Spacehounds of IPC Part 30

"Don't think so, either. Maybe it's a purely mechanical affair that they use for observing. Anyway, old sons, I don't like the looks of things at all. Quince, you're the brains of this outfit--s.h.i.+ft the ma.s.sive old intellect into high and tell us what to do."

Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished measuring the apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward Stevens and Brandon.

"It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we do may prove to be wrong," he said, slowly. "However, I do not see that this latest development can operate to change the plan we have already adopted; that of running away, straight out from the sun. We may have to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women and babies can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will, of course, be necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to t.i.tan, for they would be powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror upon either the _Sirius_ or their torpedoes against such forces as that fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might well be bringing down upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world before he could be stopped. Both Ura.n.u.s and Neptune are approximately upon our present course. Do the t.i.tanians know anything of either of them, Steve?"

"Not a thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as Ura.n.u.s on their power beam--it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Ura.n.u.s or Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on the Jovian satellites and on t.i.tan, I'd say that anything might be out there--on Ura.n.u.s, Neptune, their satellites, or anywhere else."

"Cancel Ura.n.u.s, and double that for Neptune," Brandon commanded.

"Realize how far away they are?"

"That's right, too," agreed Stevens. "Before we got there, with any acceleration we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way or the other."

Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his results. Then, with a grave face, he went to consult the medical officers. The women, children, and the two Martian scientists were sent to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly to twenty meters per second per second, above which point the physicians declared they should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists met again--met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon narrow hospital bunks, unable even to lift their ma.s.sive arms.

While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the super-dreadnought of s.p.a.ce so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled heavily about the room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing emitting clouds of smoke from his villainously reeking pipe. The Venetians, lacking Brandon's physical strength and by nature quieter of disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at the calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and meaningless integrals, while he also concentrated upon the problem before them.

"They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly," Westfall finally reported. "They seem to be...."

"In that case we may be all x," Brandon interrupted, brandis.h.i.+ng his pipe vigorously. "We know that they're on a beam--apparently we're the only ones hereabouts having cosmic power. If we can keep away from them until their beam attenuates, we can whittle 'em down to our size and then take them, no matter how much acc.u.mulator capacity they've got."

"But can we keep away from them that long?" asked Dol Kenor, pointedly; and his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:

"Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a rendezvous with the s.p.a.ce Fleet, which will probably be ready by the time of meeting?"

"I am afraid that that would be useless," Westfall frowned in thought.

"Given power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as easily as she could wipe out the _Sirius_ alone."

"Kenor's right." Stevens spoke up from the calculator. "You're getting too far ahead of the situation. We aren't apt to keep ahead of them long enough to do much leading anywhere. The t.i.tanians can hold a beam together from Saturn to Jupiter--why can't these snake-folks?"

"Several reasons," Brandon argued stubbornly. "First place, look at the ma.s.s of that thing, and remember that the heavier the beam the harder it is to hold it together. Second, there's no evidence that they wander around much in s.p.a.ce. If their beams are designed princ.i.p.ally for travel upon Jupiter, why should they have any extraordinary range? I say they can't hold that beam forever. We've got a good long lead, and in spite of their higher acceleration, I think we'll be able to keep out of range of their heavy stuff. If so, we'll trace a circle--only one a good deal bigger than the one Amonar suggested--and meet the fleet at a point where that enemy s.h.i.+p will be about out of power."

Thus for hours the scientists argued, agreeing upon nothing, while the Vorkulian fortress crept ever closer. At the end of three days of the mad flight, the pursuing s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p was in plain sight, covering hundreds of divisions of the micrometer screens. But now the size of the images was increasing with extreme slowness, and the scientists of the _Sirius_ watched with strained attention the edges of those glowing green pictures. Finally, when the pictured edges were about to cease moving across the finely-ruled lines, Brandon cut down his own acceleration a trifle, and kept on decreasing it at such a rate that the heptagon still crept up, foot by foot.

"Hey what's the big idea?" Stevens demanded.

"Coax 'em along. If we run away from them they'll probably reverse power and go back home, won't they? Their beam is falling apart fast, but they're still getting so much stuff along it that we couldn't do a thing to stop them. If they think that we're losing power even faster than they are, though, they'll keep after us until their beam's so thin that they'll just be able to stop on it. Then they'll reverse or else go onto their acc.u.mulators--reverse, probably, since they'll be a long ways from home by that time. We'll reverse, too, and keep just out of range. Then, when we both have stopped and are about to start back, their beam will be at its minimum and we'll go to work on 'em--foot, horse, and marines.

n.o.body can run us as ragged as they've been doing and get away with it as long as I'm conscious and stand a chance in the world of hanging one onto their chins in retaliation. I've got a hunch. If it works, we can take those birds alone, and take 'em so they'll _stay_ took. We might as well break up--this is going to be an ordinary job of piloting for a few days, I think. I'm going up and work with the Martians on that hunch.

You fellows work out any ideas you want to. Watch 'em close, Mac. Keep kidding 'em along, but don't let them get close enough to puncture us."

Everything worked out practically as Brandon had foretold, and a few days later, their acceleration somewhat less than terrestrial gravity, he called another meeting in the control room. He came in grinning from ear to ear, accompanied by the two Martians, and seated himself at his complex power panel.

"Now watch the professor closely, gentlemen," he invited. "He is going to cut that beam."

"But you can't," protested Pyraz Amonar.

"I know you can't, ordinarily, when a beam is tight and solid. But that beam's as loose as ashes right now. I told you I had a hunch, and Alcantro and Fedanzo worked out the right answer for me. If I can cut it, Quince, and if their screens go down for a minute, shoot your visiray into them and see what you can see."

"All x. How much power are you going to draw?"

