"Aye, aye, Sir...." The voice of the radioman sounded strangled.
Scott read from the flimsy in a flat voice, a note of astonishment
creeping in as he finished the message.
"TORAN LONG, SENIOR CONTROL, LUNA BASE. AM STANDING BY OFF OBERON
READY TO LOAD ISOTOPE X-R ON BOARD DESTROYER "ARTEMIS" HAVE NOT MET
THE ENEMY AND HAVE SUFFERED NO CASUALTIES. ONE AUXILIARY TUBE ON
THE "ORION" HAS BLOWN BUT THE "JOVE" AND "MINERVA" ARE STANDING BY
TO EFFECT EMERGENCY REPAIRS. HAVE DOCK SPACE AVAILABLE FOR REPAIR
OF "ORION" L PLUS 21 2235 SIDEREAL. SIGNED C. HARTNETT COMMODORE
RED SIX. END MESSAGE."
Scott wondered wildly if Hartnett had not suddenly lost his mind. Red
Six was the Code name for the Task Force that included five Terran
dreadnaughts, and the part about the blown tube and the repairs added
up to just so much lunacy. The Cats had the cipher ... there wasn't
much doubt of that, and had Hartnett invited every Martian captain in
the quadrant to come blasting down on them with all tubes blowing, he
couldn't have phrased it better!
Leaving the stunned Scott to ponder his strange madness, Commodore
Hartnett hurried down into the cluttered gun-deck. Drew, at the remote
controls of the _Artemis_, was ready for action when he arrived. Time
was important now, thought Hartnett.
"Now get that can down there ... and fast!"
Drew and his men went into action, and the _Artemis_ vanished from the
string of beads and plunged toward Oberon ... an empty and forlorn
bait for a trap whose jaws were beginning to close as from all over
the quadrant, Cat warships converged on Oberon ... their vaunted
superdreadnaught in the lead.
Twenty minutes after _Artemis_ left the Flotilla, the radioactive
streaks of the first Martian cruisers showed in the sky 15,000 miles
away.
* * * * *
Blake and the three technicians from Station 9 huddled in the careening
skeeter-boat. They were almost on top of the Martian superdreadnaught
before they saw it. For just a fleeting instant it seemed to fill all
of space, and then it was gone. The Cats on board paid no attention to
a tiny boat that they imagined to be the survivor of the battle that
must have already begun off Oberon. But Blake paled at the very size
and might of the craft. From what he had seen of it it would take much
heavier stuff than the _Darkside_ carried to dent that monster!
Then they were nearing the _Darkside_ and Blake had his hands full
threading the skeeter back into the valve that yawned black as he drew
near. Once aboard, he slipped through the sighing valves and into
the boat deck. A steward came to take charge of the passengers, and
Blake hurried up to the gun-deck that had been transformed into the
extra-corporeal brain of the doomed _Artemis_.
Hartnett looked up from his work to grunt at him: "Did you do what I
told you to do?"
Blake grinned, "Yes, sir. All the stuff is buried in the storage
chambers directly under the pits ... the ones that are used to store
the coolants."
"Good enough." He rang for Control. "Have we been sighted yet?"
"No, sir," came Chavez' voice. "But the Cats are gathering thick and
fast."
Blake told Hartnett about the mammoth superdreadnaught, and the older
man smiled. "We'll see if we can't give them something for their
trouble." He turned back to the communicator. "Chavez, see to it that
we maintain a mean distance from Oberon of at least 25,000 miles. And
have all the screens in place."
"Aye, Sir."
"_Artemis_ is down, Sir," reported Drew.
Hartnett turned to look into the visiplates. The derelict ship had
landed nicely on the spaceport near the metallurgical station. He
nodded with satisfaction. At least the blast of her tubes hadn't
detonated the pile. He looked into a sky plate and saw that she had not
landed a minute too soon.
Two Martian cruisers, their black shapes dark against the starry sky,
were hanging low over her. Others circled behind them, and higher
than all the others, Hartnett could make out the huge shape of the
superdreadnaught that Blake had seen. That was the one he wanted!
For perhaps twenty minutes the Martians hung suspiciously over the
still landscape of Oberon. Then a cruiser detached itself and began to
sink down towards the spaceport on a long, slowly diminishing column of
flame.
Hartnett swore. They were going to try and land! That wouldn't do at
all. He had to goad them into attacking. He snapped an order to Drew.
Only one of the _Artemis'_ proton cannon was connected with the remote
control apparatus in the _Darkside_ but Hartnett hoped it would be
enough. It had to be.
