Read Ebook: Electron Eat Electron by Loomis Noel M

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Ebook has 979 lines and 33244 words, and 20 pages

Hoshawk heard the Starter's voice: "President Forgacs, are you ready?"

"Ja," came the deep voice of the Hunyas president.

Jeffrey flicked the oxygen valve for a second, snapped it off, and Hoshawk saw him glance down at it. Then Jeffrey sat poised, all the alertness of his incredible mind bearing intently on the map before him.

A bell sounded. The war was on!

Jeffrey did not move. He waited, and watched. Ten trillion electronic tubes would flash their information on the Map. He waited--one minute, two minutes, five minutes. The Map was dark.

So Forgacs wanted him to move first.

Jeffrey flicked the oxygen and his chair shot to the left. His fingers blurred into movement. He shot back to the center of the keyboard and focused his entire intellect on the Map.

A dozen tiny red lights rose off the coast of Newfoundland and raced eastward. Each light represented a thousand rockets loaded with thirty tons of DTN. One of those rockets would wipe Berlin from the earth--if it struck.

But Hoshawk knew the President did not expect them to reach Europe.

They did not. Near the coast of Holland they began to wink out. One got as far as Cologne.

If the Chamber had been above ground instead of three hundred feet deep in solid rock, they would have felt the concussion, for DTN's powerful waves traveled at the speed of light.

Still there was no answer.

Jeffrey's fingers played for an instant on the keys. Red lights rose from Labrador, from near Boston, from Florida, and streaked east--not for Berlin this time, but for Marseilles.

Jeffrey was testing Forgacs' explosive screen. It was wholly effective; one after the other, the trains of red lights winked out.

But now there was an answer. From the Bay of Biscay red lights with black dots on them began to wink on as the mammoth tabulating machine in the room below recorded the information from thousands of hidden electronic tubes, totaled it, and presented it on the Map.

The President hardly watched them. His screen with its principal power-plant in Philadelphia would stop the rockets, up to a total of some seventy-five octillion macro-ergs.

On the off chance that Forgacs would forget to close his screen after his rockets had passed it, Jeffrey fired a salvo from the Bahamas.

Forgacs answered with three salvos from Brest, and Jeffrey gave him back ten from Long Island, then Hoshawk frowned as he saw the President rub his stomach. Hoshawk had always opposed that abominable atavistic confection called ice cream.

It was a game of incredibly swift calculation and rapier thrusts from strong point to strong point in the effort to break through the screen. Once the screen should be broken, anything might happen.

Jeffrey could see when his own screen was up, but their science had devised no way to detect the enemy's screen except by firing into it. Jeffrey pressed a pedal with his left foot, and a thin golden line flashed on in a flattened arc from Greenland down through the Atlantic and curved around the Falkland Islands.

Jeffrey's screen was up. The Biscay salvos began to wink out against it. Jeffrey's hands began to flash. Red lights winking up along the coast of Europe and from North Africa showed that Forgacs was opening up.

Jeffrey cut in the oxygen for a second and flicked it off, then his left foot slashed at the pedal as he cut his screen to let his own rockets through and then threw it on again to stop the enemy.

Forgacs was beginning a drive on Philadelphia, the site of the power plant. Jeffrey was watching for an opening to Marseilles, vulnerable for the same reason.

Jeffrey kept firing rockets, but his mutant mind would be racing ahead, calculating with infinite precision the times of discharge and times of arrival.

It was apparent by now that Forgacs' most powerful defenses were centered around Marseilles, because Forgacs was not using them. This meant he was not taking a chance on opening the Marseilles sector of the screen.

Jeffrey calculated the probable interchange of batteries for some sixty moves ahead, Hoshawk knew, then he began to fire the Philadelphia batteries at intervals.

The firing rose in intensity, and Jeffrey's faster-than-light fingers played the great keyboard like a master organ. A bell sounded and his right foot threw on the western screen with its automatic cut-out.

And all the time Jeffrey fired his big Philadelphia batteries at intervals with a definite rhythm--five, three, and six seconds.