"Plenty--it figures a little better than four hundred thousand kilofranks. I'll draw it all from the acc.u.mulators, so as not to disturb you fellows on the cosmic intake. We don't care if we do run the batteries down some, but I don't want to hold that load on the bus-bars very long. However, if my hunch is right, I won't be on that beam five minutes before it's cut from Jupiter--and I'll bet you four dollars that you won't see the original crew in that fort when you get into it."

He set upper and lower bands of dirigible projectors to apply a powerful sidewise thrust, and the _Sirius_ darted off her course.

Flas.h.i.+ng a minute pencil behind the huge heptagon, Brandon manipulated his tuning circuits until a brilliant spot in s.p.a.ce showed him that he was approaching resonance with the heptagon's power beam. Micrometer dials were then engaged and the delicate tuning continued until the meters gave evidence that the two beams were precisely synchronized and exactly opposite in phase. Four plunger switches closed, that tiny pilot ray became an enormous rod of force, and as those two gigantic beams met in exact opposition and neutralized each other, a solid wall of blinding brilliance appeared in the empty ether behind the Vorkulian fortress. As that dazzling wall sprang into being, the sparkling green protection died from the walls of the heptagon.

"Go to it, Quince!" Brandon yelled, but the suggestion was entirely superfluous. Even before the wall-screen had died, Westfall's beam was trying to get through it, and when the visiray revealed the interior of the heptagon, the quiet and methodical physicist was shaken from his habitual calm.

"Why, they aren't the winged monsters at all--they're _hexans_!"

he exclaimed.

"Sure they are." Brandon did not even turn his heavily-goggled eyes from the blazing blankness of his own screen. "That was my hunch. Those snakes went about things in a business-like fas.h.i.+on. They didn't strike me as being folks who would pull off such a wild stunt as trying to chase us clear out of the solar system, but a gang of hexans would do just that. Some of them must have captured that s.h.i.+p and, already having it in their c.o.c.k-eyed brains that we were back of what happened on Callisto, they decided to b.u.mp us off if it was the last thing they ever did. That's what I'd do myself, if I were a hexan. Now I'll tell you what's happening back at the home power plant of that s.h.i.+p and what's going to happen next. I'm kicking up a horrible row out there with my interference, and a lot of instruments at the other end of that beam must be cutting up all kinds of didoes, right now. They'll check up on that s.h.i.+p with the expedition, by radio and what-not, and when they find out that it's clear out here--chop! Didn't get to see much, did you?"

"No, they must have switched over to their acc.u.mulators almost instantly."

"Yeah, but if they've got acc.u.mulator capacity enough to hold off our entire cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I'm a polyp! We're going to take that s.h.i.+p, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his beam--pay me the four, Quince."

The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and Brandon's beam bored on through s.p.a.ce, unimpeded. He shut it off and turned to his fellows with a grin--a grin which disappeared instantly as a thought struck him and he leaped back to his board.

"Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!" he snapped, and drove in switch after switch.

"Cosmic intake's gone down to zero!" exclaimed MacDonald, as the _Sirius_ leaped away.

"Had to cut it--they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought of something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if ... it's necessary, all x--we're taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though we're at pretty long range, they've got some horrible projectors, and they were evidently mad enough to waste some power taking a good, solid flash at us--and if we hadn't been expecting it, that flash would have been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me--Great Cat! Look at that meter--and I've had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is drawing five hundred and forty thousand!"

They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after they had seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range any offensive beam could be driven with such unthinkable power--power requiring for its neutralization almost the full output of the prodigious batteries of acc.u.mulators carried by the _Sirius_! Yet for five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against their straining screens, and even Brandon's face grew tense and hard as that frightful attack continued. At the end of twenty-two minutes, however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin and every man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief--the almost unbearable bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.

"Wow!" Brandon shouted. "I thought for a minute they were going to hang to us until we cracked, even if it meant that they'd have to freeze to death out here themselves!"

"It would have meant that, too, don't you think?" asked Stevens.

"I imagine so--don't see how they could possibly have enough power left to get back to Jupiter if they s.h.i.+ne that thing on us much longer. Of course, the more power they waste on us, the quicker we can take them; but I don't want much more of that beam, I'll tell the world--I just about had heart failure before they cut off!"

The ma.s.sive heptagon was now drifting back toward Jupiter at constant velocity. The hexans were apparently h.o.a.rding jealously their remaining power, for their wall screens did not flash on at the touch of the visiray. Through unresisting metal the probing Terrestrial beams sped, and the scientists studied minutely every detail of the Vorkulian armament; while the regular observers began to make a detailed photographic survey of every room and compartment of the great fortress.

Much of the instrumentation and machinery was familiar, but some of it was so strange that study was useless--days of personal inspection and experiment, perhaps complete dismantling, would be necessary to reveal the secrets hidden within those peculiar mechanisms.

"They're trying to save all the power they can--think I'll make them spend some more," Brandon remarked, and directed against the heptagon a heavy destructive beam. "We don't want them to get back to Jupiter until after we've boarded them and found out everything we want to know. Come here, Quince--what do you make of this?"

Both men stared at the heptagon, frankly puzzled; for the screens of the strange vessel did not radiate, nor did the material of the walls yield under the terrible force of the beam. The destructive ray simply struck that dull green surface and vanished--disappeared without a trace, as a tiny stream of water disappears into a partially-soaked sponge.

"Do you know what you are doing?" asked Westfall, after a few minutes'

thought. "I believe that you are charging their acc.u.mulators at the rate of," he glanced at a meter, "exactly thirty-one thousand five hundred kilofranks."

"Great Cat!" Brandon's hand flashed to a switch and the beam expired.

"But they can't just simply grab it and store it, Quince--it's impossible!"