The Metal Horde
By John W. Campbell, Jr.
_Author of "When the Atoms Failed."_
Illustrated by DE PAUW
_What with calculating machines and robots and now perhaps
even mechanical airplane pilots, there seems no limit to the
possibilities in the realm of working machinery. We have
seismographs that can locate the place of distant earthquakes,
and machines that can solve, in a comparatively short period,
problems in the higher calculus that would otherwise take brilliant
mathematicians an endless time to do. It seems to us quite logical
that machines might some day, perhaps in the distant future, be
developed to solve for our scientists now apparently insoluble
problems. Or they might even be made to state their own problems
and work them out--in other words, it might some day be possible
to have a machine with almost a working brain. According to our
author, this will be possible and his final explanation of his idea
is exceedingly clever and novel. There is no question Mr. Campbell
knows his science and he has by this time proved his ability to
weave a great deal of sound science into an absorbing scientific
fiction story of exceeding plausibility._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories April 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It would seem lack of generalship that permitted them to be discovered
so soon, for had we not picked up those signals from the ether we
should not have received that warning that meant so much to us, and
it might well have been that this system would have acquired a new
population. For it would have needed but little to shift the balance
the other way! Once I watched Steven Waterson save the civilization of
the Earth, but now I saw him in a greater rôle, for it was he who made
possible the defeat of the Sirians. But even had his brilliant mind
succeeded in working out the problem of the de-activating field without
the precious hours gained by that warning, many millions more would
have died before they could have escaped from Mars.
I was in his laboratory at the time he received the messages from the
System government telling the import of those strange tone-signals out
there in space. I seem fated to be with that man every time some great
event breaks on the System. I was with him when Dr. Downey announced
his discovery of the secret of old age--or, better, its prevention.
Waterson was forty-two now, in years, but in body he was still
twenty-eight for it was late in 1947 that he had taken Dr. Downey's
treatment.
Those strange tone-signals had been heard faintly for days, but it was
not until July 8th, 1961, that they were located in space, and then man
began to realize something of the message they might bear.
Waterson asked me to accompany him to the System Capital on Venus, and
I was present at that first Cabinet meeting, and at each succeeding
meeting. Again I was close to the facts--and again Waterson has asked
me to write a chronicle of that terrible War.
It was not till the signals had definitely been located as originating
far out in space that man began to take more than a mildly curious
interest in them. They were coming from the Metal Horde that was even
then sweeping across space at a thousand miles a second to the planets
ahead.
Their goal of ages was in sight. Sixteen hundred years of ceaseless
rushing flight had at last brought them near.
When our ancestors were beginning to grumble under their Roman lords,
in the time of Horlak San, when his mighty armies were sweeping their
way across Mars under the newly developed heat rays, spreading death
and civilization at one time, that menace started on its expedition.
When the Normans invaded England, when the mighty empire that the San
dynasty had maintained over all Mars was crumbling, that journey was
half done.
When Columbus first set foot on the shores of America, when Koral Nas
formed the great union of the federated nations of Mars, that trip was
three-quarters done.
But it was seven-eighths completed when Mars developed the first crude
atomic engines, and when Priestly of England discovered oxygen. And
during the two centuries of flight that remained before they reached
their goal, there developed on those tiny planets the instruments that
were to throw that mighty force down to defeat.
But I am to tell you of that war as I saw it; we have all seen it--all
too closely! It was really but a little more than a month that that
Menace of Metal hung over us there on Mars, but to us it seemed years,
except to the frantically working scientists, striving desperately to
discover some weapon to defeat them. David Gale.
* * * * *
A tiny glistening mote in space it was, as it sped toward the shining
planet before it--the rapid flight of the car aided by the gravity of
Venus. The call had been urgent, and the Earth had been in superior
conjunction, that meant a full twenty-hour trip, even at 1000 miles
a second, but now they were approaching the planet and the pilot was
losing speed as rapidly as possible. There was a limit to what he could
stand, though, and it took him many thousands of miles to bring the
machine down to a speed compatible with atmospheric conditions of the
planet.
The air of the planet seemed thick with traffic, mighty half-million
ton lift freighters and passenger ships setting out toward Earth,
smaller private machines, but none were slower nor faster than the
others, for all were limited only by the acceleration they could stand.
There was only one speed limit, that of economical, safe operation,
for with all space to move in, there was no need of speed laws. Yet
it seemed impossible to make any more than two thousand miles an hour
through this slow moving air traffic--then there shone a little emblem
on the bow of the little iridescent metal ship, and a huge freighter
swerved respectfully aside. As by magic a lane opened through the thick
traffic as the sign of the System President shone out.
