CHAPTER VIII
Thunder rolled and bellowed across the night sky, mounting to a deafening crescendo. Up into the starry heavens rose a great black bulk, climbing starward on a column of fading fire. And hardly had its echoes ebbed than the dull explosions came again, and another rocket-ship took off in the unending Marslift.
Crouching with Martha in the darkness of an old pier, with the murmuring black vagueness of the Upper Harbor in front of them, Wales looked over his shoulder at the fiery finger that pointed out to man's new home in the sky. He turned back to Martha, as she whispered to him. She was staring out over the dark water.
"I don't see any lights, Jay. Not one."
"They wouldn't show lights," he said. "They'd not advertise the fact that they're there."
"If they're there," she said. "If Lee's there."
He took her roughly by the shoulders. "Martha, don't lose your nerve now. Think what depends on this."
He jerked his head in the direction of the distant New Jersey Spaceport, as still another Mars-bound ship rode up in majestic thunder and flame.
"There should be twice as many ships, twice as many evacuees, going out now as there are! All the people who doubt, who hold back, who refuse to go—Lee is the key to saving them."
"But if we only had help, Jay! The authorities—"
Wales said, "Fairlie, as regional Evacuation Marshal, is the top local authority here now. And don't you see—if that story is true, Fairlie is the last man we dare let know we're here."
He took her hand. "Come on. We've still got to find a skiff of some kind."
They started along the dark waterfront. They were, Wales figured, somewhere in the southern Jersey City docks. Out in the dark harbor lay Bedloe's Island, and it was past midnight and there was little time.
He and Martha, with their prisoner, had come across Pennsylvania by unused, deserted back roads during the day. The circuitous route had taken time, and a few hours of sleep snatched in a thicket off the road had taken more time. But Wales had not dared to risk being seen.
If Pudgy's story was true, Fairlie was the enemy. Fairlie was the man who had sent hunters after him. And it would be so easy for the Evacuation Marshal, with his regional authority, to have Wales proclaimed an outlaw on some phony charge, and set every Evacuation Police post around New York looking for him.
They dared seek aid of no one. If Kendrick was a prisoner on the little island, they must attempt the rescue themselves. And that would not be easy, judging from what Pudgy had said.
Wales had driven into an alley in deserted Jersey City, and had dragged their bound prisoner into an empty store.
"Now," said Wales, "we're going to leave you here."
"Tied hand and foot?" cried Pudgy. "Why not kill me and get it over with? This town is closed out, I could yell all day and nobody would hear me. I'll starve! No one will ever come—"
"We'll come, and free you," Wales said. "After we've got Kendrick off that island. But of course, if we fail, if they get us, then we'll never be back. I want you to think about that."
Pudgy had thought about it, and it was clear that he did not like that thought at all. When it had sunk in, Wales said,
"Now you tell us all you know about the set-up on that island. How many guards, where they usually are, how they're armed, where Kendrick is kept. Everything. If you brief us well enough, we may succeed—and then we'll be back for you."
Pudgy had got the point. He had talked long and rapidly, feverishly giving Wales every scrap of information he possessed.
They had left him there, and had come by foot to the waterfront, and now if they had a boat, the island was only a little way ahead.
But there was no boat, not a canoe even, along these dark docks. Wales led the way farther along the waterfront. He dared not flash a light, and they might search all night amid these dark piers without success.
He was beginning to despair, when they came to a small boatyard. He found a skiff by stumbling over it in the dark. There were no oars, but he soon forced the door of the dark office-shack and found those.
"Now before we start, Martha—" He was fitting the oars into locks that he'd made as silent as possible by rag mufflings. "—when we reach the island, I want you to stay on the shore and wait."
"I'm not afraid—" she began, but Wales cut her short.
"Listen, it's not that. I'll be in the dark there. If I have to shoot, I want to be sure I'm not shooting you by mistake."
He pushed out onto the water, and bent to the oars, rowing steadily. The tide was running, and he had to allow for that, but there was only a little choppiness on the Upper Harbor.
Wales thought again how unreal everything on Earth seemed by now. And this scene most of all! This harbor had once been the busiest in the world, and by night the lights of shipping, of docks, of bridges, had flared everywhere, with the electric glow of Manhattan blazing over everything.
And now there was silence and darkness on the waters. All the millions who had lived around these shores had left Earth long ago, and their cities were dark and still. Only the downtown tip of Manhattan still showed patterns of lighted windows, where the ceaseless activities of Operation Doomsday centered.
Wales rowed on, and then rested his oars a moment and turned and peered ahead in the darkness. He saw a lofty shadow now against the stars, and knew that it was the great Statue. He lifted the oars again, rowing now with infinite care to make no sound.
