The Citadel in Space
For the first time in many days Brandon and Westfall sat at dinner in
the main dining room of the _Sirius_. They were enjoying greatly the
unaccustomed pleasure of a leisurely, formal meal; but still their
talk concerned the projection of pure forces instead of subjects more
appropriate to the table; still their eyes paid more attention to
diagrams drawn upon scraps of paper than to the diners about them.
"But I tell you, Quince, you're full of little red ants, clear to the
neck!" Brandon snorted, as Westfall waved one of his arguments aside.
"You must have had help to get that far off--no one man could possibly
be as wrong as you are. Why, those fields absolutely will...."
"Hi, Quincy! Hi, Norman!" a merry voice interrupted. "Still fighting as
usual, I see! What kind of knights are you, anyway, to rescue us poor
damsels in distress, and then never even know that we're alive?" A tall,
willowy brunette had seen the two physicists as she entered the saloon,
and came over to their table, a hand outstretched to each in cordial
greeting.
"Ho, Verna!" both men exclaimed, and came to their feet as they welcomed
the smiling, graceful newcomer.
"Sit down here, Verna--we have hardly started," Westfall invited, and
Brandon looked at the girl in assumed surprise as she seated herself in
the proffered chair.
"Well, Verna, it's like this...." he began.
"That's enough!" she broke in. "That phrase always was your introduction
to one of the world's greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the
first time you have had time even to eat like civilized beings, so I'll
forgive you this once. Why all the registering of amazement, Norman?"
"I'm astonished that you aren't being monopolized by some husband or
other. Surely the officers of the _Arcturus_ weren't so dumb that they'd
stand for your still being Verna _Pickering_, were they?"
"Not dumb, Norman, no. Far from it. But I'm still working for my
M. R. S. degree, and I haven't succeeded in snaring it yet. You'd be
surprised at how cagy those officers got after a few of them had been
captured. But they are just like any other hunted game, I suppose--the
antelopes that survive get pretty wild, you know," she concluded,
plaintively.
"Well, that certainly is one tough break for a poor little girl,"
Brandon sympathized. "Quince, our little Nell, here, hasn't been done
right by. I'm bashful and you're a woman-hater, but between us, some
way, we've simply got to take steps."
"You might take longer steps than you think," Verna laughed, her
regular, white teeth and vivid coloring emphasized by her olive skin
and her startling hair, black as Brandon's own. "Perhaps I would like
a scientist better than an I-P officer, anyway. The more I think of it,
the surer I am that Nadia Newton had the right idea. I believe that
I'll catch me a physicist, too--either of you would do quite nicely,
I think," and she studied the two men carefully.
Westfall, the methodical and precise, had never been able to defend
himself against Verna Pickering's badinage, but Brandon's ready tongue
took up the challenge.
"Verna, if you really decided to get any living man he wouldn't stand a
chance in the world," he declared. "If you've already made up your mind
that I'm your meat, I'll come down like Davy Crockett's coon. But if
either of us will do, that'll give us each a fifty-fifty chance to
escape your toils. What say we play a game of freeze-out to decide it?"
"Fine, Norman! When shall we play?"
"Oh, between Wednesday and Thursday, any week you say," and the two
fenced on, banteringly but skilfully, with Westfall an appreciative and
unembarrassed listener.
Dinner over, Brandon and Westfall went back to the control room, where
they found Stevens already seated at one of the master screens.
"All x, Perce?"
"All x. The observers report no registrations during the last two
watches," and the three fell into discussion. Long they talked, studying
every angle of the situation confronting them; until suddenly a speaker
rattled furiously and an enormous, staring eye filled both master
plates. Brandon's hand flashed to a switch, but the image disappeared
even before he could establish the full-coverage ray screen.
"I'm on the upper band--take the lower!" he snapped, but Stevens'
projector was already in action. Trained minds all, they knew that some
intelligence had traced them, and all realized that it was of the utmost
importance to know what and where that intelligence was. Stevens found
the probing frequency in his range and they flashed their own beam along
it, encountering finally one of the monstrous Vorkulian fortresses, far
from Jupiter and almost directly between them and the planet! Its wall
screens were in operation, and no frequency at their command could
penetrate that neutralizing blanket of vibrations.
"What kind of an eye was that--ever see anything like it, Perce?"
Brandon demanded.
"I don't think so, though of course we got only an awfully short flash
of it. It didn't look like the periscopic eyes that those flying snakes
had--looked more like a hexan eye, don't you think? Couldn't very well
be hexan, though, in that kind of a ship."
