Solar Assassins Page 8

  The Nature Philosopher obeyed, bewildered and scared out of his wits. O'Bannon took the firearm from him and barked further instructions.

  "Now climb up around me. A couple of guys up at the other hole are waiting for you. On the double!"

  O'Bannon supported himself on the ladder rungs with his left hand. He had shoved the captured weapon into his pocket and held his own weapon in his right hand. Stray thermo-flashes from below were bright enough to reveal to the bushwhacked enemy that he didn't have a chance.

  Obediently, he disappeared into the shaft above.

  O'Bannon climbed down farther. Using the same procedure as before, he surprised three more of the Nature Philosophers and sent them up the shaft. His pockets were beginning to bulge with all the captured weapons.

  Meanwhile, however, the remaining attackers had been able to finally burn a hole through the wall. The bright illumination from the main mess hall broke into the shaft. Outside there was uproar, a hiss of raygun shots and in the middle of it all Wolley's bellowing commands.

  The battle in the mess hall was in full course.

  The Nature Philosophers below him chafed with impatience. The edges of the hole were still glowing dark red and yet it seemed that Wolley was still not aware of what was going on at his back.

  Then O'Bannon opened up. He hurled a blinding raygun shot down into the shaft below him and yelled: "Surrender, you men down there! Your game is up; four of you have been captured already! You only have one way to go!"

  For a long moment there was nothing more to be heard below than the clamor of the battle in the mess hall. But O'Bannon observed that the silhouette of the man nearest him began to move. He saw a hand lower to a belt and return into view again with a weapon. O'Bannon flipped his own weapon around, butt first, and before the other man could fire, he struck. The heavy handle struck the man's wrist and with a loud cry he dropped his weapon. O'Bannon could hear it thumping away down into the shaft below.

  "'Another one down!" he shouted. "Throw in the towel, chums—but make it snappy because we're awfully edgy!"

  The problem might not have been so quickly resolved if by this time the edges of the hole in the wall had not cooled down sufficiently to permit the sudden entrance of a prodigious bald head from outside. Wolley's triumphant voice was clearly heard. "O'Bannon! Are you there already? We've sent Hollander's troops running! Do we take the rest of these prisoner?"

  The Nature Philosophers in the shaft gave up. Wolley told them to throw their weapons through the hole into the mess hall and to climb out by themselves. Since everything was going along without a hitch, O'Bannon and his men climbed back up the shaft. In a few minutes they arrived at the upper exit on F-deck where the two other men were just finishing the task of binding the prisoners.

  O'Bannon did a double take when he only saw three prisoners. "I sent up four men! Where's the missing one?"

  The two sentinels knew nothing about him. "Only three guys came out here," they confirmed.

  "I can see that!" roared O'Bannon. "But where's the fourth one gone off to?"

  The two men who had been with O'Bannon confirmed that four of the Nature Philosophers had climbed up around them. Since on the return climb one of them had not been seen, only one possibility remained: the fourth one had managed to continue climbing up farther in the shaft.

  "After him!" rasped O'Bannon. "We have to get him! God knows what kind of mischief he can start!"

  The prisoners had been secured. They would not be able to free themselves. O'Bannon and his four companions reentered the shaft and began to climb upward as fast as they could.

  He had hardly gotten farther than 10 rungs of the ladder before he discerned, far above him, a brilliant flash of light. Without slowing, he called behind him to his men: "Watch it! That character's got another weapon! He's trying to cut his way out up there. If he hears us coming he'll shoot!"

  O'Bannon climbed so hard that he almost lost his breath. After he had ascended what he estimated to be about 600 feet, there was another series of flashes above him in which he could make out the shadow of a man against the wall of the shaft far overhead. He let out his final reserve of energy and kept climbing, unheedful of the fact that he was outdistancing his companions.

  But the man discovered him before he could get very far. "Stay where you are!" he shouted. "Otherwise I'll shoot!"

