 CHAPTER VII The heavy cruiser Chicago hung motionless in space, thousands of miles distant from the warring fleets of spaceships so viciously attacking and so stubbornly defending the planetoid of the enemy. In the captain's sanctum, Lyman Cleveland crouched tensely above his ultracameras, his sensitive fingers touching lightly their micrometric dials. His body was rigid, his face was set and drawn, only his eyes moved, flashing back and forth between the observation plates and smoothly running rolls which were feeding into the cameras, the hardened steel tapes upon which were being magnetically recorded, the frightful scenes of carnage and destruction there held. Silent and bitterly absorbed, though surrounded by staring officers whose fervent, almost unconscious cursing was prayerful in its intensity, the Vizieray expert kept his ultra-instruments upon that awful struggle to its dire conclusion. Flawlessly those instruments noted every detail of the destruction of Roger's fleet, of the transformation of the armada of triplanetary into an unknown fluid, and finally, of the dissolution of the gigantic planetoid itself. Then furiously Cleveland drove his beams against the crimsonly opaque obscurity into which the peculiar, viscous stream of substance was disappearing. Time after time he applied his every watt of power, with no result. A vast volume of space, roughly ellipsoidal in shape, was closed to him by forces entirely beyond his experience or comprehension. But suddenly, while his rays were still trying to pierce that impenetrable murk, it disappeared instantly and without warning the illimitable infinity of space once more lay revealed upon his plates and his beams flashed on and on through the void unimpeded. Back to tell us, sir, the Chicago's captain broke the strain silence. I wouldn't say so if I had the say. Cleveland, baffled and frustrated, straightened up and shut off his cameras. We should report back as soon as possible, of course, but there seems to be a lot of wreckage out there yet, that we can't photograph in detail at this distance. A close study of it might help us a lot in understanding what they did and how they did it. I'd say that we should get close-ups of whatever is left and do it right away before it gets scattered all over space, but of course I can't give you orders. You can, though. The captain made surprising answer. My orders are that you are in command of this vessel. In that case we will proceed at full emergency acceleration to investigate the wreckage. Captain replied, and the cruiser, sole survivor of triplanetary's supposedly invincible force, shot away with every projector delivering its maximum blast. As the scene of the disaster was approached, there was revealed upon the plates a confused mass of debris, a mass whose individual units were apparently moving at random, yet which was, as a whole, still following the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts, structural members, furniture, flotsam of all kinds, and everywhere were the bodies of men. Some were encased in space suits, and it was to these that the rescuers turned first. Space-hardened veterans, though the men of the Chicago were, they did not care even to look at the others. Strangely enough, however, not one of the floating figures spoke or moved, and space-line men were hurriedly sent out to investigate. All dead—quickly the dread report came back. Been dead a long time. The armours all stripped off the suits, and the generators and the other apparatus are all shot. Something funny about it, too. None of them seem to have been touched, but the machinery of the suits seemed to be about half of it missing. I've got it all on the spool, sir. Cleveland, his close-up survey of the wreckage finished, turn to the captain. What they've just reported checks up with what I've photographed everywhere. I've got an idea of what might have happened, but it's so dizzy that I'll have to have a lot of reinforcement before I'll believe it myself. But you might have them bring in a few of the armoured bodies, a couple of those switchboards and panels floating around out there, and half a dozen miscellaneous pieces of junk, the nearest things they can get hold of whatever they happen to be. Then back to tell us at maximum. Right, back to tell us as fast as we can possibly go there. While the Chicago hurtled through space at full power, Cleveland and the ranking officers of the vessel grouped themselves about the salvaged wreckage. Familiar with space wrecks as were they all, none of them had ever seen anything like the material before them. For every part and instrument was weirdly and meaninglessly disintegrated. There were no breaks, no marks of violence, and yet nothing was intact. Boatholes stared empty, cores, shielding cases and needles had disappeared. The vital parts of every instrument hung awry. Disorganization reigned rampant and supreme. I never imagined such a mess. The captain said after a long and silent study of the objects, if you have any theory to cover that, Cleveland, I would like to hear it. I want you to notice something first, the Vizieray expert replied, but don't look for what's there. Look for what isn't there. Well, the armour's gone. So are the shielding cases, shafts, spindles, the housings, and stems. The captain's voice died away as his eyes raced over the collection. Why? Everything that was made of wood, bakelite, copper aluminum, silver, bronze, or anything but steel hasn't been touched, and every bit of steel is gone. But that doesn't make sense. What does it mean? I don't know yet. Cleveland replied slowly. But I'm afraid that there's more and worse. He opened a spacesuit reverently, revealing the face, a face calm and peaceful, but utterly, sickeningly white. Still reverently, he made a deep incision in the brawny neck, severing the jugular vein, then went on soberly. You never imagined such a thing as white blood, either, but it all checks up. Someway, somehow, every particle, probably every atom, of free or combined iron in this whole volume of space, was made off with. Huh? How come? And above all, why? From the amazed and staring officers. You know as much as I do, grimly, ponderingly. If it were not for the fact that there are solid asteroids of iron out beyond Mars, I would say that somebody wanted iron badly enough to wipe out the fleets and the planetoid to get it. But anyway, whoever they were, carried enough power so that our armament didn't bother them at all. They simply took the metal they wanted and went away with it, so fast that I couldn't trace them with an ultra-beam. There's only one thing plain, and that's so plain that it scares me stiff. This whole affair spells intelligence with a capital I, and that intelligence is anything but friendly. As for me, I want to get Fred Rautabusch at work on this soon. Think I'll hurry it up a little. He stepped over to his ultra-projector and called the terrestrial headquarters of the TSS. Sam's his face soon appeared upon his screen. We got it all, Virgil, he reported. It's something extraordinary, bigger, wider, and deeper than any of us dreamed. It may be urgent, too, so I think I better shoot the pictures in on the ultra-wave and save a few days. Fred has a tele-magneto recorder there that he can synchronize with this camera outfit easily enough. Right? Right. Good work, Lyman. Thanks. Came back terse-approval in appreciation, and soon the steel tapes were again flashing between the feed-rolls. This time, however, their varying magnetic charges were modulating an ultra-wave so that every detail of that calamitous battle of the void was being screened and recorded in the innermost private laboratory of the triplanetary secret service. Eager though he naturally was to join his fellow scientists, Cleveland did not waste his time during the long but uneventful journey back to Earth. There was much to study, many improvements to be made in his comparatively crude first ultra-camera. Then, too, there were long conferences with Sam's, and particularly with Rautabusch, the mathematical physicist. Use was the task of solving the riddles of the energies and weapons of the Nevians. Thus it did not seem long before green terra grew large beneath the flying sphere of the Chicago. Going to have to circle at once, aren't you? Cleveland asked the chief pilot. He had been watching that officer closely for minutes, admiring the delicacy and precision with which the great vessel was being maneuvered preliminary to entering the Earth's atmosphere. Yes, the pilot replied. We had to come in with as short as possible time, and that meant a velocity here that we can't check without a spiral. However, even at that we saved a lot of time. You can save quite a bit more, though, by having a rocket plane come out to meet us somewhere around fifteen or twenty thousand kilometers, depending upon where you want to land. With their power-to-mass ratio they can match our velocity and still make the drop direct. Guess I'll do that. Thanks. And the operative called his chief, only to learn that his suggestion had already been acted upon. We beat you to it, Lyman. Sam smiled. The silver sliver is out there now, looping to match your course, acceleration and velocity at twenty-two thousand kilometers. You'll be ready to transfer? I'll be ready. And the quartermaster's ex-clerk went to his quarters and packed his dunnage-bag. In due time the long slender body of the rocket plane came into view, creeping down upon the spaceship from above, and Cleveland bade his friends goodbye. Donning a spacesuit he stationed himself in the starboard airlock. Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened, and he glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket plane which, Keele-Port's fiercely aflame, was breaking her terrific speed to match the slower pace of the gigantic ship of war. Shaped like a toothpick, needle pointed for an aft, with ultra-stubby wings and veins, with flush-set rocket-ports everywhere, built of a lustrous silvery alloy of noble and almost infusible metals, such was the private speedboat of the chief of the TSS. The fastest thing known, whether in planetary air, the stratosphere, or the vacuous depth of interplanetary space, her first flashing trial spins had won her the nickname of the Silver Sliver. She had had a more formal name, but that title had long since been buried in the departmental files. Lower and slower dropped the Silver Sliver, her rockets flaming even brighter, until her slender length lay level with the airlock door. Then her blasting discharges subsided to the power necessary to match exactly the Chicago's deceleration. "'Ready to cut, Chicago. Give me a three-second call,' snapped from the pilot room of the sliver. "'Ready to cut,' the pilot of the Chicago replied. "'Seconds. Three. Two. One. Cut!' At the last word the power of both vessels was instantly cut off, and everything in them became weightless. In the tiny airlock of the slender craft crouched a space-line man with coiled cable in readiness, but he was not needed. As the flaring exhaust ceased, Cleveland swung out his heavy bag and slept lightly off into space, and in a right line he floated directly into the open doorway of the rocket plane. The door clang shut behind him, and in a matter of moments he stood in the control room of the racer, divested of his armor and shaking hands with his friend and co-laborer, Frederick Rattabush. "'Well, Fred, what do you know?' Cleveland asked, as sin's greetings have been exchanged. "'How do the various reports dovetail together? I know that you couldn't tell me anything on the wave, but there's no danger of eavesdroppers here.' "'You can't tell,' Rattabush soberly replied. "'We're just beginning to wake up to the fact that there are a lot of things we don't know anything about. Better wait until we're back at the hill. We have a full set of ultrascreens around there now. There's a couple of other good reasons, too. It would be better for both of us to go over