"Don't think so, either. Maybe it's a purely mechanical affair that they
use for observing. Anyway, old sons, I don't like the looks of things at
all. Quince, you're the brains of this outfit--shift the massive old
intellect into high and tell us what to do."
Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished
measuring the apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward
Stevens and Brandon.
"It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we
do may prove to be wrong," he said, slowly. "However, I do not see that
this latest development can operate to change the plan we have already
adopted; that of running away, straight out from the sun. We may have
to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women and babies
can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will, of course, be
necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to Titan,
for they would be powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror
upon either the _Sirius_ or their torpedoes against such forces as that
fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might well be bringing down
upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world before he could
be stopped. Both Uranus and Neptune are approximately upon our present
course. Do the Titanians know anything of either of them, Steve?"
"Not a thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as
Uranus on their power beam--it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They
seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Uranus or
Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps
even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on
the Jovian satellites and on Titan, I'd say that anything might be out
there--on Uranus, Neptune, their satellites, or anywhere else."
"Cancel Uranus, and double that for Neptune," Brandon commanded.
"Realize how far away they are?"
"That's right, too," agreed Stevens. "Before we got there, with any
acceleration we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way
or the other."
* * * * *
Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his
results. Then, with a grave face, he went to consult the medical
officers. The women, children, and the two Martian scientists were sent
to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly to twenty meters
per second per second, above which point the physicians declared they
should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists
met again--met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon
narrow hospital bunks, unable even to lift their massive arms.
While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the
super-dreadnought of space so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled
heavily about the room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing
emitting clouds of smoke from his villainously reeking pipe. The
Venetians, lacking Brandon's physical strength and by nature quieter of
disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at the
calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and
meaningless integrals, while he also concentrated upon the problem
before them.
"They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly," Westfall finally
reported. "They seem to be...."
"In that case we may be all x," Brandon interrupted, brandishing his
pipe vigorously. "We know that they're on a beam--apparently we're the
only ones hereabouts having cosmic power. If we can keep away from them
until their beam attenuates, we can whittle 'em down to our size and
then take them, no matter how much accumulator capacity they've got."
"But can we keep away from them that long?" asked Dol Kenor, pointedly;
and his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:
"Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a
rendezvous with the Space Fleet, which will probably be ready by the
time of meeting?"
"I am afraid that that would be useless," Westfall frowned in thought.
"Given power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as
easily as she could wipe out the _Sirius_ alone."
"Kenor's right." Stevens spoke up from the calculator. "You're getting
too far ahead of the situation. We aren't apt to keep ahead of them long
enough to do much leading anywhere. The Titanians can hold a beam
together from Saturn to Jupiter--why can't these snake-folks?"
"Several reasons," Brandon argued stubbornly. "First place, look at the
mass of that thing, and remember that the heavier the beam the harder
it is to hold it together. Second, there's no evidence that they wander
around much in space. If their beams are designed principally for travel
upon Jupiter, why should they have any extraordinary range? I say they
can't hold that beam forever. We've got a good long lead, and in spite
of their higher acceleration, I think we'll be able to keep out of range
of their heavy stuff. If so, we'll trace a circle--only one a good deal
bigger than the one Amonar suggested--and meet the fleet at a point
where that enemy ship will be about out of power."
Thus for hours the scientists argued, agreeing upon nothing, while
the Vorkulian fortress crept ever closer. At the end of three days of
the mad flight, the pursuing space ship was in plain sight, covering
hundreds of divisions of the micrometer screens. But now the size of
the images was increasing with extreme slowness, and the scientists
of the _Sirius_ watched with strained attention the edges of those
glowing green pictures. Finally, when the pictured edges were about
to cease moving across the finely-ruled lines, Brandon cut down his
own acceleration a trifle, and kept on decreasing it at such a rate
that the heptagon still crept up, foot by foot.
"Hey what's the big idea?" Stevens demanded.
"Coax 'em along. If we run away from them they'll probably reverse power
and go back home, won't they? Their beam is falling apart fast, but
they're still getting so much stuff along it that we couldn't do a thing
to stop them. If they think that we're losing power even faster than
they are, though, they'll keep after us until their beam's so thin that
they'll just be able to stop on it. Then they'll reverse or else go onto
their accumulators--reverse, probably, since they'll be a long ways from
home by that time. We'll reverse, too, and keep just out of range. Then,
when we both have stopped and are about to start back, their beam will
be at its minimum and we'll go to work on 'em--foot, horse, and marines.
