The Project Gutenberg eBook of No war tomorrow, by Wallace West

Title: No war tomorrow

Author: Wallace West

Release Date: April 17, 2023 [eBook #70580]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Captain Frank Sage, S.P., shouldered through the double safety doors of Moon Station Cafe, tossed his gear into a corner and sat down at the bar.

"'Lo, Tom," he said glumly. "Make it black coffee, ham and eggs and apple pie."

"You going right out?" Old Tom stopped his eternal polishing of glasses and gave his bald head a rub with the towel before switching on the hot plate. "I was hoping you could lay over a day and chew the fat."

"Not this time." Sage swished the coffee in its heavy cup to cool it. "I'm pushing off soon as they refuel my crate and calibrate the orbit; I've got troubles."

"Um!" The bartender squinted quizzically at his lean and lanky customer. "I hear the Big Shots are big-shotting it again on Venus."

"Right! They're getting much too big for their britches these days; that's why I'm on this cursed jaunt."

"I sort of thought you and the Space Patrol and my gal Sadie had the Big Shots on the hip up there."

"Sadie!" The captain's voice was bitter as his coffee.

"You kids been fighting again?"

"Fighting again! We never stop. If Sadie weren't your daughter, Tom, and if I weren't so crazy about her...." Frank's dour face lit up briefly, "... I'd have sewed her in a sack and dumped her into the Central Sea long ago."

"When she was a kid I often used to think of doing the same thing." Tom juggled a sizzling order onto a plate and slid it across the bar. "What's the trouble this time?"

"It's just that United Stars won't use the Patrol to clean the Big Shots off Venus." The younger man attacked the victuals with a gusto which belied his mood. "We've got things pretty well under control at Venusport. The Incor Underground is growing stronger all over Wildoatia. One more push and...."

"... and Sadie agrees with United Stars?"

"That's right. I don't get it, Tom."

"Look, son." The old man leaned both hamlike hands on the bar and thrust his face within a few inches of the captain's. "Sadie's a mighty smart gal. If Wildoatia ever gets cleaned up, the Incors in the Underground will have to do the job themselves. The Patrol's work is to police Venusport and see that tender-foot Incors get an even break until they head into the bush."

"But why, Tom? Confound it...."

"Didn't you learn at school," the bartender interrupted, "that the state of Wildoatia is the safety valve for United Stars? The people who go there voluntarily—and the ones who are sent there—don't want to live under a decent government. They're incorrigibles who hate and abominate a peaceful, well-ordered civilization. They want to sow their wild oats—to rob, steal, commit murder and do as they damned well please. Maybe they'll—some of them—become good citizens eventually if we leave them alone—give them a chance to grow up. The growth of the Underground suggests that that may happen. On the other hand, if you use outside force to destroy Wildoatia, you upset the whole apple cart. Where, let me ask you, do you send the Incorrigibles? If you don't deport 'em, in no time at all they'd be raising hob on Earth and Mars the way they did before the Cooperative Commonwealth was set up. That wouldn't be pretty, would it?"

"Of course Venus is the only place to exile fascists, crooks, and plain damn fools," Frank agreed as he signalled for his pie, "but why let them run the whole show up there? Oh, you'll spout that that's their most fitting punishment ... to have a free rein to chew each other up. But what if the Big Shots get strong enough to defy United Stars? You should see them strut and goose step when they visit Venusport. They may have no space ships, but I tell you they're up to something devilish."

He shoved his plate away, tossed a five-credit note across the bar and got up. "It must be about blasting-off time. I'd better be getting into my strait-jacket."

"You've plenty of time. The mail packet from Mars has to come in before you can leave. I won't have another customer until then." The bartender removed his apron. "Come on. I'll walk you around the dome."

As soon as they left the cafe, Frank had the uncomfortable feeling that he had shrunk to pigmy size. The metal hemisphere which served as way station for all ships travelling between planets was a quarter of a mile in diameter. The few grease monkeys moving about its vast floor were almost lost among landing cradles and other pieces of machinery.

"This certainly is the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse," Sage grumbled. "It's been a hundred years since the first trip was made to the Moon and we're still hanging on here by our eye-lashes. For every ship that blasts off from Moon Station for Mars or Venus, ten robot freighters have to stagger up from Earth with fuel and supplies for it."

"Plutonium's not good enough," agreed Tom, who had flown space ships in his time. "Fission just can't supply enough power to make interplanetary travel pay. Fact is, if the Moon weren't here, we'd still be earthbound."

"Um! Think of all the trade that could go on if ships could carry worthwhile payloads. I suppose they'd have closed Moon Base long ago, except for the U 235 which is exported by Wildoatia."

"Oh, I don't know." Old Tom was puffing as he kept up with the younger man's long strides. "We clear a bit of oricalchum from Mars, tungsten and commercial diamonds from Earth, plus a fair trade in jewels and other lightweight luxury items. Tourist traffic is brisk. We manage here, but we'll never get much farther without a better fuel.... Well, here comes the mail packet."

A man in a lead-armored suit had run past them and was wigwagging with a checkered flag. Other men were sweating a twenty-ton cradle into the middle of the floor. Then the mechanics scuttled for the barriers.

Frank and Tom followed their example. As they watched over the top of a thick wall surrounding the "field", a shutter in the center of the roof snapped open. They had a glimpse of the ship cushioning down on her atomic jets before they ducked out of range of the deadly gamma rays.

"One nice thing about landing where there's no atmosphere," said Frank. "You don't have to shift to those confounded peroxide jets." He found that he was shouting, but that his voice sounded far-away and thin. Even with the comparatively small air loss through the shutter opening, pressure within the dome was dropping so rapidly that they found it difficult to breathe. The almost instantaneous loss of air and heat into the absolute zero vacuum of space caused a snowstorm to swirl within the dome. Then the rocket blaze died, the packet dropped neatly into her cradle and the shutter closed.

"Whew! You really take a landing seriously," whistled the S.P. man. "What if a ship should miss the shutter and come down through another part of the roof?"

"Don't mention it." Tom's voice was strained.

Frank stepped from behind the barrier to stare at the new arrival. She was a globe, probably twenty times the size of his one-man ship. She was painted a dead black on one hemisphere and a blazing white on the other so her interior temperature could be regulated by rotating the reflecting and absorbent surfaces toward the sun while in flight. She evidently had had a brush with a meteor, since one section of her hull was badly scratched and dented.

The packet's port spun open. An eight-foot Martian in captain's uniform came tumbling out of it.

"K. M! K. M! K. M!" the Martian was chanting in a magnificent baritone. His great chest pumping like a bellows and his downy red face covered with perspiration, he sprinted for the Communications Room.

"Flash for all stations," he was singing as Frank and Tom hurried up to eavesdrop. "Captain Avron of Packet Spaceblazer reporting. When I came out from under Suspenso two hours ago an unknown comb-shaped vessel was pacing the Spaceblazer."

"Another ship in your orbit? And pacing a packet?" The K. M. man shook his head. "That's impossible, Captain."

"Impossible! Impossible!" The Martian hit a High C and fluttered the stumps of his atrophied wings. "The ship was there! When I signalled her, she accelerated and disappeared in fifteen minutes."

"Excuse me, captain," frowned the K. M. officer. "It must have been a meteor. You have the fastest ship in the system, so...."

Frank couldn't hear any more for the man in the lead-covered suit began bawling through a loudspeaker: "Space Patrol Two-Six ready for blast-off in ten minutes. Captain Sage on board, please."

"What do you make of that?" Frank asked, as he and Tom trotted toward the patrol ship.

"Hallucination, probably. Suspenso does strange things to a person sometimes."

"I don't think so. It fits in with rumors I've been hearing at Venusport. The Big Shots are up to something."

"Then here's a word of advice, son." Tom laid a hand on the captain's shoulder as they stopped before his ship. "If that's the way you feel, stop making these fool junkets to New Washington and spend your time finding out what Wildoatia's really up to. If any more trips are absolutely necessary, send Sadie." He smiled crookedly. "Gets sort of lonesome here, now that my ticker won't let me go spacehopping. I'd like to see my girl before I turn up my toes." He shook hands briefly and trudged back toward the cafe, his pudgy shoulders drooping.

