Islands in the Sky Read online

  He had been in New York for six hours, and it was more than he could understand. Tiers, galleries, arcades, halls, shouted advertisements, speeding silent vehicles, strange folk who knew all about it while he knew nothing . . . the warden had been right, but not helpful, when he said that everything was changed.

  Who was going to help him? Peyton shook his head.

  Someone sat down at the other end of the bench. The newcomer was a lean, ragged man with gray whiskers and a wrinkled, rosy face. His old eyes were bright and humorus. Peyton studied the face, liked it. He had an inspiration.

  “Want to earn some money?” he asked.

  The old man turned toward him.

  “Doing what?”

  Peyton drew out his little roll of bills and detached a thousand-dollar note.

  “Take this and tell me all you know about what has happened in the last twenty years.”

  But the old man made no move to accept.

  “What’s happened to what?”

  “Everything,” Peyton said, and thrust the bill into the thin hand. He puzzled over an explanation, decided to tell the simple truth. “I’ve been in prison since the fall of Nineteen-Sixty. I’m out today.

  “Congrats.”

  “Thanks. Begin with Nineteen-Sixty. The Third World War broke out just when I was put away. Who won?”

  “Nobody,” the old man replied. “It lasted about a year. Fleets sunk, armies shot to hash. Only the air forces came through it and they kept busy bombing each other’s towns, like throwing stones at each other’s kid brothers. Not many kid brothers left by summer of Nineteen-Sixty-one.” He pushed the bill back. “Keep it. I’ve eaten today.”

  “So the war burned itself out?”

  The gray head nodded. “When the air forces had bombed everything to pieces, they were all that was left. So they made peace. They were running things on both sides, anyway. They still do.”

  Peyton remembered scraps of the television broadcast.

  “How can an air force run things?”

  “I’ll try to make it simple, Mr.—”

  “Blackie Peyton.”

  “I’m Joe Hooker. They call me Gramp, though I never had a family. Yes, the Airman were left to build the world again. Everything was killed or burnt or blasted. New York is all new, you see.”

  “Yes, it’s not like I remember it,” confessed Peyton. “And my home town, Rochester, probably has changed, too.”

  Gramp snorted. “There ain’t no Rochester, no Schenectady, no Albany! All bombed to flinders. Nothing but woods and wreckage today. Hardly anybody lived through it and all who did gathered at the big towns.”

  Peyton felt a chill. Rochester gone, destroyed, grown over with wildness! His faint hope of finding his former friends simply vanished.

  “Open country’s gone back to the Indians,” Gramp Hooker continued. “Only there ain’t any Indians. I’ve heard tell there’s a Philadelphia somewhere, like this place, but I can’t say for sure.”

  “You can’t say about Philadelphia? Why not? Don’t New Yorkers know anything except New York? That sounds—”

  “Wait, wait!” interposed Hooker. “Let me back up to where I told about the Airmen building and running things. Around the world, as I get it, there’s a string of cities. New York, London, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo, Frisco, Chicago, and places along that zone. They were built by the Airmen, or rather the Airmen made the people that were left build them. Here and there, to north and south, are other big centers, though I can’t say where, or what names they have. I suppose they’re mostly like this place.

  “New York’s a great, big heap, all sorts of buildings and tunnels and spaces jammed together. Quarter-mile high, five or six miles square. There are holes in it down to ground-level, like this park, so we can get some light and air if we come after them. But mostly it’s tiers of shops and offices and dormitories and such. Outside is a bunch of fields and farms, run by the city to feed us. Factories right in the city. Used to be mines, but they dig next to town, miles deep.”

  “I know,” said Peyton. “I’ve been down there.”

  There was silence again. From the nearest high wall came a distant but audible voice, extolling the desirability of a synthetic tobacco.

  “What’s happened to billboards?” asked Peyton.

  “Not many folks read these days. Only old coots like me. It’s well—out of fashion, so the ads are yammered out, not printed. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I wonder,” muttered Peyton.

  GRAMP shook his head and continued.

