WITHIN THE RED VEIL
Nevia, the home planet of the marauding space-ship, would have appeared
peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses. High in the deep red heavens a
fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon
a world of water. Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky, and
through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon--a
horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are
accustomed--with a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra's
dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky
would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and
steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as
they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and
through that huge world's wonderfully transparent gaseous envelope the
full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we
know it--for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were
light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood--but a strange
and glorious firmament containing few constellations familiar to Earthly
eyes.
Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void--the vessel
that was to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of Triplanetary and
Roger's planetoid--plunged into the rarefied outer atmosphere, and
crimson beams of force tore shriekingly through the thin air as it
braked its terrific speed. A third of the circumference of Nevia's
mighty globe was traversed before the velocity of the craft could be
reduced sufficiently to make a landing possible. Then, approaching the
twilight zone, the vessel dived vertically downward, and it became
evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of
intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing
toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings
were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color,
and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb
would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively
narrow channel of water, and all were built of the same white metal.
Many bridges and more tubes extended through the air from building to
building, and the watery "streets" teemed with swimmers, with surface
craft, and with submarines.
The pilot, stationed immediately below the conical prow of the
space-ship, peered intently through thick windows which afforded
unobstructed vision in every direction. His four huge and contractile
eyes were active, each operating independently in sending its own
message to his peculiar but capable brain. One was watching the
instruments, the others scanned narrowly the immense, swelling curve of
the ship's belly, the water upon which his vessel was to land, and the
floating dock to which it was to be moored. Four hands--if hands they
could be called--manipulated levers and wheels with infinite delicacy of
touch, and with scarcely a splash the immense mass of the Nevian vessel
struck the water and glided to a stop within a foot of its exact berth.
Four mooring bars dropped neatly into their sockets and the
captain-pilot, after locking his controls in neutral, released his
safety straps and leaped lightly from his padded bench to the floor.
Scuttling across the floor and down a runway upon his four short,
powerful, heavily scaled legs, he slipped smoothly into the water and
flashed away, far below the surface. For Nevians are true amphibians.
Their blood is cold; they use with equal comfort and efficiency gills
and lungs for breathing; their scaly bodies are equally at home in the
water or in the air; their broad, flat feet serve equally well for
running about upon a solid surface or for driving their streamlined
bodies through the water at a pace few fishes can equal.
Through the water the Nevian commander darted along, steering his course
accurately by means of his short, vaned tail. Through an opening in a
wall he sped and along a submarine hallway, emerging upon a broad ramp.
He scurried up the incline and into an elevator which lifted him to the
top of the hexagon, directly into the office of the Secretary of
Commerce of all Nevia.
"Welcome, Captain Nerado!" The Secretary waved a tentacular arm and the
visitor sprang lightly upon a softly cushioned bench, where he lay at
ease, facing the official across his low, flat "desk." "We congratulate
you upon the success of your final trial flight. We received all your
reports, even while you were traveling at ten times the velocity of
light. With the last difficulties overcome, you are now ready to start?"
"We are ready," the captain-scientist replied, soberly. "Mechanically,
the ship is as nearly perfect as our finest minds can make her. She is
stocked for two years. All the iron-bearing suns within reach have been
plotted. Everything is ready except the iron. Of course the Council
refused to allow us any of the national supply--how much were you able
to purchase for us in the market?"
"Nearly ten pounds...."
"Ten pounds! Why, the securities we left with you could not have bought
two pounds, even at the price then prevailing!"
"No, but you have friends. Many of us believe in you, and have dipped
into our own resources. You and your fellow scientists of the expedition
have each contributed his entire personal fortune; why should not some
of the rest of us also contribute, as private citizens?"
"Wonderful--we thank you. Ten pounds!" The captain's great triangular
eyes glowed with an intense violet light. "At least a year of cruising.
But ... what if, after all, we should be wrong?"
"In that case you shall have consumed ten pounds of irreplaceable
metal." The Secretary was unmoved. "That is the viewpoint of the Council
and of almost everyone else. It is not the waste of treasure they object
to; it is the fact that ten pounds of iron will be forever lost."
"A high price, truly," the Columbus of Nevia assented. "And after all, I
may be wrong."
