THE SUPER-SHIP IS LAUNCHED
After weeks of ceaseless work, during which was lavished upon her every
resource of mind and material afforded by three planets, the _Boise_ was
ready for her maiden flight. As nearly ready, that is, as the thought
and labor of man could make her. Rodebush and Cleveland had finished
their last rigid inspection of the aircraft and, standing beside the
center door of the main airlock, were talking with their chief.
"You say that you think that it's safe, and yet you won't take a crew,"
Samms argued. "In that case it isn't safe enough for you two, either. We
need you too badly to permit you to take such chances."
"You've _got_ to let us go, because we are the only ones who are at all
familiar with her theory," Rodebush insisted. "I said, and I still say,
that I _think_ it is safe. I can't prove it, however, even
mathematically; because she's altogether too full of too many new and
untried mechanisms, too many extrapolations beyond all existing or
possible data. Theoretically, she is sound, but you know that theory can
go only so far, and that mathematically negligible factors may become
operative at those velocities. We do not need a crew for a short trip.
We can take care of any minor mishaps, and if our fundamental theories
are wrong, all the crews between here and Jupiter wouldn't do any good.
Therefore we two are going--alone."
"Well, be very careful, anyway. I wish that you could start out slow and
take it easy."
"In a way, so do I, but she wasn't designed to neutralize half of
gravity, nor half of the inertia of matter--it's got to be everything or
nothing, as soon as the neutralizers go on. We could start out on the
projectors, of course, instead of on the neutralizers, but that wouldn't
prove anything and would only prolong the agony."
"Well, then, be as careful as you can."
"We'll do that, Chief," Cleveland put in. "We think as much of us as
anybody else does--maybe more--and we aren't committing suicide if we
can help it. And remember about everybody staying inside when we take
off--it's barely possible that we'll take up a lot of room. Goodbye!"
"Goodbye, fellows!"
The massive insulating doors were shut, the metal side of the mountain
opened, and huge, squat caterpillar tractors came roaring and clanking
into the room. Chains and cables were made fast and, mighty steel rails
groaning under the load, the space-ship upon her rolling ways was
dragged out of the Hill and far out upon the level floor of the valley
before the tractors cast off and returned to the fortress.
"Everybody is under cover," Samms informed Rodebush. The Chief was
staring intently into his plate, upon which was revealed the control
room of the untried super-ship. He heard Rodebush speak to Cleveland;
heard the observer's brief reply; saw the navigator push the
switch-button--then the communicator plate went blank. Not the ordinary
blankness of a cut-off, but a peculiarly disquieting fading out into
darkness. And where the great space-ship had rested there was for an
instant nothing. Exactly nothing--a vacuum. Vessel, falsework, rollers,
trucks, the enormous steel I-beams of the tracks, even the deep-set
concrete piers and foundations and a vast hemisphere of the solid
ground; all disappeared utterly and instantaneously. But almost as
suddenly as it had been formed the vacuum was filled by a cyclonic rush
of air. There was a detonation as of a hundred vicious thunderclaps made
one, and through the howling, shrieking blasts of wind there rained down
upon valley, plain, and metaled mountain a veritable avalanche of
debris; bent, twisted, and broken rails and beams, splintered timbers,
masses of concrete, and thousands of cubic yards of soil and rock. For
the atomic-powered "Rodebush-Cleveland" neutralizers were more powerful
by far, and had a vastly greater radius of action, than the calculations
of their designers had shown; and for a moment everything within a
hundred yards or so of the _Boise_ behaved as though it were an integral
part of the vessel. Then, left behind immediately by the super-ship's
almost infinite velocity, all this material had again become subject to
all of Nature's every-day laws and had crashed back to the ground.
"Could you hold your beam, Randolph?" Samms' voice cut sharply through
the daze of stupefaction which held spellbound most of the denizens of
the Hill. But all were not so held--no conceivable emergency could take
the attention of the chief ultra-wave operator from his instruments.
"No, sir," Radio Center shot back. "It faded out and I couldn't recover
it. I put everything I've got behind a tracer on that beam, but haven't
been able to lift a single needle off the pin."
"And no wreckage of the vessel itself," Samms went on, half audibly.
