NO WAR TOMORROW

Feature Novel of Days to Come

By Wallace West

War now would mean the destruction, not merely of
one planet, but all the inhabitable worlds. But
if a satisfactory substitute could be found....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Captain Frank Sage, S.P., shouldered through the double safety doors of Moon Station Cafe, tossed his gear into a corner and sat down at the bar.

"'Lo, Tom," he said glumly. "Make it black coffee, ham and eggs and apple pie."

"You going right out?" Old Tom stopped his eternal polishing of glasses and gave his bald head a rub with the towel before switching on the hot plate. "I was hoping you could lay over a day and chew the fat."

"Not this time." Sage swished the coffee in its heavy cup to cool it. "I'm pushing off soon as they refuel my crate and calibrate the orbit; I've got troubles."

"Um!" The bartender squinted quizzically at his lean and lanky customer. "I hear the Big Shots are big-shotting it again on Venus."

"Right! They're getting much too big for their britches these days; that's why I'm on this cursed jaunt."

"I sort of thought you and the Space Patrol and my gal Sadie had the Big Shots on the hip up there."

"Sadie!" The captain's voice was bitter as his coffee.

"You kids been fighting again?"

"Fighting again! We never stop. If Sadie weren't your daughter, Tom, and if I weren't so crazy about her...." Frank's dour face lit up briefly, "... I'd have sewed her in a sack and dumped her into the Central Sea long ago."

"When she was a kid I often used to think of doing the same thing." Tom juggled a sizzling order onto a plate and slid it across the bar. "What's the trouble this time?"

"It's just that United Stars won't use the Patrol to clean the Big Shots off Venus." The younger man attacked the victuals with a gusto which belied his mood. "We've got things pretty well under control at Venusport. The Incor Underground is growing stronger all over Wildoatia. One more push and...."

"... and Sadie agrees with United Stars?"

"That's right. I don't get it, Tom."

"Look, son." The old man leaned both hamlike hands on the bar and thrust his face within a few inches of the captain's. "Sadie's a mighty smart gal. If Wildoatia ever gets cleaned up, the Incors in the Underground will have to do the job themselves. The Patrol's work is to police Venusport and see that tender-foot Incors get an even break until they head into the bush."

"But why, Tom? Confound it...."

"Didn't you learn at school," the bartender interrupted, "that the state of Wildoatia is the safety valve for United Stars? The people who go there voluntarily—and the ones who are sent there—don't want to live under a decent government. They're incorrigibles who hate and abominate a peaceful, well-ordered civilization. They want to sow their wild oats—to rob, steal, commit murder and do as they damned well please. Maybe they'll—some of them—become good citizens eventually if we leave them alone—give them a chance to grow up. The growth of the Underground suggests that that may happen. On the other hand, if you use outside force to destroy Wildoatia, you upset the whole apple cart. Where, let me ask you, do you send the Incorrigibles? If you don't deport 'em, in no time at all they'd be raising hob on Earth and Mars the way they did before the Cooperative Commonwealth was set up. That wouldn't be pretty, would it?"

"Of course Venus is the only place to exile fascists, crooks, and plain damn fools," Frank agreed as he signalled for his pie, "but why let them run the whole show up there? Oh, you'll spout that that's their most fitting punishment ... to have a free rein to chew each other up. But what if the Big Shots get strong enough to defy United Stars? You should see them strut and goose step when they visit Venusport. They may have no space ships, but I tell you they're up to something devilish."

He shoved his plate away, tossed a five-credit note across the bar and got up. "It must be about blasting-off time. I'd better be getting into my strait-jacket."

"You've plenty of time. The mail packet from Mars has to come in before you can leave. I won't have another customer until then." The bartender removed his apron. "Come on. I'll walk you around the dome."

As soon as they left the cafe, Frank had the uncomfortable feeling that he had shrunk to pigmy size. The metal hemisphere which served as way station for all ships travelling between planets was a quarter of a mile in diameter. The few grease monkeys moving about its vast floor were almost lost among landing cradles and other pieces of machinery.

"This certainly is the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse," Sage grumbled. "It's been a hundred years since the first trip was made to the Moon and we're still hanging on here by our eye-lashes. For every ship that blasts off from Moon Station for Mars or Venus, ten robot freighters have to stagger up from Earth with fuel and supplies for it."

"Plutonium's not good enough," agreed Tom, who had flown space ships in his time. "Fission just can't supply enough power to make interplanetary travel pay. Fact is, if the Moon weren't here, we'd still be earthbound."

"Um! Think of all the trade that could go on if ships could carry worthwhile payloads. I suppose they'd have closed Moon Base long ago, except for the U 235 which is exported by Wildoatia."

"Oh, I don't know." Old Tom was puffing as he kept up with the younger man's long strides. "We clear a bit of oricalchum from Mars, tungsten and commercial diamonds from Earth, plus a fair trade in jewels and other lightweight luxury items. Tourist traffic is brisk. We manage here, but we'll never get much farther without a better fuel.... Well, here comes the mail packet."

A man in a lead-armored suit had run past them and was wigwagging with a checkered flag. Other men were sweating a twenty-ton cradle into the middle of the floor. Then the mechanics scuttled for the barriers.

Frank and Tom followed their example. As they watched over the top of a thick wall surrounding the "field", a shutter in the center of the roof snapped open. They had a glimpse of the ship cushioning down on her atomic jets before they ducked out of range of the deadly gamma rays.