"You probably are wrong," his host made startling answer. "It is
practically certain--it is almost a demonstrable mathematical fact--that
no other sun within hundreds of thousands of light-years of our own has
a planet. In all probability Nevia is the only planet in the entire
Universe. We are very probably the only intelligent life in the
Universe. There is only one chance in numberless millions that anywhere
within the cruising range of your newly perfected space-ship there may
be an iron-bearing planet upon which you can effect a landing. There is
a larger chance, however, that you may be able to find a small, cold,
iron-bearing cosmic body--small enough so that you can capture it.
Although there are no mathematics by which to evaluate the probability
of such an occurrence, it is upon that larger chance that some of us are
staking a portion of our wealth. We expect no return whatever, but if
you _should_ by some miracle happen to succeed, what then? Deep seas
being made shallow, civilization extending itself over the globe,
science advancing by leaps and bounds, Nevia becoming populated as she
should be peopled--that, my friend, is a chance well worth taking!"
The Secretary called in a group of guards, who escorted the small
package of priceless metal to the space-ship. Before the massive door
was sealed the friends bade each other farewell.
"... I will keep in touch with you on the ultra-wave," the Captain
concluded. "After all, I do not blame the Council for refusing to allow
the other ship to go out. Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss to
the world. If we _should_ find iron, however, see to it that she loses
no time in following us."
"No fear of that! If you find iron she will set out at once, and all
space will soon be full of vessels. Goodbye."
The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the
air. Up and up, out beyond the last tenuous trace of atmosphere, on and
on through space it flew with ever-increasing velocity until Nevia's
gigantic blue sun had been left so far behind that it became a splendid
blue-white star. Then, projectors cut off to save the precious iron
whose disintegration furnished them power, for week after week Captain
Nerado and his venturesome crew of scientists drifted idly through the
illimitable void.
There is no need to describe in detail Nerado's tremendous voyage.
Suffice it to say that he found a G-type dwarf star possessing
planets--not one planet only, but six ... seven ... eight ... yes, at
least nine! And most of those worlds were themselves centers of
attraction around which were circling one or more worldlets! Nerado
thrilled with joy as he applied a full retarding force, and every
creature aboard that great vessel had to peer into a plate or through a
telescope before he could believe that planets other than Nevia did in
reality exist!
Velocity checked to the merest crawl, as space-speeds go, and with
electro-magnetic detector screens full out, the Nevian vessel crept
toward our sun. Finally the detectors encountered an obstacle, a
conductive substance which the patterns showed conclusively to be
practically pure iron. Iron--an enormous mass of it--floating alone out
in space! Without waiting to investigate the nature, appearance, or
structure of the precious mass, Nerado ordered power into the converters
and drove an enormous softening field of force upon the object--a force
of such a nature that it would condense the metallic iron into an
allotropic modification of much smaller bulk; a red, viscous, extremely
dense and heavy liquid which could be stored conveniently in his tanks.
No sooner had the precious fluid been stored away than the detectors
again broke into an uproar. In one direction was an enormous mass of
iron, scarcely detectable; in another a great number of smaller masses;
in a third an isolated mass, comparatively small in size. Space seemed
to be full of iron, and Nerado drove his most powerful beam toward
distant Nevia and sent an exultant message.
"We have found iron--easily obtained and in unthinkable quantity--not in
fractions of milligrams, but in millions upon unmeasured millions of
tons! Send our sister ship here at once!"
"Nerado!" The captain was called to one of the observation plates as
soon as he had opened his key. "I have been investigating the mass of
iron now nearest us, the small one. It is an artificial structure, a
small space-boat, and there are three creatures in it--monstrosities
certainly, but they must possess some intelligence or they could not be
navigating space."
"What? Impossible!" exclaimed the chief explorer. "Probably, then, the
other was--but no matter, we had to have the iron. Bring the boat in
without converting it, so that we may study at our leisure both the
beings and their mechanisms," and Nerado swung his own visiray beam into
the emergency boat, seeing there the armored figures of Clio Marsden and
the two Triplanetary officers.
"They are indeed intelligent," Nerado commented, as he detected and
silenced Costigan's ultra-beam communicator. "Not, however, as
intelligent as I had supposed," he went on, after studying the peculiar
creatures and their tiny space-ship more in detail. "They have immense
stores of iron, yet use it for nothing other than building material.