The little ship darted along the ground a short way, then rose
vertically, only to settle lightly on the roof of the great System
Capitol. Two men came out and walked quickly to the elevator entrance,
where three guards, armed with disintegration ray projectors, greeted
them with a stiffly military salute. The larger of the men responded
with a smile, and a brief salutation in the common language of the
System, for these great men were Martians, each well over eight feet
tall. They entered the lift, and quickly sank down one hundred and
fifty stories to the Governmental Offices. They proceeded directly
to the great Cabinet chamber, down through the long halls, lined on
each side by huge murals depicting scenes in the history of the three
planets. Then they came to the cabinet room and entered.
Thirty-nine men were seated there now, but as the two entered, they
rose, and waited for the President to be seated. The forty greatest
living men were in that room that day and all worked together, for
they were scientists who had learned the value of cooperation. There
was no rivalry, for each was the greatest in his own field and had no
aspirations toward any other branch of science. And none but conceded
the power of the Presidency gladly to the greatest of them, Steven
Waterson of Earth.
"Gentlemen of the Cabinet, I am beginning to believe it is time we had
something added to the Constitution forbidding Members of the Cabinet
to rise on the entry of the President." Waterson deeply appreciated
that compliment, as they all knew, but he could not feel at home
in an atmosphere of diffidence. He was a scientist, a planner, not
a diplomat. "I am sorry I was forced to make you gentlemen wait for
me, but as you see," he continued, pointing to the great map of the
System on the ceiling of the Cabinet chamber, where the slow motion of
the planets in their orbits was being accurately traced, "Earth is in
superior conjunction at present, and I could not make better time.
"I see from this memorandum that has been prepared for me that Mansol
Korac, Martian Astro-physicist, is to be our first speaker. I take it
you have had no official discussion as yet?"
He was correct in this assumption for the men had convened shortly
before at his radio announcement that he would land within an hour.
Some years before there had been some agitation to have the Cabinet
meetings carried on by Radio-vision plates, but the low speed of light
had made the speeches a terrible failure, as they would frequently
have to wait ten or even fifteen minutes while the radio messages were
reaching them. Over short distances that method was practicable, but
between planets light is too slow, it cannot be used.
"Some time ago our radio engineers developed a new instrument for
detecting exceptionally short waves. They really came under the
category of the longer heat radiations, but were detected electrically.
While experimenting with this device they have been consistently
picking up signals apparently originating in free space. At first these
signals were exceedingly weak, but their intensity has grown uniformly
and rapidly, and from the results some amazing conclusions have been
drawn.
"They are originating at some source or sources out in space in
the direction of the sun Sirius. I was asked to help the radiation
engineers under Horus Mal in the calculation of the Astro-physical
aspect of the problem. I believe that there are some man-made vehicles
out there in space sending those signals. No man of the System has
ever had reason to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune for any great
distance; there would be no reason for it, as none of the outer planets
are habitable. The rate of increase of the signal strength, coupled
with observations made from Earth, Mars and Venus, have made it evident
that they are at present about one and a quarter billion miles away,
but approaching us at the rate of 1000 miles a second. This means that
in approximately two weeks they will reach our planets.
* * * * *
"As to their point of origin we can only make guesses really. They are
coming toward us with Sirius--and thousands of other stars--at their
back. Of all, Sirius is the nearest, being approximately nine light
years away. This means that they must have spent at least 1600 years on
that trip across space. Dr. James Downey of Earth has recently shown
us how to lengthen life almost indefinitely, so the problem of old age
need not be considered. A supply of air and water would, of course,
be no great problem with the Waterson apparatus for electrolyzing CO
back to carbon and oxygen, using atomic energy fuel. Water, of course,
is merely transmuted and recombined and thus automatically purified
for use. A sufficient reserve of very dense materials could easily
be carried that would make up for any losses by transmutation to the
necessary gases. As yet we have not been able to make foods from
energy, carbon, and oxygen and hydrogen, but I believe you, Dr. Lange,
have made very considerable progress along that line, have you not?"
"I intended announcing at this meeting," said Dr. Lange, "the
development of a commercial method of manufacturing any one of
the sugars and several proteins directly from rock or water, by a
transmutation and building-up process. The method has been developed."
"Then," continued the Martian, "there would be no need of carrying any
great amount of food. That problem is settled.
"As there would be no resistance encountered in space, once the machine
had been accelerated to its definite speed of 1000 miles per second, on
leaving Sirius it would be able to make the trip across space with no
expenditure of energy, until it reached its goal and slowed down to the
speed of a planet. Hence no great amount of matter-fuel would be needed
to drive the machine.