"One nice thing about landing where there's no atmosphere," said Frank. "You don't have to shift to those confounded peroxide jets." He found that he was shouting, but that his voice sounded far-away and thin. Even with the comparatively small air loss through the shutter opening, pressure within the dome was dropping so rapidly that they found it difficult to breathe. The almost instantaneous loss of air and heat into the absolute zero vacuum of space caused a snowstorm to swirl within the dome. Then the rocket blaze died, the packet dropped neatly into her cradle and the shutter closed.

"Whew! You really take a landing seriously," whistled the S.P. man. "What if a ship should miss the shutter and come down through another part of the roof?"

"Don't mention it." Tom's voice was strained.

Frank stepped from behind the barrier to stare at the new arrival. She was a globe, probably twenty times the size of his one-man ship. She was painted a dead black on one hemisphere and a blazing white on the other so her interior temperature could be regulated by rotating the reflecting and absorbent surfaces toward the sun while in flight. She evidently had had a brush with a meteor, since one section of her hull was badly scratched and dented.

The packet's port spun open. An eight-foot Martian in captain's uniform came tumbling out of it.

"K. M! K. M! K. M!" the Martian was chanting in a magnificent baritone. His great chest pumping like a bellows and his downy red face covered with perspiration, he sprinted for the Communications Room.

"Flash for all stations," he was singing as Frank and Tom hurried up to eavesdrop. "Captain Avron of Packet Spaceblazer reporting. When I came out from under Suspenso two hours ago an unknown comb-shaped vessel was pacing the Spaceblazer."

"Another ship in your orbit? And pacing a packet?" The K. M. man shook his head. "That's impossible, Captain."

"Impossible! Impossible!" The Martian hit a High C and fluttered the stumps of his atrophied wings. "The ship was there! When I signalled her, she accelerated and disappeared in fifteen minutes."

"Excuse me, captain," frowned the K. M. officer. "It must have been a meteor. You have the fastest ship in the system, so...."

Frank couldn't hear any more for the man in the lead-covered suit began bawling through a loudspeaker: "Space Patrol Two-Six ready for blast-off in ten minutes. Captain Sage on board, please."

"What do you make of that?" Frank asked, as he and Tom trotted toward the patrol ship.

"Hallucination, probably. Suspenso does strange things to a person sometimes."

"I don't think so. It fits in with rumors I've been hearing at Venusport. The Big Shots are up to something."

"Then here's a word of advice, son." Tom laid a hand on the captain's shoulder as they stopped before his ship. "If that's the way you feel, stop making these fool junkets to New Washington and spend your time finding out what Wildoatia's really up to. If any more trips are absolutely necessary, send Sadie." He smiled crookedly. "Gets sort of lonesome here, now that my ticker won't let me go spacehopping. I'd like to see my girl before I turn up my toes." He shook hands briefly and trudged back toward the cafe, his pudgy shoulders drooping.

Frank climbed into his tiny cabin, dogged the port shut behind him, lashed himself into the anti-shock hammock, shook three Suspenso tablets out of their bottle and signalled for blast-off. Inwardly he fumed because ships could not carry enough air, water and food to allow their crews to remain conscious during a month-long trip. If any strange vessel showed up, he wanted to see it. Finally he broke one of the big pills in two and dropped half of it back into the bottle before gagging over the rest of the bitter dose.

The drug took effect more slowly than usual. Dimly, he felt the pain of the grinding acceleration as the rockets blazed. Before he drifted into suspended animation he saw the silvery Dome plummeting away from him until it assumed perspective in the center of Copernicus Crater.

"Defenseless," he mumbled as his mind clouded. "Moon Station absolutely defense...."

"... less," he gasped, regaining consciousness with a spine-shattering start and with the conviction that someone had played a dirty trick on him while he slept. That was always Suspenso's after-effect, along with a ravening hunger and thirst. Sage reached for the canned tomatoes which spacemen favor in getting their starving, dehydrated bodies back to normal. Then he recalled the comb-shaped vessel and squinted blearily through the blister above his hammock. The black sky was empty of everything except gigantic sun, unwinking stars and the blank and shining disc of Venus.

"Guess they ... don't bother with ... small fry," he croaked, opening the can. After finishing its contents he loosened the hammock straps, dragged himself to the control board and cut the atomic drive. The pile could not be damped, and the fantastically high temperatures at which it operated safely in open space would vaporize the ship as soon as it struck atmosphere. Like it or not, he would have to jockey to a landing by means of a reserve tank of feeble hydrogen peroxide fuel.

Twelve hours later, after circling Venus three times to cut down his speed, Frank knifed into the planet's opaque cloud blanket and settled, with hardly a jar, on the Venusport field. As he clambered to the soggy ground he caught sight of Sadie Thompson racing through the mists to be the first to greet him.

"The same old Sadie," he chuckled when she was in his arms, alternately purring and biting like a kitten. "Still wearing just as few clothes as the law allows and still breaking regulations. Don't you know you shouldn't run out on the field like this? At least you've picked up a few pounds since the first time I came to Wildoatia."

"Uh huh. Gottum dimples now." She exhibited a few. "Like?"

"Like!" He proved it, until she had to draw away to catch her breath.

"What did Great White Father in New Washington say?" She lit a damp cigarette after several tries and dangled it expertly from a scarlet upper lip.

"Great White Father say keepum shirt on," he grinned a bit ruefully as he tried to match her mood.

"I told you." She tossed back her red curls, hugged herself and did a dance step. "You just listen to your Sadie and you'll save yourself a lot of spacehopping."

