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Title: Earthmen Ask No Quarter!

Author: Fox B. Holden

Release Date: August 30, 2021 [eBook #66176]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARTHMEN ASK NO QUARTER! ***




               General Taylor knew that Earth could not
            resist the invaders, so he ordered all units to
            surrender. But one commander thought he meant--

                       EARTHMEN ASK NO QUARTER!

                           By Fox B. Holden

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                             December 1953
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Let them in, sergeant." The white-haired New United Nations World
Space Force chief spoke the words as though he had been forced into
the most humiliating surrender in history. And he had been.

What could he tell them? They were not fools, after all, and he was so
impossibly exhausted.... Uniform was a mess. All day and all night,
words, words, ... and nothing. Too many useless, powerless words,
all adding up to nothing. Foreign space admirals, ground-force field
marshals, defense secretaries from a dozen capitals.

Where were the ion-field cannon that had been promised for the last
twenty years? Where were the new main-drives? The new alloys? Promises,
always promises--but where in God's name _were_ they?

And now--now it didn't matter any more.

He let his massive frame slump tiredly for a moment, elbows flattening
some of the official litter strewn across the broad desk-top, head in
his big hands.

"General Taylor, sir--"

He forced the thoughts from his brain with almost the same physical
force with which he shoved his tired body erect.

"Yes, yes, thank you, sergeant. Good morning, gentlemen. Sorry to have
kept you waiting."

There were perhaps thirty of them, all civilians, all crowding for a
spot nearest the huge desk, all with stub pencils and sheafs of rumpled
newsprint in their hands. A couple of flash-bulbs went off.

"General, can you tell us what the aliens' intentions are?"

And it had begun.

"I'm authorized to tell you that the alien space ship is hostile. But,
under the circumstances we are convinced with reasonable certainty that
their hostility may be ... mollified to an appreciable degree."

He watched them as they got the official double-talk down word for
word. And then, "In other words, General--we are counter-attacking?"

"Sorry. That information is classified."

"About how high is the alien, sir?"

"He is circling Earth in an orbit about two thousand miles out, passing
our own stations about once every forty-eight hours."

"How big is the ship, sir? About what shape?"

"It is a cigar-shaped vessel, approximately three miles in length and
slightly under one at maximum diameter."

"Have any of our own ships as yet had actual contact with this craft?"

"Yes, there has been contact. I am sorry that for the time being the
result cannot be disclosed."

"There are rumors, General, that the 402nd Space Wing sent a five or
six-ship element of J-83 Lancers from Lunar Base, and that the ships
have not reported back. Is this true, sir?"

"It is true that they have not been heard from since they left."

Then a young, unquavering voice cut in softly. "When is it to begin,
sir? And when will we--"

"You may--write, gentlemen, that the invasion of Earth has already
begun. And, that we have absolutely no defense against it. None.
Because of that fact, the decision of the New U. N. Joint Chiefs has
been that there should be no needless loss of life. You may write that
we have--that we have already surrendered."

His face felt as though it were hewn from wood--a strange wood with a
fever in it. He had spoken far beyond his authorization. But they had
to know. They could not be lied to forever. And the lies had always,
ultimately, been worthless things. He was so _tired_.

"General, can you tell us _why_?"

The group was white-faced, still. The flash-bulbs had stopped popping.
The first impulse to bolt the General's office for the nearest bank of
press telephones had somehow died even as it had arisen. Belief and
disbelief mingled as one in the eyes of each.

"I'll try gentlemen," Taylor said wearily, leaning across the desk,
his knuckles white against the smooth surface. "I could talk about our
stressing of cultural advancement in this 21st century, rather than
technological ... a trend that has always made us of the military
fearful of the future--now at hand--but what's the use of rehashing
problems of the past.... Plainly and simply, gentlemen, the Invader is
superior to us in every phase of known warfare. Add to that the element
of a surprise attack and you find us as we are at this moment--beaten,
irreparably."

