thoughts.
Mankind didn’t give a damn for good business administration, nor a hoot for prosperity or peace or happiness. Liberty and the right to rule, the right to go risk one’s neck ... to climb a mountain or cross a desert or explore a swamp, the right to aim one’s sights at distant stars, to fling a taunting challenge into the teeth of space, to probe with clumsy fingers and force nature to lay bare her secrets ... that was what mankind wanted. That was what those men out on Mars and Venus and in the Jovian worlds were fighting for. Not against Spencer Chambers or Ludwig Stutsman or Interplanetary Power, but for the thing that drove man on and made of him a flame that others might follow. Fighting for a heritage that was first expressed when the first man growled at the entrance to his cave and dared the world to take it from him.
Spencer Chambers closed his eyes and rocked back and forth in the tilting office chair.
It had been a good fight, a hard fight. He had had a lot of fun out of it. But he was licked, after all these years. He had held the biggest dream of any man who ever lived. Alexander and Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and those other fellows had been pikers alongside of Spencer Chambers. They had only aimed at Earthly conquest while he had reached out to grab at all the worlds. But by heaven, he’d almost made it!
A door grated open.
“Chambers!” said a voice.
His feet hit the floor with a thud and he sat stiff and staring at the figure in the door.
It was Craven and the man was excited. His glasses were slid far down on his nose, his hair was standing on end, his tie was all awry.
“I have it!” Craven whooped. “I have it at last!”
Hope clutched at Chambers, but he was almost afraid to speak.
“Have what?” he whispered tensely.
“The collector field! It was under my nose all the time, but I didn’t see it!”
Chambers was out of his chair and striding across the room. A tumult buzzed within his skull.
Licked? Hell, he hadn’t even started! He’d win yet. He’d teach the people to revolt! He’d run Manning and Page out to the end of space and push them through!
Chapter Seventeen
It was a weird revolution. There were few battles, little blood shed. There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, no passwords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion against tyranny.
It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police were helpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and the troopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest were shadows that flitter here and there ... large and substantial shadows, but impossible to seize and imprison.
Every scheme that was hatched within the government circles was known almost at once to the ghostly leaders who stalked the land. Police detachments, armed with warrants for the arrests of men who had participated in some action which would stamp them as active rebels, found the suspects absent when they broke down the doors. Someone had warned them. Troops, hurried to points where riots had broken out, arrived to find peaceful scenes, but with evidence of recent battle. The rioters had been warned, had made their getaway.
When the rebels struck it was always at the most opportune time, when the government was off balance or off guard.
In the first day of the revolt, Ranthoor fell when the maddened populace, urged on by the words of a shadowy John Moore Mallory, charged the federation buildings. The government fled, leaving all records behind, to Satellite City on Ganymede.
In the first week three Martian cities fell, but Sandebar, the capital, still held out. On Venus, Radium City was taken by the rebels within twenty-four hours after the first call to revolt had rung across the worlds, but New Chicago, the seat of government, still was in the government’s hands, facing a siege.
Government propagandists spread the word that the material energy engines were not safe. Reports were broadcast that on at least two occasions the engines had blown up, killing the men who operated them.
But this propaganda failed to gain credence, for in the cities that were in the rebel hands, technicians were at work manufacturing and setting up the material engines. Demonstrations were given. The people saw them, saw what enormous power they developed.
*
Russ Page stared incredulously at the television screen. It seemed to be shifting back and forth. One second it held the distorted view of Satellite City on Ganymede, and the next second the view of jumbled, icy desert somewhere outside the city.
“Look here, Greg,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
Greg Manning turned away from the calculator where he had been working and stared at the screen.
“How long has it been acting that way?” he asked.
“Just started,” said Russ.
Greg straightened and glanced down the row of television machines. Some of them were dead, their switches closed, but on the screens of many of the others was the same effect as on this machine. Their operators were working frustratedly at the controls, trying to focus the image, bring it into sharp relief.
“Can’t seem to get a thing, sir,” said one of the men. “I was working on the fueling station out on Io, and the screen just went haywire.”
“Mine seems to be all right,” said another man. “I’ve had it on Sandebar for the last couple of hours and there’s nothing wrong.”
A swift check revealed one fact. The machines, when trained on the Jovian worlds, refused to function. Anywhere else in space, however, they worked perfectly.
Russ stoked and lit his pipe, snapped off his machine and swung around in the operator’s chair.
“Somebody’s playing hell with us out around Jupiter,” he stated calmly.
“I’ve been expecting something like this,” said Greg. “I have been afraid of this ever since Craven blanketed us out of the Interplanetary building.”
*
“He really must have something this time,” Russ agreed. “He’s blanketing out the entire Jovian system. There’s a space field of low intensity surrounding all of Jupiter, enclosing all the moons. He keeps shifting the intensity so that, even though we can force our way through his field, the irregular variations make it impossible to line up anything. It works, in principle, just as effectively as if we couldn’t get through at all.”
Greg whistled soundlessly through suddenly bared teeth.
“That takes power,” he said, “and I’m afraid Craven has it. Power to burn.”
“The collector field?” asked Russ.
Greg nodded. “A field that sucks in radiant energy. Free energy that he just reaches out and grabs. And it doesn’t depend on the Sun alone. It probably makes use of every type of radiation in all of space.”
Russ slumped