the whole thing with Virgil, from the ground up. And we can't do any more talking, anyway. Our orders are to get back there at maximum, and you know what that means aboard the sliver. Strap yourself solid in that shock absorber there, and here's a pair of earplugs. When the sliver really cuts loose, it means a rough party all right. Cleveland ascended, snapping about his body the heavy spring straps of his deeply cushioned seat. But I'm just as anxious to get back to the hill as anybody can be to get me there. All set.' Rattabush waved his hand at the pilot, and the purring whisper of the exhaust changed instantly to a deafening, continuous explosion. The men were pressed deeply into their shock absorbing chairs as the silver sliver spun around her longitudinal axis and darted away from the Chicago, with such a tremendous acceleration that the spherical worship seemed to be standing still in space. In due time the calculated midpoint was reached, the slim space plane rolled over again, and mad acceleration now reversed, rushed on toward the earth, but with constantly diminishing speed. Finally a measurable atmospheric pressure was encountered, the needle-prow dipped downward, and the silver sliver shot forward upon her tiny wings and veins, nose rockets now drumming in staccato thunder. Her metal grew hot, dull red, bright red, yellow, blinding white, but it neither melted nor burned. The pilot's calculations had been sound, and though the limiting point of safety of temperature was reached and steadily held, it was not exceeded. As the density of the air increased, so decreased the velocity of the man-made meteorite. So it was that a dazzling lance of fire sped high over Seattle, lower over cocaine, and hurled itself eastward a furiously flaming arrow, slanting downward in a long, screaming dive toward the heart of the Rockies. As the now rapidly cooling gray hound of the skies passed over the western ranges of the Bitter Roots, it became apparent that her goal was a fast, flat-topped and conical mountain, shrouded in livid light, a mountain whose height awed even its stupendous neighbors. While not artificial, the hill had been altered markedly by the tri-planetary engineers who had built into it the headquarters of the Secret Service. Its mile-wide top was a jointless expanse of gray armor steel. The steep, smooth surface of the truncated cone was a continuation of the same immensely thick sheet of metal. No known vehicle could climb that smooth, hard, forbidding slope of steel. No known projectile could mar that armor. No known craft could even approach the hill without detection. Could not approach it at all, in fact, for it was constantly enclosed in a vast hemisphere of lament, violet flame through which neither material substance nor destructive ray could pass. As the silver sliver, crawling along at a bare three hundred miles an hour, approached that transparent, brilliantly violet wall of destruction, a violet light filled her control room and as suddenly went out, flashing on and off again and again. "'Giving us the once over, eh?' Cleveland asked. "'That is something new, isn't it, Fred?' "'Yes, it's a high-powered, ultra-wave spy,' wrote Abouche replied. "'The light is simply a warning which can be carried if desired. It can also carry voice and vision.' "'Like this,' Sam's voice interrupted from the powerful dynamic speaker upon the pilot's panel, and his clear-cut face appeared upon the television screen. "'I don't suppose, Fred thought to mention it, but this is one of his inventions of the last few days. We are just trying it out on you. It doesn't mean a thing, though, as far as the sliver is concerned. Come ahead.' A circular opening appeared in the wall of force, an opening which disappeared as soon as the plane had darted through it, and at the same time her landing cradle rose into the air through a great trap-door. Slowly and gracefully the space plane settled downward into that cushioned embrace. Then cradle and nestled sliver sank from view, and, turning smoothly upon mighty trunnions, the plug of armor drove solidly back into its place in the metal pavement of the mountain's lofty summit. The cradle elevator dropped rapidly, coming to rest many levels down in the heart of the hill, and Cleveland and Roudabouche leaped lightly out of their transport, through her still hot outer walls. A door opened before them, and they found themselves in a large room of full daylight illumination, the anti-room of the private office of Virgil Sam's. Chiefs of departments sat at their desks, concentrated upon problems or at ease, according to the demands of the moment. Televisit types and recorders flashed busily but silently. Calmly efficient men and women went wantedly about the all-embracing business of triplanetary's space-pervading secret service. Right away, Norma, Roudabouche paused briefly before the desk of the Chief's private secretary, but even before he had spoken she had pressed a button, and the door behind her swung wide. You two do not need to be announced. The attractive young woman smiled. Go right in. Sam's met them at the door eagerly, shaking hands particularly vigorously with Cleveland. Congratulations on that camera, Lyman! He exclaimed. You did a wonderful piece of work on that. Help yourselves to smokes and sit down. There are a lot of things we want to talk over. Your pictures carried most of the story, but they would have left us pretty much at sea without Costigan's reports. But, as it was, Fred here and his crew worked out most of the answers from the dope the two of you got, and what few they haven't got yet they soon will have. Nothing new on Conway? Cleveland was almost afraid to ask the question. No. A shadow came over Sam's face. I'm afraid. But I'm hoping it's only that those creatures, whatever they are, have taken him so far away that he can't reach us. They certainly are so far away that we can't reach them, Roudabouche volunteered. We can't even get their ultrawave interference anymore. Yes, that's a hopeful sign, Sam's went on. I hate to think of Conway Costigan checking out. Their fellows was a real observer. He was the only man I have ever known who combined the two qualities of the perfect witness. He could actually see everything he looked at and could report it truly to the last least detail. Take all this stuff, for instance, especially their ability to transform iron into a fluid allotrope, and in that form to use its intra-atomic energy as power. Something brand new, unheard of, except in the ravings of imaginative fiction. And yet he described their converters and projectors so minutely, that Fred was able to work out the underlying theory in three days, and to tie it in with our own supership. My first thought was that we'd have to rebuild it iron-free. But Fred showed me my error. You found it first yourself, of course. It wouldn't do any good to make the ship non-ferrous, unless you could so change our blood chemistry that we could get along without hemoglobin. And that would be quite a feat," Cleveland agreed. Then, too, our most vital electrical machinery is built around iron cores. No, we'll have to develop a screen for those forces. Screens, rather, so powerful that they can't drive anything through them. We have been working along these lines ever since you reported, Rado Busch said. And we're beginning to see light. And in that same connection it's no wonder that we couldn't handle our supership. We had some good ideas, but they were wrongly applied. However, things look quite promising now. We have that transformation of iron all worked out in theory, and as soon as we get a generator going, we can straighten out everything else in short order. And think what that unlimited power means. All the power we want. Power enough even to try out such hitherto purely theoretical possibilities as the neutralization of gravity, and even of the inertia of matter. Hold on, protested Sams. You certainly can't do that. Inertia is, must be, a basic attribute of matter and surely cannot be done away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything like that. Fred, I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too. Don't worry about us, Chief. Rado Busch replied with a smile. If you will tell me what matter is fundamentally, I may agree with you. No? Well then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to do a lot of things that nobody ever thought of doing before. Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be interrupted by the voice of the Secretary. Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Sams, but some things have come up that you will have to handle. Nobos is calling from out near Mars. He has caught the Endymion and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported for Venus after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintents into Thaleron Swap. They crashed him there, but he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But Nobos is on now. What do you want him to do about the Endymion? Tell him to... No. Put him on here. I'd better tell him myself. Sams directed, and his face hardened in ruthless decision as the horny, misshapen face of the Martian lieutenant appeared upon the screen. What do you think, Nobos? Shall we come to trial or not? No. I don't think so either. It is better that a few gangsters should disappear in space, then run the risk of another uprising. See to it. Right. The screen darkened, and Sams spoke to his secretary. Put Milton and Fletcher on whenever their rays come in. He then turned to his guests. We've covered the ground quite thoroughly. Goodbye. I wish I could go with you, but I'll be pretty well tied up for the next week or two. Tied up. Doesn't half express it. Rodebusch remarked as the two scientists walked along a corridor toward an elevator. He probably is the busiest man on the three planets. As well as the most powerful, Cleveland supplemented, and very few men could use his power as fairly. But he's welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. I'd have the pink phantods for a month if I had to do only once what he's just done, and to him it's just part of a day's work. You mean the endemian? What else could he do? Nothing. That's just what I'm talking about. It had to be done, since bringing them to trial would probably mean killing half the people of Morsica. But at the same time, it's a ghastly thing to have to order a job of deliberate, cold-blooded, and illegal murder. You're right, of course, but you would— He broke off unable to put his thoughts into words. For while inarticulate, men-like, concerning their deepest emotions, in both men was ingrained the code of their organization, both knew that to every man chosen for it the service was everything, himself nothing. But enough of that. We'll have plenty of grief of our own right here. Rodebusch changed the subject abruptly as they stepped into a vast room almost filled by the immense bulk of the Boise, the sinister spaceship which, although never flown, had already lined with black so many pages of triplanetary's roster. She was now, however, the center of a furious activity. Men swarmed over her and threw her in the orderly confusion of a fiercely driven but carefully planned program of reconstruction. I hope your dope is right, Fred. Cleveland called, as the two sides separated, to go to their respective laboratories. If it is, we'll make a perfect lady out of this unmanageable man-killer yet. The supership is launched. After weeks of ceaseless work, during which was lavished upon her every resource of mind and material afforded by three planets, the Boise was ready for her maiden flight. As nearly ready, that is, as the thought and labor of men could make her. Rodebusch and Cleveland had finished their last rigid inspection of the craft, and, standing beside the center door of the main airlock, were talking with their chief. You say that you didn't think that it's safe, and yet you won't take a crew, Sam's argued. In that case