The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (96 page)

These powerful remote-controlled machines had been designed for heavy toil. Schuyler had found another use for them. He had had them fitted with high-power destruction-beams, that could be flashed from two eye-like apertures high in the cylinder. And he had sent such deadly altered Workers with his looters to Andromeda. Evers had heard from the K’harn about the stalking metal terrors and what they had done.

Evers expected the destroying beams to stab toward them as the Worker entered. But they did not.

Instead, the metal colossus came striding in toward them, raising its great arms.

“Three beams together might burn through a leg and bring it down,” Evers whispered. “The left leg at the joint, full strength. Now!”

Their weapons flashed and the three beams converged on the joint of the massive metal limb.

They had no effect whatever on the tough metal. Next instant, with a ponderous agility, the thing sprang in with great pincer-like hands reaching.

They darted back from it, scattering. It stood, as though contemplating them, immobile but infinitely threatening. It was impossible to remember that it was a machine actuated by the control of someone outside, impossible to think of it as other than alive.

Evers, crouched ready to move and hoping for a shot at a vital part of the thing, heard a voice outside saying,

“I can cut them down fast with the beams!”

And he heard Schuyler’s flat voice answering commandingly, “No! No beams. It must look as though they crashed and were killed in their ship.”

The Worker sprang again, this time at Straw.

Straw fired, and his delaying to do so was fatal. His beam splashed harmlessly off the big cylinder. The great pincer-hand swung with blurring speed toward him. Unable to draw back in time, Straw tried to duck the metal hand, and it struck the side of his head and knocked him into a tumbled heap.

Lindeman screeched in pure anger and ran in at the Worker, firing. The metal arm that had just felled Straw instantly darted and encircled Lindeman’s small figure, pressing him helpless against the cylinder. And, holding Lindeman, the Worker leaped toward Evers.

Evers, possessed by a cold rage, had no intention of attacking the Worker. Such attack had been proved futile. It seemed to him that they were done for and his only wish now was to take Schuyler with them.

He plunged past the Worker, heading for the doorway and the man outside whom he wanted to kill.

He almost made it. He was at the door, his gun raised, when he heard the rush of clanking feet right behind him and the Worker’s metal arm flashed around him and gripped crushingly. He was drawn against the cold metal side, his arms pinioned, his bones cracking.

“Got them!” said a voice outside, and then the men out there came in.

Strangled in that iron embrace, Evers hung helpless and looked down at them.

THERE WAS a man in the front of the group who was dressed in a rich, shimmering blue coverall. He was a tall man, who had run a little to fat. You didn’t notice that at first because his face held you. It was plump with good living, but there was nothing soft about it. It was the face of an emperor who has had power so long that people are no longer people to him, but creatures to be given their orders. His eyes had no pity in them as he surveyed Evers and Lindeman, only a certain resentment.

“You’ve made a lot of trouble,” he said in that hard, flat voice. “Too bad for you you had to go where you weren’t wanted.”

Lindeman said, “Schuyler.” He said other things, and his voice shook, and Schuyler paid no attention at all but turned impatiently to the bald, lean, hard-bitten man beside him.

“Take them back out to their ship, Alden. You know what to do. Remember, it must absolutely look to GC as though they died in the crash.”

Alden, the bald man, nodded curtly. “Yes, Mr. Schuyler. The Worker can take these two out—it’s safer.”

One of the other men had gone and was bending over Straw. He said, “This one’s dead. Whole skull crushed in.”

Lindeman, his face pale and tragic, looked at Evers. And Evers thought of how brief a man’s obituary could be. All the things that Straw had done, the dreams he had dreamed and the things he had laughed at, and all of a sudden it was all wrapped up and put away forever with the three words, “
This one’s dead
.”

“All right, bring him along,” Alden said impatiently.

There was another man with a small control-box slung on his chest. It had many buttons on it and he played upon them as expertly as an accordionist. In answer to his playing, the Worker turned ponderously.

Evers did not struggle as the Worker started out through the door with them. You could not struggle against that iron grip, and anyway the sooner they all left the warehouse, the less likely was Sharr to be discovered.

It wasn’t only that he felt sorry for the Valloan girl who had unwisely stepped into a game too big and deadly for her. He still had a bitter hope—not for themselves, they were all through, but a hope that Sharr might keep hidden till the GC cruisers came. If she could, Schuyler might still be exposed, even though he and Lindeman were dead.

But Lindeman struggled. Straw’s death had stunned him to silence for a moment but now as they were carried out, the little scientist raged back at Schuyler.

“You won’t get away with it forever, Schuyler! Sooner or later, someone else will go to Andromeda and the K’harn will tell them what they told us, and you’ll be all through.”

Evers desperately wished that Lindeman would shut up. Talk would do no good now, and might only get Sharr discovered. But Lindeman had reached the end of all self-control.

“All the dead out there, all the agony you’ve caused, you’ll pay for it, Schuyler, when—”

Schuyler’s voice cut across Lindeman’s raging. “Hold it,” he said sharply.

He spoke to the man controlling the Worker, for the Worker holding Evers and Lindeman suddenly stopped its clanking stride just outside the warehouse.

Schuyler came and looked up at the two captives. It seemed to Evers that there was an alert new expression on Schuyler’s face.

Schuyler said, “You say the K’harn
told
you what we’d done there? How could you understand their language?”

“We understood them,” Lindeman shouted. “We learned their language well enough to understand everything they told us of what you’d done there, damn you!”

Evers saw that Schuyler was paying no attention to the rest of Lindeman’s furious maledictions. The magnate seemed to be thinking fast and hard, looking up at the two of them.

