_By the Author of "The Space Visitors," "Cities in the Air," etc._
[Illustration: EDMOND HAMILTON]
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Air Wonder Stories April 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_The present likelihood is that the first interplanetary flight
will probably be by means of a rocket-propelled ship. As far as
our knowledge goes the rocket seems to be the most feasible means
of propulsion because it will reach its greatest efficiency in the
vacuum of inter-stellar space._
_If the conditions on other planets, including our moon, are not
too prohibitive, it is doubtless true that these planets will be
explored for whatever mineral wealth or possibilities of life they
may contain. The resulting interplanetary commerce will call into
being a host of problems, such as the protection of cargo and
passenger shipments against natural and human agents that might
wish to destroy them._
_In that case, the Earth-Guard that Mr. Hamilton describes so
vividly will play a most important part in the protection of such
commerce._
_Mr. Hamilton, as is usual with him, has, in this story, developed
it so that we were unable to predict from page to page what would
happen next. And the editors were just as fooled by the surprising
denouement as we believe our readers will be._
"All Earth-Guard rockets attention! One-man rocket _Pallas_ speaking.
Am pursued by pirate rocket believed to be that of the Hawk! I am
running toward earth on space-lane 18, now in zone 44-6, but am being
rapidly overtaken!"
As the clear voice came from the radiophone before him, Captain Wright
Evans slammed over the reply-switch and shouted back into it.
"Earth-Guard Rocket 283 answering. Standing toward you at top speed
instantly!"
Then he was up and bursting into the great rocket ship's squat little
pilot-house, where a man seated at the controls turned inquiringly to
him.
"Full speed ahead, Calden!" he cried. "The Hawk's out again and after a
one-man rocket not a thousand miles ahead--it's our chance to get him
at last!"
"Full speed it is," rejoined Calden calmly, his hands flashing forth to
flick down a half-score of the banked shining levers before him.
Instantly the great ship lurched and trembled as, from its rear,
came thunderous explosion on explosion. In a moment every one of its
rear-tubes was firing, and the speed-dial's arrow was creeping steadily
forward until in a few minutes more it registered the ship's top speed
of ten thousand miles an hour. The long gleaming craft, stubby of nose
and stern and fully five hundred feet in length, was like a giant
projectile, as it tore through the void, belching fire behind it.
From the squat pilot-house set atop it, Evans and Calden gazed
ahead. The great gray disk of earth filled a quarter of the heavens
before them, the outline of its continents and seas visible here and
there through its shifting screen of clouds. Behind them the moon's
silvery sphere was dwindling rapidly, as they had seen it dwindle now
for hours. It was hours that the great Earth-Guard rocket with its
half-hundred men had been hurtling toward earth after its weary week's
vigil in space, before this call had come.
And weary enough indeed was the vigil that the rocket ships of the
Earth-Guard kept around the earth and its moon, and had kept up for
more than fifty years. More than fifty years it had been since, back
in 1954, the first crude rocket had thundered out from earth into the
great void toward its shining satellite. Neither that first rocket nor
the twenty-first had reached their goal, but the next one had.
Thus had begun the commerce that now filled all the space-lanes between
the earth and moon. In their first flame of exploration, men had
headed out toward the nearer planets, too, but they had found them
unapproachable because of the fierce guard maintained by their strange
peoples. Every ship that had sought to explore another planet had
been annihilated on reaching it and we had finally realized that our
planetary neighbors were guarding fiercely their isolation.
* * * * *
There had remained to earth only its own moon. But that had become
swiftly a lure to all adventurous earthlings. Upon the moon's other
side were great mines in which men, dwelling in air-tight cities and
toiling in hermetically-tight metal suits, worked the rare metals and
minerals in which earth's satellite abounded. And upon the moon's
earthward side were other great air-tight cities, glass-roofed and
luxurious, to which went each year hundreds of thousands of the
earth's wealthy--there to spend their vacations--enjoying the wondrous
celestial views, the astounding strength and youth given them by the
moon's lesser gravity, and the chance to view the earth from the
outside.
