Maynard's force swept out from Mephisto, drove in toward Sol, and
slipped between Terra and Venus. They passed Sol just outside of the
orbit of Mercury and headed outward again.
Just beyond the orbit of Terra, the souped-up detectors flared briefly
and then burst into full indication. Maynard smiled wryly and said:
"How can any military strategy work when both sides have mental
telepathy, even though it is mechanical?"
The Martian task force was plunging into space almost on an opposite
course, coming forward under battle acceleration. "We're not having
any," snapped Guy.
"They must have heard of the trouble Terra had with us," observed
Turretman Holmes. "Maybe they'd like Mephisto?"
"They aren't heading for Terra," said Guy. "Well, we're being attacked,
technically. Let's have at them."
The indication in the detector opened, and the pattern of the Martian
fleet became clear. Guy shook his head at the perfection of the space
lattice. Against the vortex, a perfect space lattice meant ruin.
Into the Martian fleet went Maynard's group. At terrific velocity,
the two fleets met, and the vortexes flowed from Guy's ships and ran
together in a mad pattern through which there was no place to pass
unharmed.
There was a flash of MacMillan fire. Crossed beams radiated, and the
space between the ships dotted with blinding flashes of premature
torpedoes.
The Martians were more interested in avoiding the toroids, and their
fire was desultory. The Terrans were more interested in the Martian
ships, and their fire was defensive only.
Then at once, the Martians were through, passed, and inert. They sped
on at zero drive, and their courses diverged.
"After 'em!" grunted Maynard. "Get 'em on detectors!"
The Martians went out of sight. The contact-detectors stretched as
the two opposing velocities caused the separation to add into the
unthinkable miles. Days passed before the velocity of Guy's fleet
dropped to turn-back velocity, and more days passed before Guy's ships
were within sight of their quarry. By then, no ship was within detector
range of its fellow; the sky was clear save for the inert Martian and
the pursuing ship.
Slowly, the _Leoniad_ crept up beside the Martian ship. And then as
the velocity of _Leoniad_ approached zero relative to the Martian,
there was motion in the sky, the detectors flared bright, and the alarm
bells rang with ear-splitting loudness. The detector showed a Martian
sub-ship at pointer range.
Its barrier had been blasted open by the huge vortex that crept and
rolled towards the _Leoniad_.
"Pilot! Vortex at fourteen--seven ten!"
_Leoniad_ creaked. Ponderously, it swapped ends. A seam split, and the
intercom became hoarse with the shrill of escaping air and the cries
of the repair crew. An alarm rang loud, which stopped when the split
seam was plastered. Acceleration took hold, and the men were nailed
to their places. The generator alarm pealed, indicating dangerous
overload. More plates creaked as the drivers took the power and
strained against the mass and inertia of the _Leoniad_.
"Not enough!"
The turrets of the _Leoniad_ whipped around and the sub-ship was
blasted in a vast, expanding flare.
But its work was done. Though the drivers, straining their best, were
fighting the _Leoniad_ into velocity, there was too little time. The
vortex caught up with the _Leoniad_, passed upward from base to top,
and went on to die in the remoteness of space.
The breakers blew, the fuses sputtered, and _Leoniad_ went inert.
She coasted away from the Martian at much less than one mile per second.
* * * * *
Maynard bumped gently into the wall of his scanning room and the pain
wakened him. Dazedly, he passed a hand over his face, and the movement
turned him over in midair. He clutched foolishly at the wall, and then
waited until he found a handhold. He handed himself to the floor of the
room, and sought the desk.
Forcing himself into the seat, Guy snapped the safety belt and then
reached for the communicator.
"Pilot! Technician! Navigator! Isn't there anybody alive on this crate!"
He sat and thought. Something had happened that was not in the books.
He'd hit a vortex and had awakened without help. The others--what had
happened to them?
The communicator spoke tinnily: "Is there anybody else on this space
can?"
"Maynard--who's speaking?"
"You and I are all?" came the return. "This is Hume, the assistant
calculator."
"Might as well get together," said Maynard. "Come on in."
"This is Evans, of the Technician's crew. Can I come in, too?"
"Wait a minute, both of you," said Guy. "Go take a look around. Someone
else may be alive, too."
"How many?" asked another voice. "In case anyone's interested, this is
Ted Jones, of the power gang."
"Pete Rivers and I ... I'm Jim Phelps ... are both O.K."
"Wait a minute," said Guy. "Someone run into the turretman's office,
and the other go into the navigator's office. If either of them come
out of it, let me know immediately."
"Pilot Tinsley, sir. Just came out of it."
"Were you on duty?"
"No, sir. Assistant Pilot Adcock was on the board."
"Oh," answered Guy. "He's still in the greenhouse, then."
"Did you expect him?"
"Dunno," said Guy slowly. "The passage of the vortex effect is leaving
this office spherically. Or roughly so. Spread out--"
"Turretman Greene just came to, sir."
"You beat me by ten seconds. Navigator Sampson just took up _his_
interest in life."
"See?" continued Guy. "As I was saying; spread out and cover the ship.
Record each awakening time precisely. Later we'll get the dimensions of
this can to the fractional millimeter, and we can chart what happened."
As time went on, the communicator took up the clamor, swelling from
individual calls to the full cry of the personnel in a regular increase.
The calculator and Guy sat before the plans of the _Leoniad_ and drew
lines, scribed curves, and calculated in simple trigonometry. It did
not take long. Guy put a pinprick in the plan and said:
"It's right here!"
"You suspected that," answered the other.
"I know--but what's in here that would nullify that effect? It takes
heat, work, and superenalin."
"Haven't you anything odd?"
"Nothing that the other ships haven't got ... no, wait ... no, can't
be."