Frank climbed into his tiny cabin, dogged the port shut behind him, lashed himself into the anti-shock hammock, shook three Suspenso tablets out of their bottle and signalled for blast-off. Inwardly he fumed because ships could not carry enough air, water and food to allow their crews to remain conscious during a month-long trip. If any strange vessel showed up, he wanted to see it. Finally he broke one of the big pills in two and dropped half of it back into the bottle before gagging over the rest of the bitter dose.

The drug took effect more slowly than usual. Dimly, he felt the pain of the grinding acceleration as the rockets blazed. Before he drifted into suspended animation he saw the silvery Dome plummeting away from him until it assumed perspective in the center of Copernicus Crater.

"Defenseless," he mumbled as his mind clouded. "Moon Station absolutely defense...."

"... less," he gasped, regaining consciousness with a spine-shattering start and with the conviction that someone had played a dirty trick on him while he slept. That was always Suspenso's after-effect, along with a ravening hunger and thirst. Sage reached for the canned tomatoes which spacemen favor in getting their starving, dehydrated bodies back to normal. Then he recalled the comb-shaped vessel and squinted blearily through the blister above his hammock. The black sky was empty of everything except gigantic sun, unwinking stars and the blank and shining disc of Venus.

"Guess they ... don't bother with ... small fry," he croaked, opening the can. After finishing its contents he loosened the hammock straps, dragged himself to the control board and cut the atomic drive. The pile could not be damped, and the fantastically high temperatures at which it operated safely in open space would vaporize the ship as soon as it struck atmosphere. Like it or not, he would have to jockey to a landing by means of a reserve tank of feeble hydrogen peroxide fuel.

Twelve hours later, after circling Venus three times to cut down his speed, Frank knifed into the planet's opaque cloud blanket and settled, with hardly a jar, on the Venusport field. As he clambered to the soggy ground he caught sight of Sadie Thompson racing through the mists to be the first to greet him.

"The same old Sadie," he chuckled when she was in his arms, alternately purring and biting like a kitten. "Still wearing just as few clothes as the law allows and still breaking regulations. Don't you know you shouldn't run out on the field like this? At least you've picked up a few pounds since the first time I came to Wildoatia."

"Uh huh. Gottum dimples now." She exhibited a few. "Like?"

"Like!" He proved it, until she had to draw away to catch her breath.

"What did Great White Father in New Washington say?" She lit a damp cigarette after several tries and dangled it expertly from a scarlet upper lip.

"Great White Father say keepum shirt on," he grinned a bit ruefully as he tried to match her mood.

"I told you." She tossed back her red curls, hugged herself and did a dance step. "You just listen to your Sadie and you'll save yourself a lot of spacehopping."

"Now look here! Is that the way to greet a returning prodigal? You keep a civil tongue in your head, my girl, or I'll take the flat of me hand to you."

"Yah! Sorehead! You'll have to catch me first." And she was off across the field with Frank in pursuit. Venusport officials tore up their speeches of welcome and shook their heads in despair.

Sadie was in a much more subdued mood that night as they ate scamour steaks and drank sparkling traskette at Venusport's best cafe. She listened without a single wisecrack as he told how United Stars executives had insisted that no drastic action be taken against the Big Shots. But she leaned forward intently as he described the arrival of the mail packet at Moon Station.

"Why, if what that captain said is true," she gasped, "it means somebody has invented a ship that can make interplanetary hops in three or four days."

"It means more than that, my sweet. (Here. Have some more steak; you can still put on a pound or two.) It means a new fuel has been found which will permit trips to the outer planets, make Moon Station obsolete and open up untold trade possibilities."

"Uh huh!" Her blue eyes opened wide and she reached across the table to grip his wrist. "It also may mean the end of all of us."

"Nonsense. They said that about the first fission bomb."

"And they were nine-tenths right, as you'll admit if you remember the history of the Atomic War. But this may be far worse. Look, let's figure it out. Remember what those bombs did to the cities of Earth. Well, they were loaded with Plutonium, the stuff we now use for rocket fuel.

"But Plutonium furnishes just enough power to lift a ship, its pilot, one or two passengers, and a few pounds of pay load from Venus or Mars to the Earth. A ship escaping from the stronger gravity of Earth can only limp as far as Moon Station without refueling. Do you follow me?"

"So far." Frank finished his traskette and motioned the waiter to bring more. "Go on."

"So if somebody has built a ship ten or fifteen times larger and faster than ours, it means...?"

"... that he has found out how to destroy atomic nuclei instead of merely splitting them by stripping off the electrons. In other words, he is possessed of a source of practically limitless power."

"Right." She patted his hand. "And now we come to the 64-credit question: Who is that somebody?"

"Well, he couldn't be a good citizen of United Stars. In that case he would have turned over his discovery to the Commonwealth at once. It's too hot for one man to handle."

"So he must be either an Incor or a Big Shot! Please pass those credits, Frank."

"Not yet, my pet. He must be a Big Shot, and only a Big Shot. No Incor could get his hands on enough fissionable material to conduct the necessary research. Only the Big Shots could do that."

"The credits are yours. Now ... what can we do about it?"

Frank twirled his empty glass and stared out at the lights of rainswept Venusport. He was fond of the little place and the thought that it stood in the shadow of disaster made him feel ill. When he and Sadie had helped the Underground to take over the town five years before, it had been a dripping pesthole where arriving Incors were robbed of credits and equipment, then shipped off to virtual slavery in Big Shot uranium mines. Now it was a U.S. outpost, clean, rebuilt and thriving.

Adventurous youths who elected to leave the well-ordered societies of Earth or Mars to sow their wild oats under conditions of untrammelled freedom on Venus were well protected while passing through the port. Even criminals and other anti-social exiles were entitled to a stiff S. P. indoctrination course in the weird geography and topsy-turvy customs of their new planet. One and all were guaranteed free return trips to their homes whenever they gave proof that they had reformed.

"I suppose this means another war," Frank said at last. "And if it comes it really will smash everything beyond repair."

"Maybe not." Sadie thrust out her dimpled chin.

"You mean the Big Shots will give up their discovery without a battle?"

"Not a chance."

"If I know them, they'll try to use it to set up a tri-planetary dictatorship."

"Oh, be your age, Frank! Dictatorships are out of date. They won't work; never have worked for more than a few years. You won't catch up-to-the-minute Big Shots betting on a horse that Hitler, and Mussolini, Stalin, and all the others rode to death."

"Then what?" He was beginning to be angry, as he often did when Sadie disagreed with him.

"They'll plan to use the invention as a lever which will allow them to return to positions of power in United Stars. Think what that would mean to them in terms of graft and legalized robbery. They'd be sitting pretty in the middle of everything once more, instead of being tucked away on the fringe of civilization."

"The United Stars would never agree to that; it would mean war."

"I doubt it." The girl picked the strawberry out of her traskette glass and chewed it thoughtfully. "Both Wildoatia and United Stars know that another war is impossible. Say that on Monday the Big Shots wrecked every city on Earth and Mars with a new type of bomb. A month from Monday our V-60's would hit Wildoatia and wipe it off the map. No bomb of any kind could destroy our V-60 dumps without setting off a chain reaction...."

"... which would reduce Earth to a cinder," he snapped.

"A chain reaction wouldn't stop there. It might turn the whole solar system into a Nova ... just one big ball of atomic fire. Nuh uh, my friend! The Big Shots know they couldn't escape a chain reaction ... and they like to live as well as anybody else does."

"What's your solution, Sadie?" Frank stared at her with a sort of wonder. She looked so much like a little girl, despite the gown which she might about as well not have been wearing.

"We've got to beat the Big Shots at their own game; we've got to invent a substitute for war."

"A substitute for war!" His respect turned to disgust. "You're nuts; there ain't no such animal."

"Sez you!" As always, when under the strain of great excitement, she dropped into the half-gangster, half-western argot which she had picked up while fighting in the Underground. "Listen, wise guy. I'll bet you five grand I can cook up a substitute the Big Shots will fall for like a ton of bricks."

"Some sort of game, I suppose," he jeered as he picked up the check.

