Part 1

The Fifty-fourth Of July

By Alan E. Nourse

Matt had to destroy the rocket because it was a symbol of evil that had brought economic disaster. But must he also destroy--the future?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy March 1954 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was well after dark when Matt Matthews got back down to the headquarters camp, and saw the city stranger sitting there before the fire. He knew he was a city man after a single glance at the shiny, low-topped shoes and the reminiscence of a crease in the dusty trousers. Matt tossed the gophers and the two small coyotes off his broad shoulders to old Moe Arhelger, across the campfire, staring in suspicious silence from the stranger to Moe and back again. "Who's he?" he asked finally.

"He wants to go down to the Ship," said Moe, tossing another stick into the fire. He was a thin, wiry old man, with a white rim of beard scraggling over his lean jaw. A short-bit pipe was clenched between a set of very bad teeth. On his head was a torn, filthy old felt hat, but his clear blue eyes held the silent confidence of authority. The old man puffed quietly as he glanced up at the young giant who had just arrived. "His name's Loevy--he says. Flew over from El Paso this morning in a 'copter, just to see me. Even knew my name--"

"Everybody in New Mexico knows your name," Matthews growled.

The old man nodded, his eyes bright. "Mr. Loevy wants to go down to the Ship tonight."

Matt stared at the stranger's half-day stubble. Then he burst out laughing. "That's what we all want to do, buddy. Just go down to the Ship. That's all. Only trouble is, the Bulldog isn't ready to lay out the welcome mat for us just yet." He glanced over at Moe. "Did the doc say anything about Jack Abel?"

"Jack's dead. Three slugs in the head."

Matt's face darkened. He looked up at Loevy. "Jack wanted to go down to the ship, too. Tried to go down quiet-like." He set about skinning the first coyote, tossing the rest of the game to the group of silent men sitting around the fire near Moe. "You're wasting your time, stranger. Stick around a while. Be patient, like us. The Bulldog can't hold out forever."

Loevy ran a hand through his dark hair, watching Matthews with sharp brown eyes. "I wasn't figuring on going down quiet-like," he said.

Matt looked up as though seeing the man for the first time, his eyes dark with suspicion. "Then how _do_ you plan to go?" His hand moved to the gun at his side, and he began massaging the stock with his huge paw.

Loevy glanced at the gun without fear. "Under a truce flag," he said.

Matthews spat. "Old man Gorham has command of four hundred men down at the ship. They'll shoot anybody that comes close on sight." He looked up at Moe, caught the old man's blue eyes sharply. "I don't like this guy, Moe. I think we'd better take care of him."

Moe shook his head. "Take it easy, Matt. The man thinks maybe he can get this siege broken. Thinks Gorham may surrender if he knows what's happened--in Washington, all over the country."

Loevy nodded, bobbing his head eagerly. "I knew Gorham--before the crash. He's an old-guard soldier, he'll honor a truce flag." His voice was crisp in the still night air. "You want to get your hands on that ship--that's all you want, the whole crowd of you out here. Nothing else. So why risk a fight, risk getting killed, if I can get Gorham to surrender to you?"

Matt grinned unpleasantly. "Why do you think they call him the Bulldog? He'll never give up--until we starve him out. We've got the time, and the men, and the food. They can't last much longer--"

Loevy frowned in annoyance. "I say you may not need to wait."

* * * * *

Matthews climbed to his feet and walked slowly over to the edge of the rocks where the camp was situated. It was on the edge of the desert, and down below sand and sage stretched for miles in the pale moonlight. On either side he could see the flicker of the other campfires, forming a huge circle, many miles in diameter. As he stood watching, his ear unconsciously picked up the rustle of silent footsteps on the trail leading to the nearest campfire away--the guard-line which closed the circle tight. But he was not interested in the guard lines tonight. They were well guarded, no one could get through them. There were half a dozen dead soldiers lying out in the desert to attest to that, soldiers who had tried to break through to the main highway during the past three weeks. What held Matt's interest right now was the huge cyclone-fence enclosure in the center of the circle of fires. Inside the fence he could see the low, flat buildings of the Rocket Development Project, and in the moonlight he could make out the lines of the Ship itself, standing tall and lifeless in the darkness. He watched it for a moment, and his fists clenched.