"But the problem of heating seems to me to be insoluble. Interplanetary
space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are
decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite
depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect
reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by
radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the
ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but
in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the
entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would
be sufficient. Polished walls would reduce the radiation, but still
it would be too high. I can not understand it--unless these men can
endure a temperature of but twenty or thirty degrees above absolute
zero--then they could make it quite readily--but two hundred and forty
degrees below zero Centigrade means that air--nearly everything would
be solid, except a few rare gases. No it seems impossible--yet we have
the evidence! I can not understand how they have made this terrible
migration, but I know that there are many different units. I believe
two thousand or more was the number you mentioned Horus Mal?"
"There seem to be a very considerable number of separate signals that
we can distinguish. I consider the two thousand a very conservative
estimate," replied Horus Mal, the Martian radiation engineer.
"Then," continued Mansol Korac, "we must decide on some plan of meeting
them."
The Martian sat down and for some time there was silence in the great
hall. At last President Waterson rose slowly to his feet. His face
showed his concern. In times of emergency he always felt that these men
here were responsible for the welfare of the twenty billions of human
beings they controlled. And he was their leader, and therefore the
responsibility was his.
"Mansol Korac, could you point out to us the approximate location of
the approaching ships?" asked Waterson and handed him a small hand
light and pointed to the great map of the system above them.
"I cannot be very exact, Mr. President; I do not know their location
very definitely, but I should say about here, proceeding thus." The
dazzling beam of white light stabbed up to the ceiling high above, and
a sharp circle of light a foot across appeared, just within the orbit
of Uranus, but well beyond Saturn. Then it slowly moved inward toward
tiny glowing Mars. They were within the Solar System, but had not yet
reached the Inner Ring of planets. Doubtless they who could make a
trip across the great Void had the energy of matter at their disposal,
and probably the disintegration ray. They would have no difficulty with
the planetoids, they could merely beam them out of existence if they
came too near.
The light snapped out, and each member of the cabinet turned toward
Waterson again.
"Gentlemen, we see that they are within the Solar System already
and appear to be heading directly for the Inner Ring, and Mars in
particular. I do not know whether they come in peace or as invaders,
but I think I can reasonably say that they are probably invaders. We
all agree that they have made a trip of some 1600 years' duration.
We all recognize the difficulty of such a trip. There are over two
thousand ships in their fleet. I would not send so large a fleet to
investigate the Outer Ring, but to send that great number of ships on a
mere exploration trip of 1600 years--I do not think it is consistent.
Then, too, we must allow them a life span of over three thousand years
if we are going to admit that this fleet is for exploration, for it
would be three thousand two hundred years before they could bring back
news of their trip. In the meantime they might well have been wiped
out by some stellar catastrophe, or they might have developed means of
seeing us directly in nine years, the time light takes for the trip.
Much as we would prefer peace, I fear we must prepare for war. But we
can always go out to meet them peacefully, in a great battle fleet.
That might convince them that it is better to deal peaceably with
us and it would at least be a protection. I suggest that we have a
discussion on this, and take a vote."
But there was no discussion, and the vote was unanimous, for the
President's suggestion was the logical thing. They had to be prepared
for either peace or war.
Then came the discussion of weapons. There was pitifully little to
discuss. The interplanetary patrol fleet was a mere police force,
designed to destroy meteors, turn comets or asteroids. There was no
real naval fleet. But mechanical devices had reached a great peak
of perfection and the little space ships were so cheap, so easily
operated, and so eminently safe, that nearly every family had several,
and new ones were always in demand. There were mighty factories to
meet this demand. Twenty billion people can absorb a tremendous number
of machines. That was the greatest protection we had, and it was
that quantity production, developed by the American, Ford, that made
Waterson's campaign possible. But we were to learn much of quantity
production methods before that war was over!
* * * * *
Orders were issued that evening to all the great plants over all
three planets to begin work on a great quantity of ten-man-high speed
ships. They were to be arranged with mountings for machine guns firing
explosive bullets loaded with material explosive, each one equal to
100 tons of the old fashioned Dynamite, with special mountings for Dis
ray machines. The disintegration ray machinery was to be built by the
companies employed ordinarily in making private power plants, hand
lights, and the jumping belts. These belts had small projectors that
threw a directional beam of force that tended to deform the curvature
of space, at that point, and the result was a force that pulled the
projector forward, for the space before it acted like a spring. If a
magnet be held near a steel watch spring, the spring will bend, but
it will try to straighten out and pull the magnet forward. If the
magnet could pass through the spring it would progress, as the space
curver apparatus was pulled through space. This was the principle
of every ship now built, from these tiny two-kilogram (nearly five
pounds) machines capable of lifting a man into the air, to the titanic
new passenger-freight liners carrying as high as three quarters of a
million tons.