"Game, my eye!" Seeing his bewilderment, she leaned forward and nibbled his ear. "I'll give you just one tip. If an atom bomb explodes, where's the only place it can't do any serious damage?"

"Why ... why. Holy cats. Maybe you've got something there!"

"I've got everything." She rose lithely as if to prove it. "Come on, let's hit the hay; we're going into Wildoatia as Incors tomorrow."

"But the Space Patrol has the authority to inspect every Big Shot mine and factory. Why should we go incognito?"

"Because I like to stay alive, chump," she answered, slipping her hand under his arm.

As a slow lightening of the cloud blanket indicated dawn, Sadie and Frank took places among some fifty Incors who were heading out from Venusport into Wildoatia. Like the others, they were dressed in heavy coveralls. Each carried a Tommygun, a knapsack stuffed with food and necessities, and a money belt containing the five thousand gold dollars without which no man or woman was allowed to cross the last frontier.

The Incors were a wild lot; mostly young, high-spirited or spoiled people who rebelled at the strict moral standards of United Stars. In spite of themselves, both Frank and the girl felt strongly drawn to this group. They felt no sympathy for a scattering of older Incors whose hardbitten faces indicated that they had run afoul of U.S. law and were being "shipped over", the only major punishment permitted within the solar system.

"Say, chum." A beetlebrowed youth sidled over to Sadie as they left the port and plunged into the sweating jungle. "Do you reckon it's as tough in Wildoatia as they make out in that indoctrination course?"

"It's plenty tough," she answered out of the corner of her mouth.

"Been there before?"

"What's it to you?" As he started to protest she added: "The first law of Wildoatia is not to ask personal questions."

"Watch him," the girl whispered to Frank as Beetlebrow retreated. "I smell Pumper."

"Oh, he's just a dumb kid."

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. Watch him anyway."

It was a dismal trip. The eternal drizzle soaked them to the skin; a few hardy jitbugs chewed at them. From time to time bloodsucking plant-animals along the muddy trail snaked out prehensile branches. Then there was much swearing and hacking with machetes until the white-faced victims freed themselves.

The skylarking with which the Incors had celebrated their departure from Venusport dwindled and died. In fact, it became evident as the day progressed that Beetlebrow, at least, was losing his nerve. He snarled curses on the journey; he buttonholed lagging companions and muttered about the advisability of returning to Venusport. He yelled like a frightened child when branches reached for him. Only when more hardy travellers threatened to kick him out of the group did he subside.

"That kid's a menace," Frank groaned at last; "he'll wreck the morale of all of us."

"I'll bet he's doing it deliberately." Sadie squashed a jitbug which had chewed its way through the mosquito netting draped from her helmet. "A Pumper. No doubt of it."

Things came to a head when camp was made for the night on a high and relatively uninfested ridge. There Beetlebrow grew suddenly brave and argued against Sadie's proposal that sentries be posted.

"There ain't no danger," he whined. "Scamours don't climb this high. We all ought to get a good night's sleep so we'll be on our toes when we get to Nirvana tomorrow."

When Sadie's counsel prevailed, the fellow picked up his blankets and stalked into the darkness to sleep by himself.

"I agree with you," said Frank when he and Sadie were rolled snugly in their waterproofs near a smudge. (It held off the humming army of jitbugs which had arrived with darkness.)

"Um." She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the sodden ground. "I told the sentries to keep an eye on him.

"Say," he continued softly, "on your idea for a war substitute.... Why not break down and explain it to me?"

"Haven't explained it to myself yet," she yawned. "That professor who named me Sadie Thompson when we were concentrated once ... because it rains all the time here, you know ... he told me about how, in the Middle Ages, when two armies were too well matched to fight, each would select its best knight to represent it. Now what did he call 'em?"

"Champions?" Frank rose on one elbow.

"That's it. So the champions would ... joust, was it? And the army whose Champ won would be declared the victor."

"Do you think either the U.S. or the B.S. would agree to any such harebrained scheme as that?"

"They would if they had to."

"But the Big Shots glory in having no sense of honor. Under their crazy code, they'd be bound to doublecross us if they lost."

"But they couldn't lose, could they? Not if they've learned how to disintegrate atoms." Her voice sounded far away.

"I don't get you. What's the use of our side putting up a champion if he's sure to lose?"

"I didn't say our side would lose. Or did I?" She yawned again. "I'm dog-tired and all mixed up. Haven't taken a hike like this since we marched on Venusport. Kiss me goodnight. Beetlebrow says we have to be on our toes in the morning."

Frank lay awake a long time, listening to jungle sounds and struggling over her paradox. He dozed off to be jerked awake by a burst of gunfire. It was from the sentries; their quick action alone saved the little party as a horde of wild-eyed, ragged savages poured up the ridge toward them in the dawnlight.

Sadie was out of her blankets and yelling orders even as she knuckled the sleep from her eyes.

"Take cover," she shouted. "Spread out. 'Ware grenades. Hold your fire." She spoke with the authority of a girl who had grown up as a jungle outlaw. As the others jumped to obey, Frank crawled through the biteweed to see whether their defense circle was complete. He found it so, except where the ridge ended in a steep declivity.

"Fire," screamed their self-appointed commander as the gaunt figures of their attackers loomed through the fog. A storm of Tommygun bullets sent the enemy flying, except for a dozen who lay writhing.

"They're poor devils of Incors who've been waylaid and robbed by some Big Shot patrol," Sadie explained grimly as the shooting died. "They'll come again; they've either got to make another stake, let themselves be concentrated, or starve."

It was at this moment that Beetlebrow went mad. Throwing away his gun, he began running along the edge of the cliff, waving his arms and alternately shouting curses at the enemy and screaming for mercy.

Without a second's hesitation, Sadie swung her weapon and pressed the trigger. Beetlebrow went over the cliff.

"My Gawd! What did you do that for?" Frank looked at her aghast.

"I think he was signaling for an attack up the cliff. Get a detail deployed over there fast."

"Why, the kid cracked up!"

"In that case he didn't belong in Wildoatia and I did him a service. Quick! That detail!"

Surely enough, when they reached the clifftop they found twenty of the frowsy enemy toiling up toward them. This time their fire did real execution; the few survivors fled like lost souls.

Mindful that they must reach Nirvana before nightfall if they expected to enter its wall, the Incors, who had survived the battle with hardly a scratch, packed knapsacks and plunged again down the trail. Once they detoured a heavily-guarded convoy of ore trucks enroute to Venusport. Once their enemies of the morning tried another ambush. Nevertheless they made good progress and caught sight of the mist-shrouded battlements of their destination while it was still light. Here Sadie called a halt.

"Fellow Incors," she cried as she leaped onto a rock, "you're entering Wildoatia proper. From now on each one of us is on his own. You all know the laws here: Might makes right; dog eat dog; devil take the hindmost. No cooperation; no partnerships; no friendships. Even hand-shaking is illegal. If you are robbed or cheated, don't go running to the police. They'll laugh at you. Maybe they'll slap you in a concentration camp where you'll work a year to pay your fine.

"You get only three breaks in Wildoatia. If anyone swipes your gun, he has to leave a shooting iron of some kind in exchange. If you're arrested and escape, you can't be picked up again on the same charge after five hours have passed. And if you manage to beg, borrow, earn or steal a million bucks, you automatically become a Big Shot with all rights, privileges and immunities."

"Wait a minute, Miss." The speaker was rawboned and bowlegged, as though from riding herd on some far-away cattle ranch. "Ain't they no way a feller can get help if he finds himself in a jam?"

"There are two ways. First, you can return to Venusport and promise the S.P. that you'll go straight." She bit her lip and hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you the other way this early in the game, but I will. If you've got the guts, you can join the Underground. Then you'll have a sporting chance of getting to civilization."

"The Underground," sang out a downy youth from Mars. "The indoctrinators said you can get shot just for joining it."

"That's right. I said you had to have guts.... Well, good luck, folks. You've made a good start; only one group of Incors out of three ever gets to Nirvana without being hi-jacked. Let's go." She jumped from her perch and stalked off toward the town which rose, like a scene from fairyland, before them.