He whirled back to the fire, lifting the city stranger up by the collar, dragging his face up close to his. "Why do you want to go down there?" he snarled.

Loevy's face was purple, and he gasped for breath. "Because there's no point in letting four hundred innocent men be slaughtered when you can have the Ship without firing a gun. That's why!"

"My but we're noble," Matt snapped. "What do you care how many are killed? Who sent you here in the first place? Where did you get a 'copter to fly over here in?"

Loevy shook himself free, glaring up at the giant standing over him. "I stole a 'copter, if you have to know. And nobody sent me--"

"How did you know we were here?"

"Don't be a fool. The whole country knows you're here. Look, all I want is a chance to talk to Gorham under a truce flag for fifteen minutes. If I don't succeed, you don't lose a thing. What harm can it do?"

Moe Arhelger spat into the fire. "Can't do no harm. And it might just break this open for us, once and for all. Then we could go back home."

"But if he's a spy--he could have word from reinforcements. Maybe the Army's planning a march--"

Loevy snorted. "The Army isn't planning anything. The Army is starving to death. The nearest contingent is in San Diego, and they've got their hands full just scouring the countryside for food. They've got no fuel to come here with even if they felt like it--"

Matt scowled. "He could still be a spy."

Moe Arhelger nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing at the city man. Then he looked up at Matt. "I know. That's why I want him to go down to the Ship. With you along with him."

* * * * *

The trip down the mountainside was slow. It was almost a half an hour before they reached the encampment at the bottom, on a gravel road that led straight out to the Rocket site. The road was piled high with rocks, and four men with old felt hats and plaid shirts sat in jeeps, watching the road for a stir of life.

Matt and Loevy commandeered a jeep, bounced down a gulley to by-pass the road block, and started along the road toward the fenced enclosure. A spotlight picked them up almost immediately, and Loevy hoisted a white shirt up on a pole, waving it to catch the light. Then slowly they drove ahead, until two more spotlights flashed on from the ship, scanning the sage on either side of them, flickering in their faces as they made their way along. Loevy sat tight-lipped, peering ahead into the darkness. Matthews drove silently. He had never been this close to Rocket Number Five before, but rockets were an old story to him. He had worked on Number Three and Number Four during his two years in the Labor Force. He knew quite enough about rockets.

More lights went on as they approached the fence. Inside, off to the left and right were buildings, the storerooms and offices of the Project, and in the center, standing tall, with her lower third enshrouded in scaffolding and canvas, stood the ship--

Rocket Number Five. The last attempt, the straw that broke the camel's back. Four great ships before it, crashing into heaps of rubble, dragging the Earth down with them. And here the fifth, as yet unborn, never to be launched. Matthews made a bitter sound in his throat. When he thought of the horrible fifty-four days just past, he knew that his hate for this Rocket ship and everything it stood for was right. Moe was right, in his fanatical burning hatred of the old world which had struggled blindly to launch its ships, and starved itself to do so. But Moe wanted everything--the ships, the men, the government, everything. Matthews only wanted the ship.

He smiled grimly to himself. The garrison could not hold out much longer. They had no food, and the ring of guerillas surrounding the ship like a tight net would see that they got no food. It had been a long wait--but soon they would struggle out, begging for food and water, leaving the ship standing alone--

To be wrecked, and ripped, and torn into a thousand bitter pieces--

A soldier suddenly appeared in a spotlight inside the huge fence gate, rifle half-raised in his hands. He let out a shout and brought the rifle up to his shoulder. "Halt!"

The jeep's tires screeched. Then Loevy raised the flag again and waved it. "Truce," he called out. "We're unarmed."

"What do you want?"

"We want to talk to the Bulldog."

