Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
Invasion - Murray Leinster
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- Broadcast on:
- 21 Sep 2024
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After investing billions to light up our network, T-Mobile is America's largest 5G you can switch, keep your phone, and we'll pay it off up to $800. Up to four lines via virtual prepaid card, a left 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service poured in 90-plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption which access and expires in six months. At Sprouts Farmers Market, you'll always find fresh at the center of the store. Come in to discover a huge selection of the season's best produce bursting with flavor in every bite. Explore thousands of better-for-you products for every dietary lifestyle, from plant-based and organic to gluten-free and keto-friendly. Scoop up your favorite bulk nuts, fruits, sweets, and more, perfect for baking or snacking. We've been Sprouts Today to explore healthy products down every aisle. Invasion by Mary Leinster It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just 50 years old. Televisers were still monochromatic. The Nittics had just won the World Series in Prague. Compub observers were publishing elaborate figures on moving specs in space on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomers could not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year. Heat induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers. Thorne Hard was a high-level flyer for the Pacific Watch. Matholitus was the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases and was to be cured by Arrow 17, the foundation of personal charm. Somebody named Nerdlinger was President of the United Nations and somebody else named Krasen was Commissar of Commissars for the Compubs. Newspapers were printing flat pictures in three colors only and deploring the high cost of stereoscopic plates. And Thorne Hard was a high-level flyer for the Pacific Watch. That is the essential point, of course. Thorne Hard's work with the Watch. His job was officially hanging somewhere above the 20,000-foot level with his detector screens out listening for unauthorized traffic and the normal state of affairs between the Compubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truths. Unauthorized traffic meant nothing more or less than spies. But on August 19th, 2037 Thorne Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. He was sitting on top of Mount Wendell in the Rockies. A mighty girl sitting on the same rock with him and he was looking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official watch plane which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. It had brought Thorne Hard and Sylvia West to this spot. It waited now, half hidden by a spur of age eroded rock to take them back to civilization again. It's GC, general communication phone, muttered occasionally like the voice of a conscience. The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westward was a glory of myriad colors. Man and girl high above the world sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watched the colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even more exquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. They smiled clearly as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quite sane. They moved inevitably closer. Then the GC phone barked rockously. Thorne Hard stiffened all over. He got up and swung down to the stubby little ship with its gossamer like wings of cellate and touched the report button. Plane 257A reporting 710 line. Thorne Hard flying on Mount Wendell on leave. Orders? He was throwing on the screens even as he reported and the vertical detector began to whistle shrilly. His eyes started to the dial and he spoke again. Added report. Detector shows traffic approaching bound to east 700 miles an hour. High altitude. Correction. 65 miles. Correction. 600. He paused. Traffic is decelerating rapidly. I think, sir. This is the reported ship. And then there was a barely audible whining noise high in the air to the west. It grew in volume and changed in pitch. From a wine it became a scream. From a scream it rose to a shriek. Something monstrous and red glittered in the dying sunlight. It was huge. It was of no design ever known on earth. Wings supported it, but they were obscured by the blasts of forward rockets checking its speed. It was dropping rapidly. Then lifting rockets spouted flame to keep it from too rapid a descent. It cleared a mountain peak by a bare 200 feet some two miles to the south. It was 100 odd feet in length. It was ungainly in shape, monstrous in confirmation. Colossal rocket tubes behind it now barely trickled vaporous discharges. It cleared the mountain top when heavily on in a steep glide downward and vanished behind a mountain flank. Presently the thin mountain air brought the echoed sound of its landing of rapid fire explosions of rocket tubes and then silence. Thorn hard was snapping swifts the cotto sentences into the report transmitter, the clumsy glittering monster, its motion, its wings, its method of propulsion. It seemed somehow familiar despite its strangeness. He said so. Then a vivid blue flame licked all about the rim of the world and was gone. Simultaneously the GC speaker crashed explosively and went dead. Thorn went on grimly switching in the spare. A very violent electrical discharge went out from it then. Two lights seemed to flash all around the horizon at no great distance and my speaker blew out. I have turned on the spare, I do not know whether my sender is functioning. The spare speaker cut in abruptly at that moment. It is, stay where you are and observe, a squadron is coming. Then the voice broke off because a new sound was coming from the speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and somehow machined like. The voice and howls and whistles came from the speaker, whaling sounds. Ghostly noises devoid of consonants but broadcast on a wavelength close to the GC band and therefore produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots and whales and whistles came through for nearly a minute and stopped. Stay on duty, snap the GC speaker, that's no language known on earth, those are Martians. Thorn looked up to see Sylvia standing by the watch plane door. Her face was pale in the growing darkness outside. Beginning duty, sir, said Thorn steadily. I report that I have with me Miss Sylvia West, my fiance in violation of regulations. I ask that her family be notified. He snapped off the lights and went with her. The red rocket ship had landed in the very next valley. There was a glare there which wavered and flickered and died away. Martians said Thorn in fine irony. We'll see when the watch planes come. My guess is calm pubs using a searchlight, nervy. The glare vanished. There was only silence, a curiously complete and deadly silence and Thorn said suddenly. There's no wind. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream. Collect a rent and relax. That is until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price. Then there's cleaning, staging, repairs and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites and schedule countless shows. Oh, no free screen tense information. At least I'll collect your 10 minutes. Phew, sound complicated? Runner's warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to do West. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing the lease. Our best in class property management professionals take care of your property as if it were our own. From rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent estate advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runners warehouse. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance. Uncover opportunity and move upward at Moss Adams.com. There was not, not a breath of air. The mountains were uncannily quiet. The air was impossibly still for a mountaintop. Ten minutes went by twenty. The detector whistles shrilled. "There's the watch," said Thorn in satisfaction. Now we'll see. And then, abruptly, there was a lurid flash in the sky to northward two thousand feet up and a mile away. The unearthly green blaze of a hexignitrate explosion lit the whole earth with unbearable brilliance. "Stop your ears!" snapped Thorn. The racking concussion wave of hexignitrate will break human eardrums at an incredible distance. But no sound came, though the seconds went by. Then, two miles away, there was a second gigantic flash. Then a third. But there was no sound at all. The quiet of the hills remained unbroken, though Thorn knew that such cataclysmic detonations should be audible at twenty miles or more. Then lights flashed on above. Two. Three. Six of them. They wavered all about, darting here and there. Then one of the flying searchlights vanished utterly and a fourth terrific flash of green. "The watch planes are going up," said Thorn dazedly, blowing up, and we can't hear the explosions. Behind him the GC speaker barked his call. He raced to get its message. "The watch planes we sent to join you," said a curt voice he recognized as that of the commanding general of the United Nations, "have located an invisible barrier by their sonic altimeters. Four of them seem to have rammed it and exploded without destroying it. What have you to report?" "I've seen the flashes, sir," said Thorn unsteadily. "But they made no noise, and there's no wind, sir. Not a breath since the blue flash I reported." "A pause." "Your statement bears out their report," said the GC speaker harshly. "The barrier seems to be hemispherical. No such barrier is known on earth. These must be Martians," as the compub said. "You will wait until morning and try to make peaceful contact with them. This barrier may be merely a precaution on their part. You will try to convince them that we wish to be friendly." "I don't believe they're Martians, sir." Sylvia came racing to the door of the plane. " Thorn, something's coming. I hear it, drowning." Thorn himself heard a dull, droning noise in the air coming toward him. "Occupents of the rocket ship, sir," he said grimly, seemed to be approaching. "Orders?" Evacuate the ship, snap the GC phone, let them examine it. They will understand how we communicate and prepare to receive and exchange messages. If they seem friendly, make contact at once. Thorn made swift certain movements and dived for the door. He seized Sylvia and fled for the darkness below the plane. He was taking a desperate risk of falling down the mountain slopes. The droning drew near. It passed directly overhead. Then there was a flash and a deafening report. A beam of light appeared aloft it searched for and found Thorn's plane, now a wreck. Flash after flash and explosion after explosion followed. They stopped. Their echoes rolled and reverberated among the hills. There was a hollow, tremendous intensification of the echoes aloft as if a dome of some solid substance had reflected back the sound. Slowly the rollings died away. Then a voice boomed through a speaker overhead and despite his suspicions Thorn felt a queer surprise. It was a human voice, a man's voice, full of horrible amusement. Thornheart. Thornheart. Where are you? Thorn did not move or reply. If I have not killed you, you hear me? The voice chuckled. Come see me, Thornheart. Their dome of force is big, yes, but you can no more get out than your friends can get in. And now I have destroyed your phone so you can no longer chat with them. Come see me, Thornheart, so I will not be bored. We will discuss their compubes. And bring their lady framed. You may play their shaperon. The voice laughed. It was not a pleasant laughter. And the humming drone in the air rose and dwindled. It moved away from the mountaintop. It lessened and lessened until it was inaudible. Then there was dead silence again. By his accent he's a Baltic Russian said Thorn grimly in the darkness. Which means compubbs, not Martians. Though we're the only people who realize it and they're starting a war. And we, Sylvia, must warn our people. How are we going to do it? She pressed his hand confidently but it did not look promising. Thornheart was on foot without a transmitter, armed only with his belt weapons and with a girl to look after. And moreover imprisoned in a colossal dome of force which hexy nitrate had failed to crack. It was August 20th, 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which was rumored to be the work of a compub spy. Though the murderers unquestionably Gaelic touches made the rumors dubious. Newspaper vendor units were screaming raucously. Martians land in Colorado. And the newspapers themselves printed colored photos of hastily improvised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood red rocket ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The intercontinental tennis matches reached their semi-finals in Havana, Cuba. Thornheart had not reported to watch headquarters in 12 hours. Quadruplets were born in Des Moines, Iowa. Crasson Commissar of the Commissars of the Compubs made a diplomatic inquiry about the rumors that a Martian spaceship had landed in North America. He asked that compub scientists be permitted to join in the questioning and examination of the Martian visitors. The most famous European screen actress landed from the morning transatlantic plane with her hair dyed a light lavender. And beauty shops throughout the country placed rush orders for dye to take care of the demand for lavender hair which would begin by mid-afternoon. The heavyweight champion of the United Nations was warned that his title would be forfeited if he further dodged a fight with his most promising contender. And Thornheart had not reported to watch headquarters in 12 hours. He was, as a matter of fact, cautiously parting some bushes to peer past a mountain flank at the red rocket ship. Silvia West lay on the ground behind him, both of them weary to the point of exhaustion. They had started their descent from Mount Wendell at the first grey streak of dawn in the east. They had toiled painfully across the broken country between to this point of vantage. Now Thorn looked down upon the rocket ship. It lay a little askew upon the ground seeming to be partly buried in the earth. A hundred feet and more in length it was even more obviously a monstrosity as he looked at it in the bright light of day. But now it was not alone. The side it was a white tower reared upward, pure white and glistening in the sunshine. A bulging uneven shaft rose a hundred feet shear. It looked as solid as marble its purpose was unguessable. There was a huge fan-shaped space where the vegetation about the rocket ship was colored a vivid