Brr-rumble—oom—oom—oom—
Up into the sky westward rose another of the mighty Marslift rocket-ships, and then in quick succession, two more.
The flare of them in the heavens sent a wild, shaking light over the waters, over the little skiff.
"Get down!" Wales whispered frantically, and he and Martha crouched low in the little craft.
The oom—oom—oom faded away in muttering echoes. Wales could but pray that they had not been seen from the island ahead, and row on.
He hoped desperately that there would be no more rocket-ships taking off, no more flares in the sky, until he reached the island. It seemed to him that he rowed eternally, and got nowhere.
Then, in the darkness, Martha whispered warning. The skiff bumped land. Wales made out a low bank rising above them. He picked up the Venn gun and climbed ashore.
He whispered, "Stay in the skiff, Martha. You can push off if I fail." And added quickly, "Don't you see, if I do fail, you'll be the last hope left."
He gave her no time to argue. He gripped the Venn gun, and started through the darkness.
There was no doubt about directions. Huge now against the stars loomed the Statue. And in it, if Pudgy had told truth, were Lee Kendrick—and the four of Fairlie's secret police who guarded him.
Wales crossed the park with his stubby gun held high. The grass was tall and ragged from long lack of care. And there was not a sound, or a light, on the little island.
He circled around to the front of the Statue, and stared up at the parapet of the mighty pedestal, and the entrance to the giant figure.
Nothing. No light, no sound of movement.
Wales felt a chill of dismay. He had not realized how much he had begun to hope, until now.
Brr-rumble—
He heard the first preliminary roar from the west, and immediately he dropped flat behind a shrub.
The full thunderous diapason of take-off broke around him, and the flaming exclamation point in the heavens blazed brightly.
And Wales saw a man, with a gun under his arm, standing on the parapet.
The flare of light died, and the rocket-roar grumbled away.
But now, as he rose to his feet, Wales felt a wild triumph. The guard was there, as Pudgy had said, and that meant—
He moved forward, and started up the steps. He was more than halfway up them, moving softly, when he heard a movement above.
Wales froze. The guard above might not have heard him. But he could take no chances, with all that depended on him now.
He crouched waiting on the steps, the Venn gun raised. It seemed to him that hours went by.
Rumble-boom-boom—
As the distant rocket-roar crashed again, as the column of fire streaked across the sky, by its light Wales saw the man on the parapet peering down toward him with his gun alertly raised.
Instantly, Wales shot him. He shot to kill.
The man dropped. Wales raced on up the steps, hoping that the brief burst of his Venn gun would not have been heard in the rocket-roar.
But a door above swung open, and light spilled out from inside the base of the giant Statue. Two men appeared in the doorway, drawing pistols.
"What—" one cried.
Wales fired, a prolonged burst. He had no intention whatever of taking extra risks by sparing life. These men, and the men they worked for, would have taken the lives of millions. There was no mercy in him.
One of the two in the doorway fell. The other, blood welling from his shoulder, tried to shift his pistol to his other hand.
Wales, racing up to them, heard pounding footsteps inside the statue, and he took no time to shoot again. He clubbed the Venn gun's barrel down over the head of the wounded man, and sprang over him and the dead one in the doorway, right into the base of the lofty figure.
A light burned in here. He ran to the foot of the winding stair that led upward. Frantic feet running up above him made reverberating echoes. He glimpsed a pair of legs on the stair—
He shot, and the legs crumpled and a man came sliding back down the stair, screaming and trying to aim his gun. Wales triggered again, and when the scream of richocheting steel and the echoes of gunfire died away, there was silence unbroken.
He started running up the stair. In a minute he heard Martha's voice calling, from down beneath.
"Jay!"
He shouted back down, and ran on, his heart pounding, his lungs pumping.
He came into the grotesque room of angled steel that was the inside of the giant head. There was a carefully shaded light here. And a man huddled on the floor near it, shackled to the wall.
Wales turned the light full on him. A bearded face looked at him, with wild dark eyes—a face he could hardly recognize.
"Lee?" he said. And then suddenly, he was sure. "Lee Kendrick."
Kendrick said, hesitantly, "Why it's Jay Wales. But you were on Mars. How—" And then Kendrick's eyes suddenly flamed and he shouted hoarsely. "Wales, you don't know what's happened, what they're planning—"
"I know," Wales said, stooping by him. "Take it easy. Please—"
Kendrick clutched him, babbling, pleading. Not until Martha came in, and stooped beside her brother, crying, could Wales get away.
He said, "Try to quiet down. There must be a key to these shackles somewhere."
He went back down the stair. The man he had shot in the shoulder and then stunned, was now stirring and groaning.
