The Gods Hate Kansas Page 11

  CHAPTER 13

  Luck Runs Out

  From where he and Farge crouched out of sight in the back of the sedan, Temple said softly, “You’ve got it straight now, Lee? Try to persuade the guard to shut off the current and open the gate for you. If we can get through without raising an alarm, we’ve got some chance of getting through to the rocket silo before the fighting starts. If we have to crash the gate, we face a pitched battle right there against pretty heavy odds.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Lee said. “Lord knows I had plenty of practice getting through. Quiet, now. I’m stopping at the gate.”

  She leaned out and motioned imperiously to the glaring guard inside. Her voice was coldly commanding. “Jonas, open the gate for me immediately. I have just escaped from kidnapers and I must report to the tower at once.”

  In the rear, Temple felt cold perspiration crawl down his face as he waited through a dragging silence. Then Lee’s whisper came, ragged with strain. “Curt, he doesn’t answer me or even move. He just stands there like a statue.”

  “Oh-oh!” Temple raised far enough to peer out through the detector and his face hardened. “I thought so. Two free entities are floating over to investigate. The one on his own skull is waiting for their report before it gives him his orders. Don’t panic, sweet. I’ll handle them.”

  The click of the projector was followed by two violet flashes on the detector screen. Instantly the guard yelled and started to run toward the gate controls and telephone in the shanty. A lance of invisible fury destroyed his guiding entity and sent him sprawling in the dust.

  A spark of violet flicked across the detector screen and was gone, too fast for the eye to follow. Temple hurled the car door open and plunged out.

  “Get out, quick! The fat’s in the fire now. There was another of those things prowling and I didn’t see it in time. It’s gone to sound the alarm.” He slid into the driver’s seat. “Stand well back. All hell’s going to break loose when this buggy hits that charged gate.”

  The engine roared and the heavy sedan shot backward. The first cars from the highway were just streaming over the rise when he reversed and shoved his foot to the floor boards. The car hurtled back down the gentle slope straight at the gate, its thunder rising to a howl.

  At the last possible moment Temple forced the door open, steadied the wheel, flipped the automatic transmission to neutral and jumped. Arms folded over his face, he struck the soft ground with stunning force and rolled. An instant later the heavy car, its momentum unchecked, smashed into the charged gate.

  There was a rending crash and crackle, a blaze of greenish flame and the alarm bells set up their harsh clangor. With the wrecked gate folded around it, the car slewed around and crashed into the guard shanty.

  As it collapsed, there was a smaller crackle of sparks from the gate control panel, the bells stopped jangling and every light in the camp winked out. A moment later dim lights winked on along the streets and the bells resumed their yammering. Obviously the entities had learned a lesson from Temple’s previous invasion and had installed an auxiliary lighting system to take over if the main line blew out.

  Temple staggered to his feet, stunned and bruised but not seriously injured. Lee and Farge ran up, white-faced. “Curt, are you all right? You might have been killed, jumping at that speed.”

  “I’m fine.” He snatched the detector and projector he had left with Lee for safekeeping. “You two stay outside. You wouldn’t stand a chance in there unarmed and you’d only handicap me.”

  “Who’s unarmed?” Farge growled. He charged in past the tangled wreck of gate and car, rolled the guard’s body over and drew a projector from under it. “I spotted this in his belt. Give me five seconds and I’ll have it converted into an entity-destroyer.”

  “I’m going with you,” Lee said flatly. “I still remember the layout of the camp pretty well and I may see other things that will bring back some memories.”

  There was no time to argue. “Stay behind me and spread out. The big rocket’s our target number one. We can’t let that blast off with its human cargo.”

  Beyond the fence, cars were piling up and voices were yelling. Temple ignored them and ran down the street toward the tower, the others at his heels. Ahead, a knot of armed guards burst into sight, racing toward them. Probably, Temple thought, they had been pulled off fence duty to handle some important task connected with the rocket.

  Guns blazed and lead hissed and whined around the trio, or kicked spurts of dust from the street. Temple snapped the projector but apparently the range was too great for effect.

