Very near to Valeron, as space distances go, yet so far away in terms
of miles that he could take no active part whatever in the proceedings,
Quedrin Radnor sat tense at his controls, staring into his powerful
visiplates. Even before Klynor Siblin had lifted his rocket plane
off the ground, Radnor had opened his throttles wide. Then, his ship
hurtling at full drive toward home, everything done he could do, he sat
and watched.
Watched, a helpless spectator. Watched while Siblin made his futilely
spectacular attack; watched the gallant plane's destruction; watched
the capture of the brave but foolhardy pilot; watched the rolling up
and compression of the Chloran dome; watched in agony the obliteration
of everything, animate and inanimate, pertaining to the outlying
village; watched in horrified relief the departure of the invading
space ship.
Screaming through the air, her outer plating white hot from its
friction, her forward rocket tubes bellowing a vicious crescendo,
Radnor braked his ship savagely to a landing in the dock beside the
machine shop in which she had been built. During that long return
voyage his mind had not been idle. Not only had he decided what to
do, he had also made rough sketches and working drawings of the
changes which must be made in his peaceful space ship to make of her a
superdreadnought of the void.
This was not as difficult an undertaking as might be supposed. She
already had power enough and to spare, her generators and connectors
being able to supply, hundreds of times over, her maximum present
drain; and, because of the ever-present danger of collision with
meteorites, she was already amply equipped with repeller screens and
with automatically tripped zones of force. Therefore all that was
necessary was the installation of the required offensive armament--beam
projectors, torpedo tubes, fields of force, controls, and the like--the
designing of which was a simple matter for the brain which had tamed to
man's everyday use the ultimately violent explosiveness of intra-atomic
energy.
Radnor first made sure that the machine-shop superintendent, master
mechanic, and foremen understood the sketches fully and knew precisely
what was to be done. Then, confident that the new projectors would
project and that the as yet nonexistent oxygen bombs would explode with
their theoretical violence, he hurried to the office of the Bardyle.
Already gathered there was a portentous group. Besides the coördinator
there were scientists, engineers, architects, and beam specialists, as
well as artists, teachers, and philosophers.
"Greetings, Quedrin Radnor!" began the Bardyle. "Your plan for the
defense of Valeron has been adopted, with a few minor alterations
and additions suggested by other technical experts. It has been
decided, however, that your proposed punitive visit to Chlora cannot
be approved. As matters now stand it can be only an expedition of
retaliation and vengeance, and as such can in no wise advance our
cause."
"Very well, O Bardyle! It is--" Radnor, trained from infancy in
cooperation, was accepting the group decision as a matter of course
when he was interrupted by an emergency call from his own laboratory.
An assistant, returning to the temporarily deserted building, had found
the message of Klynor Siblin and had known that it should be given
immediate attention.
"Please relay it to us here, at once," Radnor instructed; and, when the
message had been delivered:
"Fellow councilors, I believe that this word from Klynor Siblin will
operate to change your decision against my proposed flight to Chlora.
With these incomplete facts and data to guide me I shall be able to
study intelligently the systems of offense and of defense employed by
the enemy, and shall then be in position to strengthen immeasurably our
own armament. Furthermore, Siblin was alive within the hour--there may
yet be some slight chance of saving his life in spite of what he has
said."
The Bardyle glanced once around the circle of tense faces, reading in
them the consensus of opinion without having recourse to speech.
"Your point is well taken, Councilor Quedrin, and for the sake of
acquiring knowledge your flight is approved," he said slowly.
"Provided, however--and this is a most important proviso--that you can
convince us that there is a reasonable certainty of your safe return.
Klynor Siblin had, of course, no idea that he would be captured.
Nevertheless, the Chlorans took him, and his life is probably forfeit.
You must also agree not to jeopardize your life in any attempt to
rescue your friend unless you have every reason to believe that such an
attempt will prove successful. We are insisting upon these assurances
because your scientific ability will be of inestimable value to Valeron
in this forthcoming struggle, and therefore your life must at all
hazards be preserved."
"To the best of my belief and ability my safe return is certain,"
replied Radnor positively. "Siblin's plane, used only for low-speed
atmospheric flying, had no defenses whatever and so fell an easy prey
to the Chlorans' attack. My ship, however, was built to navigate space,
in which it may meet at any time meteorites traveling at immensely high
velocities, and is protected accordingly. She already had four courses
of high-powered repeller screens, the inside course of which, upon
being punctured, automatically throws around her a zone of force.