Nobody can run us as ragged as they've been doing and get away with it
as long as I'm conscious and stand a chance in the world of hanging one
onto their chins in retaliation. I've got a hunch. If it works, we can
take those birds alone, and take 'em so they'll _stay_ took. We might as
well break up--this is going to be an ordinary job of piloting for a few
days, I think. I'm going up and work with the Martians on that hunch.
You fellows work out any ideas you want to. Watch 'em close, Mac. Keep
kidding 'em along, but don't let them get close enough to puncture us."
* * * * *
Everything worked out practically as Brandon had foretold, and a few
days later, their acceleration somewhat less than terrestrial gravity,
he called another meeting in the control room. He came in grinning from
ear to ear, accompanied by the two Martians, and seated himself at his
complex power panel.
"Now watch the professor closely, gentlemen," he invited. "He is going
to cut that beam."
"But you can't," protested Pyraz Amonar.
"I know you can't, ordinarily, when a beam is tight and solid. But
that beam's as loose as ashes right now. I told you I had a hunch, and
Alcantro and Fedanzo worked out the right answer for me. If I can cut
it, Quince, and if their screens go down for a minute, shoot your
visiray into them and see what you can see."
"All x. How much power are you going to draw?"
"Plenty--it figures a little better than four hundred thousand
kilofranks. I'll draw it all from the accumulators, so as not to
disturb you fellows on the cosmic intake. We don't care if we do run the
batteries down some, but I don't want to hold that load on the bus-bars
very long. However, if my hunch is right, I won't be on that beam five
minutes before it's cut from Jupiter--and I'll bet you four dollars that
you won't see the original crew in that fort when you get into it."
He set upper and lower bands of dirigible projectors to apply a
powerful sidewise thrust, and the _Sirius_ darted off her course.
Flashing a minute pencil behind the huge heptagon, Brandon manipulated
his tuning circuits until a brilliant spot in space showed him that he
was approaching resonance with the heptagon's power beam. Micrometer
dials were then engaged and the delicate tuning continued until the
meters gave evidence that the two beams were precisely synchronized and
exactly opposite in phase. Four plunger switches closed, that tiny pilot
ray became an enormous rod of force, and as those two gigantic beams met
in exact opposition and neutralized each other, a solid wall of blinding
brilliance appeared in the empty ether behind the Vorkulian fortress. As
that dazzling wall sprang into being, the sparkling green protection
died from the walls of the heptagon.
"Go to it, Quince!" Brandon yelled, but the suggestion was entirely
superfluous. Even before the wall-screen had died, Westfall's beam was
trying to get through it, and when the visiray revealed the interior of
the heptagon, the quiet and methodical physicist was shaken from his
habitual calm.
"Why, they aren't the winged monsters at all--they're _hexans_!"
he exclaimed.
"Sure they are." Brandon did not even turn his heavily-goggled eyes
from the blazing blankness of his own screen. "That was my hunch. Those
snakes went about things in a business-like fashion. They didn't strike
me as being folks who would pull off such a wild stunt as trying to
chase us clear out of the solar system, but a gang of hexans would do
just that. Some of them must have captured that ship and, already having
it in their cock-eyed brains that we were back of what happened on
Callisto, they decided to bump us off if it was the last thing they ever
did. That's what I'd do myself, if I were a hexan. Now I'll tell you
what's happening back at the home power plant of that ship and what's
going to happen next. I'm kicking up a horrible row out there with my
interference, and a lot of instruments at the other end of that beam
must be cutting up all kinds of didoes, right now. They'll check up on
that ship with the expedition, by radio and what-not, and when they find
out that it's clear out here--chop! Didn't get to see much, did you?"
"No, they must have switched over to their accumulators almost
instantly."
"Yeah, but if they've got accumulator capacity enough to hold off our
entire cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I'm a polyp! We're
going to take that ship, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never
dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his beam--pay me the four, Quince."
The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and
Brandon's beam bored on through space, unimpeded. He shut it off and
turned to his fellows with a grin--a grin which disappeared instantly
as a thought struck him and he leaped back to his board.
"Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!" he snapped, and
drove in switch after switch.
"Cosmic intake's gone down to zero!" exclaimed MacDonald, as the
_Sirius_ leaped away.
"Had to cut it--they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought
of something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if ... it's necessary,
all x--we're taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though
we're at pretty long range, they've got some horrible projectors, and
they were evidently mad enough to waste some power taking a good, solid
flash at us--and if we hadn't been expecting it, that flash would have
been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me--Great Cat! Look at that
meter--and I've had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is
drawing five hundred and forty thousand!"