  “Take cover,” he panted over his shoulder. “I’ll zigzag forward until I can knock them out with the beam.”

  His head was jerking crazily as he tried to search the air through the detector screen and still keep an eye on the guards. He saw three of the violet blobs whipping toward him in a cluster, with a number of others spread out behind. A single burst destroyed the three and the rest fled.

  Lead was singing all around him. Only his evasive action and the difficulty of aiming on the dead run kept him from being riddled. Then he saw a guard drop to one knee and take careful aim. The range still seemed too great but in desperation he triggered the projector, sweeping it in an arc. The kneeling rifleman toppled and the front rank of runners melted so swiftly that those behind tripped over them.

  Yelling exultantly, Temple sprayed the invisible beam over the melee and was exhilarated by the dazzling burst of violet flashes. Every guard was down, their limp figures sprawled in a bloodless comic-opera grotesquerie of mock carnage. As he ran past the tumbled bodies, he was suddenly aware that Lee and Farge had never run to cover but faced the gunfire with him.

  Farge paused to rummage over the fallen guards, then ran to catch up. “Guns, but not a projector in the lot.”

  “There aren’t many,” Lee panted. “I remember, we could only make a few crystals at a time. We were too busy.”

  “Make?” Temple cried over his shoulder. “Do you mean those are synthetics, made from materials right here on Earth?”

  Lee nodded. “But don’t ask me what materials.”

  There was no more human interference, no visible sign of hovering entities as they burst into the open space at the foot of the rocket tower. Lee motioned. “Around this way. There’s a door that leads straight to the rocket’s loading ramp.”

  They swerved to the right, took a dozen pounding strides. In the lead Temple stiffened and skidded to a stop, hands half lifted, eyes wide in an incredulous stare. The others stopped beside him, gaping.

  Before their bulging eyes rose a second tower, immensely larger than the first, a quarter mile to the north. The central tower, directly in line with the gate, had masked it from their view before.

  “Curt,” Lee cried. “I can’t remember ever seeing that second tower before.”

  “It’s new,” Temple said bitterly. “I’m the world’s prize knucklehead. I never stopped to think that their new giant rocket would require a new giant launching tower of its own. It’s from there, not here, that another five hundred helpless victims are about to be shot to the moon.”

  “There might still be time to stop it,” Farge said. “That street runs straight through to…” His words trailed off as a faint rumble made the air and earth quiver.

  At the open top of the tower a faint glow appeared and grew swiftly brighter as the sound and vibration rose. The sound became a titanic, howling thunder and the monstrous new rocket burst from its silo. Up and up it fled, hurling its trail of intolerable flame, and vanished in a soundless flash as it shifted to the new drive; perhaps, Temple thought, to a new dimension. Afterward the invisible storm of ionized air or whatever swept them eerily and was gone.

  The spell was broken by sudden movement from the deep shadows, the wink of light on metal. Temple yelled and spun around. His outflung arms caught the others and sent them reeling back an instant before the pale blue beam flicked past. He triggered the projector at
the shadows. There was a flash of violet light and the body of another guard pitched into the street.

  Farge ran to snatch up his fallen projector. He worked at it for a moment, with a tiny pocket screwdriver, then handed it to Lee with a flourish. “You now have your own projector. Welcome to the club.”

  Temple was standing in an attitude of hopeless dejection, his head still thrown back, eyes staring bleakly at the sky. By their failure, five hundred more human beings had been hurled from the familiar Earth toward unknowable anguish on an alien world. They, and all the others before them, were beyond reach of any human aid. How many so-called Crimson Plague victims had already been sent to the moon? Five thousand? Ten?

  Suddenly he tensed with a startled exclamation that brought the others spinning around. “What is it, Curt? I can’t see anything.”

  He gestured upward. “Entities—thousands of them. They’re pouring in from every direction, diving into the top of this smaller tower above us like swallows returning to their chimney at sundown.”

