Chapter FOUR: The Struggle for Earth

The man with the rifle prowled around the ship, looking carefully out across the plains.

Then, angrily, he turned and said something at the door of the helicopter, and a second head appeared. There was a short discussion that Dave could not hear, and then the second man came out carrying a tool kit and headed for the lab. The first man got back into the helicopter and took off towards the main building.

Dave nodded. It was reasonable to suppose that Claverly, and then Phelps, after finding themselves in this half-world alone, had gone back to the main laboratory to see if they could raise the attention of their friends. Dave himself could have been expected to follow, running after the jeep that had taken the others back to their lab. The hunter expected to find Dave wandering disconsolately around the other lab.

When the helicopter had disappeared, Dave arose and scuttled across the plain towards the building he had left. He felt like a battleship on a clear ocean in broad daylight trying to slink unseen behind an enemy, but there seemed no way to avoid it. At any rate, the workman was paying no attention to his surroundings.

Within the walls of the laboratory, the workman was unlimbering his tool kit. He was an efficient workman. It was his job to repair the television camera and it was his cohort's job to track down and dispose of Dave.

He went to work on this basis and ignored the possibility that Dave might be stalking him--until Dave came silently up behind him and kicked the small sectional ladder out from beneath the workman's feet. Dave's fist came plunging through the windmill of flying arms and legs and connected solidly beneath the workman's ear. Startled, off-balance, and then slugged, the workman came to earth with a dull thud and sprawled motionless. Dave snarled and made doubly sure with a thrusting heel-kick against the workman's jaw and throat. The workman was not the first man to die from such a kick.

Then, in a matter of minutes, Dave was wearing the dead workman's shirt and trousers and was plying the tools on the television camera deftly. Dave had not wrecked the thing, he had just swung his weight against its moorings and displaced it. The problem was simple, and was handled by a couple of adjustable end-wrenches. It could have been done by sheer strength, but not with the desired precision. So Dave loosened the nuts that held the flexible couplings and slid the camera back into its original perfect registry with the camera in the real world. He was tightening the nuts again when he heard the helicopter returning.

Dave stooped and packed the tools back in the kit, folded the collapsible ladder and stowed it atop the tools, and then stood up and waved at the pilot.

The helicopter landed. The pilot got out and called, "Have you seen him?"

This was in a foreign tongue that Dave understood, and could speak acceptably.

"He jumped me," called Dave, pointing with his toe at the inert figure on the floor beside him.

The pilot looked and scowled. "Dead?"

"No!" grunted Dave, turning his back on the pilot, who was approaching. He scooped up the tool kit with his left hand and walked rapidly to get out of range of whatever loudspeaker system the enemy had in the laboratory. He strode thirty feet towards the pilot, who also came towards Dave about the same distance. Then--

"You're not--"

"Up!" snapped Dave, dropping the tool kit and pulling the captured revolver out of its holster.

The pilot snarled and made a side-swinging fadeaway motion, bringing the rifle up from its under-arm position. The pilot fired and the slug snapped past Dave's head. Dave fired and winged the pilot in the right shoulder, spinning the man around and dropping him to the ground.

Then Dave raced forward, made a long leap, and landed, kicking the rifle away with one heel and planting the toe of the other foot cruelly in the armpit of the wounded shoulder.

Pain crazed the pilot and he writhed on the ground, half-conscious. When he came to, Dave had his knees and ankles trussed with friction tape and was winding his free arm against his body with more tape.

The pilot mouthed some unprintables.

"Shut up!" snapped Dave.

"Bah!"

Dave backhanded the pilot across the face. The face writhed in pain and the eyes half-closed again. Dave tore the sleeve from the shirt and bound the bullet wound crudely.

"Now," he said harshly, "you'll live if you behave. It ain't painless, but you'll live--if you want to."

"You can't get away with this."

"No?"

"We'll get you sooner or later--"

"Think you'll live to see it?"

"Yes."