"Now look here! Is that the way to greet a returning prodigal? You keep a civil tongue in your head, my girl, or I'll take the flat of me hand to you."

"Yah! Sorehead! You'll have to catch me first." And she was off across the field with Frank in pursuit. Venusport officials tore up their speeches of welcome and shook their heads in despair.

Sadie was in a much more subdued mood that night as they ate scamour steaks and drank sparkling traskette at Venusport's best cafe. She listened without a single wisecrack as he told how United Stars executives had insisted that no drastic action be taken against the Big Shots. But she leaned forward intently as he described the arrival of the mail packet at Moon Station.

"Why, if what that captain said is true," she gasped, "it means somebody has invented a ship that can make interplanetary hops in three or four days."

"It means more than that, my sweet. (Here. Have some more steak; you can still put on a pound or two.) It means a new fuel has been found which will permit trips to the outer planets, make Moon Station obsolete and open up untold trade possibilities."

"Uh huh!" Her blue eyes opened wide and she reached across the table to grip his wrist. "It also may mean the end of all of us."

"Nonsense. They said that about the first fission bomb."

"And they were nine-tenths right, as you'll admit if you remember the history of the Atomic War. But this may be far worse. Look, let's figure it out. Remember what those bombs did to the cities of Earth. Well, they were loaded with Plutonium, the stuff we now use for rocket fuel.

"But Plutonium furnishes just enough power to lift a ship, its pilot, one or two passengers, and a few pounds of pay load from Venus or Mars to the Earth. A ship escaping from the stronger gravity of Earth can only limp as far as Moon Station without refueling. Do you follow me?"

"So far." Frank finished his traskette and motioned the waiter to bring more. "Go on."

"So if somebody has built a ship ten or fifteen times larger and faster than ours, it means...?"

"... that he has found out how to destroy atomic nuclei instead of merely splitting them by stripping off the electrons. In other words, he is possessed of a source of practically limitless power."

"Right." She patted his hand. "And now we come to the 64-credit question: Who is that somebody?"

"Well, he couldn't be a good citizen of United Stars. In that case he would have turned over his discovery to the Commonwealth at once. It's too hot for one man to handle."

"So he must be either an Incor or a Big Shot! Please pass those credits, Frank."

"Not yet, my pet. He must be a Big Shot, and only a Big Shot. No Incor could get his hands on enough fissionable material to conduct the necessary research. Only the Big Shots could do that."

"The credits are yours. Now ... what can we do about it?"

Frank twirled his empty glass and stared out at the lights of rainswept Venusport. He was fond of the little place and the thought that it stood in the shadow of disaster made him feel ill. When he and Sadie had helped the Underground to take over the town five years before, it had been a dripping pesthole where arriving Incors were robbed of credits and equipment, then shipped off to virtual slavery in Big Shot uranium mines. Now it was a U.S. outpost, clean, rebuilt and thriving.

Adventurous youths who elected to leave the well-ordered societies of Earth or Mars to sow their wild oats under conditions of untrammelled freedom on Venus were well protected while passing through the port. Even criminals and other anti-social exiles were entitled to a stiff S. P. indoctrination course in the weird geography and topsy-turvy customs of their new planet. One and all were guaranteed free return trips to their homes whenever they gave proof that they had reformed.

"I suppose this means another war," Frank said at last. "And if it comes it really will smash everything beyond repair."

"Maybe not." Sadie thrust out her dimpled chin.

"You mean the Big Shots will give up their discovery without a battle?"

"Not a chance."

"If I know them, they'll try to use it to set up a tri-planetary dictatorship."

"Oh, be your age, Frank! Dictatorships are out of date. They won't work; never have worked for more than a few years. You won't catch up-to-the-minute Big Shots betting on a horse that Hitler, and Mussolini, Stalin, and all the others rode to death."

"Then what?" He was beginning to be angry, as he often did when Sadie disagreed with him.

"They'll plan to use the invention as a lever which will allow them to return to positions of power in United Stars. Think what that would mean to them in terms of graft and legalized robbery. They'd be sitting pretty in the middle of everything once more, instead of being tucked away on the fringe of civilization."

"The United Stars would never agree to that; it would mean war."

"I doubt it." The girl picked the strawberry out of her traskette glass and chewed it thoughtfully. "Both Wildoatia and United Stars know that another war is impossible. Say that on Monday the Big Shots wrecked every city on Earth and Mars with a new type of bomb. A month from Monday our V-60's would hit Wildoatia and wipe it off the map. No bomb of any kind could destroy our V-60 dumps without setting off a chain reaction...."

"... which would reduce Earth to a cinder," he snapped.

"A chain reaction wouldn't stop there. It might turn the whole solar system into a Nova ... just one big ball of atomic fire. Nuh uh, my friend! The Big Shots know they couldn't escape a chain reaction ... and they like to live as well as anybody else does."

"What's your solution, Sadie?" Frank stared at her with a sort of wonder. She looked so much like a little girl, despite the gown which she might about as well not have been wearing.

"We've got to beat the Big Shots at their own game; we've got to invent a substitute for war."

"A substitute for war!" His respect turned to disgust. "You're nuts; there ain't no such animal."

"Sez you!" As always, when under the strain of great excitement, she dropped into the half-gangster, half-western argot which she had picked up while fighting in the Underground. "Listen, wise guy. I'll bet you five grand I can cook up a substitute the Big Shots will fall for like a ton of bricks."

"Some sort of game, I suppose," he jeered as he picked up the check.

