Wandl the Invader | Page 9

You are to sit with him."
He showed us out and the door slid down before him. We trudged the
corridor, and Snap gripped me.
"For myself," he whispered swiftly, "I'll go to the damnable conclave
because I'm ordered. But I won't stay there long. Once we get out of it,
if I don't route myself back to the Red Spark, I'm a motor-oiler."
I agreed with him. We had a mental picture of Anita and Venza in the
Red Spark's public room. Doubtless Orentino had created a way for
them to meet Molo. They would sit there in the Red Spark with that
drinking party, and in less than an hour we would be back.

But as we crossed diagonally across an end of the main room with
Foley leading us, we caught a glimpse of Molo's table. The party was
still there, but Molo, Anita, and Venza were gone!
We had no time to get any information. Foley abruptly left us and
another man took his place. In the service room a passenger cylinder
was waiting. Our guide entered it with us.
At the switch station we had the breath knocked out of us. After
another ten minutes in the vacuum tube, we reached our unknown
destination. The cylinder-slide opened. We found ourselves with a lone
guard; and through a gloomy arcade opening, Johnny Grantline was
advancing, to greet us.
"Well, so here you are, Gregg. Hell to pay heaven, going on here.
Come on in; I'll tell you."
"We were sent for," Snap said.
"Yes, but they don't want you yet. Come in here."
He waved away the guard and led us through a padded arcade into a
low-vaulted audience room, windowless and gloomy. Across it, a
doorway panel stood ajar. Grantline peered through it. There was the
glow of light from the adjoining room and the distant murmur of many
voices.
Grantline closed the door. "Sit down and I'll tell you...."
"Where are we?" I asked.
"The ninth Conclave Hall."
I knew its location: Lower Manhattan, high under the city roof.
Grantline produced little cigarette cylinders. "Steady your nerves, lads;
you'll need it."
He grinned at us. The hand with which he lighted my cylinder was

steady as a tower-base, but he was excited. I could see it by the glint in
his eyes, and hear it in his voice.
"What's going on?" Snap demanded.
"It's about this invading planet. By the gods, when you hear what's
really been learned about it!"
"Well, what?" I asked.
He sketched what he had heard this night at the conclave. The
mysterious invader was inhabited.
"How do they know that?" Snap put in.
"Wait. I'll tell you the rest of it. The accursed thing changes its orbit. It
banks and turns like a spaceship! It stopped out in space; it's poised out
there now between Mars and Jupiter. A world about a fifth the size of
the Moon, and the beings on it can control its movements. They've
brought it in from interstellar space, into our solar system. Evidently
the point they've reached now is far as they want to come. They've
poised out there, getting ready to attack, not only us, but Mars and
Venus simultaneously."
Grantline gazed at us through the smoke of his cigarette. He was much
like Snap, small, wiry, brisk of movement and manner, but older. His
hair was graying at the temples; his voice carried the authority of one
accustomed to commanding men.
"Don't ask me for the technicalities of how they reached these
conclusions. I'm no astronomer. I'm only telling you their conclusions
and what their discussions have been here for the past hour."
Heaven knows, we had no inclination to dispute him. What we had
seen and heard at the Red Spark tallied with his words.
He went on swiftly, "The attack, of whatever nature it may be, is
impending at once. Not next month, or next week, but now. Lord,

Gregg, I don't blame you for staring like that. You don't know what's
been going on for the past two days on Earth, and Venus and Mars. It's
all been suppressed. Neither did I, until I heard it here tonight. The
U.S.W., the Martian Union, the Venus Free State, are all preparing for
war. Every government spaceship on Earth is being commissioned.
We're not going to sit around and wait for invaders to land; the war
won't be fought on Earth if we can help it."
We stared. Snap asked, "What makes them so sure?"
"That war is coming? Plenty. This new planet has sent out spaceships.
The planet itself is hovering sixty million miles away from us, about
forty million miles from Mars and close to ninety million from Venus.
Perhaps its leaders think that's the most strategic spot.
"Then it sent