"What?"
"Can't possibly be."
"Name it, Maynard. No matter how silly it may seem, that's it!"
"This thought-beam gadget--the heavy-duty one."
"That's it."
"But Mephisto went down under the vortex projector. To the last man.
They had these things."
"You fired and fired and fired, though. Hundreds and hundreds of
vortexes. The effect is cumulative, I've heard. But for a single shot,
Guy, we've got a remedy."
The ship took control as the instrument gang replaced the fuses, threw
in the breakers, and reset the balancing controls. The _Leoniad_
swapped ends, raced for the quarry that was invisible in the distance,
and took over the Martian.
* * * * *
It was days before the combined fleets were collected again. They
converged upon a million cubic miles of space, and mulled around in a
mad pattern before they turned and headed for Mephisto.
The commander of the Martians came before Guy.
"I am defeated," said the Martian stiffly. "I would have preferred it
at the hands of--"
"One who is not a traitor?" asked Guy. "Marshal Monogon, why am I a
traitor?"
"You betrayed your oath."
"My oath," said Guy, "was intended to set up a condition in which a man
will do the best thing for his homeland. That I am doing."
"You think so."
"They'll all think so."
"I am defeated," repeated Monogon. "I hope to see the day when you are
caught."
"You may, at that."
"But to what end are you working? You fought Terrans. You fight us.
Why?"
"Monogon, you have a super vortex machine set up on Phobos. Terra has
one on Luna. You now know that the vortex will not kill on a single
try. But how much less dead will the entire System be if either of us
fires?"
"I ... yes, the speed will permit you to fire once we have fired. You
would be able to detect the operation of the projector hours before the
toroid envelops Terra."
"And with no one alive to awaken any of us--those who are not on Terra
will fight one another to the death--vortexes will be coming from every
solid body in the Solar System within a week. Do you think I want that?"
"You hope to accomplish something?" asked Monogon. "What--and how and
why?"
"I hope to unify. I cannot appeal directly because of my ... my
traitorous past. But Monogon, I can and will fight to the last breath
to try my plan. Never forget Ertene, Monogon. They'll be here next,
looking for me--or something. They've got to have their trouble, and
they well know that a good offense is the best defense. They've got
vortexes too, you know. As a last resort, they'll fire on us both. What
I've got to do is to hold off both Mars and Terra--and then go out and
take Ertene!"
"Madness."
"Necessary. Ertene must be brought in, so that she will depend on Sol
and the rest of us."
"You're mad, Guy Maynard. Stark mad. But I agree with you. The vortex
is deadly, and with things at the breaking-point as they are now,
oblivion is but a step. Can you believe me?"
"Yes," smiled Guy. He tapped the thought-instrument and explained.
"Then you can also believe me when I offer you my aid?"
"Yes."
"I'll make no move against Mars, understand."
"I'll not ask you to. You'll go to--"
The radiation alarm broke.
"What's up?" asked Maynard.
"Nothing dangerous. We just uncovered a Terran crate trying to run
through us under a barrier."
Maynard looked at Monogon. "We'd better hurry," he told the Martian.
"They'll be tearing up the Solar System before we can stop them."
The combined fleet increased its acceleration towards Mephisto.
* * * * *
The spaceport on Mephisto became a mad place. Terran ships stood
plate to plate against Martian ships, and the sky above the port was
interlaced with the invisible communication beams that connected
incoming and outgoing ships. At no time was the sky ever completely
clear of spacecraft.
They came in sight out of the clear black sky of the moonlet, and
hovered until the ship before them had landed. Then they dropped slowly
into the landing place assigned to them, coming to a full landing just
in time to see the next ship begin to drop. Another ship would come
from outer space at this time, and assume the hovering area, awaiting
its turn.
Ships took off at the same rate. But unlike the cumbersome landing
feat, they leaped upward into the sky, running a direction-beam before
them, and disappeared in seconds.
The nerve center of this activity was a squat building on the edge of
the port. In it worked Maynard's spies--his _agents provocateur_. A
black chamber of intense men, all working their shifts over huge mental
projectors.
Solarian shipping was being completely disrupted.
No ship took off from any of the spaceports without Guy's knowledge.
And no cargo worth having ever reached its destination. Mephisto was
becoming the most valuable planet-system in the Solar sphere, for the
cargoes that were pirated and brought to Mephisto were those items that
Terra and Mars could not find in plenty at home.
The capture of single ships had gone on unchecked for a long time. Then
protection began to go with the shipping, and finally the spacelines
were running in full convoys that sported constellation craft for
protection. But Guy's fleet collected the constellation craft as easily
as they caught tramp spacers. When a spaceship is going a thousand
miles per second, a barrier-sown toroid could burst from space before
the huge ship. It was a matter of dropping the toroid so close to the
nose of the ship that the turreted AutoMacs had no time to answer the
impulses that came from the detector-couplers. The huge ship plunged
through the toroid, and left the rest of the unprotected convoy for
Maynard's choice.
And when they sent decoys, Maynard's men ignored them. Only when the
carriers held valuable material did they suffer.
The ships of Ertene came in for their share. Guy worried about the
thought-beam instrument that he had left there; he knew that no
sensible world would adhere to a program of destroying such a device.
One of the main thought-beam jobs was continually directed at Ertene
and the thought-beam instrument that Guy had left. So far, they had
done nothing but use the thing locally. It would not reach Mephisto by
a billion miles, and so Guy knew his secret was safe.
At least for the time being.
But molesting Ertene on Ertene's own ground was not possible; once they
came within range of Ertene's thought-beam, the secret of avoiding the
vortex would be out. Only those ships of Ertene that came outside of
range were taken--and they were all too few.