The four earthmen watched the fleet of alien ships roar through the air
toward them.
"Now how shall we signal them?" asked Morey, also trying to be
nonchalant, and failing as badly as Arcot had.
"Don't try the light beam method," cautioned Arcot. The last time they
had tried to use a light beam signal was when they first contacted the
Nigrans. The Nigrans thought it was some kind of destruction ray. That
had started the terrible destructive war of the Black Star.
"Let's just hang here peaceably and see what they do," Arcot suggested.
Motionless, the _Ancient Mariner_ hung before the advancing attack of
the great battle fleet. The shining hull was a thing of beauty in the
golden sunlight as it waited for the advancing ships.
The alien ships slowed as they approached and spread out in a great
fan-shaped crescent.
Suddenly, the _Ancient Mariner_ gave a tremendous leap and hurtled
toward them at a terrific speed, under an acceleration so great that
Arcot was nearly hurled into unconsciousness. He would have been except
for the terrific mass of the ship. To produce that acceleration in so
great a mass, a tremendous force was needed, a force that even made the
enemy fleet reel under its blow!
But, sudden as it was, Arcot had managed to push the power into reverse,
using the force of the molecular drive to counteract the attraction the
aliens had brought to bear.
The whole mighty fabric of the ship creaked as the titanic load came
upon it. They were using a force of a million tons!
The mighty lux beams withstood the stress, however, and the ship came to
a halt, then was swiftly backing away from the alien battle fleet.
"We can give them all they want!" said Arcot grimly. He noticed that
Wade and Fuller had been knocked out by the sudden blow, but Morey,
though slightly groggy, was still in possession of his senses.
"Let's not," Morey remonstrated. "We may be able to make friends with
them, but not if we kill them off."
"Right!" replied Arcot, "but we're going to give them a little
demonstration of power!"
The _Ancient Mariner_ leaped suddenly upward with a speed that defied
the eyes of the men at the rays of the enemy ships. Then, as they turned
to follow the sudden motion of the ship--_it was not there!_
The _Ancient Mariner_ had vanished!
Morey was startled for an instant as the ship and his companions
disappeared around him, then he realized what had happened. Arcot had
used the invisibility apparatus!
Arcot turned and raced swiftly far off to one side, behind the strange
ships, and hovered over the great cliff that made the edge of the cleft
that was the river bed. Then he snapped the ship into full visibility.
Wade and Fuller had recovered by now, and Arcot started barking out
orders. "Wade--Fuller--take the molecular ray, Wade, and tear down that
cliff--throw it down into the valley. Fuller, turn the heat beams on
with all the power you can get and burn that refuse he tears down into a
heap of molten lava!
"I'm going to show them what we can do! And, Wade--after Fuller gets it
melted down, throw the molten lava high in the air!"
From the ship, a long pencil of rays, faintly violet from the air they
ionized, reached out and touched the cliff. In an instant, it had torn
down a vast mass of the solid rock, which came raining down into the
valley with a roaring thunder and threw the dirt of the valley into the
air like splashed mud.
Then the violet ray died, and two rays of blinding brilliance reached
out. The rock was suddenly smoking, steaming. Then it became red, dull
at first, then brighter and brighter. Suddenly it collapsed into a great
pool of white-hot lava, flowing like water under the influence of the
beams from the ship.
Again the pale violet of the molecular beams touched the rock--which was
now bubbling lava. In an instant, the great mass of flaming incandescent
rock was flying like a glowing meteor, up into the air. It shot up with
terrific speed, broke up in mid-air, and fell back as a rain of red-hot
stone.
The bright rays died out, but the pale fingers of the molecular beams
traced across the level ground. As they touched it, the solid soil
spouted into the air like some vast fountain, to fall back as
frost-covered powder.
The rays that had swung a sun into destruction were at work! What chance
had man, or the works of man against such? What mattered a tiny planet
when those rays could hurl one mighty sun into another, to blaze up in
an awful conflagration that would light up space for a million light
years around with a mighty glare of light!