"You're wrong again, chum."

"Bah! We know your kind, all of you. Self-centered and egotistical, not one of you would care to die for his fellow man. We--"

Dave snorted scornfully. "During the last time we got in a scrap to prove that we're not as sloppy as you think, I took on a load of fission products. I don't much care whether you kill me quick right now or whether you let me die six months from now. I'm a dead man anyway. But in the meantime, little pawn of the superstate, I might be able to foul you up because I have nothing to be afraid of--but failure!" Dave let that sink in, although he doubted whether it made much impression. Then he demanded, "What do you know about this?"

"Nothing."

Dave joggled the wounded arm. "Are you certain?"

"You can't torture it out of me," said the pilot between gritted teeth.

"Maybe I can scare it out of you," said Dave. He stood up and lifted the pilot by hooking his left hand under the windings of tape. He dragged the man along the ground to the helicopter and slung him into the passenger's seat. Then Dave went around and climbed into the pilot seat and wound up the motor. He snapped off the radio and inspected the dashboard carefully to be sure that all radiating equipment was dead; he did not wish to be followed by any direction-finding equipment.

Then he drove the helicopter for two solid hours north until he came to a piney forest. He dropped the ship slantwise through the forest for a mile and came to earth in a little glade. The wheels of the 'copter rested on the half-world surface a few inches below the apparent ground.

* * * * *

"Now, my friend, I'm going to show you a few things that may prove to you that we're not as stupid as you think. For one thing, I, an unarmed man in a strange world, have succeeded in killing one of your buddies, wounding you, and making off with your helicopter. I've succeeded in escaping to a place where it may be difficult--if possible at all--to find us. Third, I've established the fact that you are not carrying any means of communicating to the real world on this 'copter."

"Oh, brilliant," said the pilot.

"It was," nodded Dave. "You see, we're a bunch of mechanical geniuses, which you've always admitted. So I postulate some sort of mechanical linkage through these devil's crystals of yours. A pencil, perhaps, with the barrel in one world and the magazine in the other world, coupled between them with a bushing made of a crystal. Maybe a radio set with bushings in the dials, and a crystal between the this-world diaphragm and the real-world electrical element. But if we were carrying anything of that nature I'd have felt resistance as we passed down through this forest. So--?"

"Why don't you kill me and forget it all?" asked the pilot.

"I am compassionate, sympathetic. A lover of mine enemy. When smitten upon one cheek, I turn the other cheek for a second wallop. Since you've had only one wallop, I'm keeping you alive so you can get that busted wing back in shape for the second smiting. But you see," added Dave as he saw a wave of pain pass over the pilot, "the book doesn't fill in the gap between the smiting of the first cheek and the offering of the second. Elsewhere in the same book--and a long way in front of that--you find references to the taking of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You and your gang of hotshots have been responsible for the deaths of a lot of fine men, killed with no warning.

"So," finished Dave, hard-voiced, "maybe you'd like to learn what goes on when a mild-mannered gent like myself gets mad?"

Dave reached across the pilot's body, grasped the wounded arm and joggled it sharply. The pilot cried out in pain and beads of sweat popped out on his face.

"Talk, damn you!" Dave twisted the arm again.

"Where are you running this game from?"

No answer--and another twist of the arm.

"How do you blow up the crystals?"

The pilot's eyes closed and he breathed heavily.

"Possum!" said Dave, slapping the pilot across the face. There was no response, so he fumbled under the seat and found a water flask. He threw a small handful into the pilot's face. "There isn't much of this here," he said, "and I doubt that there's any water we can drink on this half-world. Wounded men get thirsty, don't they, chum?"

The pilot opened his eyes and groaned, "Water--"

"Talk!"

"I don't know anything."

"Then you're no good to me alive!" snapped Dave.

The pilot sat up a bit. Dave twisted the arm again. "Don't!" pleaded the pilot.

"Then talk!" snapped Dave again. "You got into this world the same as I did, but by choice. How do we get out again?"