* * * * *
They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after
they had seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range
any offensive beam could be driven with such unthinkable power--power
requiring for its neutralization almost the full output of the
prodigious batteries of accumulators carried by the _Sirius_! Yet for
five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against
their straining screens, and even Brandon's face grew tense and hard
as that frightful attack continued. At the end of twenty-two minutes,
however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin and every
man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief--the almost unbearable
bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.
"Wow!" Brandon shouted. "I thought for a minute they were going to hang
to us until we cracked, even if it meant that they'd have to freeze to
death out here themselves!"
"It would have meant that, too, don't you think?" asked Stevens.
"I imagine so--don't see how they could possibly have enough power left
to get back to Jupiter if they shine that thing on us much longer. Of
course, the more power they waste on us, the quicker we can take them;
but I don't want much more of that beam, I'll tell the world--I just
about had heart failure before they cut off!"
The massive heptagon was now drifting back toward Jupiter at constant
velocity. The hexans were apparently hoarding jealously their remaining
power, for their wall screens did not flash on at the touch of the
visiray. Through unresisting metal the probing Terrestrial beams sped,
and the scientists studied minutely every detail of the Vorkulian
armament; while the regular observers began to make a detailed
photographic survey of every room and compartment of the great fortress.
Much of the instrumentation and machinery was familiar, but some of it
was so strange that study was useless--days of personal inspection and
experiment, perhaps complete dismantling, would be necessary to reveal
the secrets hidden within those peculiar mechanisms.
"They're trying to save all the power they can--think I'll make them
spend some more," Brandon remarked, and directed against the heptagon a
heavy destructive beam. "We don't want them to get back to Jupiter until
after we've boarded them and found out everything we want to know. Come
here, Quince--what do you make of this?"
Both men stared at the heptagon, frankly puzzled; for the screens of the
strange vessel did not radiate, nor did the material of the walls yield
under the terrible force of the beam. The destructive ray simply struck
that dull green surface and vanished--disappeared without a trace, as a
tiny stream of water disappears into a partially-soaked sponge.
"Do you know what you are doing?" asked Westfall, after a few minutes'
thought. "I believe that you are charging their accumulators at the rate
of," he glanced at a meter, "exactly thirty-one thousand five hundred
kilofranks."
"Great Cat!" Brandon's hand flashed to a switch and the beam expired.
"But they can't just simply grab it and store it, Quince--it's
impossible!"
"The word 'impossible' in that connection, coming from you, has a queer
sound," Westfall said pointedly and Brandon actually blushed.
"That's right, too--we have got pretty much the same idea in our cosmic
intake fields, but we didn't carry things half as far as they have done.
Huh! They're flashing us again ... but those thin little beams don't
mean anything. They're just trying to make us feed them some more, I
guess. But we've got to hold them back some way--wonder if they can
absorb a tractor field?"
The hexans had lashed out a few times with their lighter weapons,
but, finding the _Sirius_ unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were
stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod
and threw the mass of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen
green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt its drag, their screens
flared white, and the massive Terrestrial space-ship quivered in every
member as that terrific cable of force was snapped.
"They apparently cannot store up the energy of a tractor," commented
Westfall, "but you will observe that they have no difficulty in
radiating when they care to."
"Those two ideas didn't pan out so heavy. There's lots of things not
tried yet, though. Our next best bet is to get around in front of him
and push back. If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a
pressor, they're really good."
The pilot maneuvered the _Sirius_ into line, directly between Jupiter
and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action,
Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the
center of mass of the Vorkulian fortress. For a moment it held solidly,
then, as the screens of the enemy went into action, it rebounded and
glanced off in sparkling, cascading torrents. But the hexans, with all
their twisting and turning, could not present to that prodigious beam of
force any angle sufficiently obtuse to rob it of half its power, and the
driving projectors of the pentagon again burst into activity as the
backward-pushing mass of the _Sirius_ made itself felt. In a short time,
however, the wall-screens were again cut off--apparently more power was
required to drive them than they were able to deflect.
Although even the enormous tonnage of the Terrestrial cruiser was
insignificant in comparison with the veritable mountain of metal to
which she was opposed, so that the fiercest thrust of her driving
projectors did not greatly affect the monster's progress; yet Brandon
and his cohorts were well content.
"It's a long trip back to where they came from, and since they wanted
to drift all the way, I think they'll be out of power before they get
there," Brandon summed up the situation. "We aren't losing any power,
either, since we are using only a part of our cosmic intake."
In a few hours the struggle had settled down to a routine matter--the
_Sirius_ being pushed backward steadily against the full drive of her
every projector, contesting stubbornly every mile of space traversed.
