7/ ATLANTIS—DYING

 

We gambled on a short transition jump but as we emerged out of hyperspace we found ourselves in the centre of a mass formation of about 150 heavy-class enemy fighter ships. None of them matched the size of the Tosoma and only 2 were identified as being capable of facing up to the heavy cruiser Paito. Nevertheless, from the first moment of battle our resistance seemed doomed to failure. We never recovered. After the first penetrating bits the defence screens of the Paito failed. It was structurally characteristic of heavy cruiser types that although they were fast and heavily armed the space demands of equipment installations were satisfied at the cost of defensive screening. The prescribed structural weight, by Arkon standards, could not be exceeded, and if the spherical compartments were stuffed chock-full with every possible type of equipment and machinery there was simply nothing more that would go into the ship.

The proud Paito under Capt. Inkar was caught in a hail of fire from approximately 60 enemy ships and was detonated. The resultant energy release was equivalent to that of a miniature sun. I knew that the engine and reactor cores had gone into a chain reaction. About 50 billion tons of TNT was released, in effect.

The catastrophe occurred close to the lunar orbit. As hot as the sun, the gaseous sphere spread out so quickly that it even grazed the upper air strata of the 3rd planet.

I hovered over the night hemisphere of our colonial world. The almost ultra-violet energy ball arched upward in all its splendour and might above the dark planetary horizon and turned the night into glaring day.

Even at our distance our protective screens raged with titanic forces to resist the impact. I was certain that Inkar’s fiery demise had taken at least 70 enemy ships to their doom. The aliens were not yet aware of the effects of detonating a large Arkonide fighting ship.

But they learned quickly!

The Tosoma was still lying under a crossfire from about 80 enemy ships but suddenly the fire was lifted. The others had had a bitter lesson. They retreated frantically and did not reopen their effective fire until they were at a distance of almost 2 million miles.

They had practiced their gunnery well, these mysterious ones from another time plane. My evasive manoeuvres were rash and wild. I had overridden the automatic controls in favour of manual piloting so as to move the heavy ship out of the intercepting energy beams.

It was futile! Only 5 minutes after our first enemy contact, 3 thermal shots had broken through our overloaded defence screens. A fire had broken out in power room 4. Six of our available 15 propulsion units went out. From there on the Tosoma’s hull plates bore the brunt of everything that was being thrown at us.

Now we were close to the end. Our movements had become sluggish and easier to calculate. We had dropped our excessive speed because even Arkonides cannot shoot perfectly if their ship is travelling near the speed of light.

The enemy had retained their rate of motion. We no longer held any special advantage over them. Per the status report the nuclear hurricane of fire from the Tosoma’s gun turrets had annihilated 34 of the alien ships. But there were still enough of them left to polish us off.

By this time the heavily battered Tosoma was ablaze in 4 major sections and was falling toward the surface of the planet. Just prior to our short transition jump I had issued an order for all hands to exchange their Arkonide combat uniforms for regular spacesuits. With these very excellent apparatuses one was capable of flight and a light repulsion field for defence purposes could also be generated.

The individual protection screens were now urgently needed. The high-pitched hissing sound of the flagship’s automatic fire-fighting equipment had already ceased because of breakdown. As a result, the countless safety hatches had long since closed. The individual compartments—and there were hundreds of them—had all been hermetically sealed.

The only method of combating the fire now was to withdraw the synthetic atmosphere from the interior. Without oxygen there could be no process of molecular combustion. I had no sooner gotten such a program underway than the air-pumping system broke down. Of course the positronicon sounded an alarm but that didn’t serve much purpose anymore.

The fire continued unabated in the engine and power rooms. If the highly volatile fuel catalyst were to be ignited, the enemy would experience an even greater explosion. For the time being, however, the special tanks held up, since they could withstand temperatures up to 50,000°.

About 60% of the videophone connections were knocked out, as well, so all I had left was the radio intercom system.