"Game, my eye!" Seeing his bewilderment, she leaned forward and nibbled his ear. "I'll give you just one tip. If an atom bomb explodes, where's the only place it can't do any serious damage?"

"Why ... why. Holy cats. Maybe you've got something there!"

"I've got everything." She rose lithely as if to prove it. "Come on, let's hit the hay; we're going into Wildoatia as Incors tomorrow."

"But the Space Patrol has the authority to inspect every Big Shot mine and factory. Why should we go incognito?"

"Because I like to stay alive, chump," she answered, slipping her hand under his arm.

As a slow lightening of the cloud blanket indicated dawn, Sadie and Frank took places among some fifty Incors who were heading out from Venusport into Wildoatia. Like the others, they were dressed in heavy coveralls. Each carried a Tommygun, a knapsack stuffed with food and necessities, and a money belt containing the five thousand gold dollars without which no man or woman was allowed to cross the last frontier.

The Incors were a wild lot; mostly young, high-spirited or spoiled people who rebelled at the strict moral standards of United Stars. In spite of themselves, both Frank and the girl felt strongly drawn to this group. They felt no sympathy for a scattering of older Incors whose hardbitten faces indicated that they had run afoul of U.S. law and were being "shipped over", the only major punishment permitted within the solar system.

"Say, chum." A beetlebrowed youth sidled over to Sadie as they left the port and plunged into the sweating jungle. "Do you reckon it's as tough in Wildoatia as they make out in that indoctrination course?"

"It's plenty tough," she answered out of the corner of her mouth.

"Been there before?"

"What's it to you?" As he started to protest she added: "The first law of Wildoatia is not to ask personal questions."

"Watch him," the girl whispered to Frank as Beetlebrow retreated. "I smell Pumper."

"Oh, he's just a dumb kid."

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. Watch him anyway."

It was a dismal trip. The eternal drizzle soaked them to the skin; a few hardy jitbugs chewed at them. From time to time bloodsucking plant-animals along the muddy trail snaked out prehensile branches. Then there was much swearing and hacking with machetes until the white-faced victims freed themselves.

The skylarking with which the Incors had celebrated their departure from Venusport dwindled and died. In fact, it became evident as the day progressed that Beetlebrow, at least, was losing his nerve. He snarled curses on the journey; he buttonholed lagging companions and muttered about the advisability of returning to Venusport. He yelled like a frightened child when branches reached for him. Only when more hardy travellers threatened to kick him out of the group did he subside.

"That kid's a menace," Frank groaned at last; "he'll wreck the morale of all of us."

"I'll bet he's doing it deliberately." Sadie squashed a jitbug which had chewed its way through the mosquito netting draped from her helmet. "A Pumper. No doubt of it."

Things came to a head when camp was made for the night on a high and relatively uninfested ridge. There Beetlebrow grew suddenly brave and argued against Sadie's proposal that sentries be posted.

"There ain't no danger," he whined. "Scamours don't climb this high. We all ought to get a good night's sleep so we'll be on our toes when we get to Nirvana tomorrow."

When Sadie's counsel prevailed, the fellow picked up his blankets and stalked into the darkness to sleep by himself.

"I agree with you," said Frank when he and Sadie were rolled snugly in their waterproofs near a smudge. (It held off the humming army of jitbugs which had arrived with darkness.)

"Um." She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the sodden ground. "I told the sentries to keep an eye on him.

"Say," he continued softly, "on your idea for a war substitute.... Why not break down and explain it to me?"

"Haven't explained it to myself yet," she yawned. "That professor who named me Sadie Thompson when we were concentrated once ... because it rains all the time here, you know ... he told me about how, in the Middle Ages, when two armies were too well matched to fight, each would select its best knight to represent it. Now what did he call 'em?"

"Champions?" Frank rose on one elbow.

"That's it. So the champions would ... joust, was it? And the army whose Champ won would be declared the victor."

"Do you think either the U.S. or the B.S. would agree to any such harebrained scheme as that?"

"They would if they had to."

"But the Big Shots glory in having no sense of honor. Under their crazy code, they'd be bound to doublecross us if they lost."

"But they couldn't lose, could they? Not if they've learned how to disintegrate atoms." Her voice sounded far away.

"I don't get you. What's the use of our side putting up a champion if he's sure to lose?"

"I didn't say our side would lose. Or did I?" She yawned again. "I'm dog-tired and all mixed up. Haven't taken a hike like this since we marched on Venusport. Kiss me goodnight. Beetlebrow says we have to be on our toes in the morning."

Frank lay awake a long time, listening to jungle sounds and struggling over her paradox. He dozed off to be jerked awake by a burst of gunfire. It was from the sentries; their quick action alone saved the little party as a horde of wild-eyed, ragged savages poured up the ridge toward them in the dawnlight.

Sadie was out of her blankets and yelling orders even as she knuckled the sleep from her eyes.

"Take cover," she shouted. "Spread out. 'Ware grenades. Hold your fire." She spoke with the authority of a girl who had grown up as a jungle outlaw. As the others jumped to obey, Frank crawled through the biteweed to see whether their defense circle was complete. He found it so, except where the ridge ended in a steep declivity.

"Fire," screamed their self-appointed commander as the gaunt figures of their attackers loomed through the fog. A storm of Tommygun bullets sent the enemy flying, except for a dozen who lay writhing.

"They're poor devils of Incors who've been waylaid and robbed by some Big Shot patrol," Sadie explained grimly as the shooting died. "They'll come again; they've either got to make another stake, let themselves be concentrated, or starve."