No one said anything. There was nothing to say.

General Taylor sank into his chair and stared at them, a grim
hopelessness in his eyes.

Then the newsmen walked from the room. Slowly and silently.

       *       *       *       *       *

Robert Manning, civilian Pentagon clerk, told himself that the Invaders
might better kill everybody off and get it over with than to just
regiment the hell out of everything. A man couldn't even stay home so
his wife could take care of his cold for him.

He sneezed. If allowed to live it, there were perhaps forty years of
life yet for him. Forty years, and they would be slave years. It was
all too damned new and just hadn't got through to him yet. What in
God's name was it going to be _like_....

There was a sickness in his stomach, and he knew it was not from his
cold.

"Manning--"

He looked up. It was Sweeney, the chief clerk. Manning always thought
of him as a man who should've been a first-sergeant somewhere. He was
big enough and loud enough, and certainly had temper enough.

"Yes, Mr. Sweeney?"

"Need these damn records right away. They all here? Each reel
double-wound with positive and negative both?"

"Yes, sir." Sweeney picked up the bundlesome stack of microfilm reels.
"Mr. Sweeney--"

"What is it?"

"Are--are _They_ going to get 'em? All of Earth's Space outpost and
military records--_every_thing?"

"After the Joint Chiefs make out emergency recall orders for every
last damn unit, they are. They will check each set of orders against
every unit record here, all the way from Corps down to each individual
ship." Sweeney grunted. "Then they'll burn 'em, positives, negatives,
everything ... then when the ships come in, they will destroy them too."

Manning felt something turn over inside him. "General Taylor,--"

"What the hell can Taylor do? Christ, you're better off than he is.
Once every ship is back here and busted up, he won't even have a job.
Maybe not even a head."

"Every ship. They're all there, Mr. Sweeney. Positives and negatives
double-wound on every reel."

"They better be. Or _you_ won't have a damn head!"

Sweeney turned and steamrollered out of the office, with every existing
record past and present of General Taylor's New U. N. World Space Force
under one beefy arm. For security reasons, Manning realized, there had
been made but a single copy and negative for each of its units.

His desk was an old one, practically an antique dating back to the
1940's, and his sonotyper was buried deep in its insides on a wooden
shelf that folded out to meet you in an awkward manner when you pushed
the desk-top up, over and down.

Manning pushed, and with a couple of bronchial grunts produced the
sonotyper. He fed in a continuous paper spool, turned on the current,
unhooked the compact microphone from the machine's side, and began
dictating the rest of his day's work.

Something got kicked viciously out of the key-bed. Black, shiny squares
of something. All he needed was for the sonotyper to go haywire and
start shooting its complex insides all over.

He stopped dictating to remove his glasses and dry his streaming eyes.
His vision cleared, and for an instant settled on the shiny things
that had landed near the front edge of his desk.

Hunks of microfilm.

He picked them up, held one to the light. Words. He fished in a drawer,
found a magnifying glass that was used for half-obliterated old files.

He could see the words better, but they were backwards. He had the
negative. Impatiently, he grabbed the other square. And read it.

And shivered. And again, it wasn't his cold that was bothering him. He
would have to call Sweeney right away--

... _Light Space Brigade, Experimental. Temporary outpost, Callisto.
Force: 20 Lancer-type J-88 destroyers. Complement: 600. Commanding:
Col. Geofferey Steele_--

He felt his insides turning to cold jelly. He would have to call
Sweeney. God! Sweeney would skin him alive. Somehow, the tail ends
of one of the double-wound reels must have stuck out a little, got
sliced neatly off when he'd hastily jammed its pan-cover back on after
inspecting it. Then the severed squares of microfilm had slipped down,
unnoticed, through one of the desk-top cracks where the sonotyper
fold-away unit was. And landed in the key-bed. Only Sweeney wouldn't
understand it that way. And the Joint Chiefs--

Oh God no!

