the merest crawl, as space-speeds go. That velocity, however, was so
utterly beyond anything known to his system that the usually phlematic
Nhalian stood spellbound for a fraction of a second. Then he drove a
hand toward a control. Too late—before the hand had covered half the
distance the incomprehensibly fast ship struck his own without impact,
jar, or shock.
Both vessels should have been blasted to atoms; but there the stranger
was, poised motionless beside him. Then, under the urge of a
ridiculously tiny jet of flame, she leaped away; covering miles in an
instant. Then something equally fantastic happened. She drifted heavily
_backward, against_ the full force of her driving blasts!
Only one explanation was possible—inertialessness! What a weapon! With
that and Luda—even without Luda—the solar system would be his. No
longer was it a question of Nhal conquering Dhil. He himself would
become the dictator, not only of Nhal and Dhil and Lune, but also of all
other worlds within reach. That vessel and its secrets _must_ be his!
He blasted, then, to match the inert velocity of the smaller craft, and
as his ship approached the other he reached out both telepathically—he
could neither speak nor hear—and with a spy-ray to determine the most
feasible method of taking over this Godsend.
Bipeds! Peculiar little beasts—repulsive. Only two arms and eyes—only
one head. Weak, no weapons—good! Couldn’t _any_ of them communicate? Ah
yes, there was one—an unusually thin, reed-like creature, bundled up in
layer upon layer of fabric. . . .
“I see that you are survivors of a catastrophe in outer space,” Darjeeb
began. He correlated instantly, if not sympathetically, the smashed
panel and the pilot’s bleeding head. If the creature had had a head
worthy of the name, it could have wrecked a dozen such frailties with
it, and without taking hurt. “Tell your pilot to let me in, so that I
may guide you to safety. Hurry! Those will come at any moment who will
destroy us all without warning or palaver.”
“I am trying, sir, but I cannot get through to him direct. It will take
a few moments.” The strange telepathist began to make motions with her
peculiar arms, hands, and fingers. Others of the outlanders brandished
various repulsive members and gesticulated with ridiculous mouths.
Finally:
“He says he would rather not,” the interpreter reported. “He asks you to
go ahead. He will follow you down.”
“Impossible. We cannot land upon this world or its primary, Dhil,”
Darjeeb argued, reasonably. “These people are enemies—savages—I have
just escaped from them. It is death to attempt to land anywhere in this
system except on my own world Nhal—that bluish one over there.”
“Very well, we’ll see you there. We’re just about out of air, but we can
travel that far.”
But that wouldn’t do, either, of course. Argument took too much time.
He’d have to use force, and he’d better call for help. He hurled mental
orders to a henchman, threw out his magnetic grapples, and turned on a
broad, low-powered beam.
“Open up or die,” he ordered. “I do not want to blast you open, but time
presses and I will if I must.”
Pure heat is hard to take. The portal opened and Darjeeb, after donning
armor and checking his ray-guns, picked Luda up and swung nonchalantly
out into space. Luda was tough—a little vacuum wouldn’t hurt her much.
Inside the lifeboat, he tossed his captive into a corner and strode
toward the pilot.
“I want to know right now what it is that makes this ship to be without
inertia!” Darjeeb radiated, harshly. He had been probing vainly at the
pink thing’s mind-block. “Tell your pilot to tell me or I will squeeze
it out of his brain.”
As the order was being translated he slipped an arm out of his suit and
clamped a huge hand around the pilot’s head. But just as he made
contact, before he put on any pressure at all, the weakling fainted.
Also, two of his senses registered disquieting tidings. He received, as
plainly as though it was intended for him, a welcome which the
swaddled-up biped was radiating in delight to an unexpected visitor
rushing into the compartment. He saw that that visitor, while it was
also a biped, was not at all like the frightened and harmless creatures
already cluttering the room. It was armed and armored, in complete
readiness for strife even with Darjeeb of Nhal.
The bonehead swung his ready weapon—with his build there was no need,
ever to turn—and pressed a stud. A searing lance of flame stabbed out.
Passengers screamed and fled into whatever places of security were
available.
-----
[1] For the explanation of these somewhat peculiar facts, which is too
long to go into here, the student is referred to _Transactions of the
Planetographical Society_; Vol. 283,_ No._ 11, _P._ 2745. E.E.S.
_Chapter 6_
▂▂▂▂▂▂DRIVING JETS ARE WEAPONS
CLOUD’S SWEARING wasted no time; he could swear and act simultaneously.
