NO PROJECT FOR ENERGY BEAM CAPABLE OF REMOVING METEORS UNDER WAY
AT TERRAN ELECTRIC, OR AT ANY OF THE SUBSIDIARY COMPANIES. IDEAS
SUGGESTED ALONG THESE LINES HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN BY YOUR ABORTIVE
ATTEMPT OF A YEAR AGO, AND WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED UNLESS THEORY IS
SUBSTANTIATED IN EVERY WAY BY PRACTICAL EVIDENCE.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, WE WILL DELVE INTO THE SUBJECT FROM ALL
ANGLES. PLEASE ADVISE.
TERRAN ELECTRIC CO.
BOARD OF LEGAL OPERATIONS
MARK KINGMAN, LL.D.
Channing smiled wryly at Keg Johnson and told him of their trouble.
"Oh?" said Keg with a frown. "Then you haven't heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Hellion Murdoch has been on the loose for weeks."
"Weeks!" yelled Channing.
"Uh-huh. He feigned gangrene, was taken to the base hospital, where he
raised hob in his own inimitable way. He blasted the communications
set-up completely, ruined three spaceships, and made off with the
fourth. The contact ship just touched there recently and found hell
brewing. If they hadn't had a load of supplies and prisoners for the
place, they wouldn't have known about it for months, perhaps."
"So! Brother Murdoch is loose again. Well! The story dovetails in
nicely."
"You think that was Hellion himself?"
"I'd bet money on it. The official report on Hellion Murdoch said that
he was suffering from a persecution complex, and that he was capable of
making something of it if he got the chance. He's slightly whacky, and
dangerously so."
"He's a brilliant man, isn't he?"
"Quite. His name is well known in the circles of neurosurgery. He is
also known to be an excellent research worker in applied physics."
"Nuts, hey?" asked Walt.
"Yeah, he's nuts. But only in one way, Walt. He's nuts to think that he
is smarter than the entire solar system all put together. Well, what do
we do now?"
"Butter ourselves well and start scratching for the answer. That
betatron trick will not work twice. There must be something."
"O.K., Walt, we'll all help you think. I'm wondering how much research
he had to do to develop that beam. After all, we were five thousand
miles away, and he heated us up. He must've thought that we were a
meteor--and another thing, too--he must've thought that his beam was
capable of doing something at five thousand miles' distance or he
wouldn't have tried. Ergo he must have beaten that two hundred mile
bugaboo."
"We don't know that the two hundred mile bugaboo is still
bugging in space," said Walt, slowly. "That's set up so that the
ionization-by-products are not dangerous. Also, he's not transmitting
power from station to station, et cetera. He's ramming power into some
sort of beam and to the devil with losses external to his equipment.
The trouble is, darn it, that we'll have to spend a month just building
a large copy of my miniature set-up."
"A month is not too much time," agreed Channing. "And Murdoch will take
a swing at us as soon as he gets ready to reach. We can have Chuck
start building the big tubes immediately, can't we?"
"Just one will be needed. We'll use one of the standard solar intake
tubes that we're running the station from. There's spare equipment
aplenty. But the transmitter-terminal tube will take some building."
"Can we buy one from Terran Electric?"
"Why not? Get the highest rating we can. That should be plenty. Terran
probably has them in stock, and it'll save us building one."
"What is their highest rating?"
"Two hundred megawatts."
"O.K. I'll send 'em a coded requisition with my answer to their
letter."
"What are you going to tell 'em?"
"Tell 'em not to investigate the energy-gun idea unless they want to
for their own reasons," Channing grinned. "They'll probably assume--and
correctly--that we're going to tinker ourselves."
"And?"
"Will do nothing since it is an extra-planetary proposition. Unless it
becomes suitable for digging tunnels, or melting the Martian ice cap,"
laughed Channing.
* * * * *
Mark Kingman took the letter to Murdoch, who was hidden in the depths
of the _Black Widow_. Hellion read it twice, and then growled.
"They smell something sure," he snarled. "Why didn't we make that a
perfect hit!"
"What are we going to do now?"
"Step up our plans. They'll have this thing in a few weeks. Hm-m-m.
They order a transmitter terminal tube. Have you got any in stock?"
"Naturally. Not in stock, but available for the Northern Landing
power-line order."
"You have none, then. You will have some available within a few days.
That half-promise will stall them from making their own, and every day
that they wait for your shipment is a day in our favor. To keep your
own nose clean, I'll tell you when to ship the tube. It'll be a few
days before I strike."
"Why bother?" asked Kingman. "They won't be around to call names."
"No, but their friends will, and we want to keep them guessing."
"I see. Those tubes are huge enough to cause comment, and there will
be squibs in all papers telling of the giant tube going to Venus
Equilateral, and the Sunday supplements will all break out in wild
guesses as to the reason why Venus Equilateral wants a two-hundred
megawatt tube. Too bad you couldn't keep your escape a secret a while
longer."
"I suppose so. It was bound to be out sooner or later anyway. A good
general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment's
notice without sacrificing. We'll win through."