There was a long pause as a conference was held back in the shadows. Someone in the darkness ran out to join the gate guard. Then there was a grating sound as the lock on the gate snapped open. The gate swung out as five more soldiers encircled it from within, rifles cocked and ready. "Leave the jeep outside. Come in with your hands raised."

Slowly Matt and Loevy climbed out and walked forward. The soldiers looked weary, their clothes filthy, their eyes bright with hate. They watched the men as they walked in, and then closed around them, herding them across to a long, low building. Lights went on, and Matt could see the dim interior of a disused day room, the walls piled high with supply cartons.

"You wait," said one of the soldiers. "I'll see if the Colonel wants to see you." He watched them carefully until the gate clanged shut. Then he nodded to another guard, and disappeared into the darkness.

* * * * *

They did not wait long. The door burst open, and a short, squat, grey-haired man strode into the room. Dressed in a T shirt and OD pants, he was not an imposing figure, but there was no mistaking the heavy shock of grey hair, the solid, sour set of the mouth, the wideset eyes. The Bulldog of White Sands, they had called him. The man in charge of administration of three Rocket Projects, the man who had sworn that space would never defeat him. He glared at Matthews for a moment, and then his glance shifted to Loevy, and his eyes widened.

"Well," he said sourly. "I hardly expected to see _you_ joining up with these pigs."

Loevy's eyes flickered in a tired smile. "So you remember me," he said.

"I never forget a face." The Colonel stared at him with a stony expression for a moment. "White Sands, April of 1993--two and a half years ago, almost. Just after the third ship blew up. Name is--umm--Loevy--"

Loevy nodded. "That's right."

The Colonel's eyes hardened. "You were with a crowd that was trying to talk the government into junking the Rocket projects--right?"

"That's right. We predicted the impending crash even then--"

"Hogwash," said the Colonel. "A lot of statistical blather."

"Unfortunately, statistics is a scientific technique, and our predictions were not blather. We predicted the crash almost to the day. We said the 30th of July, 1995. We had no way of predicting the Iranian oil decision, which happened last April. That precipitated the crisis by a month, so it came on the first of July instead of the thirtieth. But socio-mathematics were far beyond the blather stage then. We hope we can still salvage something from the country now."

The old soldier blinked at him. "What do you want, Loevy?"

"I've come to ask you to surrender the Ship and march your men out of here."

Colonel Gorham snorted. "My orders were to guard and protect this rocket, down to the last man if necessary. On the sixth of July, a week after the crash, I had orders direct from the President to hold this Ship at any cost. He warned me then that there'd be mobs, maybe even an attempt to storm the enclosure." He scowled angrily. "They'll never get this ship as long as I'm alive."

"And have you heard from the President since the sixth?" Loevy's voice was smooth.

"I have not."

"Perhaps that's because the President was hanged on the White House lawn the day after he called you. Quite a mob was there. The food pinch was just beginning to be felt. And that was forty-seven days ago--" He glanced up at the Colonel's white face. "Oh, I'm not lying to you. It happened. Have you had _any_ communications recently?"

"How could I? They cut the telephone cables, and we can't get anything but hysterical nonsense from our radio sets--"

* * * * *

"Has it occurred to you that many things may have happened in the course of this last month?" Loevy's voice was sharp in the still room.

"I'll hold this Ship until things get straightened out," the Colonel snapped.

"Colonel--_things aren't going to straighten out_. This isn't just a little depression we're in now, it isn't a small business recession that will just up and stabilize soon. This is an economic crash that has thrown the world back a thousand years. We may _never_ recover from the crash that came on the first of July. The government is gone, Colonel. _There isn't any government._ The army has dissolved into the hills, hunting for food. The only money with any value is being paid out by the hospitals for blood to restock their banks. And without money there isn't any food. The people in the cities are starving--standing in the streets starving because food isn't coming in. Communications are out, there isn't any commercial traffic--"

"I have a stockpile of emergency rations a mile high, and I have four hundred men who aren't running around in the hills," the Colonel snarled. "I have a job to do, and I'm doing it--"

"But you're guarding an empty shell! Look, the people don't know all the reasons for the collapse. They don't know the whole picture--but they know one thing. They know they've been taxed beyond endurance, their gasoline has been requisitioned, their boys taken for military and labor service, their money devaluated again and again so that the government could get a Rocket off the Earth before the Asians did. And they know that now the whole world has fallen in a heap, and they're starving to death. And they know that this Rocket was being worked on when the crash came. They want it, Colonel. They are going to get it, too. They need a scapegoat for these fifty-four days, and this Rocket is it! And there won't _be_ any recovery as long as the ship stands."

