XIII.

The scene at the proving grounds was a bustle of activity. In the

center of the area stood a huge machine with a paraboloid reflector,

pointing skyward on gimbals. Supporting the projector was a girdered

and trussed platform, with tractor beams on each corner, pointing down

to the center of Terra. Vast was the machine; no telescope in the Solar

Combine was half as solid as the trunnions and bars that rigidized the

setting of the relatively small, ten-foot bowl of the projector.

A line of portable telephone poles, strung with portable wiring, led

from the housing below the projector. Off across the proving ground

they went to a master-control office almost lost in the horizon and the

haze.

But the projector would not be studied from the remote position. That

was just a clearing house--a veritable telephone exchange--that fed

terrestrial data from all of the research laboratories of Terra to the

monster on the proving ground.

Inside the housing was Cliff Lane, directing the technical staff.

There, too, was Linzete, the catman, brought back to Terra by Lane's

doubly convincing mind. Linzete did not like primates; he avoided them

and went out of his way to keep a two-foot clear space between himself

and the primates as he moved around in the crowded housing.

The Terrans, warned beforehand, did their best to honor his dislike of

them. They respected his preference in contact, though they, at this

point, tended to use his mind and his experience as something presented

to them. For they--and he--knew that their mental ability exceeded his

and he was there only because his experience had been greater than

theirs.

Out on the trestles and the catwalks of the machine stood Stellor

Downing, directing the final touches of the monstrous mechanical system.

The operator called to Lane: "The sounding-boat is over the Mindanao

Deep, sir. Ready and waiting."

"How's the terrestrial laboratory at Washington?"

"Ready for an hour. And Cal Tech has been chewing their fingernails for

two hours."

"Call Downing and ask him how long?"

"Calling Stellor Downing--"

"On the roger," answered Downing, grabbing a phone from its rack on a

catwalk.

"How much more greasing are you going to give that mecanno set?" asked

Cliff.

"Oh, any time you're ready, we are."

"I know but--"

"Until the bell rings, we'll sort of pick curls of dust out of the

bearings, put a drop of oil here and there, and see that the stuff is

shiny--and as slippery as the devil."

The operator plugged into a ringing line. "Lane," he called after

listening, "the crew just dropped the drone."

"Get the detector gang and tell 'em."

The operator unplugged and shoved the plug into another jack. He spoke,

and listened for several minutes.

"Detector gang has picked up the drone," he announced to Lane.

"Ring the warning bell!"

The clangor of the warning bell shattered the air. Over the _tactac_ of

machinery and the rumble of heavy generators, it fell on waiting ears,

and from all parts of the great projector there was a general rush to

hit solid ground. A huge ring of men formed a hundred yards from the

machine, and Downing entered the housing.

"Can we see better in here or out there?" he asked.

"In here," said Cliff. "The drone won't be within a ten light-sec range

when we hit it. The celestial globe, here, has been juggled up to show

both drone and projector. It's rough, but the lack of definition won't

bother us. We can understand what's happening--and if it happens as we

expect, we'll see it go blooey and be able to reconstruct the event.

Stick around."

Linzete came and stood beside them. "I think the sawtooth is not of

the proper shape," he suggested.

"Perhaps not," agreed Lane. "But to put any sharper break on it

will require another high-power driver stage. I'm hoping it will be

adequate."

"The recovery time may seem slow," added Downing. "But remember how

much distance it controls."

Linzete nodded dubiously. He was not the type to argue. If these

gadget-mad Terrans were going to ruin a second-rate ship on the first

try, well, they'd find out soon enough. He hoped they had a stock of

radio-controlled drones. They'd need them.

They had--and they probably would need them.

"On target!" came the cry.

* * * * *

Above, the platform swung around. The projector bobbled over in its

gimbals and centered on something invisible in the blue sky. The

tractor beams took hold invisibly and there was a grunting of the

bearings as the whole mechanism anchored itself to the core of the

planet.

Then the projector jumped perceptibly. It seemed to gather itself

together and pounce. Then the system relaxed, apparently, for the

tractor beams died and the bearings resumed their freedom.

Down in the housing, the celestial globe showed a small, outdated

cruiser. Speed was apparently zero, for the globe and its detecting

and scanning circuits was following it, mile for mile and second by

second. A range and velocity computed below the globe gave the data:

Nine light-sec range, velocity sixty-six MPS.

