_The Hawk Strikes_
No surprise showed on the Hawk's face, though the others were visibly
shaken. He, at the helm, merely nodded and continued with further
orders.
"Williams," he said to one of Leithgow's assistants, "get Thorpe and
go and dose Ku Sui with V-27. Give him plenty. Then both of you
station yourselves, ray guns in hand, outside his cabin. We'll take no
chances with him, gassed or not. Friday, open our radio receiver to
the general band. Just the receiver, not the mike.... Our speed,
Eliot?"
"Down to seven hundred, and falling steadily."
Carse went to the electelscope, after giving the controls over to Ban.
Squarely behind the _Sandra_, and within twenty-five miles, the
peanut-shaped body had come. It was an ominous and silent approach.
The _Sandra_ remained pinned by the purple ray for minutes while the
Hawk studied her aggressor. As he watched the asteroid, the others
watched him; Ban Wilson fidgety, Friday clenching and unclenching his
big hands. Eliot Leithgow with whitened face and shoulders that seemed
to have bowed a little.
The forward speed of the _Sandra_ decreased to four hundred miles an
hour, and still the Hawk studied the massive body behind....
A sputter sounded in the radio receiver. Carse turned away from the
electelscope and listened to the heavy Venusian voice that was
suddenly speaking to him from it.
"Carse, I've got you! You've seen our ray, of course, but have you
looked at your speed-indicator? You're caught--and this time you're
going to stay caught. You cannot possibly resist the magnetic ray I
have on you, and in a few minutes you will be drawn right into me. I
advise you to surrender peacefully. No tricks--though there's no trick
that could do you any good! Nothing! I have you this time!"
A frosty smile tightened the Hawk's lips.
"I was right, Eliot," he murmured. "The man behind the panel took the
asteroid to Lar Tantril. He is our opponent."
* * * * *
Those were his words, but he did nothing. He seemed content to stand
with cold, intent face looking back through the infra-red
electelscope. The _Sandra's_ speed sank to three hundred, two hundred
and soon a hundred, and the asteroid, which was of course also
decelerating, crept up remorselessly. Ban Wilson had every confidence
in the Hawk, but finally the inaction grew too much for him to bear.
"Jumping Jupiter, Carse!" he sputtered. "--aren't you going to do
anything? Use our rays! Try maneuvering to the side! Damn it, we're
just letting them take us!"
The adventurer might not have heard, for all the sign he gave. The
Earth-clock on the wall ticked on; seconds built minutes, and the
minutes passed. The asteroid was only ten miles astern.
"Eliot," said Carse quietly, "get me one of your infra-red glasses."
He took over the controls again. Carefully he varied the forward
repulsion and sent current to the side gravity-plates, and slowly the
_Sandra_ answered by rotating, longitudinally, reversing her position.
Still maintaining a slight and dwindling speed toward Earth, her bow
swung from that planet's eye-filling panorama and came to face,
instead, the invisible asteroid. When turned completely around, the
men in her control cabin looked through the bow windows right into
the brilliant cone of the purple ray.
Lar Tantril's voice again boomed from the broadcasting shell, and this
time it was harsh with anger.
"Try no tricks, Carse! I see what you intend. You plan to suddenly
_answer_ my ray, instead of continuing to resist it, and so drive
right past me and escape. But I warn you I have terrific power, and if
you move towards me of your own volition, I can burn you to a cinder
in three seconds, and I'll do it. You can't escape! If I have to
destroy Ku Sui, all right--but I'll get you!"
* * * * *
The Hawk strapped over his eyes the infra-red glasses Leithgow now
gave him.
Reversing the _Sandra's_ ends had neither increased nor decreased the
rate at which the asteroid's purple stream was bringing her closer.
Obviously the magnetic stream was being varied. The space-ship's
forward momentum merely continued to drop normally until the moment
came when she had no Earthward velocity at all; and then more quickly
she moved toward the restraining asteroid.
With his infra-red glasses, through the bow windows, Carse could now
see the massive body in full detail. There was the dome, a huge,
gleaming cup of transparent stuff now showing wisps of blue, from the
defensive web around it; and inside were the several buildings, and
minute black dots which were the figures of men. There was a great
number of them. The largest group was clustered inside one of the
large ship-size port-locks in the dome. The lock's outer door was
open, and it was from there that the purple ray seemed to originate.
Obviously the intention of the enemy was to draw the _Sandra_ right
in. Five miles now separated asteroid and ship.
Again the Venusian chief spoke.
