Time Will Run Back

Chapter 31

AS the car got toward the outskirts of the city its speed rose to XJ L sixty-five miles an hour—to seventy—to eighty-five. They were now in fairly open country.

“Where are we heading?” asked Peter. Adams pointed meaningfully to the corporal, and then spoke to him:

“Listen, soldier, you have been taking part in a revolt. We could shoot you now and throw out your body. Or we could throw you out alive at this speed—”

“Oh, let’s stop and let him out here,” said Peter.

“They’d kill me for having fallen into this trap,” said the corporal. “I’m lucky if that’s the worst they do. If they don’t even know what’s happened to me, they may assume I’ve been shot and at least let my family alone.”

“Do you want to stay with us?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He had apparently just recognized Peter.

“It’s ‘Your Supremacy’ now,” said Adams.

“No, no,” said Peter. “Your Highness’ is as high as I care to go.”

He turned again to the corporal. “Can we trust you?”

The corporal nodded.

Adams shook his head. “I think we’d better put him on probation for a while.”

They bound his hands and feet and sat him between them.

“Where are we heading?” asked Peter again.

“For the airfield,” said Adams.

“Why?”

“It’s our only chance. You’re head of the Air Force. They’re loyal—I hope.”

They sped along, the speedometer wavering around ninety. The car lurched and pitched crazily.

Peter felt sick and heavy. He had shot a man. Killed him. Self-defense—the only way to save his own life—to save Won-world. But he had killed. And he had also killed something in himself. “Means determine ends,” he had said repeatedly to Adams; “means determine ends.” A society founded on horrible means would be a horrible society. Had he been right? Of course. But suppose there were no choice of means? Reason? Moral suasion? Reason with Bolshekov? At that moment? Preposterous! But how about Peter himself? He had solved a problem with murder. Would he try to solve his other problems with murders? Wasn’t it precisely this choice of means that had already made the end-result in Won world so horrible?...

The airfield came in sight. Two sentries blockaded the road. Peter asked for the commandant.

Colonel Torganev welcomed them with the greatest warmth. “We heard the broadcast, Your Supremacy. You are the legitimate successor of Stalenin the First. The Air Force is completely loyal. We are at your absolute disposal.”

Peter thanked him. “What can we do?” he asked.

“I don’t know how long we could hold this field against the Army,” said Torganev. “I don’t know how long any field around here could be held. So far as we can learn, the Army is completely under the thumb of Bolshekov.”

“So?” asked Adams.

“My advice would be, Your Supremacy, to order every member of the Air Force to his respective field, including every officer, every conscript, every mechanic.”

“And then what?” Peter asked.

“All would be ready to flee Russia the moment the field became untenable.”

“And go where?”

“To the Polish province. Three-fourths of the Wonworld Army is based in Russia and three-fourths consists of Russians.” “What would we do in the Polish province?” “We would see when we got there. First of all, we must be out of reach of the Bolshekovites.”

Peter issued the orders. They were telephoned, telegraphed and flown. He extended Torganev’s idea and invited every worker in an airplane or motor factory to the airfields. Every field was to load each plane with all the personnel, bombs, gasoline and other supplies that it could hold. Each plane was to take off, the moment it was filled, for its assigned airfield to the west.

There were not nearly enough fields in the Polish provinces to hold the planes from Russia. Many planes had to be assigned destinations in the Czech, German, and Balkan provinces.

The Air Force at the Moscow field held out for nearly three days, drawing in men, with supplies, who shot their way into and out of Moscow. Adams himself, without consulting Peter or Torganev, took a jeep with two machine gunners into the heart of Moscow in the dead of night and safely pulled out Baronio and Patelli. “We’ll need their brains,” he explained.

Peter envied him. He would have risked anything to find Edith and her father and bring them with him. But he did not know where to go; he did not know whether they were still in the Moscow district; he did not even know whether they were still alive. Action at any risk was better than this frustration.

At the end of the third day Bolshekov’s men had the Moscow airfield surrounded. They began closing in. The field was running out of ammunition. Peter found they had all the men and supplies they could lift.

