_The First Encounters_
[Illustration: Like feathers we were blown with it.]
[Sidenote: The besieged Earth-men wage grim, ultra-scientific war with
Martian bandits in a last great struggle for their radium-ore--and
their lives.]
It seemed, with that first shot from the enemy, that a great relief
came to me--an apprehension fallen away. We had anticipated this
moment for so long, dreaded it. I think all our men felt it. A shout
went up:
"Harmless!"
It was not that. But our building withstood it better than I had
feared. It was a flash from a large electronic projector mounted on
the deck of the brigand ship. It stabbed up from the shadows across
the valley at the foot of the opposite crater-wall, a beam of vaguely
fluorescent light. Simultaneously the search-light vanished.
The stream of electrons caught the front face of our main building in
a six-foot circle. It held a few seconds, vanished; then stabbed
again, and still again. Three bolts. A total, I suppose, of nine or
ten seconds.
I was standing with Grantline at a front window. We had rigged an
oblong of insulated fabric like a curtain: we stood peering, holding
the curtain cautiously aside. The ray struck some twenty feet away
from us.
"Harmless!"
The men in the room shouted it with derision. But Grantline swung on
them.
"Don't think that!"
An interior signal-panel was beside Grantline. He called the duty-men
in the instrument room.
"It's over. What are your readings?"
* * * * *
The bombarding electrons had passed through the outer shell of the
building's double-wall, and been absorbed in the rarefied, magnetized
air-current of the Erentz circulation. Like poison in a man's veins,
reaching his heart, the free alien electrons had disturbed the motors.
They accelerated, then retarded. Pulsed unevenly, and drew added power
from the reserve tanks. But they had normalized at once when the shot
was past. The duty-man's voice sounded from the grid in answer to
Grantline's question:
"Five degrees colder in your building. Can't you feel it?"
The disturbed, weakened Erentz circulation had allowed the outer cold
to radiate through a trifle. The walls had had a trifle extra
explosive pressure from the room-air. A strain--but that was all.
"It's probably their most powerful single weapon, Gregg." Grantline
said.
I nodded. "Yes. I think so."
I had smashed the real giant, with its ten-mile range. The ship was
only two miles from us, but it seemed as though this projector were
exerted to its distance limit. I had noticed on the deck only one of
this type. The others, paralyzing-rays and heat rays, were less
deadly.
Grantline commented: "We can withstand a lot of that bombardment. If
we stay inside--"
That ray, striking a man outside, would penetrate his Erentz suit
within a few seconds, we could not doubt. We had, however, no
intention of going out unless for dire necessity.
"Even so," said Grantline. "A hand-shield would hold it off for a
certain length of time."
* * * * *
We had an opportunity a moment later to test our insulated shields.
The bolt came again. It darted along the front face of the building,
caught our window and clung. The double window-shells were our weakest
points. The sheet of flashing Erentz current was transparent: we could
see through it as though it were glass. It moved faster, but was
thinner at the windows than in the walls. We feared the bombarding
electrons might cross it, penetrate the inner shell and, like a
lightning bolt, enter the room.
We dropped the curtain corner. The radiance of the bolt was dimly
visible. A few seconds, then it vanished again, and behind the shield
we had not felt a tingle.
"Harmless!"
But our power had been drained nearly an aeron, to neutralize the
shock to the Erentz current. Grantline said:
"If they kept that up, it would be a question of whose power supply
would last longest. And it would not be ours.... You saw our lights
fade down while the bolt was striking?"
But the brigands did not know we were short of power. And to fire the
projector with a continuous bolt would, in thirty minutes, perhaps,
have exhausted their own power-reserve.
This strange warfare! It was new to all of us, for there had been no
wars on any of the three inhabited worlds for many years. Silent,
electronic conflict! Not a question of men in battle. A man at a
switch on the brigand ship was the sole actor so far in this assault.
And the results were visible only in the movement of the needle-dials
on our instrument panels. A struggle, so far, not of man's bravery, or
skill, or strategy, but merely of electronic power supply.
* * * * *
Yet warfare, however modern, can never transcend the human element.
Before this insult was ended I was to have many demonstrations of
that!
"I won't answer them," Grantline declared. "Our game is to sit
defensive. Conserve everything. Let them make the leading moves."
We waited half an hour, but no other shot came. The valley floor was
patched with Earthlight and shadow. We could see the vague outline of
the brigand ship backed up at the foot of the opposite crater-wall.
The form of its dome over the illumined deck was visible, and the line
of its tiny hull ovals.