As the long, cylindrical ships of the enemy opened their pincers formation in order to get to a safe distance from us, we were temporarily in the lee of their fire. The aliens had stern-mounted propulsion engines whose thrust impulses apparently interfered with the automatic target tracking. At least we suddenly found ourselves free of their fire barrage. I used the opportunity to drop the Tosoma toward the 3rd planet’s nearby air envelope. As we made entry, a whistling and howling arose outside. Our usually dependable collision shields had by this time become very weak so that they could hardly ionize the air molecules. And without electrostatic charging, no electromagnetic repulsion could be effected.

Thus it developed that my flagship soon raced through the thin upper strata looking like a red-glowing sunball. In spite of this I maintained a respectable rate of descent. Our Arkonide armourplate hull could withstand 50,000° and the air-conditioning system was still operating.

It was clear to me that we were out of the fighting, without a chance. So I did what any responsible commander-in-chief would have done in such a situation. I was not of the maudlin, romantic school who fancied plunging heroically to a flaming death. What everything depended on now was the possibility of saving the crew survivors so that later we could put in a call for help from the home planet.

"The course is set," announced the First Officer. "Atlantis is ahead in the daylight zone."

I was planning to land the battered Tosoma near Atlopolis and set up a temporary ground defence, to provide fire cover so that the men could escape into the undersea dome.

We were flying at about a 60-mile altitude over the eastern continent which was heavily covered with jungles and populated by extremely primitive dark-skinned savages. Shortly thereafter the broad expanse of the ocean came into view and finally the coastal mountains of Atlantis.

 

* * * *

 

I heard a muttered curse from Tarth. Above the approaching land rose flaming mushroom clouds. The enemy seemed to have known exactly where the only defence installations were to be found on this world. Moments later we heard from the tracking and detection centre. 5 spaceships had landed near the coast. Apparently troops were disembarking.

"We aren’t picking up any cellular vibrations," announced Capt. Masal from the still-undamaged Com Central. "They are robots."

My orders went out to the weapons officers. The mighty Tosoma prepared to show its claws for the last time.

Tarth spoke with deadly calm over the helmet radio com. "Do you think their noses would be up in the air very long if my ship were crippled?"

Further communication was drowned out by the terrible thunder of a broadside volley. The 5 enemy ships on the land went up in a tornado of explosions and glowing flames.

I groaned aloud when the capital city and the harbour appeared on the viewscreens. The entire terrain was a single crater. All that was left of the buildings of Atlopolis were a few smoking ruins. Mile-wide thermal impact patterns had seared the countryside. There where we had installed our stationary impulse weapons, dark mushroom clouds towered over the landscape. Capt. Feltif did not answer. Our calls were not even met with an answering echo. I realized then that my ground commandos did not exist anymore. What had happened to the settlers I could well imagine.

In deep space another overlap front was forming again. We noticed it because of a strange discolouration of the stars and a shimmering in the atmosphere. And now the enemy added his renewed attacks to the forces of nature.

The Tosoma was barely capable of flight by now and Tarth flew it totally on manual controls. The autopilot facilities had ceased to function and all command links to engine and power room control centres had gone out of commission. The temperature rose in the Command Central, indicating that terrible fires must be raging around us.

I carried out what I had planned to do. It was imperative at all costs to keep the battleship airborne as long as possible so that it could provide a protective cover until the robot-controlled entrance locks of the undersea dome had been opened.

For security reasons a control had been set up that was based on a few individual vibratory identities. There were only 3 Arkonides that the gates would open for. Any visitors not thus recognized by the dome’s robot brain would not only be left swimming helplessly before the great steel portals; they would be shot by the powerful weapons of the fortress.

The men who were authorized to enter were Capt. Feltif, chief of ground forces and the person responsible for evacuation measures—now missing; the new chief mathematician, Kosol, who was located on board my flagship; and I was the 3rd person whose individual vibrations would be recognized by the robot crew.

I had to see to it as quickly as possible now that Kosol got underway. He had to use one of the pressure-screened undersea vehicles to get down below and open the gates so that the entry would be clear for us. While he was busy with that, I was to run a defence with the Tosoma against any possible interference attacks and prepare to make a blitz landing when I could get the men to safety. We assumed that the enemy had not detected the presence of the undersea dome, since the surface gun positions had offered much more obvious targets.

