Spacehounds of IPC Part 19

Slowly the day wore on, and the receiving sounder remained silent.

Supper was eaten as the sun dropped low and disappeared, but they felt no desire to sleep. Instead, they went out in front of the steel wall, where Stevens built a small campfire. Leaning back against the wall of their vessel, they fell into companionable silence, which was suddenly broken by Stevens.

"Nadia, I just had a thought. I'll bet four dollars I've wasted a lot of time. They'll certainly have automatic relays on Tellus, to save me the trouble of hunting for them, but like an idiot I never thought of it until just this minute, in spite of the speech I made you about them.

I'm going to change those directors right now."

"That's quite a job, isn't it?"

"No, only a few minutes."

"Do it in the morning; you've done enough for one day--maybe you've hit them already, any way."

They again became silent, watching Jupiter, an enormous moon some seven degrees in apparent diameter.

"Steve, I simply can't get used to such a prodigious moon! Look at the stripes, and look at that perfectly incredible...."

A gong sounded and they both jumped to their feet and raced madly into the _Hope_. The ultra-receiver had come to life and the sounder was chattering insanely--someone was sending with terrific speed, but with perfect definition and s.p.a.cing.

"That's Brandon's fist--I'd know his style anywhere," Stevens shouted, as he seized notebook and pencil.

"Tell me what it says, quick, Steve!" Nadia implored.

"Can't talk--read it!" Stevens snapped. His hand was flying over the paper, racing to keep up with the screaming sounder.

"...ymede all x stevens ganymede all x stevens ganymede all x placing and will keep sirius on plane between you and tellus circle fifteen forty north going tellus first send full data spreading beam to cover circle fifteen forty quince suggests possibility this message intercepted and translated personally I think such translation impossible and that he is wilder than a hawk but just in case they should be supernaturally intelligent...."

Stevens stopped abruptly and stared at the vociferous sounder.

"Don't stop to listen--keep on writing!" commanded Nadia.

"Can't," replied the puzzled mathematician. "It doesn't make sense. It sounds intelligent--it's made up of real symbols of some kind or other, but they don't mean a thing to me."

"Oh, I see--he's sending mush on purpose. Read the last phrase!"

"Oh, sure--'mush' is right," and with no perceptible break the signals again became intelligible.

"... if they can translate that they are better scholars than we are signing off until hear from you brandon."

The sounder died abruptly into silence and Nadia sobbed convulsively as she threw herself into Stevens' arms. The long strain over, the terrible uncertainty at last dispelled, they were both incoherent for a minute--Nadia glorifying the exploits of her lover, Stevens crediting the girl herself and his two fellow-scientists with whatever success had been achieved. A measure of self-control regained, Stevens cut off his automatic sender, changed the adjustments of his directors and cut in his manually operated sending key.

"What waves are you using, anyway?" asked Nadia, curiously. "They must be even more penetrating than Roeser's Rays, to have such a range, and Roeser's Rays go right through a planet without even slowing up."

"They're of the same order as Roeser's--that is, they're sub-electronic waves of the fourth order--but they're very much shorter, and hence more penetrating. In fact, they're the shortest waves yet known, so short that Roeser never even suspected their existence."

"Suppose there's a Jovian s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p out there somewhere that intercepts our beams. Couldn't they locate us from it?"

"Maybe, and maybe not--we'll just have to take a chance on that. That goes right back to what we were talking about this morning. They might be anywhere, so the chance of hitting one is very small. It isn't like hitting the _Sirius_, because we knew within pretty narrow limits where to look for her, and even at that we had to hunt for her for half a day before we hit her. We're probably safe, but even if they should have located us, we'll probably be able to hide somewhere until the _Sirius_ gets here. Well, the quicker I get busy sending the dope, the sooner they can get started."

"Tell them to be sure and bring me all my clothes they can find, a gallon of perfume, a barrel of powder, and a carload of Delray's Fantasie chocolates--I've been a savage so long that I want to wallow in luxury for a while."

"I'll do that--and I want some real cigarettes!"

Stevens first sent a terse, but complete account of everything that had happened to the _Arcturus_, and a brief summary of what he and Nadia had done since the cutting up of the IPV. The narrative finished, he launched into a prolonged and detailed scientific discussion of the enemy and their offensive and defensive weapons. He dwelt precisely and at length upon the functioning of everything he had seen. Though during the long months of their isolation he had been too busy to do any actual work upon the weapons of the supposed Jovians, yet his keen mind had evolved many mathematical and physical deductions, hypotheses, and theories, and these he sent out to the _Sirius_, concluding:

"There's all the dope I can give you. Figure it out, and don't come at all until you can come loaded for bear; they're bad medicine. Call us occasionally, to keep us informed as to when to expect you, but don't call too often. We don't want them locating you, and if they should locate us through your ray or ours, it would be just too bad. So-long.