red. In air photos the rocket ship would look remarkably like something from another planet. But nearby Thorn could see a lazy trickle of fuel fumes from a port pipe on one side of the monster. That tower is nothing but solid foam which hardens and silvia, see? She came cautiously through the brushwood and looked down. She shivered a little. From here they could see beneath the bowels of the rocket ship. And there was a name there in this Cyrillic alphabet which was the official written language of the compubs. Here on United Nations soil it was insolent. It boasted that the red ship came not from an alien planet but from a nation more alien still to all the United Nations stood for. The compubs, the Union of Communist Republics, were neither communistic nor republics. But they were much more dangerous to the United Nations than any mere Martians would have been. "We'll have some heavy ships here to investigate soon," said Thorn grimly. "Then I'll signal." He flung back his head, high up and far away beyond that invisible barrier against which watch planes had flung themselves in vain there were tiny moats in mid-air. These were watch planes too, hovering outside the obstacle they could not see, but which even hexenitrate bombs could not break through. And very far away indeed there was a swiftly moving dark cloud. As Thorn watched that cloud drew close and his eyes glowed, it resolved itself into its component specs. Small, two-man patrol scouts, larger ten-man cruisers of the air, huge massive dreadnoughts of the blue. A complete combat squadron of the United Nations flying forces was sweeping to position about the dome of force above the rocket ship. The scout swept forward in tiny whirling clouds. They sheared away from something invisible. One of them dropped a smoking object. It emitted a vast cloud of paper which the wind caught and swept away and suddenly wrapped about a definite section of an arc. More and more of the tiny smoke bombs released their masses of cloud-like stuff. In mid-air a dome began to take form, outlined by the trailing streaks of gray. It began to be more definitely traced by inter-linings. An aerial lattice spread about a portion of a six-mile hemisphere. The top was 15,000 feet above the rocket ship, 25,000 feet from sea level, as high as Mount Everest itself. Tiny moats hovered even there where the smallest of visible specks was a ten-man cruiser. And one of the biggest of the aircraft came gingerly up to the very inner edge of the lattice work of fog and hung motionless, holding itself aloft by powerful helicopter screws. Men were working from a trailing stage. Scientists examining the barrier even hexignitrate would not break down. Thorn set to work. He had come toil some lead to the neighborhood of the rocket ship because he would have to do visual signaling and there was no time to lose. The dome of force was transparent. The air fleet would be trying to communicate through it with the Martians they believed were in the rocket ship. Sunlight reflected from a polished canteen would attract attention instantly from a spot near the red monster, while elsewhere it might not be observed for a long time. But, trying every radio wave band and every system of visual signaling and watching and testing for a reply, Thorn's signal ought to be picked up instantly. He handed his pocket speechlight receptor to Sylvia. It is standard equipment for all flying personnel so they may receive non-broadcast orders from flight leaders. He pointed to a ten-man cruiser from which showed the queer electric blue glow of a speechlight. "Listen in on that," he commanded. "I'm going to call them. Tell me when they answer." He began to flash dots and dashes in that quaintly archaic telegraph alphabet watch flyers are still required to learn. It was the watch code call sent over and over again. "They're trying to make the Martians understand," said Sylvia, unsteadily with the speechlight receiver at her ear. Flash, flash, flash, Thorn kept on grimly. The canteen top was slightly convex so the sunlight beam would be spread. Accuracy was not needed, therefore. He covered and uncovered it and covered and uncovered it. "They answered," said Sylvia eagerly. "They said Thorn Hard reported once." There was a hissing, roaring noise over the hillside where the red rocket ship lay. Thorn paid no attention. He began to spell out in grim satisfaction. Rocket ship is... "Look out!" gasped Sylvia. "They say look out, Thorn," then she screamed. As Thorn swung his head around, he saw a dense mass of white vapor rushing over the hillside toward them. He picked Sylvia up in his arms and ran madly. The white vapor tugged at his knees. It was a variation of the vortex stream. He fought his way savagely toward higher ground. The white vapor reached his waist. It reached his shoulders. He slung Sylvia upon his shoulder and fought more madly still to get out of the wide white current. It submerged him in its stinging bitter flood. As he felt himself collapsing, his last conscious thought was the bitter realization that the bulbous white tower had upheld television lenses at its top, which had watched his approach and inspection of the rocket ship and had enabled those in the red monster to accurately direct their spurt of gas. His next sensation was that of pain in his lungs. Something that smarted intolerably was being forced into his nostrils and he battled against the agony it produced. And then he heard someone chuckle amusingly and felt the curious, furry sensation of electric anesthesia beginning. When he came to himself again, a machine was clicking erratically and there was the soft wine of machinery going somewhere. He opened his eye. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream. Collect a rent and relax. That is, until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price. Then there is cleaning, staging, repairs, and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites and schedule countless shows. Oh, don't be as pretense for the information. At least I'll collect your 10 minutes. Whew, sound complicated? Runners warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing the lease. Our best-in-class property management professionals take care of your property as if it were our own. From rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to Runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent estate advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Runners warehouse. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance. Uncover opportunity and move upward at MossAtoms.com. I then saw Red all about him. He stirred and he was free. Painfully, he sat up and blinked about him with streaming gas irritated eyes. He had been lying on a couch. He was in a room, perhaps 15 feet by 20, of which the floor was slightly off-level. And everything in the room was red, floor and walls and ceiling. The couch he had lain on and the furniture itself. There was a monstrous bulk of a man sitting comfortably in a chair on the other side of the room pecking at a device resembling a writing machine. Thorne sat still for an instant gaining strength. Then he flung himself desperately across the room. His fingers curved into talons, five feet, ten, with the slant of the floor giving him added impetus. Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor while the high frequency currents of an induction screen had their way with him. He was doubled into a knot by his muscles responding to the electric stimulus instead of his will. Sheer anguish twisted him and the room filled with a hearty bellow of laughter. The monstrous whiskard man had turned about and was shaking with merriment. He picked up a pocket gun from beside him and turned off a switch at his elbow. Thorne's muscles were freed. "Go back, my friend," boomed the same voice that had come from a speaker the night before. "Go to their couch. You amuse me and you have already been useful, but I have no hesitation in killing you. You are Thorne Hart." "My name is Crane Borg. How do you do?" "Where's my friend?" demanded Thorne savagely. "Where is she?" "Dare lady friend?" "Dare." The whiskard man pointed negligently with the pocket gun. I gave her a book to slumbering. There was a niche in the wall which Thorne had not seen. Silvia was there, sleeping the same heavy, dreamless sleep from which Thorne himself had just awakened. He went to her swiftly. She was breathing naturally, though tears from the irritating gas still streaked her face, and her skin seemed to be pinkened a little from the same cause. Thorne swung around. His weapons were gone, of course. The huge man snapped on the induction screen switch again and put down his weapon. With that screen separating the room into two halves, no living thing would cross it without either such muscular paralysis as Thorne had just experienced, or death. Coils in the floor induced alternating currents in the flesh itself, very like those currents used for supposed medical effects in the medical batteries and shockers. "Be calm!" said Craneboard, chuckling. "I am pleased to have company. This is their loneliest spot in Tarukis. It was chosen for that raison. But I shall be here for maybe months, and now I shall not be lonely." V of their compubes have scientific resources which as your fools have never dreamt of. But there is no scientific substitute for a pretty woman. He turned again to the writing device. It clicked half a dozen times more and he stopped. A strip of paper came out of it. He inserted it into the slot of another mechanism and switched on a standard GC phone as the paper began to feed. In seconds the room was filled with unearthly hoots and whales and whistles. They came from the device into which the paper was feeding and they poured into the GC transmitter. They went on for nearly a minute and ceased. Craneboard shut off the transmitter. "My code!" he observed comfortably, giving their good news to stallion crad. "Everything is going along beautifully." I roused their fair sylvia and keyster a few times to make a scream into a record, and I interpolated their screamings into their last code transmission. Your wise men think their Martian have vivisected here. They are concentrating their entire fighting force of their united nations outside their dome of force and all for a few kisses. Thorne was white with rage. His eyes burned with a terrible fury. His hands shook. Craneboard chuckled again. "Oh, she is unharmed so far. I have not much time now, presently, dare two of you, vivile, vivile, dare time, but not now." He switched on the GC receiver in the room filled with a multitude of messages. Thorne sat beside sylvia, watching, watching, watching. While invisible machinery whined softly, and Craneboard listened intently to the crisp, curt official reports that came through on the fighting force band. Three combat squadrons were on the spot now. One, three, and eight. Four more were coming at fast cruising speed, 400 miles an hour. One combat squadron of the whole fleet alone would be left to cope with all other emergencies that might arise. A television screen lighted up, and Thorne could see where the lenses on the bulbous tower showed the air all about filled with fighting planes, hovering about the dome of force like moths beating their wings against a screen. The strongest fighting force in the world, helpless against a field of electrical energy. It is a mooseing, chuckled Craneboard, looking at the screen complacently. Dare-domo forces new infiancien. It is hetero-dining of one frequency upon another at prey determined distance. It has all their properties of matter except mass and limit of strength. There is no limit to each strength, but it cannot be made except in sphere. So at first it seemed only defensive weapon. With it we could defy their united nations to attack us, but we wish to do more. So I propose plan, and I have their honor of carrying it out. If I fail, crash and disavow us me. But I shall not fail, and I shall end as commissar for their continent of North America. He looked wisely at Thorne, who sat motionless. You keep quiet, eh, and wait for me to say something indiscreet? Very well, I tell you. We are in sort of a goldfish globe of electric force. Your air fleet cannot break in. You know that. Also, if they were in, they could not break out again. So I wait. Very patiently. Pray the ending to be Martian until all your fighting force has gathered around in radius to fight me. But I shall not fight. I shall simply make do and larger goldfish globe outside of this one. And then I go out and make faces at their fighting force of their united nations, imprisoned between their two of them. And then their compub fleet comes in. He stood up and put his hand on a doorknob. "Is it not pretty?" he asked blandly. And two weeks their air fleet will begin to starve. And three, there will be cannibalism. Unless their compubes accept their surrender. "Imagine," he laughed. "But do not fear, my friend. I have profism for a year. If you are amusing, I feed you. In any case, I exchange food for kisses with their charming Sylvia. It will be a mussing to change out from woman who screams as I kiss her to one who veeps for joy. If I do not have to kill you, you shall witness it." He vanished through a doorway on the farther side of the room. Instantly thorn was on his feet. The dead slumber in which Sylvia was sunk was wholly familiar. Electric anesthesia used not only for surgery but to enforce complete rest at any chosen moment. He dragged her from that couch to his own. He saw her stir and her eyes were instantly wide with terror. But thorn was tearing the couch to pieces, cover, pneumatic mattress. He ripped out a loosely fitting frame piece of steel. "Quick now," he said in a low voice. "I'm going to short the induction screen. We'll get across it, then, out the door." She struggled to her feet terrified but instantly game. Thorn slid the rod of metal across the stretch of flooring he had previously been unable to cross. The induced currents in the rod amounted to a short circuit of the field. The rod grew hot and its paint blistered smokeily. Thorn leaped across with Sylvia in his wake. He pointed to the door and she fled through it. He seized a chair, crashed it frenziedly into the television screen and had switched on the GC phone when there was a roar of fury from Crainborg. Instantly there was the splitting sound of a pocket gun and in the red room the racking crash of a hexy nitrate pellet. Nothing can stand the instant crash of hexy nitrate. Its concussion wave is a single pulsation of the air. The cellate diaphragm of the GC transmitter tore across from its violence and thorn cursed bitterly. There was no way now of signaling. A second racking