On the rocks near the ship, helmet-lights of prowling brigands
occasionally showed.
Whatever activity was going on down there we could not see with the
naked eye. Grantline did not use our telescope at first. To connect
it, even for local range, drew on our precious ammunition of power.
Some of the men urged that we search the sky with the telescope. Was
our rescue ship from Earth coming? But Grantline refused. We were in
no trouble yet. And every delay was to our advantage.
"Commander, where shall I put these helmets?"
A man came wheeling a pile of helmets on a little truck.
"At the manual porte--other building."
Our weapons and outside equipment were massed at the main exit-locks
of the large building. But we might want to sally out through the
smaller locks also. Grantline sent helmets there; suits were not
needed, as most of us were garbed in them now, but without the
helmets.
* * * * *
Snap was still in the workshop. I went there during this first
half-hour of the attack. Ten of our men were busy there with the
little flying platforms and the fabric shields.
"How is it, Snap?"
"Almost all ready."
He had six of the platforms, including the one we had already used,
and more than a dozen hand-shields. At a squeeze, all of us could ride
on these six little vehicles. We might have to ride them! We planned
that, in the event of disaster to the buildings, we could at least
escape in this fashion. Food supplies and water were now being placed
at the portes.
Depressing preparations! Our buildings uninhabitable, a rush out and
away, abandoning the treasure.... Grantline had never mentioned such a
contingency, but I noticed, nevertheless, that preparations were being
made.
"Only that one shot, Gregg?"
Snap's voice was raised over the clang of the workmen bolting the
little gravity-plates of the last platform.
"Four blasts. But just the one projector. Their strongest."
He grinned. He wore no Erentz suit as yet. He stood in torn grimy
work-trousers and a bedraggled shirt, with the inevitable red eyeshade
holding back his unruly hair. Around his waist was the weighted belt
and there were weights on his shoes for gravity stability.
"Didn't hurt us much."
"No."
"When I get the tube-panels in this thing I'll be finished. It'll take
another half-hour. I'll join you. Where are you stationed?"
* * * * *
I shrugged. "I was at a front window with Johnny. Nothing to do as
yet."
Snap went back to his work. "Well, the longer they delay, the better
for us. If only your signal got through, Gregg! We'll have a rescue
ship here in a few hours more."
Ah, that "if!"
I turned away. "Can't help you, Snap?"
"No. Take those shields," he added to one of the men.
"Take them where?"
"To Grantline. The front admission porte, or the back. He'll tell you
which."
The shields were wheeled away on a little cart. I followed it.
Grantline sent it to the back exit.
"No other move from them yet, Johnny?"
"No. All quiet."
"Snap's almost finished."
The brigands presently made another play. A giant heat-ray beam came
across the valley. It clung to our front wall for nearly a minute.
Grantline got the reports from the instrument room. He laughed.
"That helped rather than hurt us. Heated the outer wall. Frank took
advantage of it and eased up the motors."
We wondered if Miko knew that. Doubtless he did, for another interval
passed and the heat-ray was not used again.
* * * * *
Then came a zed-ray. I stood at the window, watching it, faint sheen
of beam in the dimness. It crept with sinister deliberation along our
front building-wall, clung momentarily to our shielded windows and
pried with its revealing glow into Snap's workshop.
"Looking us over," Grantline commented. "I hope they like what they
see."
I knew he did not feel the bravado that was in his tone. We had
nothing but small hand weapons: heat-rays, electronic projectors, and
bullet projectors. All for very short-range fighting. If Miko had not
known that before, he could at least make a good guess at it after the
careful zed-ray inspection. With his ship down there two miles away,
we were powerless to reach him.
It seemed that Miko was now testing the use of all his mechanisms. A
light-flare went up from the dome-peak of the ship. It rose in a slow
arc over the valley, and burst. For a few seconds the two-mile circle
of crags was brilliantly illumined. I stared, but I had to shield my
eyes against the dazzling actinic glare, and I could see nothing. Was
Miko making a zed-ray photograph of our interiors? We had no way of
knowing.
He was testing his short-range projectors now. With my eyes again
accustomed to the normal Earthlight in the valley, I could see the
stabs of little electronic beams, the Martian paralyzing-rays and
heat-beams. They darted out like flashing swords from the rocks near
the ship.
Then the whole ship and the crater-wall behind it seemed to shift
sidewise as a Benson curve-light spread its glow about the ship, with
a projector curve-beam coming up and touching the window through which
I was peering.
