_Cover by Gerald McConnell_
Printed in U.S.A.
Transcriber's Note:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note. Subscript
characters are shown within {braces}. The mathematical symbol pi is
shown as [pi].
[Illustration]
I
Patrol Cruiser "IP-T 247" circling out toward Pluto on leisurely
inspection tour to visit the outpost miners there, was in no hurry at
all as she loafed along. Her six-man crew was taking it very easy, and
easy meant two-man watches, and low speed, to watch for the instrument
panel and attend ship into the bargain.
She was about thirty million miles off Pluto, just beginning to get in
touch with some of the larger mining stations out there, when Buck
Kendall's turn at the controls came along. Buck Kendall was one of
life's little jokes. When Nature made him, she was absentminded. Buck
stood six feet two in his stocking feet, with his usual slight stoop in
operation. When he forgot, and stood up straight, he loomed about two
inches higher. He had the body and muscles of a dock navvy, which Nature
started out to make. Then she forgot and added something of the same
stuff she put in Sir Francis Drake. Maybe that made Old Nature nervous,
and she started adding different things. At any rate, Kendall, as
finally turned out, had a brain that put him in the first rank of
scientists--when he felt like it--the general constitution of an ostrich
and a flair for gambling.
The present position was due to such a gamble. An IP man, a friend of
his, had made the mistake of betting him a thousand dollars he wouldn't
get beyond a Captain's bars in the Patrol. Kendall had liked the idea
anyway, and adding a bit of a bet to it made it irresistible. So, being
a very particular kind of a fool, the glorious kind which old Nature
turns out now and then, he left a five million dollar estate on Long
Island, Terra, that same evening, and joined up in the Patrol. The Sir
Francis Drake strain had immediately come forth--and Kendall was having
the time of his life. In a six-man cruiser, his real work in the
Interplanetary Patrol had started. He was still in it--but it was his
command now, and a blue circle on his left sleeve gave his lieutenant's
rank.
Buck Kendall had immediately proceeded to enlist in his command the IP
man who had made the mistaken bet, and Rad Cole was on duty with him
now. Cole was the technician of the T-247. His rank as Technical
Engineer was practically equivalent to Kendall's circle-rank, which made
the two more comfortable together.
Cole was listening carefully to the signals coming through from Pluto.
"That," he decided, "sounds like Tad Nichols' fist. You can recognize
that broken-down truck-horse trot of his on the key as far away as you
can hear it."
"Is that what it is?" sighed Buck. "I thought it was static mushing him
at first. What's he like?"
"Like all the other damn fools who come out two billion miles to scratch
rock, as if there weren't enough already on the inner planets. He's got
a rich platinum property. Sells ninety percent of his output to buy his
power, and the other eleven percent for his clothes and food."
"He must be an efficient miner," suggested Kendall, "to maintain 101%
production like that."
"No, but his bank account is. He's figured out that's the most economic
level of production. If he produces less, he won't be able to pay for
his heating power, and if he produces more, his operation power will
burn up his bank account too fast."
"Hmmm--sensible way to figure. A man after my own heart. How does he
plan to restock his bank account?"
"By mining on Mercury. He does it regularly--sort of a commuter. Out
here his power bills eat it up. On Mercury he goes in for potassium, and
sells the power he collects in cooling his dome, of course. He's a good
miner, and the old fool can make money down there." Like any really
skilled operator, Cole had been sending Morse messages while he talked.
Now he sat quiet waiting for the reply, glancing at the chronometer.
"I take it he's not after money--just after fun," suggested Buck.
"Oh, no. He's after money," replied Cole gravely. "You ask him--he's
going to make his eternal fortune yet by striking a real bed of jovium,
and then he'll retire."
"Oh, one of that kind."
"They all are," Cole laughed. "Eternal hope, and the rest of it." He
listened a moment and went on. "But old Nichols is a first-grade
engineer. He wouldn't be able to remake that bankroll every time if he
wasn't. You'll see his Dome out there on Pluto--it's always the best on
the planet. Tip-top shape. And he's a bit of an experimenter too.
Ah--he's with us."
Nichols' ragged signals were coming through--or pounding through. They
were worse than usual, and at first Kendall and Cole couldn't make them
out. Then finally they got them in bursts. The man was excited, and his
bad key-work made it worse. "--Randing stopped. They got him I think. He
said--th--ship as big--a--nsport. Said it wa--eaded my--ay. Neutrons--on
instruments--he's coming over the horizon--it's huge--war ship I
think--register--instru--neutrons--." Abruptly the signals were blanked
out completely.
