Battlefield Earth (45 page)

     Jonnie lay in a coffin at the near end of the morgue. The lid was slightly propped open to give him air and an interior view. On the outside roof a button camera brought the exterior scene to a hand viewer resting beside him in the dark confines. He was dressed in Chinko blue but he wore moccasins, the better to speed him today.

For today in the space of just two exact minutes he had to cover certain exact grounds and do very drilled and exact things and do them in an exact time, or the whole project would fail and he would be dead. And Chrissie and Pattie would die as well. And all the Scots and others left on Earth.

He heard the transshipment area control tower warning horn for the incoming phase.

“Motors off. Stand clear!”

The humming came on. The ground vibrated. The coffin lid trembled. The humming built up and up.

Suddenly two hundred new incoming Psychlos appeared on the platform along with their baggage.

The humming dropped. A faint vibration remained.

“Coordinates holding and linked up with second stage.”

The whole area came to life. One hour and thirteen minutes would elapse now until they fired back to Psychlo.

Personnel department members were herding the incoming draft off to the side and getting them in line.

Terl eyed the assemblage. The last time a draft had come in he had had a bad shock, and now he wasn’t taking any chances. He was half-expecting to find a new Planet Head in this lot, somebody to replace Ker, and he might have to think fast. He walked down the line, not looking at baggage for contraband. He was just looking at faces through their domed transport helmets, checking off the names. Two hundred. More of old Numph’s nonsense to get as many on the swindle payroll as he could. Terl went down the whole line. He breathed a sigh of relief. No replacement here for Ker, just the usual gutter sweepings from the slums of Psychlo plus an oddball junior executive and a couple of graduates from the mine school. Routine. Not one in the lot that could qualify as a Planet Head. All a bit lethargic. No agents from I.B.I. either!

Terl raised a paw to personnel and they divided some off for waiting transport planes destined for other minesites and some to berthing here.

They loaded them on flatbeds with their baggage and they were gone.

That was a relief to Terl. He approached the morgue. That blasted horse of the animal’s that was always hanging around the compound was grazing in back of the morgue. “Get away from here!” Terl yelled at the horse and made paw motions to shoo him off. The horse looked at Terl indifferently, and when Terl went to open the door it came even closer.

Terl unlocked the morgue door and threw it wide.

There were ten coffins lying there, ready to be scooped up by lift machines. He checked for the small “X” marks on the covers. Nothing like taking precautions. Every lid had its little “X” mark.

He patted one of them fondly. He took a deep breath. Maybe eight or ten months from now he would be digging these up some dark Psychlo night in the isolated and dreary cemetery on Psychlo. And it would be riches, power! The fruits of his project were hard won. They wouldn’t be that hard to spend!

The first lift came, thrust its prongs under a coffin. Terl went back outside. He checked off the name on his records. The second coffin, the third, the fourth…Terl looked at the fourth one, a bit puzzled. How come he had spelled Jayed’s false name wrong?

Not “Snit” but “Stni.” He checked for the “X.” That was there all right. Well, to crap with it. He’d enter the error on the record. One good false name deserved another. The ex-agent was good and dead. That’s all that mattered.

The lifts were dumping the coffins any which way on the platform. Terl watched, a bit apprehensive at the rough handling. But none landed upside-down.

Nine of the coffins were lying out there now. The lift superintendent stopped his machine beside Terl to let him check off number ten, the last one he was carrying.

“These coffins seem awful heavy,” commented the superintendent.

Terl looked up, masking any alarm. They were only about a hundred pounds overweight, not enough to notice and certainly not enough to make much difference to a lift machine. The coffins should weigh about seventeen hundred each, even with those lids.

“Your power cartridge is probably half-discharged,” said Terl.

“Maybe,” said the superintendent. The coffins seemed like three thousand pounds. But he rolled the machine and dumped the tenth one on the platform.

The personnel department flatbed for outgoing personnel came up. It s driver was looking a little harassed. There were five Psychlos and their baggage on the truck, two of them returning executives and the other three ordinary miners going home. The driver gave Terl the list.

“You’ll have to change that list,” said the driver. “Char is supposed to be on it. He was scheduled to go home today and all of us in personnel have been running around looking for him, and we can’t find him. His baggage is here but we can’t find Char.”

“Which is his baggage?” asked Terl. The driver pointed to a separate pile and Terl swept it off the truck with one sweep of his arm.

“We looked everywhere,” said the driver. “Shouldn’t we hold up the firing?”

“You know you can’t do that,” said Terl quickly. “Did you look in the beds of the female admin people?”

The driver let out a guffaw. “I guess we should have done that. That was some party last night.”

“We’ll fire him off in six months,” said Terl and wrote, “Fires later,” on the document after Char’s name and signed it.

The personnel flatbed went off to dump the passengers on the platform. They stood about in a group, making sure their firing helmets were on tight. They were several feet away from the coffins.

Terl glanced at his watch. One hour and eleven minutes. Two more minutes to go.

“Coordinates holding on second stage!” came from the bullhorn over the operations dome. The white light was flashing.

Terl walked back closer to the morgue. That blasted horse was poking around the door. Terl made shooing motions with his paws. The horse moved off a few steps and began to graze again.

It was a relief to see those coffins out there. Terl stood gazing upon them fondly. About one minute to go.

Then his hair seemed to stand on end. From within the morgue, the empty deserted morgue, came a voice!

     When the last coffin had gone out the open door, Jonnie had silently slid out of his coffin. He had three kill-clubs thrust in his belt and he was holding a fourth, the heaviest one. He laid a picto-recorder player in the middle of the floor with one flashing motion and backed up behind the door. The shadow of Terl outside lay across the floor.

