Stalemate In Space

By CHARLES L. HARNESS

Two mighty metal globes clung in a murderous death-struggle, lashing out with flames of poison. Yet deep in their twisted, radioactive wreckage the main battle raged—where a girl swayed sensuously before her conqueror's mocking eyes.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

At first there was only the voice, a monotonous murmur in her ears.

"Die now—die now—die now—"

Evelyn Kane awoke, breathing slowly and painfully. The top of the cubicle was bulging inward on her chest, and it seemed likely that a rib or two was broken. How long ago? Years? Minutes? She had no way of knowing. Her slender right hand found the oxygen valve and turned it. For a long while she lay, hurting and breathing helplessly.

"Die now—die now—die now—"

The votron had awakened her with its heart-breaking code message, and it was her duty to carry out its command. Nine years after the great battle globes had crunched together the mentors had sealed her in this tiny cell, dormant, unwaking, to be livened only when it was certain her countrymen had either definitely won—or lost.

The votron's telepathic dirge chronicled the latter fact. She had expected nothing else.

She had only to find the relay beside her cot, press the key that would set in motion gigantic prime movers in the heart of the great globe, and the conquerors would join the conquered in the wide and nameless grave of space.

But life, now doled out by the second, was too delicious to abandon immediately. Her mind, like that of a drowning person, raced hungrily over the memories of her past.

For twenty years, in company with her great father, she had watched The Defender grow from a vast metal skeleton into a planet-sized battle globe. But it had not grown fast enough, for when the Scythian globe, The Invader, sprang out of black space to enslave the budding Terran Confederacy, The Defender was unfinished, half-equipped, and undermanned.

The Terrans could only fight for time and hope for a miracle.

  P 1/31 next