Страница 7 из 38
Ingrid Nashdoi, standing beside Broward, whispered in a trembling voice, "The Russian is right. He is mad. It's too great a gamble. If we lose, then everybody loses,"
"Exactly what Scone is betting on," murmured Broward. "He knows the Russians and Chinese know it, too. Like you, I'm scared. If I could have foreseen what he was going to do, I think I'd have put a bullet in him back at Eratosthenes. But it's too late to back out now. We go along with him no matter what."
The voyage from the Moon and the capture of the Zemlya had taken twelve hours. Now, with the Zemlya's mighty drive applied—and the four destroyers riding in the landing-port —the voyage back took three hours. During this time, the Russian base sent messages. Scone refused to answer. He intended to tell all the Moon his plans but not until the Zemlya was close to the end of its path. When the globe was a thousand kilometers from the surface, and decelerating with the force of 3g's, he and his men returned to the destroyers. All except three, who remained with Shaposhnikov.
The destroyers streaked ahead of the Zemlya towards an entrance to a narrow canyon. This led downwards to a chasm where Scone intended to place the Zemlya beneath a giant overhang.
But, as the four sped towards the opening two crags, their radar picked up four objects coming over close to the mountains to the north. A battlebird and three destroyers. Scone knew that the Russians had another big craft and three more destroyers available. But they probably did not want to send them out, too, and leave the base comparatively defenseless.
He at once radioed the commander of the Lermontdv and told him what was going on.
"We declare independence, a return to Nationalism," he concluded. "And we call on the other bases to do the same."
The commander roared, "Unless you surrender at once, we turn on the bonephones! And you will writhe in pain until you die, you American swine!"
"Do that little thing," said Scone, and he laughed.
He switched on the communication beams linking the four ships and said, "Hang on for a minute or two, men. Then, it'll be all over. For us and for them."
Two minutes later, the pain began. A stroke of heat like lighting that seemed to sear the brains in their skulls. They screamed, all except Scone, who grew pale and clutched the edge of the control panel. But the dishes were, for the next two minutes, on automatic, unaffected by their pilots' condition.
"Flutter your craft as if it's going out of control," said Scone. "Make it seem we're crashing into the entrance to the canyon."
Scone himself put the lead destroyer through the simulation of a craft with a pain-crazed pilot at the controls. The others followed his maneuvers, and they slipped into the canyon.
From over the top of the cliff to their left rose a glare that would have been intolerable if the plastic over the portholes had not automatically polarized to dim the brightness.
Broward, looking through a screen which showed the view to the rear, cried out. Not because of the light from the atomic bomb which had exploded on the other side of the cliff. He yelled because the top of the Zemlya had also lit up. And he knew in that second what had happened. The light did not come from the warhead, for an extremely high mountain was between the huge globe and the blast If the upper region of the Zemlya glowed, it was because a tongue from a Russian ship had brushed against it.
It must have been an accident, for the Russians surely had no wish to wreck the Zemlya. If they defeated the USAF, they could recapture the globe with no trouble.
"My God, she's falling!" yelled Broward. "Out of control!"
Scone looked once and quickly. He turned away and said, "All craft land immediately. All perso
The maneuver took three minutes, for the men in the other dishes had to co
Scone did not explain what he meant to do until all perso
Only the American commander, the man of stone, seemed not to feel.
Scone took his ship up against the face of the cliff until she was just below the top. Here the cliff was thin because of the slope on the other side. And here, hidden from view of the Russians, he drove a tongue two decimeters wide through the rock.
And, at the moment three Russian destroyers hurtled over the edge, tongues of compressed light lashing out on every side in the classic flailing movement, Scone's beam broke through the cliff.
The three empty USAF ships, on automatic, shot upwards at a speed that would have squeezed their human occupants into jelly—if they had had occupants. Their tongues shot out and flailed, caught the Russian tongues.
Then, the American vessels rammed into the Russians, drove them upwards, flipped them over. And all six craft fell along the cliff's face, Russian and American intermingled, crashing into each other, bouncing off the sheer face, exploding, their fragments colliding, and smashed into the bottom of the canyon.
Scone did not see this, for he had completed the tongue through the tu
Some one, or some detecting equipment, on the Lermontov must have caught view of the tongue as it slid through space to intercept the battlebird. A tongue shot out towards the American beam. Then Scone's was in contact with the hull, and a hole appeared in the irradiated plastic.
Majestically, the Lermontov continued rising—and so cut itself almost in half. And, majestically, it fell.
Not before the Russian commander touched off all the missiles aboard his ship in a last frenzied defense, and the missiles flew out in all directions. Two hit the slope, blew off the face of the mountain on the Lermontov's side, and a jet of atomic energy flamed out through the tu
But he had dropped his craft like an elevator, was halfway down the cliff before the blasts made his side of the mountain tremble.
Half an hour later, the base of Eratosthenes sued for peace. For the sake of human continuity, said Panchurin, all fighting must cease forever on the Moon.
The Chinese, who had been silent up to then despite their comrades' pleas for help, also agreed to accept the policy of Nationalism.
Now, Broward expected Scone to break down, to give way to the strain. He would only have been human if he had done so.
He did not. Not, at least, in anyone's presence. Broward awoke early during a sleep-period. Unable to forget the dream he had just had, he went to find Ingrid Nashdoi. She was not in her lab; her assistant told him that she had gone to the dome with Scone.
Jealous, Broward hurried there and found the two standing there and looking up at the half-Earth. Ingrid was holding a puppy in her arms. This was one of the few animals that had been taken unharmed from the shattered tanks of the fallen Zemlya.