He stared at the Colonel, and then made a hopeless gesture. "You don't believe me, do you? You think that it's just a matter of time until things stabilize, and everything will be back to normal, don't you? Well, it won't Colonel. Do you know what they are calling the date, out there? The Fifty-Fourth of July! Fifty-four days since the crash, and things are getting worse every day. Even time has stood still; they've forgotten to use the calendar. There'll never be a world like you knew before, Colonel--but the agony and suffering and chaos must be paid for, somehow, and the Rocket is the price. Until the whole world knows that the Rocket is utterly destroyed, there will be no faith in government or people or anything else."

Loevy glanced nervously at Matthews, towering against the wall watching the discussion sourly. Then he looked back at the Colonel and leaned forward. "Let them take the ship. There are things here far more precious than any single rocket ship could ever be. You know what I mean. If you resist, they'll get the ship and _everything else_--"

The Colonel's eyes moved to Matthews' heavy face, and then back to Loevy. Suddenly his face looked very tired. "That's a chance I'll have to take," he said wearily. "You're wasting your time, Loevy."

* * * * *

Later, around the campfire, Matt stared gloomily at old Moe Arhelger. "I tell you, I don't like it," he said. "I just don't like it."

The old man cocked sharp eyes across the fire. "I don't see that any harm was done. We gave the Bulldog his last chance. He didn't care to take it. That suits me fine. Now he can watch out."

Matt shook his head sharply. "That isn't what I mean. I didn't like the looks of the place. It looked too much like a going concern. Gorham was too damned confident."

"Did you ever see a garrison commander who wasn't?"

"But Gorham is no fool. He knows we've got this encampment sewed up. He knows he can't get out and neither can his men. He knows there won't be any supplies coming in for him." Matt rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And the look of the place--the look of the ship. I couldn't see much, of course, but it didn't look right--"

The old man's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean by that?"

Matt's forehead creased into a worried frown. "I don't know. I think they're trying to complete the Rocket for a flight."

"But that's crazy!" Moe exploded. "They don't have the supplies, they don't have the calculator power, they haven't got power for anything. We've seen to that. Gasoline generators for their spotlights--nothing else."

"I know, I know--it doesn't make sense." Matt shot a glance at Loevy, crouched at a nearby fire, and he lowered his voice. "And there was something Loevy said--about something more valuable than the ship itself--Look, Moe, we don't know how far the Ship had gone before the crash. Maybe all the calculations were completed."

Moe stared at the fire for a long moment. A tall, lanky man stumbled up the trail by flashlight, sending down a shower of pebbles. He stopped before the fire. "All quiet, Moe. They closed up shop after the delegation left."

Moe nodded to the man. "Tell Mike to alert his men, Tommy. Get everybody looking alive."

"What's up? Something about to break?"

The old man scowled. "I don't know. But I want everyone awake. Got it?"

The guard nodded, and vanished down the trail again. Moe turned to Matthews, a queer look in his eyes. "What do you think, Matt?"

"I think our time is running out," said Matthews.

"Maybe you worry too much."

"Maybe."

Moe's eyes blazed. "They _can't_ try to launch it," he snarled. "It's got to be smashed--smashed so hard they'll never dare try to make another one--" His hand clenched on his rifle until the knuckles were white.

Matt leaned forward eagerly. "Let me go down there, Moe. We've got dynamite. I could find a way to climb the fence, maybe, and start the works off. Once something went bang from the inside and broke their control of the place, we could mop them up."

