Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" (9 page)

BLAM!

A shell slammed into the mountain. They had spotted him!

BLAM! BLAM!

The attractor-target, thank Heavens, was pulling the cannon wrong in aim. Just one of those shells landing and this tug would go up like smoke: no armor. Heller rammed open the throttles of the planetary drives. He yanked the Will-be Was time drives full on. The tug lunged ahead. The traction beams strained. The tug began to thresh about. The mountaintop was NOT moving! Heller looked down the slope toward the city. Made small by distance, an infantry squad was coming. They stopped amongst the boulders, knelt and levelled blast-rifles. Heller braced himself to receive a hit. The tug struggled to move the mountain.

HIS WINDSCREEN SHATTERED!

The tug's automatic warning went on, "Sir, my starboard Will-be Was converter drum is overheating. Please ease off." Heller took another lunge against the tow. An explosion sounded above him. A blastrifle must have hit one of the tube casings on top of the craft. This was getting too rough a situation. Suddenly he dropped the tow that refused to tow. He spun around to his right. He ducked behind the mountain out of the sight of the infantry. This was the time for the diversion. He took the remote out of his pocket, took the safety off and pressed it. It should begin to fire the pellets he had dropped into the city. They should begin to go off at intervals. That should make things interesting for them down there. And maybe he could complete his job. The trouble was, the mountaintop was not thoroughly cut through. In the tube underneath the belly, thinking this might happen, he had placed a hundred down-blast shatter mines. It meant he would have to make a circle around the mountain. He hoped his diversion had worked. He began to move clockwise around the peak. Every hundred yards, at approximately the place he had made the cut, he dropped a shatter mine. His explosions began to go off with a crump as each one hit. He stuck the tug's nose around the mountain shoulder, visible again from Palace City.

BLOWIE!

Something tore through the upper hull! His diversion had not worked! Then he realized he had made a mistake: he had been behind the mountain and the black hole when he hit the button, and the activating radio beam had not been powerful enough to get through! Well, diversion or not, he had to keep going. Dropping mines, air about him streaked with blast-rifle charges, taking shots in his hull, he completed the circle. Smoke was rolling through the tug. More than one thing had been hit. Hoping against hope that he had completed the severance with mines, he ducked back of the mountain again. He couldn't even see his screens. "Sir," said the tug, "my Will-be Was engine room is on fire. Could I recommend a visit to the nearest repair yard?" The idiocy of it made Heller realize that the computer banks must also have been hit. He pressed a manual emergency fire-suppression button. It was sloppy under his thumb. He glanced down: hydraulic fluid was pooling on the floor of the flight deck. Praying that his controls would still work, he worked the tractor engines to seize the mountain once again. He felt them grip. He opened the throttles of his planetary drives. He felt the tug take the strain against the beams. Praying, he opened the throttles of the powerful Will-be Was time-converter drives. It stopped the tug with a backward yank. He still had power. Something struck the tug from below. He could not see in all the smoke but he hazarded that some of that infantry had made its way around the mountain shoulder. His absorbo-coat must be ripped to shreds. He was visible! He began to work the throttles. He was making the tug lunge again and again against the dead weight of the mountaintop. A shot struck the underside of the star-pilot chair beside him. It began to smoke and crackle. The controls were getting sloppier and sloppier. He pointed the nose of the tug upward at an angle of forty-five degrees. He once more slammed the throttles open. There was a sort of roar behind him. It began low and then rose up the scale like something wailing. The tug was moving. The shots which had been lacing the air suddenly halted. That infantry back there must be now contending with an earthquake under their very feet. Heller couldn't see. His screens were not working to be seen by. He could only guess what was happening. Was he going forward with the mountaintop towed behind or wasn't he?

