space-battle was that of Canis Major, when forty thousand warships
plunged toward each other with their fighting-beams stabbing out
savagely, aimed and controlled by every device that human ingenuity
could contrive.
That battle had ended wars for all time, the Galaxy believed, because
there was no survivor on either side. In seconds every combatant ship
was merely a mass of insensate metal, which fought on in a blind
futility.
The fighting-beams killed in thousandths of seconds. The robot gunners
aimed with absolute precision. The two fleets joined battle and the
robots fixed their targets and every ship became a coffin in which all
living things were living no longer, which yet fought on with beams
which could do no further harm.
With every man in both fleets dead the warships raged through
emptiness, pouring out destruction from their unmanned projectors.
It was a hundred years before the last war-craft, its fuel gone and
its crew mere dust, was captured and destroyed. But there had been no
space-fight since--until now.
And this one was strangeness itself. Four huge, squat ships of war
rose steadily from the planet Sinab Two. They were doubtless bound
on a mission of massacre. The Empire of Sinab gave no warning of its
purpose. It did not permit the option of submission.
Its ships headed heavily out into space, crammed with generators of the
murder-frequency. They had no inkling of any ships other than those of
their own empire as being in existence anywhere.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a slim and slender space-craft winked into
being--a member of Kim's squadron, just arrived. Within a fraction of
an instant it was plunging furiously for the Sinabian monster.
The _Starshine_ also flung itself into head-long attack, though it
was unarmed save for projectors of a field that would not kill anyone.
The other ships--and more, as they appeared--darted valorously for the
giants.
Meteor-repellers lashed out automatically. Scanners had detected the
newcomers and instantly flung repeller-beams to thrust them aside. They
had no effect. Meteor-repellers handle inert mass but, by the nature of
its action, an interplanetary drive neutralizes their effect.
The small ships flashed on.
Kim found himself grinning sardonically. There would be alarms ringing
frantically in the enemy ships and the officers would be paralyzed
with astonishment at the sudden appearance and instant attack by the
space-craft which could not--to Sinabian knowledge--exist.
Four ships plunged upon one monster. Three dashed at another. Eight
little motes streaked for a third and the fourth seemed surrounded by
deadly mites of space-ships, flashing toward it with every indication
of vengeful resolution.
The attacks were sudden, unexpected, and impossible. There was no time
to put the murder-beams into operation. They took priceless seconds to
warm up.
In stark panic the control-room officer of the ship at which the
_Starshine_ drove jammed his ship into overdrive travel. The
Sinabian flashed into flight at two hundred times the speed of light.
It fled into untraceable retreat, stressed space folded about it.
Kim spoke comfortably into the space-phone:
"Everything's fine! If the others do the same...."
A second giant fled in the same fashion. The small ships of Ades were
appearing on every hand and plunging toward their enemies. A third huge
ship made a crazy, irresolute half-turn and also took the only possible
course by darting away from its home planet on overdrive. Then the
fourth!
"They'd no time to give an alarm," said Kim crisply. "Into atmosphere
now and we do our stuff!"
The tiny craft plunged toward the planet below them. It swelled in the
_Starshine's_ forward vision-ports. It filled all the firmament.
Kim changed course and aimed for the limb of the planet. The ship went
down and down.
A faint trembling went through all the fabric of the ship. It had
touched atmosphere. There was a monstrous metropolis ahead and below.
Kim touched a control. A little thing went tumbling down and down. He
veered out into space again.
He watched by electron telescope. Like tiny insects, the fleet of Ades
flashed over the surface of the planet. They seemed to have no purpose.
They seemed to accomplish nothing. They darted here and there and fled
for open space again, without ever touching more than the outermost
reaches of the planet's atmosphere.
But it took time. They were just beginning to stream up into emptiness
again when the first of the giant warships flashed back into view. This
time it was ready for action.
Its beam-projectors flared thin streams of ions that were visible
even in empty space. The ships of Ades plunged for it in masses. The
fighting-beams flared terribly.