"Haljan, come look at these damn girls! Commander--shall I stop them?
They'll kill themselves, or kill us--or smash something!"
* * * * *
We followed the man into the building's broad central corridor. Anita
and Venza were riding a midget flying platform! Anita, in her boyish
black garb; Venza with a flowing white Venus-robe. They lay on the
tiny, six-foot oblong of metal, one manipulating its side shields, the
other at the controls. As we arrived, the platform came sliding down
the narrow confines of the corridor, lurching, barely missing a
door-grid projection. Up to skim the low vaulted ceiling, then down to
the floor.
It sailed past our heads, rising over us as we ducked. Anita waved her
hand.
Grantline gasped, "By the infernal!"
I shouted, "Anita, stop!"
But they only waved at us, skimming down the length of the corridor,
seeming to avoid a smash a dozen times by the smallest margin of
chance, stopping miraculously at the further end, hanging poised in
mid-air, wheeling, coming back, undulating up and down.
Grantline clung to me. "By the gods of the airways!"
In spite of my astonished horror I could not but share Grantline's
obvious admiration. Three of four other men were watching. The girls
were amazingly skillful, no doubt of that. There was not a man among
us who could have handled that gravity-platform indoors, not one who
would have had the brash temerity to try it.
The platform landed with the grace of a humming bird at our feet, the
girls dexterously balancing so that it came to rest swiftly, without
the least bump.
I confronted them. "Anita, what are you doing?"
She stood up, flushed and smiling.
"Practising."
Imperturbable girls! The product of their age. Oblivious to the
brigand attack, they were in here practising!
"What for?" I demanded.
Venza's roguish eyes twinkled at me. Her hands went to her slim hips
with a gesture of defiance.
She asked, "Are you speaking for yourself or the commander?"
* * * * *
I ignored her. "What for?" I reiterated.
"Because we're good at it," Anita retorted. "Better than any of you
men. If you should need us...."
"We don't. We won't." I said shortly.
"But if you should...."
Venza put in, "If Snap and I hadn't come for you, you wouldn't be
here, Gregg Haljan. I didn't notice you were so horrified to see me
holding that shield up over you!"
It silenced me.
She added, "Commander, let us alone. We won't smash anything."
Grantline laughed, "I hope you won't!"
A warning call took us back to the front window. The brigand's
search-beam was again being used. It swept slowly along the length of
the cliff. Its circle went down the cliff steps to the valley floor,
and came sweeping up again. Then it went up to the observatory
platform at the summit above us, then back and crept over to the
ore-sheds.
We had no men outside, if that was what the brigand wanted to
determine. The search-beam presently vanished. It was replaced
immediately by a zed-ray, which darted at once to our treasure sheds
and clung.
That stung Grantline into his first action. We flung our own zed-ray
down across the valley. It reached the brigand ship; this zed-ray and
a search-light were our only two projectors of long range.
The brigand ray vanished when ours flashed on. I was with Grantline at
an image grid in the instrument room. We saw the deck of the brigand
ship and the blurred interior of the cabins.
"Try the search-beam, Franck. We don't need the other."
The zed-ray went off. We gazed down our search-light which clung to
the dome of the distant enemy vessel. We could see movement there.
"The telescope," Grantline ordered.
* * * * *
The little dynamos hummed. The telescope-finder glowed and clarified.
On the deck of the ship we saw the brigands working with the
assembling of ore-carts. A deck landing-porte was open. The ore-carts
were being carried out through a porte-lock and down a landing
incline. And on the rocks outside, we saw several of the carts--and
rail-sections and the sections of an ore-shute.
Miko was unloading his mining apparatus! He was making ready to come
up for the treasure!
The discovery, startling as it was, nevertheless was far overshadowed
by an imperative danger alarm from our main building. Brigands were
outside on our ledge! Miko's search-beam, sweeping the ledge a moment
before, had carefully avoided revealing them. It had been done just
for that purpose, no doubt--making us sure that the ledge was
unoccupied and thus to guard against our own light making a search.
But there was a brigand group here close outside our walls! By the
merest chance the radiating glow from our search-ray had shown the
helmeted figures scurrying for shelter.
Grantline leaped to his feet.
We rushed for the rear exit-porte which was nearest us. The giant
bloated figures had been seen running along the outside of the
connecting corridor, in this direction. But before we ever got there,
a new alarm came. A brigand was crouching at a front corner of the
main building! His hydrogen heat-torch had already opened a rift in
the wall!