Spacehounds of IPC Part 18

But that one remaining vessel was to prove no such easy victim as had its sister s.h.i.+ps. Being six to one, and supposedly invincible, the squadron had been overconfident and had attacked carelessly, with only its crippling slicing beams instead of its more deadly weapons of total destruction; and so fierce and hard had been Stevens' counter-attack that five of its numbers had been destroyed before they realized what powerful armament was mounted by that apparently crude, helpless, and innocuous wedge. The sixth, however, was fully warned, and every resource at the command of its h.e.l.lish crew was now being directed against the _Forlorn Hope_.

Sheets, cones, and gigantic rods of force flashed and crackled. s.p.a.ce was filled with silent, devastating tongues of flame. The _Forlorn Hope_ was dragged about erratically as the sphere tried to dodge those hurtling torpedoes; tried to break away from the hawser of energy anchoring her so solidly to her opponent. But the linkage held, and closer and closer Stevens drove the fourfold menace of his frightful dirigible bombs. Pressor beams beat upon them in vain. Hard driven as those pushers were, they could find no footing, but were reflected at many angles by that untouchable mirror and their utmost force scarcely impeded the progress of the rocket-propelled missiles. Comparatively small as the projectiles were, however, they soon felt the effects of the prodigious beams of heat enveloping them, and torpedo after torpedo exploded harmlessly in s.p.a.ce as their mirrors warmed up and volatilized.

But for each bomb that was lost, Stevens launched another, and each one came closer to its objective than had its predecessor.

Made desperate by the failure of his every beam, the enemy commander thought to use material projectiles himself--weapons abandoned long since by his race as antiquated and inefficient, but a few of which were still carried by the older types of vessels. One such sh.e.l.l was found and launched--but in the instant of its launching Stevens' foremost bomb struck its mark and exploded. So close were the other three bombs, that they also let go at the shock; and the warlike sphere, hemmed in by four centers of explosions, flew apart--literally pulverized. Its projectile, so barely discharged, did not explode--it was loaded with material which could be detonated only by the warhead upon impact or by a radio signal.

It was, however, deflected markedly from its course by the force of the blast, so that instead of striking the _Forlorn Hope_ in direct central impact, its head merely touched the apex of the mirror-plated wedge.

That touch was enough. There was another appalling concussion, another blinding glare, and the entire front quarter of the terrestrial vessel had gone to join the shattered globes.

Between the point of explosion and the lifeboats there had been many channels of insulation, many bulkheads, many air-breaks, and compartment after compartment of acc.u.mulator cells. These had borne the brunt of the explosion, so that the control room was unharmed, and Stevens swung his communicator rapidly through the damaged portions of the vessels.

"How badly are we hurt, Steve--can we make it to Ganymede?"

Nadia was quietly staring over his shoulder into the plate, studying with him the pictures of destruction there portrayed as he flashed the projector from compartment to compartment.

"We're hurt--no fooling--but it might have been a lot worse," he replied, as he completed the survey. "We've lost about all of our acc.u.mulators, but we can land on our own beam, and landing power is all we want, I think. You see, we're drifting straight for where Ganymede will be, and we'd better cut out every bit of power we're using, even the heaters, until we get there. This lifeboat will hold heat for quite a while, and I'd rather get pretty cold than meet any more of that gang.

I figured eight hours just before they met us, and we were just about drifting then. I think it is safe to say seven hours blind."

"But can't they detect us anyway? They may have sent out a call, you know."

"If we aren't using any power for anything, their electr-omagnetics are the only things we'll register on, and they're mighty short-range finders. Even if they should get that close to us, they'll probably think we're meteoric, since we'll be dead to their other instruments.

Luckily we've got lots of air, so the chemical purifiers can handle it without power. I'll shut off everything and we'll drift it. Couldn't do much of anything, anyway--even our shop out there won't hold air. But we can have light. We've got acetylene emergency lamps, you know, and we don't need to economize on oxygen."