Assured that the regular pilots and lookouts were fully capable
of handling the vessel, the scientists were about to resume their
interrupted tasks when one of the photographers called them over to look
at something he had discovered in one of the lowermost and smallest
compartments of the heptagon. All crowded around the screens, and saw
pictured there the winged, snake-like form of one of the original crew
of the Vorkulian vessel!
"Dead?" Brandon asked.
"Not yet," replied the photographer. "He is twitching a little once in
a while, but you see, he's pretty badly cut up."
"I see he is ... he must have a lot of vitality to have lasted this
long--may be he'll live through it yet. Hold him on the plate, and get
his exact measurements." He turned to the communicator. "Doctor von
Steiffel? Can you come down to the control room a minute? We may want
you to operate upon one of these South Jovians after a while."
"_Himmel! Es ... ist ... der...._" The great surgeon, bearded and
massive, stared into the plate, and in his surprise started to speak
in his native German. He paused, his long, powerful fingers tracing the
likeness of the Vorkul upon the plate, then went on: "I would like very
much to operate, but, not understanding our intentions, he would, of
course, struggle. And when that body struggles--_schrecklichkeit_!" and
he waved his arms in a pantomime of wholesale destruction.
"I thought of that--that's why I am talking to you now instead of when
we get to him, two or three days from now. We'll give you his exact
measurements, and a crew of mechanics will, under your direction, sink
holes in the steel floor and install steel bands heavy enough to hold
him rigid, from tailfins to wing-tips. We'll hold him there until we can
make him understand that we're friends. It is of the utmost importance
to save that creature's life if possible; because we do not want one of
their fortresses launched against us--and in any event, it will not do
us any harm to have a friend in the City of the South."
"Right. I will also have prepared some kind of a space-suit in which
he can be brought from his vessel to ours," and the surgeon took the
measurements and went to see that the "operating table" and suit were
made ready for Kromodeor, the sorely wounded Vorkul.
* * * * *
It was not long until the projectors of the heptagon went out and
she lay inert in space, power completely exhausted. Knowing that the
screens of the enemy would absorb any ordinary ray, the scientists had
calculated the most condensed beam they could possibly project, a beam
which, their figures showed, should be able to puncture those screens by
sheer mass action--puncture them practically instantaneously, before the
absorbers could react. To that end they had arranged their circuits to
hurl seven hundred sixty-five thousand kilofranks--the entire power of
their massed accumulators and their highest possible cosmic intake--in
one tiny bar of superlative density, less than one meter in diameter!
Everything ready, Brandon shot in prodigious switches that launched that
bolt--a bolt so vehement, so inconceivably intense, that it seemed
fairly to blast the very ether out of existence as it tore its way along
its carefully predetermined line. The intention was to destroy all the
control panels of the absorber screens; parts so vital that without them
the great vessel would be helpless, and yet items which the Terrestrials
could reconstruct quite readily from their photographs and drawings.
As that irresistible bolt touched the Vorkulian wall-screen, the spot
of contact flared instantaneously through the spectrum and into the
black beyond the violet as that screen overloaded locally. Fast as it
responded and highly conductive though it was, it could not handle that
frightfully concentrated load. In the same fleeting instant of time
every molecule of substance in that beam's path flashed into tenuous
vapor--no conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing
stiletto of energy--and the main control panel of the Vorkulian
wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as rapidly as he could
sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle of
annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls.
Then, the walls unresisting, he cut in the vastly larger, but infinitely
less powerful, I-P ray, and with it systematically riddled the immense
heptagon. Out through the gaping holes in the outer walls rushed the
dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their massed hundreds
died.
The _Sirius_ was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main
air-lock was against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall
of the enemy. There she was anchored by tractor beams, and the two
hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full space equipment, prepared
to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense at his
controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any
hexans that might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment.
General Crowninshield sat beside the physicist at an auxiliary board,
phones at ears and four infra-red visiray plates ranged in front of him;
ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the attack, no
matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might
become before the citadel was taken.
The space-line men--the engineers of weightless combat--led the van,
protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up
ways of rope, along which the others could advance. Power drills bit
savagely into metal, making holes to receive the expanding eyebolts;
grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and corner; points of
little stress were supported by powerful suction cups; and at intervals
were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of
march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the
many gaps in the metal through which Brandon's beams had blasted their
way; guided by Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the
little projector room in which Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There
were so many chambers and compartments in the heptagon that it had, of
course, been impossible to puncture them all, and in some of the tight
rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the general's eye
led his men, and if such a room lay before them, Brandon's frightful
beam entered it first--and where that beam entered, life departed.