He flashed his vessel up near the lifeboat, went inert, and began to
match its intrinsic velocity.
He’d have to board, no other way. Even if he had anything to blast it
with, and he didn’t—his vessel wasn’t armed—he couldn’t, without
killing innocent people. What did he have?
He had two suits of armor; a G-P regulation and his vortex special,
which was even stronger. He had his DeLameters. He had four
semi-portables and two needle-beams, for excavating. He had thousands of
duodec bombs, not one of which could be detonated by anything less
violent than the furious heart of a loose atomic vortex.
What else? Well, there was his sampler. He grinned as he looked at it.
About the size of a carpenter’s hand-axe, with a savage beak on one side
and a wickedly-curved, razor-sharp blade on the other. It had a
double-grip handle, three feet long. A deceptive little thing, truly,
for it was solid dureum. It weighed fifteen pounds, and its ultra-hard,
ultra-tough blade could shear through neocarballoy as cleanly as a steel
knife slices cheese. Considering what terrific damage a Valerian could
do with a space-axe, he should be able to do quite a bit with this—it
ought to qualify at least as a space-hatchet.
He put on his armor, set his DeLameters to maximum intensity at minimum
aperture, and hung the sampler on a belt-hook. He eased off his blasts.
There, the velocities matched. A minute’s work with needle-beam,
tractors, and pressor sufficed to cut the two smaller ships apart and to
dispose of the Nhalian’s magnets and cables. Another minute of careful
manipulation and his scout was in place. He swung out, locked the port
behind him, and entered the lifeboat.
He was met by a high-intensity beam. He had not expected instantaneous,
undeclared war, but he was ready for it. Every screen he had was full
out, his left hand held poised at hip a screened DeLameter. His return
blast was, therefore, a reflection of Darjeeb’s bolt, and it did vastly
more damage. The hand in which Darjeeb held the projector was the one
that had been manhandling the pilot, and it was not quite back inside
the Nhalian’s screens. In the fury of Cloud’s riposte, then, gun and
hand disappeared, as did also a square foot of panel behind them. But
Darjeeb had other hands and other guns and for seconds blinding beams
raved against unyielding screens.
Neither screen went down. The Tellurian bolstered his weapons. It
wouldn’t take much of this stuff to kill the passengers remaining in the
saloon. He’d go in with his sampler.
He lugged it up and leaped straight at the flaming projector, with all
of his mass and strength going into the swing of his “space-hatchet.”
The monster did not dodge, but merely threw up a hand to flick the toy
aside with his gun-barrel. Cloud grinned fleetingly as he realized what
the other must be thinking—that the man must be puny indeed to be
making such ado about wielding such a trifle—for to anyone not familiar
with dureum it is sheerly unbelievable that so much mass and momentum
can possibly reside in a bulk so small.
Thus when fiercely-driven cutting edge met opposing ray-gun it did not
waver or deflect. It scarcely even slowed. Through the metal of the gun
that vicious blade sliced resistlessly, shearing flesh as it sped. On
down, urged by everything Cloud’s straining muscles could deliver.
Through armor it slashed, through the bony plating covering that
tremendous double shoulder, deep into the flesh and bone of the shoulder
itself; being stopped only by the impact of the hatchet’s haft against
the armor.
Then, planting one steel boot on the helmet’s dome, he got a momentary
stance with the other between barrel body and flailing arm, bent his
back, and heaved. The deeply-embedded blade tore out through bone and
flesh and metal, and as it did so the two rear cabled arms dropped
useless. That mighty rear shoulder and its appurtenances were out of
action. The monster still had one good hand, however, and he was still
full of fight.
That hand flashed out, to seize the weapon and to wield it against its
owner. It came fast, too, but the man, strongly braced, yanked backward.
Needle point and keen edge tore through flesh and snicked off fingers.
Cloud swung his axe aloft and poised, making it limpidly clear that the
next blow would be straight down into the top of the head.
That was enough. Darjeeb backed away, every eye glaring, and Cloud
stepped warily over to Luda. A couple of strokes of his blade gave him a
length of chain. Then, working carefully to keep his foe threatened at
every instant, he worked the chain into a tight loop around the
monster’s front neck, pulled it unmercifully taut around a stanchion,
and welded it there with his DeLameter. He did not trust the other
monster unreservedly, either, bound as she was. In fact, he did not
trust her at all. In spite of family rows, like sticks to like in
emergencies and they’d gang up on him if they could. Since she wasn’t
wearing armor, however, she didn’t stand a chance with a DeLameter, so
he could take time now to look around.