The principle of the disintegration ray was not greatly different, and
so the machines designed for turning these out in quantities were used
to make the Dis ray apparatus with no great changes.
The heat ray projectors were made in quantities for every purpose, they
were used for cooking, for welding metals, for warming the home, for
melting down cliffs to make way for a building or a tunnel for water,
for heating the mighty space ships, for anything to which heat might be
applied to advantage. These would make very effective weapons but for
the fact that heat rays could be reflected. They would bounce off the
car of the enemy without doing any damage if it were polished, as no
doubt it would be.
Great liners of space were requisitioned and fitted with Dis rays, and
with mighty attractor beam apparatus that would grip and hold anything
short of another liner. Each of the ten-man-cruisers had a smaller
attractor beam by which they could grip an adversary and hold to his
tail with the tenacious grip of a bulldog and yet not weary the pilot
with violent movement. These ships were exceedingly powerful, and their
speed was limited only by the accelerations the passengers could stand.
But all the scientists of the System were working desperately to
design some new weapon, some new machine that was a little faster, a
little more powerful; although with resistance in space and with the
tremendous energies of matter at their disposal, there was little lack
of power as far as the speed of the ships were concerned. Ten thousand
times more powerful than the titanic energies of atoms, this energy
had defeated the Martians that memorable day in May, 1947, and it was
a full ten billion times more powerful than the energies of coal, of
oil, of the fuels man had known before that day. But they needed a
machine that could project the Dis ray farther. Twenty-five miles was
the limit, beyond that the tremendous electrical field that was used
to direct it must be built up to so high a voltage that there was
no practical way of insulating it. They must be satisfied with the
twenty-five mile range--but the scientists were working at increasing
the range.
They had two weeks before the Sirians would reach Mars, and in those
two weeks much was done. There was a very carefully laid out system in
all notices; the absolute truth was laid before the public, but there
was also laid before them the evidences of Man's power. There were no
panics. This was no weird thing to them, the landing of a fleet from
another world; it was as commonplace to them as the landing of a fleet
from the other side of the ocean had been a generation ago. The element
of the unfamiliar was gone, and with it had gone the element that
produces panic, that reduces the efficiency of a nation or of a System.
New production machines had to be built, new designs worked out, new
dies cut, but it was done with the quickness that a generation of mass
production had made possible, it was not new to them, this change of
design overnight.
It required most of those two precious weeks to get the great machines
working once more at their tasks, but at last a steady stream of
ten-man cruisers was being poured out, 5000 an hour, night and day,
from the factories of three planets. But there was only one day to
work before the Invaders would reach Mars, and the fleet was gathered,
120,000 ten-man ships, manned by the volunteers of three worlds.
But in the meantime Waterson had had built for himself a ten-man ship
with triple strength of walls, and triple power plant installation, and
an extra energy generator. He was experimenting with it, no one knew on
what.
At last the invaders were seen. Far out in their course the scouts had
met them. Those scouts were destroyed, without provocation; they did
not even have time to finish their reports, but we learned enough.
Mars was a deserted planet now. All its population had moved to the
other worlds. Most of them moved to Earth, on the other side of the
sun. Only the workers in the great factories remained. They were not
compelled to. They were told of the danger of their position, but those
factories could contribute 1500 ships an hour, and they were manned.
The fleet had gathered on Mars, awaiting the news of the Sirians, when
the report of the scouts was flashed across the ether.
They told of a great horde of metal ships, shining, iridescent,
ranging in size from tiny darting machines, ten feet long by one and
three-quarters in diameter, mere torpedoes, to great transport ships.
And there was a single spherical ship. A great sphere that floated in
the center of a bodyguard of the thousands of its followers. There were
literally hundreds of thousands of the little torpedo-ships, a few
dozen of the cargo ships, and a few ships that seemed more like scouts
of some sort. But it was apparent that the little torpedo-ships were
the real fighters--tiny ships that spun and turned and darted like an
electron in ionized gas. It seemed impossible that a man could stand
those sudden turns at several miles a second, but they watched them,
and went into nothingness as the Dis ray reached out from those tiny
ships and caressed their ships.
They, too, had Dis rays--it would be a terrible battle, for man had
that same force, a force so deadly they had feared to use it in
industry. But man had the advantage of numbers.
The men on the fleet who saw those television plates glowing with the
story of what was taking place out there in space decided that those
torpedo-ships must be guided by radio. If they were it would be a
simple matter to wreck that system by using a powerful interference
that would drown out the directing wave and make its ships unmanageable.
The System Capital was temporarily moved to the Waterson Laboratories
on Earth. There the forty men had gathered around great television
plates and were watching the battle of the scouts. They were not to go
to that battle front. The System needed them.