But the hexans were really intelligent, as has been said. They had had
time to prepare for what they knew awaited them, and they were rendered
utterly desperate by the knowledge that, no matter what might happen,
their course was run. Their power was gone, and even if the present
enemy should be driven off, they would float idly in space until they
died of cold; or, more probably, hurtling toward Jupiter as they were,
they would plunge to certain death upon its surface as soon as they came
within its powerful gravitational field. Therefore some fifty of the
creatures, who had had space experience in their spherical vessels,
had spent the preceding days in manufacturing space equipment. Let the
weight-fiends plan upon detonating magazines of explosives, upon laying
mines calculated to destroy the invaders, even the vessel itself and
all within it. Let them plan upon any other such idle schemes, which
were certain to be foreseen and guarded against by the space-hardened
veterans who undoubtedly moaned that all-powerful and vengeful football
of scarred gray metal. Space-fighters were they, and as space-fighters
would they die; taking with them to their own inevitable death a full
quota of the enemy.
* * * * *
Thus it came about that the head of the column of police had scarcely
passed a certain door, when in the room behind it there began to
assemble the half-hundred spacehounds of the hexans. When the vanguard
had approached that room, Crowninshield had inspected it thoroughly with
his infra-red beams. He had found it punctured and airless, devoid of
life or of lethal devices, and had passed on. But now the space-suited
warriors of the horde, guided in their hiding by their own visirays,
were massing there. When the center of the I-P column reached that door,
it burst open. There boiled out into the corridor, into the very midst
of the police, fifty demoniacal hexans, fighting with Berserk fury,
ruled by but one impulse--to kill.
Hand-weapons flashed viciously, tearing at steel armor and at bulging
space-suits. Space-hooks bit and tore. Pikes and lances were driven with
the full power of brawny arms. Here and there could be seen trooper and
hexan, locked together in fierce embrace far from any hand-line--six
limbs against four, all ten plied with abandon in mortal, hand-to-hand,
foot-to-foot combat.
"Give way!" yelled Crowninshield into the ears of his men. "Epstein,
back! LeFevre, advance! Get out of block ten--give us a chance to use
a beam!"
As the police fell back out of the designated section of the corridor,
Brandon's beam tore through it, filling it from floor to ceiling with
a volume of intolerable energy. In that energy walls, doorway, and
space-lines, as well as most of the hexans, vanished utterly. But the
beam could not be used again. Every surviving enemy had hurled himself
frantically into the thickest ranks of the police and the battle raged
fiercer than ever. It did not last long. The ends of the column had
already closed in. The police filled the corridor and overflowed into
the yawning chasm cut by the annihilating ray. Outnumbered, surrounded
upon all sides, above, and below by the Terrestrials, the hexans fought
with mad desperation to the last man--and to the last man died. And even
though in lieu of their own highly efficient space-armor they had fought
in weak, crude, and hastily improvised space-suits, which were pitifully
inferior to the ray resistant, heavy steel armor of the I-P forces,
nevertheless the enormous strength and utter savagery of the hexans had
taken toll; and when the advance was resumed, it was with extra lookouts
scanning the entire neighborhood of the line of march.
Since the troops had entered the fortress as close to their goal as
possible, it was not long until the leading platoon reached the door
behind which Kromodeor lay. Tools and cylinders of air were brought up,
and the engineers quickly fitted pressure bulkheads across the corridor.
There was a screaming hiss from the valves, the atmosphere in that
walled-off space became dense, and mechanics attacked with their power
drills the door of the projector room. It opened, and four husky
orderlies rapidly but gently encased the long body of the Vorkul in the
space-suit built especially to receive it. As that monstrous form in
its weirdly bulging envelope was guided through the air-locks into the
_Sirius_, Crowninshield barked orders into his transmitter and the
police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to
wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and
destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might
have planted for their undoing.
Assured that the real danger to the _Sirius_ was over and that his
presence was no longer necessary, Brandon turned his controls over to an
assistant and went up to the Venerian rooms, where von Steiffel and his
staff were to operate upon the Vorkul. There, in the dense, hot air, but
little different now from the atmosphere of Jupiter, Kromodeor lay;
bolted down to the solid steel of the floor by means of padded steel
straps. So heavy were the bands that he could not possibly break even
one of them; so closely were they spaced that he could scarcely have
moved a muscle had he tried. But he did not try--so near death was he
that his mighty muscles did not even quiver at the trenchant bite of the
surgeon's tools. Von Steiffel and his aides, meticulously covered with
sterile gowns, hoods, and gloves, worked in most rigidly aseptic style;
deftly and rapidly closing the ghastly wounds inflicted by the weapons
of the hexans.
