Eando Binder - Anton York, Immortal

It came finally—a furious wrench that made the entire ship groan and creak. It spun violently and dashed ground-ward at lightning speed, caught in the world-moving force of the beam. Securely strapped in their seats, York and Vera felt as though they were being torn apart. Their inertia-suspension was not equipped to neutralize rotary motion.

Vera fainted. York, with an effort of will, clawed at the controls and stopped their twisting plunge a hundred feet above the brittle, rocky surface of the lost moon. Vera came to almost immediately, smiling gamely. York was exultant.

“Now we have him located!” he cried.

He adopted a course perpendicular to the spot they had nearly crashed upon, crawled up into the starry vault. Twenty-five miles above the surface the Immortal’s ship appeared among the stars. It was a gigantic thing with two enormous, bulging tubes at its back. From one of these was projected the force-beam. It returned to the other tube—after passing into the center of the planet below and firmly gripping it.

The motion of this moon-and-ship system was accomplished by creating an unbalanced strain of its appreciable gravitational field in relation to mighty Jupiter. As a stretched rubber-band tends to snap together, so the distended force-field strained to close the gap between.

With lights out in his cabin, York pulled close to the dark ship. Into his meteor-screen he phased in another screen, one that was supersensitive to electromagnetic waves of high power. It would allow transmission of the low-power radio waves, but any radiation of high power would cause it to snap on instantaneously an impenetrable blanket screen. This protective wizardry had many times saved York out in space among hostile races.

Idling next to the huge space-tug, York radioed across.

“Anton York calling the Immortal. I am just outside your side ports, a hundred feet away. Reduce speed immediately and reverse your force-beam.”

Evidently the Immortal had had his radio set open and heard, for his laugh sounded.

“The Space Patrol, eh?” his voice hissed. “Take that—”

There was a sharp click in York’s cabin, which cut off the radio voice abruptly. An eye-searing shower of sparkles blossomed where the Immortal’s lethal beam of exploding neutrons had impinged on the protective screen. Again the sparkles cast a lurid glare over the two ships, and revealed an amazed face at one of the larger ship’s ports. A third time the high-powered beam expended itself against the impenetrable screen of York’s ship.

York broadcast as the trigger-touch relay screen released the stronger one.

“You can’t destroy me. My screen is beam-proof. But I can destroy you, Immortal!”

A gasp came from the radio.

“What did you say your name was?” asked the Immortal, as though suddenly realizing he had heard the strange name before.

“Anton York.”

“Anton York! Not the—”

“Yes, the same Anton York who left the Solar System a thousand years ago. The York who annihilated the armada of the Immortals, of which you are apparently a survivor. Remember the weapon I had—the one which turned the Immortals’ ships to black dust? I still have that weapon!”

“W-what do you want?” came the Immortal’s cowed voice.

“I told you before. Reverse your force-beam and slow down the moon you are dragging. Then you will take up the course I plot, which will return this moon to its former orbit as the sixth satellite of Jupiter. One slightest infraction of my orders and I will turn you and your ship to—black dust!”

Ten hours later the lost moon of Jupiter was restored to its age-old berth in the Jovian system, none the worse for its strange journey. It had not been inhabited nor even exploited for minerals. When York was satisfied that it had been given the right orbital speed to continue revolving properly, he allowed the Immortal to disengage the force-beam.

“You are coming with me now,” stated York. “You have been branded an outlaw and must be turned over to the courts for sentence. Be thankful your crime hasn’t been the destruction of Ganymede, as you originally intended.”

But Mason Chard, recovering from his first awe and fear at the appearance of the legendary York, had been thinking—and scheming. When he released his force-beam from the planetoid, he coincidently shortened its focus. Then he made his ship wobble as though he were clumsy at the controls. At the proper moment, when York’s ship was at his back, he jerked the levers and clamped his force-beam to it. Yelling in triumph, Mason Chard twisted his ship in circles, whirling York’s like a stone at the end of a string. He released it suddenly.

It receded into the starry background and dwindled to nothingness. Chard hastily rammed full power into his engines, to make good his escape. He took a course directly away from York’s ship, eager to put as much distance between as possible. That, he realized soon after, was a mistake.

When York was able to stop the flight of his ship and return to the spot where his prisoner had been, the other ship was long out of sight. It angered him that he had been tricked so easily. On the long chance that the other’s psychology had been to dash the other way, York immediately gunned his ship in the same line, with furious acceleration.

He turned his meteor-screen to full power, for its protection, and scanned the dark regions ahead. A mounting velocity that had never been matched in the Solar System before overhauled the fleeing ship in a few minutes. York smiled grimly as a black shape ahead occulted stars like an expanding balloon.

Realizing his stupidity at the last moment, Chard veered his ponderous ship into a parabola. But York’s ship clung near him as though attached by a chain. When Chard, in desperation, tried again to focus the powerful force-beam on his pursuer, a hazy beam of violet stabbed from York’s ship, sheering off the force-beam projector neatly. The fused beam of ultra-sound and gamma-radiation turned the metal it touched into black dust, as it had turned to black dust fifty Immortal ships more than a thousand years before.

Chard gaped at the instruments which told of destruction in the rear part of his ship and turned white. Hastily he snapped on his transmitter.

“Don’t destroy me!” he pleaded. “I surrender, York!”

“Very well,” said York grimly. “Let’s report to the Jovian Council. Head for Ganymede. I’ll follow.”

Chard had no alternative. Bitterness charged his heart as he swung toward Jupiter, completely subdued. The blow to his puffed ego made tears of helpless anger well to his eyes.

If the Jovian Councillors on Ganymede had been amazed at the disappearance of their moon, they were still more astounded at its sudden, reappearance. The fears of the panic-stricken inhabitants of Ganymede were quieted. Had this all been a huge practical joke by that queer, half-mythical person who had flitted in and out of history during the past thousand years? Or did it have a deeper significance. Many there were who did not believe in the existence of Mason Chard, explaining it as a recurrent fable dating from the time of the Immortals a thousand years before.

An attendant approached the Chief Councillor and whispered in his ear. The latter looked at the attendant as though he thought him insane, but at his earnest look nodded and sent him away. Then the Chief Councillor turned to his colleagues and raised a hand. His face was bewildered.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a high-pitched voice, “we are to be honoured with the presence of the Immortal, the man who recently threatened this world with destruction! And his captor is a certain—Anton York!”

A dead silence came over the room. Every face looked incredulous. Anton York, the greatest figure in past history—the immortal who had given mankind the secret of controlled gravitation. And then, more a god than a man, had plunged into outer space, no longer concerned with the petty affairs of men. He was here?