Escape!
:
The Airlords Of Han
We had little time, however, to waste in endearments, and very little to
devote to informing me as to the American plans. The essential thing
was that I report the Han plans and resources to the fullest of my
ability. And for an hour or two I talked steadily, giving an outline of
all I had learned from San-Lan and his Councillors, and particularly of
the arrangements for drawing off the population of the city to new
ci
ies concealed underground, through the system of tunnels radiating
from the base of the mountain. And as a result, the Americans determined
to speed up their attack.
There were, as a matter of fact, only two relatively small commands
facing the city, Wilma told me, but both of them were picked troops of
the new Federal Council. Those to the south were a division of veterans
who a few weeks before had destroyed the Han city of Sa-Lus (St. Louis).
On the east were a number of the Colorado Gangs and an expeditionary
force of our own Wyomings. The attack on Lo-Tan was intended chiefly as
an attack on the morale of the Hans of the other twelve cities. If there
seemed to be a chance of victory, the operations were to be pushed
through. Otherwise the object would be to do as much damage as possible,
and fade away into the forests if the Hans developed any real pressure
with their new infantry and field batteries of rocket guns and
disintegrator-rays.
The "air balls" were simply miniature swoopers of spherical shape,
ultronically controlled by operators at control boards miles away, and
who saw on their viewplates whatever picture the ultronic television
lens in the sphere itself picked up at the predetermined focus. The main
propulsive rocket motor was diametrically opposite the lens, so that the
sphere could be steered simply by keeping the picture of its objective
centered on the crossed hairlines of the viewplates. The outer shell
moved magnetically as desired with respect to the core, which was
gyroscopically stabilized. Auxiliary rocket motors enabled the operator
to make a sphere move sidewise, backward or vertically. Some of these
spheres were equipped with devices which enabled their operators to hear
as well as see through their ultronic broadcasts, and most of those
which had invaded the interior of Lo-Tan were equipped with "speakers,"
in the hope of finding me and establishing communication. Still others
were equipped for two-stage control. That is, the operator control led
the vision sphere, and through it watched and steered an air torpedo
that travelled ahead of it.
The Han airship or any other target selected by the operator of such a
combination was doomed. There was no escape. The spheres and torpedoes
were too small to be hit. They could travel with the speed of bullets.
They could trail a ship indefinitely, hover a safe distance from their
mark, and strike at will. Finally, neither darkness nor smoke screens
were any bar to their ultronic vision. The spheres, which had penetrated
and explored Lo-Tan in their search for me, had floated through breaches
in the walls and roofs made by their advance torpedoes.
* * * * *
Wilma had just finished explaining all this to me when I heard a noise
outside my door. With a whispered warning I flung myself back on the
couch and simulated unconsciousness. When I did not answer the poundings
and calls to open, a police detail broke in and shook me roughly.
"The air ball," I moaned, pretending to regain consciousness slowly. "It
came in from the corridor. Look what it did to the guard. It must have
grazed my head. Where is it?"
"Gone," muttered the under-officer, looking fearfully around. "Yes,
undoubtedly gone. These men have been dead some time. And this pistol.
The ball got him before he had a chance to use it. See, it has beamed
through the wall only here, where he dropped it. Who are you? You look
like a tribesman. Oh, yes, you're the Heaven-Born's special prisoner.
Maybe I ought to beam you right now. Good thing. Everyone would call it
an accident. By the Grand Dragon, I will!"
While he was talking, I had staggered to the other side of the room, to
draw his attention away from the couch where the ball was concealed.
Now suddenly the pillows burst apart, and a blanket with which I had
covered the thing streaked from the couch, hitting the man in the small
of the back. I could hear his spine snap under the impact. Then it shot
through the air toward the group of soldiers in the doorway, bowling
them over and sending them shrieking right and left along the corridor.
Relentlessly and with amazing speed it launched itself at each in turn,
until the corpses lay grotesquely strewn about, and not one had escaped.
It returned to me for all the world like an old-fashioned ghost, the
blanket still draped over it (and not interfering with its ultronic
vision in the least) and "stood" before me.
"The yellow devils were going to kill you, Tony," I heard Wilma's voice
saying. "You've got to get out of there, Tony, before you are killed.
Besides, we need you at the control boards, where you can make real use
of your knowledge of the city. Have you your jumping belt, ultrophone
and rocket gun?"