* * * * *
It was midnight on the part of Mars where the Sirians first struck. The
fleet of the Solar System was massed there to meet them. They seemed
headed for the mighty gleaming city of Metal, below. Dornalus, the
second city of old Mars; was there, and they seemed bent on reaching
it. As the Sirians drew near they threw forward a great shield of the
torpedo-ships; then the great generators on the Solarian fleet forced
tremendous etheric currents into space, and waited to see the motions
of the tiny ships become erratic, but they darted about as steadily,
as easily as ever. These Sirians must be small men! And they must
be from a massive world, a world that had accustomed them to great
accelerations.
Below them the city was deserted except for vision projector machines
that hummed steadily, automatically, from a thousand points. They were
broadcasting the message to the worlds and to the commanding officers
on the other side of Mars. These men had direct control of the battle.
They could not control it from Earth, for radio waves travel too
slowly. Twenty minutes each way the waves took and in forty minutes the
battle was more than over. It lasted only fifteen minutes--minutes of
terrific carnage!
As the two great fleets came into contact, the Solarians drove into
the mass of tiny ships, their Dis rays flashing in every direction.
They had one advantage in that they sprayed nine streams of death from
each of their craft; but the torpedo-ships were so unbelievably fast
that it was nearly impossible to hit them. And they seemed to have no
compunction about raying one of their own ships if a more than equal
amount of damage was inflicted on their enemies. Logical, no doubt, but
how inhuman.
The sky above the city became a blazing hell of Dis rays, heat rays,
and exploding shells. The explosives were not safe, for they threw
great flying fragments that could pierce the wall of a ship and send it
down. They damaged friend and foe alike.
The Solarian fleet had a solid projectile of a single giant crystal of
copper that was immune to the Dis ray. It could penetrate the walls
of a ship and bring it down. But the explosive bombs were more often
than not exploded or merely disintegrated before they reached their
goal. A crystal of any sort was immune to the Dis ray, but it was not
a protection against it. There was no known way of deflecting the Dis
ray except by that special electrical field that directed it, and
that could not be made to surround a ship. The copper crystals were
used mainly to destroy the Dis ray projectors of the enemy. They were
fired at the faint glow, and with luck they would hit the machine and
instantly wreck the projector. More than one machine disappeared as
its own Dis ray projector, wrecked by the fifteen-inch copper crystal,
suddenly spread in all directions.
The sphere and its escort of transports hung back, surrounded by a
great number of the torpedo-ships. They did not join in the fight.
And at last the Solarian fleet was recalled. It was not right that
they should make such heavy sacrifices. The city must fall, and it
would be easy to crush the Sirians with a larger fleet. At the rate of
5000 Solarian ships an hour, they might well do so in three days. So
the Solarians left, and behind on the ground there were a few ships;
a great number had been rayed into nothingness. The Sirians had won
this first victory, but the Solarians could soon make up for this loss.
They had twenty billions to back them up, and they had the resources of
three planets. It seemed as though the invaders could not last long,
but we had yet to learn the true meaning of mass production.
No man could hang around the encampment of that alien race. But above
them television broadcasts were suspended, and some were installed
in the buildings of the city. But these were of no avail, for the
Sirians seemed obsessed with the idea of making Mars a true sphere.
They proceeded to level the great city with Dis rays. No news projector
could remain there, of course, and several news projector men lost
their lives. It was foolhardy to stay in that city; they had been
forbidden, but nothing will keep a newsman out of a chance for a scoop.
The projectors which hung above continued to show a weird scene.
The great sphere and its attendant transports sank gently to the
ground and formed a great wheel, with the sphere as the hub and the
transports as radiating spokes and the rim. High above them the darting
torpedo-ships were wheeling in constant circles. It seems a miracle
that not all of those news projectors were destroyed, but some did last
till the early rays of the sun set them off as shining targets for the
flashing Dis rays. It was a weird scene they showed!
[Illustration: _The great sphere and its attendant transports sank
gently to the ground and formed a vast wheel, with the sphere as the
hub and the transports as radiating spokes and the rim._]
Now from the sides of the great transports came, not men, but great
machines, machines that lumbered along on caterpillar treads to set
themselves down beside their parent ship, one from each ship, and
proceeded to dig themselves in, about three feet deep. Then all seemed
quiet, except for a steady hum from the great machines, fifty-eight
in all there were, great machines--fully two-hundred feet on a side.
They worked there quietly now, and the men within them must have been
totally covered, for they could not be seen. Apparently the Sirians
dared not come out into the Martian atmosphere. And now something was
happening that startled all the billions of watchers on the three
planets. In the top of the great machines was a small trapdoor. Through
this, there came a torpedo-ship that floated up a few feet, then darted
off to join the wheeling machines above. Then eleven seconds later
another came forth--another--each machine there was sending them out
now. One by one those machines released a torpedo-boat--one every
eleven seconds, with the regularity of a clock.