  “We farm and mine and do other things close by. Not much trade or travel. Country a little way off is gone back to the forest. Trees and brush grown up where there used to be towns and farms. And animals—lots of bears, for instance—track down from the Adirondacks. Quite a few generations of bears can grow up in twenty years.

  “Also what some folks call wolves, but I figure they’re just dogs, forgotten and run wild. There must be good hunting, if a fellow had a gun.”

  He looked wistful. “Guns ain’t allowed, though.”

  “Nor real coffee,” added Peyton with equal longing. “I’ll bet the Airmen have real coffee and guns, too.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Gramp. “We can’t be too sure about them, or the other towns, only what they want to tell us. And speaking of the Airmen, here they come.”

  It was almost exactly noon, but a shadow fell across the bright park.

  Peyton saw the sun disappear behind something that blotted the sky. Nightlike gloom fell, stars appeared. Then the thing moved past the sun and away toward the horizon.

  “That,” said Gramp, “is the Flying Island.”

  “But what is it?” Peyton blurted. “What I said. A flying island, a mile across. It stays up there, twelve or fifteen miles, keeps neck and neck with the sun. In this part of the world, that takes about seven hundred miles an hour. The Airmen live on it and it’s always noon for them. They keep tab on the whole world, sliding over every city once a day.”

  “They’ve got that thing forever flying, with the world spinning down below, and all the guns and airplanes and atomic power?”

  “Better not talk about atomics,” warned Gramp. “It’s their favorite taboo. We ain’t only not supposed to use it, but we ain’t even supposed to think about it.”

  Peyton remembered the agitation of Harrett at the office of the Pardon Board, decided to drop the subject immediately.

  “Does anybody know why the Airmen take all that trouble to keep that thing going?”

  “To keep watch on their ring of cities, naturally. The cities feed them and furnish them and pay taxes and entertain them—”

  “Entertain them?”

  “Sure, at the circuses up on the roof of the town. Everyone goes—Airmen, ground men, rich and poor. It’s a public works. People wouldn’t know what to do without a circus once a week.”

  “I’m going up to the Flying Island some day,” Peyton muttered.

  “Nobody ever goes up there but Airmen,” Hooker snorted. “It’s fifteen miles up, I tell you, right in the stratosphere.”

  Fifteen miles up. Peyton turned the words over in his mind. That was a long climb, but he had made it from underground. He could make it from the surface. Suddenly he felt as if he had a purpose in life—to set foot on the Flying Island that circled the globe.

  “If you won’t take my money,” he said, “let me buy us some lunch.”

  “How much you got, Blackie? Four thousand six hundred? It won’t last you a week. Better make it just a sandwich. Tonight I’ll show you a place where you can sleep for only two hundred.”

  Peyton stood up and followed him, but he could not forget the black, powerful blotch which was flying steadily above the lofty battlements of New York.

  III

  THE flop-room was as long as a riding gallery and as narrow as a sidewalk. Once it had been a Dublic alleyway.

  Now, walled fore and aft, it was furnished with a front office and
a lengthy row of open stalls, each containing a cot. Many were occupied by grubby, seedy men. Only one small light glowed near the office.

  “I’ve slept in worse than this,” said Peyton as they entered. He remembered the tiny, stuffy cells in the Pit, barred and reeking of disinfectant. “What are you staring at me like that for?”

  “You sort of give off light,” remarked Gramp.

  “Sure,” said Peyton. “That’s Pit glow. You pick it up smashing atoms.”

  “Shut up, I want to sleep!” growled the occupant of a nearby cot.

  The pair sought adjoining stalls. Peyton removed his shoes and stretched out on the blankets. Gazing up through the dimness, he reviewed his first day of freedom.

  The newness of the world was too much for him to straighten out now. More important, probably, was the fact that he was down to first principles. No job, no prospects, mighty little money. Four hundred for breakfast, two hundred for sandwiches, two hundred more for this lodging. That left him forty-two hundred dollars, which might or might not keep body and soul together for five days. Then what? Where and how could a friendless ex-convict hope for help or comfort?