Many a fellow officer had often teased Heller about his "built-in compass." Sometimes on a warship flight deck he would sense that the gyros were in error. Seniors would ignore him but he would persevere and they would, finally, to get some peace, order a technician check. An error was always found but sometimes it was as little as a thousandth of a degree.' And even though this would make a significant mistake in course travelling at septuple light speed, nobody ever believed he could have detected it. Any gyro, they had said, is liable to be out a thousandth of a degree. Right now, astonishingly, he was totally uncertain which way he was going. He should have been able to detect, despite smoke, the north and south magnetic poles of Voltar. But he couldn't. Then he realized he had never before tried to navigate inside a time/space warp and that was where he was now. The black hole he was or was not towing extended its influence sphere to encase the tug. He did not know how fast he was going or even if he was going. His object was to get this mountaintop several miles from Palace City. If he did that, the command area of Voltar would drop back those thirteen minutes and appear in the same time band as the planet itself. Then, unless something else happened, the rebel forces could launch an assault and, with luck, break the defense perimeters and seize the place. He did not at that time know of Hisst's plan to hit the rebels' rear with the Apparatus forces from the staging area. His whole purpose was to expose the palaces and parks so they could be targeted by direct frontal assault. The security net would be gone if he had removed the source of all the power used in Palace City. Right then he wasn't thinking of anything except Where the blazes am I? The tug was on fire. It might explode. If he dropped this load, it might fall right back on the remaining mountain if it had not moved at all. He got some sand goggles over his eyes so they would stop streaming. He got down and moved up close to a screen. Maybe he could see something on it. He twiddled knobs. The screen was blank. His electronics were gone. The tractor engines were raving with the strain of the pull. The Will-be Was drives were thundering, fire or no fire. The planetary motors were screeching. The smoke billowed. The broken windscreen didn't seem to be letting in any air so that was no indicator of forward progress: rather it would seem to say that they were not going anyplace at all. He had a beltgun. With a sudden idea, he pulled it. Without being able to see its levers, he set it to impact-explosion. He reached out through the broken windscreen and fired straight down. It would be hard to tell above all this shrieking machinery. But he listened hard. He was counting. When that handgun charge hit the ground, wherever the ground might be, it would explode with a cracking sound. The number of seconds times the distance sound travelled on Voltar in a second would give him his altitude. He heard nothing. He fired again and began to count. Once more, nothing! The weird idea hit him that he might be flying upside down: that could happen around anti-gravity coils. It was getting too hot in here. Tongues of flame were licking through the passageway. Maybe he had moved the mountain. Maybe he hadn't. "My Will-be Was starboard time-converter is melting," said the tug. "I sincerely recommend you land somewhere and look into it." This thing was going to blow up! Heller knew he'd have to simply take a chance that he had towed the mountaintop away. He shut down the Will-be Was drives. There was a sag. He cut off the traction engines. With a scream the planetary drives hurled the tug ahead like a streak of lightning! Heller was hit with the time-transition nausea! He shot through into planetary time! The desert sun glared! He hastily shut the planetary throttles. Instantly the tug began to fall. Then he saw what some of this was about. He had pulled the mountaintop fifty thousand feet into the air. The range of those shots was too extreme and they had also gone outside the space warp. His own built-in compass wasn't working yet. He had no idea where he was. He grabbed the tug controls to right it. They did not respond! Heller groped behind him. He had parked the space-trooper sled in the passageway. He had it. It was no time to be careful. He jumped on it and shot it through the shattered windscreen!

The sled was tumbling. His lungs were full of smoke. He coughed and it was a mistake. At fifty thousand feet there wasn't enough air to take a decent breath. Head spinning for lack of oxygen, he blindly fumbled with the spacetrooper sled controls. He was trying to make it head straight down at power to an altitude where there was some air. He could feel wind begin to twitch at him now. Still, he wasn't making the downward plunging speed he should. He had reached terminal velocity for a man for Voltar. Something was desperately wrong-he wasn't diving anywhere near as fast as he knew this sled could. His sand goggles had whipped down across his mouth, letting the smoke out of his eyes. He was staring at the power meter of the spacetrooper sled that was embedded in the shaft.

CHARGE ZERO!

Comets, thought Jet, I haven't switched this sled off since I used it in New York! Missy is right. I'm getting too old for this racket. Senile! The desert below was coming up in a huge cone: one spot in the middle was motionless, everything else was speeding away. That's where I splash, thought Jet. Then he thought, the blazes I do! He still had the hand blast-gun hanging on him by its lanyard. He recovered it. He could breathe now: the rush of passage was stacking up enough air to fill his lungs. He must be down to twenty thousand feet. His thumb flipped the levers of the gun. Ten thousand feet. Five thousand feet. Two thousand feet. Seven hundred feet. He pointed the handgun straight ahead at that motionless spot in the desert sand. Would it work? Two hundred feet.

HE FIRED!

Set at maximum blast, the recoil was terrific. It almost tore the weapon from his hand! He pressed the trigger for automatic fire, always on the target. It was like cushioning yourself against a brick wall with a palm. The sled and his body slowed. Blowing sand into a molten turmoil, he halted ten feet in the air. He turned the weapon sideways and blew himself twenty feet to the left of the self-manufactured lava. He hit. He let go of the sled and stood up gingerly. Nothing bruised but his pride. Then-

CRRRRRUUUUUMP!