  The voice sounded nervous and uncertain. Which served to give O'Bannon confidence as he tried a new strategy.

  "Listen, you up there!" he yelled. "You know that Hollander is going into transition in two or three minutes! Have you thought out what will happen then?"

  The man appeared to be thinking it out. "So? What's supposed to happen?" grumbled the man, still uncertainly.

  "For a few seconds you're going to be dematerialized and even when you come back your senses will be distorted; you won't have control over your muscles. You will lose your grip on the ladder rungs and at the end of the transition you're going to drop like a rock down this shaft. It reaches clear down to B-deck. Do you know how deep that is?"

  The Nature Philosopher didn't answer. O'Bannon used the opportunity to climb up a few more rungs. This time there was no subterfuge. "Don't do anything foolish!" he shouted as he climbed and he sought to put a suggestive power into his voice. "I'll help you break through the wall. To be a prisoner of the Democrats is better than a corpse at the bottom of a 2,400-foot shaft!"

  The man didn't move. He permitted O'Bannon to advance another three rungs. O'Bannon could hear his rapid breathing.

  "Don't lose your head!" O'Bannon told him calmly. "If you have such a big itch to fire that thing, aim it at the wall!"

  Something whizzed past O'Bannon. Instinctively he flattened himself against the wall to one side of the ladder. Blindingly a beam of energy flamed within a yard of him, over his head. O'Bannon tensed his body in order to change places instantly and avoid the next shot.

  But then he noticed that the shot hadn't been aimed at him. A narrow blue beam of finely concentrated energy bored into the side of the shaft. The man above him had followed his advice and was now aiming at the wall.

  O'Bannon climbed the remaining rungs between him and the other man, until he joined him at the same level. "That's the ticked" he panted. "The two of us can do the job faster!"

  Working alternately they brought the pencil-beams of their weapons to bear on the wall and the hole grew larger. The strategy O'Bannon had used to outwit the Nature Philosopher was not actually a deception: the transition was close" at hand; they had to get through the wall.

  They finally made it. O'Bannon's men brought up the rear and added the power of their own weapons to the task. They made the hole large enough so that they could jump through it without touching the glowing edges.

  They entered into a giant storage hold where many large pieces of equipment were packed in barred cages and half-covered with charts and blueprints. O'Bannon discovered one apparatus that looked something like a cannon and since everything with such a shape gave promise of being useful to him he investigated the covering grating and began to loosen the bars.

  He had the third grating bar in his hands and had bent it outward, thus using the leverage to tear loose its fastening screws; but in that moment he suddenly felt himself in the mind-rending grip of, a searing pain.

  The outlines of everything before him became blurred and he lost control over his hands.

  Somebody cried out: "Transition!"

  • • •

  After a quarter of an hour, Mullon inquired whether or not the repairs could be completed prior to the end of the stipulated period. Milligan and the technical officer had long since given up merely handing out instructions and instead had joined in directly with the workers. Stokes came crawling out of the wide cable shaft he'd been working in as he heard Mullon's question and he shook his head despairingly. "Impossible!" he answered. "One of the gunshots has bored a hole clear through the whole mess. To do things right we'd have to disass
emble the entire converter; but I'd say we could make provisional repairs in something like one hour."

  Mullon nodded as though he hadn't expected anything else. "Alright then," he said. "In that case we'll have to ask Hollander for a delay. Suttney!"

  "Yes?"

  "Stop what you're doing and come with me. We have to convince Hollander to postpone the transition."

  Suttney wiped sweat from his face. "It's no use," he answered dourly. "He won't put it off!"

  "It doesn't make any difference," Mullon retorted sharply. "We're going to try just the same—now come along with me!"

  At the same time he ordered one of the men to go up to E-deck and report to the Democrats that he, Mullon, would be on the bridge trying to bring Hollander around to the deal. The messenger he chose was one of the Nature Philosophers who had been disarmed. It was questionable whether or not the man would actually fulfill the assignment given to him but Mullon had no other choice.

