Spacehounds of IPC Part 13

Inside the _Forlorn Hope_ the ma.s.s of metal was urged into the shop, where Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor, before he took off his s.p.a.ce-suit.

"Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is getting positively _cold_!" Nadia exclaimed.

"Sure. Anything that comes in from s.p.a.ce is cold, even if it's been out only a few minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for n.o.body knows how many million years. It didn't get much heat from the sun except at perihelion, you know, so it's probably somewhere around minus two hundred and sixty degrees now. I'll have to throw a heater on it for half an hour before we can touch it. And since this is more or less new stuff to you, I'll caution you--don't try to touch anything that has just come in. That hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, even though they've been out only a little while. Before you touch anything, blow on it, like this, see? If your breath freezes solid on it, like that, don't touch it--it's cold."

Under the infra-beams of the heater, the ma.s.s of the metal was brought to room temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools.

Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavy goggles he watched the incandescent ma.s.s in a refractory crucible, in the heart of the induction furnace.

"What do you think you've got--what you want?"

"I don't know. It wasn't iron--it wouldn't hold a magnet. It's royal metal of some kind, I think. Base metals mostly melt at around fifteen hundred, and that crucible is still dry as a bone at better than seventeen."

"How are you going to separate out the tantalum and the others you want from the ones that you don't want?"

"I'm afraid that I'm not going to, very well," replied Stevens, with a wry grimace. "What I don't know about metallurgy would fill a library, and I'm probably the world's worst chemist. However, by a series of successive liquations, I hope to separate out fractions that I can use. Platinum melts somewhere around seventeen-fifty, tantalum about twenty-nine hundred, and tungsten not until 'way up around thirty-three, or four hundred--and that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course, each fraction will probably be an alloy of one kind or another, but I think maybe I'll be able to make them do."

"But mayn't that whole chunk be a pure metal?"

"It's conceivable, but not probable. There, she's beginning to separate at just below eighteen hundred! Platinum group coming out now, I think--platinum, rhodium, iridium, and that gang, you know. While I'm doing this, you might be getting those five coils into exact resonance, if you want to."

"Sure I want to," and Nadia made her way across to the short-wave oscillator and set to work.

After an hour or so, bent over her delicate task, she began to twitch uneasily, then shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

"What's the idea of staring at me so?" she broke out suddenly. "How do you expect me to tune these things up if you...." She stopped abruptly, mouth open in amazement, as she turned toward Stevens. He had not been looking at her, but he turned a surprised face from his own task at the sound of her voice. "Excuse me, please, Steve. I don't know what's the matter with me--must be getting jumpy, I guess."

"I wish that was all, but it isn't!" Face suddenly grim and hard, Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and shot the beam out into s.p.a.ce. "There's an answer, but that isn't it. You're a fine-tuned instrument yourself, ace, and you've detected something.... I thought so! There's the answer--the guy that was looking at you!"

Plainly there was revealed upon the plate a small, spherical s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p, very like the one that had attacked and destroyed the _Arcturus_. After Nadia had taken one glance at it, Stevens shut off the power and leaped out into the shop. He closed all the bulkhead doors and air-break openings, then closed and secured the ma.s.sive insulating door of the lifeboat in which they had made their headquarters. Then, after they had again put on the s.p.a.ce-suits they had taken off such a short time before, he extinguished all the lights and hooded the communicator screen before he ventured again to glance out into the void.

"If I had a brain in my head, instead of the pint of bean soup I've got up there, we'd have worn these when they cut up the _Arcturus_, and saved us a lot of mental wear and tear," he remarked. "They were right there in the lockers all the time, and I knew it!"

"Well, we got away, anyway. You couldn't be expected to think of everything at once. We didn't have much time, you know."

"No, but I should have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway.

Wonder how they found us? Did they detect us, or did they come out to this comet after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally?

However, it all works out the same--they're apparently out to get us.

I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting back at a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while they're getting a square meal ... here they come!"