They make little and inefficient use of atomic energy. They apparently
have a rudimentary knowledge of ultra-waves, but do not use them
intelligently--they cannot neutralize even these ordinary forces we are
now employing. They are of course more intelligent than the lower
ganoids, or even than some of the higher fishes, but by no stretch of
the imagination can they be compared to us. I am quite relieved--I was
afraid that in my haste I might have slain members of a highly developed
race."
The helpless boat, all her forces neutralized, was brought up close to
the immense flying fish. There flaming knives of force sliced her neatly
into sections and the three rigid armored figures, after being bereft of
their external weapons, were brought through the airlocks and into the
control room, while the pieces of their boat were stored away for future
study. The Nevian scientists first analyzed the air inside the
space-suits of the Terrestrials, then carefully removed the protective
coverings of the captives.
Costigan--fully conscious through it all and now able to move a little,
since the peculiar temporary paralysis was wearing off--braced himself
for he knew not what shock, but it was needless; their grotesque captors
were not torturers. The air, while somewhat more dense than Earth's and
of a peculiar odor, was eminently breathable, and even though the vessel
was motionless in space an almost-normal gravitation gave them a large
fraction of their usual weight.
After the three had been relieved of their pistols and other articles
which the Nevians thought might prove to be weapons, the strange
paralysis was lifted entirely. The Earthly clothing puzzled the captors
immensely, but so strenuous were the objections raised to its removal
that they did not press the point, but fell back to study their find in
detail.
Then faced each other the representatives of the civilizations of two
widely separated solar systems. The Nevians studied the human beings
with interest and curiosity blended largely with loathing and repulsion;
the three Terrestrials regarded the unmoving, expressionless "faces"--if
those coned heads could be said to possess such thing--with horror and
disgust, as well as with other emotions, each according to his type and
training. For to human eyes the Nevian is a fearful thing. Even today
there are few Terrestrials--or Solarians, for that matter--who can look
at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and
experiencing a "gone" sensation in the pit of the stomach. The horny,
wrinkled, drought-resisting Martian, whom we all know and rather like,
is a hideous being indeed. The bat-eyed, colorless, hairless,
practically skinless Venerian is worse. But they both are, after all,
remote cousins of Terra's humanity, and we get along with them quite
well whenever we are compelled to visit Mars or Venus. But the Nevians--
The horizontal, flat, fish-like body is not so bad, even supported as it
is by four short, powerful, scaly, flat-footed legs; and terminating as
it does in the weird, four-vaned tail. The neck, even, is endurable,
although it is long and flexible, heavily scaled, and is carried in
whatever eye-wringing loops or curves the owner considers most
convenient or ornamental at the time. Even the smell of a Nevian--a
malodorous reek of over-ripe fish--does in time become tolerable,
especially if sufficiently disguised with creosote, which purely
Terrestrial chemical is the most highly prized perfume of Nevia. But the
head! It is that member that makes the Nevian so appalling to Earthly
eyes, for it is a thing utterly foreign to all Solarian history or
experience. As most Tellurians already know, it is fundamentally a
massive cone, covered with scales, based spearhead-like upon the neck.
Four great sea-green, triangular eyes are spaced equidistant from each
other about half way up the cone. The pupils are contractile at will,
like the eyes of the cat, permitting the Nevian to see equally well in
any ordinary extreme of light or darkness. Immediately below each eye
springs out a long, jointless, boneless, tentacular arm; an arm which at
its extremity divides into eight delicate and sensitive, but very
strong, "fingers." Below each arm is a mouth: a beaked, needle-tusked
orifice of dire potentialities. Finally, under the overhanging edge of
the cone-shaped head are the delicately-frilled organs which serve
either as gills or as nostrils and lungs, as may be desired. To other
Nevians the eyes and other features are highly expressive, but to us
they appear utterly cold and unmoving. Terrestrial senses can detect no
changes of expression in a Nevian's "face." Such were the frightful
beings at whom the three prisoners stared with sinking hearts.
But if we human beings have always considered Nevians grotesque and
repulsive, the feeling has always been mutual. For those "monstrous"
beings are a highly intelligent and extremely sensitive race, and
our--to us--trim and graceful human forms seem to them the very
quintessence of malformation and hideousness.
"Good Heavens, Conway!" Clio exclaimed, shrinking against Costigan as
his left arm flashed around her. "What horrible monstrosities! And they
can't talk--not one of them has made a sound--suppose they can be deaf
and dumb?"
But at the same time Nerado was addressing his fellows.