The cruiser faltered in flight and the scanners almost passed ahead

of it. It faltered momentarily--that was during the time that the

projector seemed to gather its energy. As the pounce came, something

inside of the cruiser exploded very slowly. It expanded the cruiser

slightly here and there; a plate blew off; five or six of the

greenhouses shattered in puffs of mild fire; and then the cruiser

staggered and continued on at a lower velocity.

"Send out the word," called Lane. "General coverage. That was the first

shock."

Laboratories marked the time all over Terra. It would take hours

for the shock--if any--to reach the antipodes. What Lane was more

interested in was the report from Cal Tech, only a few hundred miles

away.

"Linzete, you were right," said Lane. "It'll take time, and we'll need

it. But--Hey! Fellows! Get the high-power stage rigged and see what can

be done about increasing the sharpness of the sawtooth generator."

The period of waiting was filled with activity. The reports started to

come in:

"Cal Tech reports very mild shock."

"Washington indicated almost zero--just a trace."

"O.K., we can stand it," said Lane. "How's the target?"

"Circling Terra. Radius seven light-sec. Velocity fifty-three MPS."

The projector was ready when the drone returned. Again the projector

gathered itself together, and the pounce was quite visible. Beneath

them, the ground shook violently, and the projector and its mighty

platforms rattled in the bearings, held as they were by tractors to the

core of Terra.

In the celestial sphere, the cruiser faltered again, and then exploded

in a wild blast of sheer flame, white and violent. The radiating gases

expanded, passed out of the scope of the scanner, and then the scanner

fell away from the scene and roamed aimlessly across the sky, showing a

mad whirling pattern of uninteresting stars.

"What happened?" asked Linzete.

"Main target blew up completely. Nothing massive to focus on, so the

finders and scanners just roam at will. That's it, Stellor."

"Wait until we get the seismographic reports," cautioned the Martian.

"Maybe we can blast a ship to bits at two million miles, but so what if

California slides into the San Jacinto fault?"

"Well, there'll be no more attempts until the returns are all in from

the labs," said Lane. "I'm taking no more chances." He turned to

Linzete. "You'll want the plans, of course?"

The Sscantovian nodded. "I will not require the main circuits, of

course. The snatcher portion is just an oversized version of our own

invention. What I shall need is the details of the compressing sphere.

We were content to tear a section out of the ship. You made a precision

slicing operation out of it which pleased us greatly. But this problem

of taking the spherical cut and actually compressing the matter

inside--then releasing it instantly to create an atomic explosion is

far beyond me. We can copy it, but no Sscantovian would ever hope to

develop it from the facts here unless he had detailed plans. We--could

not understand its operation."

"You did understand the main principle, though. You were the one who

predicted that the release-time was not fast enough and suggested

sharpening the sawtooth generator."

"One may make suggestions without understanding the whole process,"

purred Linzete. "Your weapon seems to be a success."

"We'll know that when the seismographic reports are all in. Hurling a

beam of this kind, doing what we do, may well shake the planet's crust.

We hope to extend our range to ten million miles, and we'll know if we

can in a few months. If you have any deities, Linzete, you might burn a

prayer to 'em."

* * * * *

It was thirty-six hours before the returns were all in. All along the

fault-lines of Terra came reports of very mild temblors. Nowhere was

there any severe slippage of Terra's crust: the seismographs could

find no epicenters, the uncounted tons of rock, under unknown tons of

pressure, had slid uniformly, creating a general, little shock.

And Lane grinned. "With little slippages," he said, "we may do away

with all severe earthquakes. Releasing the crust-pressures before they

build up to a disaster-quantity should help, not hinder. We might

continue hitting small targets like this until the distribution of

fault-pressures is even all over. Then we can swing the Big Beam."

"What I'm interested in at this point," said Downing, "is the

countermeasures group. What if the Loard-vogh get this thing?"

"Billy says that they can't miss getting it eventually. And Billy also

says that the countermeasures gang is working on another development.

Has something to do with a similar gadget, only the sphere of force can

be made to pierce the snatcher--or any other field of force--and remove

smaller items inside. Sort of grab the stuff out from the contracting

sphere and toss it outside. It might save a lot of the crew, especially

since the atomic sphere is necessarily small."

Linzete purred and asked: "Couldn't you compress a whole section of the

ship?"

Lane turned. "Billy says we could, but why? Takes that much more power,

and the ultimate explosion would do little harm. This way we can grab a

hunk the size of a baseball and make quite an atomic blowup out of it.