And the little ships vanished. Diving for it, plunging for it, raging
toward it with every appearance of deadly assault, they flicked into
transmitter-drive when the deadly beams touched them. Because the crews
of every one were fitted with the wristlets and the relays which flung
them into infinite speed when the fighting-beams struck.
In seconds, when the second and third and fourth Sinabian warships came
back from the void prepared for battle, they found all of space about
their home planet empty. They ragingly reported their encounter to
headquarters.
Headquarters did not reply. The big ships went recklessly, alarmedly,
down to ground to see what had happened. They feared annihilation had
struck Sinab Two.
But it hadn't. The fleet of Ades had bombed the enemy planet, to be
sure, but in a quite unprecedented fashion. They had simply dropped
small round cases containing apparatus which was very easily made and
to which not even the most conscientious of the exiles on Ades could
object.
They were tiny broadcasting units, very much like one Kim had put in a
decoy ship, which gave off the neuronic frequencies of the disciplinary
circuit, tuned to men. The cases were seamless spheres, made of an
alloy that could only be formed by powder metallurgy, and could not be
melted or pierced at all.
It was the hardest substance developed in thirty thousand years of
civilization. And at least one of those cases had been dropped on
every large city of Sinab Two, and when they struck they began to
broadcast.
8
_Pitched Battle_
Every man in every city of the capital planet of the empire was
instantly struck motionless. From the gross and corpulent emperor
himself down to the least-considered scoundrel of each city's slums,
every man felt his every muscle go terribly and impossibly rigid. Every
man was helpless and convulsed. And the women were unaffected.
On Sinab Two, which was the capital of a civilization which considered
women inferior animals, the women had not been encouraged to be
intelligent. For a long time they were merely bewildered. They were
afraid to try to do anything to assist their men.
Those with small boy-children doubtless were the first to dare to use
their brains. It was unquestionably the mother of a small boy gone
terribly motionless who desperately set out in search of help.
She reasoned fearfully that, since her own city was full of agonized
statues which were men, perhaps in another city there might be aid. She
tremblingly took a land-car and desperately essayed to convey her son
to where something might be done for him.
And she found that, in the open space beyond the city, he recovered
from immobility to a mere howling discomfort. As the city was left
farther behind he became increasingly less unhappy and at last was
perfectly normal.
But it must have been hours before that discovery became fully known,
so that mothers took their boy-children beyond the range of the small
cases dropped from the skies. And then wives dutifully loaded their
helpless husbands upon land-cars or into freight-conveyors and so got
them out to where they could rage in unbridled fury.
The emperor and his court were probably last of all to be released from
the effects of the disciplinary-circuit broadcasts by mere distance.
The Empire was reduced to chaos. For fifty miles about every bomb it
was impossible for any man to move a muscle.
For seventy-five it was torment.
No man could go within a hundred miles of any of the small objects
dropped from the _Starshine_ and her sister-ships without
experiencing active discomfort.
Obviously, the cities housed the machinery of government and the
matter-transmitters by which the Empire communicated with its
subject worlds and the food-synthesizers and the shelters in which
men were accustomed to live and the baths and lecture-halls and
amusement-centers in which they diverted themselves.
Men were barred from such places absolutely. They could not govern nor
read nor have food or drink or bathe or even sleep upon comfortable
soft couches. For the very means of living they were dependent upon the
favor of women--because women were free to go anywhere and do anything,
while men had to stay in the open fields like cattle.
The foundation of the civilization of Greater Sinab was shattered
because women abruptly ceased to be merely inferior animals. The
defenses of that one planet were non-existent, and even the four
ships just taken off went down recklessly to the seemingly unharmed
cities--to land with monstrous crashes and every man in them helpless.
The ships were out of action for as long as the broadcast should
continue.
But the fleet of Ades rendezvoused at Ades, and again put out into
space. They divided now and attacked the subjugated planets. They had
no weapons save the devices which every government in the Galaxy used.
It was as if they fought a war with the night-sticks of policemen. But
the disciplinary circuit which made governments absolute, by the most
trivial of modifications became a device by which men were barred from
cities, and therefore from government. All government ceased.
