MALCOLM JAMESON: Science Fiction Collection - 17 Books in One Edition. Malcolm Jameson

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СКАЧАТЬ had a little time, he knew. He grinned in triumph as he imagined the consternation reigning among the surviving AFPA men, now that they had learned how they had been tricked.

      He had a vivid mental picture of their chagrin, as they poked among the ashes of the records, only to find that the work of two generations had gone up in smoke.

      But the grimmest satisfaction of all was to be had from picturing Lohan's fury, as soon as the prince should come and learn the truth. It was easy to predict that in his mad rage, Lohan would have all the surviving guards at Central Station summarily executed.

      Yes, the resourceful American had time — a few hours, at least.

      He and Heim worked frantically to make the most of them. For the nucleus of the revolt, they chose but a hundred of their closest friends at first. These were sent scurrying about the machinery in the dome, gathering up the material Winchester had asked for.

      In half an hour, piles of metal parts lay about, and men were plying their tools feverishly to fashion wooden stocks their leader had sketched out for them.

      "Now, look, men," said Winchester, seeing everything needed was at hand. "In the old days before death rays were invented, men fought by hurling missiles. In my time, this was done by firing lumps of steel out of steel tubes by means of a powerful explosive. But long before the invention of the rifle and cannon, men had developed other ways.

      "The one I am about to show you was among the most deadly. It is silent and makes no flash, yet will kill surely and efficiently at a considerable distance."

      He picked up one of the hardwood stocks. A skilled workman handed him a slightly curved blade of metal. It was a leaf from a spring made for one of the small ore cars used on the Moon, but modified for its new purpose. Winchester fastened it to the small end of the stock.

      Next he added a ratchet and a pawl and rigged them to the side of the stock, together with an operating lever. He inserted a trigger mechanism, last of all strung a short length of high-tensile wire from one end of the spring to the other.

      "This is a crossbow," explained Winchester, "and I energize it thus."

      He engaged the wire of the bow on the trigger, and began jacking it backward by turning the ratchet.

      "The spring is now under great tension. I place an iron bolt in this groove and aim so..."

      Winchester looked about him. Perched in a swinging gondola above them was one of the ever-present guards. At the moment he was not alert, since the conspirators had worked so quietly that no suspicion had been aroused. Winchester drew a careful bead on him, allowing for the curve of the trajectory. He squeezed the trigger.

      There was a sharp, low twang — inaudible above the roar of the busy shop — and the bent spring sprang back to straightness with a jerk. The whizzing bolt had sped away, propelled by the powerful kinetic force released. The convicts followed its flight with eager eyes.

      They saw a red blotch appear behind the guard's ear, saw him slump without a whimper to the floor of his hanging lookout.

      They started, listening; but there was no other sound to follow. The general alarm did not ring. The stricken guard had had no time to give it, and no one else had heard or seen.

      The prisoners needed no further demonstration. Each grabbed a set of parts laid out before him and began hastily assembling his own weapon. In a few minutes Heim was among them, whispering to each where he was to go, and passing out ammunition.

      "Two of you will account for each guard," Winchester instructed them carefully.

      "Just in case one misses. If we are lucky, we can knock them all off before they can muster their reserves. Then, as the relief shift comes on, we'll go at them while they are on their way to their posts."

      The men nodded and slipped away in pairs.

      Not all the guards were killed at the first shot, or even hit. Some heard the clang of the bolt against their armored niches and stood up to peer down at the throng below. The second or third bolt usually did its work. In no case did a sentry realize his danger in time to jab the button that would set the sirens howling.

      Winchester's men swiftly climbed to the lookout perches and robbed the dead guardsmen of their weapons. A half hour later they lay in half a hundred separate ambushes. They brought down the new guard as it came in to relieve the old.

      "We have a hundred paralyzers now," Winchester exulted, "and as many lightning guns. The next step will be to turn in the alarm. It should come from a distant building, while we wait here near the sally-port of the guardhouse. I have sent a man already; — he should be at his post at any moment."

      Gongs began to clang and the sirens wail. Winchester ran, leading his resolute gang to an outside corner of the guardhouse. They arrived just as the gates swung open and the riot squad burst forth. The convict fire caught the guardsmen on the flank and unawares, since they were bent on getting to the building whence the false alarm had come.

      The surprised soldiers went down in windrows under the hail of lightning bolts and paralytic rays.

      "Never mind them — they're washed up!" yelled Winchester. "Into the guardhouse, quick, before the door is closed!"

      The inner guards were quickly disposed of. But by that time the great triple-warning signal was being blasted out by a gigantic, deep-throated whistle. The steel doors cutting the soldiers' barracks and the arsenal into many minute compartments closed automatically. The room where the reserves and riot squad had been idling was effectively cut off from the rest of the building.

      "Not that way," Winchester shouted to a prisoner who was blasting away with a flame-thrower. "Save your fire until Heim comes up with our reserves."

      He stooped over and rifled the pockets of the dead Officer of the Day.

      Heim came pounding up with two hundred more selected convicts, some of whom had armed themselves from the corpses of the defunct riot squad.

      "It pays to have been a policeman here," Winchester said grimly, as he fingered the small mechanism he had taken from the man who lay at his feet.

      "I know how those locks work. They are magnetic. You don't use keys, but set this gadget and wave it before a certain spot. Follow me closely with your men — and blast down every guard you see. Behind the third door we go through, there's enough equipment for an army."

      They met with little opposition. Winchester's purge of "disloyal" police had been drastic indeed. Wholesale execution had left every post on the Moon short-handed. The two sets of sentries plus the riot squad must have represented most of the garrison. The few rebels they met in the passages went out of existence with a flicker of blue fire. It took but two minutes to reach the armory door.

      "Pass out arms to everyone," ordered Winchester. "Mop up the remainder of the guards, then man the defenses of the dome and the outer walls. It won't be long before the Khan's cruisers will be coming. One of these guards must surely have sent for them.

      "And," he added significantly, "if they didn't, I will!"

      The convicts ran by the thousands to their stations, shouting and leaping for joy and waving their weapons in elation. At last, after years of unutterable misery and harsh treatment, they had been given a chance to win their freedom.

      Throughout СКАЧАТЬ