Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

Then York knew. He and Vera looked at one another. “Dr. Vinson!” gasped York. “Dr. Vinson and a band of ruthless demons bent on conquering Earth. For a hundred years he planned this. I did not think he would go to such lengths. In some hidden spot he and his crew, all immortals, must have laboured for this day. Undoubtedly they are all scientists and technicians. Men who in a century’s time could do miracles in discovery. Vastly improved ships, super-weapons, carefully laid plans. They played for big stakes and made preparations in a big way.”

He turned his anger on himself.

“Why didn’t I see it before this? It’s all so clear now. In the past year they carried out experimental raids, to gauge their power and readiness. I should have suspected, and prepared. Now they have struck, and the end will be soon. True scientific warfare against the world’s tremendous, but clumsy armament. The wasp against the bear. It can sting again and again, too quick and small to be crushed by might.” Again news came over the tele-visor, indicating the crisis which faced the world. A hastily and secretly formed armada of the world’s best fighting craft—of every large nation—had massed and challenged The Immortals. The challenge had been promptly accepted. The incredible story told by gasping announcers was that by sheer weight of numbers the fleet had succeeded in downing three of the enemy, while they themselves were mowed to one-third their strength. The remnant had fled.

Vera was alarmed by the sickly grey colour of York’s face as he heard this.

“I’m responsible,” he whispered hoarsely. “I let the dangerous secret of immortality fall into Vinson’s hands!” His whisper continued, but with a deadlier note in it, “I must act before it is too late.”

It was the climax of his super-lifetime. Armed with nothing more than a few pages of diagrams and figures, York descended on Washington in his silent gravity ship and said he could fight the alien power. He was derided rather than laughed at, in that the situation was too grim for laughing.

HOWEVER, the gravity ship could not be laughed at. And when a group of scientists was hurriedly assembled, they said the thing looked good on paper. At the same time the startling news came that The Immortals had been completely victorious in Europe and were now sweeping Asia. If Japan would fall, as must be, America would be next, as the last remaining power.

Faster than they had ever moved before, the wheels of industry, lashed by a frantic government, turned out the apparatus York wanted. He had them secretly move their headquarters to Pittsburgh. The terrible weapon he had kept locked in his brain for over a century took form here.

In two weeks it was nearly completed, but not before The Immortals, now dominant in the Eastern Hemisphere, swung their tiny, deadly fleet westward. At the first encounter, the pride of America’s aerial defence was annihilated by the sweeping rays of the enemy. These rays had all the potency of a two-ton bomb at close range, yet were invisible and noiseless.

“We must surrender!” This cry echoed in the hall of authority.

“Hold out!” commanded York. “Hold-out, I tell you.”

They obeyed him, almost hypnotized by his blazing eyes. The Immortals, after defiance of their ultimatum, promptly began razing cities to the ground. Their supply of fuel and ammunition seemed inexhaustible. Coming from the west, San Francisco, Denver and St. Louis crumpled before the onslaught.

“Enough is enough. We must give in!” was the horrified clamour among the leaders and statesmen.

“Hold out!” screamed York. “Three more days!”

They did. In those three days Chicago, Cincinnati and Philadelphia became smoking ruins. And the invincible fleet headed for New York City!

But in those three days York became prepared. His weapon was mounted on his ship, a long snout of vitrolite pivoted on a universally jointed base. Wires led inside the ship, through hastily made rips in the hull, to the power source of the ship. By a quick change, York had fitted his anti-gravity unit to utilize Earth’s tremendous gravitational field for power for the vitrolite gun.

Then he contacted the fleet of The Immortals by radio, challenged them, called them back from their course toward New York. They might have taken it as a desperate bluff to save that great city except that York made his challenge a personal one—from himself to Dr. Vinson.

“York?” came back a voice that was recognizable as Dr. Vinson’s. “Anton York? Impossible—he—”

“I did not die, Vinson. I survived the cyanide. I’ve been wondering if you would appear on the scene. I’d almost forgotten you in the century that has gone by. But bad pennies always show up. You’ve done a lot of damage, Vinson, but you’ll do no more. I’ll meet your fleet anywhere you say for a showdown. If you don’t meet me half-way, I’ll hound you to the ends of the earth—to the ends of the Universe if I must!”

Vinson’s voice spluttered over the radio. For the first time his companions around him saw fear on their leader’s face. What man could this York be; that their hitherto confident master feared him?

Then Vinson spoke again: “Wait, York. I don’t know what you have to give you such confidence against my fleet, but listen to reason. You’re an Immortal, as we are. You belong with us, York—as rulers of Earth. I have no grudge against you. Join up with me and that’s the end of it. Why should there be trouble between us?”

York’s voice was a white-hot hiss in the microphone.

“You will rule Earth without me, or not at all. But first you must put me out of the way. Name the place!’

“Over Niagara Falls!” Vinson’s voice, previously uncertain, rang now with arrogance and assurance “What can you do against the fleet that has whipped a world?”

It must have seemed like a battle of the gods to those fortunate eyes that saw it, especially those who had caught the exchange of words between York and Vinson.

York’s ship, a bright ball of metal and glass, dropped from the clouds several miles from the fleet of The Immortals. A group of tiny black figures could be seen around the base of the vitrolite gun, precariously hung in sprung seats. These were the gunners, iron-nerved army men who knew nothing about the weapon, but who knew that when you aimed the long snout and jerked a lever, a something was released that could destroy. Other than that they had only grim determination and courage.

Like the buzzing of angry hornets, Vinson’s fleet dashed for the lone ship. York’s ship, high over Lake Erie, hovered like a poised eagle. The long, slender vitrolite tube swung toward the oncoming ships. Something blue and pulsating sprang from it, projected a streamer of violet across the intervening space of two miles.

What inconceivable force it was, no one was ever to know. York could have described it briefly as a combination of atom-tuned sound vibrations and, electron-tuned gamma vibrations, both together able to rip matter to ultra-shreds, without revealing its secret. For it was a type of wave existing in the audio-ether transition stage between the known and the unknown in catalogued science.

But the effect was not so mysterious. A dozen of the enemy craft sagged strangely, burst into little bubbles of vapour, and changed to clouds of black dust that fell slowly toward the water below. The rest of the fleet, as one, swept up and to one side, away from this frightful weapon. Yet before they had completed the retreat, twelve more of their ships had become puff-balls of black soot.

York smiled grimly. He had purposely made the focus of the gun’s beam very wide. Each time it belched forth its titanic charge, a ransom in power went with it. But Earth, could afford it, with its almost unlimited gravitational stresses that fed the weapon.