"No," I replied, "they are all gone."
"It would be no good for you to try to make your way to one of the
breaches in the wall, nor to the roof," she mused.
"No, they are too well guarded," I replied, "and even if you made a new
one at a predetermined spot I'm afraid the repair men and the patrol
would go to it ahead of me."
"Yes, and they would beam you before you could climb inside of a
swooper," she added.
"I'll tell you what I can do, Wilma," I suggested. "I know my way about
the city pretty well. Suppose I go down one of the shafts to the base of
the mountain. I think I can get out. It is dark in the valley, so the
Hans cannot see me, and I will stand out in the open, where your
ultroscopes can pick me up. Then a swooper can drop quickly down and get
me."
"Good!" Wilma said. "But take that Han's disintegrator pistol with you.
And go right away, Tony. But wrap this ball in something and carry it
with you. Just toss it from you if you are attacked. I'll stay at the
control board and operate it in case of emergency."
* * * * *
So I picked up ball and pistol, and thrust the hand in which I held it
into the loose Han blouse I wore, wrapped the ball in a piece of
sheeting, and stepped out in the corridor, hurrying toward the nearest
magnetic car station, a couple of hundred feet down the corridor, for I
had to cross nearly the entire width of the city to reach the shaft that
went to the base of the mountain.
I thanked Providence for the perfection of the Han mechanical devices
when I reached the station. The automatic checking system of these cars
made station attendants unnecessary. I had only to slip the key I had
taken from the dead Han officer into the account-charting machine at the
station to release a car.
Pressing the proper combinations of main and branch line buttons, I
seated myself, holding the pistol ready but concealed beneath my blouse.
The car shot with rapid acceleration down the narrow tunnel.
The tubes in which these magnetic cars (which slid along a few inches
above the floor of the tunnel by localized repeller rays) ran were very
narrow, just the width of the car, and my only danger would come if on
catching up to another car its driver should turn around and look in my
face. If I kept my face to the front, and hunched over so as to conceal
my size, no driver of a following car would suspect that I was not a
Han like himself.
The tube dipped under traffic as it came to a trunk line, and my car
magnetically lagged, until an opening in the traffic permitted it to
swing swiftly into the main line tunnel. At the automatic distance of
ten feet it followed a car in which rode a scantily clad girl, her
flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my luck. She would
be far more likely to turn around than a man, to see if a man were in
the car behind, and if he were personable--for not even the impending
doom of the city and the public demoralization caused by the "air balls"
had dulled the proclivities of the Han women for brazen flirtation. And
turn around she did.
Before I could lower my head she had seen my face, and knew I was no
Han. I saw her eyebrows arch in surprise. But she seemed puzzled rather
than scared. Before she could make up her mind about me, however, her
car had swung out of the main tunnel on its predetermined course, and my
own automatically was closing up the gap to the car ahead. The passenger
in this one wore the uniform of a medical officer, but he did not turn
around before I swung out of main traffic to the little station at the
head of the shaft.
This particular shaft was intended to serve the very lowest levels
exclusively, and since its single car carried nothing but express
traffic, it was used only by repair men and other specialists who
occasionally had to descend to those levels.
* * * * *
There were only three people on the little platform, which reminded me
very much of the subway stations of the Twentieth Century. Two men and a
girl stood facing the gate of the shaft, waiting for the car to return
from below. One of these was a soldier, apparently off duty, for though
he wore the scarlet military coat he carried no weapons other than his
knife. The other man wore nothing but sandals and a pair of loose short
pants of some heavy and serviceable material. I did not need to look at
the compact tool kit and the ray machines attached to his heavy belt,
nor the gorgeously jewelled armlet and diadem that he wore to know him
for a repair man.
The girl was quite scantily clad, but wore a mask, which was not unusual
among the Han women when they went forth on their flirtatious
expeditions, and there was something about the sinuous grace of her
movements that seemed familiar to me. She was making desperate love to
the repair man, whose attitude toward her was that of pleased but lofty
tolerance. The soldier, who was seeking no trouble, occupied himself
strictly with his own thoughts and paid little attention to them.
I stepped from my car, still carrying my bundle in which the "air ball"
was concealed, and the car shot away as I threw the release lever over.
Not so successful as the soldier in simulating lack of interest in the
amorous girl and her companion, I drew from the latter a stare of
haughty challenge, and the girl herself turned to look at me through her
mask.