  Then, unbidden, came a vision. It was as if the many ceilings slid away from above him and the noonday sun arose. High above in the heaven soared the Flying Island, from which the world’s rulers had broadcast that morning and of which Gramp had told him something. There was a goal, the Flying Island!

  I’m going to get up there, he swore to himself. There must be a way . . .

  TWO hours later, crashes and clamors rent the quiet. Peyton awoke and sat up. Other occupants of the flop-room ran by the open front of his stall. “Airmen!” cried one. “A grab gang!”

  They scampered toward the back of the long chamber. He jammed his feet into his shoes and came to the front of the stall. Gramp was there, caught him by the hair.

  “C’mon, Blackie, I waited—skip it. Too late.”

  The front door had been kicked in. Men, flashing electric torches, surrounded them. There were six, in khaki-colored tunics, flaring breeches, gleaming boots. Each wore a leather helmet with flaps over the ears and goggles pushed up on the brow. They carried pistols. Their faces were clean, handsome and sneering.

  “Well, two of you didn’t run,” said the tallest man, who seemed to be a leader. “We want men who won’t run. Argyle took command today and he wants to run a great show next week.”

  “Why should I run?” Peyton demanded. “You don’t scare me.”

  “Identification folders,” ordered the leader. Gramp produced a doubled piece of card from inside his threadbare coat. The leader studied it. “Huh—charity case, daily dole of five hundred dollars. We can take you. Anybody not in useful or gainful employment can be drafted for public works, and the circus is public works.” He turned to Peyton. “Where is your folder?”

  “If I had one, I wouldn’t give it to you,” Peyton snapped.

  “He doesn’t understand,” interposed Gramp. “He’s just out of—”

  “Shut up!” rapped the leader. “Even if you had a folder, you can’t have much of a job, bunking down here. Not useful or gainful, anyway. And you look like a fighting man to me.”

  Peyton hunched his shoulders. In the light of the torches, his skin was not glowing. His dark eyes returned the other’s gaze levelly.

  “I am a fighting man,” he said. “Try something. You’ll find out.”

  “Stand easy!” warned the other sharply. “Try any violence and you won’t live long enough to regret it. I’m an Airman, you stupid fool.”

  “Yeah?” said Peyton, unimpressed. “I kind of thought so.”

  The leader of the Airmen jerked his leather-sheathed head.

  “We’re a special detail. General Argyle needs chopping blocks for the circus fighters. Come along, both of you.” He pointed. “There’s an elevator just outside.”

  Peyton, emerging from the elevator kiosk under guard, found himself in a park under a starry sky. Lawns, thickets, flower-beds, fountains, noisy open-air theaters and game establishments. It seemed similar to other public resorts in the days he had known. Then he realized that all this was flourishing upon a vast roof expanse of the city, miles square and at least a quarter of a mile above ground-level.

  “All the closer to the Flying Island,” came a satisfying reflection.

  Even without a moon, myriad illuminations made the area as bright as day. Gramp, marching beside Peyton, explained that here the rich of New York spent their considerable leisure time.

  “There are rich people besides Airmen?” asked Peyton.

  “Sure. Even Airmen have relatives. Look, there’s the circus.”

  They crossed a lawn to approach a great, squat cylinder of steel and plastic, fully five hundred yards in diameter, and jutting eighty yards upward from the roof level.

  “Inside it’s all a slope,” explained Gramp, “with a flat arena in the center, like a crater on the Moon.”

  They were brought to a door in the cylinder and led into chambers beneath the inner slope. Inside a metal-lined vestibule, the guards met other Airmen.

  “Any luck?” the leader inquired. “We found nobody. They ran for their holes like mice. They’d rather watch the show than work in it.”

  “We got two.” The leader of Peyton’s captors jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “One’s old, but he’s still got fire in his eye. Might make sport for a little while. The other’ll make more than that.”

  “Try me,” invited Peyton with grim eagerness. “Any of you, bare-handed. Make it any two of you!”

  “See?” cried his captor, as though Peyton’s challenge gave him the utmost pleasure.