The pilot, lying flat upon the floor, was beginning to come to. Not
quite flat, either, for a shapely Chickladorian girl, wearing the forty
one square inches of covering which were _de rigueur_ in her eyes, had
his bandaged head in her lap—or, rather, cushioned on one bare leg—and
was sobbing gibberish over him. That wouldn’t help. Cloud started for
the first-aid locker, but stopped; a white-wrapped figure was already
bending over the injured man with a black bottle in her hand. He knew
what it was. Kedeselin. That was what he was after, himself; but he
wouldn’t have dared give a hippopotamus the terrific jolt she was
pouring into him. She must be a nurse, or maybe a doctor; but Cloud
shivered in sympathy, nevertheless.
The pilot stiffened convulsively, then relaxed. His eyes rolled; he
gasped and shuddered; but he came to life and sat up groggily.
“What the hell goes on here?” Cloud demanded urgently, in spaceal.
“I don’t know,” the pink man replied. “All the ape said, as near as I
could get it, was that I had to give him our free drive.” He then spoke
rapidly to the girl—his wife, Cloud guessed; if she wasn’t, she ought
to be—who was still holding him fervently.
The pink girl nodded. Then, catching Cloud’s eye, she pointed at the two
monstrosities, then at the nurse standing calmly near by. Startlingly
slim, swathed to the eyes in billows of glamorette, she looked as
fragile as a wisp of straw; but Cloud knew Manarkans. She, too, nodded
at the Tellurian, then “talked” rapidly with her hands to a short,
thick-set, tremendously muscled woman of some race entirely strange to
the Blaster. She was used to going naked; that was very evident. She had
been wearing a light “robe of convention,” but it had been pretty well
demolished in the melee and she did not realize that what was left of it
was hanging in tatters down her broad back. The “squatty” eyed the
gesticulating Manarkan and spoke, in a beautifully modulated deep bass
voice, to a supple, lithe, pantherish girl with vertically-slitted
yellow eyes, pointed ears, and a long and sinuous, meticulously-groomed
tail. The Vegian—by no means the first of her race Cloud had
seen—spoke to the Chickladorian eyeful, who in turn passed the message
along to her husband.
“The bonehead you had the argument with says to hell with you,” the
pilot translated to Cloud in spaceal. “He says his mob will be out here
after him directly, and if you don’t cut him loose and give him the dope
he wants they’ll burn us all to cinders.”
Luda was, meanwhile, trying to attract attention. She was bouncing up
and down, rattling her chains, rolling her eyes, and in general
demanding notice. More communication ensued, culminating in:
“The one with fancy-worked skull—she’s a frail, but not the other
bonehead’s frail, I guess—says pay no attention to the ape. He’s a
murderer, a pirate, a bum, a louse, and so forth, she says. Says to take
your axe—it’s _some_ cleaver, she says, and I check her to ten decimals
on that—cut his goddam head clean off, chuck his stinking carcass out
the port, and get the hell out of here as fast as you can blast.”
That sounded to Cloud like good advice, but he didn’t want to take such
drastic action without more comprehensive data.
“Why?” he asked.
But this was too much for the communications relays to handle. Cloud did
not know spaceal any too well, since he had not been out in deep space
very long. Also, spaceal is a very simple language, not well adapted to
the accurate expression of subtle nuances of thought; and all those
intermediate translations were garbling things up terrifically. Hence
Cloud was not surprised that nothing much was coming through, even
though the prettied-up monster was, by this time, just about throwing a
fit.
“She’s quit trying to spin her yarn,” the pilot said finally. “She says
she’s been trying to talk to you direct, but she can’t get through. Says
to unseal your ports—cut your screens—let down your guard—something
like that, anyway. Don’t know what she does mean, exactly. None of us
does except maybe the Manarkan, and if she does she can’t get it across
on her fingers.”
“Perhaps my thought-screen?” Cloud cut it.
“More yet,” the Chickladorian went on, shortly. “She says there’s
another one, just as bad or worse. On your head, she says. . . . No, on
your head-bone—what the hell! Skull? No, _inside_ your skull, she says
now. . . . Hell’s bells! I don’t know what she _is_ trying to say!”
“Maybe I do—keep still a minute, all of you.” A telepath undoubtedly,
like the Manarkans—that was why she had to talk to her first. He’d
never been around telepaths much—never tried it. He walked a few steps
and stared directly into one pair of Luda’s eyes—large, expressive
eyes, now soft and gentle.