The enemy sphere launched its flaming plane of force, and the _Forlorn Hope_ shuddered in every plate and member as its apex was severed cleanly under the impact. Instantly Stevens hurled his only weapons.

Flaming ultra-violet and dully glowing infra-red, the twin beams lashed out; but their utmost force was of slight moment to the enormous power driving the enemy screens. Two circular spots of cherry red in s.p.a.ce were the only results of Stevens' attack, and the next fierce cut sheared away the two projectors and, incidentally, a full half of the fifty-inch armor of the leading edge.

"Then we're checking out now?" Nadia asked quietly, as the man's hands dropped from his useless controls. "I'm sorrier than I can say, lover.

But at least, I'm glad that I can go out with you," and her glorious eyes were s.h.i.+ning with unshed tears.

"Maybe, but snap out of it, girl--our hearts are still beating! We're not dead yet, and maybe we won't be. Perhaps they want to capture us alive, as they did before; if so, we may be able to hide out on them somewhere and pull off another escape. Things don't look very bright, I know, but we're not checking out until our numbers are actually run up!"

He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer, and stood tense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control room, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening; while the air shrieked outward into s.p.a.ce and their suits bulged suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While they were in midflight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way through the control board and through the spot upon which they had been standing a moment before. As they pa.s.sed the severed edge, en route into open spare, Stevens seized a metal brace and clung there, every nerve taut.

"Something funny here, Nadia," he said after a little, in a low tone.

"They should have made one more cut, to make us absolutely blind and helpless. As it is, they've clipped off all our projectors, so we can't move, but I think we've got the whole control compartment of number two lifeboat untouched. If so, we can look around, anyway. Let's go!"

Floating without effort from fragment to fragment, they made their way toward the section of their cruiser as yet undamaged. They found an airlock in working order, and were soon in the second lifeboat, where Stevens hastily turned on a communicator and peered out into s.p.a.ce.

"There they are! There's another stranger out there, too. They're fighting with her, now--that's probably why they didn't polish us off."

Steel-braced, clumsy helmets touching, the two Terrestrials stared spell-bound into the plate; watching while the insensately vicious intelligences within the sphere brought its every force to bear upon another and larger sphere which was now so close as to be plainly visible. Like a gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globe appeared--its smooth and highly-polished surface one enormous, perfect, spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw flash out that frightful plane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all too familiar, and saw it strike full upon the dazzling ball.

"This is awful, ace!" Stevens groaned. "They haven't got ray-screens, either, and without them they don't stand a chance. No possible substance can stand up under that beam. When they get done and turn back to us, we'll have to dive back to where we were."

But that brilliant mirror was not as vulnerable as Stevens had supposed.

The plane of force struck and clung, but could not penetrate it. Broken up into myriads of scintillating crystals of light, intersecting, multi-colored rays, and cascading flares of sparkling energy, the beam was reflected, thrown back, hurled away on all sides into s.p.a.ce in coruscating, blinding torrents. And neither was the monster globe inoffensive. The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, emit a flame-erupting something, and close as rapidly as it had opened. That something was a projectile, its propelling rockets fiercely aflame; as smoothly brilliant as its mother-s.h.i.+p and seemingly as impervious to the lethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, it received the full power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistible plane of force beat upon it; ultra-violet, infra-red, and heat rays enveloped it; there were hurled against it all the forces known to the scientific minds within that fiendishly destructive sphere.

Finally, only a scant few hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could not be shaken off. At every dodge and turn, steering rockets burst into furious activity and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing that she had at last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in mad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes were faster and all three of them struck her at once. There ensued an explosion veritably s.p.a.ce-racking in its intensity; a flash of incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all s.p.a.ce, subsiding into a vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about and attached itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the s.p.a.ce where had been the enemy sphere, there was nothing.

A slow-creeping pale blue rod of tangible force reached out from the great sphere, touched the wreckage of the _Forlorn Hope_, and pulled; gently, but with enormous power.

"Tractor beams again!" exclaimed Stevens, still at the plate.