"What hideous, deformed creatures they are! Truly a low form of life,
even though they do possess some intelligence. They cannot talk, and
have made no signs of having heard our words to them--do you suppose
that they communicate by sight? That those weird contortions of their
peculiarly placed organs serve as speech?"
Thus both sides, neither realizing that the other had spoken. For the
Nevian voice is pitched so high that the lowest note audible to them is
far above our limit of hearing. The shrillest note of a Terrestrial
piccolo is to them so profoundly low that it cannot be heard.
"We have much to do." Nerado turned away from the captives. "We must
postpone further study of the specimens until we have taken aboard a
full cargo of the iron which is so plentiful here."
"What shall we do with them, sir?" asked one of the Nevian officers.
"Lock them in one of the storage rooms?"
"Oh, no! They might die there, and we must by all means keep them in
good condition, to be studied most carefully by the fellows of the
College of Science. What a commotion there will be when we bring in this
group of strange creatures, living proof that there are other suns
possessing planets; planets which are supporting organic and intelligent
life! You may put them in three communicating rooms, say in the fourth
section--they will undoubtedly require light and exercise. Lock all the
exits, of course, but it would be best to leave the doors between the
rooms unlocked, so that they can be together or apart, as they choose.
Since the smallest one, the female, stays so close to the larger male,
it may be that they are mates. But since we know nothing of their habits
or customs, it will be best to give them all possible freedom compatible
with safety."
Nerado turned back to his instruments and three of the frightful crew
came up to the human beings. One walked away, waving a couple of arms in
an unmistakable signal that the prisoners were to follow him. The three
obediently set out after him, the other two guards falling behind.
"Now's our best chance!" Costigan muttered, as they passed through a low
doorway and entered a narrow corridor. "Watch that one ahead of you,
Clio--hold him for a second if you can. Bradley, you and I will take the
two behind us--now!"
Costigan stooped and whirled. Seizing a cable-like arm, he pulled the
outlandish head down, the while the full power of his mighty right leg
drove a heavy service boot into the place where scaly neck and head
joined. The Nevian fell, and instantly Costigan leaped at the leader,
ahead of the girl. Leaped; but dropped to the floor, again paralyzed.
For the Nevian leader had been alert, his four eyes covering the entire
circle of vision, and he had acted rapidly. Not in time to stop
Costigan's first berserk attack--the First Officer's reactions were
practically instantaneous and he moved fast--but in time to retain
command of the situation. Another Nevian appeared, and while the
stricken guard was recovering, all four arms wrapped tightly around his
convulsively looping, writhing neck, the three helpless Terrestrials
were lifted into the air and carried bodily into the quarters to which
Nerado had assigned them. Not until they had been placed upon cushions
in the middle room and the heavy metal doors had been locked upon them
did they again find themselves able to use arms or legs.
"Well, that's another round we lose," Costigan commented, cheerfully. "A
guy can't mix it very well when he can neither kick, strike, nor bite. I
expected those lizards to rough me up then, but they didn't."
"They don't want to hurt us. They want to take us home with them,
wherever that is, as curiosities, like wild animals or something,"
decided the girl, shrewdly. "They're pretty bad, of course, but I like
them a lot better than I do Roger and his robots, anyway."
"I think you have the right idea, Miss Marsden," Bradley rumbled.
"That's it, exactly. I feel like a bear in a cage. I should think you'd
feel worse than ever. What chance has an animal of escaping from a
menagerie?"
"These animals, lots. I'm feeling better and better all the time," Clio
declared, and her serene bearing bore out her words. "You two got us out
of that horrible place of Roger's, and I'm pretty sure that you will get
us away from here, somehow or other. They may think we're stupid
animals, but before you two and the Triplanetary Patrol and the Service
get done with them they'll have another think coming."
"That's the old fight, Clio!" cheered Costigan. "I haven't got it
figured out as close as you have, but I get about the same answer. These
four-legged fish carry considerably heavier stuff than Roger did, I'm
thinking; but they'll be up against something themselves pretty quick
that is _no_ light-weight, believe me!"
"Do you know something, or are you just whistling in the dark?" Bradley
demanded.
"I know a little; not much. Engineering and Research have been working
on a new ship for a long time; a ship to travel so much faster than
light that it can go anywhere in the Galaxy and back in a month or so.