It was at this moment that Beetlebrow went mad. Throwing away his gun, he began running along the edge of the cliff, waving his arms and alternately shouting curses at the enemy and screaming for mercy.

Without a second's hesitation, Sadie swung her weapon and pressed the trigger. Beetlebrow went over the cliff.

"My Gawd! What did you do that for?" Frank looked at her aghast.

"I think he was signaling for an attack up the cliff. Get a detail deployed over there fast."

"Why, the kid cracked up!"

"In that case he didn't belong in Wildoatia and I did him a service. Quick! That detail!"

Surely enough, when they reached the clifftop they found twenty of the frowsy enemy toiling up toward them. This time their fire did real execution; the few survivors fled like lost souls.

Mindful that they must reach Nirvana before nightfall if they expected to enter its wall, the Incors, who had survived the battle with hardly a scratch, packed knapsacks and plunged again down the trail. Once they detoured a heavily-guarded convoy of ore trucks enroute to Venusport. Once their enemies of the morning tried another ambush. Nevertheless they made good progress and caught sight of the mist-shrouded battlements of their destination while it was still light. Here Sadie called a halt.

"Fellow Incors," she cried as she leaped onto a rock, "you're entering Wildoatia proper. From now on each one of us is on his own. You all know the laws here: Might makes right; dog eat dog; devil take the hindmost. No cooperation; no partnerships; no friendships. Even hand-shaking is illegal. If you are robbed or cheated, don't go running to the police. They'll laugh at you. Maybe they'll slap you in a concentration camp where you'll work a year to pay your fine.

"You get only three breaks in Wildoatia. If anyone swipes your gun, he has to leave a shooting iron of some kind in exchange. If you're arrested and escape, you can't be picked up again on the same charge after five hours have passed. And if you manage to beg, borrow, earn or steal a million bucks, you automatically become a Big Shot with all rights, privileges and immunities."

"Wait a minute, Miss." The speaker was rawboned and bowlegged, as though from riding herd on some far-away cattle ranch. "Ain't they no way a feller can get help if he finds himself in a jam?"

"There are two ways. First, you can return to Venusport and promise the S.P. that you'll go straight." She bit her lip and hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you the other way this early in the game, but I will. If you've got the guts, you can join the Underground. Then you'll have a sporting chance of getting to civilization."

"The Underground," sang out a downy youth from Mars. "The indoctrinators said you can get shot just for joining it."

"That's right. I said you had to have guts.... Well, good luck, folks. You've made a good start; only one group of Incors out of three ever gets to Nirvana without being hi-jacked. Let's go." She jumped from her perch and stalked off toward the town which rose, like a scene from fairyland, before them.

Nirvana had once been the main pleasure city of Wildoatia while Venusport had been its administrative center. Since the latter had been taken over by United Stars, Nirvana had also become the Big Shot capital. But it still retained its synthetic medieval grandeur. On a mountain top which pierced the planet's lower cloud layers, it rose, tier on tier of marble castles, twisting streets and crenelated walls, until it disappeared in the distance, like a dream of old Spain.

They were welcomed like heroes into Valhalla when they reached the frowning wall, with its moat and torchlit portcullis. Trumpets sang from a dozen towers; the drawbridge came down with a roar. Out marched a guard of honor in shining armor, preceded by a bevy of houris in diaphanous robes, or better. The latter strewed orchids along the pathway before throwing themselves into the arms of the newcomers. There were even handsome youths to greet the women in the party.

"Poppycock right out of the telies," whispered Sadie. "But it wows 'em every time. It got me too, the first time I came.... Thought I was entering heaven."

A dark-eyed beauty in cellophane danced up and presented them with goblets of traskette. Sadie pretended to drain hers, but slopped most of the heady stuff on the cobblestones. Frank followed her example; the other arrivals, their misgivings forgotten, drank the liquor to the lees.

After another flourish of trumpets, a jolly fat man, dressed like the king of Mardi Gras, hurried across the drawbridge, arms outstretched. "Welcome to Wildoatia," he boomed. "Who are the leaders of your party? I have a special welcome for them."

The cowboy opened his mouth but closed it when Frank kicked his shins. There was a long silence.

"Splendid! Splendid," bellowed the fat man at last. "You have no leaders. That's as it should be in Wildoatia, where every man is a king and every woman a queen." As houris threw garlands around the necks of the newcomers he continued: "Tonight Nirvana is yours. You are honored guests of the city. Not one penny can you spend. Come, follow me to the City Hall. We must check your passports. A mere formality, of course."

"Of course!" sneered Sadie in a whisper.

"After that," this strange glad-hander rambled on, "you must taste the unparalleled joys of Nirvana, the jewel among all the cities of the universe. You may bathe in scented waters; you may dine on the best foods and drink the finest wines. Later you will want to play games of chance or dally with the maiden or youth of your choice...." He paused to mop his brow.

"... and wake up tomorrow with a dark brown taste to find that your friend has stolen your money belt," Sadie crooned in Frank's ear. "Then, ho, for a concentration camp for a long term at hard labor if you dare make a complaint."

"Come one; come all!" Their host pranced away. The houris urged the Incors across the drawbridge in his wake.

"Do exactly as I do," whispered Sadie after they had progressed for several blocks up a flag-draped boulevard. "We've got to make our get-away."

"But aren't we...?" Despite himself, Frank was a bit carried away by the pomp and circumstance of the martial music and the gaily-dressed, cheering throngs which lined the way. "I never had a chance...."

