The two men looked at one another.
"That's something we can get hold of," said Greg.
He walked to the ship controls and lowered himself into the pilot's
chair. A hand came out and hauled back a lever.
The _Invincible_ moved.
From the engine rooms came the whine of the gigantic power plant as it
built up and maintained the gravity concentration center suddenly
created in front of the ship.
Russ, standing beside Greg at the control panel, looked out into space
and marveled. They were flashing through space, their speed building up
at a breath-taking rate, yet they had no real propulsion power. The
discovery of the gravity concentrator had outdated such a method of
driving a spaceship. Instead, they were falling, hurtling downward into
the yawning maw of an artificial gravity field. And such a method made
for speed, terrible speed.
Jupiter seemed to leap at them. It became a great crimson and yellow
ball that filled almost half the vision plate.
* * * * *
The _Invincible's_ speed was slacking off, slower and slower, until it
barely crawled in comparison to its former speed.
Slowly they circled Jupiter's great girth, staring out of the vision
port for a sight of Craven's ship. They were nearing the position the
little mechanical shadow had indicated.
"There it is," said Russ suddenly, almost breathlessly.
Far out in space, tiny, almost like a dust mote against the great bulk
of the monster planet, rode a tiny light. Slowly the _Invincible_
crawled inward. The mote of light became a gleaming silver ship, a
mighty ship--one that was fully as large as the _Invincible_!
"That's it all right," said Greg. "They're lying behind a log out here
raising hell with our television apparatus. Maybe we better tickle them
a little bit and see what they have."
Rising from the control board, he went to another control panel. Russ
remained standing in front of the vision plate, staring down at the
ship out in space.
Behind him came a shrill howl from the power plant. The _Invincible_
staggered slightly. A beam of deep indigo lashed across space, a finger
suddenly jabbing at the other ship.
Space was suddenly colored, for thousands of miles, as the beam struck
Craven's ship and seemed to explode in a blast of dazzling indigo light.
The ship reeled under the impact of the blow, reeled and weaved in space
as the beam struck it and delivered to it the mighty power of the
screaming engines back in the engine room.
"What happened?" Greg screamed above the roar.
Russ shrugged his shoulders. "You jarred him a little. Pushed him
through space for several hundred miles. Made him know something had hit
him, but it didn't seem to do any damage."
"That was pure cosmic I gave him! Five billion horsepower--and it just
staggered him!"
"He's got a space lens that absorbs the energy," said Russ. "The lens
concentrates it and pours it into a receiving chamber, probably a huge
photo-cell. Nobody yet has burned out one of those things on a closed
circuit."
Greg wrinkled his brow, perplexed. "What he must have is a special field
of some sort that lowers the wave-length and the intensity. He's getting
natural cosmics all the time and taking care of them."
"That wouldn't be much of a trick," Russ pointed out. "But when he takes
care of cosmics backed by five billion horsepower ... that's something
else!"
Greg grinned wickedly. "I'm going to hand him a long heat radiation. If
his field shortens that any, he'll have radio beam and that will blow
photo-cells all to hell."
He stabbed viciously at the keys on the board and once again the shrill
howl of the engines came from the rear of the ship. A lance of red
splashed out across space and touched the other ship. Again space was
lit, this time with a crimson glow.
* * * * *