I brought our coasting speed to a stop and brought the still usable antigrav fields into play. The battleship hovered in the air above the razed harbour area. The helmet radio of my combat spacesuit worked flawlessly in response to a hand button control.

"Atlan to chief mathematician Kosol. Project Salvage now in effect. Leave your station, land in your flying spacesuit and proceed to open the locks of the pressure dome. Kosol, calling Kosol, please answer!"

Within a second or so the answer returned. The face of a young officer appeared on the mini-screen inside my helmet, on a level just above my eyes.

"Lt. Einkal, Eminence, fire-fighting post 18. Chief mathematician Kosol is dead; the computer section is burning—all bulkhead hatches sealed off. The adjacent compartments are also on fire. Fresh air keeps coming in through large rents in the hull. Over and out!"

I heard my own involuntary outcry over this news. Close beside me, Tarth swung around in his commander seat. He had understood more swiftly than I.

"Out of here, Admiral!" he shouted at me. "Out! Get out as fast as you can! I’ll handle the coverage of the retreat. Go down there, open the dome and then give me the landing instructions over the helmet radio com. Get going—what are you waiting for?"

"I—I will not leave my flagship prior to my crew!" I said harshly.

Tarth laughed humourlessly. He was incredibly cool and collected. "I’ll have to throw you out. You’re obligated by duty to save your men, above all. I don’t need you to skipper the ship since no more tactical decisions are involved. Open the dome, Atlan! Kosol is dead and Feltif is missing. In ½ hour the time-front will be here and all life will disappear into the other plane. Don’t worry about the enemy ships—I can take care of those space-going sewer pipes. You know I’m no greenhorn when it comes to atmospheric in-fighting. Now you get going!"

He fairly bellowed these last words. 2 heavy fighter robots trudged over toward me under remote command of Lt. Cunor. I was torn from my seat and carried bodily to the Command Central’s escape tube. Tarth responded to my transport of rage with ringing laughter.

"We’ll be waiting for your radio signal—‘Atlan’ 3 times, by word or code, and I’ll risk the landing. Until that time I have a few things still left to do. Go, my friend, and bear in mind that I honour you and your family."

Before me the round lid of the emergency exit opened—a 3-foot tube that ran a straight 1,200 feet to end in a fully automated air chamber. Using this piece of equipment the crew of the Command Central could exit swiftly from the midship area.

As they closed the lid on me I was still yelling in a frenzy of rage. The stream of compressed air converted my body into a projectile. These crash exit tubes were not especially comfortable but were commensurately practical. I landed in a bed of compressed air inside the reception chamber, hard put to land on my feet. Instantly I dodged aside as another body came shooting through. It was Lt. Cunor whose robots had made short work of dumping me into the tube.

"I’ll bring you before a ship’s court martial!" I shouted, beside myself, and grasped him by the shoulders.

Naturally I wasn’t able to carry out my threat any further because the heavy armourplate hatches glided upward and we were swirled outward into the open by a second jolt of compressed air.

I pressed a button switch that activated my flying equipment. In the spacesuit’s backpack the combined micro-reactor and mini-powerpak were already humming away. The antigrav auto-control stabilized my flight so that all I had left to do was make sure that my small pulse-engine started. Behind me was Lt. Cunor, one of the most audacious and daring officers of the flagship. And of course he had been ordered by Tarth to accompany me on my difficult way.

"Lots of luck!" Tarth’s voice rattled in my ears as saw his face on the tiny screen inside my helmet. "Can I blast out now? We’re picking up new images on the trackers."

"You’re not off the book yet," I told him, although by this time my anger had subsided somewhat. "That was a blatant violation of orders involving physical constraint as well. So you’d better prepare yourself, Old Man!"

He only laughed and in the end it was all we could do to get out of the suction of the giant ship as it, started off again. At a safe distance, Tarth picked up speed. Spewing flames, the Tosoma hurtled into a sky darkened by nuclear clouds. When it disappeared and the deep rumbling of air masses crashing into the vacuum of its wake subsided, I heard Cunor speaking warily.

"There’s a high gamma fallout, Eminence. Our friends must be using old-fashioned bombs."