  Immediately thereafter he departed together with Suttney. His plan remained firm: he would use Stokes as a pawn in his game with Hollander. Like anyone else on board, Hollander was cognizant of the fact that at least one man had to be kept alive who knew something about the complicated subject of astronautical technology.

  Apparently Hollander had not been alerted to Mullon's visit. He stood in front of the main control console together with his men and a prisoner. When the hatch door opened, he glanced at it. His eyes widened when he discovered Mullon standing there. He pushed through the group of his men and came toward him with a wide grin on his face, stretching out his hands dramatically.

  "Well, Mullon, old friend, have you finally found it in your conscience to place yourself at the disposal of the Council of the Free Settlers Anti-Socialist Party? I can assure you that this voluntary decision on your part will be taken highly into consideration. They will—"

  "Oh, knock it off!" Mullon interrupted him angrily. "They will do what? They'll not do another thing at all—unless you postpone the transition!"

  Hollander stood rooted to the spot. He dropped his hands and glared darkly at Mullon. "Why?" he asked curtly.

  "Because in the short time left the converter cannot be put into shape—at least not good enough!"

  "So in this case what's good enough? I'm only going to make just one transition; it ought to be able to hold up under that. I'm convinced that Stokes exaggerates to an extreme."

  "He hasn't exaggerated in the slightest detail!" shouted Mullon. "If you try a hyperjump, this ship is going to blow to pieces!"

  Hollander appeared to consider this. Then he turned suddenly and went across to the control section of the tracking station. "Come over here, Mullon!" he said. "I want to show you something."

  Mullon followed him. Hollander indicated a greenish glimmering radar screen which revealed a row of tiny, brightly colored points of light.

  "Do you see that?" asked Hollander.

  Mullon nodded. "Naturally. What are they?"

  "We don't know for sure yet. In any case, they have to be spaceships. They may be signaling us but we can't unscramble it because the receiver is on the fritz. But the most probable answer is that they're search ships from the Solar Fleet. Ever since we took over the Control Central, communications between the Adventurous and the Earth have been cut off. They got suspicious in Terrania and probably sent a couple of patrol cruisers after us. We've been watching them for several hours. There's no doubt they must have recognized us by now; but they're being cautious—maybe we’re too quiet for them.

  "But if we hang around here much longer they're going to be on top of us. They've closed the distance fast in just the past few minutes. Do you think I want to be captured again and have to stand before another court just because Stokes can't get that converter fixed fast enough?"

  "No, my friend. We're going to jump—and right now! I'd rather be dead than a prisoner a second time!"

  Mullon remained calm. "That may be the way you feel about it!" he retorted. "Apparently you couldn't care less about the other 8000 people on board, is that right?"

  Hollander grinned brutally. "That's right!" Then he turned away without paying further attention to Mullon. "Throw in that switch!" he ordered one of the men at the main console. "We're transiting now!"

  "No!" yelled Mullon. "Don't listen to him! You close that switch and we're dead men!"

  Hollander didn't even look back at him. Mullon retreated slowly toward the wall in the direction of a small control panel that governed the hyper-transmitter. The man at the main console hesitated.

  "Do you want to do what I tell you or do you want to be replaced?" asked Hollander sharply.

  Nobody paid any more attention to Mullon. Mullon backed up and only came to a halt when he felt the keys and control buttons of the hyper-transmitter behind him.

  In the meantime the man at the main console had made, up his mind. With a quick shove, he threw the switch home.

  Mullon sensed that a sort of mist swam before him. The contours of the room melted away as a searing pain shot through his body.

  • • •

  O'Bannon didn't know how long a transition normally should last but this one seemed to him unbearably long. But he didn't know of the complications that had occurred in the engine room nor of all the dangers the Adventurous had been exposed to during the last few seconds.