Nirvana had once been the main pleasure city of Wildoatia while Venusport had been its administrative center. Since the latter had been taken over by United Stars, Nirvana had also become the Big Shot capital. But it still retained its synthetic medieval grandeur. On a mountain top which pierced the planet's lower cloud layers, it rose, tier on tier of marble castles, twisting streets and crenelated walls, until it disappeared in the distance, like a dream of old Spain.

They were welcomed like heroes into Valhalla when they reached the frowning wall, with its moat and torchlit portcullis. Trumpets sang from a dozen towers; the drawbridge came down with a roar. Out marched a guard of honor in shining armor, preceded by a bevy of houris in diaphanous robes, or better. The latter strewed orchids along the pathway before throwing themselves into the arms of the newcomers. There were even handsome youths to greet the women in the party.

"Poppycock right out of the telies," whispered Sadie. "But it wows 'em every time. It got me too, the first time I came.... Thought I was entering heaven."

A dark-eyed beauty in cellophane danced up and presented them with goblets of traskette. Sadie pretended to drain hers, but slopped most of the heady stuff on the cobblestones. Frank followed her example; the other arrivals, their misgivings forgotten, drank the liquor to the lees.

After another flourish of trumpets, a jolly fat man, dressed like the king of Mardi Gras, hurried across the drawbridge, arms outstretched. "Welcome to Wildoatia," he boomed. "Who are the leaders of your party? I have a special welcome for them."

The cowboy opened his mouth but closed it when Frank kicked his shins. There was a long silence.

"Splendid! Splendid," bellowed the fat man at last. "You have no leaders. That's as it should be in Wildoatia, where every man is a king and every woman a queen." As houris threw garlands around the necks of the newcomers he continued: "Tonight Nirvana is yours. You are honored guests of the city. Not one penny can you spend. Come, follow me to the City Hall. We must check your passports. A mere formality, of course."

"Of course!" sneered Sadie in a whisper.

"After that," this strange glad-hander rambled on, "you must taste the unparalleled joys of Nirvana, the jewel among all the cities of the universe. You may bathe in scented waters; you may dine on the best foods and drink the finest wines. Later you will want to play games of chance or dally with the maiden or youth of your choice...." He paused to mop his brow.

"... and wake up tomorrow with a dark brown taste to find that your friend has stolen your money belt," Sadie crooned in Frank's ear. "Then, ho, for a concentration camp for a long term at hard labor if you dare make a complaint."

"Come one; come all!" Their host pranced away. The houris urged the Incors across the drawbridge in his wake.

"Do exactly as I do," whispered Sadie after they had progressed for several blocks up a flag-draped boulevard. "We've got to make our get-away."

"But aren't we...?" Despite himself, Frank was a bit carried away by the pomp and circumstance of the martial music and the gaily-dressed, cheering throngs which lined the way. "I never had a chance...."

"I do believe, Frank," the girl teased him, "that if you had made your pile when you first came to Wildoatia you'd be a Big Shot today. Well, you'll have no chance to taste the fleshpots and I'm the only houri you're going to have any traffic with tonight. Besides, we wouldn't stand a chance of escaping recognition in the police lineup at City Hall.... Now!"

She hurled herself into the crowd lining the street, sprinted for an alley with the patrolman at her heels. They plunged into darkness just as a burst of gunfire sent splinters flying about their heads.

Sadie hurled herself into the crowd, as a patrolman looked up, with gun raised.

"That was close," gasped the girl. "The Shots certainly have their guard up these days." She seized Frank's hand and raced with him along a narrow way which was slippery with garbage and rank with stenches. "Here we are. Sharp right.... Now left.... Last time I came through here I had a broken arm. But you should have seen the Concentrator who gave it to me.... Wup! This is the place." She dived into a tumbledown liquor store.

"Sadie Thompson," she snapped at the blinking proprietor; "we're tailed."

The fellow jerked a thumb toward a curtain at the back of the shop.

They ducked behind the cloth, plunged down a flight of stairs and landed, plop, in a sewer.

Wading against a flood of filth, beating off tarks which squeaked and slavered at them, they advanced blindly. A quarter of a mile "up-stream" they found a door marked by a phosphorescent glow.

They dragged themselves through it and into an empty chamber which bore the word, Baths, on an inner door.

After scrubbing some of the sewage off each other and changing to clean overalls, which they found in a locker, Sadie pressed a concealed button in a series of dots and dashes.

A door opened in the wall, revealing a corridor hewn out of rock. They went through it until they reached a room occupied by a man with one arm and a hideously disfigured face.

"Jack!" cried the girl. "I hoped you'd be on duty. This is Captain Sage; you've heard of him. The Shots are tearing the town apart to find us. Can you put us up for the night?" As the one-armed man nodded she rattled on: "We hear the Shots have something better than Plutonium."

Again the nod.

"Know where their labs are located?"

Jack picked up a pencil, wrote a sentence and handed her the pad.

"Somewhere under the Polar Sea?" Sadie frowned. "Not much chance of hitting a hideout like that with a V-60. How far along are they?"

"One ship finished and given a trial run," wrote the cripple. "The Underground managed to get 542 on board but I haven't received any information for weeks."

"How about her speed?" Frank put in.

"Last report from 542 said she travels at One Gravity acceleration," was the scribbled reply.

"One G?" The spaceman wanted to laugh but dared not because of that scarred, impassive face. "Why that's only a little more than 32 feet per second. My patrol ship can hit ten G's."

"You got me wrong," came the answer. "One G is only 16.1 feet for the first second, but after that, the speed of the new ship increases steadily at the rate of 32.2 feet per second."

"Wow! I see what you mean." Frank did some quick calculation. "She can reach Earth in three days or so. Our ships have to take more than a month for the same run because they hit maximum speed soon after blast-off and coast the rest of the way to save fuel."

"And since the new ship has some sort of super-fuel, there need be no limit to her size," Sadie exclaimed. "She can carry plenty of food, air and water, so crews can remain conscious at all times. Crews can move about on shipboard as comfortably as they do on the ground because her constant acceleration—or deceleration after she reaches turnover point—will act as a substitute for gravity. This is big, Frank. Bigger than we thought."

"Man can reach for the stars," wrote Jack.

"Or finally blow himself to smithereens." This from Frank. "The Shots have us licked this time if we don't stop them quick."

"Can we raid that lab?" asked the girl.

"Not a chance." The pencil raced. "Only a tark could get into it."

"Then we'll have to fish a tark out of some sewer." Sadie thought deeply for a moment, then slapped her round thigh. "Not a bad idea at that!... Well, Jack, how about a place to sleep?"

They spent the night in an air-conditioned subterranean chamber. Jack had beautifully forged passports ready for them when they awoke. After bidding him goodby they mounted endless stairs to emerge at last onto a busy street.

Even in the pearly daylight—Venusians seldom see their monstrous sun, and then only with regret—they found that the city had lost none of its brittle charm ... its hectic Coney Island dash.

Incors by the score already were entering its blatant palaces, intent on squandering their last few silver dollars or gold nuggets in an effort to forget their grinding, hopeless toil in mine or jungle. Others, better dressed and cockier, evidently had made a stake. They were going to the dens, usually to gamble away their winnings, but once in a while to pyramid them into the coveted million which meant freedom and a proud place in Wildoatian society.

A few Big Shots were drifting into the more expensive and exotic pleasure haunts, there to lord it over lesser men, take their pick of lesser women and indulge every whim their jaded fancies could invent.

Roaming the streets at random, the interlopers looked from blossoming terraces over breathtaking vistas; smiled at roving mountebanks and accepted flowers tossed by pretty girls.

"The place has a certain charm," Frank said grudgingly.

"Think so?" She led him into a street where glittering cafes—one was frankly called "The Clip Joint"—dope dens, telie theaters, circuses and houses of assignation rubbed elbows like thievish brothers.

Within a few minutes they saw an Incor in ragged coveralls stumble out of a "gambling salon", place an automatic to his head and blow his brains out. Later a blonde in sequin harness stepped behind her companion and slipped a stiletto between his plump shoulders. In both cases nearby policemen made no move to interfere. Instead, they blew piping whistles which brought street cleaners on the run to clear away the mess.

"Charm!" snorted Sadie. "Yes, in Nirvana you can do anything you please ... except look crosswise at a Big Shot, or go broke."