The recorder started to play. It was a recording of Terl’s own voice. It said, “Jayed, you silly crunch, what a crap lousy I.B.I. agent you were.”

It was playing loudly enough to be heard outside.

The shadow of Terl contracted, turning.

The recorder said, “It ain’t smart, Jayed, to come in here worrying your betters….”

Terl lunged through the door, slamming it shut with a frantic hand. He raised his boot to stamp the recorder into oblivion.

Jonnie dove forward. With a motion he had drilled and drilled with a dummy, the kill-club crashed into Terl’s skull.

With his other hand, even as Terl fell forward, Jonnie ripped up the pocket flap and got the remote control box to the cage.

A horn was going outside. “Coordinates holding on first stage. Motors off!”

Jonnie hit Terl again. The body collapsed. Jonnie ripped the breathe-mask off Terl’s face and threw it clear to the far end of the morgue where it landed with a clatter. He bent over Terl. Green blood was running down the side of the monster’s head. The feet were drumming. Then Terl was still. There was no breathing. The eyes seemed glazed. He would have liked to put a shot in Terl. He took the belt gun. But he didn’t dare shoot. Until those wires out there started to hum, they could stop the firing. The instant the wires began to hum he knew the process was irreversible.

The bullhorn bawled, “Stand clear!” The wires had begun to hum.

Jonnie’s two minutes had begun, and they might well be his last two minutes alive. He had clicked on the stopwatch on his wrist.

He flashed out the door and twisted the lock closed behind him. In these two minutes, nobody would fire a gun since it might hit wires or mess up coordinate settings.

He took in the scene. Windsplitter was only three paces away from where he was supposed to be. Jonnie was on him and with one heel jab they were running.

In a flying blur they raced to the platform!

The humming was intensifying. Anything that stayed on that platform was going to go to Psychlo where you couldn’t even breathe the atmosphere. And a very messy arrival this would be if all went well.

Windsplitter’s hoofs hit the metal of the platform and he reared to a stop as Jonnie dove for the first coffin.

His fingers sought a little round ring that imperceptibly stood out, just under the lid at the top end. He pulled it and a strip came away in his hand. One!

Second coffin. Ring found. Pull. Strip in hand. Two!

The third coffin. Ring. Strip. Three!

A hysterical Psycho voice came on the bullhorn. “Clear the platform! Clear the platform!”

The small group of Psychlos beyond the coffins woke up to something strange going on. They stared. One of the executives, hungover from the party, raised his arm to point.

Fourth, fifth, and sixth rings!

In these coffins were ten “planet buster” nuclear missile bombs, forbidden by treaties because they could crack the planet’s crust and spray the world with fallout. Packed around them were the “dirtiest” early, radioactive atomic bombs, outlawed because of their extreme pollution potential.

The seventh ring was bent. Jonnie fumbled with it.

“Grab him!” screamed the executive on the platform.

The five Psychlos moved to attack.

Jonnie threw his kill-club at the executive. He went down.

Jonnie yanked two more kill-clubs from his belt and hurled them in a blur of speed. Two more Psychlos went down.

He got back to number seven. He untwisted it and got it out.

He grabbed number eight and pulled it.

There was a suicide squad of Scots in the bushes, standing by in case at the last moment Jonnie failed. He had forbidden it but they insisted. He had timed the run. He wanted no dead Scots.

Jonnie had refused to simply let the fuses be set. If the firing had been canceled they would have blown Earth out of existence. They had to be sure the irreversible action of actual firing was in progress before these fuse strips were pulled.

Nine strips in hand!

The two remaining Psychlos had been further away but they were coming now.

“Strike!” shouted Jonnie at Windsplitter.

The horse reared and struck the nearest Psychlo.

The last monster on the platform reached to grab Jonnie.

Ten!

Jonnie struck with the kill-club and smashed the Psychlo’s helmet.

The reaching talons tore his sleeve. He struck again.

He leaped to the back of Windsplitter.

“Run!”

Someone on the control porch had come out with a blast rifle but did not dare shoot.

The humming wires were building up to crescendo.

Jonnie was off the platform and racing up the hill to the cage. His watch said forty-two seconds left to go. He had never known time to flow so slowly! Or so fast!

He had not gone to Psychlo.

But blast rifles were waiting to cut him down.

He had already switched the remote control box he had recovered so as to shut off the current to the bars. He had gotten out the metal severing tool so he could slash off the girls’ collars.

Windsplitter plunged to a halt before the cage door. Jonnie threw himself off the horse.

He paused for an instant.

The cage door was open! The wood barrier was torn aside!

Where were the girls? Their effects were all here.

Not up? There was a mound under the robes. Ah, they must still be asleep.

He rushed in, metal tool ready to cut the collars, shouting their names.

No motions in the robes. He threw the furs aside.

He was staring at the corpse of Char. It lay on its back and the stainless steel knife he had given Chrissie was sticking out of Char’s middle.

He had no time for speculation. He was out of the cage, staring about. Old Pork and Dancer were not there. Could it be possible the girls had actually killed Char and escaped? Not likely! Not with this remote box in Terl’s possession.

Seconds were ticking away. Blast rifles were waiting.

He leaped on Windsplitter and dashed for the edge of the bluff. They started a small avalanche as they halted halfway down the slope.

Jonnie sprang off and made sure they were covered from sight.

The humming came to top crescendo. The strange quiver was in the air. He recognized the feeling.

The shipment had shimmered and vanished from the platform!