"I do believe, Frank," the girl teased him, "that if you had made your pile when you first came to Wildoatia you'd be a Big Shot today. Well, you'll have no chance to taste the fleshpots and I'm the only houri you're going to have any traffic with tonight. Besides, we wouldn't stand a chance of escaping recognition in the police lineup at City Hall.... Now!"

She hurled herself into the crowd lining the street, sprinted for an alley with the patrolman at her heels. They plunged into darkness just as a burst of gunfire sent splinters flying about their heads.

Sadie hurled herself into the crowd, as a patrolman looked up, with gun raised.

"That was close," gasped the girl. "The Shots certainly have their guard up these days." She seized Frank's hand and raced with him along a narrow way which was slippery with garbage and rank with stenches. "Here we are. Sharp right.... Now left.... Last time I came through here I had a broken arm. But you should have seen the Concentrator who gave it to me.... Wup! This is the place." She dived into a tumbledown liquor store.

"Sadie Thompson," she snapped at the blinking proprietor; "we're tailed."

The fellow jerked a thumb toward a curtain at the back of the shop.

They ducked behind the cloth, plunged down a flight of stairs and landed, plop, in a sewer.

Wading against a flood of filth, beating off tarks which squeaked and slavered at them, they advanced blindly. A quarter of a mile "up-stream" they found a door marked by a phosphorescent glow.

They dragged themselves through it and into an empty chamber which bore the word, Baths, on an inner door.

After scrubbing some of the sewage off each other and changing to clean overalls, which they found in a locker, Sadie pressed a concealed button in a series of dots and dashes.

A door opened in the wall, revealing a corridor hewn out of rock. They went through it until they reached a room occupied by a man with one arm and a hideously disfigured face.

"Jack!" cried the girl. "I hoped you'd be on duty. This is Captain Sage; you've heard of him. The Shots are tearing the town apart to find us. Can you put us up for the night?" As the one-armed man nodded she rattled on: "We hear the Shots have something better than Plutonium."

Again the nod.

"Know where their labs are located?"

Jack picked up a pencil, wrote a sentence and handed her the pad.

"Somewhere under the Polar Sea?" Sadie frowned. "Not much chance of hitting a hideout like that with a V-60. How far along are they?"

"One ship finished and given a trial run," wrote the cripple. "The Underground managed to get 542 on board but I haven't received any information for weeks."

"How about her speed?" Frank put in.

"Last report from 542 said she travels at One Gravity acceleration," was the scribbled reply.

"One G?" The spaceman wanted to laugh but dared not because of that scarred, impassive face. "Why that's only a little more than 32 feet per second. My patrol ship can hit ten G's."

"You got me wrong," came the answer. "One G is only 16.1 feet for the first second, but after that, the speed of the new ship increases steadily at the rate of 32.2 feet per second."

"Wow! I see what you mean." Frank did some quick calculation. "She can reach Earth in three days or so. Our ships have to take more than a month for the same run because they hit maximum speed soon after blast-off and coast the rest of the way to save fuel."

"And since the new ship has some sort of super-fuel, there need be no limit to her size," Sadie exclaimed. "She can carry plenty of food, air and water, so crews can remain conscious at all times. Crews can move about on shipboard as comfortably as they do on the ground because her constant acceleration—or deceleration after she reaches turnover point—will act as a substitute for gravity. This is big, Frank. Bigger than we thought."

"Man can reach for the stars," wrote Jack.

"Or finally blow himself to smithereens." This from Frank. "The Shots have us licked this time if we don't stop them quick."

"Can we raid that lab?" asked the girl.

"Not a chance." The pencil raced. "Only a tark could get into it."

"Then we'll have to fish a tark out of some sewer." Sadie thought deeply for a moment, then slapped her round thigh. "Not a bad idea at that!... Well, Jack, how about a place to sleep?"

They spent the night in an air-conditioned subterranean chamber. Jack had beautifully forged passports ready for them when they awoke. After bidding him goodby they mounted endless stairs to emerge at last onto a busy street.

Even in the pearly daylight—Venusians seldom see their monstrous sun, and then only with regret—they found that the city had lost none of its brittle charm ... its hectic Coney Island dash.

Incors by the score already were entering its blatant palaces, intent on squandering their last few silver dollars or gold nuggets in an effort to forget their grinding, hopeless toil in mine or jungle. Others, better dressed and cockier, evidently had made a stake. They were going to the dens, usually to gamble away their winnings, but once in a while to pyramid them into the coveted million which meant freedom and a proud place in Wildoatian society.

A few Big Shots were drifting into the more expensive and exotic pleasure haunts, there to lord it over lesser men, take their pick of lesser women and indulge every whim their jaded fancies could invent.

Roaming the streets at random, the interlopers looked from blossoming terraces over breathtaking vistas; smiled at roving mountebanks and accepted flowers tossed by pretty girls.

"The place has a certain charm," Frank said grudgingly.

"Think so?" She led him into a street where glittering cafes—one was frankly called "The Clip Joint"—dope dens, telie theaters, circuses and houses of assignation rubbed elbows like thievish brothers.

Within a few minutes they saw an Incor in ragged coveralls stumble out of a "gambling salon", place an automatic to his head and blow his brains out. Later a blonde in sequin harness stepped behind her companion and slipped a stiletto between his plump shoulders. In both cases nearby policemen made no move to interfere. Instead, they blew piping whistles which brought street cleaners on the run to clear away the mess.

"Charm!" snorted Sadie. "Yes, in Nirvana you can do anything you please ... except look crosswise at a Big Shot, or go broke."