He had no sooner spoken than a new rumbling was heard. A gleaming phantom shot past far overhead but simultaneously opened up with its guns. I was hurled from my course by a hard shockwave and then a storm of fire raged over the tortured land. My palatial government seat had been annihilated. All I could see of it were the still-smoking remains. Far and wide there was not a sign of any living creature. It became clear to me that the transit of the relative time zone that Feltif had reported had resulted in sucking up everything that even remotely resembled an organism. Only vegetation had remained but that had been destroyed by the unleashed storm of atomic forces.

We drifted along close above the fire-scarred ground, circumnavigated the ruins of Atlopolis and turned our flight toward the open sea.

It was then I noticed that the ocean seemed to be stirred up by a typhoon—that is, such was my impression for about a second! After the shockwave from the attacking ship subsided, the air itself was fairly calm. In spite of this the raging waters towered into foaming breakers. The peninsula that had protected the harbour was nowhere to be seen. Farther to the East the ocean inundated the shorelines and swallowed up great stretches of land.

To the West of our location the ground had cracked open. The old volcanoes, which we had considered long extinct, had opened their craters to spill forth death and destruction. The thundering and rumbling was not being caused by a battle but by the forces of Nature.

"Atlantis is sinking!" shouted Cunor, horrified.

It was then that I perceived clearly that the ground was swaying. It was the most tremendous earthquake I had ever witnessed. In the distance a typhoon was brewing, the first gusts already howling across the sinking island.

The inner harbour basin was already flooded over. The breakers came onward as though intending to swallow all of Atlantis in a matter of minutes.

We landed close beside the boat bunkers that had been carved out of the high rocky headlands with disintegrators but the land was still sinking. Even as I opened the bunker doors the water was washing about my feet. Normally we would have had to take the pressure-screened vehicles 100 feet below to reach sea level.

Cunor prepared one of the special machines for operation. It was a craft built for the Fleet, which was intended for use in land operations on impassable water planets or swamp-covered worlds.

Meanwhile I attempted to get in touch with the Tosoma. I succeeded on the first try. The highly sensitive special equipment on the flagship could still receive the weak signals from my helmet transmitter and amplify them in their receiver a million times.

"Everything alright on board." In my helmet loudspeaker, Tarth’s answer was garbled by interference sounds. "I’m just weaving in and out of their fire and taking occasional potshots. How far along are you?"

"We’re just getting on board. Be careful—the island appears to be going down. We’ve registered powerful earthquakes."

"The whole planet’s acting crazy. In the big ocean to the West, a new continent is rising out of the waters. The axial position of this world is changing! We can expect to see a global deluge! Over and out!"

As I closed the pressure-resistant cupola of the flat glider we were washed out of the bunker by the frothing waves. For some moments the craft danced about in the quake-shaken turbulent water, while Cunor pointed eastward silently.

I suppressed a cry of horror when I saw the titanic moving front of overlapping time zones. It must have had a velocity of more than 6,000 miles per hour. Its presence was discernible because of the shimmering of the air and the darkening of the sunlight as it progressed. It occurred to me then that we had lost 9 days because of a mysterious time shift—and meanwhile the dreaded full opposition of Planets 2 and 3 had arrived.

The swiftly travelling catastrophe approached us silently. It was a typical overlap curtain that spared no form of life in its wide sweep.

Cunor swung down the rheostat lever of the gravo-mechanical pressure screen. Immediately the water was pressed back away from the boat hull. An air-exhausted zone was generated which acted as a protective cushion between the thin hull material and the pressing water.

The flood tanks filled. We sank like a stone. We didn’t notice a lessening turbulence until we had descended 150 feet beneath the surface. However such powerful submarine shockwaves assailed us that I feared for the stability of our screen.

The infrared searchlights snapped on. We looked for the pressure dome that Feltif’s specialists had constructed, knowing it must be about 50 fathoms under the surface. I had only been there once before for the purpose of having the impulse detector of the guiding robot brain pick up my physical vibrations.

I knew that at this depth a submarine plateau began, its massive cliffs reaching to the ocean floor. We had anchored the foundation of the structure there. The dome could withstand any conceivable pressure because in an emergency it could be strengthened by repulsion screens.