it isn't safe enough for you men, either. We need you too badly to permit you to take such chances. You've got to let us go, because we are the only ones who are thoroughly familiar with her theory, Rodebusch insisted. I said, and still say, that I think it is safe. I can't prove it, however, except mathematically, because she's altogether too full of too many new and untried mechanisms, too many extrapolations beyond all existing or possible data. Theoretically, she is sound, but you know that theory can go only so far, and that mathematically negligible factors may become operative at those velocities. We do not need a crew for a short trip. We can take care of any minor mishaps, and if our fundamental theories are wrong, all the crews between here and Jupiter wouldn't do any good. Therefore we too are going alone. Well, we'll be very careful anyway. Start out slow and take it easy. Start out slow? We can't. We can't neutralize half of gravity, nor half of the inertia of matter. It's got to be everything or nothing as soon as the neutralizers go on. We could start out on the projectors, of course, instead of on the neutralizers, but that wouldn't prove anything, and would only prolong the agony. Well, then, be as careful as you can. We'll do that, Chief, Cleveland put in. We think a lot of us, and we aren't committing suicide just yet if we can help it. And remember about everybody staying inside when we take off. It's barely possible that we'll take up a lot of room. Goodbye to all of you. Goodbye, fellas. The massive insulating doors were shut, the metal side of the mountain opened, and huge squat caterpillar tractors came roaring and clanking into the room. Chains and cables were made fast, and mighty steel rails groaning under the load. The spaceship upon her rolling ways was dragged out of the hill and far out upon the level floor of the surface before the tractors cast off and returned to the fortress. Everybody's under cover, Sam's informed Routabush. The Chief was staring intently into his plate upon which was revealed the control room of the untried supership. He heard Routabush speak to Cleveland, heard the observer's brief reply, saw the navigator throw his switches. Then the communicator plate went blank, not the ordinary blankness of a cut-off but a peculiarly disquieting fading out into darkness. And where the great spaceship had rested, there was, for an instant, nothing. Exactly nothing, a vacuum. Vessel, falsework, rollers, trucks, the enormous steel I-beams of the tracks, even the deep-set concrete piers and foundations in a vast hemisphere of the solid ground, all had disappeared utterly and instantaneously. But almost as suddenly as it had been formed, the vacuum was filled by a cyclonic rush of air. There was a detonation as of a hundred vicious thunderclaps made one, and, through the howling, shrieking blasts of wind, there rained down upon the valley, plain and meddled mountain of veritable avalanche of debris. Bent, twisted in broken rails and beams, splintered timbers, masses of concrete, and thousands of cubic yards of soil and rock. For inertia and gravitation had not been neutralized at precisely the same instant, and for a moment everything within the radius of action of the iron-driven gravity nullifiers of the Boise had continued its absolute motion with inertia unimpaired. Then, left behind immediately by the almost infinite velocity of the cruiser, all this material had again become subject to all of nature's everyday laws and had crashed back to the ground. Could you hold your beam, Randolph? Sam's voice cut sharply through the days of stupid faction which held spellbound most of the denizens of the hill. But all were not so held. No conceivable emergency could take the attention of the chief ultrawave operator from his instruments. No, sir! Radio center shot back. It faded out and I couldn't recover it. I put everything I've got behind a tracer on that beam, but haven't been able to lift a single needle off the pin. And no wreckage of the vessel itself. Sam's went on half-audibly. Either they have succeeded far beyond their wildest hopes or else. More probably. He fell silent and switched off the plate. Were his two friends those intrepid scientists alive and triumphant, or had they gone to lengthen the list of victims of that man-killing spaceship? Reason told him that they were gone. They must be gone, or else's ultra-beams energies of such unthinkable velocity of propagation that man's most sensitive instruments had never been able even to estimate it, would have held the ship's transmitter in spite of any velocity attainable by any matter under any conceivable conditions. The ship must have been disintegrated as soon as Rautabouche released his forces. And yet, had not the physicist dimly foreseen the possibility of such an actual velocity? Or had he? However, individuals could come and could go, but triplanetary went on. Sam's squared his shoulders unconsciously and slowly, grimly, made his way back to his private office. He had scant time to mourn. Scarcely had he seated himself at his desk when an emergency call came snapping in. A call of such import that his secretaries usually calm voice trembled as she put it on his plate. "'Commissioner Hinkel is calling, sir,' she announced. "'Something terrible is going on again out toward Orion. Here he is.' And there appeared upon the screen the face of the commissioner of public safety, the commander of triplanetary's every armed force, whether of land, or of water, of air, or of empty space.' "'They've come back, Sam's,' the commissioner rapped out without preliminary or greeting. Four vessels gone, a freighter and a passenger liner, with their escort of two heavy cruisers, all in sector M, DX about 151. I have ordered all traffic out of space for the duration of the emergency, and since even our warships seem useless every ship is making for the nearest dock at maximum. How about that new flier of yours? Got anything that will do us any good?' No one beyond the hill's shielding screens knew that the Boise had already been launched. "'I don't know. We don't even know whether we have a super ship or not.' And Sam's described briefly the beginning and very probably the ending of the trial flight, concluding, "'It looks bad. But if there was any possible way of handling her, Rouda Bush and Cleveland did it. All our traces are negative yet, so nothing definite has—' He broke off his ephraantic call, came in from the Pittsburgh station for the commissioner, a call which Sam's both heard and saw. "'This city is being attacked!' came the urgent message. "'We need all the reinforcements. You can send us!' In a picture of the beleaguered city appeared in ghastly detail upon the screens of the observers, a view being recorded from the air. It required only seconds for the commissioner to order every available man and engine of war to the seat of conflict. Then, having done everything they could, Henkel and Sam stared in helpless, fascinated horror into their plates, watching the scenes of carnage and destruction depicted there. The Nevian vessel, the sister ship, the craft which Costigan had seen in mid-space as it hurdled earthward in response to Norado's summons, hung poised in full visibility, high above the metropolis. Scornful of the pitiful weapons wielded by man she hung there, her sinister beauty of line sharply defined against the cloudless sky. From her shining hull there reached down a tenuous but rigid rod of crimson energy, a rod which slowly swept hither and thither as the detectors of the amphibians searched out the richest deposits of the precious iron for which the inhuman visitors had come so far. Iron once solid, now a viscous red liquid, was sluggishly flowing in an ever-thickening stream up that intangible crimson duct and into the capacious storage tanks of the Nevian raider, and wherever that flaming beam went there went also ruin, destruction, and death. Office buildings, skyscrapers towering majestically in their architectural symmetry and beauty, collapsed into heaps of debris as their steel skeletons were abstracted. Deep into the ground the beam bored, flood, fire, and explosion following in its wake as the mazes of underground piping disappeared, and the humanity of the buildings died, instantly and painlessly, never knowing what struck them as the life-bearing iron of their bodies went to swell the Nevian stream. Pittsburgh's defenses had been feeble indeed. A few antiquated railway rifles had hurled their shells upward in futile defiance and had been quietly absorbed. The district planes of triplanetary, newly armed with iron-driven ultra-beams, had assembled hurriedly and had attacked the invader information, but with little more success. Under the impact of their beams the stranger's screens had flared white, then poised ship and flying squadron alike had been lost to view in a merkily opaque shroud of crimson flame. The cloud had soon dissolved, and from the place where the planes had been had floated or crashed down a litter of non-ferrous wreckage. And now the cone of spaceships from the Buffalo base of triplanetary was approaching Pittsburgh, hurling itself toward the Nevian plunderer and toward known, gruesome and hopeless defeat. Stop them, Hinkle! Sam's cried. It's sheer slaughter. They haven't got a thing. They aren't even equipped yet with the iron drive. I know it! The commissioner groaned. An admiral Barnes knows it as well as we do, but it can't be helped. Wait a minute. The Washington cone is reporting. There is close as the other and they have the new armament. Philadelphia's close behind and so is New York. Now perhaps we can do something! The Buffalo flotilla slowed and stopped, and in a matter of minutes the detachments from the other bases arrived. The cone was formed in iron-driven vessels in the van, the old-type craft far in the rear. It bore down upon the Nevian, vomiting from its hollow front a solid cylinder of annihilation. Once more the screens of the Nevian flared into brilliance. Once more the red cloud of destruction was flung abroad. But these vessels were not entirely defenseless. Their iron-driven ultra-generators threw out screens of the Nevian's own formulae. Screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of lightning upon the city far beneath. No battle of such incredible violence could long endure. Triplanetary ships were already exerting their utmost power, while the Nevians, contemptuous of solarian science, had not yet uncovered their full strength. Thus the last desperate effort of mankind was proved futile, as the invaders forced their beams deeper and deeper into the overloaded defensive screens of the war vessels, and one by one the supposedly invincible spaceships of humanity dropped in horribly dismembered wreckage upon the ruins of what had once been Pittsburgh. Only too well-founded was Kostigan's conviction that the submarine of the deep sea fishes had not been able to prevail against Neurado's formidable engines of destruction. For days the Nevian lifeboat with its three terrestrial passengers hurtled through the interstellar void without incident. But finally the operative spheres were realized. His far-flung detector screens reacted. Upon his observation plate lay revealed, Neurado's mammoth spaceship in full pursuit of its fleeing lifeboat. On your toes, folks, it won't be long now," Kostigan called, and Bradley and Cleo hurried into the tiny control room. Armour dawned and tested. The three terrestrials stared into the observation plates, watching the rapidly enlarging pictures of the Nevian spaceship. Neurado had traced them and was following them, and such was the power of the great vessel that the nearly inconceivable velocity of the lifeboat was the various crawl in comparison to that of the pursuing cruiser. "'And we've hardly started to cover the distance back to Telus. Of course you can't get in touch with anybody yet,' Bradley stated, rather than asked. I kept on trying until they blanketed