  “Maybe—” Farge began, then yelled and pointed.

  A small, slim figure had burst from the base of the great rocket tower and was running furiously, desperately, up the wide street toward the smaller tower beside them. As it burst through the glow of an auxiliary street lamp, Temple recognized the thin, pale face with its line of neat black mustache.

  “Rocky,” he cried. “It’s Dr. Eno Rocossen.”

  The little physicist was clutching a projector and running as if his life depended upon it. In that moment of startled recognition, Temple saw a whole knot of men burst from the larger tower to follow at the same frantic run.

  He gasped with the shock of recognition at the same moment Lee cried, “Curt, it’s the whole Meteoritics Team. There’s Jacobs, Spirovic, Bensil, all of them.” A big blond man, a total stranger to Temple, ran through the light and she added. “And Mr. Van Arden of NASA.”

  Temple had completely forgotten the man whose early morning phone call had plunged him into this nightmare. But there were more important matters to face now. Every member of the group was carrying a weapon of some kind.

  He glimpsed three or four blue beam projectors, several guns, clubs. He took it for granted that they were charging to attack the three intruders. Then realization burst upon him.

  “They aren’t after us. They’re heading for the smaller rocket, just as all those entities were, evacuating their base here on Earth. You said Rocky was pilot of the small rocket. He’s flying them all back to the moon, beyond our reach.”

  “Good riddance,” Farge said, his eyes shining. “We’ve licked ’em, Curt, chased them and their dirty business off the Earth.”

  “No,” Temple cried. “If they get away, we’re whipped. They can stay there, out of reach, with an army of mindless slaves until they’ve built up a new plan of conquest. We’ve got to stop them. That rocket is our only hope of blocking them and saving those thousands of poor victims they kidnapped. Come on!”

  Rocossen, still running at his furious pace, was almost to the tower where they stood in the shadows, the other scientists only yards behind him. In the detector screen they showed as a swarm of bobbing violet fireflies.

  Temple burst from the shadows, running to intercept the physicist, lifting the projector. He saw Rocossen’s eyes widen, his stride falter at the first shock of surprise. Then his own projector flashed up and the trigger studs clicked in unison.

  The blue beam missed by no more than an inch as Temple flung himself aside. But the movement evidently spoiled his own aim, since there was no violet flash of a disintegrating entity. Before he could aim again, Rocossen darted aside and raced toward a smaller door, barely visible in the tower base. Temple pounded after him, centering his projector with cold deliberation. Behind him rose Lee’s clear cry. “Destroy it, Curt! His is one of the most powerful and dangerous entities of all.”

  On the detector screen the thing seemed huge, its violet hue deeper and richer. As Rocossen fumbled with the door, Temple had a clear point-blank shot. His finger pressed the firing stud.

  In the same instant, his reflex jerked the projector up so the invisible destroying force whipped harmlessly over its target. At the same moment, Rocossen jerked the door open and darted inside.

  Farge, pounding up, gasped, “You missed, Curt. You had a clear shot and something jerked your arm.”

  “I jerked it,” Temple panted. “That rocket’s the only hope of escape for those poor devils on the moon. If I destroyed his entity, Rocky wouldn’t know how to fly it, and neither would we. I’ve got to grab him with that thing still alive and somehow force it to obey our orders. You and Lee block the door, try to hold the others back until I grab him. Use your projectors on them.”

  Without waiting for an answer he plunged into the shadowy interior of the tower. The smaller rocket, still immense, loomed over him, its nose hidden in the shadowy upper reaches of the tower. He saw that it crouched in a deep pit, a full third of its body below ground level. Straight ahead a wide gangplank led across the outer edge of that pit to an open port in the side of the rocket. The port lock, hinged at the bottom, stood out to form a platform on which the far end of the gangplank rested.

  Light flooded from the rocket’s interior onto the figure of Rocossen staggering breathlessly across the gangplank. Behind him Temple heard yells and the sound of conflict as the entity-driven mob hurled itself on Lee and Farge. He wanted desperately to look around, to check on their safety, but there was not a second to be spared. He hurled himself onto the gangplank, shouting “Rocky! Stop or I’ll use the destroying beam.”