"Hi, Brandon," the surgeon grunted as he straightened up, the work
completed. "I did not use much antiseptic on him. Because of possible
differences in blood chemistry and in ignorance of his native bacteria,
I depended almost wholly upon asepsis and his natural resistance. It is
a good thing that we did not have to use an anaesthetic. He is in bad
shape, but if we can feed him successfully, he may pull through."
"Feed him? I never thought of that. What d'you suppose he eats?"
"I have an idea that it is something highly concentrated, from his
anatomy. I shall try giving him sugar, milk chocolate, something of
the kind. First I shall try maple syrup. Being a liquid, it is easily
administered, and its penetrating odor also may be a help."
* * * * *
A can of the liquid was brought in and to the amazement of the
Terrestrials, the long, delicate antennae of the Vorkul began to twitch
as soon as the can was opened. Motioning hastily for silence, von
Steiffel filled a bowl and placed it upon the floor beneath Kromodeor's
grotesque nose. The twitching increased, until finally one dull, glazed
eye brightened somewhat and curled slowly out upon its slender pedicle,
toward the dish. His mouth opened sluggishly and a long, red tongue
reached out, but as his perceptions quickened, he became conscious of
the strangers near him. The mouth snapped shut, the eye retracted, and
heaving, rippling surges traversed that powerful body as he struggled
madly against the unbreakable shackles of steel binding him to the floor.
"_Ach, kindlein_!" The surgeon bent anxiously over that grotesque but
frightened head; soothing, polysyllabic German crooning from his bearded
lips.
"Here, let's try this--I'm good on it," Stevens suggested, bringing up
the Callistonian thought exchanger. All three men donned headsets, and
sent wave after wave of friendly and soothing thoughts toward that
frantic and terrified brain.
"He's got his brain shut up like a clam!" Brandon snorted. "Open up,
guy--we aren't going to hurt you! We're the best friends you've got,
if you only knew it!"
"Himmel, und he iss himself killing!" moaned von Steiffel.
"One more chance that might work," and Brandon stepped over to the
communicator, demanding that Verna Pickering be brought at once. She
came in as soon as the air-locks would permit, and the physicist
welcomed her eagerly.
"This fellow's fighting so he's tearing himself to pieces. We can't make
him receive a thought, and von Steiffel's afraid to use an anaesthetic.
Now it's barely possible that he may understand hexan. I thought you
wasted time learning any of it, but maybe you didn't--see if you can
make him understand that we're friends."
The girl flinched and shrank back involuntarily, but forced herself to
approach that awful head. Bending over, she repeated over and over one
harsh, barking syllable. The effect of that word was magical. Instantly
Kromodeor ceased struggling, an eye curled out, and that long, supple
tongue flashed down and into the syrup. Not until the last sticky trace
had been licked from the bowl did his attention wander from the food.
Then the eye, sparkling brightly now, was raised toward the girl.
Simultaneously four other eyes arose, one directed at each of the men
and the other surveying his bonds and the room in which he was. Then the
Vorkul spoke, but his whistling, hissing manner of speech so garbled
the barking sounds of the hexan words he was attempting to utter, that
Verna's slight knowledge of the language was of no use. She therefore
put on one of the headsets, motioning the men to do the same, and
approached Kromodeor with the other, repeating the hexan word of
friendly import. This time the Vorkul's brain was not sealed against
the visitors and thoughts began to flow.
"You've used those things a lot," Brandon turned to Stevens in a quick
aside. "Can you hide your thoughts?"
"Sure--why?"
"All I can think of is that power system of theirs, and he'd know what
we were going to do, sure. And I'd better be getting at it anyway. So
you can wipe that off your mind with a clear conscience--the rest of us
will get everything they've got there. Your job's to get everything you
can out of this bird's brain. All x?"
"All x."
"Why, you didn't put yours on!" Verna exclaimed.
"No, I don't think I'll have time. If I get started talking to him now,
I'd be here from now on, and I've got a lot of work to do. Steve can
talk to him for me--see you later," and Brandon was gone.
He went directly to the Vorkulian fortress, bare now of hexan life and
devoid of hexan snares and traps. There he and his fellows labored day
after day learning every secret of every item of armament and equipment
aboard the heptagon.
"Did you finish up today, Norm?" asked Stevens one evening. "Kromodeor's
coming to life fast. He's able to wiggle around a little now, and is
insisting that we take off the one chain we keep on him and let him use
a plate, to call his people."