He had to think.

And he thought of that other name. On the microfilm record--Steele, it
was, who commanded 600 men, twenty J-88s....

He thought of forty years of slavery.

And then he was doing a crazy thing--crazy--

While no one looked, Robert Manning sneezed and blew his nose and
touched the flame of his cigarette lighter to the two squares of
microfilm.

       *       *       *       *       *

The white-faced communications sergeant stood just inside the door, and
this time he failed to be impressed with the unusual smartness of the
Colonel's acknowledging salute. The thick sheaf of yellow papers he
held in his left hand was trembling visibly, noisily, and he couldn't
make it stop.

"Well, Grady, what is it? You look as though you'd picked up a telepath
message from one of our Callistan cap-crawlers, or something--"
He reached out for the quaking message the sergeant held, and the
communications man smiled nervously and held it out to him.

"Sorry, sir. I--I guess I just--"

"No trouble, boy?" The stocky black-and-silver uniformed figure
paused in its movement, the thick pile of yellow papers momentarily
forgotten. All of Steele's personnel seemed like sons to him. Even the
raw recruits who had previously never been further out than Earth's
own Moon. Sometimes, during the lonely hours there had been in the
fastnesses of Space, he had surmised it was because there had never
been a real son of his own with whom to share the adventures of his
calling.

But hadn't it been Space itself that had denied him those many things
other men could take for granted--the things for which he had never
quite been able to trade? Forty years of it. Venus to Pluto. Deep Space
at the System's rim and beyond, to the very edge of Infinity itself.

Sometimes this deep hurt within him seemed too great. And yet, somehow,
it seemed always worth the venture. One day, no matter the cost or the
hurt, men's outposts would be flung to the stars themselves. This thing
he knew.

The sergeant was speaking, and there was a fear in his eyes.

"Something's--happened, home, sir. You'd better read this right away.
All the way to the very end, sir."

Steele ran a freckled, stub-fingered hand slowly and deliberately along
the close-cropped iron-gray side of his squarish skull.

_Attention all stations, the message read. URGENT IMPERATIVE. Earth
has been successfully invaded. The rapidity, timing, and infallibility
of the attack has made the necessity of immediate capitulation
unquestionable. The following-listed units are therefore commanded, for
the good of the planet, to return to home Earth bases at once, with
all armament either completely dismantled or destroyed. The conquerors
have warned that failure to comply with this command will result in
wholesale liquidation of Earth's populace._

The long list of outposts followed for fifteen closely-spaced pages.
The message was signed _Taylor, General, New United Nations World Space
Force, Commanding_.

Steele suddenly felt himself struggling to keep order for full-scale
attack bottled in his throat.

Then he fought to keep from simply cursing.

He fought to keep the hot, quick panic in him from boiling into some
unthinkable suicide.

The sergeant still stood before him, the thing of awful fear deep in
his eyes.

"Get Major Zukow at once, sergeant."

"Yes, sir. But sir--"

"What is it?" His jaws hurt, and he could feel the words hissing from
between his teeth.

"The list, sir. We're the smallest and newest unit there is, so we'd
lie right at the bottom, page fifteen. But we're not there. We're not
listed at all, sir."

He looked. Grady was right. And OK'd and signed by Taylor himself, no
mistaking that.

"Get Major Zukow, sergeant. On the double!"

"Yes, sir!" The communications non-com stumbled awkardly;
acclimatization to lesser gravities came quickly only with long
experience. He recovered, and then in a curious loping fashion began to
run.

       *       *       *       *       *

For terse seconds Steele spoke clipped words into a unit-communicator.
And then he waited for Zukow.

It would be a moment, or so yet. He looked at the message again,
re-read it, tried to glean information from it that it didn't contain.
It told what, but it didn't tell _why_. Nor even how. It was just
a command, to be obeyed like any other command. No, it wasn't the
soldier's place to question. Never the soldier's place to question.

