declared Chizzy.

  Pete started out of his seat. His voice gurgled in his throat. He pointed with a shaking finger out into the night.

  "Look!" he yelled "Look!"

  Chizzy rose out of his seat... and froze in sudden terror.

  Straight ahead of the ship, etched in silvery moon-lines against the background of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face.

  It was as big and hard as a mountain.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.

  "It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!"

  Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.

  "Do something!" screamed Max. "You damn fool, do something!"

  "I can't," moaned Chizzy. "The ship is out of control."

  It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reserve power far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream... it was tops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerful than the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.

  "Manning's got us!" squealed Pete. "We came out to get him and now he has us instead!"

  The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against its plates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel and hear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greater pace through the tenuous atmosphere.

  The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon and the brush-stroke mountain
s far below.

  Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, down into the saw-teeth of the mountains.

  "We're falling!" yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.

  But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspended above a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.

  "That's Manning's laboratory," whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.

  The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over, drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and screamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast of heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines... but the ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.

  Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began clawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were only two men in the cabin with him--Reg and Max. Pete had gone!

  "He just disappeared," Max jabbered. "He was standing there in front of us. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke. Then he was gone."

  * * *

  Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, no heat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind had become disembodied.

  Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on a light. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split-second before, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.

  It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, a laboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery, lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illumination white as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.

  Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile on his lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. The smiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!

  With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights came up and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heat that sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemed to strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with a flare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into the gangster's body.