* * * * *
Cole and Kendall sat frozen and stiff. Each looked at the other abruptly,
then Kendall moved. From the receiver, he ripped out the recording coil,
and instantly jammed it into the analyzer. He started it through once,
then again, then again, at different tone settings, till he found a very
shrill whine that seemed to clear up most of Nichols' bad key-work.
"T-247--T-247--Emergency. Emergency. Randing reports the--over his
horizon. Huge--ip--reign manufacture. Almost spherical. Randing's stopped.
They got him I think. He said the ship was as big as a transport. Said
it was headed my way. Neutrons--ont--gister--instruments. I think--is
h--he's coming over the horizon. It's huge, and a war ship I
think--register--instruments--neutrons."
Kendall's finger stabbed out at a button. Instantly the noise of the
other men, wakened abruptly by the mild shocks, came from behind.
Kendall swung to the controls, and Cole raced back to the engine room.
The hundred-foot ship shot suddenly forward under the thrust of her tail
ion-rockets. A blue-red cloud formed slowly behind her and expanded.
Talbot appeared, and silently took her over from Kendall. "Stations,
men," snapped Kendall. "Emergency call from a miner of Pluto reporting a
large armed vessel which attacked them." Kendall swung back, and eased
himself against the thrusting acceleration of the over-powered little
ship, toward the engine room. Cole was bending over his apparatus,
making careful check-ups, closing weapon-circuits. No window gave view
of space here; on the left was the tiny tender's pocket, on the right,
above and below the great water tanks that fed the ion-rockets, behind
the rockets themselves. The tungsten metal walls were cold and gray
under the ship lights; the hunched bulks of the apparatus crowded the
tiny room. Gigantic racked accumulators huddled in the corners. Martin
and Garnet swung into position in the fighting-tanks just ahead of the
power rooms; Canning slid rapidly through the engine room, oozed through
a tiny door, and took up his position in the stern-chamber, seated
half-over the great ion-rocket sheath.
"Ready in positions, Captain Kendall," called the war-pilot as the
little green lights appeared on his board.
"Test discharges on maximum," ordered Kendall. He turned to Cole. "You
start the automatic key?"
"Right, Captain."
"All shipshape?"
"Right as can be. Accumulators at thirty-seven per cent, thanks to the
loaf out here. They ought to pick up our signal back on Jupiter, he's
nearest now. The station on Europa will get it."
"Talbot--we are only to investigate if the ship is as reported. Have you
seen any signs of her?"
"No sir, and the signals are blank."
"I'll work from here." Kendall took his position at the commanding
control. Cole made way for him, and moved to the power board. One by one
he tested the automatic doors, the pressure bulkheads. Kendall watched
the instruments as one after another of the weapons were tested on
momentary full discharge--titanic flames of five million volt protons.
Then the ship thudded to the chatter of the Garnell rifles.
* * * * *
Tensely the men watched the planet ahead, white, yet barely visible in
the weak sunlight so far out. It was swimming slowly nearer as the tiny
ship gathered speed.
Kendall cast a glance over his detector-instruments. The radio network
was undisturbed, the magnetic and electric fields recognized only the
slight disturbances occasioned by the planet itself. There was nothing,
noth--
Five hundred miles away, a gigantic ship came into instantaneous being.
Simultaneously, and instantaneously, the various detector systems howled
their warnings. Kendall gasped as the thing appeared on his view screen,
with the scale-lines below. The scale must be cock-eyed. They said the
ship was fifteen hundred feet in diameter, and two thousand long!
"Retreat," ordered Kendall, "at maximum acceleration."
Talbot was already acting. The gyroscopes hummed in their castings, and
the motors creaked. The T-247 spun on her axis, and abruptly the
acceleration built up as the ion-rockets began to shudder. A faint smell
of "heat" began to creep out of the converter. Immense "weight" built
up, and pressed the men into their specially designed seats--
The gigantic ship across the way turned slowly, and seemed to stare at
the T-247. Then it darted toward them at incredible speed till the poor
little T-247 seemed to be standing still, as sailors say. The stranger
was so gigantic now, the screens could not show all of him.
"God, Buck--he's going to take us!"
Simultaneously, the T-247 rolled, and from her broke every possible
stream of destruction. The ion-rocket flames swirled abruptly toward
her, the proton-guns whined their song of death in their housings, and
the heavy pounding shudder of the Garnell guns racked the ship.
Strangely, Kendall suddenly noticed, there was a stillness in the ship.