  When the pain of the after-effects passed and the room around him became visible again, he continued laboring with the grating that enclosed the cannon-like piece of equipment, while his men finished securing the prisoner.

  Within a few minutes O'Bannon had uncovered the strange machine completely. From the lettering under the small switch panel he made out that this was some kind of an 'automatic router'. For the time being O'Bannon didn't have any idea what was supposed to be routed or how the equipment carried out its purpose but he took it upon himself to find out as soon as possible. With this in mind he began to experiment cautiously with the control buttons. He took the precaution to see that none of his companions was in the line of the 'cannon barrel's' fire.

  For some time O'Bannon's efforts were without results. None of the small colored panel lamps lit up though they were undoubtedly some kind of controls. He finally figured that a certain button bearing the caption 'Energization' was the one he should press first.

  He depressed the button and in the same instant a green control lamp lit up. Encouraged by this, O'Bannon depressed a second knob labeled Minimum Intensity and at that moment something strange occurred: ahead in front of the cannon's barrel the air began to shimmer. The shimmering path in the air extended itself swiftly to the opposite wall and a wave of oppressive heat enveloped O'Bannon so that sweat broke out of all his pores.

  He left the control panel on its present setting and went around the cannon. Cautiously he put his left hand in the path of the highly heated air, then drew it back with a cry of pain. Blisters began to swell up on the back of his hand.

  Too excited to pay any attention to this pain, O'Bannon went back to the small button panel and depressed the button labeled Maximum Intensity. And what he expected to happen did: the shimmering in the air intensified, the temperature in the great storage hold soared up suddenly and the wall suffering the impact of the energy beam began to emit bubbles.

  O'Bannon grabbed one of the metal staves he had taken from the machine's grating and held it in the beam. The bar sagged immediately and then began to hiss, finally melting down in great, grey droplets that fell to the, floor and crystallized again.

  O'Bannon shut off the machine and was no longer able to contain his sense of triumph. "Men, with this thing we can conquer the whole ship!" he cried out enthusiastically. "And a couple of other ships besides, if there happen to be any! The main thing is to get it out of here and set up outside the Control Central!"

  His men were elated. They rolled the cannon to the hatch door of the hold. O'Bannon tried to open it but didn't succeed. The batch resisted every combination he tried. So
he finally lost his patience and shot the opening mechanism to pieces with his beamer. After that, the hatch rolled easily to one side and the five men passed through with their cannon.

  Outside they saw that the hatch bore the label Sealed, which was obviously why he hadn't been able to open it. O'Bannon assumed that this particular storage hold contained a lot of equipment that was not to be distributed among the settlers until after they had landed on the planet of their destination.

  Everything else followed without difficulty. With their combined strength the men brought the cannon to the nearest main lift shaft and, conscious of being in possession of such a superior weapon, they pushed onward without further ado.

  They went down to E-deck.

  There they found out that Mullon had gone to see Hollander shortly before the transition in order to make an appeal to him. Mullon's doubtful messenger had actually carried out his orders.

  O'Bannon did not hesitate for long. He gathered a fighting force of 100 men and struck out with them and his newly scrounged cannon in the direction of C-deck and the Control Central.

  • • •

  Mullon felt the transition after-effects fade away. He saw the objects in the Control Central regain their shapes and then attempted once more to grasp the switches he had gotten hold of before.

  He was the first one in the room to regain his senses.

  He took a good look at the control panel he was standing in front of. The lettered captions were simple and understandable. There was a switch-button labeled Power On and a throw-switch labeled Ready to Transmit. There were many buttons and switches for various kinds of antenna arrays and beam transmission of hyperspace messages. Unseen by the others, Mullon pressed a button for general transmission into all areas of space and then threw in the switch for maximum output of broadcast energy. He noted with satisfaction that the two corresponding signal lamps flamed into life. The only remaining action he had to take was either to pick up a microphone and speak into it or hit the key that would send out an automatic code signal.