Active warfare by the Empire of Sinab became impossible. Space-yards,
armories, space-ships grounded and space-ships as they landed from the
void--every facility for war or rule in an empire of twenty planets
became useless without the killing of a single man and without the
least hope of resistance.
Only--a long while since, a squadron of Sinabian warships had headed
out for Ades as a part of the program of expansion of the Empire. It
had lifted from Sinab Two--then the thriving, comfortable capital of
the Empire--and gone into overdrive on its mission.
The distance to be covered was something like thirty light-years.
Overdrive gave a speed two hundred times that of light, which was very
high speed indeed, and had sufficed for the conquest of a galaxy, in
the days when the human race was rising.
But even thirty light-years at that rate required six weeks of
journeying in the stressed space of overdrive. During those six weeks,
of course, there could be no communication with home base.
So the squadron bound for Ades had sped on all unknowing and
unconscious, while Khiv Five was beamed and all its men killed and
while the _Starshine_ had essayed a return journey from the Second
Galaxy and then sped crazily to universes beyond men's imagining and
returned, and while the midget fleet of Ades wrecked the Empire in
whose service the travelers set out to do murder.
The journeying squadron--every ship wrapped in the utter
unapproachability of faster-than-light travel--was oblivious to all
that had occurred. Its separate ships came out of overdrive some forty
million miles from the solitary planet Ades, lonesomely circling its
remote small sun.
The warships of Sinab had an easier task in keeping together
on overdrive than ships of the _Starshine_ class on
transmitter-drive, but even so they went back to normal space forty
million miles from their destination--two seconds' journey on
overdrive--to group and take final counsel.
Kim Rendell in the _Starshine_ flashed back from the last of the
twenty planets of Sinab as six monster ships emerged from seeming
nothingness. The _Starshine's_ detectors flicked over to the
"_Danger_" signal-strength.
Alarm-gongs clanged violently. The little ship hurtled past a monster
at a bare two-hundred miles distance, and there was another giant a
thousand miles off, and two others and fifth and sixth....
The six ships drew together into battle formation. Their detectors,
too, showed the _Starshine_. More, as other midgets flicked into
being, returning from their raid upon the Empire, they also registered
upon the detector-screens of the battle-fleet.
The fighter-beams of the ships flared into deadliness. They were
astounded, no doubt, by the existence of other space-craft than
those of Sinab. But as the little ships flung at them furiously, the
fighting-beams raged among them.
Small, agile craft vanished utterly as the death-beams hit--thrown into
transmitter-drive before their crews could die. But the Sinabians could
not know that. They drove on. Grandly. Ruthlessly. This planet alone
possessed space-craft and offered resistance.
It had appeared only normal that all the men on Ades should die. Now
it became essential. The murder-fleet destroyed--apparently--the tiny
things which flung themselves recklessly and went on splendidly to
bathe the little planet in death.
The midgets performed prodigies of valor. They flung themselves at the
giants, with the small hard objects that had destroyed an empire held
loosely to the outside of their hulls.
When the death-beams struck and they vanished, the small hard objects
went hurtling on.
They could have been missiles. They traveled at miles per second. But
meteor-repellers flung them contemptuously aside, once they were no
longer parts of space-craft with drive in action.
The little ships tried to ram, and that was impossible. They could do
nothing but make threatening dashes. And the giants went on toward Ades.
From forty million miles to thirty millions the enemy squadron drove
on with its tiny antagonists darting despairingly about it. At thirty
millions, Kim commanded his followers to flee ahead to Ades, give
warning, and take on board what refugees they could.
But there were nineteen million souls on Ades--at most a million had
crowded through to Terranova in the Second Galaxy--and they could do
next to nothing.
At twenty millions of miles, some of the midgets were back with
cases of chemical explosive. They strewed them in the paths of the
juggernaut ships. With no velocity of their own--almost stationary
in space--someone had thought they might not activate the Sinabian
repellers.
But that thought was futile. The repeller-beams stabbed at them with
the force of collisions. The chemical explosives flashed luridly in
emptiness and made swift expanding clouds of vapor, of the tenuity of
comets' tails. The enemy ships came on.
At ten million miles two unmanned ships, guided by remote control,
flashed furiously toward the leading war-craft. They, at least, should
be able to ram.
