The Passing of Ku Sui Part 18

He took over the controls again. Carefully he varied the forward repulsion and sent current to the side gravity-plates, and slowly the _Sandra_ answered by rotating, longitudinally, reversing her position.

Still maintaining a slight and dwindling speed toward Earth, her bow swung from that planet's eye-filling panorama and came to face, instead, the invisible asteroid. When turned completely around, the men in her control cabin looked through the bow windows right into the brilliant cone of the purple ray.

Lar Tantril's voice again boomed from the broadcasting sh.e.l.l, and this time it was harsh with anger.

"Try no tricks, Ca.r.s.e! I see what you intend. You plan to suddenly _answer_ my ray, instead of continuing to resist it, and so drive right past me and escape. But I warn you I have terrific power, and if you move towards me of your own volition, I can burn you to a cinder in three seconds, and I'll do it. You can't escape! If I have to destroy Ku Sui, all right--but I'll get you!"

The Hawk strapped over his eyes the infra-red gla.s.ses Leithgow now gave him.

Reversing the _Sandra's_ ends had neither increased nor decreased the rate at which the asteroid's purple stream was bringing her closer.

Obviously the magnetic stream was being varied. The s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p's forward momentum merely continued to drop normally until the moment came when she had no Earthward velocity at all; and then more quickly she moved toward the restraining asteroid.

With his infra-red gla.s.ses, through the bow windows, Ca.r.s.e could now see the ma.s.sive body in full detail. There was the dome, a huge, gleaming cup of transparent stuff now showing wisps of blue, from the defensive web around it; and inside were the several buildings, and minute black dots which were the figures of men. There was a great number of them. The largest group was cl.u.s.tered inside one of the large s.h.i.+p-size port-locks in the dome. The lock's outer door was open, and it was from there that the purple ray seemed to originate.

Obviously the intention of the enemy was to draw the _Sandra_ right in. Five miles now separated asteroid and s.h.i.+p.

Again the Venusian chief spoke.

"I warn you once more, Sparrow Hawk, try no tricks. You can see the men I have here, but you can't see my ray projectors. They're hidden, but they're centered on you, every one, and my hand's at the control that fires them. They have terrific power, Ca.r.s.e. Better not attempt anything!"

The Hawk switched on the extension microphone at his side. He said levelly into it:

"Lar Tantril, I'll make a bargain with you: a favor for a favor."

"What?" shot from the loudspeaker.

"I will agree to surrender peaceably when you've drawn my s.h.i.+p inside if, for your part, you promise to free Eliot Leithgow, who is aboard with me, and the five patients on whom Ku Sui operated. If you don't grant me that, I will oppose you to the last pull of my finger on trigger."

"But, Ca.r.s.e--" the Master Scientist began, horrified: but his expression of amazement faded when the slender man at the radio turned his head and half-closed one eye in a wink.

"You will agree to that--and no tricks?" Tantril's voice repeated.

"I will agree to it. And as for tricks, what could I possibly try?

Your rays could burn through the maximum power of my web in three seconds, as you say: I know it as well as you. I only wish there was a chance to get out of your range in time."

"All right!" the Venusian replied decisively. "I agree. I'll release Leithgow and the five patients. Keep away from the controls and I'll draw you in."

Ca.r.s.e switched off the microphone.

"A h.e.l.l of a lot Tantril's word is worth!" muttered Ban Wilson. Once more, surprisingly, the Hawk winked. Friday was grinning now. For once in his life he had guessed his master's strategy before the others.

A mile and a half to the front lay the dome-end of the asteroid.

Perhaps nine hundred miles to the rear lay the tremendous mottled curve of Earth with her dangerous upper layers of the stratosphere all too close. In the very face of Earth, all three on a line, the s.h.i.+p lay linked by a stream of purple to the great rough-hewn, errant asteroid. Half the bulk of all three lay sharply outlined against the black of s.p.a.ce by the intense yellow light of the flaming distant sun.

The asteroid neared to a mile, then a half-mile. Hawk Ca.r.s.e said curtly:

"Ban, when I give the word, put all the power we've got into our defensive web. Load the generators; overload them; tax them to the limit. That web must be as tough as possible for five seconds."