"Where are you taking me, anyway?" Sage tried to forget the things he had just seen.

"To the City Hall to look up an old friend of ours."

"A Big Shot?"

"I'll say; we made him one of the biggest."

"You mean...." He fished back into those hectic days when he first had come to Venus and when Sadie was the firebrand of the Underground. "You mean Mike, the stupid little doublecrossing tark who betrayed Venusport to us in exchange for the location of the uranium mother lode?"

"The same; he's now commandant of Nirvana."

"He'll have us shot."

"No he won't—not if we make it worth his while. Besides, I still have the safe conduct he gave me to show his gratitude."

"Look, Sadie my girl!" He dragged her down on an iridescent bench beside a fountain of scented rainbows. "Ever since I got back I've been trailing you around like a puppydog. I don't like it. Are we partners or am I just a stooge? What's up your sleeve?"

"I'm simply working on the theory that history repeats itself," she chuckled, rumpling his hair. "Ancestors of the Big Shots lost the First World War, the Second World War and the Atomic War. Each time they were a hundred times better prepared than the decent folks who opposed them. Now, teacher, tell me why they lost."

"Because ..." he fumbled. "I guess it was because they had no honor; they doublecrossed themselves into defeat."

"Right. They're atavars ... throw-backs to the age of tooth and claw. Some of them happen to be geniuses, though. That's one of the reasons why we try not to kill 'em any more. We send 'em here to blow off steam, bust atoms if they can, and possibly see the error of their ways. The reason we dare do that is because they can't see any farther than their own noses; they take the cash and let the credit go, as old Omar put it."

"A comforting theory," he jeered. "If it's true, why don't we just sit back and take it easy?"

"Because such people have to be whittled down to size occasionally. They serve a useful purpose in society but they can't be allowed to get out of hand again."

"You win. But you still haven't told me what you want with Mike."

"I'm going to take him in hand," she laughed, and dodged into a crowd of tipsy merrymakers as he reached for her.

They took a compressed air car to the City Hall, a vision in black marble which towered at the very top of the mountain. Sadie's crumpled safe conduct got them past guard after frowning guard, but they saw several less fortunate citizens being booted down the wide steps.

They were escorted into a 100-foot-long chamber. At the end of it, a colorless man in a colorful uniform was almost hidden behind a desk three sizes too large for him. It was Mike, all right, but a Mike considerably changed by his success. That is, he no longer sniggered sadistically; he frowned sadistically. He still gnawed the knuckle of his left forefinger, however, with the same nervous gesture he had used when he had been bodyguard to the brutal boss of Dead Man's Delta.

"Well?" he barked when their guards had placed the visitors before his chromium and plastic throne.

"Well yourself," the patrolman snapped. "Send your gorillas away."

Mike gnawed in indecision, then gave the order.

"So you found you couldn't get out of Nirvana and have come in to give yourselves up," said the commandant when they were alone. "That was a dirty trick you played on me yesterday.... Scared the new Incors half to death. If you had come as members of the Space Patrol, I'd have given you every honor. As it is, I'm entitled to concentrate you under the law. Which camp do you pick?"

"We'll take the one under the Polar Sea." Sadie lit a cigarette and tossed the match on the inch-thick rug.

Mike jumped, then blew up, dropping his pseudo-cultured tone for gangsterese. "Snoopin' again," he shrieked. "I'll have you rubbed out. Youse guys ain't gonna...."

"Mustn't say 'youse guys', Mike," Sadie spoke as to a child. "You're commandant now."

To Frank's amazement, Mike's fury collapsed like a pricked balloon.

"You haven't a thing on me," he mumbled, sinking back on his throne. "I ain't gonna ... I won't talk."

"Nobody asked you to," said Frank. "This is just a personal call ... for old time's sake. We were wondering how you are making out with your mother lode."

"It ... it's still producing ninety per cent of the U 235 on Venus." Mike stared at them like a sick calf. "Only...."

"Only the new engine they've developed up north doesn't need U 235. A hunk of rock will serve it just as well for fuel. Right?"

"That's about it." The little man licked dry lips. "I'm ruined; you devils know it damned well."

"Going to take it lying down?" jibed Sadie.

"Aw, cut it out, will you? What can I do about it? Kingfish Uranium has dropped from 240 to 23-1/4 on the big board since the rumors got around. I'm washed up; one of these days the Directors will remember I'm here and kick me out among the Incors."

"Look, Mike," said Frank. "The Space Patrol likes you. You've played ball with us before. We really want to help."

"Ain't nothin'.... I mean there's nothing you can do." That knuckle was taking punishment again.

"We got you out of a hole once, didn't we?"

"You sure did and I sure appreciates it." A faint light of hope dawned in those frightened, beady eyes.

"We can do it again," the captain went on. "But first we want to ask you one question: Do you think the Shots can take over the system with their new weapon?"

"Naw." The narrow shoulders sagged. "Everybody knows we'll be blown to bits if we try that. But we gotta try. Ain't no future for a man in this gawdforsaken hole. Some of the other Directors, they're rarin' to go, no matter what happens. Me, all I want is to live a while." He shook his balding head. "I don't even like commandanting any more ... don't get any fun outa it. Why, just yesterday I broke an Incor on the rack and, would you believe it, I didn't get any kick at all; I must be gettin' old." He seemed ready to cry.

"That's tough, Mike." Sadie was all sympathy. "But I have a plan to prevent any real trouble. It'll make you the biggest Shot on Venus, too ... for a consideration, of course."