Repeller-beams which focused upon them were neutralized by the
space-torpedoes' drives. They drove in frenziedly. But as they drew
closer the power of the repeller-beams rose to incredible heights
and overwhelmed the power of the little ships' engines and shorted
the field-generating coils and blew out the motors--and the guided
missiles were hurled away, broken hulks.
The fleet reached a mere five million miles from the planet Ades.
Its separate members had come to realize their invincibility against
all the assaults that could be made against them by the defending
forces--unexpected as they were--of this small world.
The fleet divided, to take up appropriate stations above the planet and
direct their projectors of annihilation downward. They would wipe out
every living male upon the planet's surface. They would do it coldly,
remorselessly, without emotion.
Presently the planet would become part of an empire which, in fact,
had ceased to function. The action of the fleet would not only be
horrible--it would be futile. But its personnel could not know that.
The giant ships took position and began to descend.
Odd little blue-white glows appeared in the atmosphere far below.
They seemed quite useless, those blue-white glows. The only effect
that could at once be ascribed to them was the sudden vanishing of
a dozen little ships preparing to make, for the hundredth time,
despairing dashes at the monsters. Those little ships winked out of
existence--gone into transmitter-drive.
And then the big ships wavered in their flight. Automatic controls
seemed to take hold. They checked in their descent, and presently were
motionless....
A roar of triumph came to Kim Rendell's ears from the space-phone
speaker in the _Starshine's_ control-room. The Mayor of Steadheim
bellowed in exultation.
"We got 'em, by Space! We _got_ 'em!"
"Something's happened to them," said Kim. "What?"
"I'm sending up a couple of shiploads of women," rumbled the Mayor of
Steadheim zestfully. "Women from Khiv Five. They'll take over! Remember
you had us go to ground to salvage the two ships that crashed there?
"They bounced when they landed. They shook themselves apart and spilled
themselves in little pieces instead of smashing to powder. We picked
up half a dozen projectors that could be repaired--all neatly tuned to
kill men and leave women unharmed.
"We brought 'em back to Ades and mounted 'em--brought 'em here with
wives for my four sons and a promise of vengeance for the other women
whose men were murdered. We just gave these devils a dose of the
medicine they had for us!
"Those ships are coffins, Kim Rendell! Every man in the crews is dead!
But no man can go aboard until their beams are cut off! I'll send up
the women from Khiv Five to board 'em. They'll attend to things! If any
man's alive they'll slit his throat for him!"
9
_Homecoming_
A considerable time later, Kim Rendell eased the _Starshine_
down through the light of the two Terranovan moons to the matted lawn
outside his homestead in the Second Galaxy. A figure started up from
the terrace and hurried down to greet him as he opened the exit-port
and helped Dona to the ground.
"Who's this?" asked Kim, blinking in the darkness after the lighted
interior of the _Starshine_. "Who--"
"It's me, Kim Rendell," said the Colony Organizer for Terranova. He
sounded unhappy and full of forebodings, "We've been doing all we can
to take care of the crowds who came through the matter-transmitter, but
it was a difficult task--a difficult task!
"Now the crowd of new colonists has dropped to a bare trickle. Every
one has a different story. I was told, though, that you were coming
back in the _Starshine_ and could advise me. I need your advice,
Kim Rendell! The situation may be terrible!"
Kim led the way to the terrace of his house.
"I wouldn't say it will be terrible," he said cheerfully enough. "It's
good to get back home. Dona--"
"I want to look inside," said Dona firmly.
She went within, to satisfy the instinct of every woman who has been
away from home to examine all her dwelling jealously on her return. Kim
stretched himself out in a chair.
The stars--unnamed, unexplored, and infinitely promising--of all the
Second Galaxy twinkled overhead. Terranova's two moons floated serenely
across the sky, and the strange soft scents of the night came to his
nostrils. Kim sniffed luxuriously.
"Ah, this is good!" he said zestfully.