So that there had grown gradually the commerce that kept endless
streams of ships moving between earth and moon--great and luxurious
passenger-craft laden with the wealthy and powerful of earth; and sleek
private ships bound like the others for the luxurious lunar cities.
Bulky and battered cargo-rockets had their own space-lanes, carrying
metals and minerals to the earth, and returning with loads of supplies
and tanks of the liquid rocket-fuel to the moon.
It was inevitable that all this traffic should need regulating, and so
there had been formed the Earth-Guard, an organization corresponding to
the old Coast-Guards of the nations, but controlled by an international
commission of earth's powers. The Earth-Guard boasted five hundred
gleaming rockets that patrolled ceaselessly the space between and
around the earth and moon, enforcing peace with their electric-guns and
guarding the lunar commerce.
For there were those against whom it must be guarded--space-pirates
who dashed forth from time to time from hidden bases on earth or moon
to harry and hold up in the void the rich lunar commerce. The boldest
and most dreaded of them all was that swift and flashing corsair of
the void known to all on earth and moon alike as the Hawk, and who for
years had been the despair of all the Earth-Guard.
"Lord, if we can get him!" Evans was praying as he gazed out of a port
hole from the hurtling ship's pilot-house. "I get so tired of jabs
about him that I'd lose an arm to get him."
"Well, everyone's turn comes sooner or later in that game,"
philosophized Calden. "It may be the Hawk's now."
Evans pulled a speaking-tube toward him and shouted down into it over
the roar of the rocket's explosions. "Hartley? Put full crews on all
the electric-guns and have them stand ready for action. Yes. And tell
them it's the Hawk we're after this time--it'll put them on their toes."
Calden grinned as a moment later a muffled cheer came up from the
gun-rooms beneath. "They're on their toes, evidently," he commented.
"They're as crazy to get their hands on the Hawk as you are."
Evans made no answer but started ahead with teeth clenched upon his
lower lip, glancing over now and then at the dials that recorded the
rocket's position between earth and moon. This recording was automatic,
being dependent on the change in the gravitational power of the two
bodies. Evans saw by them now that the rocket was hurtling into the
very zone in which the _Pallas_ had reported itself.
Missed!
He reached to turn a knob and there clicked up into position against
the lenses set in the pilot-house window two long metal tubes with
eye-pieces that formed powerful binoculars. Gazing ahead through these
he kept watch, while with fingers on the firing-levers of the rocket's
tubes Calden kept them steady on their course. Minutes passed before
Evans uttered a cry.
"They're just ahead!" he exclaimed. Then, into the tube--"All batteries
ready, Hartley, and use the port guns when we bank."
"Lord, look at that fellow!" breathed Calden as he too stared ahead.
"He sure can handle a rocket--the Hawk can't get his guns on him!"
Far ahead of them in the void the scene of combat to which they had
been summoned was rushing into view. A tiny and shining one-man rocket
was dodging and twisting and circling in space, with its firing-tubes
flaming first on one end and then on the other to keep it in an
ever-changing course. And around it, like a great grim pike rushing a
shining chub, was circling and swooping a long dead-black rocket of the
same size almost as the Earth-Guard craft. It was the dreaded black
rocket of the Hawk, reputed the swiftest craft in space.
The grim black rocket, whirling and dipping with a swiftness of
maneuver astounding in a ship of its size, was endeavoring to bring
the twisting little craft that evaded it into the line of its guns. As
their own ship thundered down on the scene, Evans and Calden saw the
one side of the Hawk's rocket stabbing forth a half-score slender jets
of blue fire as its electric-guns blasted toward the smaller craft. But
the latter had shot upward in time to avoid the fire, and in the next
moment the Earth-Guard rocket was rushing down upon the ebon attacker.
"Fire!" As Hartley's voice below shouted the order, the Earth-Guard
ship poured a deadly fire toward the black rocket of the Hawk. But
at the very instant of firing, with a swiftness born of a hundred
space-fights, the Hawk's rocket had shot upward.
