Doomsday Eve by Robert Moore Williams (ebook pc reader .TXT) 📗

long as I need to be there."

"But the rocket is in constantly accelerating flight. It's a moving target."

"Red-Dog Jimmie Thurman's plane was falling and Colonel Grant's satellite was moving and Spike Larson's sub was on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Don't give me any back talk, Sam. Somebody got into that plane and that satellite and that submarine. I can get into that rocket. You're the man who can put me there."

"But I'm not on that target!" West's voice had a wail in it.

"Then get on it!" Kurt Zen sounded like an exceedingly gruff drill sergeant addressing a new recruit, or like a colonel who had his mind made up.

"All right. I'll do my best. But something will remain here, Kurt, even after the explosion. We'll be safe, in a way, here."

"That argument has already been used, by me, to get the others back to you. You and I know, Sam, that hell won't hold a hat to the American continent if that whizzer hits."

"All right," West repeated. "Ah! I'm on the rocket as a target."

"Good!" Zen repressed every muscular tremor everywhere in his body.

Somewhere there was jubilation, a sensed but not tangible vibration that he could not locate. He concentrated on the jubilation.

A layer of smoke floated down from the ceiling like a descending death-pall. The guard had gotten to his feet. He had picked up his rifle and was staring around the room seeking either an explanation for what had happened, or a target. To him, which he got didn't matter. His eyes came to focus on the lean colonel with the bandaged fingers. That uniform did not belong here.

The guard raised his rifle.

"Good luck, Kurt," West's voice whispered across the space between two continents.

As the gun exploded in his face, Kurt Zen felt his body vibrate into what seemed to be nothing. Again the terror wrenched at his soul. Again he experienced the mind-compelling agony of this incredible type of space flight.

This time he did not mind these terrors. Somewhere in his mind was jubilation. Wondering if it was the forerunner of death, he continued to concentrate on that.

Dimly, as if from some other space, or some other time, he was aware of a roar. The rocket swam into existence ten feet away from him. He was outside it, in airless space.

West had made a miscalculation.

Agony seared every cell in his body. Pain clamped at his throat like hands trying to choke him to death.

"Oops! I made a mistake," he heard West gasp.

He was moving with the rocket, on a parallel course. West had matched course and velocity but he had not achieved his exact aiming point. Error in the instrument? Human mistake? Who knew?

Who cared?

Click!

Like a vast ocean of warm, pulsing, sure power, the race mind came into Kurt Zen. It existed here in space, too! He had never thought of that. In what little thinking he had had time to do, he had considered it as a super special sort of field which possessed intelligence but which was limited to the surface of the planet.

Here in space, it sustained life in him.

He did not know how this was done, this was one of the mysteries which must be left to the future to solve—if there was a future other than the mud flats. It felt to him as if a vast tidal current was flowing into his body.

Click!

He was in the rocket!

The smell of overheated oil fouled his nose. As he tried to move, he bumped his head. He was in a narrow passage. Ahead was a control panel with automatic devices. He began to crawl in that direction.

Noise was a thundering roar in his ears. His whole body felt as if it was about to shake to pieces. The passage was narrow. It had never been intended for humans. Moving upward, Zen found it was too narrow. He got stuck.

No matter how hard he tried he could not move an inch forward. The control panel was so close he could spit on it but it could not have been farther out of his reach if it had been on the other side of the Moon.

Air was getting short. He twisted and squirmed, fighting like the devil, but his body was wedged into the narrow passage in such a way that he could not move.

Something pulled at his arms. Nedra was directly ahead of him. She was trying to pull him forward along the passage.

"You?" he whispered.

"Who has a better right than I?" she answered. Sweat grimed her face. Her hair was awry. Fiercely she pulled at him.

The rocket yawed, beginning its turn in space. He forced himself forward. And came free.

Somehow he found the strength to pull himself up in front of the control panel. He was running on nervous energy now and he knew it. No strength was left in his body beyond what he was forcing into it.

"Send it out to space!" he muttered. "Send it out there!" He tried to wave his arm in an outward gesture and bumped his hand on the steel hull.

Light came through a circular port. He had a glimpse of the Earth down below. The planet was very far away. Blue seas and green land, the planet was also very beautiful.

He fumbled his way over the controls, trying to understand them. Somewhere stabilizing gyroscopes were running smoothly. He could hear them. The controls were simple. He decided which way was up, and jammed home the controls.

Nothing happened.

In the confined quarters his laughter had madness in it.

Nedra stared at him.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Nothing happened. They're locked in place."

His eyes grew very wide.

"These controls are only for establishing the flight course. Once that is established and the rocket launched, they automatically lock in place."

"Then we can't change the course?"

"No."

Her face puckered and she looked like a small girl about to cry.

Another panel to the left caught his attention. It had a red button on it. He studied the wiring on it.

"By thunder!" the words burst involuntarily from his lips.

"What is it, Kurt?"

"They put a manual control on the warhead. It's got to be that. It can't be anything else." He pointed to the red button. "Why do you suppose they did that?"

"Test purposes, probably, to check the firing mechanism before the warhead was installed. What difference does it make?" Nedra's voice was listless.

"Maybe we can go to heaven."

"What do you mean?"

He explained very carefully what he meant.

"Explode the rocket here in space?"

"Sure," he said. His tone of voice said this was nothing, that anybody could do it. West's voice clamored in his mind again. He ignored it. His hand moved toward the red button.

"There's one thing I want you to know," he said, pausing.

"What is that?"

"I love you," he said.

She came into his arms like a tired, frightened child. "I knew that the minute I saw you," she said. He held her close to him and she lay there, seemingly very content. "All right," she said. "I'm ready." Her lips sought his.

Kissing her, he reached behind her back and punched the red button.

A relay thudded.

Darkness closed in.

Kurt Zen came out of that darkness to find himself staring upward into the face of Sam West. There was something about that face that was familiar, something that he should have guessed long before. He tried to think what it was.

"How'd you get to heaven?" he said.

"The warhead had a delay relay on it," West explained. "It was about thirty seconds, as near as I can figure it. Anyhow it gave us just enough time to snatch both of you out of that rocket before she blew."

What he said sounded very important. Under other circumstances, Zen knew he would have considered it important. But other things seemed more significant now. "Did she blow?" he asked.

"All of ten minutes ago," West said exultantly. "Do you know what this means, Kurt? Do you know what it means?"

"Yeah," Zen answered. "I won't have to be an eel." There was still this other thing that was important. "Say—"

"An eel?" For an instant the craggy man was puzzled. Then he grasped the meaning. "You're right, Kurt. No eels—for any of us."

"That's good," Zen said. "Nedra—"

"She's right here beside you, still out from exhaustion. But she will be all right."

"Good," Zen said again. This other fact was still in his mind. As he tried to think what it was, the answer came to him. He looked up at the craggy man. "You're not Sam West," he said.

"No?" the craggy man said, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Then who am I?"

"You're Jal Jonner. Nobody but Jal Jonner could have done all the things you have done."

"You're right, Kurt. I'm Jal Jonner. And you're Kurt Zen. And this is Nedra—" Zen saw the smile on the face of the craggy man. It was a very good smile, the best he had ever seen. Then it faded away as he sank into the deep slumber of exhaustion. He did not even feel Jonner place Nedra's hand in his as he went to sleep.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Doomsday Eve, by Robert Moore Williams