"All washed up. Guess I'll go in and talk to him--you all say he's such
an egg. With this stuff off my mind I can hide it well enough. By the
way, what does he eat?" And the two friends set out for the Venerian
rooms.
"Anything that's sweet, apparently, with just enough milk to furnish a
little protein. Won't eat meat or vegetables at all--von Steiffel says
they haven't got much of a digestive tract, and I know that they haven't
got any teeth. He's already eaten most all the syrup we had on board,
all of the milk chocolate, and a lot of the sugar. But none of us can
get any kind of a raise out of him at all--not even Nadia, when she fed
him a whole box of chocolates."
"No, I mean what does he eat when he's home?"
"It seems to be a sort of syrup, made from the juices of jungle plants,
which they drag in on automatic conveyors and process on automatic
machinery. But he's a funny mutt--hard to get. Some of his thoughts are
lucid enough, but others we can't make out at all--they are so foreign
to all human nature that they simply do not register as thoughts at all.
One funny thing, he isn't the least bit curious about anything. He
doesn't want to examine anything, doesn't ask us any questions, and
won't tell us anything about anything, so that all we know about him we
found out purely by accident. For instance, they like games and sports,
and seem to have families. They also have love, liking, and respect for
others of their own race--but they seem to have no emotions whatever for
outsiders. They're utterly inhuman--I can't describe it--you'll have to
get it for yourself."
"Did you find out about the Callistonians who went to see them?"
"Negatively, yes. They never arrived. They probably couldn't see in the
fog and must have missed the city. If they tried to land in that jungle,
it was just too bad!"
"That would account for everything. So they're strictly neutral, eh?
Well, I'll tell him 'hi,' anyway." Now in the sickroom, Brandon picked
up the headset and sent out a wave of cheery greeting.
To his amazement, the mind of the Vorkul was utterly unresponsive
to his thoughts. Not disdainful, not inimical; not appreciative, nor
friendly--simply indifferent to a degree unknown and incomprehensible to
any human mind. He sent Brandon only one message, which came clear and
coldly emotionless.
"I do not want to talk to you. Tell the hairy doctor that I am now
strong enough to be allowed to go to the communicator screen. That is
all." The Vorkul's mind again became an oblivious maze of unintelligible
thoughts. Not deliberately were Kromodeor's thoughts hidden; he was
constitutionally unable to interest himself in the thoughts or things of
any alien intelligence.
"Well, that for that." A puzzled, thoughtful look came over Brandon's
face as he called von Steiffel. "A queer duck, if there ever was one.
However, their ship will never bother us, that's one good thing; and
I think we've got about everything of theirs that we want, anyway."
The surgeon, after a careful examination of his patient, unlocked the
heavy collar with which he had been restraining the over-anxious Vorkul,
and supported him lightly at the communicator panel. As surely as though
he had used those controls for years Kromodeor shot the visiray beam out
into space. One hand upon each of the several dials and one eye upon
each meter, it was a matter only of seconds for him to get in touch with
Vorkulia. To the Terrestrials the screen was a gray and foggy blank; but
the manifest excitement shrieking and whistling from the speaker in
response to Kromodeor's signals made it plain that his message was being
received with enthusiasm.
"They are coming," the Vorkul thought, and lay back, exhausted.
"Just as well that they're comin' out here, at that," Brandon commented.
"We couldn't begin to handle that structure anywhere near Jupiter--in
fact, we wouldn't want to get very close ourselves, with passengers
aboard."
Such was the power of the Vorkulian vessels that in less than twenty
hours another heptagon slowed to a halt beside the _Sirius_ and two of
its crew were wafted aboard.
They were ushered into the Venerian room, where they talked briefly with
their wounded fellow before they dressed him in a space-suit, which
they filled with air to their own pressure. Then all three were lifted
lightly into the air, and without a word or a sign were borne through
the air-locks of the vessel, and into an opening in the wall of the
rescuing heptagon. A green tractor beam reached out, seizing the
derelict, and both structures darted away at such a pace that in a few
minutes they had disappeared in the black depths of space.
"Well--that, as I may have remarked before, is indisputably and
conclusively that." Brandon broke the surprised, almost stunned, silence
that followed the unceremonious departure of the visitors. "I don't know
whether to feel relieved at the knowledge that they won't bother us, or
whether to get mad because they won't have anything to do with us."
He sent the "All x" signal to the pilot and the _Sirius_, once more at
the acceleration of Terrestrial gravity, again bored on through space.