As if by a giant plow, the valley was torn and rent in great streaks by
the pale violet rays of the molecular force. Wade tore loose a giant
boulder and sent it rocketing into the heavens. It came down with a
terrific crash minutes later, to bury itself deep in the soil as it
splintered into fragments.
Suddenly the _Ancient Mariner_ was jerked violently again. Evidently
undaunted by their display of power, the aliens' rays had gripped the
Earthmen's ship again and were drawing it with terrific acceleration.
But this time the ship was racing toward the city, caught by the beam of
one of the low-built, sturdy buildings that housed the protective ray
projectors.
Again Arcot threw on the mighty power units that drove the ship, bracing
them against the pull of the beam.
"Wade! Use the molecular ray! Stop that beam!" Arcot ordered.
The ship was stationary, quivering under the titanic forces that
struggled for it. The enemy fleet raced toward them, trying to come to
the aid of the men in the tower.
The pale glow of the molecular beam reached out its ghostly finger and
touched the heavy-walled ray projector building. There was a sudden
flash of discharging energy, and the tower was hurled high in the air,
leaving only a gaping hole in the ground.
Instantly, with the collapse of the beam that held it, the _Ancient
Mariner_ shot backward, away from the scene of the battle. Arcot snapped
off the drive and turned on the invisibility apparatus. They hung
motionless, silent and invisible in the air, awaiting developments.
In close formation, one group of ships blocked the opening in the wall
of rays that the removal of one projector building had caused. Three
other ships went to investigate the wreck of the building that had
fallen a mile away.
The rest of the fleet circled the city, darting around, searching
frantically for the invisible enemy, fully aware of the danger of
collision. The unnerving tension of expecting it every second made them
erratic and nervous to the _n_th degree.
"They're sticking pretty close to home," said Arcot. "They don't seem to
be too anxious to play with us."
"They don't, do they?" Morey said, looking angry. "They might at least
have been willing to see what we wanted. I want to investigate some
other cities. Come on!" He had thoroughly enjoyed the rest at the little
mountain lake, and he was disappointed that they had been driven away.
Had they wanted to, he knew, they could easily have torn the entire city
out by the roots!
"I think we ought to smash them thoroughly," said Wade. "They're
certainly inhospitable people!"
"And I, for one, would like to know what that attraction ray was," said
Fuller curiously.
"The ray is easily understood after you take a look at the wreck it
made of some of these instruments," Arcot told him. "It was projected
magnetism. I can see how it might be done if you worked on it for a
while. The ray simply attracted everything in its path that was
magnetic, which included our lux metal hull.
"Luckily, most of our apparatus is shielded against magnetism. The few
things that aren't can be repaired easily. But I'll bet Wade finds his
gear in the galley thrown around quite a bit."
"Where do we go from here, then?" Wade asked.
"Well, this world is bigger than Earth," said Morey. "Even if they're
afraid to go out of their cities to run farms, they must have other
cities. The thing that puzzles me, though, is how they do it--I don't
see how they can possibly raise enough food for a city in the area they
have available!"
"'People couldn't possibly live in hydrogen instead of oxygen'," Arcot
quoted, grinning. "That's what they told me when I made my little
announcement at the meeting on the Black Star situation. The only
trouble was--they did. That suggestion of yours meets the same fate,
Morey!"
"All right, you win," agreed Morey. "Now let's see if we can find the
other nations on this world more friendly."
Arcot looked at the sun. "We're now well north of the equator. We'll go
up where the air is thin, put on some speed, and go into the south
temperate zone. We'll see if we can't find some people there who are
more peaceably inclined."
Arcot cut off the invisibility tubes. Instantly, all the enemy ships in
the neighborhood turned and darted toward them at top speed. But the
shining _Ancient Mariner_ darted into the deep blue vault of the sky,
and a moment later was lost to their view.
"They had a lot of courage," said Arcot, looking down at the city as it
sank out of sight. "It doesn't take one-quarter as much courage to fight
a known enemy, no matter how deadly, as it does to fight an unknown
enemy force--something that can tear down mountains and throw their
forts into the air like toys."
