For many weeks the production of Ardan warships and missiles had been
spiraling upward.
Half a mountain range of solid rock had been converted into fabricated
super-steel and armament. Superdreadnoughts Were popping into existence
at the rate of hundreds per minute. Missiles were rolling off the ends
of assembly lines like half-pint tin cans out of can-making machines.
The Strett warcraft, skeletons and missiles, would emerge into normal
space anywhere within a million miles of Ardvor. The Ardan missiles were
powered for an acceleration of one hundred gravities. That much the Kedy
brains, molded solidly into teflon-lined, massively braced steel
spheres, could just withstand.
To be certain of breaking the Strett screens, an impact velocity of
about six miles per second was necessary. The time required to attain
this velocity was about ten seconds, and the flight distance something
over thirty miles.
Since the Stretts could orient themselves in less than one second after
emergence, even this extremely tight packing of missiles--only sixty
miles apart throughout the entire emergence volume of space--would still
give the Stretts the initiative by a time-ratio of more than ten to one.
Such tight packing was of course impossible. It called for many billions
of defenders instead of the few millions it was possible for the Omans
to produce in the time they had. In fact, the average spacing was well
over ten thousand miles when the invading horde of Strett missiles
emerged and struck.
_How_ they struck!
There was nothing of finesse about that attack; nothing of skill or of
tactics: nothing but the sheer brute force of overwhelming superiority
of numbers and of over-matching power. One instant all space was empty.
The next instant it was full of invading missiles--a superb exhibition
of coordination and timing.
And the Kedy control, upon which the defenders had counted so heavily,
proved useless. For each Strett missile, within a fraction of a second
of emergence, darted toward the nearest Oman missile with an
acceleration that made the one-hundred-gravity defenders seem to be
standing still.
One to one, missiles crashed into missiles and detonated. There were no
solid or liquid end-products. Each of those frightful weapons carried so
many megatons-equivalent of atomic concentrate that all nearby space
blossomed out into superatomic blasts hundreds of times more violent
than the fireballs of lithium-hydride fusion bombs.
For a moment even Hilton was stunned; but only for a moment.
"Kedy!" he barked. "Get your big stuff out there! Use the boosters!" He
started for the door at a full run. "That tears it--that _really_ tears
it! Scrap the plan. I'll board the _Sirius_ and take the task-force to
Strett. Bring your stuff along, Skipper, as soon as you're ready."
* * * * *
Ardan superdreadnoughts in their massed thousands poured out through
Ardvor's one-way screen. Each went instantly to work. Now the Kedy
control system, doing what it was designed to do, proved its full worth.
For the weapons of the big battle-wagons did not depend upon
acceleration, but were driven at the speed of light; and Grand Fleet
Operations were planned and were carried out at the almost infinite
velocity of thought itself.
Or, rather, they were not planned at all. They were simply carried out,
immediately and without confusion.
For all the Kedys were one. Each Kedy element, without any lapse of time
whatever for consultation with any other, knew exactly where every other
element was; exactly what each was doing; and exactly what he himself
should do to make maximum contribution to the common cause.
Nor was any time lost in relaying orders to crewmen within the ship.
There were no crewmen. Each Kedy element was the sole personnel of, and
was integral with, his vessel. Nor were there any wires or relays to
impede and slow down communication. Operational instructions, too, were
transmitted and were acted upon with thought's transfinite speed. Thus,
if decision and execution were not quite mathematically simultaneous,
they were separated by a period of time so infinitesimally small as to
be impossible of separation.
Wherever a Strett missile was, or wherever a Strett skeleton-ship
appeared, an Oman beam reached it, usually in much less than one second.
Beam clung to screen--caressingly, hungrily--absorbing its total energy
and forming the first-stage booster. Then, three microseconds later,
that booster went off into a ragingly incandescent, glaringly violent
burst of fury so hellishly, so inconceivably hot that less than a
thousandth of its total output of energy was below the very top of the
visible spectrum!
If the previous display of atomic violence had been so spectacular and
of such magnitude as to defy understanding or description, what of this?
When hundreds of thousands of Kedys, each wielding world-wrecking powers
as effortlessly and as deftly and as precisely as thought, attacked and
destroyed millions of those tremendously powerful war-fabrications of
the Stretts? The only simple answer is that all nearby space might very
well have been torn out of the most radiant layers of S-Doradus itself.
* * * * *
Hilton made the hundred yards from office door to curb in just over
twelve seconds. Larry was waiting. The car literally burned a hole in
the atmosphere as it screamed its way to Ardane Field.
It landed with a thump. Heavy black streaks of synthetic rubber marked
the pavement as it came to a screeching, shrieking stop at the
flagship's main lock. And, in the instant of closing that lock's outer
portal, all twenty-thousand-plus warships of the task force took off as
one at ten gravities. Took off, and in less than one minute went into
overdrive.
