"Oh. An excellent idea. We'll save time that way. The scanner-type
radiomagnetic wave equipment is two-way and connected to a menslator
for contacting primitive peoples, you know, and--"
"Get it fired up," said Dusty shortly. "Full power."
* * * * *
The screech of air came first as a thin whistle, and then thundered and
slammed down at Earth below as the thirteen Marandanian spacecraft were
inched lower and lower into the complaining atmosphere. The howling
racket dinned into the ears of Russian and Chinese and Hawaiian and
Californian and New Yorker and Briton and Frenchman and Indian and
Malayan and Indonesian and Argentinian and South African and Australian
and Mexican and Floridian. Around it went, across the land and the sea,
a thunder blast of rent air that piled shock wave on shock wave and
sent them tearing down at the ground below. The thunder cracked windows
and made plaster sift down from ceilings. It dinned down a tree or two,
and it hurled some people to the ground. It flipped a parked fleet of
jetplanes over in crumpled ruin like a windstorm hitting a deck of
cards.
Across the world, radar operators looked blankly at the signal pips
that raced across their screens and began to make apologetic reports.
Interceptors tried to rise, but were tossed madly in the racing
shock-stream to lose ground and return to earth limping.
But in the lead spacecraft of this mad fleet, the barytrine operator
watched his detector hopefully. The entire screen was aglow, but he
watched it and finally said, "I think it's down there somewhere."
He pointed to a region in Indiana not far from the lower tip of Lake
Michigan.
The fleet circled Terra once more, swung high for the long dive, and
then came howling down on a long slant, while Dusty took the radio and
cried: "Junior Spacemen of The Space Patrol, _Attention_!"
The radio, powered by machinus forces, hammered down and blanketed
the radio broadcast stations. It broke up the video screens in a mash
of spots, flecks and snowflakes. Dusty's voice roared into telephone
lines and onto the commercial radio links and chattered indistinctly in
direction-finding equipment and made incomprehensible squiggles clutter
the radar screens.
"Junior Spacemen, Attention to Official Orders! By now you are aware
that your Commander, Dusty Britton, flies with a fleet of spacecraft
above you. Now hear this!
"Within a few hundred miles of the lower tip of Lake Michigan there is
concealed somewhere a dangerous device known as a barytrine generator.
This must be located and stopped.
"Now! To the Junior Spaceman who locates this machine I will personally
award the Medal of Merit. And to the entire Group Command of which he
is a member I will award full scholarships as Space Midshipmen in a
real Space Academy, to make them real spacemen.
"Now, Junior Spacemen, go out and find me that barytrine generator!"
Dusty signed off as the down-rushing fleet swaybacked close to the
ground and pulled out to swap ends and go screaming up in a stark
vertical climb, its drivers fighting the rise to a standstill fifty
miles in the sky.
Here they hovered for a second to turn rightside up and then the flight
formed into a pattern and began to land, coming down slowly.
Before they were halfway down, Dusty saw results. In the telescope
were moving dots scouring the landscape. And along highways that led
from town and city were boys on bicycles and a few in cars driven by
parents. Across the fields they went, peering under trees and behind
bushes, scouring the cornfields and the farms and stamping through
woodsy sections like swarming ants.
But then as the flight landed in a neat pattern in a bald field, the
barytrine detector hissed once and gave up, smoke curling out of the
cabinet.
"Close," said the operator.
But Dusty, with a yell, was at the airlock. For across the field a
thousand yards away was a faint bluish haze that shimmered iridescent
in the sunlight. He pawed at the door as it swung open ponderously,
then he looked around wildly for something to use. His eyes fell upon a
small cabinet.
Scyth had placed that fluted-barrelled thing back in the airlock after
he burned Dusty's antenna off. Dusty tore a cabinet open and grabbed
one of the fluted-barrelled things from a clip.
Then he jumped to the ground and raced across the field.
"Dusty!" roared Gant Nerley. "That's dangerous. You can't--"
Gant let his voice trail away as Dusty plunged into the blue haze,
fingering the trigger-button at the top of the pistol grip. The searing
beam lashed out and slashed at the air as Dusty's heels caught the
ground in a braking slide. Then the knifing beam slashed down across
the metal case and into the ground before it. Curls of smoke arose and
the ground sizzled. He cross-slashed and cut another ribbon out of the
air and the barytrine generator, then cut down again.
There was a hiss and a sputter and the blue haze ceased--there was a
blinding flash and a flat bark of something exploding violently. Dusty
felt a wave of almost-intolerable heat, his closed eyes were seared by
a flare of brightness, and the explosion hurled him backwards on his
spine. He turned and scrambled back, stumbling over the rough ground,
blinded.
At that moment four members of the Junior Space Patrol came through a
small thicket of trees.
"Gee," said their Group Leader. "Gee--the Commander found it first!"
* * * * *
They stood on a small reviewing stand, Dusty Britton and the Group
Command that had come through the thicket of trees in time to steer
their blinded Commander away from the flaring barytrine generator.
Dusty's face and hands were a super-sunburned red, and his eyes were
still puffy but open enough to see.
From a sheet of paper he read:
"It is not within my power to grant a medal that is worth the tin it is
made of. But for the diligence and their quick action I do hereby grant
and guarantee them full scholarships in White Sands University, which
by the time they graduate will have become a full Space Academy. So I
here hand them their Certificates of Entry, and to the President of
White Sands University I deliver a certified check to be held in trust
and used for their education.
"I salute the future Commanders of The Space Patrol and step down from
my position to leave it open for them!"
There came a roar from the crowd that thundered across the field as
Dusty stepped from the platform into a spaceport jeep and was hustled
out to Gant Nerley's flagship. Inside there were a number of men
waiting.
"Now see here, Dusty, you can't go galaxy-hopping when we've got plans
for you."
Dusty eyed Martin Gramer with a grunt. "Last time we met in a place
like this you had me all scheduled to take a space hop when I had other
plans for myself. No dice, Gramer."
"But look at the money--"
"I'll make millions out of this clear-channel idea, according to Gant,
here."
"That's right," said Gant.
"So," said Dusty, "if you think I'm going to go on playing the part of
a broken-down hero-spaceman when there are real spacemen around, you're
nuts, Gramer. Include me--as you've said so often--out."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Me? I'm going to Marandis. Barb and I have an offer from Supergalaxy
Spectacles to make a series of what they call 'Primitives.' You know,
old-timers with men using chemical rockets and learning their first
feeble steps into space."
He grinned at Barbara knowingly. "I've got a script of _Destination
Moon_ I swiped from Central Files. It should oughta wow 'em cold!"
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: No Chapter XII heading in original publication.]