my wave, but all negative. Thousands of times too far for my transmitter. Our only hope of reaching anybody was the mighty slim chance that our supership might be prowling around out here already. But it isn't, of course. Here they are. Reaching out to the control panel, Kostigan shot out against the great vessel wave after wave of lethal vibrations under whose fiercely clinging impacts the Nevian defensive screens flared white. But strangely enough, their own screens did not radiate. As if contemptuous of any weapons the lifeboat might wield, the mothership simply defended herself from the attacking beams in much the same fashion as a wildcat mother wards off the claws and teeth of her spitting, snarling kitten who is resenting a touch of needed maternal discipline. "'They probably won't fight us at that,' Cleo first understood the situation. "'This is their own lifeboat, and they want us alive, you know.' "'There's one more thing we can try. Hang on,' Kostigan snapped as he released his screens and threw all his power into one enormous presser beam. The three were thrown to the floor and held thereby an awful weight as if the lifeboat darted away at the stupendous acceleration of the beam's reaction against the unimaginable mass of the Nevian sky rover. But the flight was of short duration. Along that presser beam there crept a dull rod of energy which surrounded the fugitive shell and brought it slowly to a halt. Furiously then Kostigan set and reset his controls, launching his every driving force and his every weapon, but no beam could penetrate that red murk, and the lifeboat remained motionless in space. No, not motionless. The red rod was shortening, drawing the truant craft back toward the launching-port from which she had so hopefully emerged a few days before. Back and back it was drawn, Kostigan's utmost efforts futile to affect by a hare's breath its line of motion. Through the open port the boat slipped neatly, and as it came to a halt in its original position within the multi-layered skin of the monster the prisoners heard the heavy doors clang shut behind them one after another. And then sheets of blue fire snapped and crackled all about the three suits of triplanetary armor. The two large human figures and the small one were outlined starkly in blinding blue flame. That's the first thing that has come off according to schedule. Kostigan laughed a short fierce bark. That is their paralyzing ray. We've got it stopped cold, and we've each got enough iron to hold it forever. What it looks as though the best we can do is to stalemate, Bradley argued. Even if they can't paralyze us, we can't hurt them, and we are heading back for Nevia. I think Nerada will come in for a conference, and we'll be able to make terms of some kind. He must know what these Lewistons will do, and he knows that we'll get a chance to use them some way or other before he gets to us again. Kostigan asserted confidently, but again he was wrong. The door opened, and through it there waddled, rolled, or crawled a metal-clad monstrosity, a thing with wheels, legs, and writhing tentacles of jointed bronze, a thing possessed of defensive screens sufficiently powerful to absorb the full blast of the triplanetary projectors without effort. Three brazen tentacles reached out through the ravening beams of the Lewistons, smashed them to bits, and wrapped themselves in unbreakable shackles about the armored forms of the three human beings. Through the door the machine or creature carried its helpless load, and out into and along a main corridor, and soon the three terrestrials, without armor, without arms, and almost without clothing, were standing in the control room, again facing the calm and unmoved Nerado. To the surprise of the impetuous Kostigan, the Nevian commander was entirely without ranker. "'The desire for freedom is perhaps common to all forms of animate life,' he commented, through the transformer. "'As I told you before, however, you are specimens to be studied by the College of Science, and you shall be so studied in spite of anything you may do. Resign yourselves to that.' "'Well, say that we don't try to make any more trouble, that we cooperate in the examination and give you whatever information we can,' Kostigan suggested. "'Then you will probably be willing to give us a ship and let us go back to our own world?' "'You will not be allowed to cause any more trouble,' the amphibian declared coldly. "'Your cooperation will not be required. We will take from you whatever knowledge and information we wish. In all probability you will never be allowed to return to your own system, because as specimens you are too unique to lose. But enough of this idle chatter. Take them back to their quarters.' And back to their intercommunicating rooms the prisoners were led under heavy guard. True to his word, Nerado made certain that they had no more opportunities to escape. All the way back to far distant Nevia, the spaceship sped, where at once in manacles the terrestrials were taken to the College of Science, there to undergo the physical and psychical examinations which Nerado had promised them. Cleo and Kostigan learned that the Nevian scientist-captain had not erred in stating that their cooperation was neither needed nor desired. Furious but impotent, the human beings were studied in laboratory after laboratory by the coldly analytical, unfeeling scientists of Nevia, to whom they were nothing more nor less than specimens, and in full measure they came to know what it meant to play the part of an unknown, lowly organism in a biological research. They were photographed externally and internally. Every bone, muscle, organ, vessel, and nerve was studied and charted. Every reflex and reaction was noted and discussed. Meters registered every impulse and recorders filmed every thought, every idea, and every sensation. Endlessly, day after day, the nerve-wracking torture went on, until the frantic subjects could bear no more. White-faced and shaking, Cleo finally screamed wildly, hysterically, as she was being strapped down upon a laboratory bench, and at the sound, Kostkin's nerves, already at the breaking point, gave way in an outburst of berserk fury. The men's struggles and the girl's shrieks were all like futile, but the surprised Nevians, after a consultation, decided to give the specimens a vacation. To that end they were installed, together with their earthly belongings, in a three-room structure of transparent metal, floating in the large central lagoon of the city. There they were left undisturbed for a time. Undisturbed, that is, except by the continuous gaze of the crowd of hundreds of amphibians which constantly surrounded the floating cottage. First were bugs under a microscope. Bradley growled. Then were goldfish in a bowl. I don't know that... He broke off as two of their jailers entered the room. Without a word into the transformers, they seized Bradley and the girl, as those tentacular arms stretched out toward Cleo, Kostkin leaped. A vain attempt. In midair the paralyzing ray of the Nevians touched him, and he crashed heavily to the crystal floor. And from that floor he looked on in helpless, raging fury, while his sweetheart and his captain were carried out of their prison and into awaiting submarine. CHAPTER X CHAPTER X. The Boise Axe. But what of the supership? What happened after that inertialist, that terribly destructive take-off? Dr. Frederick Groudobusch sat at the control panel of Triplanetary's newly reconstructed spaceship, his hands grasping the gleaming ebonite handles of two double-throw switches. Facing the unknown though the physicist was, yet he grimmed whimsically at his friend. Something, whatever it is, is about to take place. The Boise is taking off, under full neutralization. Ready for anything to happen, Cleve? Already? Shoot! Mechanically, Cleveland also was constitutionally unable to voice his deeper sentiments in time of stress. Groudobusch flipped the switches clear over in flashing arcs, and instantly over both men there came a sensation akin to a tremendously intensified vertigo, but a vertigo as far beyond the space sickness of weightlessness as that horrible sensation is beyond mere terrestrial dizziness. The pilot tried to reverse the switches he had just thrown, but his leaden hands utterly refused to obey the dictates of his reeling mind. His brain was a writhing convulsive mass of torment indescribable, expanding, exploding, swelling out with an unendurable pressure against its confining skull. Fiery spirals, laced with streaming darting lances of black and green, flamed inside his bursting eyeballs. The universe spun in world in mad gyrations about him as he reeled drunkenly to his feet, staggering and sprawling. He fell. He realized that he was falling yet he could not fall. Thrashing wildly, grotesquely, in agony, he struggled madly and blindly across the room, directly toward the thick steel wall. The tip of one hair of his unruly thatch touched the wall, and the slim length of that single hair did not even bend as its slight strength brought to an instant halt the hundred and eighty odd pounds of mass, mass now entirely without inertia, that was his body. But finally the sheer brain power of the man began to triumph over his physical torture. By indomitable force of will he compelled his groping hands to seize a lifeline, almost meaningless to his dazed intelligence, and through that nightmare incarnate of hellish torture he fought his way back to the control board. Hooking one leg around a standard he made his seemingly enormous effort and drove the two switches back into their original positions, then fell flat upon the floor, weakly but in a wave of relief and thankfulness as his wracked body felt again the wanted phenomena of weight and of inertia. White, trembling, frankly and openly sick, the two men stared at each other in half a maize joy. It worked! Cleveland smiled wanly as he recovered sufficiently to speak, then leaped to his feet. Snap it up, Fred! We must be falling fast. We'll be wrecked when we hit. We're not falling anywhere. Groudabush, foreboding in his eyes, walked over to the main observation plate and scanned the heavens. However, it's not as bad as I was afraid it might be. I can still recognize a few of the constellations, even though they are all pretty badly distorted. That means that we can't be more than a couple of light-ears or so away from the solar system. Of course, as we had so little thrust on, practically all of our time and energy was spending getting out of the atmosphere. But, even at that, it's a good thing that space isn't an absolutely perfect vacuum, or we would have been clear out of the universe by this time. Huh! Impossible! Where are we, anyway? Then we must be making myth—oh, I see! Cleveland exclaimed in disjointed sentences as he also stared into the plate. Right! We aren't travelling at all, now, Groudabush replied. We are perfectly stationary relative to Telus, since we made the hop without inertia. We must have attained 100% neutralization, which we didn't quite expect, and therefore we must have stopped instantaneously when our inertia was restored. But it isn't where we are that is wearing me the most. We can fix our place in space accurately enough by a few observations. It's when. That's right, too. Say we're two light-ears away. You think maybe we're two years older than we were ten minutes ago, then? That's possible, of course. Maybe? Probable. There's been a lot of discussion on that theory. Now's a good time to prove or to disprove it. Let's snap back to Telus and find out. We'll do that, after a little more experimenting. You see, I had no intention of giving us such a long push. I was going to throw the switches over in fact, but you know what happened. However, there's one good thing about it. It's worth two years of anybody's life to settle that relativity-time thing definitely, one way or the other. I'll say it is. But, say, we've got a lot of power on our ultrawave. Enough