"Yeah?" He leaned forward greedily. "Shoot."

The girl outlined her idea for a war substitute.

"You got somethin' there," he agreed doubtfully when she had finished, "but I don't get this champeen stuff. Ain't no Big Shot gonna risk his life in an evenly-matched duel."

"Oh, I didn't mean that at all. I meant something like matching your new ship against the Space Patrol out where nobody but the crews could get hurt."

"Say!" Mike sucked through his yellow teeth. "That's not bad at all. If we win we'd have a monopoly on space travel ... a chance to get off this dinky planet and do some business. If we lose, I reckon we'll have to surrender our new discovery to United Stars—but otherwise we won't be much worse off than now.... But what do I get outa the deal?"

"Why, you sell it to the Directors while we get New Washington to agree. If it goes through, it will get the Shots out of an impossible situation, no matter who wins. The least they can do is make you chairman of the board. Then you won't have to worry about Kingfish U."

"The present board chairman hates my guts. He won't go for any plan I suggest. Besides...." He looked at them through slitted lids, "what's that 'consideration' you mentioned?"

"You'll have to get one or both of us on board that ship. Frank is an astrogator, so he should qualify. I can pinch hit as a nurse, entertainer or even a cook."

"Not on your life; I ain't gonna doublecross my pals."

"You made out all right when you doublecrossed them before."

"Nope." Mike thrust out his weak chin. "They'd rub me out."

"Okay. But being rubbed out is better than rotting by inches when our V-60's begin to drop. You won't look pretty, Mike, when your nose and ears fall off; when your flesh starts peeling from your bones because of the gamma rays. Then, there's that palace of yours ... and your harem."

"Oh stop it, Sadie. Stop it! You win!" His knuckle was bleeding by now. "How about dropping out to the palace tonight? The chairman is coming over. I'll try to sell your plan to him. You won't hold it against me, will you, if he doesn't buy?"

"He'll buy ... one way or another," the girl said grimly.

"Swell." The commandant jumped up with a lightning-like change of mood. "Let's go, then. The little women will be waitin' for me."

After they were aboard his shiny black plane Mike asked jovially: "What kinda entertainment would you like tonight? I been tinkerin' with some of Nero's old stunts.... Incors to the scamours and stuff like that.... Not bad for a change."

"A little too close to home right now." Frank shuddered.

"How about a scamour hunt, then, before dinner? There's scads of them critters around the palace. They keep me fresh out of slaves."

"Swell." There was nothing Frank wanted less than a brush with those gobbling reptiles, but he knew Mike needed gentle handling if he were to go through with his bargain.

"Like it?" beamed the little Big Shot as they landed on the roof of a rococco monstrosity which must have cost millions.

"Gorgeous!" beamed his guests.

Mike's harem, twenty beauties of every race, color and state of deshabille, was waiting for them. Squealing with synthetic glee, the girls bore them on embroidered litters to their quarters. These resembled glorified hotel suites replete with gold-plated bathrooms, priceless tapestries and uncomfortable furniture.

"What awful taste the beast has," laughed Sadie as she dunked her long-legged body in a scented and mirrored pool. "And to think I once wanted to be a Big Shot ... wanted to be one so desperately that I tried to rob a joint like this."

"What happened?" He was eyeing her appreciatively.

"Oh I was caught, of course. They slapped me in a concentration camp. See that scar? It's a burn I got in the uranium mines. That's where I joined the Underground."

"Funny place to have a scar," he grinned. "Get out of that pool and help me put on this cursed armor.... Are all their palaces like this one?"

"Worse!" She dripped water down his back. "Huge, gloomy holes where bored gangsters try to pretend they're having a wonderful time. The Big Shots are just Incors who made their pile and are out to show off like wicked children. Well, tonight let's pretend we're wicked children too."

"That shouldn't be hard for you." He helped the girl don her own light armor. "Sometimes I think you're a potential Big Shot still, at heart."

They entered the palace donjon to find Mike chatting uncomfortably with Hirokima Schmidzu, chairman of the Wildoatian board.

"So pleased," hissed the yellow man after introductions were completed. "Have been hearing about your plan."

"Like it?" Sadie sounded unutterably bored as she surveyed her shining self in a mirror.

"Regrettably not." Schmidzu was not in the least bored as he undressed her with his slant eyes. "There is no substitute for honorable war."

"Too bad." The girl turned to Mike. "When do we start?"

In the dripping twilight ... that hour before ravening jitbugs make outdoor life impossible ... the scamour hunters poured out of the gates and into the softly-breathing jungle. Machetes in hand and Tommyguns slung across their shoulders, about a dozen of the commandant's guests spread out and moved forward warily. The chairman attached himself to Sadie and Frank as they advanced.

Mike's gardeners had done a fair job of weeding out the most dangerous plant-animals from the grounds. Nevertheless, their way was made dangerous by roots which snaked out to grasp their ankles and by sucker-lined branches which whipped at their throats.

They had progressed only a few hundred yards when Frank came upon a panting slave girl entangled in a mass of carnivorous vines. While the Japanese hissed disapproval, he defied the immutable laws of Wildoatia by cutting her free. She stared at him as if he had committed a crime and fled without a word of thanks.

"It is, shall we say, bad taste, to help Incors in distress," Schmidzu expostulated.

"You'd talk differently if you were in a jam," flashed Sadie.

"Beg to differ. I would never be in what you call a jam. See." He held out two gold-encrusted blades. "These Samurai swords. My honorable grandsire used them to defend Tokyo in second World War. Gods protect me through them."