"Either they have succeeded far beyond their wildest hopes or else ...
more probably...." He fell silent and switched off the plate. Were his
two friends, those intrepid scientists, alive and triumphant, or had
they gone to lengthen the list of victims of that man-killing
space-ship? Reason told him that they were gone. They _must_ be gone, or
else the ultra-beams--energies of such unthinkable velocity of
propagation that man's most sensitive instruments had never been able
even to estimate it--would have held the ship's transmitter in spite of
any velocity attainable by matter under any conceivable conditions. The
ship must have been disintegrated as soon as Rodebush released his
forces. And yet, had not the physicist dimly foreseen the possibility of
such an actual velocity--or had he? However, individuals could come and
go, but the Service went on. Samms squared his shoulders unconsciously;
and slowly, grimly, made his way back to his private office.
"Mr. Fairchild would like to have a moment as soon as possible, sir,"
his secretary informed him even before he sat down. "Senator Morgan has
been here all day, you know, and he insists on seeing you personally."
"Oh, that kind, eh? All right, I'll see him. Get Fairchild, please ...
Dick? Can you talk, or is he there listening?"
"No, he's heckling Saunders at the moment. He's been here long enough.
Can you take a minute and throw him out?"
"Of course, if you say so, but why not throw the hooks into him
yourself, as usual?"
"He wants to lay down the law to you, personally. He's a Big Shot, you
know, and his group is kicking up quite a row, so it might be better to
have it come straight from the top. Besides, you've got a unique
knack--when you throw a harpoon, the harpoonee doesn't forget it."
"All right. He's the uplifter and leveler-off. Down with Triplanetary, up
with National Sovereignty. We're power-mad dictators--iron-heel-on-the-
necks-of-the-people, and so on. But what's he like, personally?
Thick-skinned, of course--got a brain?"
"Rhinoceros. He's got a brain, but it's definitely weaseloid. Bear
down--sink it in full length, and then twist it."
"O.K. You've got a harpoon, of course?"
"Three of 'em!" Fairchild, Head of Triplanetary's Public Relations,
grinned with relish. "Boss Jim Towne owns him in fee simple. The number
of his hot lock box is N469T414. His subbest sub-rosa girl-friend is
Fi-Chi le Bay ... yes, everything that the name implies. She got a
super-deluxe fur coat--Martian tekkyl, no less--out of that Mackenzie
River power deal. Triple play, you might say--Clander to Morgan to le
Bay."
"Nice. Bring him in."
"Senator Morgan, Mr. Samms," Fairchild made the introduction and the two
men sized each other up in lightning glances. Samms saw a big man,
florid, somewhat inclined toward corpulence, with the surface
geniality--and the shrewd calculating eyes--of the successful
politician. The senator saw a tall, hard-trained man in his forties; a
lean, keen, smooth-shaven face; a shock of red-bronze-auburn hair a
couple of weeks overdue for a cutting; a pair of gold-flecked tawny eyes
too penetrant for comfort.
"I trust, Senator, that Fairchild has taken care of you satisfactorily?"
"With one or two exceptions, yes." Since Samms did not ask what the
exceptions could be, Morgan was forced to continue. "I am here, as you
know, in my official capacity as Chairman of the Pernicious Activities
Committee of the North American Senate. It has been observed for years
that the published reports of your organization have left much unsaid.
It is common knowledge that high-handed outrages have been perpetrated;
if not by your men themselves, in such circumstances that your agents
could not have been ignorant of them. Therefore it has been decided to
make a first-hand and comprehensive investigation, in which matter your
Mr. Fairchild has not been at all cooperative."
"Who decided to make this investigation?"
"Why, the North American Senate, of course, through its Pernicious
Activities...."
"I thought so." Samms interrupted. "Don't you know, Senator, that the
Hill is not a part of the North American Continent? That the
Triplanetary Service is responsible only to the Triplanetary Council?"
"Quibbling, sir, and outmoded! This, sir, is a democracy!" the Senator
began to orate. "All that will be changed very shortly, and if you are
as smart as you are believed to be, I need only say that you and those
of your staff who cooperate...."
"You need say nothing at all." Samms' voice cut. "It has not been
changed yet. The Government of North America rules its continent, as do
the other Continental Governments. The combined Continental Governments
of the Three Planets form the Triplanetary Council, which is a
non-political body, the members of which hold office for life and which
is the supreme authority in any matter, small or large, affecting more
than one Continental Government. The Council has two principal operating
agencies; the Triplanetary Patrol, which enforces its decisions, rules,
and regulations, and the Triplanetary Service, which performs such other
tasks as the Council directs. We have no interest in the purely internal
affairs of North America. Have you any information to the contrary?"