All personal haste was now over. Hilton went up into what he still
thought of as the "control room," even though he knew that there were no
controls, nor even any instruments, anywhere aboard. He knew what he
would find there. Fast as he had acted, Temple had not had as far to go
and she had got there first.
He could not have said, for the life of him, how he actually felt about
this direct defiance of his direct orders. He walked into the room, sat
down beside her and took her hand.
"I told you to stay home, Temple," he said.
"I know you did. But I'm not only the assistant head of your Psychology
Department. I'm your wife, remember? 'Until death do us part.' And if
there's any way in the universe I can manage it, death isn't going to
part us--at least, this one isn't. If this is it, we'll go together."
"I know, sweetheart." He put his arm around her, held her close. "As a
psych I wouldn't give a whoop. You'd be expendable. But as my wife,
especially now that you're pregnant, you aren't. You're a lot more
important to the future of our race than I am."
She stiffened in the circle of his arm. "What's _that_ crack supposed to
mean? Think I'd ever accept a synthetic zombie imitation of you for my
husband and go on living with it just as though nothing had happened?"
Hilton started to say something, but Temple rushed heedlessly on:
"_Drat_ the race! No matter how many children we ever have you were
first and you'll _stay_ first, and if you have to go I'll go, too, so
there! Besides, you know darn well that they can't duplicate whatever it
is that makes you Jarvis Hilton."
"Now wait a minute, Tempy. The conversion ..."
"Yes, the conversion," she interrupted, triumphantly. "The thing I'm
talking about is immaterial--untouchable--they didn't--couldn't--do any
thing about it at all. Kedy, will you please tell this big goofus that
even though you have got Jarvis Hilton's brain you aren't Jarvis Hilton
and never can be?"
* * * * *
The atmosphere of the room vibrated in the frequencies of a deep bass
laugh. "You are trying to hold a completely untenable position, friend
Hilton. Any attempt to convince a mind of real power that falsity is
truth is illogical. My advice is for you to surrender."
That word hit Temple hard. "Not surrender, sweetheart. I'm not fighting
you. I never will." She seized both of his hands; tears welled into her
glorious eyes. "It's just that I simply couldn't _stand_ it to go on
living without you!"
"I know, darling." He got up and lifted her to her feet, so that she
could come properly into his arms. They stood there, silent and
motionless, for minutes.
Temple finally released herself and, after feeling for a handkerchief
she did not have, wiped her eyes with a forefinger and then wiped the
finger on her bare leg. She grinned and turned to the Omans. "Prince,
will you and Dark Lady please conjure us up a steak-and-mushrooms
supper? They should be in the pantry ... since this _Sirius_ was
designed for us."
After supper the two sat companionably on a davenport. "One thing about
this business isn't quite clear," Temple said. "Why all this tearing
rush? They haven't got the booster or anything like it, or they'd have
used it. Surely it'll take them a long time to go from the mere analysis
of the forces and fields we used clear through to the production and
installation of enough weapons to stop this whole fleet?"
"It surely won't. They've had the absorption principle for ages.
Remember that first, ancient skeleton that drained all the power of our
suits and boats in nothing flat? From there it isn't too big a jump. And
as for producing stuff; uh-_uh_! If there's any limit to what they can
do, I don't know what it is. If we don't slug 'em before they get it,
it's curtains."
"I see.... I'm afraid. We're almost there, darling."
He glanced at the chronometer. "About eleven minutes. And of course I
don't need to ask you to stay out of the way."
"Of course not. I won't interfere, no matter what happens. All I'm going
to do is hold your hand and pull for you with all my might."
"That'll help, believe me. I'm mighty glad you're along, sweetheart.
Even though both of us know you shouldn't be."
* * * * *
The task force emerged. Each ship darted toward its pre-assigned place
in a mathematically exact envelope around the planet Strett.
Hilton sat on a davenport strained and still. His eyes were closed and
every muscle tense. Left hand gripped the arm-rest so fiercely that
fingertips were inches deep in the leather-covered padding.
The Stretts _knew_ that any such attack as this was futile. No movable
structure or any combination of such structures could possibly wield
enough power to break down screens powered by such engines as theirs.
Hilton, however, knew that there was a chance. Not with the first-stage
boosters, which were manipulable and detonable masses of ball lightning,
but with those boosters' culminations, the Vangs; which were ball
lightning raised to the sixth power and which only the frightful
energies of the boosters could bring into being.
But, even with twenty-thousand-plus Vangs--or any larger number--success
depended entirely upon a nicety of timing never before approached and
supposedly impossible. Not only to thousandths of a microsecond, but to
a small fraction of one such thousandth: roughly, the time it takes
light to travel three-sixteenths of an inch.
It would take practically absolute simultaneity to overload to the point
of burnout to those Strett generators. They were the heaviest in the
Galaxy.