She gasped as she did so, and shrank back in alarm. And I knew her then
in spite of her mask. She was the favorite of the Heaven-Born himself.
"Ngo-Lan!" I exclaimed before I could catch myself.
At the mention of her name, the soldier's head jerked up quickly, and
the girl herself gave a little cry of terror, shrinking against her
burly companion. This would mean death for her if it reached the ears of
her lord.
And her companion, arrogant in his immunity as a repair man, hesitated
not a second. His arm shot out toward the soldier, who was nearer to him
than I. There was the flash of a knife blade, and the soldier sagged on
his feet, then tumbled over like a sack of potatoes, and before my mind
had grasped the danger, he had swept the girl aside and was springing at
me.
* * * * *
That I lived for a moment even was due to the devotion of my wife,
Wilma, who somewhere in the mountains to the east was standing loyally
before the control board of the air ball I carried.
For even as the Han leaped at me, the bundle containing the air ball,
which I had placed at my feet, shot diagonally upward, catching the
fellow in the middle of his leap, hurling him back against the grilled
gate of the elevator shaft, and pinning his lifeless body there.
An instant the girl gazed in speechless horror at what had been her
secret lover, then she threw herself at my feet, writhing and shrieking
in terror.
At this moment, the elevator shot to a sudden stop behind the grill, and
prepared for the worst, I faced it, disintegrator pistol raised.
But I lowered the pistol at once, with a sigh of relief. The elevator
was empty. For a moment I considered. I dared not leave either of these
bodies nor the girl behind in descending the shaft. At any moment other
passengers might glide out of the tunnel to take the elevator, and give
an alarm.
So I played the beam of the pistol for an instant on the two dead
bodies. They vanished, of course, into nothingness, as did part of the
station platform. The damage to the platform, however, would not
necessarily be interpreted as evidence of a prisoner escaping.
Then I threw open the elevator gate, dragging Ngo-Lan into the car and
stifling her hysterical shrieks, pressed the button that caused it to
shoot downward. In a few moments I stepped out several thousand feet
below, into a shaft that ran toward one of the Valley Gates.
The pistol again became serviceable, this time for the destruction of
the elevator, thus blocking any possible pursuit, yet without revealing
my flight.
Ngo-Lan fought like a cat, but despite her writhing, scratching and
biting, I bound and gagged her with her own clothing, and left her lying
in the tunnel while I stepped in a car and shot toward the gate.
As the car glided swiftly along the brilliantly lit but deserted tunnel
I conversed again with Wilma through the metallic speaker of the air
ball.
"The only obstacle now," I told her, "is the massive gate at the end of
the tunnel. The gate-guard, I think, is posted both outside and inside
the gate."
"In that case, Tony," she replied, "I will shoot the ball ahead, and
blow out the gate. When you hear it bump against the gate, throw
yourself flat in the car, for an instant later I will explode it. Then
you can rush through the gate into the night. Scout ships are now
hovering above, and they will see you with their ultroscopes, though the
darkness will leave you invisible to the Hans."
* * * * *
With this the ball shot out of the car and flashed away, down the tunnel
ahead of me. I heard a distant metallic thump, and crouched low in the
speeding car, clapping my hands to my ears. The heavy detonation which
followed, struck me like a blow, and left me gasping for breath. The car
staggered like a living thing that had been struck, then gathered speed
again and shot forward toward the gaping black hole where the gate had
been.
I brought it to a stop at the pile of debris, and climbed through this
to freedom and the night. Stumblingly I made my way out into the open,
and waited.
Behind, and far above me on the mountain peak, the lights of the city
gleamed and flashed, while the iridescent beams of countless
disintegrator ray batteries on surrounding mountain peaks, played
continuously and nervously, criss-crossing in the sky above it.
Then with a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, and a little seat
rested on the ground beside me. I climbed into it, and without further
ado was whisked up into the swooper that floated a few hundred feet
above me.
A half an hour later I was deposited in a little forest glade where the
headquarters of the Wyoming Gang were located, and was greeted with a
frantic disregard for decorum by the Deputy Boss of the Wyomings, who
rushed upon me like a whirlwind, laughing, crying and whispering
endearments all in the same breath, while I squeezed her, Wilma, my
wife, until at last she gasped for mercy.