Taking the gun control himself, he swung the sight so that it pointed
at the lowest cruiser. A flash of energy sizzled from the projector,
and spattered on the exposed flank of the Cat cruiser throwing sparks
wildly like the glitter of a child's Fourth of July sparkler. The ship
shuddered under the impact and glowed white hot along the scarred beam.
Like a speeded up motion picture shot, the Cat ship leaped away from
the spaceport, leveling its own guns at the recumbent _Artemis_. The
men in the _Darkside_ caught a glimpse of the other ships bearing
their projectors, and far above, Hartnett was elated to see that the
superdreadnaught had extended the muzzles of its massive cyclotronic
rifles.
The cruisers fired first, and the screens went blank, so the Terrans
never saw the rest of it. But up in the darkened Control Chavez and
Scott were witnesses to one of the greatest cataclysms men have ever
seen.
The tiny disk of Oberon seemed to light up with a white fire; swelling
like a glowing balloon and then shattering with a violence that left
them speechless. The very atmosphere of Uranus under the low swinging
moonlet boiled and billowed with a frightful incandescence, great
prominences of radioactivated methane spouting high into the air as the
very internal balance of the great planet teetered.
A shock-wave of corruscating fire shot out from the blazing surface
of Oberon, engulfing the Martian warships in a sea of spinning,
scintillating destruction. Like a tiny nova, the satellite flared in
the black silence of deep space, vaporizing everything within ten
thousand miles of it; churning the very vacuum into a hell of hard
radiation.
Scott stared at the outside Geiger counters as they chattered their
story of charged ions and electrons battering, even at this distance,
at sheathing in the destroyer's hull.
Hartnett's shouted order to "... get the hell out of here!" was
strictly unnecessary. By the time he had issued it, the remaining three
ships of Blue Three were piling on Gs in the direction of Terra.
Though no one stayed to look at it, the sight of the remnants of Oberon
forming into a thin ring around the grumbling Uranus must have been
quite impressive.
* * * * *
Ten hours from Luna Base, Flotilla Blue Three's officers had assembled
for a victory dinner in the wardroom. The last course was cleared away,
and Chavez passed a quantity of his precious cheroots around.
He settled himself down beside Scott and dragged happily at his smoke.
It was Blake who burst out with the question that was on everyone's
mind.
Commodore Hartnett smiled. "It was Horowitz who really doped the
thing out, gentlemen. I just put the plan into operation. You see,
plutonium can be used as a sort of booster charge in a chain reaction
explosion ... you all know that. You, yourself, Blake, and you men from
the station moved the stuff into a spot that would be directly under
the poor old _Artemis_ when the shooting started.
"You youngsters don't remember much about land warfare, so it was
up to me to rig the trap. The bait was _Artemis_. The teaser was
the spread-beam radio message about the three dreadnaughts that we
aren't.... Remember that, Mr. Scott?"
Scott blushed furiously and nodded.
"Well," continued Hartnett, "It was something of a gamble, I suppose.
But the odds were long and the chances weren't too bad.
"You all know how anxious the Cats are to try something new. Those
cyclotronic rifles must have been literally burning a hole in their
pockets ... and the range was short ... they couldn't resist the
temptation to try them. If they had stuck to proton guns they would
have melted _Artemis_ down and that would have been the end of
it ... they would have had the X-R to do with as they pleased. But
they got itchy fingers with the new stuff ... as I prayed they would.
Curiosity, I suppose. The feline instinct. Have you ever seen a cat
trying to open a package? Same kind of people.
"The rest was just a repetition of the atom blasts of the first
Martian War and the earlier wars on Terra. The only difference was
the size of the bomb. The cyclotrons set off the chain reaction in
the plutonium ... the plutonium set off the reaction in the U-235 ...
common enough on a world made practically all of pitchblende and other
Uranium compounds. The same thing could happen to ... say Terra ... if
we ever started a chain reaction in one of the commoner elements such
as iron, or carbon. Or even one of the commoner gases. Anyway there are
only three satellites in the Uranian System now ... and eight less Cat
cruisers and one less superdreadnaught. I suspect the Cats can hardly
afford to lose them, too. Wouldn't surprise me to hear that Mars has
been feeling around for an armistice even by the time we get home. The
very fact that they have no idea how their fleet was destroyed will
tickle them in the right place, I suppose."
Scott spoke in surprised tones. "So they blew themselves up with their
own fancy cannon."
Hartnett nodded reflectively. "Um ... that's about it. Of course we had
to set up the proper conditions." He grinned at the younger man. "Or,
you might say, the 'Booby Trap'...."