At first men could not grasp the significance of this--but soon it
became obvious. These wonderful machines were complete factories in
themselves, portable, mass production factories for producing those
torpedo-ships, and one each eleven seconds came from the end of the
production line, complete. The noises there were no longer a gentle
hum. There was a whir and rattle of machines. It was not loud, though
considering the mighty works that must have been going on inside. But
steadily now, that darting fleet of torpedo-ships was increasing the
power for all this work was obvious to these men who used similar
processes in their work.
From the soil below them the machines dug masses of matter, and
carrying it up into the machine transmuted its elements, into
the elements necessary to their machines, then molded them, and
automatically assembled them. It would require very little supervision,
but that production-rate was staggering! One each eleven seconds meant
325 completed machines an hour.
There were no signs of any men entering these ships, or the machines,
so it seemed there must be some means of distant control that man
knew nothing of, for it was improbable that all those men could
have been in the parent machine from the beginning. No wonder the
Sirians could lose these machines so freely. The ability to make them
automatically from anything meant they cost practically nothing and
could be produced in limitless quantity. The notion that Man was to
be an easy victor was fast disappearing. These machines were coming to
form an ever-growing cloud of wheeling ships. Still, man had destroyed
fully half their fleet in that desperate struggle; they must spend
some time in making up those losses. But Man had lost nearly a third
of his great fleet. Four hundred thousand brave men had been lost. It
was not even a victory, and it had cost Man far more than it had cost
the Sirians. They had learned something from them, though. Perhaps
radio control would enable man to do an equal amount of damage. Orders
were put through to make an experimental fleet of thirty thousand
radio-controlled machines.
* * * * *
In the meantime a new thing was attracting the attention of the people
on the planets. A new set of machines was issuing from the transports.
These were smaller than that first set--low and squat--but they seemed
far more flexible in their movement. They went off in orderly line to
a point a few miles distant from the main encampment and there formed
themselves into two groups. One group remained still, but began to
glow faintly, and a hum came to the televisors above. Then there began
to flow from a spout on the side of each a steady stream of molten
metal. This was poured into a somewhat similar arrangement on the
other group, then these moved quickly away, and with their strange
handlike appendages began to work quickly at a great rounded hull that
was rapidly forming. The men watching understood. It was to be another
cargo ship. Rapidly this hull grew under their swift manipulation,
till it was completed in three and a half hours. An entire ship,
except for the machinery, was completed. And now they began to work
on another, and as they fell to work there started from the original
cargo shops a long line of small, quick moving machines, machines that
could run along the ground or drive through the air, and they were
covered with arm-like appendages. Soon these reached the newly built
hull, and quickly they were at work, getting material from the strange
squat machines, entering the hull, and working at it. The second hull
was nearly completed when one of the smaller machines flew back to
the original encampment and went up to the sphere. From it it drew a
strange metal case, oblong, from which led a great heavy cable. This
it carried back to the now completed ship and installed it somewhere
inside. Then the ship rose easily from the ground and floated around
a bit, landed again, and immediately there came out of it one of the
torpedo-ship machines! None of these had gone in, it had been made by
those slim, quick worker machines! And now there lumbered out a second
machine--one of the strange hull maker machines--then two of the worker
machines came out, where only one had gone in. The ship was complete,
even to its strange crew! And now that strange crew was already at
work, making others!
With the coming of dawn the televisors were rayed out of existence.
But that evening more were installed, and every night during all that
invasion there floated above them those noiseless televisors. They
destroyed many, but many remained.
That night showed us a fleet of nearly a half million of the tiny
torpedo-ships, and a rapidly growing cargo ship camp. There were more
than a hundred now, for as each was completed, the machines made could
aid in the more rapid construction of the next.
And that night they began their work of leveling Mars. That great
fleet spread itself out over all the surface of Mars, and with flaming
heat rays and the terrible Dis rays they cut down every remnant of the
Martian hills. Twenty-four hours later the entire planet was one vast
featureless plain. And on that plain there had been established eight
camps. During this time the cargo ships had been moving, and during
that twenty-four hours they did nothing. But Man was prepared. The
radio-controlled fleet was ready to be given its first try.
The entire fleet was assembled above the surface of Mars, above
that original camp, where still rested the one sphere. Then from
far out in space the great control ships directed the dive of the
radio-control-ships, making the distance one-twentieth part of a light
second. The men directing the ships were no faster than that, could not
respond sooner, and the greater distance gave them greater safety.