crash as the second pellet flashed its tiny green flame. Crainborg was using a pocket gun, one of those small terrible weapons which shoot a projectile barely larger than the graphite of a lead pencil but loaded with a fraction of a milligram of hexy nitrate. Two hundred charges would feed automatically into the bore as the trigger was pressed. Thorn gazed desperately about for weapons. There was nothing in sight. To gain the outside world he had to pass before the doorway through which the bullets had come. And suddenly Thorn seized the code writer and the device which transmitted that code as a series of unearthly noises which the world was taking for Martian speech. He swung the two machines before the door in a temporary barrier. Whatever else Crainborg might be willing to destroy he would not shoot into them. Thorn leaped madly past the door as Crainborg roared with rage again. He paused only to hurl a chair at the two essential machines and as they dented and toppled he fled through the door and away. Sylvie appeared anxiously at him from behind a huge boulder. He raced toward her expecting every second to hear the spitting of Crainborg's pocket gun. With the continuous fire stud down the little gun would shoot itself empty in 45 seconds during which time Crainborg could play it upon him like a hose that spouted death. But Thorn had done the hundred yards in eleven seconds, years before. He bettered his record now. The first of the little green flashes came when he was no more than ten yards from the boulder which sheltered Sylvia. The tiny pellet had missed him by inches, three more and he was safe from pursuit. "But we've got to get away," he panted. "He can shoot gas here and get us again. He can cover 400 yards with gas and more than that with guns." They fled down a tiny watercourse, midget figures in an infinity of earthen sky, scurrying frenziedly from a red slug-like thing that lay a skew in a mountain valley. Far away and high above hung the warplanes of the United Nations. Big ones and little ones hovering in hundreds about the outside of the dome of force they could neither penetrate nor understand. A quarter of a mile. A half a mile. There was no sign from Crainborg or the rocket ship. Thorn panted. He can't reach us with gas now and it looks like he doesn't dare use a gun. They'd know he wasn't a Martian. At night he'll use that helicopter though. If we can only make those ships see us. They toiled on. The sun was already slanting down toward the western sky. At four, by the sun, Thorn could point to a huge air dreadnought hanging by lazily revolving gyros barely two miles away. He waved wildly, frantically, but the big ship drifted on, unseeing. The fighting force was no longer looking for Thorn and Sylvia. They had been carried into the rocket ship fourteen hours and more before. Sylvia's screaming had been broadcast with the weird hoots and whistles the United Nations believed to be the language of interplanetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a watch was being kept on the rocket ship to be sure, but it was becoming a matter of fact sort of vigilance pending the arrival of the rest of the fighting force and the cracking of the dome of force by the scientists who worked on it night and day. On level ground Thorn and Sylvia would have reached the edge of the dome in an hour. Here they had to climb up steep hill sides and down precipitous slopes. Four times they halted to make frantic efforts to attract the attention of some nearby ship. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream. Collect a rent and relax. That is until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price. Then there's cleaning, staging, repairs, and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites and schedule countless showings. Oh, no free to screen tenets or information. At least I'll collect and check out the page. Whew! Sound complicated? Ranners Warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to do list. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing the lease. Our best in class property management professionals take care of your property as if it were our own. From rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to Rannerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent estate advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Ranners Warehouse. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting, and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry focus insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance, uncover opportunity, and move upward at MossAtoms.com. It was six when they came upon the rim. There was no indication of its existence saved at 300 yards from them bowels, waved, and leaves quivered in a breeze. Inside the dome, the air was utterly still. "There it is," panted Thorne. Weeried and worn out as they were, they hurried forward, and abruptly there was something which impeded their movements. They could reach their hands into the impalpable barrier for one foot, two, or even three, but an intolerable pressure thrust them back. Thorne seized a sapling and ran at the barrier as if with a spear. It went five feet into the invisible resistance and stopped, shot back out as if flung back by a jet of compressed air. "He told the truth," groaned Thorne. "We can't get out." Long shadows were already reaching out from the mountains. Darkness began to creep upward among the valleys. Far, far away, a compact dark cloud appeared, a combat squadron. It swept toward the dome and disassociated into a myriad specks which were aircraft. The fliers, already swirling about the invisible dome, drew aside to leave a quadrant clear, and combat squadron seven merged with the rest making the pattern of dancing specks markedly denser. "With a fire," said Thorne desperately, "they'll come, of course, but cream board took my lighter." Silvia said, hopefully. "Don't you know some way rubbing sticks together?" "I don't," admitted Thorne grimly, "but I've got to try to invent one. While I'm at it, you watch for fliers." He searched for dry wood. He rubbed sticks together. They grew warm, but not enough to smoke, much less to catch. He muttered, "a drill. That's the idea. All the friction in one spot." He tugged at the ring under his lapel in a parachute fastened into his uniform collar, shot out in a billowing mass of gossamer silk, flung out by the powerful elastics designed to make its opening certain. Savagley he tore at the shrouds and had a stout cord. He made a drill and revolved it as fast as he could with the cord. A second dark cloud swept forward in the gathering dusk and merged into the mass of fliers about the dome. Five minutes later, a third. Dense as the air traffic was, riding lights were necessary. They began to appear in the deepening twilight. It seemed as if all the sky were alight with fireflies whirling and swirling and fluttering here and there. But then the fire drill began to emit a tiny wisp of smoke. Thorne worked furiously. Then a tiny flickering flame appeared, which he nursed with a desperate solicitude. Then a larger flame. Then a roaring blaze. It could not be missed. A fire within the dome could not fail to be noted and examined instantly. A searchlight beam fell upon them, illuminating him in a pitiless glare. Thorne waved his arms frantically. He had nothing with which to signal save his