"Everybody's got 'em but us, it seems."

"And we can't fight a bit any more, can we?"

"Not a chance--bows and arrows wouldn't do us much good. However, we may not need 'em. Since they fought that other crew, and haven't blown us up, they aren't active enemies of ours, and may be friendly. I haven't any idea who or what they are, since even our communicator ray can't get through that mirror, but it looks as though our best bet is to act peaceable and see if we can't talk to them in some way. Right?"

"Right." They stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw that the great sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that an indistinct figure stood in an open door, waving to them an unmistakable invitation to enter the strange vessel.

"Shall we, Steve?"

"Might as well. They've got us foul, and can take us if they want us.

Anyway, we'll need at least a week to fix us up any kind of driving power, so we can't run--and we probably couldn't get away from those folks if we had all our power. They haven't blown us up, and they could have done it easily enough. Besides, they act friendly, so we'd better meet them half way. Dive!"

Floating toward the open doorway, they were met by another rod of force, brought gently into the airlock, and supported upright beside the being who had invited them to visit him. Apparently an empty s.p.a.ce-suit stood there; a peculiarly-fitted suit of some partially transparent, flexible, gla.s.s-like material; towering fully a foot over the head of the tall Terrestrial. Closer inspection, however, revealed that there was something inside that suit--a shadowy, weirdly-transparent being, staring at them with large, black eyes. The door clanged shut behind them; they heard the faint hiss of inrus.h.i.+ng air, and the inner door opened; but their enveloping suits remained stretched almost as tightly as ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, and a little weight was granted them as the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p got under way. Stevens waved his arms vigorously at the stranger, pointing backward toward where he supposed their own craft to be. The latter waved an arm rea.s.suringly, pressed a contact, and a section of the wall suddenly became transparent. Through it Stevens saw with satisfaction that the _Forlorn Hope_ was not being abandoned; in the grip of powerful tractor beams, every fragment of the wreckage was following close behind them in their flight through s.p.a.ce.

Stevens and Nadia followed their guide along a corridor, through several doors, and into a large room, which at first glance seemed empty, but in which several of the peculiarly transparent people of the craft were lying about upon cus.h.i.+ons. They were undoubtedly human--but what humans!

Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel chests, topped by heads which, though really large, appeared insignificant because of the prodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears.

Their skins were a strikingly, livid, pale blue, absolutely devoid of hair; and their lidless eyes, without a sign of iris, were chillingly horrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil and ghastly, transparent blue eyeball.

As the two Terrestrials entered the room, the beings struggled to their feet and hurried laboriously away. Soon one of them returned, dressed in an insulating suit, and carrying three sets of head harnesses, connected by multiplex cables to a large box which he placed upon the floor.

He handed the headsets to the first officer, who in turn placed two of them at the feet of the Terrestrials, indicating to them that they were to follow his example in placing them upon their heads, outside the helmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation, and in spite of the powerful heaters of their suits, they felt a touch of frightful cold. The stranger turned a dial, and the two wanderers from Earth were instantly in full mental communication with Barkovis, the commander of a s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p of t.i.tan, the sixth satellite of Saturn!

"Well, I'll be ... say, what is this, anyway?" Steve exclaimed involuntarily, and Nadia smiled as Barkovis answered with a thought, clearer than any spoken words.

"It is a thought-exchanger. I do not know its fundamental mechanism, since we did not invent it and since I have had little time to study it. The apparatus, practically as you see it here, was discovered but a short time ago, in a small, rocket-propelled s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p which we found some distance outside of the orbit of Jupiter. Its source of power had been destroyed by the cold of outer s.p.a.ce, but re-powering it was, of course, a small matter. The crew of the vessel were all dead. They were, however, of human stock, and of a type adapted for life upon a satellite. I deduce, from your compact structure, your enormous atmospheric pressure, and your, to us, unbelievably high body temperature, that you must be planet-dwellers. I suppose that you are natives of Jupiter?"