“That’s it, chief! Now blast away . . . baffle your jets . . . relax, I
guess she means. Open your locks and let her in.”
Cloud did relax, but gingerly. He didn’t like this mind-to-mind stuff at
all, particularly when the other mind belonged to such a monster. He
lowered his mental barriers skittishly, ready to revolt at any instant;
but as soon as he began to understand the meaning of her thoughts he
forgot completely that he was not talking man to man. And at that
moment—such was the power of Luda’s mind and the precision of her
telepathy—every nuance of thought became sharp and clear.
“I demand Darjeeb’s life!” Luda stormed. “Not because he is the enemy of
all my race—that would not weigh with you—but because he has done what
no one else, however base, has ever been so lost to shame as to do. In
our city upon Lune he kindled an atomic flame which is killing us in
multitudes. In case you do not know, such flames can never be
extinguished.”
“I know. We call them loose atomic vortices; but they can be
extinguished. In fact, putting them out is my business.”
“Oh—incredible but glorious news. . . .” Luda’s thought seethed, became
incomprehensible for a space. Then: “To win your help for my race I
perceive that I must be completely frank. Observe my mind closely,
please—see for yourself that I withhold nothing. Darjeeb wants at any
cost the secret of your vessel’s speed. With it, his race would destroy
mine utterly. I want it too, of course—with it we would wipe out the
Nhalians. However, since you are so much stronger than would be believed
possible—since you defeated Darjeeb in single combat—I realize my
helplessness. I tell you, therefore, that both Darjeeb and I have long
since summoned help. Warships of both sides are approaching, to capture
one or both of these vessels. The Nhalians are the nearer, and these
secrets _must not_, under any conditions, go to Nhal. Dash out into
space with both of these ships, so that we can plan at leisure. First,
however, kill that unspeakable murderer—you have scarcely injured him
the way it is—or give me that so-deceptive little axe and I’ll be only
too glad to do it myself.”
A chain snapped ringingly; metal clanged against metal. Only two of
Darjeeb’s major arms had been incapacitated; his two others had lost
only a few fingers apiece from their hands. His immense bodily strength
was almost unimpaired. He could have broken free at any time, but he had
waited; hoping to take Cloud by surprise or that some opportunity would
arise for him to regain control of the lifeboat. But now, feeling sure
that Luda’s emminently sensible advice would be taken, he decided to let
inertialessness go, for the moment, in the interest of saving his life.
“Kill him!” Luda shrieked the thought and Cloud swung his weapon aloft,
but Darjeeb was not attacking. Instead, he was rushing into the
airlock—escaping!
“Go free, pilot!” Cloud commanded, and leaped; but the inner valve swung
shut before he could reach it.
As soon as he could operate the lock Cloud went through it. He knew that
Darjeeb could not have boarded the scout, since her ports were locked.
He hurried to his control room and scanned space. There the Nhalian was,
falling like a plummet. There also were a dozen or so space-ships, too
close for comfort, blasting upward.
Cloud cut in his Bergenholm, kicked on his driving blasts, cut off, and
went back into the lifeboat.
“Safe enough now,” he thought. “They’ll never get out here inert. I’m
surprised he jumped—didn’t figure him as a suicidal type.”
“He isn’t. He didn’t,” Luda thought, dryly.
“Huh? He must have. That was a mighty long flit he took off on, and his
suit wouldn’t hold air.”
“He would stuff something into the holes. If necessary he could have
made it without air—or armor, either. He’s tough. He still lives, curse
him! But it is of no use for me to bewail that fact now. Let us make
plans. You must put out the flame, and the leaders of our people will
convince you. . . .”
“Just a second—some other things come first.” He fell silent.
First of all, he had to report to the Patrol, so they could get some
Lensmen and a task force out here to straighten up this mess. With
ordinary communicators, that would take some doing—but wait, he had a
double-ended tight beam to the laboratory. He could get through on that,
probably, even from here. He’d have to mark the lifeboat as a derelict
and get these people aboard his cruiser. No space-tube. The women could
wear suits, but this Luda. . . .
“Don’t worry about me!” that entity cut in. “You saw how I came aboard.
I don’t _enjoy_ breathing vacuum, but I’m as tough as Darjeeb is. So
_hurry_! During every moment you delay, more of my people are dying!”
“QX. While we’re transferring, give me the dope.”
Luda did so. Darjeeb’s coup had been carefully planned and brilliantly
executed. Drugged by one of her own staff, she had been taken without a
struggle. She did not know how far-reaching the stroke had been, but she
was pretty sure that most, if not all, of the Dhilian fortresses were
now held by the enemy.