"There's--no way out."

"Baloney."

The pilot screamed in pain. "No--I swear it!"

"How does the Manhattan Crystal furnish power for New York?"

"I don't know."

"It's transmission of power, isn't it?" demanded Dave, jerking the wounded arm again.

"I--"

"Good. That's what I thought. Transmission from one crystal to another. They blow them up the same way?"

The pilot nodded, weakly.

"So _we_ don't manufacture the crystals in the nuclear laboratories. You and your gang deliver them like Santa Claus, coming down the chimney!"

The pilot nodded again.

"Now--where is this thing run from?"

The pilot shook his head. Dave snapped the arm sharply and the pilot screamed. He screamed a name.

"There's no way back?"

"No," groaned the pilot.

Dave let him go. "No way of communicating with the real world from here?"

"No."

"Do you know where we are?"

"Interstitial time."

"What?" roared Dave angrily.

The pilot winced. "I'm told," he gasped, "that time moves in quanta, like energy. We're--between two quanta of time."

* * * * *

Dave frowned thoughtfully. The expression, "out of phase" came to mind, and he decided that the half-world was displaced, out of phase in time, moving behind one peak of the "real world" and before the next. He remembered seeing a series of synchronizing pulses depicted on an oscilloscope; a series of rectangular waves, square-sided and flat-topped, rising from the baseline sharply. Like the cross-section of a row of piano keys, the separation between pulses very narrow compared to the width of the flat top. This half-world, he supposed, moved along in the separation.

"Where is Claverly--and Phelps?"

"I don't know. Another crew captured them and took them back."

"I think that's about enough," said Dave. "I think we can take it from here."

"And what are you going to do with me?"

Dave grinned, "We'll make a sporting proposition out of this, superman. You'll be the bait for a trap. If the trap springs on me, you'll win. If the trap springs on you, well, that's just too damned bad!"

"You can't trap us!"

"No? You told me I couldn't get anything out of you, either. So just watch!"

Dave lifted the 'copter once more and drove, at headlong pace, back to Merion. He hovered thirty feet above the pseudo-ground, less than half a mile from the main building, and then cut the engine and let the helicopter drop. For good measure, he tilted it sidewise. The ship landed with a jarring crash that crumpled the landing gear and folded one of the rotor blades down. The hull crumpled in on one side, and a litter of broken glass and some splinters of metal spread out across the earth. Dave completed the picture by kicking out the fore window and strewing the ground around the ship with the gear from the various tool boxes and compartments.

He found a first-aid kit. He charged a hypo needle with a healthy slug of sedative and placed it handy.

Then he sat back and waited.

An hour passed; two, three, and darkness began to fall. Dave switched on the landing lights of the 'copter, and then with a vicious smile he kicked one of them loose so that its beam cut the ground askew, illuminating the litter on the ground.

Two hours after dark he was rewarded by the distant sound of another helicopter. Dave went to work vigorously. He clipped the pilot across the jaw, dazing him. He shoved the needle home and discharged the sedative into the pilot's body. Then he cut the tape and shoved the feebly-struggling body half out through the fore window, being callously rough so that the pilot's face and shoulders were slightly cut by the broken glass.

The pilot, roused a bit by the pain, waved at the oncoming helicopter, trying to warn it off. Instead, the other pilot dropped rapidly towards the wreck.

It landed a hundred feet away and two men dropped to the ground and came running.

"What happened?" cried the foremost.

"Wreck," groaned Crandall, inside the ship.

He took careful aim with the pilot's rifle and fired, twice. Both men dropped in their tracks.

Leaping over them, Dave went to their helicopter and climbed in. He snapped the radio switch and said, "We're back, reporting."

"What happened, M-22?" the speaker answered tinnily, and Dave cheered himself for guessing correctly that the other pilot or observer had reported before investigating.

"Complete wreck," he said shortly.

"The men?"

"Dead."

"You're certain, M-22?"