The guns and the rays were still going--but the little human sounds
seemed abruptly gone.
"Talbot--Garnet--" Only silence answered him. Cole looked across at him
in sudden white-faced amazement.
"They're gone--" gasped Cole.
Kendall stood paralyzed for thirty seconds. Then suddenly he seemed to
come to life. "Neutrons! Neutrons--and water tanks! Old Nichols was
right--" He turned to his friend. "Cole--the tender--quick." He darted a
glance at the screen. The giant ship still lay alongside. A wash of ions
was curling around her, splitting, and passing on. The pinprick
explosions of the Garnell shells dotted space around her--but never on
her.
Cole was already racing for the tender lock. In an instant Kendall piled
in after him. The tiny ship, scarcely ten feet long, was powered for
flights of only two hours acceleration, and had oxygen for but
twenty-four hours for six men, seventy-two hours for two men--maybe. The
heavy door was slammed shut behind them, as Cole seated himself at the
panel. He depressed a lever, and a sudden smooth push shot them away
from the T-247.
"DON'T!" called Kendall sharply as Cole reached for the ion-rocket
control. "Douse those lights!" The ship was dark in dark space. The
lighted hull of the T-247 drifted away from the little tender--further
and further till the giant ship on the far side became visible.
"Not a light--not a sign of fields in operation." Kendall said,
unconsciously speaking softly. "This thing is so tiny, that it may
escape their observation in the fields of the T-247 and Pluto down
there. It's our only hope."
"What happened? How in the name of the planets did they kill those men
without a sound, without a flash, and without even warning us, or
injuring us?"
"Neutrons--don't you see?"
"Frankly, I don't. I'm no scientist--merely a technician. Neutrons
aren't used in any process I've run across."
"Well, remember they're uncharged, tiny things. Small as protons, but
without electric field. The result is they pass right through an
ordinary atom without being stopped unless they make a direct hit.
Tungsten, while it has a beautifully high melting point, is mostly open
space, and a neutron just sails right through it, or any heavy atom.
Light atoms stop neutrons better--there's less open space in 'em.
Hydrogen is best. Well--a man is made up mostly of light elements, and a
man stops those neutrons--it isn't surprising it killed those other
fellows invisibly, and without a sound."
"You mean they bathed that ship in neutrons?"
"Shot it full of 'em. Just like our proton guns, only sending neutrons."
"Well, why weren't we killed too?"
"'Water stops neutrons,' I said. Figure it out."
"The rocket-water tanks--all around us! Great masses of water--" gasped
Cole. "That saved us?"
"Right. I wonder if they've spotted us."
* * * * *
The stranger ship was moving slowly in relation to the T-247. Suddenly
the motion changed, the stranger spun--and a giant lock appeared in her
side, opened. The T-247 began to move, floated more and more rapidly
straight for the lock. Her various weapons had stopped operating now,
the hoppers of the Garnell guns exhausted, the charge of the
accumulators aboard the ship down so low the proton guns had died out.
"Lord--they're taking the whole ship!"
"Say--Cole, is that any ship you ever heard of before? _I don't think
that's just a pirate!_"
"Not a pirate--what then?"
"How'd he get inside our detector screens so fast? Watch--he'll either
leave, or come after us--" The T-247 had settled inside the lock now,
and the great metal door closed after it. The whole patrol ship had been
swallowed by a giant. Kendall was sketching swiftly on a notebook,
watching the vast ship closely, putting down a record of its lines, and
formation. He glanced up at it, and then down for a few more lines, and
up at it--
The stranger ship abruptly dwindled. It dwindled with incredible speed,
rushing off along the line of sight at an impossible velocity, and
abruptly clicking out of sight, like an image on a movie-film that has
been cut, and repaired after the scene that showed the final
disappearance.
"Cole--Cole--did you get that? Did you see--do you understand what
happened?" Kendall was excitedly shouting now.
"He missed us," Cole sighed. "It's a wonder--hanging out here in space,
with the protector of the T-247's fields gone."
"No, no, you asteroid--that's not it. _He went off faster than light
itself!_"
"Eh--what? Faster than _light_? That can't be done--"
"He did it, I know he did. That's how he got inside our screens. He came
inside faster than the warning message could relay back the information.
Didn't you see him accelerate to an impossible speed in an impossible
time? Didn't you see how he just vanished as he exceeded the speed of
light, and stopped reflecting it? _That ship was no ship of this solar
system!_"
"Where did he come from then?"
"God only knows, but it's a long, long way off."