Moe's hand relaxed. "You'd never make it alive."

"Somebody's got to try. There isn't much time, I'm sure of it--"

"All right. Try it. But before you go, you've got a visitor. I think you'd better talk to her."

* * * * *

The girl was waiting in his tent, sitting alone in the darkness. She looked up into the flashlight beam, and there were wet streaks of dust on her cheeks. "Matt? Is that you?" She stumbled to her feet. "Oh, Matt--"

"Mary!" The big man stared at his wife, his eyes wide. "Mary, what are you doing _here_? How did you get here, why did you come?" He took her in his arms, held her tight as she pressed her face against his chest, sobbing. Then suddenly he straightened up, held her out at arm's length, staring into her large brown eyes. "Mary--the farm--"

She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, and shook her head miserably. "Gone. City people from San Diego--they came one night, they took it--"

A numbness ran down his spine as he stared at her. "But Dad and Johnny--"

"They never had a chance." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, her voice faltering. "It was a crowd of men, maybe ten of them, came across the land about eight o'clock one night. They shot your Dad when he walked out on the porch. Shot him through the head. Then they came in the house and beat Johnny to death. Oh, Matt--it was horrible. They shot the cow and cooked her over an open fire. You should have seen them--they were starving, they were like wild men, calling us land-grabbers and food-hoarders. I sneaked out the back way when they weren't looking and ran down to the road to Escondido and found Harry Davis. He and a bunch of the boys had stolen some gas and were planning to drive over the mountains to join you here. They sent word around to the other farmers, and then they brought me along--"

Matt stood numbly, staring at the girl's face. "Mary, you shouldn't have come here, you should have gone to the folks in town--they would have helped you, taken care of you--"

The girl whirled on him, her eyes pleading. "Oh, Matt, come away from here, come out of this horrible fight and come home! What does it matter if there's a Rocket out here--we can't eat Rockets, we need food. The City folks are coming out in hordes. There was a man said the water supply wasn't going to last to the north, that the cars were lined up three deep from the coast clear out to Salt-Lake, bumper to bumper, a week ago. They stole gasoline from the refineries, before they blew them up. They're all heading east and north--oh, Matt, take me home--"

He stood there in the dim light of the flashlight, and then knelt down beside her, holding her against him. "I can't, Mary. Not yet," he said softly. "The world we knew before was crazy. This Rocket was crazy--this being afraid of war, and fighting to out-do the rest of the world was crazy, somehow--"

She stared at him. "But everybody knew that if we didn't get there first, the others would. And there would have been a horrible war, the end of everything--"

"Everyone was so busy being afraid of the war that they couldn't see what was happening to the world around them. They didn't see that something worse than a war could happen until it was too late. They figured the oil would last another hundred years, and it only lasted twenty. They thought they could go on like this forever--" He stared blankly out at the darkness, his eyes hollow. "It was that Rocket that did it. That's why we have to destroy it."

"Matt, if we don't go now we won't have any home left to go to. Those people don't know how to farm, they'll kill all the animals, and strip the trees and fields, and burn all the buildings--"

He shook his head, hardly able to put into words the bitterness in his heart. "It won't do any good to go back, without destroying the Rocket. It's the last remnant of the old world--standing out there--the world that led us to _this_. It's poisonous, it's evil. There'll never be recovery unless the ship is wiped out." He looked down into her frightened eyes, rubbed her shoulders gently. "Don't be afraid. It won't be long. I'm going out there tonight. I'm going to blow that Rocket into a million pieces."

She clung to him like a child, shaking her head helplessly. "You will be killed, I know you will be killed, _please_, Matt--Oh, if anything happens to you, I--I won't know what to do, I can't let you go--"

"I've got to, Mary."

Her voice was very small. "And when it's over--?"

"We'll manage somehow. I don't know how. It doesn't really matter now. I don't know what kind of a world we'll have when it's all over, but I know that I'm going out to get that Ship. If it's the only thing I ever do that's right."

* * * * *