He was knocked flat! A tremendous concussion wave had gone over him. The ground was shaking! Dazed, he looked up through the rushing dust. The yellow haze! Three miles to the south! The mountaintop, still travelling upward, had curved over in a parabola and, carrying its warped space, had struck! It had not exploded. Underneath that yellow mantle of warped space there must be a hole in the desert floor as big as any ever made by a meteor-no, an asteroid! Thank Heavens it had not been travelling very fast! The secondary concussion waves were washing over him. The shock waves still travelled through the ground: he could hear them rumbling into the distance. Then he saw the tug. It had flown even higher into the air after he had abandoned it. It was falling in crazy spirals as though in pain. It almost righted itself. Flames were spouting from the gaping holes in the shattered hull. It tried to stand and then fell over onto its back. It struck! A flash of fire like a supernova was followed by a bloom of red. He was on his knees when this one hit him but it sent him skidding back. Poor tug. He wondered if it had had anything to say as it expired. It certainly was giving itself a soldier's funeral-all flame and smoke! Then suddenly he realized that all this commotion would be visible for miles! It could not help but bring him company! Dangerous!

The dust was dying down. His sense of location was working now. He had come halfway back to Camp Endurance! Poor old tug had been doing its job all too well! Then he saw a plume of dust. It was no wind demon. The glare of the sun was ferocious, like hammer blows. Heller cleaned his sand goggles and got them on. Not one plume of dust but ten! Suddenly, peering low, he recognized what he was looking at: Apparatus desert patrol cars! They must be running wide-ranging scouts in these times of threat. Heller checked his handgun. If fired at stun, it still had a few shots left: not enough to take on ten cars of a desert patrol. He felt in his belt: he had no spare batteries. Yes, he decided, he was getting too old. After this, if he lived through it, he would sit before the fire with a rug across his knees and, in a quavering voice, tell his grandchildren never to become combat engineers. It got to you in the end. You made mistakes you could not possibly afford. And there went the hopes of grandchildren. Yes, one of those cars had now detached itself from the rest and was speeding toward him. They were flat, chunky cars, Apparatus mustard yellow, ugly things, steel canopied to keep out the sun and hung about with a clutter of equipment. The wheels, with tires three feet wide, were treaded with alternate cushion and metal lugs like knives. He hoped they didn't intend to run over him for sport. He would count on his general's uniform for bluff. Even so, it would be hard to explain what an Apparatus general was doing out here with the yellow haze just crashed. And then another thought struck him: supposing these were rebels who had seized Apparatus cars? Maybe, seeing a "general," they'd shoot first! He hastily looked around him to find a rock to drop behind. There wasn't any. The car was almost on him. Heller held the gun behind his back. He was trying to see through the slots of the armored windscreen. Then a laugh. A voice chortled, "I thought so!"

IT WAS SNELZ!

The desert car pulled up alongside of him. Snelz had his boots up on the dash, lolling beside the driver, laughing fit to burst. Heller took the canteen one of the grinning ten soldiers in the back handed him. He washed out his mouth and then sponged his face. "You didn't think I was going to stick around and get my head blown off, did you?" said Snelz, his laughing dying down. "You're not the only one who knows explosives. I put a radio-firing remote on one of your spears and then put a time-delay fuse tuned into it in the camp magazine. I knew you were going to fire those spears from somewhere in the sky and wanted the magazine to go up shortly after. "Any fool could guess that your next target would be Palace City, so I told them the general had ordered me on to desert patrol. So I got ten desert cars, loaded my company and here we are. What the blazes have you been up to? Isn't that the tug that crashed over there?" "Poor tug," said Heller. "I thought I recognized it when it was wobbling around the sky. And isn't that yellow mist over there warped space? Don't tell me you took the lid off Palace City." "That's where we're going," said Heller. "Move over." "No you don't," said Snelz. "A colonel of Fleet marines is higher than a mere Grade Ten. I outrank you now, so I am giving the orders." "Look, I am in an Apparatus general's uniform! I've got to get back to Palace City!" "That general's uniform doesn't count," said Snelz. "The Apparatus can't order Fleet marines. I swore in my whole company. So I give the orders. All right?" "If you say so," said Heller. "Good, we've got that settled. Driver, signal the other cars to follow and head for Palace City." "That's what I ordered," said Heller, climbing in. "No," said Snelz. "It's what you suggested to a superior. And I just happen to be in a benign mood. Get going, driver." As they sped south and west, Snelz began to sing and the men in back joined in and then the whole convoy was roaring it: The Fleet marines, The Fleet marines, Have comets in their crap. The Fleet marines, The Fleet marines, Drink liquid lightning pap. The girls all run to Mama, The farmers hide their stock, For they know a Fleet marine Has got a hungry (bleep). We're the heroes of the battle, As long as it's in bed. The reason I'm a Fleet marine Is better left unsaid. I'm loyal to my seniors, As long as they are bold. But I don't think I'll live long enough To see them very old. Come march upon the spaceways, And help me sing this song. The one thing that I'm sure of Is that if you're a Fleet marine You won't live very long! The yellow and green and red desert fled under them. Heller had one more target: LOMBAR HISST!