to reach Telus, I think. Let's locate the sun and get in touch with Sam's. Let's work on these controls a little first, so we'll have something to report. Out here's a fine place to try the ship out. Nothing in the way. I'll write with me, but I would like to find out whether I'm two years older than I think I am, or not. Then for hours they put the great super ship through her paces, just as test pilots check up on every detail of performance of an airplane of new and radical design. They found that the horrible vertigo could be endured, perhaps in time even conquered as space sickness could be conquered, by a strong will and a sound body, and that their new conveyance had possibilities of which even Rautabusch had never dreamed. Finally, their most pressing questions answered. They turned their most powerful ultra-beam communicator toward the yellowish star which they knew to be old soul. Sam's. Sam's. Cleveland spoke slowly and distinctly. Rautabusch and Cleveland reporting from the Space-Eating Wampus, now directly in line with Beta Ursae Minoris from the sun, distance about 2.2 light years. It will take six banks of tubes on your tightest beam, LSV3, to reach us. Barring a touch of an unusually severe type of space sickness, everything worked beautifully, even better than our calculations showed. There's something we want to know right away. Have we been gone four hours in some odd minutes, or better than two years? He shut off the power, turned around a bush, and went on. Nobody knows how fast this ultra-wave travels, but if it goes as fast as we did coming out it's certainly moving. I'll give him about thirty minutes, then shoot in another call. But in less than two minutes the care-ravaged face of their chief appeared sharp and clear upon their plates, and his voice snapped curtly from the speaker. Thank God you're alive, and twice that the ship works! he exclaimed. You've been gone four hours, eleven minutes, and forty-one seconds, but never mind about abstract theorizing. Get back here, to Pittsburgh, as fast as you can drive. That Nevean vessel, or another Likr, is mopping up the city and has destroyed half the fleet already. We'll be back in nine minutes," Radobus snapped into the transmitter. Two to get from here to atmosphere, four from atmosphere down to the hill, and three to cool off. Notify the full four-shift crew, everybody we've picked out. Don't need anybody else. Ship, batteries, and armament are ready. Two minutes to atmosphere, and it took ten coming out? Think you can do it? Cleveland asked as Radobus flipped off the power and leaped to the control panel. We can do it in a few seconds if we had to. We use scarcely any power at all coming out, and I'm not using very much going back." The physicist explained rapidly as he set the dials which would determine their flashing course. The master switches were thrown, and the pangs of inertialessness again assailed them, but weaker far this time than ever before, and upon their lookout plates they beheld a spectacle never before seen by eye of man. For the Ultra Beam, with its heterodyne vision, is not distorted by any velocity yet attained, as are the ether-borne rays of light. Converted into light only at the plate, it showed their progress as truly as though they had been travelling at a pace to be expressed in the ordinary terms of miles per hour. The yellow star that was the sun detached itself from the firmament, and leaped toward them, swelling visibly, momentarily, into a blinding monster of incandescence, and toward them also flung the earth, enlarging with such indescribable rapidity that Cleveland protested involuntarily, in spite of his knowledge of the peculiar mechanism of the vessel in which they were. "'Hold it, Fred! Hold it! Way enough!' he exclaimed. "'I'm using only ten thousand dines, so she'll stop herself as soon as we touch atmosphere, long before she can even begin to heat,' Rautabusch explained. "'Looks bad, but we'll stop without a jar.' And they did. Waitless and without inertia, gravitation powerless against her neutralizing generators, the great supership came from her practically infinite velocity to an almost instantaneous halt in the outermost, most tenuous layer of the earth's atmosphere. Her halt was but momentary. Inertia restored, and gravitation allowed again to affect her mass, she dropped at a sharp angle downward. More than dropped, she was forced downward by one full battery of projectors, projectors driven by iron-powered generators. Soon they were over the hill, whose violet screens went down at a word. Flaming a dazzling white from the friction of the atmosphere through which she had torn her way, the boysie slowed abruptly as she neared the ground, plunging toward the surface of the small but deep artificial lake below the hill's steel apron. Into the cold waters the spaceship dove, and even before they could close over her, furious geysers of steam and boiling water erupted as the stubborn alloy gave up its heat to the cooling liquid. Endlessly the three necessary minutes dragged their slow way into time, and finally the water ceased boiling, and Rautabusch tore the ship from the lake and hurled her into the gaping doorway of her lock. The massive doors of the airlocks opened, and while the full crew of picked men hurried aboard with their personal equipment, Holmes talked earnestly to the two scientists in the control room. And about half the fleet is still in the air. They aren't attacking, they are just trying to keep her from doing much more damage until you can get there. How about your take-off? We can't launch you again. The tracks are gone, but you handled her easily through coming in? That was all my fault, Rautabusch admitted. I should have neutralized inertia first, but I had no idea that the fields would extend beyond the hull, nor that they wouldn't act simultaneously. We'll bring her out on the projectors this time, though, the same as we brought her in. She handles like a bicycle. The projector blast tears things up a little, but nothing serious. Have you got that Pittsburgh beam for me yet? We're about ready to go. Here it is, Dr. Rautabusch, came to Secretary's voice, and upon the screen there flashed into being the view of the events transpiring above that doomed city. The dock is empty and sealed against your blast. And thereupon, good-bye, and power to your tubes, came Sam's ringing voice. As the words were being spoken, mighty blasts of power raved from the driving projectors and the immense mass of the supership shot out from the portals and upward into the stratosphere. Through the tenuous atmosphere the huge ship rushed with ever-mounting speed, and while the hope of triplanetary drove eastward, Rautabusch studied the ever-changing scene of battle upon his plate, and issued detailed instructions to the highly trained specialists manning every offensive and defensive weapon. But the Nevians did not wait to join battle until the newcomers arrived. Their detectors were sensitive, operative over untold thousands of miles, and the ultra-screen of the hill had already been noted by the invaders as the earth's only possible source of trouble. Thus the departure of the Boise had not gone unnoticed, and the fact that, not even with his most penetrant rays could he see into her interior, had already given the Nevian commander some slight concern. Therefore, as soon as it was determined that the great ship was directed towards Pittsburgh, the fish-shaped cruiser of the void went into action. High in the stratosphere, speeding eastward, the immense mass of the Boise slowed abruptly, although no projector had slackened its effort. Cleveland, eyes upon interferometer-grating and spectrophotometer charts, fingers flying over calculator keys, grinned as he turned toward Rautabush. Just as you thought, Skipper, an ultra-band pusher, C4V63L29. Shall I give him a little pull? Not yet. Let's feel him out a little before we force a close up. We've got plenty of mass. See what he does when I put full push on the projectors. As the full power of the terrestrial vessel was applied, the Nevian was forced backward, away from the threatened city, against the full drive of her every projector. Soon, however, the advance was again checked, and both scientists read the reason upon their plates. The enemy had put down reinforcing rods of tremendous power. Three compression members spread out fan-wise behind her, bracing her against the low mountain side, while one huge tractor-beam was thrust directly downward, holding in an unbreakable grip a cylinder of earth extending deep down into bedrock. Two can play at that game. And Rautabush drove down similar beams and forward-reaching tractors as well. Strap yourselves in solid, everybody! He sounded a general warning. Something is going to give way somewhere soon, and when it does, we'll get a jolt. And the promised jolt did indeed come soon. Predigiously massive and powerful as the Nevian was, the Boise was even more massive and more powerful, and as the already enormous energy feeding their tractors, pushers, and projectors was raised to its inconceivable maximum. The vessel of the enemy was hurled upward, backward, and that of earth shot ahead with a bounding leap that threatened to strain even her mighty members. The Nevian anchor rods had not broken. They had simply pulled up the vast cylinders of solid rock that had formed their anchorages. Grab him now! Rautabush yelled, and even while an avalanche of falling rock was burying the countryside, Cleveland snapped a tractor-ray upon the flying fish and pulled tentatively. Before did the Nevian now seem averse to coming to grips. The two warring super-dread knots darted toward each other, and from the evader there flooded out the dreadful crimson opacity which adhered to forment the doom of all things Celerian. It flooded out and engulfed the immense mass of humanity's hope in its spreading cloud of redly impenetrable murk. But not for long. The planetary's super-ship boasted no ordinary terrestrial defence, but was sheathed in screen after screen of ultra-vibrations. Imponderable walls, it is true, but barriers impenetrable to any unfriendly wave. To the outer screen the red veil of the Nevians clung tenaciously, licking greedily at every square inch of the shielding sphere of force, but unable to find an opening through which to feed upon the steel of the Boise's armor. Get back! Way back! Go back and help Pittsburgh! Rotoboost drove an ultra-communicator beam through the murk to the instruments of the terrestrial admiral. For the surviving warships of the fleet, its most powerful units were hurling themselves forward to plunge into that red destruction. None of you will last a second in this red field, and watch out for a violet field pretty soon. It'll be worse than this. We can handle them alone, I think, but if we can't, there's nothing in the system that can help us. And now the hitherto passive screen of the supership became active. At first invisible it began to glow in livid violet light, and as the glow brightened to unbearable intensity, the entire spherical shield began to increase in size, driven outward from the supership as a center, its advancing surface of seething energy consumed the crimson murk as a billow of blast furnace heat consumes a cloud of snowflakes in the air above its shaft. Nor was the red death mist all that was consumed. Between that ravening surface and the armor skin of the Boise there was nothing. No debris, no atmosphere, no vapor, no single atom of material substance, the first time in terrestrial experience that an absolute vacuum had ever been attained. Stubbornly contesting every foot of way lost, the Nevian fog retreated before the violet sphere of nothingness. Back and back it fell, disappearing altogether from all space as the violet tied and gulfed the enemy vessel, but the flying fish did not disappear. Her triple screens flashed into furiously incandescent splendor, and she entered, unscathed, that vacuous