"I am."

"What was the waving, then?"

"Piece of canvas. I thought it was one of them. The light, you know."

"Ah, yes. Over there it is dark. All right, proceed as directed and return to this wreck once the crystal is placed!"

"Check. M-22 signing off."

Dave snapped off the radio and rummaged about in the helicopter. He found the crystal, packed neatly in an aluminum box in the compartment below the dash.

Now to find something to write upon. Nothing he had available would suffice. And if he took the crystal into the laboratory to write upon a wall, the video cameras would see him and the enemy would blow the crystal up, and himself with it. There was--

Jane!

Dave grinned happily. He lifted the 'copter and drove it madly across the plain, following the ghostly road he recalled so well, until he came to the farmhouse of the Nolan family. Shamelessly, Dave lifted the 'copter around the farmhouse, peering into the windows until he located Jane's bedroom. He took the crystal from its packing and forced it through the window screen. Then he took the whole helicopter in through the house until he was sitting beside her bed. He tapped her shoulder with the crystal until she awoke.

"Uh--what?" she gasped, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

She snapped on the light and sat up in bed.

She saw the crystal, apparently floating before her eyes, and she jumped with fright. Then Dave took the 'copter close to the wall. He scratched in the plaster:

_Jane. This is Dave!_

"Dave!" she breathed.

_Yes!_ It was hard on the plaster, but necessary.

"You can hear me?"

Dave pointed to the "Yes" with the crystal.

"You can see me?"

Again came the point. And Jane hurriedly wrapped herself in the sheet and blushed. Then she threw away the sheet and said. "It seems that this is no time for modesty, Dave."

He tapped the printed "Yes" once again as Jane reached for her dressing gown and slipped into it.

"What do you want?" she asked.

_Carbon paper_, he wrote on the wall.

Jane disappeared, and Dave smiled at the scribbling on the wall. Its disjointed message was bearing fruit. But what could one make out of:

_Jane. This is Dave!_

_Yes!_

_Carbon paper._

Nothing but the safety of America!

* * * * *

Instead of carbon paper, Jane brought a "Magic Slate", one of those wax-based tablets covered with a celluloid sheet that can be written on with a stylus and then erased by lifting the celluloid. It was better than carbon paper, and Dave cheered to himself at her brain-work.

"What is that?" she asked.

_This crystal is the one the enemy was bringing to Merion Laboratory to replace the one they blew up in the safety-dump yesterday_, he wrote.

"Where are you?"

_I am in some sort of interspace between time quanta. Your guess is better than mine._

"Who is the enemy?"

Dave wrote it out, and then added the rest of the details.

"What shall I do?"

_Stop them--somehow._

"How can I stop them?" wailed Jane.

_Call President Morgan._ You can do that, he wrote. _Let the President put a stop to it!_

Jane nodded and went to the telephone. Dave followed. _I'm putting this crystal in Merion_, he said. _I've been away too long--they will be getting suspicious._

"Dave," cried Jane, helplessly looking for him. It was hard on Dave, for he knew what she wanted and was unable to stand where her eyes were trying to focus. He gave up and watched her eyes look aside and through him, unable to help her see him as he could see her. "Dave," she cried plaintively, "come back to me!"

_When I can_, he promised.

Jane waved the pad. "I have that in writing," she said. Her face showed it to be a hard try at humor.

Dave tapped her gently on the forehead with the crystal, and then it took off in a long swoop towards the window as he left. He did not know, but he assumed that a certain amount of time must be permitted the placers of those crystals since the operator could not open a door, nor must he permit the crystal to be seen floating through a busy corridor. How much of this grace period he had left he did not know, but he wanted the crystal placed under the eye of the television cameras of the enemy before they became suspicious.

The crystal was a deadly thing under any circumstances, but now it was like a gallon tin of nitroglycerine; Jane, knowing the facts, would keep people out of its sphere of death.