  On the port threshold, Rocossen whirled around and the blue beam lashed out. Temple felt a stab of excruciating agony and his whole right side went numb. His leg crumpled and he pitched down, landing with head and shoulders out over the edge. The projector flew from his paralyzed hand to crash onto the concrete floor a full fifty feet below.

  Rocossen had darted into the rocket and disappeared. Gasping, trembling, Temple hauled himself back from the edge just as machinery inside the ship began to whine. Hydraulic pistons set up a rhythmic, gurgling thudding and under him the gangplank began to quiver.

  The port lock was rising, closing, lifting the end of the gangplank with it. In a matter of moments the rising lock would slip completely out from under the end of the plank, letting it plunge into the pit with Temple still on it. If by a miracle he survived the fall, he would be directly under the blast tubes of the rocket, trapped in a pocket of seething flames.

  Cold sweat blinded him as he scrabbled with left arm and leg to force himself up the gangplank. The steepening angle added to his problem but he gritted his teeth and inched forward. He was almost to the port, near enough to see that the area of overlap under the gangplank had dwindled to a hair. At any instant the rising lock would slip past the end, and he still had an agonizing two feet to cover. He would never make it…

  CHAPTER 14

  On The Moon

  Running steps clattered up the gangplank. Strong hands grabbed hold of his jacket and Temple felt himself lifted, dragged and literally flung over the rim of the lock. He slid and rolled down the steep incline to the floor, hearing the far-off clatter of the dislodged gangplank crashing into the pit.

  A body came tumbling down, landing across his legs. Lee Mason, her golden hair disheveled, grinned at him with bruised lips and murmured, “Just made it, darling.”

  Above them the port lock chugged into its seal and almost instantly the rocket quivered to the first murmur of awakening blasts. Temple cried wildly, “Lee! How…? What are you doing in here?”

  “I saw you about to take a dive and ran to help you in,” she panted. “Allen stayed behind to hold them back. He caught a paralysis beam and lost his projector, but he’s doing all right with one fist. At least we’re together, Curt dear.”

  The mounting thunder of the rockets penetrated his daze and an expression of frantic anguish twisted his face. “He’s blasting off. W
e’ve got to stop him. We’ll be killed, crushed to a pulp by the acceleration.”

  It was too late. The floor lurched under them, then an irresistible force smashed down with crushing pressure. Through a mist of agony Temple glimpsed Lee’s face, contorted almost beyond recognition by the terrible forces of acceleration. Then a wave of blackness swept over his senses.

  Consciousness rushed back over him in a wave. His whole body felt as if he had been beaten with clubs. A sharp tingling in his right arm and leg told him the effects of the paralysis beam were wearing off. The rockets had been cut off and there was no sound or sensation of movement whatever.

  He found he could move his head and rolled it, fighting a numbing fear for Lee Mason’s safety. She lay beside him and the regular movement of her breast told him she was alive. At the same moment he saw what had saved them. The floor on which they lay had seemed iron-hard but he saw now that it was actually a firmly resilient plastic of some unfamiliar kind. It had yielded to the press of their bodies, cushioning them against the worst fury of acceleration.

  With tremendous effort he forced himself to a sitting position. Suddenly there was a lurch that brought a wave of nausea to the pit of his stomach. A thin, high whine wracked his eardrums. The very air around him quivered with a vibration that made everything waver, as if he were viewing the interior of the rocket through heat waves.

  As suddenly as they began, the effects vanished. His vision had never seemed so clear, his whole being so exhilarated. Beside him, Lee Mason sat up, wide-eyed. “What happened, Curt? I suddenly feel wonderful but strange.”

  “I think we just slipped into that hyper-drive or dimensional drive or space-warp, whatever it is. If you’re all right, I’ll go up forward and give Rocky the shock of his life. I don’t believe he realized he was carrying passengers this trip.”