body. He flung his arms wide and up and wide again in an improvised adaptation of the telegraphic alphabet to gesticulation. He sent the watch call over and over again. A little cloud of riding lights swept toward dome from an infinite distance away. Darkness was falling so swiftly that they were still merely specks of light as they swept up to and seemed to melt into the swirling swooping mass of fliers about the dome. Cold sweat was standing out on Thorne's face. Despite the violence of his exertions, he was even praying a little, and suddenly the searchlight beam flickered a welcome answer. We understand report. Thorne flung his arms about madly, sending, "Get away quick. Calm pubs here. We'll make other dome outside to trap you." The searchlight beam upon him flickered an acknowledgement. He knew what was happening after that. The GC phones would flash the warning to every ship and every ship would dash madly for safety. A sudden concerted quiver seemed to go over the whirling maze of lights aloft. A swift simultaneous movement of every ship in flight. Thorne breathed an agonized prayer. There was a flash of blue light. For one fractional part of a second the stars and skies were blotted out. There was a dome of flame above him and all about the world of bright blue flame which instantly was and instantly was not. Then there was a ghastly blast of green. Hexenitrate going off. In this glare were silhouetted a myriad moats in flight, but there was no noise. A second flare, and then Thorne Hard groaning, saw flash after flash after flash of green. Monster explosions, colossal explosions, terrific detonations which were utterly soundless as the ships of the fighting force in flight from the menace of which Thorne had worn them crashed into an invisible barrier and exploded without cracking it. It was August 24, 2037. For three days now, seven of the eight great combat squadrons of the United Nations fighting forces had been prisoners inside a monstrous transparent dome of force. There was a financial panic of unprecedented proportions in the great financial districts of New York and London and Paris. Martial law was in force in Chicago, in Prague, in Madrid and in Buenos Aires. The compubs were preparing an ultimatum to be delivered to the government of the United Nations. Thorne and Sylvia were hunted fugitives within the inner dome of force which protected the red rocket ship from the seven combat squadrons it had imprisoned. Newspaper vendor units were shrieking, air fleets still trapped. And a prominent American politician was promising his constituents that if a foreign nation dared invade the sacred territories of the United Nations, a million embattled private planes would take to the air. And he seemed not to be trying to be humorous. Scientists were wringing their hands in utter helplessness before the incredible resistance of the dome. It had been determined that the dome was a force field which caused particles charged with positive electricity to attempt to move in a right hand direction about the source of the field, and particles charged with negative electricity to attempt to move in a left handed direction. The result was that any effort to thrust an external object into the field of force was an attempt to tear the negatively charged electrons of every atom of that substance free from the positively charged protons of nuclei. An object could only be passed through the field of force if it ceased to exist as matter, which was not an especially helpful discovery. And Thorne Hard and Sylvia were still hunted fugitives inside the inner dome. The Sun was an hour high when the helicopter appeared to hunt for them by day, after the first time they had never dared light a fire because Greenborg in the helicopter searched the hills for a glow of light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorne had speared a fish for Sylvia with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his parachute pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylvia was beginning to look like a hunted wild thing. Two hundred yards from them the most formidable fighting force the world had ever seen littered the earth with gossamer seeming celate wings and streamlined bodies at all angles to each other, and it was completely useless. The least of the weapons of the air fleet would have been a godsend to Thorne and Sylvia. To have had one ship even the smallest where they were would have been a godsend to the fleet. But two hundred yards with the dome of force between made the fleet just exactly as much protection for Sylvia as if it had been a million miles away. The droning hum of the helicopter came across the broken ground. Now louder, now momentarily muted. Its moments of loudness grew steadily more strong. It was coming nearer. Thorne gripped his spear in an instinctive utterly futile gesture of defense. Sylvia touched his hand. We'd better hide. They hid. Thick brush concealed them utterly. The helicopter went slowly overhead and they saw a crane board gazing down at the earth below him. Nearly overhead he paused and suddenly Thorne groaned under his breath. "It's the flagship!" he whispered hoarsely to Sylvia. "What fools we were, the flagship!" He knows the general would have brought it to Earth opposite us, to question us. The flagship was nearly opposite. To find the flagship was more or less to find where Thorne and Sylvia hid. But they had not realized it until now. The speaker in the helicopter boomed above their heads. "Ah, my friends, I think you hear me. Answer me. I have off here to make." Shivering Sylvia pressed close to Thorne. "Their compub fleet is on their way," said Crane Board, chuckling. Seven eighths of their united nations fleet is just outside. You have observed it. In six hours their compub fleet begins their conquest of their country and their execution of Pearson's most antagonistic to our regime. But I have still weary vicks of keeping their air fleet prisoner. Until its personnel is too weak from starvation to offer racy stance to our soldiers. So I make their offer. Come and violate their very orders for me. And I accept you both from their executions. I shall find it necessary to decree. And I get you anyhow. And you feel of a creque or a fus o' fettie mulch." Thorne's teeth ground together. Sylvia pressed close to him. "Don't let them get me, Thorne," she panted hysterically. "Don't let them get me." The droning monotonous hum of the helicopter over their heads continued. The little flying machine was motionless. The air was still. There was no other sound in the world. Silence saved for the droning hum of the helicopter than something dropped. It went off with an inadequate sort of explosion and a cloud of misty white vapor reared upward on a hillside and began to settle slowly, spreading out. The helicopter moved and other things dropped, making a pattern. The air still said Thorne quite grimly. That stuff seems to be heavier than air. It's flowing downhill toward the dome wall. It will be here in five minutes. We've got to move." Sylvia seemed to be stricken with terror. He helped her to her feet. They began to move toward higher ground. They moved with infinite caution in the utter silence of this inner dome, even the rustling of a leaf might betray them. It was the presence of the air fleet within clear view that made the thing so horrible. The defenders of a nation were watching the enemy of a nation, and they were helpless to offer battle. The helicopter hummed and droned, and Crainborg grinned and searched the earth below him for a sign of the man and girl who had been the only danger to his plan and now were unarmed fugitives. And there were four air dreadnoughts in plain sight and 5,000 men watching. And Crainborg hunted, for sport, a comrade of the 5,000 men, and a woman every one of them would have risked or sacrificed his life to protect. He seemed certain that they were below him. Presently he dropped another gas bomb, and another. And then Sylvia stumbled and caught at something, and there was a crashing sound as a sapling wavered in her grasp. And Thorne picked her up and fled madly, but billowing white vapors spouted upward before him. He dodged it, and the helicopter was just overhead, and more smoke spouted, and more, and more. They were hemmed in, and Sylvia clung close to Thorne and sobbed. 