"I warn you once more, Sparrow Hawk, try no tricks. You can see the
men I have here, but you can't see my ray projectors. They're hidden,
but they're centered on you, every one, and my hand's at the control
that fires them. They have terrific power, Carse. Better not attempt
anything!"
The Hawk switched on the extension microphone at his side. He said
levelly into it:
"Lar Tantril, I'll make a bargain with you: a favor for a favor."
"What?" shot from the loudspeaker.
"I will agree to surrender peaceably when you've drawn my ship inside
if, for your part, you promise to free Eliot Leithgow, who is aboard
with me, and the five patients on whom Ku Sui operated. If you don't
grant me that, I will oppose you to the last pull of my finger on
trigger."
"But, Carse--" the Master Scientist began, horrified: but his
expression of amazement faded when the slender man at the radio turned
his head and half-closed one eye in a wink.
"You will agree to that--and no tricks?" Tantril's voice repeated.
"I will agree to it. And as for tricks, what could I possibly try?
Your rays could burn through the maximum power of my web in three
seconds, as you say: I know it as well as you. I only wish there was a
chance to get out of your range in time."
"All right!" the Venusian replied decisively. "I agree. I'll release
Leithgow and the five patients. Keep away from the controls and I'll
draw you in."
* * * * *
Carse switched off the microphone.
"A hell of a lot Tantril's word is worth!" muttered Ban Wilson. Once
more, surprisingly, the Hawk winked. Friday was grinning now. For
once in his life he had guessed his master's strategy before the
others.
A mile and a half to the front lay the dome-end of the asteroid.
Perhaps nine hundred miles to the rear lay the tremendous mottled
curve of Earth with her dangerous upper layers of the stratosphere all
too close. In the very face of Earth, all three on a line, the ship
lay linked by a stream of purple to the great rough-hewn, errant
asteroid. Half the bulk of all three lay sharply outlined against the
black of space by the intense yellow light of the flaming distant sun.
The asteroid neared to a mile, then a half-mile. Hawk Carse said
curtly:
"Ban, when I give the word, put all the power we've got into our
defensive web. Load the generators; overload them; tax them to the
limit. That web must be as tough as possible for five seconds."
"Got you, Carse."
"You've--a trick?" ventured Leithgow timidly.
"I think I have, Eliot. Lar Tantril might have caught on when I turned
the ship, but unfortunately for him his brain is incapable of
proceeding past a certain point.... All right, Ban."
"Feel it!"
In answer to Ban's hands, the deck of the control cabin was literally
vibrating under the mounting speed of the generators in the
power-room. The generators could not stand that terrific overload
long: they would burn out. But Carse needed only a few seconds of it.
The asteroid was a quarter of a mile away, seen through the infra-red.
The dome loomed large.
"All right!" whispered Hawk Carse. "Hold on!"
With the words he unleashed the _Sandra's_ full acceleration.
* * * * *
It was a risk and a big one, but the Hawk had it calculated to a
fraction of a second, and so, without hesitation, he took the chance.
A little less than four seconds to reach his objective, he reckoned; a
little more than one second for Tantril to release the asteroid's
disintegrating rays as he had threatened; therefore about two and a
half seconds for the _Sandra_ to be exposed to those rays. The chance
that her defensive web could resist them for that long would decide
it.
From almost a standing start, the _Sandra_ swept ahead, generators
humming, her web a blue mist around her, acceleration at the full.
Straight down through the heart of the narrowing purple ray she sped,
a hurtling metallic projectile, hundreds of tons in mass, her stub bow
levelled dead at the dome.
After a second the asteroid bared its fangs.
A cone of brilliant orange flamed and washed around the _Sandra's_
bow, and a storm of soundless sparks engulfed her. She was caught in a
maw of fire, and held there for the remaining terrific seconds of her
wild forward dash. But the seconds passed; the hands of Hawk Carse
were delicate on her controls; and the _Sandra_, curving slightly
upward, struck, crashed, wrenched terribly in every joint; and then
the jolt and the protesting wrench and the spluttering sparks were
gone from her, and there was around her only the deep silence of
lifeless space.
At three hundred miles an hour the _Sandra_ had nicked the upper
plates of the dome and streaked on, unharmed!
It was not necessary now to use infra-red glasses to see the asteroid.