Nhal probably had the advantage in numbers and in firepower then upon
Lune—Darjeeb would not have made his bid unless he had found a way to
violate the treaty of strict equality. Dhil was, however, much the
nearer of the two worlds. Hence, if this initial advantage could be
overcome, Dhil’s reenforcements could be brought up much sooner than the
enemy’s. If, in addition, the vortex could be extinguished before it had
done irreparable damage, neither side would have any real advantage and
the conflict would subside instead of flaring into another tri-world
holocaust.
Cloud pondered. He would have to do something, but what? That vortex had
to be snuffed; but, with the whole Nhalian army to cope with, how could
he make the approach? His vortex-bombing flitter was screened against
radiation, not war-beams. His cruiser was clothed to stop anything short
of G-P primaries, but it would take a month at a Patrol base to adapt
her for vortex work . . . and he’d have to analyze it, anyway,
preferably from the ground. He had no beams, no ordinary bombs, no
nega-bombs. How could he use what he had to clear a station?
“Draw me a map, will you, Luda?” he asked.
She did so. The cratered vortex, where an immense building had been. The
ring of fortresses: two of which were unusually far apart, separated by
a parkway and a shallow lagoon.
“Shallow? How deep?” Cloud interrupted. She indicated a depth of a
couple of feet.
“That’s enough map, then. Thanks.” Cloud thought for minutes. “You seem
to be quite an engineer. Can you give me exact details on your defensive
screen? Power, radius, weave-form, generator type, phasing,
interlocking, blow-off, and so on?”
She could. Complex mathematical equations and electrical formulae
flashed through his mind, each leaving a residue of fact.
“Maybe we can do something,” the Blaster said finally, turning to the
Chickladorian. “Depends pretty much on our friend here. Are you a pilot,
or just an emergency assignment?”
“Master pilot, Rating unlimited, tonnage or space.”
“Good! Think you’re in shape to take three thousand centimeters of
acceleration?”
“Pretty sure of it. If I was right I could take three thousand standing
on my head. I’m feeling better all the time. Let’s hot ’er up and find
out.”
“Not until after we’ve unloaded these passengers somewhere,” and Cloud
went on to explain what he had in mind.
“Afraid it can’t be done.” The pilot shook his head glumly. “Your timing
has got to be too ungodly fine. I can do the piloting, meter the blast,
and so on. I can balance her down on her tail, steady to a hair, but
piloting’s only half what you got to have. Pilots never land on a
constant blast, and your leeway here is damn near zero. To hit it as
close as you want, your timing has got to be accurate to a tenth of a
second. You don’t know it, mister, but it’d take a master computer half
a day to. . . .”
“I know all about that. I’m a master computer and I’ll have everything
figured. I’ll give you a zero exact to plus-or-minus a hundredth.”
“QX, then. Let’s dump the non-combatants and flit.”
“Luda, where shall we land them? And maybe you’d better call out your
army and navy—we can’t blow out that vortex until we control both air
and ground.”
“Land them there.” Luda swung the plate and pointed. “The call was sent
long since. They come.”
They landed; but four of the women would not leave the vessel. The
Manarkan _had_ to stay aboard, she declared, or be disgraced for life.
What would happen if the pilot passed out again, with only laymen
around? She was right, Cloud conceded, and she could take it. She was a
Manarkan, built of whalebone and rubber. She’d bend under 3 + G’s, but
she wouldn’t break.
The squatty insisted upon staying. Since when had a woman of Tominga
hidden from danger or run away from a fight? She could hold the pilot’s
head up through an acceleration that would put any damn-fragile
Tellurian into a pack—or give her that funny axe and she’d show him how
it _ought_ to be swung!
The Chickladorian girl, too, stayed on. Her eyes—not pink, but a deep,
cool green, brimming with unshed tears—flashed at the idea of leaving
her man to die alone. She just knew they were all going to die. Even if
she couldn’t be of any use, what of it? If her Thlaskin died she was
going to die too, right then, and that was all there was to it. If they
made her go ashore she’d cut her own throat that very minute, so there!
So that was that.
So did the Vegian. Tail-tip twitching slightly, eyes sparkling, she
swore by three deities to claw the eyes out of, and then to strangle
with her tail, anyone who tried to put her off ship. She had come on
this trip to _see_ things, and did Cloud think she was going to miss
seeing _this_? Hardly!