He shot to the right and manipulated a bank of keys and was back in the center almost instantaneously.

He did not pause in his rocket salvos, but in three minutes and eight seconds his first salvo of one-ton atom bombs would reach the Marseilles screen. If he had calculated correctly, the Marseilles screen would be open for an instant just as the atom bombs reached it. He didn't think Forgacs could resist the temptation to blast Philadelphia with his Marseilles batteries.

Presently a thousand red lights winked up from the screen at Marseilles. But Forgacs overlooked the atom bombs. They were slower than the rockets, and there was no way to tell, from the Map, which was which.

Jeffrey shot a look at the chronometer, and Hoshawk saw the atom bombs go through. A few seconds later the glow in Marseilles began to redden, and Hoshawk exulted. The atom bombs had done their work. The Marseilles screen was weakening.

Jeffrey played the keys with fantastic speed. The war would soon be over. Thousands of little red lights began streaking toward Marseilles. At first they exploded in air as they hit the screen, but as the explosive force of the DTN began to drain the screen, those behind began to pour through.

But there was a flash from Philadelphia, and a shock went through Hoshawk. Something was wrong there. Jeffrey hadn't intended that. Forgacs had used atom bombs and had broken through when the screen was down.

Jeffrey's fingers snatched at the oxygen valve. He tore it off and threw it on the floor. He still held one important advantage. He was ahead of Forgacs by forty seconds.

Philadelphia went out and the golden defensive screen began to fade, but Jeffrey, tensely erect, stayed on the attack. Hundreds of green lights began to rise around Marseilles--great submarines, controlled by electronics and carrying tanks and guns and explosives.

The green lights converged on Marseilles. They got through the screen. Now was the big gamble. Jeffrey guessed that Forgacs would operate from an underground chamber near Marseilles itself.

It wasn't a logical thing to do, and so Forgacs would do it, believing that Jeffrey would pass Marseilles and go inland to find the Chamber.

Jeffrey let him believe that. He sent eight thousand giant electron-controlled bombers through the Marseilles gap and straight for Berlin.

The green lights started winking on the coast of France, showing the submarines were unloading amphibious tanks. Jeffrey started them out across France at high speed. Near Paris they met heavy resistance from Forgacs' tank-killers.

But now Jeffrey had more trouble. Forgacs had slipped a salvo of atom bombs into the Labrador power station, and the entire north quadrant of Jeffrey's screen was down. And just at that instant, the automatic breaker failed and a tube burned out in the Montevideo power station, and the southern half of South America was exposed. Green lights began to wink up at the open spaces.

Jeffrey was grim. It was near the end. Dog eat dog. His flying fingers chose to ignore Forgacs' attack, beyond firing millions of salvos of small rockets which were little better than a delaying action.

There were only two targets in this war--the Chambers.

Jeffrey released his trump--thirty-five hundred flying robot tanks.

They rocketed through the Marseilles screen and came on the city from the land side, firing eight-inch rockets and shooting flames out half a mile ahead.

But this was a feint, too. From the sea now rose a great armada of robot submarine carriers that spewed out tanks that were little more than armored tank-cars filled with jellied XPR, which exploded always down, toward the center of gravitation. They poured out the jelly on the surface around Marseilles for a distance of twenty miles until according to Jeffrey's figures the ground was covered a foot thick. The flame-throwers roared into it and Jeffrey stopped them there.

Then he fired his last salvo of atom-bombs from the Bahamas.

In the meantime, Forgacs' tanks had overrun Boston, searching for the American Chamber.

The lights began to wink out, and Hoshawk knew that Boston was being destroyed.

Orange lights, indicating bombers, were heading for Chicago, and Hoshawk knew that if Jeffrey's guess on Marseilles was bad, he had not much longer to live.

He looked at the Map. The atom-bombs were at Marseilles. A glow showed around the twenty-mile circle that he had covered with jelly, and Hoshawk knew the atom-bombs had landed.

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