"Where are you taking me, anyway?" Sage tried to forget the things he had just seen.

"To the City Hall to look up an old friend of ours."

"A Big Shot?"

"I'll say; we made him one of the biggest."

"You mean...." He fished back into those hectic days when he first had come to Venus and when Sadie was the firebrand of the Underground. "You mean Mike, the stupid little doublecrossing tark who betrayed Venusport to us in exchange for the location of the uranium mother lode?"

"The same; he's now commandant of Nirvana."

"He'll have us shot."

"No he won't—not if we make it worth his while. Besides, I still have the safe conduct he gave me to show his gratitude."

"Look, Sadie my girl!" He dragged her down on an iridescent bench beside a fountain of scented rainbows. "Ever since I got back I've been trailing you around like a puppydog. I don't like it. Are we partners or am I just a stooge? What's up your sleeve?"

"I'm simply working on the theory that history repeats itself," she chuckled, rumpling his hair. "Ancestors of the Big Shots lost the First World War, the Second World War and the Atomic War. Each time they were a hundred times better prepared than the decent folks who opposed them. Now, teacher, tell me why they lost."

"Because ..." he fumbled. "I guess it was because they had no honor; they doublecrossed themselves into defeat."

"Right. They're atavars ... throw-backs to the age of tooth and claw. Some of them happen to be geniuses, though. That's one of the reasons why we try not to kill 'em any more. We send 'em here to blow off steam, bust atoms if they can, and possibly see the error of their ways. The reason we dare do that is because they can't see any farther than their own noses; they take the cash and let the credit go, as old Omar put it."

"A comforting theory," he jeered. "If it's true, why don't we just sit back and take it easy?"

"Because such people have to be whittled down to size occasionally. They serve a useful purpose in society but they can't be allowed to get out of hand again."

"You win. But you still haven't told me what you want with Mike."

"I'm going to take him in hand," she laughed, and dodged into a crowd of tipsy merrymakers as he reached for her.

They took a compressed air car to the City Hall, a vision in black marble which towered at the very top of the mountain. Sadie's crumpled safe conduct got them past guard after frowning guard, but they saw several less fortunate citizens being booted down the wide steps.

They were escorted into a 100-foot-long chamber. At the end of it, a colorless man in a colorful uniform was almost hidden behind a desk three sizes too large for him. It was Mike, all right, but a Mike considerably changed by his success. That is, he no longer sniggered sadistically; he frowned sadistically. He still gnawed the knuckle of his left forefinger, however, with the same nervous gesture he had used when he had been bodyguard to the brutal boss of Dead Man's Delta.

"Well?" he barked when their guards had placed the visitors before his chromium and plastic throne.

"Well yourself," the patrolman snapped. "Send your gorillas away."

Mike gnawed in indecision, then gave the order.

"So you found you couldn't get out of Nirvana and have come in to give yourselves up," said the commandant when they were alone. "That was a dirty trick you played on me yesterday.... Scared the new Incors half to death. If you had come as members of the Space Patrol, I'd have given you every honor. As it is, I'm entitled to concentrate you under the law. Which camp do you pick?"

"We'll take the one under the Polar Sea." Sadie lit a cigarette and tossed the match on the inch-thick rug.

Mike jumped, then blew up, dropping his pseudo-cultured tone for gangsterese. "Snoopin' again," he shrieked. "I'll have you rubbed out. Youse guys ain't gonna...."

"Mustn't say 'youse guys', Mike," Sadie spoke as to a child. "You're commandant now."

To Frank's amazement, Mike's fury collapsed like a pricked balloon.

"You haven't a thing on me," he mumbled, sinking back on his throne. "I ain't gonna ... I won't talk."

"Nobody asked you to," said Frank. "This is just a personal call ... for old time's sake. We were wondering how you are making out with your mother lode."

"It ... it's still producing ninety per cent of the U 235 on Venus." Mike stared at them like a sick calf. "Only...."

"Only the new engine they've developed up north doesn't need U 235. A hunk of rock will serve it just as well for fuel. Right?"

"That's about it." The little man licked dry lips. "I'm ruined; you devils know it damned well."

"Going to take it lying down?" jibed Sadie.

"Aw, cut it out, will you? What can I do about it? Kingfish Uranium has dropped from 240 to 23-1/4 on the big board since the rumors got around. I'm washed up; one of these days the Directors will remember I'm here and kick me out among the Incors."

"Look, Mike," said Frank. "The Space Patrol likes you. You've played ball with us before. We really want to help."

"Ain't nothin'.... I mean there's nothing you can do." That knuckle was taking punishment again.

"We got you out of a hole once, didn't we?"

"You sure did and I sure appreciates it." A faint light of hope dawned in those frightened, beady eyes.

"We can do it again," the captain went on. "But first we want to ask you one question: Do you think the Shots can take over the system with their new weapon?"

"Naw." The narrow shoulders sagged. "Everybody knows we'll be blown to bits if we try that. But we gotta try. Ain't no future for a man in this gawdforsaken hole. Some of the other Directors, they're rarin' to go, no matter what happens. Me, all I want is to live a while." He shook his balding head. "I don't even like commandanting any more ... don't get any fun outa it. Why, just yesterday I broke an Incor on the rack and, would you believe it, I didn't get any kick at all; I must be gettin' old." He seemed ready to cry.

"That's tough, Mike." Sadie was all sympathy. "But I have a plan to prevent any real trouble. It'll make you the biggest Shot on Venus, too ... for a consideration, of course."

"Yeah?" He leaned forward greedily. "Shoot."

The girl outlined her idea for a war substitute.

"You got somethin' there," he agreed doubtfully when she had finished, "but I don't get this champeen stuff. Ain't no Big Shot gonna risk his life in an evenly-matched duel."

"Oh, I didn't mean that at all. I meant something like matching your new ship against the Space Patrol out where nobody but the crews could get hurt."

"Say!" Mike sucked through his yellow teeth. "That's not bad at all. If we win we'd have a monopoly on space travel ... a chance to get off this dinky planet and do some business. If we lose, I reckon we'll have to surrender our new discovery to United Stars—but otherwise we won't be much worse off than now.... But what do I get outa the deal?"

"Why, you sell it to the Directors while we get New Washington to agree. If it goes through, it will get the Shots out of an impossible situation, no matter who wins. The least they can do is make you chairman of the board. Then you won't have to worry about Kingfish U."

"The present board chairman hates my guts. He won't go for any plan I suggest. Besides...." He looked at them through slitted lids, "what's that 'consideration' you mentioned?"

"You'll have to get one or both of us on board that ship. Frank is an astrogator, so he should qualify. I can pinch hit as a nurse, entertainer or even a cook."

"Not on your life; I ain't gonna doublecross my pals."

"You made out all right when you doublecrossed them before."

"Nope." Mike thrust out his weak chin. "They'd rub me out."

"Okay. But being rubbed out is better than rotting by inches when our V-60's begin to drop. You won't look pretty, Mike, when your nose and ears fall off; when your flesh starts peeling from your bones because of the gamma rays. Then, there's that palace of yours ... and your harem."

"Oh stop it, Sadie. Stop it! You win!" His knuckle was bleeding by now. "How about dropping out to the palace tonight? The chairman is coming over. I'll try to sell your plan to him. You won't hold it against me, will you, if he doesn't buy?"

"He'll buy ... one way or another," the girl said grimly.

"Swell." The commandant jumped up with a lightning-like change of mood. "Let's go, then. The little women will be waitin' for me."

After they were aboard his shiny black plane Mike asked jovially: "What kinda entertainment would you like tonight? I been tinkerin' with some of Nero's old stunts.... Incors to the scamours and stuff like that.... Not bad for a change."

"A little too close to home right now." Frank shuddered.

"How about a scamour hunt, then, before dinner? There's scads of them critters around the palace. They keep me fresh out of slaves."

"Swell." There was nothing Frank wanted less than a brush with those gobbling reptiles, but he knew Mike needed gentle handling if he were to go through with his bargain.

"Like it?" beamed the little Big Shot as they landed on the roof of a rococco monstrosity which must have cost millions.

"Gorgeous!" beamed his guests.