"But what's happened?" demanded the Colony Organizer anxiously. "In
three weeks we had four hundred thousand new arrivals through the
transmitter. Most of them were children and boys. Then the flood
stopped--like that! What are we to do about them? Did you get fuel for
your ship? I understand the danger from Sinab is over, but we find it
hard to get information from Ades. Everyone there--"
"Everyone there is busy," said Kim comfortably. "You see, we smashed
the Empire without killing more than a very few men. On Sinab Two where
the Empire was started, we chased the men out of the cities and put
them at the mercy of the women.
"So many men had emigrated to the planets whose men had been killed
off, that there was a big disproportion even on Sinab. And the women
were not pleased. They'd been badly treated too. We didn't approve of
the men, though.
"We gave them their choice of emigrating to a brand-new world, with
only such women as chose to go with them, or of being wiped out. They
chose to emigrate. So half the technical men on Ades have been busy
supervising their emigration."
"Not to here?" asked the Colony Organizer in alarm. "We can't feed
ourselves, yet!"
"No, not to here," said Kim drily. "They went to a place we scouted
accidentally in the _Starshine_. They're not likely to come back.
I left a matter-receiver there, and when they've all gone through
it--all the men from twenty planets, with what women want to go with
them--we'll smash that receiver and they'll be on their own.
"They're quite a long way off. Three hundred billion light-years, more
or less. They're not likely to come in contact with our descendants for
several million years yet. By that time they'll either be civilized or
else."
The Colony Organizer asked questions in a worried tone. Kim answered
them.
"But twenty-one planets with no men on them," said the Organizer
worriedly, "These women will all want to come here!"
"Not quite all. There were ten men on Ades for every woman. A lot
of them will settle on the twenty planets where the proportion is
reversed. A surprising lot will want to move on to the Second Galaxy,
though."
"But--"
"We'll be ready for them," said Kim. "We've space-ships enough for
exploration now. The Mayor of Steadheim wants a planet for each of his
four sons to colonize. They picked up wives on Khiv Five and want to
get away from the old chap and indulge in a little domesticity.
"And there'll be plenty of others." He added, "We've some big war-craft
to bring over too, in case there's any dangerous animals or--entities
here."
"But--" said the Colony Organizer again.
"We're sending ships through the First Galaxy, too," said Kim, "to do a
little missionary work. After all, twenty-one planets are without men!
"So the _Starshine's_ sister-ships will drop down secretly on one
planet after another to start whisperings that a man who's sent to Ades
is a pretty lucky man. If he has courage and brains he's better off
than living as a human sheep under kings or technarchs who'll clap the
Disciplinary Circuit on him if he thinks for himself.
"There'll be more criminals and rebels than usual from now on. The
flow of men who are not quite sheep will increase. With three hundred
million planets to draw from and the way whispers pass from world to
world, the adventurous spirits will start getting themselves sent to
Ades.
"There'll be planets for them to move to and women to marry and a
leaven of hardy souls to teach them that being a free man is pretty
good fun. We won't make an empire of those twenty-one planets--just a
refuge for every man with backbone in all the Galaxy."
The Colony Organizer looked worried.
"But there are Terranova and the Second Galaxy waiting to be explored
and colonized. Maybe they'll be satisfied to stay there."
Kim laughed. When he ceased to laugh he chuckled.
"I'm here! I've got a wife. Do you suppose that any woman will want her
husband to stay on one of those twenty-one planets for years to come?
Where women outnumber men? Where--well--a man with a roving eye sees
plenty of women about for his eyes to rove to?"
The Colony Organizer still worried, nevertheless, until Dona came out
from the inside of the house. She had assured herself that everything
was intact and her mind was at rest. She brought refreshments for Kim
and their guest.
"I was just saying," said Kim, "that I thought there would still
be plenty of people coming from Ades and the twenty-one planets to
Terranova and to settle on the new worlds as they're opened up."
"Of course," said Dona. "I wouldn't live there! Any normal woman, when
she has a husband, will want to move where he'll be safe!"
And she might have been referring to the holocausts on those planets
caused by the death-beams of the dead Sinabian Empire. But even the
Colony Organizer did not think so.
PART THREE
THE BOOMERANG CIRCUIT
1
_Damaged Transmitter_