"This zone, as most of you know, sets up a stasis in the ether itself,
and thus is not only absolutely impervious to and unaffected by
any material substance, however applied, but is also opaque to any
vibration or wave-form propagated through the ether. In addition to
these defenses I am now installing screens capable of neutralizing any
offensive force with which I am familiar, as well as certain other
armament, the plans of all of which are already in your possession, to
be employed in the general defense.
"I agree also to your second condition."
"Such being the case your expedition is approved," the Bardyle said,
and Radnor made his way back to the machine shop.
* * * * *
His first care was to tap Siblin's beam, but his call elicited no
response. Those ultrainstruments were then lying neglected in a corner
of an air-filled room upon far Chlora, where the almost soundless voice
of the tiny receiver went unheard. Setting upon his receiver a relay
alarm to inform him of any communication from Siblin, Radnor joined the
force of men who were smoothly and efficiently re-equipping his vessel.
In a short time the alterations were done, and, armed now to the teeth
with vibratory and with solid and gaseous destruction, he lifted his
warship into the air, grimly determined to take the war into the
territory of the enemy.
He approached the inimical planet cautiously, knowing that their cities
would not be undefended, as were those of his own world, and fearing
that they might have alarms and detector screens of which he could
know nothing. Poised high above the outermost layer of that noxious
atmosphere he studied for a long time every visible feature of the
world before him.
In this survey he employed an ordinary, old-fashioned telescope instead
of his infinitely more powerful and maneuverable visirays, because the
use of the purely optical instrument obviated the necessity of sending
out forces which the Chlorans might be able to detect. He found the
diamond-shaped ocean and the elliptical lake without difficulty, and
placed his vessel with care. He then cut off his every betraying force
and his ship plunged downward, falling freely under the influence of
gravity.
Directly over the city Radnor actuated his braking rockets, and as they
burst into their staccato thunder his hands fairly flashed over his
controls. Almost simultaneously he scattered broadcast his cargo of
bombs, threw out a vast hemisphere of force to confine the gas they
would release, activated his spy ray, and cut in the generators of his
awful offensive beams.
The bombs were simply large flasks of metal, so built as to shatter
upon impact, and they contained only oxygen under pressure--but
what a pressure! Five thousand Valeronian atmospheres those flasks
contained. Well over seventy-five thousand pounds to the square inch
in our ordinary terms, that pressure was one handled upon Earth only
in high-pressure laboratories. Spreading widely to cover almost
the whole circle of the city's expanse, those terrific canisters
hurtled to ground and exploded with all the devastating might of the
high-explosive shells which in effect they were.
But the havoc they wrought as demolition bombs was neither their
only nor their greatest damage. The seventy-five million cubic feet
of free oxygen, driven downward and prevented from escaping into
the open atmosphere by Radnor's forces, quickly diffused into a
killing concentration throughout the Chloran city save inside that
one upstanding dome. Almost everywhere else throughout that city the
natives died exactly as had died the people of the Valeronian village
in the strangling chlorine of the invaders; for oxygen is as lethal to
that amœbic race as is their noxious halogen to us.
Long before the bombs reached the ground Radnor was probing with his
spy ray at the great central dome from within which Klynor Siblin's
message had in part been sent. But now he could not get through
it; either they had detected Siblin's beam and blocked that entire
communication band or else they had already put up additional barriers
around their headquarters against his attack, quickly though he had
acted.
Snapping off the futile visiray, he concentrated his destructive beam
into a cylinder of the smallest possible diameter and hurled it against
the dome; but even that frightful pencil of annihilation, driven by
Radnor's every resource of power, was utterly ineffective against that
greenly scintillant hemisphere of force. The point of attack flared
into radiant splendor, but showed no sign of overloading or of failure.
Knowing now that there was no hope at all of rescuing Siblin and that
he himself had only a few minutes left in which to work, Radnor left
his beam upon the dome only long enough for his recording photometers
to analyze the radiations emanating from the point of contact. Then,
full-driven still, but now operating at maximum aperture, he drove
it in a dizzying spiral outwardly from the dome, fusing the entire
unprotected area of the metropolis into a glassily fluid slag of
seething, smoking desolation.
But beneath that dome of force there was a mighty fortress indeed. It
is true that her offensive weapons had not seen active service for many
years; not since the last rebellion of the slaves had been crushed. It
is also true that the Chloran officers whose duty it was to operate
these weapons had been caught napping--as thoroughly surprised at that
fierce counterattack as would be a group of Earthly hunters were the
lowly rabbits to turn upon them with repeating rifles in their furry
paws.