Mike's harem, twenty beauties of every race, color and state of deshabille, was waiting for them. Squealing with synthetic glee, the girls bore them on embroidered litters to their quarters. These resembled glorified hotel suites replete with gold-plated bathrooms, priceless tapestries and uncomfortable furniture.

"What awful taste the beast has," laughed Sadie as she dunked her long-legged body in a scented and mirrored pool. "And to think I once wanted to be a Big Shot ... wanted to be one so desperately that I tried to rob a joint like this."

"What happened?" He was eyeing her appreciatively.

"Oh I was caught, of course. They slapped me in a concentration camp. See that scar? It's a burn I got in the uranium mines. That's where I joined the Underground."

"Funny place to have a scar," he grinned. "Get out of that pool and help me put on this cursed armor.... Are all their palaces like this one?"

"Worse!" She dripped water down his back. "Huge, gloomy holes where bored gangsters try to pretend they're having a wonderful time. The Big Shots are just Incors who made their pile and are out to show off like wicked children. Well, tonight let's pretend we're wicked children too."

"That shouldn't be hard for you." He helped the girl don her own light armor. "Sometimes I think you're a potential Big Shot still, at heart."

They entered the palace donjon to find Mike chatting uncomfortably with Hirokima Schmidzu, chairman of the Wildoatian board.

"So pleased," hissed the yellow man after introductions were completed. "Have been hearing about your plan."

"Like it?" Sadie sounded unutterably bored as she surveyed her shining self in a mirror.

"Regrettably not." Schmidzu was not in the least bored as he undressed her with his slant eyes. "There is no substitute for honorable war."

"Too bad." The girl turned to Mike. "When do we start?"

In the dripping twilight ... that hour before ravening jitbugs make outdoor life impossible ... the scamour hunters poured out of the gates and into the softly-breathing jungle. Machetes in hand and Tommyguns slung across their shoulders, about a dozen of the commandant's guests spread out and moved forward warily. The chairman attached himself to Sadie and Frank as they advanced.

Mike's gardeners had done a fair job of weeding out the most dangerous plant-animals from the grounds. Nevertheless, their way was made dangerous by roots which snaked out to grasp their ankles and by sucker-lined branches which whipped at their throats.

They had progressed only a few hundred yards when Frank came upon a panting slave girl entangled in a mass of carnivorous vines. While the Japanese hissed disapproval, he defied the immutable laws of Wildoatia by cutting her free. She stared at him as if he had committed a crime and fled without a word of thanks.

"It is, shall we say, bad taste, to help Incors in distress," Schmidzu expostulated.

"You'd talk differently if you were in a jam," flashed Sadie.

"Beg to differ. I would never be in what you call a jam. See." He held out two gold-encrusted blades. "These Samurai swords. My honorable grandsire used them to defend Tokyo in second World War. Gods protect me through them."

They neglected to point out that Tokyo had not been defended.

By now, Mike's beaters had driven several scamours out of the lower swamps. They heard the piteous "Gobble, gobble, gobble" of Wildoatia's most dangerous reptile not far ahead. Rifles crashed to the right. Someone screamed in the middle distance. Then a dead-grey head, with eyes big as saucers, swayed out of the muck directly in their path!

Frank and Sadie fired together. The nauseating head jerked back, then flicked forward on a scaly body equipped with a score of yardlong legs. The thing embraced the girl lovingly. Taloned feet clawed at her armor. A spiked tail wrapped about her in coil after slow coil.

"Gobble," moaned the scamour, showing its teeth in a wide smile before they sought the girl's throat.

Frank sprang forward, swinging his machete with both hands.

"Beg to state," hissed Schmidzu, "laws of Wildoatia forbid aid to another. Regret I must report this."

"Report and be damned," snarled Frank. Green ichor spurted under his blows but the creature seemed not to notice. Sadie was frantically squeezing the monster's throat to no avail. It forced its triangular snout forward, inch by inch.

Bracing himself with feet wide apart, the spaceman put all his strength into a blow aimed just below that horny carapace. The blade struck home this time, sheering through flinty scales to the backbone. The scamour's head fell backward and its coils loosened as it wailed like a hurt child.

Another wail made Frank whirl. The board chairman had been attacked by the creature's mate. Samurai swords sheared off several of the creature's legs but proved pitifully inadequate in the hands of the little Japanese. Instinctively the captain sprang to the rescue. Sadie, white and shaken though she was, gripped his arm with fingers of steel.

"No!" she gasped. "No Frank! You mustn't."

"You help girl," screamed Schmidzu, struggling futilely. "You help me, I not report, please!"

Frank did his best to respond, but Sadie clung to him until the scamour dragged its suffocating victim out of sight.

"It was our only chance," the girl wept as they chopped off the first scamour's head and turned back toward the palace with their trophy. "That rat would have had us concentrated; you know it as well as I do."

"Yes," he agreed bitterly, "but it still was a foul thing to do."

Their spirits revived somewhat when they discovered that three other hunters were missing ... and unmourned ... while the rest had returned empty-handed.

"Nothing to it," Sadie assured their cheering admirers when they reentered the keep. "We wanted to bring in another head, but the jits were getting bad." She limped off to have her bruises dressed.

They dined on scamour steaks again that night. They drank explosive gurka. They flirted outrageously with members of Mike's court. They watched the unbelievably lovely gyrations of two Martian flying girls who had been smuggled into Wildoatia at the risk of an interstellar incident.

Sadie told riproaring stories of the days when she was one of the toughest of the Incors. Then they danced square dances and sang cowboy ballads of Earth's old West which were the current rage. Finally they stumbled off to bed after having given Nirvana's commandant one of the pleasantest evenings of his misspent life.

Mike appeared while they were still asleep the next morning and reported that he had wangled them berths on the new ship.

"Took some pull," he boasted. "Ain't ten men in Wildoatia as could have did it. Wouldn't have had a chance if Schmidzu hadn't gone and got himself killed." He winked and added, "You'll have to have your faces and fingerprints changed a bit, though. Captain Hans will check your records seven ways from Sunday."

"Give Frank a pug nose like mine," Sadie directed when a plastic surgeon appeared in answer to Mike's summons. "And how about making him cross-eyed, too?"

"How about making her tongue-tied?" Frank retorted.

After much argument they compromised by altering the shape of Frank's mouth, slanting his eyebrows and pushing back his hairline. Sadie acquired a classic Greek profile; her freckles were eliminated and her hair became glossy black. Skin grafts were implanted on each of their fingertips.

"That should serve unless somebody examines your retina patterns," said the surgeon two days later. "Your features can be changed back, in time, but your fingerprints are permanently altered."

"Did I ever love that?" sighed Sadie when Frank's bandages were removed at last.

"You could get a job in Hollywood," he admitted grudgingly as he studied her in turn. "But confound it, I liked those freckles!"

They had kept the air waves to Venusport humming during their confinement. There was the usual red tape to break, of course, but news of the power source was so menacing that New Washington finally agreed to the plan for a sub rosa test of strength—the Space Patrol against the Big Shot ship at a spot somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Venus.

"Now it's up to us," said Sadie as they packed for their trip north. "How does it feel to have your head in a lion's mouth?"

"What if we can't accomplish anything when we get on board?"

"Then we're not the hellraisers we think we are.... Of course S.P. can't lick 'em. It'll have to find a way of getting the drop on 'em.... Don't worry. It will only make you lose the rest of your hair."

Mike accompanied them on the supply plane which bore them toward the Pole. He was in a bad mood. "I shouldn't ought have done it," he groaned. "If they's been a leak.... If Hans gets suspicious about you two, we'll be burned down. Only thing in our favor is that they're desperately short of men up there."

The ship's ports were blacked out as she approached her destination. They had no chance to determine the route. Finally they knew that they had landed on water, but when they emerged that they were in a pressurized hangar which had submerged into a huge chamber drilled in solid rock.

"Shots?" barked Hans, surveying the prospective recruits when Mike ushered them into the scientist's severely plain office.

"No." The commandant squirmed. "They're Incors, but they'd sell their souls to make a stake."

"Incors! Always Incors!" The unhealed radium burn which covered the whole side of the huge man's face flamed an angry red. "I need some people up here that I can half-way trust. All these Incors you've been sending me are dangerous. Already I've smashed two of their plans to steal or smash the ship. What's the matter with you Shots? Yellow?"