But the plateau could not be found! Cunor’s face paled so swiftly that I could clearly guess his thoughts. The ground quakes had also swept our last refuge place into the deeps.

"Down!" I ordered harshly. "Down deeper! The dome can’t have been destroyed. Its anchorage pilings were built into the planet with Arkon steel using thermal injection moulding. I’d like to see any force of Nature capable of loosening it!"

Cunor nodded resignedly. At the same time I thought despairingly of the men on the Tosoma who by this time must be in a frightful predicament. I dispensed with the last of my inner resistance and called to the dome’s robot station over the submarine transmitter. The control machine answered immediately.

We were gripped by remote guidance controls and drawn downward at a dizzying pace. The 400-foot diameter stronghold was ground-fastened but the ground kept sinking. By the time we could finally make out the bluish gleaming contours of the dome we were more than 550 fathoms deep.

The identification surveillance by the robot brain was accomplished by means of the prescribed, brain-frequency test. I placed the feedback probes on my skull and turned on the transmitter.

"Entrance permitted, Your Eminence," came the tinny voice of the automaton a few seconds later.

We were taken hold of by a tractor beam and hauled with breathtaking speed into the opening high-pressure lock. I listened impatiently to the high-pitched whining of the pumps. When the chamber was empty and air streamed in, I instructed Cunor hastily: "Wait here. I’ll put in the program add-word that will make the gates respond to normal code signals. Then we have to go up again in order to call the Tosoma. It’s no longer possible to call them from this depth. The dome doesn’t have a hyper-transmitter."

A plastic-covered robot simulating an Arkonide appeared in the inner lock port. I simply dashed by him and sprang up the few spiral stairs to the programming room.

Beyond the dome was heard a rumbling and thundering. The labouring sounds of the mighty energy station indicated to me that the central brain was compensating for the resulting pressures with protective force screens. There was an alarming grinding and crunching sound in the foundation. The pressure effects of the stone masses moved by the quake must have been of unimaginable magnitude.

A violent movement suddenly flung me to the deck. I waited until the wave of earth tremors had passed and then staggered, gasping, into the control room. The CPU or Central Programming Unit of the small but highly effective brain was encased in a man-high, bell-shaped steel cabinet. I was received with a stereotyped "Welcome, Your Eminence."

Wordlessly I ran my fingers over the program board in order to cancel the individual block mode of the machine’s operation, placing it instead in the normal mode where it would open the locks to ordinary code signals. The call word was identical to my name.

Without questioning the machine, I ran back to the main lock. Cunor was waiting impatiently. "Over a mile deep already," he announced with amazing composure.

I paid no heed to it. Moments later we were out in the water again but this time a number of erupting volcanoes here and there on the sea bottom turned the waters into dangerous, steel-hard looking spouts—submarine pillars of turbulence that glowed red from the flaming undersea eruptions.

Atlantis was dying!

But at least continents would be changed so that new lands would be born.

We required 10 minutes to reach a safety depth under the surface. We couldn’t actually go higher because we didn’t know whether the time-front had passed through yet or if perhaps straggling offshoots would be following.

"The time-wall’s speed was high, Your Eminence," said Cunor. "It must have really gone away by now."

I staked all we had on one move. Although we would have been safer in the depths of the sea, we surfaced. The timefront had actually passed on but we were met with such a tidal wave that our craft became a helpless plaything of the giant billows. Only the highest mountaintops of Atlantis were still to be seen. I saw water wherever I looked. But there was no trace of the Tosoma.

Even the enemy ships had ceased their attacks. If their commanding officers had even a grain of sense they would have to know that there was nothing more here to destroy. That department was being adequately taken care of by the quakes and the terrible tidal waves.

We took the shaking and buffeting for 2 hours while I sent out uninterrupted calls on the craft’s strong transmitter. High aloft, above and beyond the dark hurricane clouds, there was a far-outstretched light phenomenon. It couldn’t be the sun because the sun was never in the North.

I knew what the scattering atomic fires of an exploded spaceship looked like but I didn’t want to believe my eyes. Then the next overlap front came racing toward us.

Secretly broken-hearted, I gave the order to dive. My friends were no longer among the living.