  They went into a big enclosure beyond. It smelled like a gymnasium. Two-thirds of its floor was covered with sawdust. Against the wall near the door were attached a set of chestweights and with these a tall, rugged young man was working. An Airman of about forty, smoking a cigarette in along holder, and a dazzling young woman, watched the muscleplay of the athlete’s arms and back. “We found these, sir,” said Peyton’s captor, saluting. “One of them looks usable.”

  AT HIS words, the older Airman removed the cigarette holder from between his lips and faced Peyton. He had a brown, rectangular face with a mustache the color of ginger. His uniform was of expensive fabric and braided with gold at cuffs and shoulders.

  “He looks savage enough,” he observed. “Don’t you think so, Archbold?”

  The tall young man turned from his chest-weights.

  “A little short and compact, but tough and probably active,” he diagnosed with the air of an expert.

  Peyton paid no attention to this appraisal of himself, for he had taken time to look at the girl. He forgot that less than twenty-four hours ago he had decided to keep his mind off women. Here was a glorious blonde, ten years younger than he. Her carefully arranged curls gleamed as with frost and her face was also as pallid as Peyton’s. Her cheekbones were high. The corners of her green eyes lifted ever so slightly. Her nose and mouth were short and well shaped. A sheathlike dress of bright blue cloth hugged her slim body. She looked like a high-bred, dangerous cat . . .

  “Well,” she said to him, “now that you’ve had a look at me, how do you like me? What’s your name?”

  “Blackie Peyton,” he said. “And as for how I like you—I do.”

  Given a moment, he would be able to forget that he had been brought into her presence as a captive, but the moment was not to be had. The Airman with the gold braid struck at him with an open palm. Peyton ducked under the blow, set himself to hit back. Other Airmen swarmed upon him, pinioning his arms.

  “Don’t hurt him!” the athlete Archbold said quickly. “He’s a fighter. I want to work out with him.”

  “Suits me,” snarled Peyton.

  They pushed him to the edge of the sawdust space. From a side door came a burly Negro in trunks and sandals. He was as brown-black as a seal, with a broad, gentle face.

  “You let Willie look after you
,” he said.

  With deft hands he removed Peyton’s jacket, shirt and undershirt. Meanwhile, Archbold had departed briefly and come back with an armful of clanking metal. He donned a helmet with a visor, a rigid breastplace with chain mail sleeves and brass greaves over his shins.

  Peyton had a premonition of bizarre peril. Hadn’t they talked about fighting? Didn’t that mean boxing?

  Archbold had taken up a round shield and a lean, straight sword with a crosshilt. The forward edge of the sword was rounded and dull, the back sharpened.

  “Here, mister.”

  The big Negro was giving Peyton a similar shield and a sword that was dull on both edges. As Peyton took them, another Airman entered, wearing a badge marked “Police.” He pointed at Peyton.

  “I want that man,” he declared. “He refused assignment to work at the Pardon Board’s offices, assaulted a guard—” Then the policeman saw the gold-braided Airman and stiffened to salute. “General Argyle!”

  Peyton also looked. So that was Argyle, the man named over the television as governor-chief of New York, who had been kidnaping poor men to use in a circus!

  “Wait a second and see some fun,” Argyle said. “I’m going to let my star gladiator sweat a bit. Peyton will be his partner. You can take your man later.”

  Peyton looked again at his opponent, armed with sword and shield. Abruptly it grew clear in his brain. The circus about which everyone talked was the same sort that had been popular in ancient Rome—with swords, blood and death!

  “I never shied off from trouble yet,” he said to the gladiator. “Come on, let’s get busy.”

  “Good,” came the muffled voice of Archbold from behind his visor.

  HE FELL into a stiff-seeming fencing pose, then licked his sword out. It stung Peyton’s cheek.

  “One!” counted an Airman.

  Archbold was back on guard, fobbing off Peyton’s clumsy and fumbling return.

  “Fight him, Blackie!” squealed Gramp.

  Archbold made another smooth-cutting gesture. A sound like a whip-stroke, and Peyton stepped away with another welt, this time on his sword-wrist. The big Negro made a sympathetic clucking sound.