He gave the order to leave.

The bomber carrying Torganev, Adams and Peter landed at the Warsaw airport.

The commandant was friendly and loyal. Nearly all the planes, Peter learned, had received friendly welcomes from the air personnel at the fields on which they had landed. But the commandant at the Warsaw airfield warned him that there were still enough army troops nearby to make the field’s position untenable, and that in any case Bolshekov would order his army westward till it caught up with them.

For the next few months Peter’s forces could do nothing but retreat. From each airfield they would pick up all the additional planes, personnel, bombs and equipment they could carry, and fly further west—to French, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish airfields. The task of finding enough fields became increasingly urgent.

Bolshekov’s army rolled slowly but steadily westward, filling up the Balkan, Polish and German provinces, recruiting new men, consolidating its positions.

“Why not bomb Bolshekov’s territory?” suggested Adams. “To what purpose?” answered Peter. “We would only earn hatred. We could never land and take over.” So they bombed and machine-gunned only the concentrations of Bolshekov’s men that tried to move in on the airfields.

Torganev warned that the Air Force could not hold out on the continent. “Perhaps we can hold the British Isles,” he suggested. “The Channel should make it possible.” But their advance planes found there only about a fourth of the number of airfields needed to hold the Force.

“We have only one permanent hope,” said Adams. “The Western Hemisphere.”

Torganev conceded that even the British Isles could afford, at best, only a temporary base. The Air Force and the islands themselves would be dependent on the outside for food and supplies—and Bolshekov had control of the Navy and the merchant marine. It would be futile for the Air Force to bomb the continent if it could not land. Bolshekov would in time build up another air force of his own. Space and industrial capacity were necessary to maintain and expand Peter’s air force. And the only counterweight to Bolshekov’s army would have to be a bigger and better army.

Peter’s side needed space. It needed a continent. And if Peter didn’t soon establish himself on the Western Hemisphere, Bolshekov would.

Peter yielded to the argument.

They prepared to move three-quarters of the Air Force to the Americas. But only their long-range bombers were capable of making the trip. The planes still remaining on the Continent were to stay as long as they could hold out without seizure, and then crowd themselves up in the British Isles. The only long-run solution, they decided, was to have the long-range bombers make continuous back and forth trips until they had transported the whole Air Force personnel and supplies to the Americas.

Peter sent a few advance long-range bombers to the American provinces to find out how they were received.

The advance groups were not only welcomed; they were virtually embraced.

The intelligence reports that came back explained this reception on several grounds. There was practically no army whatever in the Western Hemisphere, except for a token force here and there consisting of American privates but commanded mainly by Russian officers. This arrangement had always been resented. Though no one had been allowed to say so openly, and though every effort had been made to expunge the historical record, the Americans felt that they were still being treated as a conquered people. They felt that they were still being drained by taxes to support the luxurious public buildings of Moscow. Though everyone had now spoken only Marxanto for generations, the Americans could still recognize and resent a Russian accent. They feared Russia. They feared Bolshekov. Peter’s introduction of a system of free exchange of consumption goods had given them their first taste of what economic liberty might be like. Though Peter was a Russian, he was now “fighting Russia.” And the fact that Adams was an American was found to be an additional reason why the Americans tended to align themselves on Peter’s side.

Peter was surprised to learn of these signs of sectional feeling. They marred what he had been taught to regard as the wonderful unity of Wonworld. But as American sectional prejudice was on his side, he was happy to take full advantage of it.

When he landed in New York he got a tremendous ovation. People lined the sidewalks throughout his route. Along Fifth Avenue a sea of faces looked out of windows; thousands of arms waved handkerchiefs. Peter found himself in a snowstorm of confetti and shredded newspapers.

It was his greatest day of personal triumph. It was the end of his retreat. From here he could organize a counterforce, and shape a world to his new ideals.

It could stand a little shaping. The greater part of Moscow was a slum, but it was relieved by a few decent public buildings. But judging from the squalor of Fifth Avenue, New York must be all slum.

Could it be true, as the histories said, that this city had once been the metropolis of capitalism?