Takes much less power, and the explosion is great."

"I think you'll find," offered Downing, "that it takes just as much

power to wreck a ship by crushing it physically as it does to compress

a small sphere and then let it explode."

"The atomic explosion takes more," said Lane.

"Then why?"

"Projector-size. We're getting away with swinging a ten-foot bowl

around. If we wanted to inclose a whole ship, we'd require a paraboloid

about forty times the longest diameter of the ship, just as the

ten-foot bowl is forty times the diameter of the compressible sphere.

And cutting a section out--well, that's the weapon we had before and

decided against because it left a chance for a well-designed ship to

lose a section and still carry on, or be repaired. Complete destruction

is the only answer."

"In other words, the power input is greater, but the operational

power--?"

"The overall power requirements of the atomic sphere projector are

about even this way to just crumpling a ship."

"That's what I said," objected Downing.

"I thought you meant just the crushing factor. The difference is made

up in the projector elements. Well, that's those. Billy says we can

turn this over to the secondary crew, now."

"Then what?"

"I'm going to get six of these made up for each planet. We'll also

mount some on the outer planets; and the colonials of Alpha, Procyon,

and the rest."

* * * * *

Hotang Lu pounded the table with his little fist. "That weapon might

have stopped them!" he snapped. "Why did you stop production?"

"Are you questioning my motives?" asked Thompson quietly.

"Yes!"

"Have you any doubts as to my loyalty?"

"I ... ah ... no."

"And you do not understand my intent?"

"No."

"He's not alone, Billy," put in Kennebec. "What do you intend to do?"

"The use of Terra's secret weapon is critical. It must be employed

at exactly the opportune moment, and not one minute before and not

one minute after. There must be, for psychological reasons you all

know, a certain amount of normal, mine-run fighting before we employ

our secret. But I do not want them to be defeated by our might and

our weapons. That would be disastrous, for they would return in a few

years, and they would return and return, until finally they succeeded

in conquering us. We must fight this as I have planned, and when the

time is exactly ripe, we shall employ our secret weapon and from that

time on, there will be no more carnage, and the Loard-vogh will be

conquered."

"When you're dealing with the Loard-vogh, there's no better way

to skin a cat than to grab the skin at the neck and pull," scowled

Downing. "Choking them to death with cream will not work. I spent three

weeks there, remember, and I tell you, Billy, you can not temporize

with them!"

Kennebec shook his head at Billy, "I wonder if your practice of getting

what you want without fighting for it mightn't be carried too far."

"We are a million million in population," said Billy. "That's counting

the Solar Combine plus the colonial outposts. This fight we're

facing can not be won in another way. They outnumber us a million

to one--think of that! To win, every Solarian must kill one million

Loard-vogh! And that," he concluded bitterly, "makes us all come out

even!"

"There isn't a man in this sector that wouldn't prefer to die

protecting his own than to knuckle under Loard-vogh rule."

"I know--"

"Billy, I can not permit this order to continue," said Kennebec. "We

must not permit them to take Terra!"

"Then you're overriding my order?"

"I am--and I pray that the procrastination isn't fatal."

Downing frowned. "Look, Billy, remember this: The Loard-vogh fear us as

we are! Otherwise they would not be mobilizing against us. Despite the

million-to-one ratio, they fear us and our heredity. We can and will

win!"

"We'll win, never fear," said Billy. "But we'll win only if we play it

properly."

"And properly means to fight with every weapon that we have."

"Spore bombs?"

"That's but one thing."

"They'll help--only to make the other trillion Loard-vogh mad. Douse a

few planets and thousands of others will muster."

Billy Thompson thought for a moment and then answered: "Really, it

makes little difference how we fight. We'll win anyway. Go ahead and

build your gadgets."

He left, and Hotang Lu nodded. "I pray there is time left. Time to

build smaller ones, too, that will fit the ships of the Solar Guard.

Time to manufacture the necessary fighting equipment. Time to ... ah,

always we are fighting time. I curse the lack of time."

And then the Tlemban added: "I am mystified. In my cosmos, if a secret

weapon is worthy of use, it is worthy of use from the time it is

discovered. I am puzzled--but then, I do not understand your secret

weapon. It sounds foolish to me."

Kennebec spent the next three hours trying to make the Tlemban

understand, and finally gave up.