Empire - free ebook by Clifford D. Simak

EMPIRE

A Powerful Novel of Intrigue and Action in the Not-So-Distant Future A Complete ORIGINAL Book , UNABRIDGED WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. 105 WEST 40 th STREET NEW YORK 18, NEW YORK Copyright 1951 by WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A....

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CHAPTER ONE

Spencer Chambers frowned at the spacegram on the desk before him. John Moore Mallory. That was the man who had caused so much trouble in the Jovian elections. The troublemaker who had shouted for an investigation of Interplanetary Power. The man who had said that Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging economic war against the people of the Solar System. Chambers smiled. With long, well-kept fingers, he rubbed his iron-gray mustache. John Moore Mallory was right; for that reason, h

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CHAPTER TWO

Russell Page squinted thoughtful eyes at the thing he had created—a transparent cloud, a visible, sharply outlined cloud of something . It was visible as a piece of glass is visible, as a globe of water is visible. There it lay, within his apparatus, a thing that shouldn't be. "I believe we have something there, Harry," he said slowly. Harry Wilson sucked at the cigarette that drooped from the corner of his mouth, blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. His eyes twitched nervously. "Yeah,"

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CHAPTER THREE

Russ hunched over the keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, finally, they held in their grasp the key to the release of energy that would give the System power to spare. His glance lifted from the keyboard, looked out the observation port. Through the inkiness of space ran

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CHAPTER FOUR

The new apparatus was set up, a machine that almost filled the laboratory ... a giant, compact mass of heavy, solidly built metal work, tied together by beams of girderlike construction. It was meant to stand up under the hammering of unimaginable power, the stress of unknown spatial factors. Slowly, carefully, Russell Page tapped keys on the control board, setting up an equation. Sucking thoughtfully at his pipe, he checked and rechecked them. Harry Wilson regarded him through squinted eyes. "W

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CHAPTER FIVE

Pine roots burned brightly in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling as the blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, Greg Manning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted his glass, squinting at the flames through the amber drink. "There's something that's been worrying me a little," he said. "I hadn't told you about it because I figured it wasn't as serious as it looked. Maybe it isn't, but it looks funny." "What's that?" asked Russ. "The stock market," replied G

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CHAPTER SIX

"If we can get television reception with this apparatus of ours," asked Greg, "what is to prevent us from televising? Why can't we send as well as receive?" Russ drew doodles on a calculation sheet. "We could. Just something else to work out. You must remember we're working in a four-dimensional medium. That would complicate matters a little. Not like working in three dimensions alone. It would ..." He stopped. The pencil fell from his finger and he swung around slowly to face Manning. "What's t

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Ben Wrail was taking things easy. Stretched out in his chair, with his cigar lit and burning satisfactorily, he listened to a radio program broadcast from Earth. Through the window beside him, he could look out of his skyscraper apartment over the domed city of Ranthoor. Looming in the sky, slightly distorted by the heavy quartz of the distant dome, was massive Jupiter, a scarlet ball tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visi

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CHAPTER EIGHT

A giant cylindrical hull of finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in the screen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster cross beams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted the scene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing the scurrying workmen who swarmed over it. "She's a beauty," said Russ, puffing at his pipe. Greg nodded agreement. "They're working on her day and night to get her finished. We may need it some day and need it in a hurry. If

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CHAPTER NINE

Ludwig Stutsman pressed his thin, straight lips together. "So that's the setup," he said. Across the desk Spencer Chambers studied the man. Stutsman was like a wolf, lean and cruel and vicious. He even looked like a wolf, with his long, thin face, his small, beady eyes, the thin, bloodless lips. But he was the kind of man who didn't always wait for instructions, but went ahead and used his own judgment. And in a ruthless sort of way, his judgment was always right. "Only as a last resort," cautio

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CHAPTER TEN

"One of us will have to watch all the time," Greg told Russ. "We can't take any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and we have to be ready for him." He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning beside the bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles of the laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed. The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger ship spearing down toward the airport south of them. "With the port

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Paris-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic ship that rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lights of eastern Europe. Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. There was nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and the other occupants of the ship ... alone in the dark world that surrounded them. But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides the pilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Scorio snarled at the four men: "I want you to get the thing done right. I don't want bungling. Understand?" The bulky, flat-faced man with the scar across his cheek shuffled uneasily. "We went over it a dozen times. We know just what to do." He grinned at Scorio, but the grin was lopsided, more like a sneering grimace. At one time the man had failed to side-step a heat ray and it had left a neat red line drawn across the right cheek, nipped the end of the ear. "All right, Pete," said Scorio, gl

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy. "It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!" Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth. "Do something!" screame

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Invincible hung in space, an empty, airless hull, the largest thing afloat. Chartered freighters, leaving their ports from distant parts of the Earth, had converged upon her hours before, had unloaded crated apparatus, storing it in the yawning hull. Then they had departed. Now the sturdy little space-yacht, Comet , was towing the great ship out into space, 500,000 miles beyond the orbit of the Moon. Slowly the hull was being taken farther and farther away from possible discovery. Work on th

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

John Moore Mallory sat on the single metal chair within his cell and pressed his face against the tiny vision port. For hours he had sat there, staring out into the blackness of space. There was bitterness in John Moore Mallory's soul, a terrible and futile bitterness. So long as he had remained within the Ranthoor prison, there had always been a chance of escape. But now, aboard the penal ship, there was no hope. Nothing but the taunting reaches of space, the mocking pinpoints of the stars, the

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A miracle came to pass in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had been abandoned suddenly appeared within the city's streets. But he appeared to be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of a man. He was pale, like a wraith from out of space, and one could see straight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms and tricks. In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread ... the spirit of John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulke

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was a weird revolution. There were few battles, little blood shed. There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, no passwords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion against tyranny. It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police were helpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and the troopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest were shadows that flitter here and there ... large and substantial shadows,

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jupiter and the Jovian worlds leaped suddenly backward, turned swiftly green, then blue, and faded in an instant into violet. The Sun spun crazily through space, retreating, dimming to a tiny ruby-tinted star. The giant generators in the Invincible hummed louder now, continually louder, a steel-throated roar that trembled through every plate, through every girder, through every bit of metal in the ship. The ship itself was plunging spaceward, streaking like a runaway star for the depths of space

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Craven watched the Invincible gather speed and tear swiftly through the black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, either swallowed by the distance or snapping into the strange super-space that existed beyond the speed of light. He turned from the window, chuckling. Stutsman snarled at him: "What's so funny?" The scientist glared at the wolfish face and without speaking, walked to the desk and sat down. He reached for pencil and paper. Chambers walked over to watch him. "You've found s

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CHAPTER TWENTY

The revolution was over. Interplanetary officials and army heads had fled to the sanctuary of Earth. Interplanetary was ended ... ended forever, for on every world, including Earth, material energy engines were humming. The people had power to burn, to throw away, power so cheap that it was practically worthless as a commodity, but invaluable as a way to a new life, a greater life, a fuller life ... a broader destiny for the human race. Interplanetary stocks were worthless. The mighty power plan

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chambers lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair. "I wish you could see it my way, Manning," he said. "There's no place for me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I tried and failed. I'm just a has-been back there." He laughed quietly. "Somehow, I can't imagine myself coming back in the role of the defeated tribal leader, chained to your chariot, so to speak." "But it wouldn't be that way," protested Greg. "Your company is gone, true, and your stocks are worthless, but you

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