New sub-ether drive, new atomic power, new armament, new everything.
Only bad thing about it is that it doesn't work so good yet--it's fuller
of bugs than a Venerian's kitchen. It has blown up five times that I
know of, and has killed twenty-nine men. But when they get it licked
they'll _have something_!"
"When, or if?" asked Bradley, pessimistically.
"I said _when_!" snapped Costigan, his voice cutting. "When the Service
goes after anything they get it, and when they get it it _stays_...." He
broke off abruptly and his voice lost its edge. "Sorry. Didn't mean to
get high, but I think we'll have help, if we can keep our heads up a
while. And it looks good--these are first-class cages they've given us.
All the comforts of home, even to lookout plates. Let's see what's going
on, shall we?"
After some experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned
how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone
of Battle hurling itself toward Roger's planetoid. They saw the pirate
fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary's massed forces, and with
bated breath they watched every maneuver of that epic battle to its
savagely sacrificial end. And that same battle was being watched, also
with the most intense interest, by the Nevians in their control room.
"It is indeed a bloodthirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation
plate. "And it is peculiar--or rather, probably only to be expected from
a race of such a low stage of development--that they employ only
ether-borne forces. Warfare seems universal among primitive
types--indeed, it is not so long ago that our own cities, few in number
though they are, ceased fighting each other and combined against the
semicivilized fishes of the greater deeps."
He fell silent, and for many minutes watched the furious battle between
the two navies of the void. That conflict ended, he watched the
Triplanetary fleet reform its battle cone and rush upon the planetoid.
"Destruction, always destruction," he sighed, adjusting his power
switches. "Since they are bent upon mutual destruction I can see no
purpose in refraining from destroying all of them. We need the iron, and
they are a useless race."
He launched his softening, converting field of dull red energy. Vast as
that field was, it could not encompass the whole fleet, but half of the
lip of the gigantic cone soon disappeared, its component vessels
subsiding into a sluggishly flowing stream of allotropic iron. The
fleet, abandoning its attack upon the planetoid, swung its cone around,
to bring the flame-erupting axis to bear upon the formless something
dimly perceptible to the ultra-vision of Samms' observers. Furiously the
gigantic composite beam of the massed fleet was hurled, nor was it
alone.
For Gharlane had known, ever since the easy escape of his human
prisoners, that something was occurring which was completely beyond his
experience, although not beyond his theoretical knowledge. He had found
the sub-ether closed; he had been unable to make his sub-ethereal
weapons operative against either the three captives or the war-vessels
of the Triplanetary Patrol. Now, however, he could work in the
sub-ethereal murk of the newcomers; a light trial showed him that if he
so wished he could use sub-ethereal offenses against them. What was the
real meaning of those facts?
He had become convinced that those three persons were no more human than
was Roger himself. Who or what was activating them? It was definitely
not Eddorian workmanship; no Eddorian would have developed those
particular techniques, nor could possibly have developed them without
his knowledge. What, then? To do what had been done necessitated the
existence of a race as old and as capable as the Eddorians, but of an
entirely different nature; and, according to Eddore's vast Information
Center, no such race existed or ever had existed.
Those visitors, possessing mechanisms supposedly known only to the
science of Eddore, would also be expected to possess the mental powers
which had been exhibited. Were they recent arrivals from some other
space-time continuum? Probably not--Eddorian surveys had found no trace
of any such life in any reachable plenum. Since it would be utterly
fantastic to postulate the unheralded appearance of two such races at
practically the same moment, the conclusion seemed unavoidable that
these as yet unknown beings were the protectors--the activators,
rather--of the two Triplanetary officers and the woman. This view was
supported by the fact that while the strangers had attacked
Triplanetary's fleet and had killed thousands of Triplanetary's men,
they had actually rescued those three supposedly human beings. The
planetoid, then would be attacked next. Very well, he would join
Triplanetary in attacking them--with weapons no more dangerous to them
than Triplanetary's own--the while preparing his real attack, which
would come later. Roger issued orders; and waited; and thought more and
more intensely upon one point which remained obscure--why, when the
strangers themselves destroyed Triplanetary's fleet, had Roger been
unable to use his most potent weapons against that fleet?