"More quibbling!" the Senator thundered. "This is not the first time in
history that a ruthless dictatorship has operated in the disguise of a
democracy. Sir, I _demand_ full access to your files, so that I can
spread before the North American Senate the full facts of the various
matters which I mentioned to Fairchild--one of which was the affair of
the _Pelarion_. In a democracy, sir, facts should not be hidden; the
people must and shall be kept completely informed upon any matter which
affects their welfare or their political lives!"
"Is that so? If I should ask, then, for the purpose of keeping the
Triplanetary Council, and through it your constituents, fully informed
as to the political situation in North America, you would undoubtedly
give me the key to safe-deposit box N469T414? For it is common
knowledge, in the Council at least, that there is a certain amount
of--shall we say turbidity?--in the supposedly pellucid reaches of North
American politics."
"What? Preposterous!" Morgan made a heroic effort, but could not quite
maintain his poise. "Private papers only, sir!"
"Perhaps. Certain of the Councillors believe, however mistakenly, that
there are several things of interest there: such as the record of
certain transactions involving one James F. Towne; references to and
details concerning dealings--not to say deals--with Mackenzie Power,
specifically with Mackenzie Power's Mr. Clander; and perhaps a juicy bit
or two concerning a person known as le Bay and a tekkyl coat. Of
interest no end, don't you think, to the dear people of North America?"
As Samms drove the harpoon in and twisted it, the big man suffered
visibly. Nevertheless:
"You refuse to cooperate, eh?" he blustered. "Very well, I will go--but
you have not heard the last of me, Samms!"
"No? Probably not. But remember, before you do any more rabble-rousing,
that this lock-box thing is merely a sample. We of the Service know a
lot of things that we do not mention to anybody--except in
self-defense."
"I am holding Fletcher, Mr. Samms. Shall I put him on now?" Norma asked,
as the completely deflated Morgan went out.
"Yes, please.... Hello, Sid; mighty glad to see you--we were scared for
a while. How did you make out, and what was it?"
"Hi, Chief! Mostly hadive. Some heroin, and quite a bit of Martian
ladolian. Lousy job, though--three of the gang got away, and took about
a quarter of the loot with them. That was what I want to talk to you
about in such a hurry--fake meteors; the first I ever saw."
Samms straightened up in his chair.
"Just a second. Norma, put Redmond on here with us.... Listen, Harry.
Now, Fletcher, did you see that fake meteor yourself? Touch it?"
"Both. In fact, I've still got it. One of the runners, pretending to be
a Service man, flashed it on _me_. It's really good, too, Chief. Even
now, I can't tell it from my own except that mine is in my pocket. Shall
I send it in?"
"By all means; to Dr. H.D. Redmond, Head of Research. Keep on slugging,
Sid--goodbye. Now, Harry, what do you think? It _could_ be one of our
own, you know."
"Could be, but probably isn't. We'll know as soon as we get it in the
lab. Chances are, though, that they have caught up with us again. After
all, that was to be expected--anything that science can synthesize,
science can analyze; and whatever the morals and ethics of the pirates
may be, they have got brains."
"And you haven't been able to devise anything better?"
"Variations only, which wouldn't take much time to solve. Fundamentally,
the present meteor is the best we know."
"Got anybody you would like to put on it, immediately?"
"Of course. One of the new boys will be perfect for the job, I think.
Name of Bergenholm. Quite a character. Brilliant, erratic, flashes of
sheer genius that he can't explain, even to us. I'll put him on it right
away."
"Thanks a lot. And now, Norma, please keep everybody off my neck that
you can. I want to think."
And think he did; keen eyes clouded, staring unseeingly at the papers
littering his desk. Triplanetary needed a symbol--a something--which
would identify a Service man anywhere, at any time, under any
circumstances, without doubt or question ... something that could not be
counterfeited or imitated, to say nothing of being duplicated ...
something that no scientist not of Triplanetary Service could _possibly_
imitate ... better yet, something that no one not of Triplanetary could
even wear....
Samms grinned fleetingly at that thought. A tall order one calling for a
_deus ex machina_ with a vengeance.... But damn it, there ought to be
_some_ way to....
"Excuse me, sir." His secretary's voice, usually so calm and cool,
trembled as she broke in on his thinking. "Commissioner Kinnison is
calling. Something terrible is going on again, out toward Orion. Here he
is," and there appeared upon Samms' screen the face of the Commissioner
of Public Safety, the commander-in-chief of Triplanetary's every armed
force; whether of land or of water, of air or of empty space.