But it did not take long for those officers to tune in their offensive
armament, and that armament was driven by no such puny engines as
Radnor's space ship bore. Being stationary and a part of the regular
equipment of a fortress, their size and mass were of course much
greater than anything ordinarily installed in any vessel, of whatever
class or tonnage. Also, in addition to being superior in size and
number, the Chloran generators were considerably more efficient in the
conversion and utilization of interatomic energy than were any then
known to the science of Valeron.
Therefore, as Radnor had rather more than expected, he was not long
allowed to wreak his will. From the dome there reached out slowly,
almost caressingly, a huge arm of force incredible, at whose first
blighting touch his first or outer screen simply vanished--flared
through the visible spectrum and went down, all in the veriest
twinkling of an eye. That first screen, although the weakest by far of
the four, had never even radiated under the heaviest test loads that
Radnor had been able to put upon it. Now he sat at his instruments,
tense but intensely analytical, watching with bated breath as that
Titanic beam crashed through his second screen and tore madly at his
third.
* * * * *
Well it was for Valeron that day that Radnor had armed and powered his
vessel to withstand not only whatever forces he expected her to meet,
but had, with the true scientific spirit and in so far as he was able,
provided against any conceivable emergency. Thus, the first screen
was, as has been said, sufficiently powerful to cope with anything
the vessel was apt to encounter. Nevertheless, the power of the other
defensive courses increased in geometrical progression; and, as a final
precaution, the fourth screen, in the almost unthinkable contingency
of its being overloaded, threw on automatically in the moment of its
failure an ultimately impenetrable zone of force.
That scientific caution was now to save not only Radnor's life, but
also the whole civilization of Valeron. For even that mighty fourth
screen, employing in its generation as it did the unimaginable sum
total of the power possible of production by the massed converters
of the space flyer, failed to stop that awful thrust. It halted it
for a few minutes, in a blazingly, flamingly pyrotechnic display of
incandescence indescribable, but as the Chlorans meshed in additional
units of their stupendous power plant it began to radiate higher and
higher into the ultra-violet and was certainly doomed.
It failed, and in the instant of its going down actuated a zone of
force--a complete stasis in the ether itself, through which no possible
manifestation, either of matter or of energy in any form, could in any
circumstances pass. Or could it? Radnor clenched his teeth and waited.
Whether or not there was a sub-ether--something lying within and
between the discrete particles which actually composed the ether--was a
matter of theoretical controversy and of some academically scientific
interest.
But, postulating the existence of such a medium and even that of
vibrations of such infinitely short period that they could be
propagated therein, would it be even theoretically possible to
heterodyne upon them waves of ordinary frequencies? And could those
amorphous monstrosities be so highly advanced that they had reduced to
practical application something that was as yet known to humanity only
in the vaguest, most tenuous of hypotheses?
Minute after minute passed, however, during which the Valeronian
remained alive within an intact ship which, he knew, was hurtling
upward and away from Chlora at the absolute velocity of her inertia,
unaffected by gravitation, and he began to smile in relief. Whatever
might lie below the level of the ether, either of vibration or of
substance, it was becoming evident that the Chlorans could no more
handle it than could he.
For half an hour Radnor allowed his craft to drift within her
impenetrable shield. Then, knowing that he was well beyond atmosphere,
he made sure that his screens were full out and released his zone.
Instantly his screens sprang into a dazzling, coruscant white under
the combined attack of two space ships which had been following him.
This time, however, the Chloran beams were stopped by the third screen.
Either the enemy had not had time to measure accurately his power, or
they had not considered such measurement worth while.
They were now to pay dearly for not having gauged his strength.
Radnor's beam, again a stabbing stiletto of pure energy, lashed out
against the nearer vessel; and that luckless ship mounted no such
generators as powered her parent fortress. That raging spear, driven
as it was by all the power that Radnor had been able to pack into his
cruiser, tore through screens and metal alike as though they had been
so much paper; and in mere seconds what had once been a mighty space
ship was merely a cloud of drifting, expanding vapor. The furious
shaft was then directed against the other enemy, but it was just too
late--the canny amœbus in command had learned his lesson and had
already snapped on his zone of force.
Having learned many facts vital to the defense of Valeron and knowing
that his return homeward would now be unopposed, Radnor put on full
touring acceleration and drove toward his native world. Motionless at
his controls, face grim and hard, he devoted his entire mind to the
problem of how Valeron could best wage the inevitable war of extinction
against the implacable denizens of the monstrous, interloping planet
Chlora.