5,000 men in a thousand grounded aircraft shouted curses that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the half-heard whisper one may attribute to a phantom. The fog vapor closed over Thorne and Sylvia as Crainborg grinned mockingly at the raging men without the dome of force. He swept the helicopter to a position above the last view of Thorne and Sylvia, and the downward-beating screws swept away the foggy gas. Thorne and Sylvia lay motionless, though Thorne had instinctively placed himself in a position of defense above her. The fighting force of the United Nations watched, raging, while Crainborg descended delivered. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream. Collect a rent, and relax. That is, until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price. Then there's cleaning, staging, repairs, and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites and schedule countless showings. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Whew! Sound complicated? Runner's Warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing police. Our best-in-class property management professionals take care of your property is if it were our own, from rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent-a-state advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runners warehouse. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting, and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance. Uncover opportunity and move upward at MossAtoms.com. While he searched Thords' pockets reflectively and found nothing more deadly than small pebbles which might strike sparks and a small fort stick, while he grinned mockingly at the raging armed men and made triumphant justiculations before carrying Sylvia's limp figure to the helicopter. While the little ship rose and swept away toward the rocket plane, it descended and was lost to view. Thord lay motionless on the earth, seven-eighths of the fighting force of the United Nations was imprisoned within the space between two domes of force no matter could penetrate. A ring two miles across and ten miles in outer diameter held the whole fleet of the United Nations paralyzed. There was sheer panic throughout the Americas and Europe and the few outlying possessions of the United Nations, and it was at this time with a great fleet already halfway across the Pacific that the Compubs declared war in a fine gesture of ironic politeness. It was within half an hour of this time that the seventh combat squadron, the only one left, unimprisoned, dived down from fifty thousand feet into the middle of the Compub fleet and went out of existence in twenty minutes of such carnage as is still stuffed for epics. The seventh squadron died but with it died not less than three times as many of the foe. And then the Compub fleet came on. Most of the original force remained, surely enough to devastate an undefended nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people, to slaughter its men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash heaps where the very backbone of resistance to the red flag had been. It was twenty minutes before Thorn hard stirred, his lungs seemed on fire, his limbs seemed led, his head reeled and rocked, he staggered to his feet and stood there swaying dullly. A vivid light brighter than the sunshine played upon him from the flagship of the fleet which now was helpless to defend its nation. Thorns be fogged, brain stirred dazedly as the message came. Compub fleet on way. Seventh combat squadron wiped out. And defenseless. You are only hope. For God's sake try something. Anything. Thorn roused himself by a terrific effort. He managed to ask a question by exhausted gestures in the watch visual alphabet. Crainborg took her to rocket ship, came the answer. She recovered consciousness before being carried inside. And Thorn, reeling on his feet and unarmed and alone turned and went staggering up a hillside toward the rocket ship's position. He could only expect to be killed. He could not even hope for anything more than to ensure that Sylvia also died mercifully. Behind him he left an unarmed nation awaiting devastation with a mighty air fleet speeding toward it at six hundred miles an hour. As he went though some strength came to him, the fury of his toil forced him to breathe deeply cleansing his lungs of the stupefying gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the rocket ship. A visible gas was of course more consistent with the early pretense that the rocket ship bore invaders from another planet. And Thorn became drenched with sweat which aided in the excretion of the poisonous stuff. His brain cleared and he recognized despair and discounted it and began to plan grimly to make the most of an infinitesimal chance. The chance was simply that Crainborg had ransacked his pockets and ignored a little forked stick. Scrambling up a steep hillside with his face hardened into granite, Thorn drew that from his pocket again. Crossing a hilltop he stripped off his coat. He traveled at the highest speed he could maintain, though it seemed painfully deliberate. An hour after he had started he was picking up small round pebbles wherever he saw them in his path. By the time the tall, Bulbo's tower was in sight he had picked up probably sixty such pebbles but no more than ten of them remained in his pockets. They though were smooth and round and even perhaps an inch in diameter and all very nearly the same size. And he carried a club in his hand. He went down the west slope openly. The television lenses on the tower would have picked him out in any case if Crainborg had repaired the screen. He went boldly up to the rocket ship. Crainborg, he called, Crainborg, he felt himself being surveyed. A door came open, Crainborg stood chuckling at him with a pocket gun in his hand. "Ha, just in time my friend, I have been very busy. Their compub fleet is just due to pass and refuel above their welcoming United Nations combat squadrons. I have been keeping them last minute information and assurance that their doms of force are solid and can hold for the effort. I have a few minutes to spare, which I had intended to therefore to their fair silfia. But what do you fish? I'm offering you a bribe," sent Thor in his face a mask, a billion dollars in immunity to cut off the outer dome of force. Crainborg grinned at him. "It is too late. It is being traitor, I would be