"Now look here, Hans...."

"Yellow!" Hans whirled from Mike and glared at Frank.

"You're an astrogator, they tell me. We can use you if you're not lying."

"Dave ..." Frank began.

"That's enough. We don't use last names up here. And you!" His one good eye examined Sadie as if she were a bug. "Nurse, eh? Know anything about radiation burns?"

"I was in the uranium mines, sir."

"Good. Your job's to help the doctors keep me on my feet a few months longer. Haven't time to die just yet."

"How the Champ?" Mike changed the unpleasant subject.

"Just back from a swing beyond Jupiter." The big man's face lighted up for the first time. "What a ship! Had her up to three quarters light speed. She ran like a dream."

"Three quarters light speed," Frank gasped. "That's around one hundred and forty thousand miles per second."

"She'd have done better, except that we started having some kind of eye trouble ... sort of like seeing double. A damned queer feeling, I tell you. Gives you the screaming meemies.... Well," he came back to normal, "thanks for bringing me an astrogator, Mike. When do we move?"

"As soon as the Boss sets a date with New Washington."

"I'll be ready." Hans escorted Mike to the door, then growled at the recruits: "Come along. I'll show you your quarters. You won't need them much; we work sixteen hour shifts here ... and I mean work!"

Frank spent the next month in a fever of toil. Hans was a slavedriver who enforced discipline on Shots and Incors alike, even though he had to break heads to do so. All life in the spacious undersea laboratory revolved around the thousand-foot-long, comb-shaped vessel which rested on its cradle beneath a dome reaching almost to the surface of the ocean. Within her silver skin lay the crooked aspirations of Wildoatia.

"Look at her," the leader crooned on one occasion. (Frank had been given a clean bill by Security and was being taken on an inspection trip.) "She'll reach Far Centaurus some day ... but I won't be on her." He caressed the bulging stern plates. "In here is a standard set of peroxide jets to take her through atmosphere. I hate the clumsy things. Wish I had time left to solve that problem of radiating heat from a compact pile when it's not operating in space.... Look up there!" They craned their necks, as at a skyscraper. "That battery of rockets projecting from what is now her side uses the new fuel. She travels broadside on after blast-off."

They took an elevator to the control room amidships.

"Designed the equipment myself." Hans beamed at the banks of quadrants, verniers and sky-encompassing viewplates. "Five years of hard work it took ... to pay off United Stars for this burn!"

They toured the engine room where a compact, heavily shielded pile stood ready to change tall stacks of pig iron ingots into unlimited power. Then they inspected the comfortable crew's quarters.

"What about armament, sir," Frank probed at last.

"There are guided missiles which can seek and find targets thousands of miles away. They can be equipped with either fission or disintegrating war heads. Both go dead after a certain period; can't have a disintegrator bumping into some planet and blowing it sky high. For really high speed operations, guided missiles won't be much good, of course, except in a stern chance. Then we'll depend mainly on the mine fields we spread behind us. Come on. Might as well show you the stuff." He started down an odd companionway which had steps both on one wall and on the floor. Then he staggered and leaned heavily against a bulkhead.

"Better go get that cursed nurse," he panted. "This burn...."

Frank found Sadie in the hospital and hurried her toward the ship.

"How long will the Old Man keep going?" he asked.

"A month or so, if he's careful.... I hope the Patrol stalls a bit."

"Then what?" He took a chance on patting her hand.

"We may get our chance. The Second is a dope."

"Have you made any contact with that Underground agent?"

"Not a chance. Hans has spy rays rigged up everywhere."

"Same here. Well, keep your funny chin up, Sadie.... There's your patient.... And try to get more rest; you look peaked."

They found Hans walking blindly in a circle, gave him a sedative and helped him back to his room. Then they parted silently with a quick handclasp.

Frank went back to plotting orbits to every planet and satellite, as well as perfecting combat maneuvers. His math was rusty, so he spent long hours at his desk and found little time to make friendships with his shipmates to be. The other technicians were also a hardworking lot, far different from the roistering Big Shots who ran the planet. Hans had handpicked them and they were wise, ambitious and hard ... driven by a grim selfishness which made the astrogator quail. When, for self-protection, Sage aped their mannerisms and ways of thinking, he found himself growing as viciously efficient as a crouching tiger.

The only real acquaintance he made, among that crowd of automatons, was the foppish son of an Argentine who had escaped from the debacle which struck his country during the Atomic War. His name was Carlos and he warmed slightly when he found that Frank had picked up his beloved ... and outmoded ... Spanish language while working on the Sahara project. Carlos was second in command and obviously dreamed of supplanting Hans. He was a complete egomaniac. But Frank could discern no outward disloyalty to Wildoatia.

Of course the patrolman discussed the details of his work with half a dozen technicians, but the person he warmed to was one of the few women in the lab. She was a radar operator who had been cashiered from a mail packet for some disgraceful episode on Mars. Blonde and good-looking in a stocky way, she answered to the name of Greta, wore her harness with an air, swore like a trooper, smoked cigars, drove her subordinates until they dropped, and worshipped money as her only God. For some reason she took a fancy to "Dave" and overlooked many of his early errors while damning others for less serious mistakes.

In other words, Frank found himself getting nowhere with his plan to sow dissension among the crew. As in early stages of the three great wars, they were frantically loyal to their brutal ideals and leaders. If there had been rivalry involved, the spacemen felt he might have accomplished something. This idea, plus a longing to look at Sadie, caused him to pay a visit to the director. The latter, now but a bloody caricature of himself, still maintained his iron rule from a hospital bed.

"Sir," he proposed, fixing his eyes on the nurse instead of on the thing propped up in bed, "I've found that the Champ needs another trial run. Her controls aren't properly calibrated for close work among the planets."

"The devil you say!" Hans rose painfully on one elbow. "I calibrated them myself."

"There's an error of half a degree in the...."

"I know, dumbkopf. It won't bother us when we move against those S. P. tubs. Leave well enough alone; I can't make such a trip again. And I don't trust a single one of you congenital doublecrossers out of my sight. Now get back to work. I'm busy." He turned almost blindly to a mass of bloodstained papers spread over the bed.

A week later the word spread like lightning through the lab. Hans had died, screaming. His screams were not due to pain. (Radiation burns are almost painless.) They were torn out of him by the knowledge that he could not live to direct the test of strength with United Stars. The cream of the jest was that, as the director breathed his last, word was flashed from Nirvana that the duel would begin "somewhere in space" at 2400 sideral time, July 14—just three days away.

Carlos called a war council immediately after the funeral. Present were Fritz, previously the second mate; the radiation-scarred chief engineer; two shifty-eyed deck officers; Greta, and Frank.

"I don't understand these orders," the Spaniard raged, twisting his moustache as if trying to tear it out by the roots. "They tell me to blast off at 2400, but they don't name the battle area. This is another New Washington trick. Do they expect me to search the universe for those confounded Space Patrol tubs?"

"The S.P. ships have just about enough range to get from the Moon to Venus, or vice versa," Fritz volunteered. "They carry very little air. We can cruise around until they exhaust their supplies, then shoot 'em like ducks." He licked his thick lips.

"I can get a radar fix on them in no time," said Greta from within her cloud of cigar smoke. "Don't be disturbed, sir." Her eyes were cold.

"Oh!" Carlos struggled to hide his chagrin. "Dismissed. Get the ship ready for blast-off."

Shortly afterward, loudspeakers blared throughout the lab. Men ran in all directions. Food and other perishables not already aboard began to be loaded with hysterical speed.

At midnight on the fourteenth, the Champ nosed her way through the watertight lock of her caisson, climbed like leviathan through the miledeep cloud layer of Venus and, dripping water from her splendid sides, leaped into the ebony sky. On the bridge, Carlos, Fritz, Frank and Greta crouched over their instruments as the shadowy planet sank beneath them. Frank's heart was throbbing as he sought wildly for some method of stopping the invincible monster. He could shoot Carlos.... He could jam the throttle.... He could.... A glance at four robot-like soldiers who guarded the doors showed him the impossibility of doing anything whatsoever; he was trapped.