"Missed him!" Calden cried. "Look out--he's tailing--!"
"Over quick!" Evans exclaimed. "Let him have the stern guns, Hartley!"
For in the instant after shooting upward to avoid their fire, the
rocket of the Hawk had flashed back down on them in the familiar
maneuver of "tailing," using all the firing-tubes placed in its nose
for braking purposes to halt it and reverse it in a flash.
Evans had a lightning glimpse of the great black shape rushing
stern-foremost down on them. Then he felt his own rocket dip and dive
like light as Calden's hands flashed on the firing-levers, and for a
moment Evans saw the white-lit pilot-house of the other rocket, with
the tense figures inside it, before it whirled out of view. He sensed
rather than saw the blast of the Hawk's guns above them as they dived
just in time to avoid the deadly missiles.
* * * * *
Evans heard shouting voices from their own gun-rooms and had no need to
cry to Calden the next order, for already the other was straightening
out their course and sending their ship soaring upward again. But the
long black craft of the Hawk was gone! After that one swift swoop and
blow it had flashed off the space-lane into the uncharted void, and
they glimpsed it only as a dwindling point of fire that vanished in the
next instant.
Evans, filled by a blind fury, whirled to give Calden the order that
would send them in wild pursuit, but checked himself as he realized,
despite his rage, the futility of such a pursuit. Once out of sight,
the Hawk in his immensely swift rocket could laugh at all pursuit, as
he had laughed many times. His face a study of conflicting emotions,
Evans turned back toward his second-officer.
"Back to our regular course on the space-lane," he ordered wearily.
"He's got away again."
Silently Calden headed the great Earth-Guard rocket again toward the
great disk of earth. But in a moment he motioned toward something
outside and above them. "It's the rocket the Hawk was attacking," he
said. "He's signalling for a contact."
"Let him come on, then," answered the other.
Calden pressed the studs that flashed from their own rocket's nose the
answering colored signal-lights, and quickly the shining smaller craft
drove down until it hung just over the big Earth-Guard ship. It settled
smoothly then on the greater craft's back, its nose firing-tubes
blasting it to a halt. The ring of metal contact-pins on its lower side
fitted smoothly into the standardized ring of openings ready for them
on the Earth-Guard's back.
Held thus to the greater craft, the little rocket was carried along
through space like a pilot-fish clinging to a great shark. In a moment
there was the clang of the contact-door opening, as the occupant of
the _Pallas_ passed into the Earth-Guard rocket through the latter's
similar door. In a moment more Hartley, the third officer, was striding
into the pilot-house with the man who had been the little craft's sole
occupant.
He was a tall young man with dark hair and dark, laughing eyes. He
came forward with hand outstretched to Evans and as the rocket-captain
grasped it, he introduced himself.
"Francis Seaworth," he named himself, "and just now mighty pleased to
see you! Indeed, if you hadn't come when you did, the Hawk would have
had me in another minute--I didn't have anyone to work my gun and could
only try to evade him till you came."
Evans laughed. "What in the devil made you start for earth all by
yourself?" he demanded. "Didn't you hear two days ago that the Hawk was
out?"
The other shook his head. "I heard," he said, "but that's just why
I chose this particular time for the trip. No, I don't mean that as
bravado," he added quickly, as he saw the incredulous smiles of the
three officers. "What I mean is that I knew the Hawk was waiting for a
chance to jump on me, and when I heard he was out on the space-lanes
again, I thought he'd be too busy at his usual trade to think of me."
Evans regarded him with more interest. "But what's the Hawk after you
for?" he asked.
Seaworth hesitated. "Well, I wouldn't want to spill too much." He
nodded toward the other officers.
Evans straightened with interest. "Anything you want to say you can
tell me in front of my officers."
"Well," said Seaworth, "I've been spending the last year as a secret
agent of the International Commission, looking for the Hawk's base on
the moon. They had an idea--just an idea--that the Hawk's base was
really inside one of the lunar cities."