Meanwhile, as Dave drove the helicopter towards Merion, the avalanche of action that he had initiated was rolling higher and higher.

A common, garden-variety citizen of no especial degree of public acclaim is normally supposed to be able to shake the President by the hand and/or complain about the weather or the administration, or taxes, or anything. It has never been determined just what might happen if Peter Doakes, of South Burlap, Idaho, became possessed of vital information that must be handed to the President within the hour. Without a doubt the country would be blown sky-high by the time Mr. Doakes succeeded in proving to ninety-odd undersecretaries that he had something truly important and was not a crank or a crackpot. But Dr. Jane Nolan of Merion Atomic Laboratory had both a name and a reputation, and when she placed her call to the White House, it took her exactly twelve minutes to convince the powers that be that she had something vital to discuss with President Morgan. Four minutes later, the President had been awakened and was on the telephone. It took another fifteen minutes for Jane to tell her story.

Then the President haled a pompous little man out of bed and made him stand at the telephone while the President of the United States gave the Foreign Ambassador a bit of the Official What-For, and began explaining that it was not necessary for Congress to convene in order for the United States to rise and defend herself against a sneak attack from a Foreign Power, and that under the Circumstances, the President was going to present the Foreign Power with a fine collection of American Military Secrets, and that the first of these Gifts would be presented within the hour unless the Foreign Power surrendered first.

The President had a few other suggestions regarding the Return, unharmed, of a couple of American Scientists, and the well-being of a certain American Newspaperman, and some other items of mutual interest, and Furthermore, Mister Ambassador--

* * * * *

Dave Crandall flew his helicopter towards Merion, wondering how things were going. His job was done. He, too, was finished. There was no return. Not that Dave felt any great urge to return; doubtless there was something he could find to do in this half-world that would let him go on working. He would have to contact them and have them ship him groceries, cigarettes, and water. But there were many things that a man could do here.

He thought about Jane, and his heart softened for a moment. This was just as well, however. She would forget him, while he had no future worth thinking about. Only hard work, partly because he liked activity, partly because it kept him from brooding about the date of his certain death.

A wonderful woman, Jane Nolan; one not to be hurt by fate's little tricks. But so long as he was here, she--

The crystal he had in his pocket flashed brilliantly, penetrating the cloth and lighting up the cabin of the helicopter. At once, Dave felt the hard matter of the seat grow tenuous, and there was a bare instant of sliding resistance, like the feeling of plunging a foot into the shifting sand of a beach. Then the helicopter disappeared and Dave felt himself falling.

"Damned unmitigated liar!" growled Dave. Then he crashed into a tree and lost consciousness.

Dave meant the pilot who swore that there was no return to the real world.

He opened his eyes and groaned. He tried to move and found that he could not. He might as well be covered up to the eyebrows in concrete.

He looked around and saw a crowd of people watching him.

"Welcome home."

"But--?"

"I owe you an apology." Dave looked and saw President Morgan.

"Apology?"

"I got too tough with them. They flashed you back while you were flying the helicopter. You're banged up a little."

"Nothing that can't be repaired," said Doctor Meteridge cheerfully. "A beautiful case. Fractures of the tibia, fibula, radius and ulna on one side, humerus and clavicle on the other. Bruises and a couple of abrasions. Nothing serious."

"David," said President Morgan, "a grateful people is waiting for your convalescence so that we can show you our appreciation."

"Yes," said Jane. "Get well. We all have plans for you!"

Dave tried to shake his head. "No, Jane. Doc'll tell you. Six months--"

"You can't escape me that easily," said Jane. "While you're all neatly immobilized in that plaster cast, we are using their machine to separate out the widespread specks of fission products that were killing you. Just a matter of tuning critically so that it will send certain isotopes into the half-world instead of the whole human being. So by the time you get off your back, we'll have you healthy again and then, Dave Crandall, just you think up another excuse!"

"Pick on a guy when he's down," grumbled Dave. He was laughing, then, but the room blurred through the tears in his eyes.