Robert Silverberg - Harwood's Vortex

We closed in a tight clinch, and his fists pummelled my stomach. I drove upward and felt teeth splinter as I connected. He spat out a mouthful of blood and backed off.

“Why did you have to do it?” he muttered. “Why did you ruin everything?”

“You pitiful madman,” I said. “For the sake of silly revenge on a world that rightfully regarded you as a crackpot, you—”

His eyes blazed and he came driving in at me again. In the background, I heard the continuing buzzing of the Invaders, who hovered out of reach of my force-field, unable to help their master. And overriding the dull droning of the aliens was a steady pattern of sobbing coming from the porch.

Laura. Watching her father and the man she loved fighting to the death in her front yard.

Harwood grasped me in a tight bear-hug, his thick fingers reaching for the power-pack on my back. I danced away and landed a solid punch in the midsection, and he countered with a wild roundhouse that staggered me and knocked me within a few inches of the garden fence.

He came lumbering after me, obviously determined to flatten me against the fence and crush the generator that way. I didn’t have any way of escaping to the right or the left; I could only wait there and hope to withstand his assault.

As he drew near, I tensed my legs and crouched. Then he hit me, and I pushed upward with all my strength. The fate of a whole world—and Laura and me—depended on my strength at that instant.

It worked. His heavy body lifted, and he grunted in pain as I rammed upward. He went up, up, over the garden fence—

And then, to my horror, he cleared the garden fence and, with a soul-splitting cry, fell into the gaping mouth of his own vortex!

I leaned against the fence, gaping—and before I could think of what to do, the vortex was gone, winked out as if it had never been!

Then Laura was on the porch, white-faced, terrified.

“What happened? Where’s Daddy?”

I ran to her side. “He’s gone,” I said. “Tripped and fell into the vortex, and then—”

“Oh!” She gave a little cry and I thought she was going to faint, but she caught herself with an effort and straightened up. Speaking carefully, syllable by syllable, she said, “I—just—smashed—Daddy’s—machine-ery.”

“You what? ”

“While you were fighting—I ran down to the basement and wrecked everything. Everything!”

I shivered. No wonder the vortex had vanished. At the very instant Abel Harwood was tumbling into it, his daughter was busily destroying the generator that operated it.

Her control broke. She burst into sobs and huddled in my arms. Finallly she said, “I—hated him. He was out of his mind.”

“Try not to think about it,” I told her. “Try to forget him. It’s all over. There’s just us now.”

“I know,” she said.

I looked up at the sky, which was dark with the Invaders. It was a frightening sight—but I no longer feared them. The Gateway was closed, and Abel Harwood dead, so far as we were concerned. I didn’t want to think of what might be happening to him in whatever universe he was in.

There would be a lot of work to do. I would have to find the authorities, if any were left, and show them how to build my generator. Then would begin the long, slow war of eradication against the remaining Invaders.

Laura was still sobbing. “Don’t worry,” I said soothingly. “It’s all over now.”

We had won.