Cities in Flight

“Make camp,” the King was saying. “We’ll be here for a while. Dammit, you guys at the base are still creeping on us a little. We’re going to have to stop here—can’t I pound that into your heads?”

“We’re decelerating in good order, Buda-Pesht. It’s the new city, the big job, that’s creeping. He’s in some kind of trouble, looks like.”

From the drone, the diagnosis seemed accurate. The enormous spherical object had separated markedly from the main body of the jungle, and was now well ahead of the trailing edge of the cone. The whole sphere was wobbling a little as it moved, and every so often it would go dim as if under unexpected and uncontrollable polarization.

“Call him and ask if he needs help. The rest of you, take up orbits.”

Amalfi barked, “O’Brian—time!”

“Course time, sir.”

“How do I know when this space stick comes alive again?”

“It’s alive now, Mr. Mayor,” the pilot said. “The City Fathers cut out as soon as you touch it. You’ll get a warning buzzer five seconds before our deceleration starts into the deep part of its curve, and then a beep every half second after that to the second inflection point. At the last beep, it’s all yours, for about the next two and a half seconds. Then the stick will go dead and the City Fathers will be back in control.”

Click.

“Admiral MacMillan, what action do you plan to take now—if any?”

Amalfi took an instant dislike to the new voice on the Dirac. It was flat, twangy, and as devoid as a vodeur of emotion, except perhaps for a certain self-righteousness tinged with Angst . Amalfi decided at once that in a face-to-face meeting the speaker would always look somewhere else than into the face of the man to whom he was speaking. The owner of that voice could not possibly be anywhere on the surface of the Earth, looking aloft for besiegers or going doggedly about his business; he was instead almost surely crouched in some subcellar.

“None, sir, at the moment,” said the cops’ Command HQ. “They’ve stopped, and appear to be willing to listen to reason. I have assigned Commander Eisenstein to cover their camp against any possible disturbance.”

“Admiral, these cities have broken the law. They’re here in defiance of our approach limits, and the very size of their gathering is illegal. Are you aware of that?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Command HQ said respectfully. “If you wish me to order individual arrests—”

“No, no, we can’t jail a whole pack of flying tramps. I want action, Admiral. These people need to be taught a lesson. We can’t have fleets of cities approaching Earth at will—it’s a bad precedent. It indicates a decline of interstellar morality. Unless we return to the virtues of the pioneers, the lights will go out all over Earth, and grass will grow in the space lanes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Command HQ. “Well spoken, if you will permit me to say so. I stand ready for your orders, Mr. President.”

“My orders are to do something. That camp is a festering sore on our heavens. I hold you personally responsible.”

“Yes, sir.” The Admiral’s voice was very crisp. “Commander Eisenstein, proceed with Operation A. Command Eighty-two, red alert; red alert.”

“Command Eighty-two acknowledging red alert.”

“Eisentein calling Command HQ.”

“Command HQ.”

“MacMillan, I’m taping my resignation over to you. The President’s instructions don’t specify Operation A. I won’t be responsible for it.”

“Follow orders, Commander,” Command HQ said pleasantly. “I will accept your resignation—when the maneuver is completed.”

The cities hung poised tensely in their orbits. For seconds, nothing happened.

Then pear-shaped, bumpy police battleships began springing out of nothingness around the jungle. Almost instantly, four cities raved into boiling clouds of gas.

The Dinwiddie pickup in the proxy backed itself hurriedly down the intensity scale until it could see again through the glare. The cities were still hanging there, seemingly stunned—as was Amalfi, for he had not imagined that Earth could have come to such a pass. Only an ideal combination of guilt and savagery could have produced so murderous a response; but evidently the president and MacMillan made up between them the necessary combination …

Click.

“Fight!” the King’s voice roared. “Fight, you lunkheads! They’re going to wipe us out! Fight!”

Another city went up. The cops were using Bethe blasters; the Dinwiddie circuit, stopped down to accommodate the hydrogen-helium explosions, could not pick up the pale guide beams of the weapons; it would have been decidedly difficult to follow the King’s order effectively.

But the city of Buda-Pesht was already sweeping forward out of the head of the cone, arcing toward Earth. It spat murder back at the police ships, and actually caught one. The mass of incandescent, melting metal appeared as a dim blob in Amalfi’s helmet, then faded out again. A few cities followed the King; then a larger number; and then, suddenly, a great wave.

Click.

“MacMillan, stop them! I’ll have you shot! They’re going to invade—”

New police craft sprang into being every second. A haze gradually began to define the area of the Okie encampment: a planetary nebula of gas molecules, dust, and condensations of metal and water vapor. Through it the Bethe guide beams played, just on the edge of visibility now, but the sun, too, was acting on the cloud, and the whole mass was beginning to re-radiate, casting a deepening luminous veil over the whole scene, about which the Dinwiddie circuit could do very little. The whole spectacle reminded Amalfi of NGC 1435 in Taurus, with exploding cities substituting novas for the Pleiades.

But there were more novas than the cities could account for, novas outside the cone of the encampment. The police craft, Amalfi noted with amazement, were beginning to burst almost as fast as they appeared. The swarming, disorganized cities were fighting back; but their inherent inefficiency as fighting machines ruled them out as the prime causes of such heavy police losses. Something else, something new was happening—something utterly deadly was loose among the cops …

“Command Eighty-two, Operation A sub a—on the double!”

A police monitor blew up with an impossible, soundless flare.

The cities were winning. Any police battleship could handle any three cities without even beginning to breathe hard, and there had been at least five battleships per city when the pogrom had started. The cities hadn’t had a chance.

Yet they were winning. They streamed on toward Earth, boiling with rage, and the police ships, with their utterly deadly weapons, exploded all over the sky like milkweed.

And, a little bit ahead of the maddened cities, an enormous silver sphere wallowed toward Earth, apparently out of control.

Amalfi could now see Earth herself as the tiniest of blue-green dots. He did not try to see it any better, though it was growing to a disc with fantastic speed. He did not want to see it. His eyes were already fogged enough with sentimental tears at the sight of the home sun.

But his eyes kept coming back to it. At its pole he caught the shine of ice …

… beep …

The sound shocked him. The buzzer had already sounded, without his having heard it. The city would cross the solar system within the next two and a half seconds— or less, for he had no idea how many beeps had probed at his ears without response during his hypnotic struggle with the blue-green planet.

He could only guess, with the fullest impact of his intuition, that now was the time …

Click.

“PEOPLE OF EARTH. US THE CITY OF SPACES CALLS UPON YOU …”

He moved the space stick out and back in a flat loop about three millimeters long. The City Fathers instantly snatched the stick out of his hand. Earth vanished. So did Earth’s sun. Hern VI began to accelerate rapidly,