Thus, then, for the first time in Triplanetary's history, the forces of
law and order joined hands with those of piracy and banditry against a
common foe. Rods, beams, planes, and stilettos of unbearable energy the
doomed fleet launched, in addition to its terrifically destructive main
beam: Roger hurled every material weapon at his command. But bombs,
high-explosive shells, even the ultra-deadly atomic torpedoes, alike
were ineffective; alike simply vanished in the redly murky veil of
nothingness. And the fleet was being melted. In quick succession the
vessels flamed red, shrank together, gave out their air, and merged
their component iron into the intensely crimson, sullenly viscous stream
which was flowing through the impenetrable veil against which both
Triplanetarians and pirates were directing their terrific offense.
The last vessel of the attacking cone having been converted and the
resulting metal stored away, the Nevians--as Roger had anticipated--turned
their attention toward the planetoid. But that structure was no feeble
warship. It had been designed by, and built under the personal supervision
of, Gharlane of Eddore. It was powered, equipped, and armed to meet any
emergency which Gharlane's tremendous mind had been able to envision.
Its entire bulk was protected by the shield whose qualities had so
surprised Costigan; a shield far more effective than any Tellurian
scientist or engineer would have believed possible.
The voracious converting beam of the Nevians, below the level of the
ether though it was, struck that shield and rebounded; defeated and
futile. Struck again, again rebounded; then struck and clung hungrily,
licking out over that impermeable surface in darting tongues of flame as
the surprised Nerado doubled and then quadrupled his power. Fiercer and
fiercer the Nevian flood of force drove in. The whole immense globe of
the planetoid became one scintillant ball of raw, red energy; but still
the pirates' shield remained intact.
Gray Roger sat coldly motionless at his great desk, the top of which was
now swung up to become a panel of massed and tiered instruments and
controls. He could carry this load forever--but unless he was very
wrong, this load would change shortly. What then? The essence that was
Gharlane could not be killed--could not even be hurt--by any physical,
chemical, or nuclear force. Should he stay with the planetoid to its
end, and thus perforce return to Eddore with no material evidence
whatever? He would not. Too much remained undone. Any report based upon
his present information could be neither complete nor conclusive, and
reports submitted by Gharlane of Eddore to the coldly cynical and
ruthlessly analytical innermost Circle had always been and always would
be both.
It was a fact that there existed at least one non-Eddorian mind which
was the equal of his own. If one, there would be a race of such minds.
The thought was galling; but to deny the existence of a fact would be
the essence of stupidity. Since power of mind was a function of time,
that race must be of approximately the same age as his own. Therefore
the Eddorian Information Center, which by the inference of its
completeness denied the existence of such a race, was wrong. It was not
complete.
Why was it not complete? The only possible reason for two such races
remaining unaware of the existence of each other would be the deliberate
intent of one of them. Therefore, at some time in the past, the two
races had been in contact for at least an instant of time. All Eddorian
knowledge of that meeting had been suppressed and no more contacts had
been allowed to occur.
The conclusion reached by Gharlane was a disturbing thing indeed; but,
being an Eddorian, he faced it squarely. He did not have to wonder how
such a suppression could have been accomplished--he knew. He also knew
that his own mind contained everything known to his every ancestor since
the first Eddorian was: the probability was exceedingly great that if
any such contact had ever been made his mind would still contain at
least some information concerning it, however carefully suppressed that
knowledge had been.
He thought. Back ... back ... farther back ... farther still....
And as he thought, an interfering force began to pluck at him; as though
palpable tongs were pulling out of line the mental probe with which he
was exploring the hitherto unplumbed recesses of his mind.
"Ah ... so you do not want me to remember?" Roger asked aloud, with no
change in any lineament of his hard, gray face. "I wonder ... do you
really believe that you can keep me from remembering? I must abandon
this search for the moment, but rest assured that I shall finish it very
shortly."
* * * * *
"Here is the analysis of his screen, sir." A Nevian computer handed his
chief a sheet of metal, bearing rows of symbols.
"Ah, a polycyclic ... complete coverage ... a screen of that type was
scarcely to have been expected from such a low form of life," Nerado
commented, and began to adjust dials and controls.
As he did so the character of the clinging mantle of force changed. From
red it flamed quickly through the spectrum, became unbearably violet,
then disappeared; and as it disappeared the shielding wall began to give
way. It did not cave in abruptly, but softened locally, sagging into a
peculiar grouping of valleys and ridges--contesting stubbornly every
inch of position lost.