"Perhaps we'd better run in the dark. Remember what you told me about their possible visirays, and that you've got only two bombs left."

"All x; that would be better. If I forget it, remind me to blow up those before we hit the atmosphere of Ganymede, will you?" He opened all the power switches, and, every source of ethereal vibrations cut off, the _Forlorn Hope_ drifted slowly on, now appearing forlorn indeed.

Seven hours dragged past: seven age-long hours during which the two sat tense, expecting they knew not what, talking only at intervals and in subdued tones. Stevens then snapped on the communicator beam just long enough to take an observation upon Ganymede. Several such brief glimpses were taken; then, after a warning word to his companion, he sent out and exploded the nitrogen bombs. He then threw on the power, and the vessel leaped toward the satellite under full acceleration. Close to the atmosphere it slanted downward in a screaming, fifteen-hundred-mile drive; and soon the mangled wedge dropped down into the little canyon, which for so long had been "home."

"Well, colonel, home again!" Stevens exulted as he neutralized the controls. "There's that falls, our power plant, the catapults, 'n'

everything. Now, unless something interrupts us again; we'll run up our radio tower and give Brandon the long yell."

"How much more have you got to do before you can start sending?"

"Not an awful lot. Everything built--all I've got to do is a.s.semble it. I should be able to do it easily in a week. Hope nothing else happens--if I drag you into any more such messes as those we've just been getting out of by the skin of our teeth, I'll begin to wish that we had started out at first to drift it back to Tellus in the _Hope_.

Let's see how much time we've got. We should start shooting one day after an eclipse, so that we'll have five days to send. You see, we don't want to point our beam too close to Jupiter or to any of the large satellites, because the enemy might live there and might intercept it.

We had an eclipse yesterday--so one week from today, at sunrise, I start shooting."

"But Earth's an evening star now; you can't see it in the morning."

"I'm not going to aim at Tellus. I'm shooting at Brandon, and he's never there for more than a week or two at a stretch. They're prowling around out in s.p.a.ce somewhere almost all the time."

"Then how can you possibly hope to hit them?"

"It may be quite a job of hunting, but not as bad as you might think.

They probably aren't much, if any, outside the orbit of Mars, and they usually stay within a couple of million kilometers or so of the Ecliptic, so we'll start at the sun and shoot our beam in a spiral to cover that field. We ought to be able to hit them inside of twelve hours, but if we don't, we'll widen our spiral and keep on trying until we do hit them."

"Heavens, Steve! Are you planning on telegraphing steadily for days at a time?"

"Sure, but not by hand, of course--I'll have an automatic sender and automatic pointers."

Stevens had at his command a very complete machine-shop, he had an ample supply of power, and all that remained for him to do was to a.s.semble the parts which he had built during the long journey from t.i.tan to Ganymede.

Therefore, at sunrise of the designated day, he was ready, and, with Nadia hanging breathless over his shoulder, he closed the switch, a toothed wheel engaged a delicate interrupter, and a light sounder began its strident chatter.

"Ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven..." endlessly the message was poured out into the ether, carried by a tight beam of ultra-vibrations and driven by forces sufficient to propel it well beyond the opposite limits of the orbit of Mars.

"What does it say? I can't read code."

Stevens translated the brief message, but Nadia remained unimpressed.

"But it doesn't say anything!" she protested. "It isn't addressed to anybody, it isn't signed--it doesn't tell anybody anything about anything."

"It's all there, ace. You see, since the beam is moving sidewise very rapidly at that range and we're shooting at a small target, the message has to be very short or they won't get it all while the beam's on 'em--it isn't as though we were broadcasting. It doesn't need any address, because n.o.body but the _Sirius_ can receive it--except possibly the Jovians. They'll know who's sending it without any signature. It tells them that Ganymede wants to receive a message on the ultra-band centering on forty-seven thousandths. Isn't that enough?"