But now the radio-controlled ships were released, and permitted to
drop, uncontrolled. They wished to give the Sirians no warning. Then
when the ships were scarcely ten miles from the Sirian fleet, they
were brought under control, headed nose down in a power dive, straight
through the surprised upper layers of the fleet, and with Dis rays
glowing they drove straight for the ships below. Suddenly, there were
great gashes in the ground beneath, and twenty of the cargo ships were
gone in that first rush, and three more followed quickly. But while
literally thousands of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been rayed, nearly
half of the thirty thousand radio-controlled ships of Man were gone.
And now they had to apply full power to prevent striking the ground.
But twenty-two of them continued on in straight fall toward the great
sphere. They were rayed by a hundred ships before they could get really
separated from their companions. And now the fast radio ships were
destroying hundreds of the Sirians, they were formed in a vertical
column reaching up ten miles, one above the other, with the nine Dis
ray projectors going full blast and spinning as rapidly as was safe
lest the machines fly apart due to centrifugal force, for the Dis ray
will work practically instantaneously. The top ship was preventing the
torpedo-ships' attack from above. Suddenly each of the ships stopped
spinning; its Dis ray went out and they dropped like rocks. The radio
control had been drowned out by powerful interference; they were no
longer under the influence of the men, and they had ceased to function.
The radio-controlled-ships would no longer be useful against the
Sirians.
* * * * *
Nearly the entire fleet of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been wiped
out by that spinning column. Now thousands of the manually-controlled
ships dove down at the weakened fleet. Every one of the remaining ships
shot up to meet the advancing fleet; there were still several thousand
of the torpedo-ships. And now the sphere rose with them, and among
them. Suddenly the entire mass came together in the shape of a greater
sphere with walls of torpedo-ships, and as it formed the torpedo-ships
snapped on their Dis rays, and started the entire surface of the sphere
spinning! They seemed invulnerable in this formation, but they quickly
moved away across the surface of the planet, the larger part of the
Solarian fleet following, wondering what to do about it. It seemed
impossible to attack the sphere of destruction.
But the cargo ships were left unprotected, and in a moment they
had been beamed out of existence. The Sirians had lost many hours'
work on this battle! And they lost more before the mighty fleet of
torpedo-ships from the other camps rescued them. For now and then an
explosive shell would penetrate the screen of disintegration rays. But
within the outer shield was a second, virtually a shield of metal, for
the metal sphere was surrounded by a solid mass of the torpedo-ships.
But many of these were destroyed. More, too, were put out of commission
by the copper crystals.
On the arrival of the great fleet from the other camps the tables were
turned. The control ships had too low an acceleration, and there were
too many ships for the ten-man machines to get, though they tried to
make a screen of Dis rays that stopped the ships till they were rayed
out of existence. Many of the control ships were lost and many of the
ten-man ships.
It was then that Waterson announced two things that gave the Solarians
new hope.
It was the fifth of August when the announcement was made. And it was
the same day on which nearly the entire fleet from all the camps on
Mars started off for Venus, but the movement was detected almost at
once, and from great underground bases on Mars the Solarian fleet sent
out fifty thousand ten-man ships. These ships skimmed along close to
the ground, and their polished metal had been sprayed with a drab paint
so that they seemed but shadows that became practically invisible as
they sped along, widely separated, but rapidly converging on the site
of the Sphere's camp. This had remained on Mars, guarded by so small a
number of ships that it was evident they expected the Solarian fleet to
go to Venus, as no doubt would have been necessary but for this swift
counter raid.
So perfectly camouflaged were the Solarian ships, that they got within
ten miles of the camp without being discovered. Then, as their Dis rays
flashed out, the entire group of the torpedo-ships dove on them. There
were nearly one hundred thousand of the ten-man ships, diving down at
them in a zigzag course that made them impossible targets, but the
fleet had been approaching from all sides, and now the entire Sirian
defense was concentrating on the machines attacking from the north.
Those from the south crept in behind them, and suddenly the sphere
started into the air, then went flying out into space at terrific
speed. It barely escaped the Dis rays of the attackers. Only its
tremendous acceleration saved it. Now several thousand of the torpedo
ships shot after it, the rest falling into the form of a great disc to
block the path of the pursuers. Man had long been accustomed to two
dimensional maneuvering, but the ease with which these Sirians fell
into complex three dimensional formations showed long practice in the
art of warfare in space.