Here is an ideal, they would say. Here is the thing you must work
or fight for. Here is what is worth believing in. And the soldier
believed. If he did not he was fortunate, for then he just had a job
to do. But if he believed, he was the most hapless creature in the
Universe. For sooner or later, the ideal wore thin as a facade for the
more practical expediencies which moved behind it. What true ideal
there was with the soldier, yet his was not the freedom to serve it....
And when the ideal was suddenly scrapped; when they said now, now it
is all over, now this is what you must do--here is a new thing to
believe....

_Forty years, from the bogs of Venus to the wastes of Pluto_....

He looked again at the list headed _ALL UNITS_: and checked them, one
by one.

Grady had been right. Experimental simply wasn't there. Maybe an
experimental Light Space Brigade on a dark little world like Callisto
could get lost in the shuffle.

But he knew better. With Earth at stake, Taylor would allow no such
error. Taylor knew every one of his units by heart, he must....

He thought about Taylor. He thought about him the way he had known him
as both soldier and individual, as general and as a man. Character.
Principle. Guts. The three biggest things about Taylor. A man who
followed orders to the letter--a man who would surrender of his own
volition, no matter what price to pay the piper ... that was where the
principle came in; the character, the guts.

He looked at Taylor's facsimile-signature again. Signed by force? By
threat? Obviously. The message itself said as much. But if somehow
there'd been a mistake, a record overlooked, Taylor would know, and
would--

_But who else would know? At a glance, who else would know? And then
how much would Taylor dare?_

For one of the rare times in his life, Steele was frightened to his
core.

"Colonel Steele, sir!" Major Zukow snapped a perfunctory salute,
put himself at rest and lowered his towering square-cut body into a
laxerchair. The healthy pink in his broad face and the purposefulness
in the set of his clean-cut features made him look younger than he
was, and the close-cropped black hair was like an added insigne of his
profession to his perfectly-fitted uniform.

"You'd better take a look at this, Georgi. And then we've got to get
things moving." Steele handed the order across his desk.

He waited while Zukow read. He watched Zukow's face. It seemed to
gradually coagulate.

And when he was finished, Steele said, "Now find us on there!"

"But I don't--anything else, any other details? Is this--?"

"It's as true as the leaves on your shoulders, Major. And that's all
there is, so far. Grady will be in with anything else when and if it
should come. Well? What are you thinking?"

"Thinking? If this damned thing isn't some criminal joke, there's no
thinking to it, Colonel. We just _go_, period. I'll get--"

"Just a minute. Did you try to find us on there? What do you make of
that?"

"A mistake. Some clerical mistake, that's all. What else could be made
of it? On an order like this?"

Steele shifted in his swivel-seat, and a neglected spring squawked its
protest. "Suppose," he began slowly, "it was a mistake, Major. But
Taylor put his name to it anyway, just the way it is. Now, do you think
he'd be _likely_ to miss such an error?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Zukow hesitated, a scowl corrugating his wide forehead. "No I don't
think so, but whether he was likely to or not hasn't anything to do
with it. The mistake was made--he didn't catch it, but he signed it,
sent it, and it means us like all the rest of 'em, period!"

"I think he caught it, Major."

"What do you--"

"I mean just that. He caught it. _And still signed it!_"

"Colonel, don't be crazy! With a gun in his back--"

"Just the point. The people holding the gun would of course have
grabbed the records as a check against Taylor's written command.
It's the only way they'd have of knowing what was what. They'd do
all they could to make sure they were given the complete works, of
course, but ultimately, they'd have to trust Taylor--trust his fear of
their terrible power and staggering advantage. Only--let's say there
_was_ a mistake. One way for it to be caught. Taylor--he'd know at a
glance--the one man who would. And he still signed it!"

"Nuts, Colonel, nuts! What you are suggesting is absolute nonsense.
With the lives of billions of people in the balance, you mean he'd--"

"Leave it up to us."