The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the _Black Widow_
took shape. The super-tubes were installed, and Murdoch worked
in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the
course-integrators and to accommodate high velocities and to correct
for the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference
in velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation.
And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking
place. The correspondence by 'type was growing into a reasonable
pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and
Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were
not finished. The big tubes were finished, but rejected because of
electrode misalignments. The big tubes were in the rework department.
The big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were
rejected because the maximum power requirements were not met. They
were returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department.
You have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two-hundred megawatt
tubes really is.
So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which
marked the mythical date of 'if'--_If_ Venus Equilateral had started
their own manufacturing on the day they were first ordered from Terran
Electric, they would have been finished and available.
Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were shipped.
They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus
Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived,
and the gang at the relay station went to work on them.
But Walt Franks shook his head. "Don, we'll be caught like a sitting
rabbit."
"I know. But--?" answered Channing.
There was no answer to that question, so they went to work again.
The news of Murdoch's first blow came that day. It was a news report
from the Interplanetary Network that the Titan Penal Colony had been
attacked by a huge black ship of space that carried a dome-shaped
turret on the top. Beams of invisible energy burned furrows in the
frozen ground, and the official buildings melted and exploded from the
air pressure within them. The Titan station went off the ether with a
roar, and the theorists believed that Murdoch's gang had been augmented
by four hundred and nineteen of the Solar System's most vicious
criminals.
"That rips it wide open," said Channing. "Better get the folks to
withstand a siege. I don't think they can take us."
"That devil might turn his beams on the station itself, though," said
Walt.
"He wants to control communications."
"With the sub-electron beams we now have, he could do it on a mere
piece of the station. Not perfectly, but he'd get along."
"Fine future," gritted Channing. "This is a good time to let this
project coast, Walt. We've got to start in from the beginning and walk
down another track."
"It's easy to say, chum."
"I know it. So far, all we've been able to do is take energy from the
solar intake beams and spray it out into space. It goes like the arrow
that went--we know not where."
"So?"
"Forget these gadgets. Have Chuck hook up the solar intake tubes to the
spotter and replace the cathodes with pure thorium. I've got another
idea."
"O.K., but it sounds foolish to me."
Channing laughed. "We'll stalemate him," he said bitterly, and
explained to Walt. "I wonder when Murdoch will come this way?"
"It's but a matter of time," said Walt. "My bet is as soon as he can
get here with that batch of fresh rats he's collected."
* * * * *
Walt's bet would have collected. Two days later, Hellion Murdoch
flashed a signal into Venus Equilateral and asked for Channing.
"Hello, Hellion," answered Channing. "Haven't you learned to keep out
of our way?"
"Not at all," answered Murdoch. "You won't try that betatron on me
again. This ship is coated with four-tenths of an inch of lithium
metal, which according to the books will produce the maximum quantity
of electrons under secondary emission. If not the absolute maximum, it
is high enough to prevent your action."
"No," agreed Channing. "We won't try the betatron again. But, Murdoch,
there are other things."
"Can they withstand these," asked Murdoch. The turret swiveled until
the triple-mount of tubes looked at Venus Equilateral.
"Might try," said Channing.
"Any particular place?" countered Murdoch.
"Hit the south end. We can best afford to lose that," answered Channing.
"You're either guessing, or hoping I won't fire, or perhaps praying
that whatever you have for protection will work," said Murdoch flatly.
"Otherwise you wouldn't talk so smooth."
"You black-hearted baby-killing rotter," snarled Don Channing. "I'm not
chinning with you for the fun of it. You'll shoot anyway, and I want to
see how good you are. Get it over with, Murdoch."
"What I have here is plenty good," said Murdoch. "Good enough. Do you
know about it?"
"I can guess, but you tell me."
"Naturally," said Hellion. He explained in detail. "Can you beat that?"
"We may not be able to outfire you," gritted Channing, "but we may be
able to nullify your beam."
"Nonsense!" roared Murdoch. "Look, Channing, you'd best surrender."
"Never!"
"You'd rather die?"
"We'd rather fight it out. Come in and get us."
"Oh, no. We'll just shoot your little station full of holes. Like the
average spaceship, your station will be quite capable of handling
communications even though the air is all gone. Filling us full of
holes wouldn't do a thing; you see, we're wearing spacesuits."
"I guessed that. No, Murdoch, we have nothing to shoot at you this
time. All we can do is hold you off until you get hungry. You'll get
hungry first, since we're self-sufficient."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime we're going to try a few things out on your hull.
I rather guess that you'll try out a few things on the station. But
at the present, you can't harm us and we can't harm you. Stalemate,
Murdoch!"
"You're bluffing!" stormed Murdoch.
"Are you afraid to squirt that beam this way?" asked Channing
tauntingly. "Or do you know it will not work?"
"Why are you so anxious to get killed?"
"We're very practical, out here on Venus Equilateral," said Don.
"There's no use in our working further if you have something that is
really good. We'd like to know our chances before we expend more effort
along another line."
"That's not all--?"
"No. Frankly, I'm almost certain that your beam won't do a thing to
Venus Equilateral."
"We'll see. Listen! Turretman! Are you ready?"