It was there in the visi-screen for naked eyes, but for seconds not
one of the men in the ship's control-cabin thought to look. The awful
acceleration and shock had dazed them. They had not known what was
coming, except Friday and the Hawk, and only the latter was able to
retain reasonable alertness. He, almost immediately after the impact,
cut down the load on the generators, and brought the _Sandra_ out of
her mad drive forward, rotating the ship until she was facing back
towards the asteroid. Then all of them looked through the bow windows,
and what they saw told the story in an instant.
"It's visible! See--the invisibility's gone!" cried Friday.
* * * * *
A score of miles away the body lay, fully revealed, its starboard half
gleaming hard and sharp in the sunlight. Cautiously the _Sandra_ drew
closer. Carse gave the controls to Ban and examined it carefully
through the electelscope, after removing the infra-red attachment.
He saw that the keel of the _Sandra_ had torn a great, mangled rent in
the dome and through this the air had rushed out. Space had taken
possession. The disintegrating rays which had been burning at the
_Sandra_ had been snapped off with the sheathing of invisibility; in
that one wild second of impact, all the asteroid's functioning
mechanism had been destroyed. Lar Tantril had not thought quite far
enough: he had not sealed the buildings air-tight against a possible
crashing of the dome, and for that reason alone he and his men had
gone down in full defeat under the drive of the Hawk.
Shreds of flotsam drifting and turning in space around the dome now
became visible--bits of wreckage hurled out from the tear, and also a
number of white, bloated things which once had been the bodies of men.
The outrushing tide of air had taken them along, and now they drifted,
shapeless, all of a kind, in the lifelessness of space.
"Merciful heaven!" whispered Eliot Leithgow, staring at the
desolation. "Gone! Just snuffed out!"
The Hawk took over again and brought and held the _Sandra_ in a
position a quarter of a mile above the now rapidly falling asteroid.
"They're all dead, I'm sure," he said in a voice hard and emotionless
as his graven face. "They must be, for the asteroid is now visible,
and that means that the doors of the power building were open. Inside
and out, all there is dead, machinery and men.... Still, it had to be
done. It was they or we. A variation of the trick we used to escape
from the dome before, Eliot; and Tantril of course didn't expect it
and protect himself as Ku Sui did that other time. It's all done
now--yes, its gravity-plates too, for see, it's turning."
"And fast!" murmured Friday.
The body was rotating around its longer axis at about twice the speed
of an Earth-watch's second hand. Now the dome was sliding under, out
of their sight, the craggy rock belly coming up to take its place.
Nine hundred miles away was Earth--rather, less than that, for the
body was now free to accept the tremendous gravity pull of the planet
so near. Soon it would plunge to destruction there....
* * * * *
A thought came to Carse, and he said:
"Perhaps Ku Sui would like to see what has become--"
On the last word he stopped and whirled around. His eyes were suddenly
intense and his face startled.
"I heard a hiss!" said Friday.
"You too? Then it was a port-lock!" Carse turned to the visi-screen.
"Look there!" he cried.
In the screen Earth made a titanic background against which, a
falling, dwindling figure in a clear-cut in the sunlight, gleamed
space-suit. Down it went, rapidly, even as they stared, until it hung
just off the also-falling asteroid. It was obviously preparing to
enter the dome.
"Take the helm, Ban, and watch him!" Carse ordered harshly, and ran
aft from the control cabin.
Leithgow and Friday, following at once, found him inside the open door
of Dr. Ku Sui's cabin, examining two figures stretched limp at his
feet. The men were Thorpe and Williams, who had been set to gas and
guard the Eurasian. Carse said:
"Both dead. Poison. Look at Thorpe's wrist."
On the right wrist of the dead man was a line of red, a scratch, and
swollen, discolored flesh was ugly around it. One cheek of Williams
bore a similar patch. Both had been armed with rayguns, but now they
were gone. Half to himself, the Hawk murmured:
"Yes, poison. It might have been in the ring. Everyone else was in the
control cabin. The men entered the door, Ku Sui was waiting--quick
death.... Well, I'm going after him."
Not understanding, still horrified by the contorted face of the man on
the deck, the other two gazed at the adventurer.
"But, Carse!" Leithgow broke out. "How can you? How can you
possibly--"
"He's gone back to the dome," the Hawk cut in frostily. "He can't make
it to Earth as he is now, for we'd see him and easily be able to pick
him up. No; he's got some reason for returning, to the dome. Something
important. He thinks he's escaped.... He's mistaken."
A shudder passed over Friday, for Hawk Carse's eyes had fallen on him,
and they were deadly.
"Let me by, Eliot," the man whispered. "This time he goes or I go, but
by the gods of space it'll be one of us!"