Third Planet by Murray Leinster (free e reader TXT) 📖

space, the Coms would ask to examine such specimens as she brought back. The request would be expressed as scientific interest, but a refusal would be treated as a concealment of dire designs. There were those on the ship who felt that the weapon should be dismantled and made to seem meaningless, to avoid any chance of a humiliating squabble with the Coms.

The skipper roared at them. It was the only time on the voyage when he displayed anger. But he glared at those who proposed the act of discretion. He drove them out of the cabin in which the suggestion was made. He turned to Nolan, who definitely was not a party to it. His manner changed. He said querulously:

"Nolan, why do you want that thing mounted so it could be used if necessary?"

"That's the way it was mounted on Planet Five. To box it or case it might injure it. To take it apart might mean that it could never be got together in working order again."

"Is that the real reason?" demanded the skipper. "It's a good reason, but is it the real one?"

"No," admitted Nolan. "It isn't."

The skipper fumed to himself.

"We might get home," he said fretfully, "and find things just as we left them. Then there'd be no harm in the mounting. We'd at least try to diddle the Coms and get it ashore without their knowing it was important. We might get home and find that war'd broken out and Earth was dead like the Third Planet back yonder, only not all yet turned to desert. Then the mounting wouldn't matter. Nothing would! Or we could find that the Coms had smashed the West and were all cockahoop about what they'd managed to do in a sneak attack. So it had better stay mounted. I covered everything, didn't I?"

Nolan wasn't feeling any better than anybody else on the Lotus. The jitters that affected everybody but conditioned Coms had been bad when the Lotus went about its business. But when the ship headed for home, nerves got visibly worse. They didn't know what they'd find there. With the third planet of Fanuel Alpha in mind, it was all too easy to believe in disaster.

"There's one thing," said Nolan painfully, "that bothers me. I've been trying to think like a Com top brass. The WDA is a well meaning organization, and it's gained time, no doubt. But aside from the Com missiles, ninety-five per cent of the atomic warheads on Earth are in the hands of just one WDA nation. It happens to be ours. It's been bearing most of the load of defense costs for the West. It's the richest country in the world. There's practically no poverty in it."

"What has poverty to do with a possible war?" demanded the skipper.

"Everything," Nolan said uncomfortably. "The Coms take over a country. They march in. There are rich people and poor people. The Coms start to humiliate and destroy the rich. The poor people hated them. So the Coms are popular long enough to get things going right. But if they tried that in our country—"

"It wouldn't work," said the skipper. "Not for a minute."

"It wouldn't," agreed Nolan. "Most of our people think of themselves as well to do, and the rest can hope to become so. So the Coms would have to try to govern two hundred million indignant and subversive underground resisters. They couldn't hold down such a country. They wouldn't try!"

The skipper blinked.

"If you mean they'd leave our country alone—"

"I don't," said Nolan. "They'd destroy it. They'd have to. So they might as well destroy it out of hand and destroy most of the fighting potential and a lot of resolution in the West. A well handled atomic-missile bombardment and some luck, and they could take over the rest of the world without trouble. I think that's the practical thing for them to do. I think they'll do it if they can."

The skipper grimaced. Then he said, almost ashamedly:

"Maybe we're talking nonsense, Nolan. Maybe we've just got bad cases of nerves. Maybe things have gotten better since we left. We could arrive back home and find nobody even dreaming of war any more!"

"That," said Nolan, "would scare me to death. That would be the time to make a sneak attack!"

Which was pessimism. But nothing else seemed justified. It was not even easy to be hopeful about the value of the fifth-planet weapon to the Western Defensive Alliance. The WDA couldn't use it in a preventive war. Their people wouldn't allow it. The initiative would always remain with the Coms.

The Lotus moved Earthward. She carried a more deadly instrument for war than men had ever dreamed of. But the ship's company daily jittered a little more violently.

The war might have been fought and be over by now. If it had, the Coms would have won it.

The Coordinator for the WDA handed the Com Ambassador his passport.

"I'm sorry you've been recalled," he said heavily, "Because I think I see the meaning of the move."

"I am only called home for conference and instructions," said the Ambassador politely. "I shall miss our friendly chats. We have had a very fine personal relationship, though we have disagreed so often."

The Coordinator absently shifted objects on his desk. He said suddenly:

"Mr. Ambassador, have I ever lied to you?"

The Ambassador raised his eyebrows. Then he smiled.

"Never!" he said pleasantly. "I have marveled!"

The Coordinator took a quick, sharp breath.

"I shall not lie now," he said abruptly. "I hope you will believe me, Mr. Ambassador, when I tell you one of our best-kept military secrets."

The Ambassador blinked and then shrugged politely.

"You always astonish me," he said mildly.

"Your High Command," said the Coordinator grimly, "has decided not to try to take over the nation around us. It is considered impractical. So this nation is to be destroyed, to shatter the backbone of the WDA and make resistance anywhere else unthinkable."

The Ambassador said reproachfully:

"Ah, but you begin to believe your own propaganda!"