Roger experimented briefly with inertialessness. No use. As he had
expected, they were prepared for that. He summoned a few of the ablest
of his scientist-slaves and issued instructions. For minutes a host of
robots toiled mightily, then a portion of the shield bulged out and
became a tube extending beyond the attacking layers of force; a tube
from which there erupted a beam of violence incredible. A beam behind
which was every erg of energy that the gigantic mechanisms of the
planetoid could yield. A beam that tore a hole through the redly
impenetrable Nevian field and hurled itself upon the inner screen of the
fish-shaped cruiser in frenzied incandescence. And was there, or was
there not, a lesser eruption upon the other side--an almost
imperceptible flash, as though something had shot from the doomed
planetoid out into space?
Nerado's neck writhed convulsively as his tortured drivers whined and
shrieked at the terrific overload; but Roger's effort was far too
intense to be long maintained. Generator after generator burned out, the
defensive screen collapsed, and the red converter beam attacked
voraciously the unresisting metal of those prodigious walls. Soon there
was a terrific explosion as the pent-up air of the planetoid broke
through its weakening container, and the sluggish river of allotropic
iron flowed in an ever larger stream, ever faster.
"It is well that we had an unlimited supply of iron." Nerado almost tied
a knot in his neck as he spoke in huge relief. "With but the seven
pounds remaining of our original supply, I fear that it would have been
difficult to parry that last thrust."
"Difficult?" asked the second in command. "We would now be free atoms in
space. But what shall I do with this iron? Our reservoirs will not hold
more than half of it. And how about that one ship which remains
untouched?"
"Jettison enough supplies from the lower holds to make room for this
lot. As for that one ship, let it go. We will be overloaded as it is,
and it is of the utmost importance that we get back to Nevia as soon as
possible."
This, if Gharlane could have heard it, would have answered his question.
All Arisia knew that it was _necessary_ for the camera-ship to survive.
The Nevians were interested only in iron; but the Eddorian, being a
perfectionist, would not have been satisfied with anything less than the
complete destruction of every vessel of Triplanetary's fleet.
The Nevian space-ship moved away, sluggishly now because of its
prodigious load. In their quarters in the fourth section the three
Terrestrials, who had watched with strained attention the downfall and
absorption of the planetoid, stared at each other with drawn faces. Clio
broke the silence.
"Oh, Conway, this is ghastly! It's ... it's just simply too damned
perfectly horrible!" she gasped, then recovered a measure of her
customary spirit as she stared in surprise at Costigan's face. For it
was thoughtful, his eyes were bright and keen--no trace of fear or
disorganization was visible in any line of his hard young face.
"It's not so good," he admitted frankly. "I wish I wasn't such a dumb
cluck--if Lyman Cleveland or Fred Rodebush were here they could help a
lot, but I don't know enough about any of their stuff to flag a
hand-car. I can't even interpret that funny flash--if it really was a
flash--that we saw."
"Why bother about one little flash, after all that really did happen?"
asked Clio, curiously.
"You think Roger launched something? He couldn't have--I didn't see a
thing," Bradley argued.
"I don't know what to think. I've never seen anything material sent out
so fast that I couldn't trace it with an ultra-wave--but on the other
hand, Roger's got a lot of stuff that I never saw anywhere else.
However, I don't see that it has anything to do with the fix we're in
right now--but at that, we might be worse off. We're still breathing
air, you notice, and if they don't blanket my wave I can still talk."
He put both hands into his pockets and spoke.
"Samms? Costigan. Put me on a recorder, quick--I probably haven't got
much time," and for ten minutes he talked, concisely and as rapidly as
he could utter words, reporting clearly and exactly everything that had
transpired. Suddenly he broke off, writhing in agony. Frantically he
tore his shirt open and hurled a tiny object across the room.
"Wow!" he exclaimed. "They may be deaf, but they can certainly detect an
ultra-wave, and what an interference they can set up on it! No, I'm not
hurt," he reassured the anxious girl, now at his side, "but it's a good
thing I had you out of circuit--it would have jolted you loose from six
or seven of your back teeth."
"Have you any idea where they're taking us?" she asked soberly.
"No," he answered flatly, looking deep into her steadfast eyes. "No use
lying to you--if I know you at all you'd rather take it standing up.
That talk of Jovians or Neptunians is the bunk--nothing like that ever
grew in our Solarian system. All the signs say that we're going for a
long ride."