Chapter Four
The Final War
Joseph Huddy, one of eight survivors of a daylight infiltration patrol, stood up behind the rock where he had sought shelter. He rubbed the back of a dirty hand across his wet forehead and glanced apprehensively toward the grey sky.
He thought, “That joker that talked this morning wasn’t kidding!” He did not think it odd that, though he had failed to believe the broadcast at the time, he suddenly believed it now. If asked, he would have said, “Hell, all of a sudden I could see those zombies, the big grey boys. Scared me, damn if it didn’t!”
Dazed, he looked up the small ravine. One of “them” was standing in plain sight. By force of habit, Joe snatched up his forgotten weapon, leveled it at the stocky foreigner. But suddenly he thought that it was pretty silly to get all hot about killing one of “them” when there was a far greater danger. His finger relaxed, slid off the trigger.
With sudden resolution, he tossed the gun aside, yelled, “Hey there!”
The stocky man looked down toward him, grinned nervously. A few moments later they had exchanged cigarettes, were squatting on their heels.
“I be damn,” Joe said. “You all of a sudden saw that big grey thing too?”
“I see,” the man said, his eyes round and wide. He shuddered.
“What about this war we’re having?” Joe asked.
The man thumped his chest. “Me, I quit. Go home. See wife before — boom!”
“Not a bad idea. Hell, if any officers see us though, we’ll both be shot.”
In response the man merely pointed with his thick thumb. Joe looked over his shoulder. Fifty feet away the lieutenant in charge of Joe’s patrol stood chatting with an enemy officer. They both seemed excited.
“Something tells me the war’s over,” Joe said wonderingly.
General Argo and Field Marshal Jatz looked at each other with impassive faces. Suddenly Argo grinned. “I’m going to get myself court-martialed for this little tea-party.”
Jatz relaxed and scratched his head. He looked worried. “I also. Never should have come here to this country in the first place.”
Argo said quietly, “We’ve been trying to convince you people of that, you know.”
Jatz grinned. “You have been very convincing, my friend. But somehow... I do not know how to say it. We were enemies. Now we are both... men. Brothers. Like two relatives fighting and along comes a peacemaker and they both turn on him. Now we have a strange race. A stronger enemy.”
“Would you like to take a look at the barrier?”
For a moment Jatz hesitated. Then he shrugged. “I have nothing to fear from you, my friend. I would like very much to take a look at this barrier. I lost rockets against it and thought it was something you people had devised.”
“We thought it was something you put there.”
Side by side they walked down the long corridor toward the waiting elevator. Their staff officers followed along, seeing nothing particularly strange in this odd and amicable alliance.
All over the world hate was forgotten — hate for other men. Fear of other men was forgotten. In its place was hatred of the invader from space, fear of the sudden death of the world.
The three battle fronts of the world dissolved. The leaders of all nations flew by fastest means to the hidden field in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
A lean and tired man presided at the long polished table. His name was Stanford Rider.
“Possibly all of you share my own feeling of guilt. We, the statesmen and politicians of the world, made possible the conditions which resulted in this deadly and barren war which has laid waste our countries and impoverished our peoples.”
He paused, saw reluctant agreement on every face. He continued. “Now we are met on a far different battlefield. Now our conflicts between nations are childish by comparison. We are in the position of small creatures of the forest beneath whom has been placed a mighty charge of explosives. It may be that we will be as powerless to alter the course of events as the wild creatures would be to halt the operation of the time fuse on the hidden mines.
“These may be the last few days of our lives. At least for these last few days there will be peace among men of all nations. Our psychiatrists have told me that the visions we all saw were activated by a projection of thought more powerful than we can contemplate. It is futile to question the accuracy of the visions we all saw. We saw our planet being destroyed in order to wipe out the ships of some unknown race which is at war with the strangers from space who have invaded our planet.
“In this perilous extremity, I invite your suggestions.”
Every known force was applied to the barrier. The most powerful atomic explosion ever released on Earth was detonated close to the barrier. Squadrons of high-explosive rockets exploded in sequence, in unison, in bursts of ten, fifty and five hundred, expended their fury against the barrier.
And in the end they accomplished no more than would have been achieved by one small boy armed with a pebble and a dry stick.
Martin Rhode felt the distant rumble and thud, heard the flakes of rock dropping from the tunnel roof. He learned to operate the clear and perfect screen and watched the efforts to destroy the barrier. He saw that peace had come to the world, and smiled wryly, knowing that for the first time since crude pictures were scratched on the walls of caves, no men were locked in combat anywhere in the world. Here and now was the dream of all Utopians.
The alien had gained such new facility with Martin’s mind that he could reach him from great distances.
“My brother has completed his preparations. It may interest you to watch the actual operation. Soon we will be ready.”
The huge room that had been hollowed out of the rock had been enlarged to an incredible distance. Martin Rhode stood near the glowing hull of the spaceship and saw that six crystals stood at equal intervals around a dull black cube that measured ten feet on a side.
The thoughts knifed into his mind. “All the matter excavated here has been compressed into that cube. It weighs half a million tons. The atomic structure is partially crushed. Stay where you are. This final operation will completely crush the atomic structure, compressing it to a smaller area than exists at the heart of any known planet. This final operation will compress that cube until it is two centimeters on each side.”
Martin gasped. Half a million tons contained within a space of eight cubic centimeters!
“The large block is resting on a metal plate. After the compression operation, the small cube will be supported by the thick metal plate, which is electronically stiffened to hold it. One crystal will be brought closer to it, with its heat potential focused directly upon it. At that point we will attract the attention of our pursuers and wait until they are within range. Every last fragment of the atomic energy in half a million tons of matter will be released instantaneously. This planet will cease to exist, as it becomes, for a brief space, a supernova.”
Martin Rhode stood and his nails bit into his palms and he gulped the hot, moist air in shallow breaths. The crystals began to glow and a low humming sound filled the chamber. Their glow was pale violet, and as the sound increased, the glow rose through the spectrum. By the time the glow was a hot, angry red, the humming had risen to a shrill scream. The scream faded away and Martin was torn by the agony of hypersonics.
The cube shrank! So slowly at first that he could barely see the change, and then more rapidly. Soon the top surface was level with his eyes, then he could see the top of it. From the cube came an angry crackling, a groan of tortured matter. It was the size of a hatbox. Constantly smaller. He felt his internal body heat rise under the unheard whine of hypersonics and the crystals vibrated until they could be seen only as deep glowing spots.