"Got you, Ca.r.s.e."

"You've--a trick?" ventured Leithgow timidly.

"I think I have, Eliot. Lar Tantril might have caught on when I turned the s.h.i.+p, but unfortunately for him his brain is incapable of proceeding past a certain point.... All right, Ban."

"Feel it!"

In answer to Ban's hands, the deck of the control cabin was literally vibrating under the mounting speed of the generators in the power-room. The generators could not stand that terrific overload long: they would burn out. But Ca.r.s.e needed only a few seconds of it.

The asteroid was a quarter of a mile away, seen through the infra-red.

The dome loomed large.

"All right!" whispered Hawk Ca.r.s.e. "Hold on!"

With the words he unleashed the _Sandra's_ full acceleration.

It was a risk and a big one, but the Hawk had it calculated to a fraction of a second, and so, without hesitation, he took the chance.

A little less than four seconds to reach his objective, he reckoned; a little more than one second for Tantril to release the asteroid's disintegrating rays as he had threatened; therefore about two and a half seconds for the _Sandra_ to be exposed to those rays. The chance that her defensive web could resist them for that long would decide it.

From almost a standing start, the _Sandra_ swept ahead, generators humming, her web a blue mist around her, acceleration at the full.

Straight down through the heart of the narrowing purple ray she sped, a hurtling metallic projectile, hundreds of tons in ma.s.s, her stub bow levelled dead at the dome.

After a second the asteroid bared its fangs.

A cone of brilliant orange flamed and washed around the _Sandra's_ bow, and a storm of soundless sparks engulfed her. She was caught in a maw of fire, and held there for the remaining terrific seconds of her wild forward dash. But the seconds pa.s.sed; the hands of Hawk Ca.r.s.e were delicate on her controls; and the _Sandra_, curving slightly upward, struck, crashed, wrenched terribly in every joint; and then the jolt and the protesting wrench and the spluttering sparks were gone from her, and there was around her only the deep silence of lifeless s.p.a.ce.

At three hundred miles an hour the _Sandra_ had nicked the upper plates of the dome and streaked on, unharmed!

It was not necessary now to use infra-red gla.s.ses to see the asteroid.

It was there in the visi-screen for naked eyes, but for seconds not one of the men in the s.h.i.+p's control-cabin thought to look. The awful acceleration and shock had dazed them. They had not known what was coming, except Friday and the Hawk, and only the latter was able to retain reasonable alertness. He, almost immediately after the impact, cut down the load on the generators, and brought the _Sandra_ out of her mad drive forward, rotating the s.h.i.+p until she was facing back towards the asteroid. Then all of them looked through the bow windows, and what they saw told the story in an instant.

"It's visible! See--the invisibility's gone!" cried Friday.

A score of miles away the body lay, fully revealed, its starboard half gleaming hard and sharp in the sunlight. Cautiously the _Sandra_ drew closer. Ca.r.s.e gave the controls to Ban and examined it carefully through the electelscope, after removing the infra-red attachment.

He saw that the keel of the _Sandra_ had torn a great, mangled rent in the dome and through this the air had rushed out. s.p.a.ce had taken possession. The disintegrating rays which had been burning at the _Sandra_ had been snapped off with the sheathing of invisibility; in that one wild second of impact, all the asteroid's functioning mechanism had been destroyed. Lar Tantril had not thought quite far enough: he had not sealed the buildings air-tight against a possible cras.h.i.+ng of the dome, and for that reason alone he and his men had gone down in full defeat under the drive of the Hawk.

Shreds of flotsam drifting and turning in s.p.a.ce around the dome now became visible--bits of wreckage hurled out from the tear, and also a number of white, bloated things which once had been the bodies of men.

The outrus.h.i.+ng tide of air had taken them along, and now they drifted, shapeless, all of a kind, in the lifelessness of s.p.a.ce.

"Merciful heaven!" whispered Eliot Leithgow, staring at the desolation. "Gone! Just snuffed out!"

The Hawk took over again and brought and held the _Sandra_ in a position a quarter of a mile above the now rapidly falling asteroid.