"With only twenty J-88s? With a planetful of people in the balance.
Sir, do you think Taylor's a lunatic or something?"

Steele groped for an answer that would take the cold logic out of
Zukow's questions. The exec had to be wrong. There must be an answer.

"Zukow," he heard himself saying at last, "there were only three of
our craft out today--all behind the Big Boy, and I've ordered them
in--damped, and clammed up. I've grounded the rest. And if we don't get
anything from communications within the next couple of hours, like a
Notification of Error and Correction--"

"You must be out of your head, Colonel." Zukow stood up, towered over
the big desk. Veins in his wide forehead stood out redly, accentuating
the growing color in his stiffened face. "In a couple of hours we go
into eclipse! Not for long, but while we are, we won't be _able_ to
pick up anything. Suppose _then_ the notification comes? While we're
working out some crazy plan still thinking Taylor was trying to pull a
cute one? Do you think we can take a gamble like that? Do you think we
have the _right_ to take a gamble like that?"

"As it is," Steele replied slowly, "our people are to be slaves. For
all we know, forever."

"A little dramatic, aren't you?"

"Would you call it a situation to be taken lightly?"

The other straightened, said nothing.

"Major, Taylor was taking a shot in the dark. We're a fantastically
slim hope--but we're the _only_ one he's got!"

"And I think that right now you are a greater enemy to Earth than all
her Invaders!"

"'Liberty or death,' Major, that's what Taylor was saying to us when
he knowingly put his signature to a fluke error!"

"Oh for God's sake Colonel, come off it! It sounds just jim-dandy but
you haven't even got a plan! Infinity to zero, those are your odds! And
if I thought you were seriously considering _not_ going in. I'd--"

"Yes, Major, you'd what?"

The door opened. It was Grady. There was a communication folder in his
hand.

Silently, Steele took the folder. There was an expectant look on
Zukow's flushed face as his superior read the brief message. Then
Steele looked up.

"No," he said. "It's not a Notification of Error and Correction. Simply
a follow-up directive ordering all recalled craft to navigate the
final ten thousand miles of their Earth-approaches in intervals of not
less than twenty minutes each. Seems the Invaders have their entire
headquarters and supply set-up in a mother-ship circling Earth--and
they aren't taking any chances."

"Under these conditions, then--"

"As far as we are concerned, Major, the conditions are the same!"

For a moment Zukow stood immobile, his dark eyes snapping down to lock
with Steele's. But the colonel's did not flinch. And then the Major
pivoted, and left Steele suddenly alone in the small office.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had hardly completed the all-units bulletin when the call-buzzer
from Operations sounded. Within the next hour his six hundred men, his
twenty small J-88 Lancers would be loaded to the fins with all the arms
they could carry, and then....

Fleetingly, the thought nagged at him. Was Zukow a coward--or right?
Twenty tiny J-88s balanced against the lives of four billion people....
Yet there would be surprise, and the over-confidence of a powerful
victor after an easy conquest. And more, there would be the will of a
small band of men.

He flipped up the buzzer-switch, and the Operations lieutenant appeared
on his small desk viewer.

"Yes, lieutenant? Did your group have some difficulty in understanding
my bulletin?"

"No, sir. We're getting things Space-shape at our end right now. But,
sir--you said that twenty craft were to be prepared."

"Yes that's correct. All of them."

"But there will be only nineteen, sir. Major Zukow blasted off nearly
a half-hour before your announcement, in a completely unarmed J-88
and--he said--on your authorization."

For a moment Steele said nothing. His mind seethed, yet he understood.

"Very well, lieutenant. You will stand by for a second bulletin."

The young officer's face faded from the screen, and Steele tried to
think. Obvious, of course, but he wondered how much Zukow could be
blamed. A frightened man. A coward, perhaps, doing what he thought was
right.

But it was _not_ right!