assassinated instantly. Also, I shall become a sulphur North America anyhow." "Two billion," said Thor in without expression. "No," said Crainborg, amusingly, "Troll away their club. I shall amuse myself with you, torn heart. You shall vouch their progress of romance between me and silfia. Throw away their club." The pocket gun came up. Torn threw away the club. "What do you want if two billions not enough?" "Emusemient," said Crainborg jovially. "I shall be bored in this inner dome, vating for their airfry to start off. I vish emusemient, and I shall get it. Come inside." He backed away from the door. His gun trained on Thorin, and Thorin saw that the continuous fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the red room in which he had once awakened. Silvia gave a little choked cry at the sight of him. She was standing desperately defiant on the other side of the induction screen area on the floor. There was a scorched place on the floor where Thorin had shorted that screen, and the bar of metal had grown red hot. Crainborg threw the switch and motioned Thorin to her. "I do not bother to search you for vapons," he said dryly. "I did it so short a time ago, and you had only club." Thorin walked stiffly beside Silvia. She put out a shaking hand and touched him. Crainborg threw the switch back again. "They're skinny, son," he chuckled. "Consoliate each other, children. I am glad you came Thorin hard. We watch their grand review of their compub fleet. Then I turn little in fiancien of my nupanyu. It is Heetre of very limited range. It will be my method of viewing their fair Silvia. Then she sees you in torment. She kisses me swiftly for their privilege of stopping their Heetre. I count upon you, my friend, to plead with her to grant me their most extravigant of concessions. Then their Heetre is searing their flesh from your bones I feel that she is softhearted enough to oblige you. Yes?" He touched a button and the repaired television screen lighted up. All the dome of mountains and sky was visible in it. There were dancing moats in sight which were aircraft. "I have rebuffed all meat will work from that side of that room," added Crainborg comfortably. "So I can dare to turn my back. You cannot short dare induction screen again." "That was clever, but you face scientist, Thornhart. You have lost." A sudden surge of flying craft appeared on the television screen. The grounded fleet of the United Nations was taking to the air again. In the narrow two-mile strip between the two domes of force it swirled up and up. Crainborg frowned. "Now what is dare idea of that?" he demanded. He moved closer to the screen. The pocket-gun was left behind, five feet from his fingertips. "Torton heart. You will explain it." "They hope," said Thorn grimly, "your fleet can make gaps in the dome to shoot through. If so, they'll go out through those gaps and fight." "Foolish," said Crainborg blandly. "Dere only viep en vie heuf tu usis dere normal mechteabolism of dere humon sisten." "Hungar." Thorn reached into his pocket. Thornborg was regarding the screen absorbently. Through the haze of flying dots which was the United Nations fleet a darkening spot to westward became visible. It drew dearer and grew larger. It was dense. It was huge. It was deadly. It was the kampub battle fleet nearly equal to the imprisoned ships in number. It swept up to view its helpless enemy. It came close so every man could see their only possible antagonists rendered impotent. A maneuver was really necessary when you think of it. The kampub fleet had encountered one combat squadron of the United Nations fleet and that one squadron dying had carried down three times its number of enemies. It was necessary to show the kampub personnel the rest of their enemies imprisoned in order to hearten them for the butchery of civilians before them. Crainborg gaffawed as the kampub fleet made its mocking circuit of the invisible dome. And Thorn raised his head. "Crainborg," he said grimly, "look." There was something in his tone which made Crainborg turn and Thorn held a little forked stick in his hand. "Turn off the induction screen or I kill you." Crainborg looked at him and chuckled, "It is Bluff, my friend," he said dryly. "I have seen many weapons. I am scientist. You play their game of poker. You try Bluf." "But I answered you with der Heitre." He moved his great bulk and Thorn released his left hand. There was a sudden crack on Crainborg's side of the room. A pebble a little over an inch and diameter fell to the floor. Crainborg wavered and toppled and fell. Three times more his face merciless Thorn drew back his arm and three times Crainborg's head jerked slightly. Then Thorn faced the panel on which the induction screen switch was placed. Several times he thrust his hand through the screen and abruptly drew it back with pain in an attempt to throw the switch. At last he was successful and now he walked calmly across the room and bent over the motionless Crainborg. Skull fractured, he said grimly. "All right, Sylvia?" He went through the narrow doorway beyond, picking up the pocket-gun as he went. There was a noise of whining machinery. Now Thorn was emptying pellets into the mechanism that controlled the dome of force. There was a crashing of glass. It stopped. There were blows and thumpings. That noise stopped, too. Thorn came back, his eyes glowing. He flung open the outer door of the rocket ship and Sylvia went with him. He pointed. Far away the fighting force of the United Nations was swirling upward, like smoke from a campfire or winged ants from a tree stump they went up in a colossal twisting spiral, beyond the domes and above them. The domes existed no longer, up and up and up. Then they swooped down upon the suddenly fleeing enemy, vengefully, savagely, with all the fury of men avenging not only what they have suffered but also what they have feared. The combat squadrons of the United Nations fell upon the invaders. Green hexy nitrate explosions lighted up the sky, ear-cracking detonations reverberated among the mountains. There was battle there, and death, and carnage, and utter destruction. The roar of combat filled the universe. Then closed the door and looked down at Creamborg, who breathed stenoriously. His mouth foolishly opened. "Our men will be back for us," he said, "shortly we needn't worry." Then he said, "Huh." He called himself a scientist, and he didn't know a slingshot when he saw one. But then Thornhart dropped a weapon made of a forked stick and strong elastic from his shoot pack and caught Sylvia hungrily in his arms. Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tenants, draft the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, maintain communication. Whew! Sound complicated? Runners' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants? Check. Rent collection? Check. Got it. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runners warehouse. What's next? At Moss Adams, that question inspires us to help people and their businesses strategically define and claim their future. As one of America's leading accounting, consulting, and wealth management firms, our collaborative approach creates solutions for your unique business needs. We leverage industry-focused insights with the collective technical resources of our firm to elevate your performance, uncover opportunity, and move upward at MossAtoms.com.