Stevens and Newton."

Nadia had insisted upon staying up and had been brewing pot after pot of her subst.i.tutes for coffee while he sat at the key; and it was almost daylight when he finally shut off the power and arose, his right arm practically paralyzed from the unaccustomed strain of hours of telegraphing.

"Well, sweetheart, that's that!" he exclaimed in relief. "Brandon and Westfall are on the job. Nothing to do now but wait, and study up on our own account on those Jovians' rays. This has been one long day for us, though, little ace, and I suggest that we sleep for about a week!"

CHAPTER VIII

Callisto to the Rescue

All humanity of Callisto, the fourth major satellite of Jupiter, had for many years been waging a desperate and apparently hopeless defense against invading hordes of six-limbed beings. Every city and town had long since been reduced to level fields of lava by the rays of the invaders. Every building and every trace of human civilization had long since disappeared from the surface of the satellite. Far below the surface lay the city of Zbardk, the largest of the few remaining strongholds of the human race. At one portal of the city a torpedo-shaped, stubby-winged rocket plane rested in the carriage of a catapult. Near it the captain addressed briefly the six men normally composing his crew.

"Men, you already know that our cruise today is not an ordinary patrol.

We are to go to One, there to destroy a base of the hexans. We have perhaps one chance in ten thousand of returning. Therefore I am taking only one man--barely enough to operate the plane. Volunteers step one pace forward."

The six stepped forward as one man, and a smile came over the worn face of their leader as he watched them draw lots for the privilege of accompanying him to probable death. The two men entered the body of the torpedo, sealed the openings and waited.

"Free exits?" snapped the Captain of the Portal, and twelve keen-eyed observers studied minutely screens and instrument panels connected to the powerful automatic lookout stations beneath the rims of the widely separated volcanic craters from which their craft could issue into Callisto's somber night.

"No hexan radiation can be detected from Exit Eight," came the report.

The Captain of the Portal raised an arm in warning, threw in the guides, and the two pa.s.sengers were hurled violently backward, deep into their cus.h.i.+oned seats, as the catapult shot their plane down the runway. As the catapult's force was spent automatic trips upon the undercarriage actuated the propelling rockets and mile after mile, with rapidly mounting velocity, the plane sped through the tube. As the exit was approached, the tunnel described a long vertical curve, so that when the opening into the shaft of the crater was reached and the undercarriage was automatically detached, the vessel was projected almost vertically upward. Such was its velocity and so powerful was the liquid propellant of its rocket motors, that the eye could not follow the flight of the wars.h.i.+p as it tore through the thin layer of the atmosphere and hurled itself out into the depths of s.p.a.ce.

"Did we get away?" asked the captain, hands upon his controls and eyes upon his moving chart of s.p.a.ce.

"I believe so, sir," answered the other officer, at the screens of the six periscopic devices which covered the full sphere of vision. "No reports from the rim, and all screens blank." Once more a vessel had issued from the jealously secret city of Zbardk without betraying its existence to the hated and feared hexans.

For a time the terrific rocket motors continued the deafening roar of their continuous explosions, then, the desired velocity having been attained, they were cut out and for hours the good s.h.i.+p "Bzark" hurtled on through the void at an enormous but constant speed toward the distant world of One, which it was destined never to reach.

"Captain Czuv! Hexan radiation, coordinates twenty two, fourteen, area six!" cried the observer, and the commander swung his own telescopic finder into the indicated region. His hands played over course and distance plotters for a brief minute, and he stared at his results in astonishment.

"I never heard of a hexan traveling that way before," he frowned.

"Constant negative acceleration and in a straight line. He must think that we have been cleared out of the ether. Almost parallel to us and not much faster--even at this long range, it is an easy kill unless he starts dodging, as usual."

As he spoke, he snapped a switch and from a port under the starboard wing there shot out into s.p.a.ce a small package of concentrated destruction--a rocket-propelled, radio-controlled torpedo. The rockets of the tiny missile were flaming, but that flame was visible only from the rear and no radio beam was upon it. Czuv had given it precisely the direction and acceleration necessary to make it meet the hexan sphere in central impact, provided that sphere maintained its course and acceleration unchanged.

"Shall I direct the torpedo in the case the hexan s.h.i.+fts?" asked the officer.

"I think not. They can, of course, detect any wave at almost any distance, and at the first sign of radioactivity they would locate and destroy the bomb. They also, in all probability, would destroy us. I would not hesitate to attack them on that account alone, but we must remember that we are upon a more important mission than attacking one hexan s.h.i.+p. We are far out of range of their electro-magnetic detectors, and our torpedo will have such a velocity that they will have no time to protect themselves against it after detection. Unless they s.h.i.+ft in the next few seconds, they are lost. This is the most perfect shot I ever had at one of them, but one shot is all I dare risk--we must not betray ourselves."