Wales made a rough bandage for the bleeding shoulder, and then tied the man's wrists with his own belt. He thought it would hurt, when the man came to. He hoped it would.
He searched pockets until he found keys, and then went back up. Kendrick seemed to have got control of himself. He talked feverishly as Wales tried keys.
"There's still time before Doomsday, isn't there?" he pleaded. "Still time to get everybody off Earth? It isn't too late?"
"I think there may be time enough," Wales said. He got the shackles unlocked, and helped Kendrick to his feet. "But we've still Fairlie to reckon with."
Kendrick broke into raging curses, and Wales stopped him sharply. "Cut it, Lee. I feel exactly the same way about it but we've no time for hysteria. It'll be tricky trying to get to Fairlie in his own stronghold, over in New York. Tell me—has he come here often?"
"He hasn't been here for two weeks," Kendrick said. "He—and Bliss and the others in it with him—you know what they wanted of me? They wanted me to issue statements saying that Nereus might not hit Earth after all. They said they'd leave me here for Doomsday, if I didn't. Damn them—"
Again, Wales calmed him down. "Those guards didn't go over to New York to report to him, did they? Did they use radiophone?"
Kendrick looked startled. "Why, yes, they did. I've heard them. But I don't know what secret wavelength they used."
"Maybe," said Wales tightly, "we can find that out. Martha, you help him down the stairs. A few steps at a time, till his legs steady."
He hurried back down again. The wounded man he had tied up had recovered consciousness. He sat, his face a pallor of pain, and looked up at Wales with wide, fearful eyes.
"Yes," said Wales softly. "I'd love to kill you. You're right about that. But maybe I won't. What's your name?"
"Mowler."
"You know how to call Fairlie, on the portable radiophone? Well, you're going to call him. You're going to tell him just what I say."
By the time he found the radiophone and brought it, Kendrick was coming shakily down the last steps with Martha steadying him.
Wales asked Mowler, "What's the wavelength for Fairlie's private phone?"
Mowler, looking up into his face, shivered and told him. He set the dial.
Then he told the wounded man what to say. He finished, "Don't do it wrong."
Again looking into Wales' face, Mowler said, "I won't."
Wales touched the call-button. He held the instrument in front of Mowler. And presently a voice came from it.
"Fairlie speaking."
"Mowler here," said Mowler. "Our guest wants to see you. He says he's ready to make that statement now—any statement you want."
"About time," growled Fairlie's voice. "All right, I'll come."
Wales switched off the instrument and took it away. He went out on the parapet, and waited in the darkness with the Venn gun in his hands.
Martha and Kendrick came out, and as another Marslift ship flamed up across the sky, he saw that her face was white and strained.
She said, "Don't kill him, Jay."
He said, without turning, "The Evacuation has been delayed, and there may not be enough time to make up that delay. We may not get everyone off Earth in time. And every one of those who are left to face Doomsday will have been killed by Fairlie and his pals."
"I know," she said. "But don't, Jay."
He would make no promise, or answer. He waited. And they heard the purr of the fast power-boat, less than an hour later.
Dawn was gray in the eastern sky when Fairlie, and one armed man in Evacuation Police uniform, came up the steps to the pedestal.
Wales stepped out, the Venn gun levelled, and Kendrick came out behind him.
Fairlie stopped. The Police officer with him made an uncertain sound and movement.
"Don't be stupid," Fairlie said. "He's got us cold."
He came up a few more steps. He looked up at Wales, and there was in his powerful face an immense disgust.
"You're proud, aren't you, Wales?" said Fairlie. "You think you've done something big and gallant. You've saved, or tried to save, a lot of human lives and that makes you happy." He suddenly raged. "Human refuse! The weak, the unfit, the no-damned-good, that we've been saddled with all our lives here on Earth—and now we must take them with us to drag us all down on Mars."
"Don't, Jay," whispered Martha, and her voice was a painful sound.
Fairlie said:
"Let him. I'd sooner go out now as see all human civilization dragged down out there by the weight of the useless rabble who would be better dead."
Wales said, "You're so sure, just who should live and who should die. You felt such a big man, making secret decisions like that, didn't you? Fairlie, who knows what's best for everybody. You and your pals liked that feeling, didn't you? There have always been characters like you—"
He paused, and then he said, "We're going over to New York. We're going to have Kendrick tell his story to all the millions still on Earth, and it's a story that two of your own men will back up. We're going to try to get every last soul off Earth before Doomsday. But if we don't—"
"If you don't?" sneered Fairlie.
"You'll know it," said Wales, and now he was shaking. "Because you, Fairlie, will not leave Earth till every last soul is evacuated. If any human being faces Doomsday here, you'll face it right with him.”