"Oh, they had courage, all right," Morey conceded, "but I wish they
hadn't been quite so anxious to display it!"
They were high above the ground now, accelerating with a force of one
gravity. Arcot cut the acceleration down until there was just enough to
overcome the air resistance, which, at the height they were flying, was
very low. The sky was black above them, and the stars were showing
around the blazing sun. They were unfamiliar stars in unfamiliar
constellations--the stars of another universe.
In a very short time, the ship was dropping rapidly downward again, the
horizontal power off. The air resistance slowed them rapidly. They
drifted high over the south temperate zone. Below them stretched the
seemingly endless expanse of a great blue-green ocean.
"They don't lack for water, do they?" Wade commented.
"We could pretty well figure on large oceans," Arcot said. "The land is
green, and there are plenty of clouds."
Far ahead, a low mass of solid land appeared above the blue of the
horizon. It soon became obvious that it was not a continent they were
approaching, but a large island, stretching hundreds of miles north and
south.
Arcot dropped the ship lower; the mountainous terrain had become so
broken that it would be impossible to detect a city from thirty miles
up.
The green defiles of the great mountains not only provided good
camouflage, but kept any great number of ships from attacking the sides,
where the ray stations were. The cities were certainly located with an
eye for war! Arcot wondered what sort of conflict had lasted so long
that cities were designed for perpetual war. Had they never had peace?
"Look!" Fuller called. "There's another city!" Below them, situated in a
little natural bowl in the mountains, was another of the cone cities.
Wade and Fuller manned the ray projectors again; Arcot dropped the ship
toward the city, one hand on the _reverse_ switch in case the
inhabitants tried to use the magnetic beam again.
At last, they had come quite low. There were no ships in the air, and
no people in sight.
Suddenly, the outside microphone picked up a low, humming sound. A long,
cigar-shaped object was heading toward the ship at high speed. It had
been painted a dark, mottled green, and was nearly invisible against
background of foliage beneath the ship.
"Wade! Catch that on the ray!" Arcot commanded sharply, moving the ship
to one side at the same time. Instantly, the guided missile turned and
kept coming toward them.
Wade triggered the molecular beam, and the missile was suddenly dashing
toward the ground with terrific speed. There was a terrific flash of
flame and a shock wave of concussion. A great hole gaped in the ground.
"They sure know their chemistry," remarked Wade, looking down at the
great hole the explosion had torn in the ground. "That wasn't atomic,
but on the other hand, it wasn't dynamite or TNT, either! I'd like to
know what they use!"
"Personally," said Arcot angrily, "I think that was more or less a
gentle hint to move on!" He didn't like the way they were being
received; he had wanted to meet these people. Of course, the other
planet might be inhabited, but if it wasn't--
"I wonder--" said Morey thoughtfully. "Arcot, those people were
obviously warned against our attack--probably by that other city. Now,
we've come nearly halfway around this world; certainly we couldn't have
gone much farther away and still be on the planet. And we find this city
in league with the other! Since this league goes halfway around the
world, and they expected us to do the same, isn't it fair to assume,
just on the basis of geographical location, that all this world is in
one league?"
"Hmmm--an interplanetary war," mused Arcot. "That would certainly prove
that one of the other planets is inhabited. The question is--which one?"
"The most probable one is the next inner planet, Aphrodite," replied
Morey.
Arcot fired the ship into the sky. "If your conclusions are
correct--and I think they are--I see no reason to stay on this planet.
Let's go see if their neighbors are less aggressive!"
With that, he shot the ship straight up, rotating the axis until it was
pointing straight away from the planet. He increased the acceleration
until, as they left the outer fringes of the atmosphere, the ship was
hitting a full four gravities.
"I'm going to shorten things up and use the space control," Arcot said.
"The gravitational field of the sun will drain a lot of our energy out,
but so what? Lead is cheap, and before we're through, we'll have plenty
or I'll know the reason why!"
Dr. Richard Arcot was angry--boiling all the way through!