"No," said the Coordinator. "I have simply told you the facts you undoubtedly already know. Now I tell you our best-kept military secret. We know that we cannot deal with you. We know that you might be successful in an overwhelming, unwarned attack. We know that if you decide upon war, it will be directed primarily at this nation. So we have set up some very special atomic bombs where it is extremely unlikely that you will find them. They are 'dirty' bombs. They are designed to make the maximum possible amount of radioactive dust—of fallout. Timing mechanisms are set to detonate them. Every day a man goes and sets back the timing mechanism in each place where a bomb is established. On the day that a man fails to do so the bombs will certainly explode."

The Coordinator said almost briskly:

"We calculate that the bombs will make the atmosphere of the whole Earth lethally radioactive. They will raise the background count on Earth to the point where nothing can live: no plant, no animal, no fish in any sea. This will only happen if this nation is destroyed. It will fight if it is attacked, of course, but your chances of substantial success are good. But if you are successful the Earth will die. I may add that the people of the Com nations will die also, to the last individual."

The Ambassador started to his feet.

"But you could not do that!" he protested white-lipped. "You cannot!"

The Coordinator shrugged and shook his head.

"I have not lied to you before, Mr. Ambassador. I do not lie to you now." Then he said formally: "I hope you have a pleasant journey home."

IV

The Lotus came out of the usual sequence of arrival-hops no more than six light-seconds from Earth. A million miles, more or less; perhaps four times the distance of the Moon. Nolan examined the planet's sunlit face and said steadily:

"Nothing's happened yet."

There was almost agonized relief. Only the skipper did not seem to relax. He went stolidly to the control-room and got out the scrambler card that matched just one other scrambler card in the world. He put it in the communicator. To speak to Earth by scrambler would be an offense. It would be protested by the Coms. They would insist that a survey ship should have nothing secret to report and that anything secret must be inimical to the Com Association of Nations.

The skipper formally reported in, in the clear, and then insisted on completing his report by scrambler. He did complete it, over the agitated protest of the ground. Then there was silence. He mopped his forehead.

"Nolan, better get down to the eyepiece. The Coms could send something up to blast us. I'll get the detectors out. You be ready! You're sure you can handle things?"

"This is a little bit late to raise the question," said Nolan. "I think I can do it, though."

He went down into the hold. He turned on the eyepiece. He saw the distinct, luminous disk which was Earth in the not-at-all-believable field of the impossible instrument. He saw points—not dots—of extremely vivid light. Obviously the size of a radioactive object did not determine the brightness of its report to the weapon from Planet Five of Fanuel Alpha. Something else controlled the brilliance.

He saw the groupings of many dimensionless points of light. There were the patterns which meant the silos holding the monster atomic missiles of the West. He could distinguish them from the much more concentrated firing-points of the Com nations. The oceans had few or no bright points at all. There were only so many atomic-powered ocean-going vessels. Nolan could tell well enough which were the Western accumulations of radioactives for defense purposes, and which were the Com stores of warheads.

His throat went dry as he realized the power in his hands. Neither he or anyone else could make one blade of grass grow, but he could turn the third planet of this sun into a desert and a dreariness like the third planet of another sun far, far away.

The skipper came into the hold. He locked the entrance door behind him.

"I got to the Coordinator," he said in a shaking voice. "I started enough trouble by reporting by scrambler. He talked to me. I showed him pictures. He's telling the Coms most of what I reported, saying that if they like they can try to blast us. If they try, and don't succeed, we can try to figure out what to do next."

The Com premiership was in some ways the equivalent of the office of Coordinator of the Western Defense Alliance. But the men who held the two posts were quite unlike and the amount of authority they could exercise was vastly different. The Com premier read, again, the newly arrived message from the Coordinator. The high officials he'd sent for came streaming into the room. Most of them had flimsies of the message in their hands. The Premier beamed at them.

"You have the news," he said humorously. "The WDA Coordinator first threatened to make all Earth's air radioactive if we attacked the—ah—leading member of the WDA and destroyed it. He has evidently decided that this threat is not strong enough. So he assures us that a Western survey ship has come back from an exploring voyage with a cargo of artifacts from a non-human civilization. Among the artifacts there is what he says is the absolute weapon. He says that the skipper who has brought it back claims that it can end the tension between the WDA and us—by ending us!" The Premier chuckled. "He invites us to verify the skipper's claim by attempting to blast the survey ship, whose coordinates of position he gives us. I think he has made a rather substantial error of judgment."

His eyes twinkled as he looked from one to another of the high officials he had summoned.

"We accepted the invitation," said the Premier. "Naturally! General?"

He looked at a tall general officer with twin silver rockets in his lapels. The general said proudly:

"Yes, Excellency! Our space-radar located an object at the survey ship's stated position. We sent six rockets with atomic warheads at it. We used satellite-placing rockets for maximum acceleration. They are well on their way now. Of course they can be disarmed or destroyed as well as maneuvered to intercept this survey ship if it attempts to flee. They will reach the target area in just under three hours."

The Premier nodded, very humorously.

"Since we accepted their invitation, naturally the Western staff concludes that we are disturbed. That we will wait to see what our rockets learn. It would be interesting, but our scientists tell me that the alleged weapon is impossible. Utterly impossible! So it is merely a trick.... And we will not wait for our rockets to arrive. We might be late for our dinners, and