"They've come back, Virgil!" The Commissioner rapped out without
preliminary or greeting. "Four vessels gone--a freighter and a passenger
liner, with her escort of two heavy cruisers. All in Sector M, Dx about
151. I have ordered all traffic out of space for the duration of the
emergency, and since even our warships seem useless, every ship is
making for the nearest dock at maximum. How about that new flyer of
yours--got anything that will do us any good?" No one beyond the
"Hill's" shielding screens knew that the _Boise_ had already been
launched.
"I don't know. We don't even know whether we have a super-ship or not,"
and Samms described briefly the beginning--and very probably the
ending--of the trial flight, concluding: "It looks bad, but if there was
any possible way of handling her, Rodebush and Cleveland did it. All our
tracers are negative yet, so nothing definite has...."
He broke off as a frantic call came in from the Pittsburgh station for
the Commissioner; a call which Samms both heard and saw.
"The city is being attacked!" came the urgent message. "We need all the
reenforcements you can send us!" and a picture of the beleaguered city
appeared in ghastly detail upon the screens of the observers; a view
being recorded from the air. It required only seconds for the
commissioner to order every available man and engine of war to the seat
of conflict; then, having done everything they could do, Kinnison and
Samms stared in helpless, fascinated horror into their plates, watching
the scenes of carnage and destruction depicted there.
The Nevian vessel--the sister-ship, the craft which Costigan had seen in
mid-space as it hurtled Earthward in response to Nerado's summons--hung
poised in full visibility high above the metropolis. Scornful of the
pitiful weapons wielded by man, she hung there, her sinister beauty of
line sharply defined against the cloudless sky. From her shining hull
there reached down a tenuous but rigid rod of crimson energy; a rod
which slowly swept hither and thither as the Nevians searched out the
richest deposits of the precious metal for which they had come so far.
Iron, once solid, now a viscous red liquid, was sluggishly flowing in an
ever-thickening stream up that intangible crimson duct and into the
capacious storage tanks of the Nevian raider; and wherever that flaming
beam went there went also ruin, destruction and death. Office buildings,
skyscrapers towering majestically in their architectural symmetry and
beauty, collapsed into heaps of debris as their steel skeletons were
abstracted. Deep into the ground the beam bored; flood, fire, and
explosion following in its wake as the mazes of underground piping
disappeared. And the humanity of the buildings died: instantaneously and
painlessly, never knowing what struck them, as the life-bearing iron of
their bodies went to swell the Nevian stream.
Pittsburgh's defenses had been feeble indeed. A few antiquated railway
rifles had hurled their shells upward in futile defiance, and had been
quietly absorbed. The district planes of Triplanetary, newly armed with
iron-driven ultra-beams, had assembled hurriedly and had attacked the
invader in formation, with but little more success. Under the impact of
their beams, the stranger's screens had flared white, then poised ship
and flying squadron had alike been lost to view in a murkily opaque
shroud of crimson flame. The cloud had soon dissolved, and from the
place where the planes had been there floated or crashed down a litter
of non-ferrous wreckage. And now the cone of space-ships from the
Buffalo base of Triplanetary was approaching Pittsburgh hurling itself
toward the Nevian plunderer and toward known, gruesome, and hopeless
defeat.
"Stop them, Rod!" Samms cried. "It's sheer slaughter! They haven't got a
thing--they aren't even equipped yet with the iron drive!"
"I know it," the commissioner groaned, "and Admiral Barnes knows it as
well as we do, but it can't be helped--wait a minute! The Washington
cone is reporting. They're as close as the other, and they have the new
armament. Philadelphia is close behind, and so is New York. Now perhaps
we can do something!"
The Buffalo flotilla slowed and stopped, and in a matter of minutes the
detachments from the other bases arrived. The cone was formed and,
iron-driven vessels in the van, the old-type craft far in the rear, it
bore down upon the Nevian, vomiting from its hollow front a solid
cylinder of annihilation. Once more the screens of the Nevian flared
into brilliance, once more the red cloud of destruction was flung
abroad. But these vessels were not entirely defenseless. Their
iron-driven ultra-generators threw out screens of the Nevians' own
formulae, screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the
amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly
coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious
conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those
straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of
lightning upon the city far beneath.
No battle of such incredible violence could long endure. Triplanetary's
ships were already exerting their utmost power, while the Nevians,
contemptuous of Solarian science, had not yet uncovered their full
strength. Thus the last desperate effort of mankind was proved futile as
the invaders forced their beams deeper and deeper into the overloaded
defensive screens of the war-vessels; and one by one the supposedly
invincible space-ships of humanity dropped in horribly dismembered ruin
upon the ruins of what had once been Pittsburgh.