"Maybe. But suppose some of them live right here on Ganymede--you'll be shooting right through the ground all night--or suppose that even if they don't live here, that they can find our beam some way? Or suppose that Brandon hasn't got his machine built yet, or suppose that it isn't turned on when our beam pa.s.ses them, or suppose they're asleep then?

A lot of things might happen."

"Not so many, ace--your first objection is the only one that hasn't got more holes in it than a sieve, so I'll take it first. Since our beam is only a meter in diameter here and doesn't spread much in the first few million kilometers, the chance of direct reception by the enemy, even if they do live here on Ganymede, is infinitesimally small. But I don't believe that they live here--at least, they certainly didn't land on this satellite. As you suggest, however, it is conceivable that they may have detector screens delicate enough to locate our beam at a distance; but since in all probability that means a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, I think it highly improbable. We've got to take the same risk anyway, no matter what we do, whenever we start to use any kind of driving power, so there's no use worrying about it. As for your last two objections, I know Brandon and I know Westfall. Brandon will have receivers built that will take in any wave possible of propagation, and Westfall, the cautious old egg, will have them running twenty-four hours a day, with automatic recorders, finders, and everything else that Brandon can invent--and believe me, sweetheart, that's a lot of stuff!"

"It's wonderful, the way you three men are," replied Nadia thoughtfully, reading between the lines of Stevens' utterance. "They knew that you were on the _Arcturus_, of course--and they knew that if you were alive you'd manage in some way to get in touch with them. And you, away out here after all this time, are superbly confident that they are expecting a call from you. That, I think, is one of the finest things I ever heard of."

"They're two of the world's best--absolutely." Nadia looked at him, surprised, for he had not seen anything complimentary to himself in her remark. "Wait until you meet them. They're men, Nadia--real men. And speaking of meeting them--please try to keep on loving me after you meet Norm Brandon, will you?"

"Don't be a simp!" her brown eyes met his steadily. "You didn't mean that--you didn't even say it, did you?"

"Back it comes, sweetheart! But knowing myself and knowing those two...."

"Stop it! If Norman Brandon or Quincy Westfall had been here instead of you, or both of them together, we'd have been here from now on--we wouldn't even have gotten away from the Jovians!"

"Now it's your turn to back water, guy!"

"Well, maybe, a little--if both of them were here, they ought to equal you in some things. Brandon says himself that he and Westfall together make one scientist--Dad says he says so."

"You don't want to believe everything you hear. Neither of them will admit that he knows anything or can do anything--that's the way they are."

"Dad has told me a lot about them--how they've always been together ever since their undergraduate days. How they studied together all over the world, even after they'd been given all the degrees loose. How they even went to the other planets to study--to Mars, where they had to live in s.p.a.ce-suits all the time, and to Venus, where they had to take ultra-violet treatments every day to keep alive. How they learned everything that everybody else knew and then went out into s.p.a.ce to find out things that n.o.body else ever dreamed of. How you came to join them, and what you three have done since. They're fine, of course--but they aren't _you_," she concluded pa.s.sionately.

"No, thank Heaven! I know you love me, Nadia, just as I love you--you know I never doubted it. But you'll like them, really. They're a wonderful team. Brandon's a big brute, you know--fully five centimeters taller than I am, and he weighs close to a hundred kilograms--and no lard, either. He's wild, impetuous, always jumping at conclusions and working out theories that seem absolutely ridiculous, but they're usually sound, even though impractical. Westfall's the practical member--he makes Norm pipe down, pins him down to facts, and makes it possible to put his hunches and wild flashes of genius into workable form. Quince is a...."

"Now _you_ pipe down! I've heard you rave _so_ much about those two--I'd lots rather rave about you, and with more reason. I wish that sounder would start sounding."

"Our first message hasn't gone half way yet. It takes about forty minutes for the impulse to get to where I think they are, so that even if they got the first one and answered it instantly, it would be eighty minutes before we'd get it. I sort of expect an answer late tonight, but I won't be disappointed if it takes a week to locate them."

"I will!" declared the girl, and indeed, very little work was done that day by either of the castaways.