And they must now act swiftly. For if the enemy were warned in
sufficient time....

Infinity to zero, Zukow had said, were his odds. Perhaps.

But there would be nineteen J-88s, armed to the fins....

       *       *       *       *       *

They had kept Zukow waiting three hours after he landed. He had
immediately been placed under guard upon setting the unarmed Lancer
down at National Spaceport, and they had not believed him until his
shouts of protest had been overheard by one of their officers. It had
almost been for nothing--

But now they were taking him to the Pentagon; into Taylor's own suite
of offices.

And Taylor was there. A different-looking Taylor than Zukow
remembered--no longer the bulky, solid-looking figure. Wan, drawn, as
were those few of his staff working with him under the orders of the
alien commander.

It was the alien who spoke. Taylor sat white and silent.

"My officers inform me that you have attempted to convince them of an
impossible story, Earthman," he said. He was man-like, only taller. His
head was bald and like a fleshless skull, and there was the glitter of
a strong intelligence behind the widely-spaced double-lidded red eyes.

And Zukow repeated his story. Shamefully, fearfully, he told it. And
as he did, new color flushed Taylor's lined face, then subsided to the
whiteness of helpless anger.

"Your story will be checked carefully," the alien commander said in a
slurred, yet fluent English. "If it is true--"

And that was all he said. There was a sudden flurry of movement, and
General Taylor had wrested a weapon from the alien's belt. He squeezed
its trigger in quick, desperate spasms, squeezed, squeezed....

Zukow lay headless on the floor. Zukow--the alien commander, and his
guards.

"Hide them! We've got to hide them!" Taylor was yelling at his
paralyzed aides. "If Steele can pull it off--can wreck that hellish
mother-ship of theirs, they'll be cut off down here--done for! Come on
for God's sake help me!"

They sprang into action then.

And with the weapons from the slain aliens, waited silently behind the
bolted office door.

Taylor's wasted frame was tensed. Minutes ... hours ... or death in
seconds, perhaps. They could only wait.

       *       *       *       *       *

They came out of the Sun.

Nineteen flat, finned, stream-lined shapes, orange flame gouting from
them as from the lips of Hell itself, hurtling headlong with some
terrible vengeance glowing in their overheated tubes.

Then Space was suddenly gaping holes of searing color, bursting
soundlessly as the nineteen became seventeen, fourteen, twelve.

The twelve became ten, and it was as though the bowels of the Sun
itself had erupted to the right and to the left of them, and everywhere
before and behind them.

Eight of them completed the first pass, and already there were yawning
holes in the gleaming hide of their enemy.

They turned, came on again. Their torpedo-tubes sparkled, and five full
salvos struck. The alien mother-ship spilled white flame from a gaping
rupture in her flank, and three ships were left to close a second time.

Then two flat, finned, stream-lined shapes did not pull from their
pass. They hurtled, instead, headlong into the wounded juggernaut's
very heart.

Drunkenly, and with almost deliberate slowness, it split in two, a
slain thing, spewing its broken structure and shattered creatures with
crazy abandon toward the great blue seas of Earth beneath.

One now there was, its flag-ship insigne half-scorched from its
twisted, battered hull. Yet it hurtled through the blackness of Space
toward the planet below it, the flush of victory shimmering in its
overheated tubes.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was little to be said. General Taylor stood at the side of the
white hospital bed, and Colonel Geofferey Steele, his head swathed in
bandages, looked questioningly up at him.

"General, did Major Zukow--"

Taylor's mouth was grim. "He reached us--and the aliens. But we ...
managed to take care of the situation ... to give you time." The
General's features softened. "You and your crew--a magnificent job.
Earth is proud--"

"We were lucky, sir," Steele attempted a grin. "Tried hard not to make
any mistakes...."

Taylor smiled then, his laughter an emotional release they had both
been seeking. "I--occasionally overlook mistakes!" he said.

And then the two men laughed together. For a long time.

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