That was why Hilton himself had to be there. He could not possibly have
done the job from Ardvor. In fact, there was no real assurance that,
even at the immeasurable velocity of thought and covering a mere million
miles, he could do it even from his present position aboard one unit of
the fleet. Theoretically, with his speed-up, he could. But that theory
had yet to be reduced to practice.
Tense and strained, Hilton began his countdown.
Temple sat beside him. Both hands pressed his right fist against her
breast. Her eyes, too, were closed; she was as stiff and as still as was
he. She was not interfering, but giving; supporting him, backing him,
giving to him in full flood everything of that tremendous inner strength
that had made Temple Bells what she so uniquely was.
On the exact center of the needle-sharp zero beat every Kedy
struck. Gripped and activated as they all were by Hilton's
keyed-up-and-stretched-out mind, they struck in what was very close
indeed to absolute unison.
Absorbing beams, each one having had precisely the same number of
millimeters to travel, reached the screen at the same instant. They
clung and sucked. Immeasurable floods of energy flashed from the Strett
generators into those vortices to form twenty thousand-plus first-stage
boosters.
* * * * *
But this time the boosters did not detonate.
Instead, as energies continued to flood in at a frightfully accelerating
rate, they turned into something else. Things no Terran science has ever
even imagined; things at the formation of which all neighboring space
actually warped, and in that warping seethed and writhed and shuddered.
The very sub-ether screamed and shrieked in protest as it, too, yielded
in starkly impossible fashions to that irresistible stress.
How even those silicon-fluorine brains stood it, not one of them ever
knew.
Microsecond by slow microsecond the Vangs grew and grew and grew. They
were pulling not only the full power of the Ardan warships, but also the
immeasurably greater power of the strainingly overloaded Strettsian
generators themselves. The ethereal and sub-ethereal writhings and
distortions and screamings grew worse and worse; harder and ever harder
to bear.
Imagine, if you can, a constantly and rapidly increasing mass of
plutonium--a mass already thousands of times greater than critical, but
not _allowed_ to react! That gives a faint and very inadequate picture
of what was happening then.
Finally, at perhaps a hundred thousand times critical mass, and still in
perfect sync, the Vangs all went off.
The planet Strett became a nova.
"We won! We _won_!" Temple shrieked, her perception piercing through the
hellish murk that was all nearby space.
"Not quite yet, sweet, but we're over the biggest hump," and the two
held an impromptu, but highly satisfactory, celebration.
Perhaps it would be better to say that the planet Strett became a
junior-grade nova, since the actual nova stage was purely superficial
and did not last very long. In a couple of hours things had quieted down
enough so that the heavily-screened warships could approach the planet
and finish up their part of the job.
Much of Strett's land surface was molten lava. Much of its water was
gone. There were some pockets of resistance left, of course, but they
did not last long. Equally of course the Stretts themselves, twenty-five
miles underground, had not been harmed at all.
But that, too, was according to plan.
* * * * *
Leaving the task force on guard, to counter any move the Stretts might
be able to make, Hilton shot the _Sirius_ out to the planet's moon.
There Sawtelle and his staff and tens of thousands of Omans and machines
were starting to work. No part of this was Hilton's job; so all he and
Temple did was look on.
Correction, please. That was not _all_ they did. But while resting and
eating and loafing and sleeping and enjoying each other's company, both
watched Operation Moon closely enough to be completely informed as to
everything that went on.
Immense, carefully placed pits went down to solid bedrock. To that rock
were immovably anchored structures strong enough to move a world.
Driving units were installed--drives of such immensity of power as to
test to the full the highest engineering skills of the Galaxy. Mountains
of fuel-concentrate filled vast reservoirs of concrete. Each was
connected to a drive by fifty-inch high-speed conveyors.
Sawtelle drove a thought and those brutal super-drives began to blast.
As they blasted, Strett's satellite began to move out of its orbit. Very
slowly at first, but faster and faster. They continued to blast, with
all their prodigious might and in carefully-computed order, until the
desired orbit was attained--an orbit which terminated in a vertical line
through the center of the Stretts' supposedly impregnable retreat.
The planet Strett had a mass of approximately seven times ten to the
twenty-first metric tons. Its moon, little more than a hundredth as
massive, still weighed in at about eight times ten to the
nineteenth--that is, the figure eight followed by nineteen zeroes.
And moon fell on planet, in direct central impact, after having fallen
from a height of over a quarter of a million miles under the full pull
of gravity and the full thrust of those mighty atomic drives.
The kinetic energy of such a collision can be computed. It can be
expressed. It is, however, of such astronomical magnitude as to be
completely meaningless to the human mind.
Simply, the two worlds merged and splashed. Droplets, weighing up to
millions of tons each, spattered out into space; only to return, in
seconds or hours or weeks or months, to add their atrocious
contributions to the enormity of the destruction already wrought.
No trace survived of any Strett or of any thing, however small,
pertaining to the Stretts.