That raid was successful in that it forced the immediate return
of the Sirian fleet, and very nearly destroyed the sphere. Over
seventy-two thousand of the torpedo-ships were destroyed, but we lost
two thousand ships and twenty thousand men. But Waterson announced
that the Sirians would no longer be able to escape because of their
greater acceleration. He had discovered a method for using an
attractor beam of a short range but considerable power to be used
with an electro-magnetic device that would automatically turn on the
instruments in such a way that no matter what the accelerations might
be, no matter how great, as long as they were within the limits of
the ship's strength, the accelerations and centrifugal forces would
be instantly neutralized, thus making possible violent maneuvers that
the sudden forces had hitherto made impossible. A demonstration of
his new ship had confirmed it. He took up a number of the Cabinet in
his special machine, and turned hairpin turns at ten miles a second!
The acceleration would have been instantaneously deadly had those
neutralizers failed. They might as well have been under a half million
ton freighter as it landed, as undergo those accelerations! But in that
perfectly balanced room, it was not detectable. The ship's hull was
made triple strength, as were the power projectors, and the generators.
It was powered like a freighter, and could reach its full speed of
1,000 miles per second at an acceleration 5,000 times that of Earth's
gravity. Waterson, who weighed two hundred and ten pounds on Earth
would have weighed over five tons! It meant that the Solarian fleet
would no longer be handicapped by the greater flexibility of the enemy
ships. The plants that had been manufacturing the machines had already
closed down temporarily, while the dies for these new machines were
being made. But within thirty-six hours the first of the machines was
being turned out.
And now a great crew of young men were being gathered to man them.
They were all volunteers. There were to be one million ships, and that
meant ten million men would be needed. Only modern methods could have
made that possible, but with three populations, totaling over twenty
billions, a sufficient number of volunteers came forward to make the
work easy. As fast as these men came to the conscription stations,
they were put into the new machines. And here also modern methods
had helped. The Waterson system of material energy release had been
so successful, that the price of a completed car had dropped to well
under one hundred dollars for the small two-man machines. And even for
the interplanetary models not more than two thousand dollars needed
to be paid, for the raw materials were absolutely free, the labor was
mechanically reduced to almost nothing, and as the energy that drove
these machines was as cheap as the raw materials, they merely charged
enough to make the venture pay a decent return on investment and to
pay the wages of the few machine supervisors and the office staff. Men
worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but
longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to
manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade
the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant
an unvaried, monotonous city. But everywhere wages were high, for wages
depend, not on the amount of work men do, but on the amount of finished
product they can turn out. The men accomplished more, and were paid
more, but they worked less. It had taken many years to finally convince
the Earth of that, but the example of American labor, with its shorter
hours and higher wages was proof enough. And then the influence of the
mighty energies Waterson had released made it even more apparent. Mars
had already developed the system under the force of the released atomic
energies.
High wages and cheap machines had meant that everyone owned one. And so
absolutely safe were they that they commanded perfect confidence. This
had been a big factor in the making of this mighty fleet. Everyone
knew how to operate the machines, so it was easy to fill the places on
the machines with pilots.
Nevertheless, special training was necessary to overcome the caution
against quick turns that long experience had instilled in them all.
Each accepted applicant was taken up in one of the new machines, and
given a breath-taking ride--a ride that consisted in diving toward the
Earth with terrific sudden acceleration. Then, just when the student
felt certain they would crash and become a mass of molten metal, the
ship was brought up, not a mile from the ground, to settle gently;
then, when they almost touched the ground, they leapt into the air
again with an acceleration that shot them out of the atmosphere with
the velocity of a meteor, while the outer wall of tungsto-iridium alloy
glowed cherry red. Then came sharp turns at ten or twenty miles a
second, till at last the students no longer gripped the arms of their
seats in anticipation of a sudden acceleration. Then they were taken
down and given a ship to experiment with.
But none of these men had ever handled a weapon of the sort they were
to use, so mimic battle practice was held, with the glowing rays of a
harmless ionizing beam instead of the deadly Dis rays.
* * * * *
Daily reports were coming from the Martian scouts as time went on.
The Sirians, too, had decided to do some fleet building, for nearly
three-quarters of their fleet had been destroyed. The production rate
of man's factories, 120,000 a day, had gained a slight lead. It would
require ten days before a fleet of a million could leave for Mars with
a home guard of two-hundred thousand ships.
The destruction of the Martian plants had lowered the production rate
to about 3,500 an hour, but shops put up rapidly on Earth and Venus had
quickly brought the production-rate back, and it would be nearer 7,000
an hour by the time the last of the fleet had been finished.
The spinning sphere formation of the Sirians had been almost
invulnerable, and an exceedingly destructive formation. The Solarians
had chosen several thousand of their crack pilots to practice this
maneuver, but despite almost constant practice during the entire ten
days, it was a miserable failure as soon as they tried to progress.
Standing motionless it was a very effective procedure, but the spinning
column was decided on as more effective as long as they had no ship to
protect. There were twenty groups that practiced that maneuver.