The Complete Science Fiction by John Scott Campbell

Author:John Scott Campbell [Campbell, John Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

FOR five minutes the air was filled with bursting shells.

The Zongainian prolo now had a gaping hole torn in her side . . . her drop was becoming more pronounced. Lord Hanavan directed the nose of our tiny ship toward a battleship below and I pushed the firing button. The other was immediately surrounded by a ring of fire and backed away, evidently disabled. But now the ground appeared. Clouds of smoke obscured the view, so we got only an occasional glimpse of Titanic buildings, grotesque twisted masses of wreckage . . . shattered battleships . . .

The Zongainian, her stern dropping lower and lower, struck against a tower. With a roar the mass of masonry fell, and then the prolo giving a last burst of fire fell heavily into the city, leaving a dozen buildings in ruin in her wake. At the same instant there was a blinding flash of light, an ear-splitting concussion, and amid a shower of broken glass and hot metal our little craft fell into the chaos below. With this all consciousness of the battle ceased for me.

My return to the land of the living was preceded by a tortuous succession of nightmares, in which I was pursued across a limitless blue void by a pack of steel monsters with gaping jaws. Flames darted from their mouths and bolts of lightning, like pointing fingers, indicated me to my relentless enemies. After an eternity of mad chase across space, I began to hear a faint pounding, a metallic ringing like a blackamith’s anvil, interposed with heavy dull thumps. Strange odors were wafted to my nostrils and, as if at a great distance, I heard the confused voices of many people. Gradually I became conscious that I was lying on my back on some kind of a couch, and that my limbs and head were curiously numb and heavy feeling. For some time I lay still, not opening my eyes, and trying to remember what had happened last.

The vague meanderings of my mind were suddenly interrupted by footsteps, and a voice near at hand. It spoke in Zongainian.

“Well, how has time treated our six runaways? Have any more died?”

I could not quite catch the answer, but a sudden gripping feeling passed over me. Who had died? Making a desperate effort I opened my eyes, and then commenced to blink them in amazement. For an instant I thought that I was the one who had gone and that I was already in some trans-stellar inferno. I was lying on a narrow cot along with a hundred or more similar beds upon a steel shelf much like the gallery of a theater. Fifty feet overhead a twisted metal roof curved, ending abruptly in a long jagged tear. Out in front of our shelf was an area of crumpled space ships and shattered buildings heaped in an incredible confusion and, as I discovered by hard peering, covered with hundreds of tiny men who were clambering about hauling on ropes, pounding and hammering and operating machines.

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