He said suddenly to Alden, “Plans are changed. Take these two to the house.”

Alden hesitated. “But the warning we got about GC ships coming here after them! When they don’t find any bodies in that wreck, they’ll start searching here for these three.”

An uneasy stir ran through the men grouped around them in the starlight. It was obvious that the last thing they wanted was for GC to start investigating on Arkar.

“That’s easily taken care of,” snapped Schuyler. “Put the dead one in the wreck, fuse the fuel-bunkers, and blow it up. Make it look as though their ship blew when they crashed.”

Alden’s face cleared in relief. “Yes. Yes, that should do it.”

The man controlling the Worker touched his controls. The iron grip suddenly relaxed, dropping Evers and Lindeman to the ground.

When Evers scrambled to his feet, it was to find that he faced the guns of two tough-faced men, who stood carefully covering him and Lindeman.

Schuyler turned away, saying over his shoulder, “I don’t want these two hurt. Bring them along to the house.”

He got into a car and was driven away. One of the tough-faced men motioned Evers and Lindeman toward another car.

Evers looked back, as they went. Straw’s body had been carried out, and was being put in the back of a half-trac. The warehouse door was being locked again. He thought that Sharr was safe for the time being. She would surely be able to pick the lock again and get out when the GC ships arrived.

Evers and Lindeman got into the back seat of the car, and the two tough-faced men got into the front. One of the men drove and the other sat turned around, his gun covering the two prisoners. The car darted away across the spaceport. Through the window, Evers saw the half-trac hurrying away toward the forest.

Goodbye, Straw…

Their car went fast under the flaring krypton lights, past the docks. There was activity around the starships there—men hurrying, a couple of towering Workers clanking away with heavy loads, whistles and orders sounding from back in the dark. They raced past a Communic building with tall masts and radar-installations. Trees were ahead now—trees that were flowers of old Earth grown to incredible size on this chemically different planet. The car sped down a narrow road between daisies as tall as eucalyptus trees, scarlet poppies with blooms like great bowls, dandelion shrubbery that was ten feet high.

Evers was trying to figure it all out, and couldn’t. Why had Schuyler suddenly countermanded the order for their killing? He wanted something from them, that went without saying, but what?

The house loomed at the end of the road, bowered in gigantic peonies, roses, lilies, softly illuminated by concealed outside floodlights, as though Schuyler was proud of his house and wanted to see it by day and by night. Evers thought he had reason to be proud.

The greatest metals magnate in the galaxy had built of metal, boldly and imaginatively. The main mass of the house, curved and domed of roof, was of sheening chrome-steel, or a metal that looked like it. The heaviness of its mass was counterbalanced by dainty, fairy-like towers that rose smoothly from its sides, high enough to brush the giant flowers all around. The house could have been grotesque, but it was not. It was a dream of unreal beauty.

They got out of the car and the Earthmen with guns walked well behind them as they went up the wide copper steps. They went into a gleaming hallway, and then into a big room whose walls were all of tawny bronze, warm and welcoming, its casual furniture giving it an air of graciousness and comfort that Evers found not at all reassuring at this moment.

Schuyler was sitting down behind a desk. He motioned to chairs beside a little table. There was a bottle and glasses on the table.

“Have a drink,” said Schuyler. “You look as though you could use it.”

Lindeman paid no heed, but sat down and put his face in his hands. He said Straw’s name in a whisper.

Evers reached for the bottle. He didn’t think that refusing would hurt Schuyler any, and he did need the drink. He poured and drank a big one. As he sat the glass down he saw, back against the bronze wall, the two tough-faced men with the guns standing and watching them.

Schuyler said incisively, “It must be obvious to you that you’ve been spared because you can be useful to me.”

They said nothing, but Lindeman raised his head and looked at Schuyler with a weary hate. Schuyler got the look, and his plump face hardened slightly.

“Let’s understand each other,” he said. “You consider me a ruthless monster. I consider you fools. But we can deal. I can give you something you want—your lives.”

“And what do you want from us in exchange?” Evers demanded.

“Help,” said Schuyler promptly. “Help in dealing with a certain problem in our Andromeda operation.”

Lindeman started to speak and Schuyler said boredly, “Spare me your moral indignation. To me, what you call moral laws are just rules that other men have laid down. I play it all by my own rules.”

He went on, tapping with a gold pencil on the desk. “Two years ago, I first went to Andromeda. It was obvious that someone would go there soon, the inter-galactic drive was possible at any time. I decided to get there first without telling anyone, and see what I could pick up before the rush started. I was looking for rare metals. I found a lot more than that. I found the K’harn and their alien science. The value of that totally different science, its instruments and potentialities, was obvious.”

Evers nodded. “So you robbed them and killed those of them who objected.”

Schuyler shrugged. “Only when they tried resistance. Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t developed any war-weapons. Since that first trip, I’ve had cruisers working the fringe worlds of Andromeda, bringing back instruments of K’harn science that
could
be invaluable. The trouble is that they’re so alien in concept, my own technicians don’t understand them. It may take years for them to puzzle out those gadgets.”

He paused, then told Evers and Lindeman, “You say you learned the K’harn language. You must have spent a good bit of time with the K’harn, to do that.”

Evers thought he understood now. “We did,” he said. “They accepted us as friends, when they found we weren’t part of your outfit. But we do
not
know how to operate or explain K’harn scientific instruments, so I think you’re wasting your time.”

Schuyler smiled slightly. “I seldom waste my time. You’re under a misapprehension. It’s your ability to speak the K’harn language that interests me.”

Evers stared, puzzled. “Why?”