"She's running perfectly, sir," intoned Fritz, his water-blue eyes fixed on the leaping indicators. "Peroxides working perfectly. Approaching speed of sound."

"Sonic it is, mister." Carlos' voice shook ever so slightly. As if in answer, the Champ shook, too, as she hit the turbulence. They clung to their padded seats for a moment as she rolled and plunged, then relaxed as the barrier was pierced and the thinning atmosphere whined more and more faintly along her sides.

"Stratosphere clear," Frank sang out. "On orbit."

"Hard fix on the Moon, sir." This from Greta.

"On orbit. Radar fix on the Moon. Get set for turnover." Carlos slid the throttle quadrant forward. Bells jangled throughout the hull. Like a seal the ship obeyed her helm. The bulkhead, on which they were seated, slowly became the left wall of the control room while the true floor assumed its rightful place and their chairs swivelled automatically. Otherwise, except for the shift of stars outside the ports, they scarcely knew that the Champ had attained broadside-on position.

"Space drive position," called Fritz. "Cut peroxides."

"Peroxides cut." The commander's hands flew over the controls. "Atomics warming up."

There was a moment when they were weightless and oddly uncomfortable, as though falling from a great height. Then they returned to normal with the first faint pulse of the new drive. Beneath their feet, translucent ports in the floor turned ruddy, then blazed with an unholy, growing splendor.

"One microsecond deviation from orbit." This from Frank.

Carlos made a quick adjustment. The telltale on the softly-glowing sky chart centered itself.

"On orbit," the astrogator amended.

"On orbit it is!" The perspiring Commander smoothed his rumpled hair and nervously adjusted his moustache. "Take over, mister. We've half an hour before the tubes are hot enough to start revving up to speed. I must inspect the ship. Come on, Dave."

They found the decks in shining order, with each crew member standing stiffly at his post. The only damage from turnover had been a slight shift in a secondary radar antenna caused by a backdraft from one of the stern jets.

"Greta and I can fix that, sir," Frank suggested.

The operator appeared, swearing her usual blue streak, after Carlos called her on the intercom. The profanity still burned Frank's ears through his helmet mike after they had wriggled into bulky spacesuits, attached tools to hooks on their belts and clumped to an airlock.

"All right, lubbers," the Amazon snarled through the open face plate of her helmet at crewmen assigned to operate the door. "Get the lead outa yer pants. Open 'er up."

With hatred in their eyes, the others leaped to obey. The inner door clanged shut. As the pressure dropped, their articulated suits expanded with loud pops. Moments later, the outer door slid away and they clambered up an iron ladder and onto the hull. Their breath spurting into space as jets of ice particles, they used magnetized shoes and gloves to creep like beetles along the smoothly welded plates.

As they worked together at the tedious repair a project began to form in Frank's mind. Perhaps it was the giddy reeling of the heavens about the ship. Perhaps the compressed air he breathed was too rich in oxygen. Whatever the cause, he reached the blinding conclusion that Greta must be the Underground's Agent 542.

It all fitted together. She had a key position on board; she had been kind to him. Now they were outside the ship and out of range of the spy rays. Here was his chance....

"Greta," he whispered through the intercom.

"Yeh?" Her helmet swivelled toward him.

At that moment all hell broke loose!

Up from the Venusian cloud blanket only a few miles below spurted a shower of golden sparks. All else forgotten, he blinked at them while his heart began pounding. They could only be ... they were the little globular ships of the Space Patrol. Travelling at four or five G's—much faster than the speed which the Champ had yet attained—they started closing in. Ahead of them, he knew, would be probing their fission torpedoes.

"Smart!" He heard Greta's voice in his ears. "I've got to hand it to 'em." She started scrabbling toward the airlock, cursing bitterly.

"Not smart enough," he answered, his heart sinking. "The Champ will accelerate and escape them within a few minutes. Then she'll circle and...."

"That's what you think, bud. Feel the hull."

Carlos was well aware of the danger, evidently. The great ship strained and heaved under them. Almost at Frank's feet a plate started its seams. The truth struck him like a blow. The Champ was not built for close quarters maneuvering. Her mass was so great ... her skeleton was relatively so weak ... that she was physically incapable of dodging the flexible patrol boats. And, since her tubes were still comparatively cool, she did not have the power to outdistance them.

"Come on S.P. Come on, you sons of guns," he whooped, staggering to his feet as a torpedo caromed into one of the Champ's jets and glanced off to explode harmlessly several miles away.

"You stinking Pumper!" He ducked as the words ripped through the phone. The bullet meant for his brain whined against the side of his helmet. "Luring me out here when I shoulda been gettin' a fix...."

There was no time to shift his shoes. He flung himself sidewise and just managed to grab the radar operator's wrist as she fired again.

The gun spiralled into darkness and they were fighting breast to breast.

Greta was strong as an ox; she got a grip on his air hose and wrenched at the connection. He jammed an elbow into her well padded solar plexus. As she relaxed with a grunt he reached down and tore her magnetized boots from the skin of the ship.

"Now, my lady...."

She smashed her helmet down upon his in an effort to break its glass front and suffocate him. With all his remaining strength he untangled her arms from his neck and hurled her into space. A scream rattled his earphones ... died slowly into silence!

Fighting for breath, he clung to the hull and gave his attention to the battle. A suicide dive by the nearest patrol boat ripped two more blazing tubes from the Champ's side. A lucky torp struck amidships, boring completely through the Champ and then driving on for several miles before exploding.... Those warheads must have deteriorated, he thought bitterly.

Nevertheless the Champ was hurt, and hurt badly. But she was still accelerating. And she was beginning to fight back.

A torpedo tube twenty feet away swivelled and belched a wicked fish. Moments later a patrol ship disappeared in a flash which temporarily blinded the watcher.

That had been only a fission torp, he knew. But what if that crazy Carlos decided to chance one of the new disintegrators? A hit on one of the attackers would destroy the whole fleet. On the other hand, a miss.... As his sight returned he stared down at Venus in growing horror. If Hans had been right, a miss would explode the planet and might make the whole solar system go Nova!

He edged back toward the airlock with frantic, sobbing speed. As he pounded for attention with a spanner, he looked over his shoulder. The attackers were nearer, but they seemed to be slowing. Why? What was the matter with the fools? Then he realized that they were moving as fast as ever but that the Champ was picking up speed. A few more minutes and she would be out of range.

The outer door closed behind him at last. Air pressure came up to normal. Then the inner door opened to admit him into pandemonium.

He flipped open his face plate, but shut it at once. This was the compartment punctured by the unexploded torp and most of its air was gone. Men screamed thinly and tore at their throats. Others were struggling into spacesuits. A handful were trying to patch the leaks. As he looked, one of the latter was sucked through the rent into space.

Cursing his twenty pound shoes, he pounded toward the control room, gun in hand. He had to stop Carlos.... Had to.... Had to.... He reeled through the door at last ... and skidded to a stop!

Fritz stood there, straddling the body of his captain. His smoking automatic was holding the rattled sentries at bay.

The gun centered on the newcomer's heart.

"I'm Captain Sage, S.P.," Frank yelled. It was a long chance.

"Right!" Fritz shot a charging sentry through the head. The others turned and fled. "I just stopped Carlos in time. Get over to that radio. Tell 'em we surrender. And then," he added as an afterthought, "go back outside and bring Greta in. The Champ's mass has pulled her back to the hull. Saw her peeking through the blister a minute ago. She looked about ready to burst a bloodvessel with fury."

They found Sadie holding forth in style when they finally managed to jockey the crippled ex-Champ back into its caisson. The girl had broken out cases of traskette and she led the Incors of the lab staff in making the half-hundred S.P. men welcome when they trooped in, grinning like the youngsters they were.

"The harder they fall!" she chortled. "Just hit the big fellows before they get their feet planted, my dad always said."

"But how?... When?..." Frank stared at her blankly.

"I took over this joint soon as we heard the Champ surrendered. Mike has thrown in the towel. The war's over, so drink hearty. And there are steaks on the fire."

"Don't drink too hearty." Frank swept her pliant body into his arms, thankful that it, at least, was familiar. "I don't want to waste a minute hunting up that plastic surgeon so he can give you back that pug nose and those freckles."