sphere, which collapsed instantly into an enormously elongated ellipsoid, at each focus a madly warring ship of space. Then in that tube of vacuum was waged as spectacular duel of ultra-weapons, weapons impotent in air but deadly in empty space. Beams, rays, and rods of titanic power smote cracklingly against ultra-screens, equally capable. Time after time each contestant ran the gamut of the spectrum with his every available ultra-force, only to find all channels closed. For minutes the terrible struggle went on. Then— ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ Cooper hurled his canisters of penetrating gas. Adlington is atomic iron explosive bombs. Spencer his indestructible armor-piercing projectiles. And Dutton his shatterable flasks of the quintessence of corrosion—a sticky-tacking liquid of such dire potency that only one rare Solarian element could contain it. 10, 20, 50, a hundred were thrown as fast as automatic machinery could launch them, and the Nevians found themselves adversaries not to be despised. Size for size their screens were quite as capable as those of the Boise. The Nevians' destructive rays glanced harmlessly from their shields, and the Nevians' elaborate screens, neutralized at impact by those of the torpedoes, were impotent to impede their progress. Each projectile must needs be caught and crushed individually by beams of the most prodigious power. And while one was being annihilated, dozens more were rushing to the attack. Then, while the twisting, dodging invader was busiest with the tiny, but relentless destroyers, Rattabhush launched his heaviest weapon. The Macro Beams. Prodigious streamers of bluish-green flame which tore savagely through course after course of Nevians' screen. Malevolent fangs, driven with such power and velocity that they were biting into the very walls of the enemy vessel before the amphibians knew their defensive shells of force had been punctured. And the emergency screens of the invaders were equally futile. Course after course was sent out, only to flare viciously through the spectrum and to go black. Outfought at every turn, the now frantically dodging Nevian leaped away in headlong flight, ready to be brought to a staggering, crashing halt as Cleveland nailed her with a tractor beam. But the terrestrials were to learn that the Nevians held in reserve a means of retreat. The tractor snapped, sheared off squarely by a sizzling plane of force. And the fish-shaped cruiser faded from Cleveland's sight, just as the Boise had disappeared from the communicator plates of Radio Center back in the hill when she was launched. But though the plates in the control room could not hold the Nevian, she did not vanish beyond the ken of Randolph, now communications officer in the supership. For, warned and humiliated by his losing one speeding vessel from his plates in Radio Center, he was now ready for any emergency. Therefore as the Nevian fled, Randolph's spy ray held her, automatically behind it as there was the full output of twelve special banks of iron-driven power tubes, and thus it was that the vengeful terrestrials flashed immediately along the Nevian's line of flight. Inertialists now, pausing briefly from time to time to enable the crew to accustom themselves to the new sensations, the Boise pursued the invader, hurtling through the void with a velocity unthinkable. "'He was easier to take than I thought he would be,' Cleveland grunted, staring into the plate. "'I thought he had more stuff, too,' Rado Busch assented, but I guess Costigan got almost everything they had. If so, with all their own stuff and most of theirs besides, we should be able to take them. They must have neutralization, too, to take off like that, and if it's one hundred percent, we'll never catch them. But if it isn't— But it isn't. There they are. And this time I'm going to hold her or burn out all our generators trying.' Cleveland declared, grimly. "'Are you fellows down there able to handle yourselves yet?' "'Fine. Start throwing out your cans.' Space-heartened veterans all the other terrestrial officers had fought off the horrible nausea of inertialistness, just as Rado Busch and Cleveland had done. Again the ravining green macro-beams tore at the flying cruiser. Again the mighty frames of the two spaceships shuddered sickeningly as Cleveland clamped on his tractor-rod. Again the highly dirigible torpedoes dashed out with their frates of death and destruction. And again the Nevean shear-plane of force slashed at the terrestrial's tractor-beam. But this time the mighty puller did not give into the solid rod of energy, brighter, thicker, and longer grew the discharges as the gnawing plane drew more and more power. But in general ratio to that power the rod grew larger, denser, and ever harder to cut. More and more vivid came the pyrotechnic energy of electric brilliance, until suddenly the entire tractor-rod disappeared. At the same instant a blast of intolerable flame erupted from the Boise's flank and the whole enormous fabric of earth shook and quivered under the force of a terrific detonation. Randoff, I don't see them. Are they attacking or running? Rado Busch demanded. He was the first to realize what had happened. Running, fast! Just as well, perhaps, but get their line. Adlington! Here! Good! Was afraid you were gone. That was one of your bombs, wasn't it? Yes, well launched, just inside the screens. Don't see how it could have detonated unless something hot and hard struck it in the tube. It would need about that much time to explode. Good thing it didn't go off any sooner, or none of us would have been here. As it is, Area 6 is pretty well done in, but the bulkheads held the damage to 6. What happened? We don't know yet exactly. Both generators on the tractor beam went out. At first I thought that was all, but my neutralizers are dead and I don't know what else. When the G-4s went out the fusion must have shorted the neutralizers. They would make a mess. It must have burned a hole down into Number 6 tube. Cleveland and I will come down and we'll all look around. Donning spacesuits, the scientists let themselves into the damaged compartment through the emergency airlocks and what a sight they saw. Both outer and inner walls of alloy armor had been blown away by the awful force of the explosion. Jagged plates hung awry, bent, twisted and broken. The great torpedo tube, with all its intricate automatic machinery, had been driven violently backward and lay piled in hideous confusion against the backing bulkheads. Practically nothing remained whole in the entire compartment. Nothing much we can do here, Rado Busch said finally, through his transmitter. Let's go see what Number 4 generator room looks like. That room, though not affected by the explosion from without, had been quite as effectively wrecked from within. It was still stiflingly hot. Its air was still reeking with the stench of burning lubricant, insulation, and metal. Its floor was half covered by a semi-molten mass of what had once been vital machinery. For with the burning out of the generator bars the energy of the disintegrating allotropic iron had had no outlet and had built up until it had broken through its insulation and in an irresistible flood of power had torn through all obstacles in its path of neutralization. Hmm. Should have had an automatic shut-off. One detail we overlooked, Rado Busch mused. The electricians can rebuild this stuff here, though. That hole in the hull is something else again. I'll say it's something else. The grizzled chief engineer agreed. She's lost all her spherical strength. Anchoring a tractor with this ship now would turn her inside out. Back to the nearest triplanetary shop for us, I would say. Come again, chief. Cleveland advised the engineer. None of us would live long enough to get there. We can't travel inertialists unless the repairs are made. So if they can't be made without very much travelling, it's just too bad. I don't see how we could support our jacks. The engineer paused, then went on. If you can't give me Mars or Telus, how about some other planet? I don't care about atmosphere or about anything but mass. I can stiffen her up in three or four days if I can sit down on something heavy enough to hold our jacks and presses. But if we have to rig up space cradles around the ship herself, it'll take a long time. Months, probably. Haven't got a spare planet on hand, have you? We might have, at that—Roudabouche made a surprising answer. A couple of seconds before we engaged, we were heading toward a sun with at least two planets. I was just getting ready to dodge them when we cut the neutralizers, so they should be fairly close somewhere. Yes, there's the sun right over there. Rather pale and small, but it's close, comparatively speaking. We'll go back up into the control room and find out about the planets. The strange sun was found to have three large and easily located children, and observations showed that the crippled spaceship could reach the nearest of these in about five days. Power was therefore fed to the driving projectors, and every scientist, electrician, and mechanic bent to the task of repairing the ruined generators, rebuilding them to handle any load which the converters could possibly put upon them. For two days the Boise drove on, then her acceleration was reversed, and finally a landing was affected upon the forbidding, rocky soil of the strange world. It was larger than the Earth, and of a somewhat stronger gravitation, although its climate was bitterly cold, even in its short daytime. It supported a luxuriant but outlandish vegetation, its atmosphere, while rich enough in oxygen, and not really poisonous, was so ranked with indescribably fetid vapors as to be scarcely breathable. But these things bothered the engineers, not at all. Paying no attention to temperatures or to scenery, and without waiting for chemical analysis of the air, the space-suited mechanics leaped to their tasks, and in only a little more time than had been mentioned by the chief engineer, the hull and giant frame of the supership were as staunch as of yore. All right, Skipper, came finally the welcome word. You might try her out with a fast hop around this world before you shove off an earnest. Under the fierce blasts of her projectors the vessel leaped ahead, and time after time as Rado Busch hurled her mass upon tractor-beam or presser, the engineers sought in vain for any sign of weakness. The strange planet half girdled, and the severest tests passed flawlessly. Rado Busch reached for his neutralizer switches. Reached and paused, dumbfounded, for a brilliant purple life had sprung into being upon his panel, and a bell rang out insistently. What the blue blazes! Rado Busch shot out an exploring beam along the detector line, and gasped. He stared mouth open, then yelled, Roger is here, rebuilding his planetoid, stations all. Life extremers of force emanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibian spaceship were driving into his defensive screens. Roger sat impassive and immobile at his desk. His hard gray eyes moved methodically over his instruments and recorders, and after a few minutes he smiled coldly, while an expression of relief struggled fleetingly to move his expressionless face. Even though his screens were better than any one had supposed, why admit it? Baxter, Hartkoff, Châtellier, Andrewsung, Penrose, Nishimura, Mursky. He called off a list of names. Report to me here at once. The planetoid is lost. He informed his select group of scientists when they had assembled, and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes, which will be the time required for the robots to fill this first section with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each of you one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and report back here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to any one else. They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall, Baxter, perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced the thought for those they were so brutally deserting. I say it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest of them, but still, I suppose, you'll suppose correctly. Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the pause. A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape, which, to me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all of our many mechanisms. Therefore, only the most important of both are saved. What would you, for the rest, it is simply what you call the fortune of war, no? But the beautiful began the amorous chetelier. Hush, fool! snorted Hartkoff. One word of that to the ear of Roger and you two are left behind. Of such non-essentials the universe is fool to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to be disregarded. This is a time of shirkly tight, indeed. The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters, to meet again in the first section a few minutes before the zero time. Roger's office was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but little room was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmoved behind his dials. But of what use is it, Roger? The Russian physicist demanded, those waves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher than anything here to forenown. Our screens should not have stopped them for an instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainly this single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid without being destroyed. There are many things you do not know, Mursky, came the cold and level answer. Our screens, which you think are of your own devising, have several improvements of my own in the formulae, and would hold forever had I the power to drive them. The screens of this section, being smaller, can be held as long as will be found necessary. Power! the dumbfounded Russian exclaimed. Why, we have almost infinite power, unlimited, sufficient for a lifetime of high expenditure. But Roger made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. He pressed down a tiny lever, and a robot in the power room threw in the gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians this stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Narado the amphibian, the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of power afforded by the planetoid. Careless alike of burnout, and of exhaustion. Then, all the attention of the Nevians, and the greater part of their power output devoted to the neutralization of that last desperate thrust. The metal wall of the planetoid opened, and the first section shot out into space. Full driven as they were, Roger's screens flared white as he drove through the temporarily lessened attack of the Nevians. But in their preoccupation the amphibians did not notice the additional disturbance, and the section tore on, unobserved and undetected. Far out in space, Roger raised his eyes from the instrument paddle, and continued the conversation as though it had not been interrupted. Everything is relative, Murski, and you have misused gravely the term unlimited. Our power was, it is, very definitely limited. True, it then seemed ample for our needs, and is far superior to that possessed by the inhabitants of any solar system with which I am familiar. But the beings behind that red screen, whoever they are, have sources of power as far above ours as ours are above those of the Celerians. How do you know? That power, what is it? We have the analyses of those fields recorded, came simultaneous questions and explanations. Their power source is very probably the inter-atomic energy of iron, and if so, much remains to be done before I can proceed with my plan. I must have the most powerful structure in the known universe before I can act. In the light of what I have just learned, the loss of the planetoid is but a trifle. Roger, as unmoved as one of his own automatons, was coldly analyzing the situation, thinking the thing through to its logical conclusion, paying no attention whatever to the losses of life, time, and treasure now behind him. But what can you do about it? growled the Russian. Many things, from the charts of the recorders, we can compute their fields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their method of liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build other robots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid. One this time that, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will be suited to my needs. And where will you build it? We are marked. Invisibility now is useless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyond that of Pluto. We have already left your Celerian system far behind. We are going to another system, one far enough removed, so that the spy rays of triplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in a reasonable length of time with the energies at our command. Some fifteen days will be required for the journey, however, and our quarters are cramped. Therefore make places for yourselves wherever you can, and lessen the tedium of those fifteen days by working upon whatever problems are most pressing in your respective researches. The grey monster fell silent, immersed in what thoughts no one knew, and the scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist, followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed Saturnine American engineer and inventor, as he made his way to the further most cubicle of the section. I say, Penrose, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind. Go ahead. Ordinarily it's dangerous to be a cackling hand anywhere around him, but he can't hear anything here now. His system is pretty well shot to pieces. You want to know all I know about Roger? Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, you know. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you know what I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wondering whether he really is human. He knows too much about too many things. He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems to visit which would require lifetimes. Then, too, he is dropped remarks which would imply that he actually saw things that happened long before any living man could possibly have been born. Finally, he looks, well, peculiar, and certainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been able to learn nothing about him, as you have said. Such talk as this aboard the planetoid was impossible. You needn't worry about being paid your price, that's one thing. If we live—and that was part of the agreement, you know—we will all get what we sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already made millions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Châtelier has had and will have his women. Anandra-Sung and Nishimura, their cherished revenges. Heart cough his power, and so on. He eyed the other speculatively, then went on. I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance, and since you should know what the rest of us do. You're in the same boat with us, and tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip, that may or may not be true. But I know one very startling fact. Here it is. My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in connection with certain things I myself, saw on the planetoid, proved beyond question that our Roger went to Harvard University at the same time he did. Roger was a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted that he was marked like this. And the Americans sketched a cabalistic design. What! Baxter exclaimed, at a depth of North Polar Jupiter? Them? Yes, that was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was those medicine-men, really high-caliber scientists, that prolonged that war so. But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped out, it was proved a lot of hocus pocus. Some of it was, but most of it wasn't. Penrose interrupted in turn. I'm not asking you to believe anything except that one fact. I'm just telling you the rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knew things and did things that take a lot of explaining. Now for the gossip, none of which is guaranteed. Roger is undoubtedly of Tullurian parentage, and the story is that his father was a moon pirate, his mother a Greek adventurous. When the pirates were chased off the moon they went getty-mead, you know, and some of them were captured by the Jovians. It seems that Roger was born at an instant of time sacred to the adepts, so they took him on. He worked his way up through the forbidden society as all adepts did, by various kinds of murder and job-lots of assorted devil-trees, until he got clear to the top the Seventy-Seventh Mystery. The secret of eternal youth, Gaster Baxter awed in spite of himself. Right! And he stayed chief devil, in spite of all the efforts of all his ambitious sub-devils to kill him, until the turning point of the First Jovian War. He cut away then in a spaceship, and ever since then he has been working, and working hard, on some stupendous plan of his own that nobody else has ever got even an inkling of. That's a story. True or not, explains a lot of things that no other theory can touch. And now I think you better shuffle along. Enough of this is a great plenty. Baxter went to his own cubby, and each man of the adepts cold-blooded crew methodically took up his task. True to prediction, in fifteen days a planet loomed beneath them, and their vessel settled through a reeking atmosphere toward a rocky and forbidding plain. Then for another day they plunged along, a few thousand feet above the surface of that strange world, while Roger, with his analytical detectors, sought the most favourable location from which to rest the materials necessary for his programme of construction. It was a world of cold. Its sun was distant, pale and wan. It had monstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhed and fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever and on a struggling part broke from its parent plant, and darted away in independent existence, leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by a fellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform colour, a lurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, some cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like, but it was all outrageous, inherently repulsive to all solarian senses. And no less hideous were the animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciously through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like, bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew, each covered with a dankly oozing yellow hide, and each motivated by twin common impulses, to kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking wilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, its appalling ferocity and horror. There should be intelligence of a kind, he mused, and swept the surface of the planet with an exploring beam. Ah, yes, there is a city of sorts. And in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon a metal-walled city of roundly conical buildings. Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttled formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel by means of a tractor-ray. Held immovable by the beam, it lay upon the floor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like, metal-studded mass of leathery substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs, it apparently had none. Yet it radiated an intensely hostile aura, a mental effluvium concentrated of rage and of hatred. Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet, Roger commented. Such creatures are useless to us. We can build robots in half the time required for their subjugation and training. Still, it should not be permitted to carry back what it may have learned of us. As he spoke, the adept threw the peculiar being out into the air and dispassionately raided out of existence. That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot. Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. The evenest tempered man in town, mad all the time. Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweeping beams denuded a great circle of life and into that circle leaped robots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants in power. Robots insensible alike to that bitter cold and to that noxious atmosphere. But the outlaws were not to win a foothold upon that inimical planet easily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weird vegetation of the circle's bare edge, they're scuttled and poured along a horde of the metal-studded men, if men they may be called, who, ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. Mowed down by hundreds, still they came on, willing, it seemed, to expend any number of lives in order that one living creature might once touch a robot with one outthrust metallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash as of lightning, the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease and metal, and the robot went down out of control. Recalling his remaining automatons, Roger sent out a shielding screen against which the defenders of their planet raged in impotent fury. For days they hurled themselves and their every force against that impenetrable barrier. Then withdrew. Temporarily stopped, but by no means acknowledging defeat. Then, while Roger and his cohorts directed affairs from within their comfortable, and now sufficiently roomy vessel, there came into being a rounded an industrial city of metal, people by metallic and insensate mechanisms. Mines were sunk, furnaces were blown in, smelters belched forth into the already unbearable air, their sulfurous fumes, rolling mills and machine shops were built and equipped, and as fast as new enterprises were completed additional robots were ready to man them. In record time the heavy work of girders, members, and plates was well under way, and shortly thereafter light, deft, and multi-fingered mechanical men began the interminable task of building and installing the prodigious amount of precise machinery required for the vast structure. Roger was well content, but one day he was rudely awakened from his dream of complete isolation. Even though he had no reason to believe that there was anything dangerous within hundreds of millions of miles, it was Roger's cautious custom to release the screens from time to time in order to allow his detectors to range out. This day, as he sent out his beams, his hard gray eyes grew even harder. Murski, Nishimura, come here! he snapped, and showed them upon his plate an enormous fear of steel, its rays flaming viciously. Is there any doubt whatever in your minds as to the system to which that ship belongs? None at all. Triplanetarian, replied the Russian, while larger than any I have seen before, its construction is unmistakable. They managed to trace us and are testing out their weapons before attacking. Do we attack or do we run away? If triplanetarian, and it surely is, we attack, coldly. This one section is armed and powered to defeat Triplanetary's entire navy. We shall take that ship, and shall add its slight resources to our own. And it may even be that they have picked up the three who escaped me. I have never yet been balked for long. Yes, we shall take that vessel, and those three sooner or later. Bradley, I care nothing about. But Costigan handled me and the woman. Diamond-hard eyes glared balefully at the urge of thoughts to a clean and normal mind, unthinkable. To your posts, he ordered, the robots will continue to function under their automatic controls during the short time it will require to abate this nuisance. One moment. A strange voice roared from the speakers. Consider yourselves under arrest. By order of the Triplanetary Council, surrender and you shall receive impartial hearing. Fight us, and you shall never come to trial. From what we have learned of Roger, we do not expect him to surrender. But if any of you other men wish to avoid immediate death, leave your vessel at once. We will come back for you later. Any of you wishing to leave this vessel have my full permission to do so. Roger announced, disdaining any reply to the challenge of the Boise. Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoid area after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attack in one minute. Would not one do better by stopping on? Baxter, in the quarters of the American, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. I should leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win. But I do not fancy that it can, do you? That ship? One triplanetary ship against us? Penrose laughed rockously. Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that there was any chance of us losing. But there isn't, so I'm staying. I know which side my bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that's all. Not bluffing exactly either, because they'll go through with it as long as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have. They'll die trying every time instead of running away, even when they know they're licked before they start. They don't use good judgment. None of you are leaving? Very well. You each know what to do. Came Rogers' emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, he advanced to Lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air. Toward the poised Boise, Rogers steered. Within range he flung out a weapon new learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing or creature, the red converter field of the Nevians. For Rogers' analytical detectors had stood him in Goodstead during those frightful minutes, and in the course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Narada's superhuman attack. In such Goodstead that from the records of those ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With a vastly inferior armament, the smallest of Rogers' vessels had defeated the most powerful battleships of triplanetary. What had he to fear in such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively armed and powered? Well, it was for his peace of mind that he had no inkling, that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical supership of triplanetary's secret service, nor that its already unprecedented armament had been reinforced, thanks to that hated custigan, with Rogers' own every worthwhile idea, as well as with every weapon and defense known to that arch-nevian, Narado. Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, and instantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rado Busch at the controls down, the men of the secret service countered with wave after wave, and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and material destruction. No thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship could enter their minds. The outlaws had each been given a chance to surrender, and each had refused it. Refusing they knew, as the triplanetarians knew and as all modern readers know, meant that they were staking their lives upon victory. For with modern armaments it is seldom indeed that a single man lives through the defeat in battle of a war-vessel of space. Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not even reach Boise's screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor, as Rado Busch neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone of force, but even that all devouring zone could not touch Roger's peculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed. Ultraviolet, infrared, pure heat, infrasound, solid beams of high tension, high frequency, current, and whose paths the most stubborn metals would be volatilized instantly. All iron-driven, every deadly and torturing vibration known, was hurled against that screen. But it, too, was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macrobeam was dissipated by it, reflected, hurled away on all sides in course getting torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and Dutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes, and still it held. But Roger's fiercest blasts and heaviest projectiles were equally impotent against the four shields of the supership. The adept, having no liking for a battle upon anything like equal terms, sought safety in flight, only to be brought to a crashing, stunning halt by a massive tractor-beam. That must be that six-phase polycyclic stream that Conway reported on. Cleveland frowned and thought. I've been doing a lot of work on that, and I think I've calculated an opener for it, Fred, but I'll have to have number 10 projector and the whole output of number 10 power room. Can you let me play with that much juice for a while? All right, Blake, tune her up to fifty-five thousand. There, hold it! Now you other fellows, listen. I'm going to try to drill a hole through that screen with a hollow, quasi-solid beam, like a diamond drill cutting out a core. You won't be able to shove anything into the hole from outside the beam, so you'll have to steer your cans out through the central orifice of number 10 projector. That'll be cold, since I'm going to use only the edge. I don't know how long I'll be able to hold the hole open, though, so shoot them along as fast as you can. Ready? Here goes. He pressed a series of contacts. Far below in number 10 converter room, massive switches drove home, and the enormous mass of the vessel quivered under the terrific reaction of the newly calculated semi-material beam of energy that was hurled out, backed by the mightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of triplanetary's super-dreadnought. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerable energy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struck Roger's hitherto impenetrable wall, struck in clung, grinding, boring in. While from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of cylinder and shield, the pirate screen radiated scintillating torrents of crackling, streaming sparks, lightning-like in length, and in intensity. Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through. Pierced Roger's polycyclic screen exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls, and now, concentrated upon one point, flamed out in seemingly redoubled fury, triplanetary's raging rays, in vain. For even as they could not penetrate the screen, neither could they penetrate the wall of Cleveland's drill, but rebounded from it in the cascaded brilliance of thwarted lightning. Oh, what a dumb bell I am, groaned Cleveland. Why, oh, why didn't I have somebody rig up a secondary XXV beam on Ten's inner rings? Hop to it, will you Blake, so that we'll have it in case they're able to stop the cans? But the pirates could not stop all of triplanetary's projectiles, now hurrying along inside the pipe as fast as they could be driven. In fact, for a few minutes desperate Roger, knowing that he faced his long life's gravest crisis, paid no attention to them at all, nor to any of his own useless offensive weapons, he struggled only and madly to break away from the savage grip of the Boise's tractor-rod. Feudal. He couldn't either cut nor stretch that inexorably anchoring beam. Then he devoted his every resource to the closing of that unbelievable breach in the shield, the barrier which through all previous emergencies had kept death at bay. Equally feudal. His most desperate efforts resulted only in more frenzied displays of incandescence along the curved surface of contact of that penetrant cylinder. And through that terrific conduit came speeding package after package of destruction, bombs, and armor piercing shells, gas shells, and shells of poisonous and corrosive fluids followed each other in close succession. The surviving scientists of the planetoid, expert gunners and raymen all, destroyed many of the projectiles, but it was not humanly possible to frustrate them all. And the breach could not be foreshut against the all but irresistible force of Cleveland's opener. And with all his power Roger could not shift his vessel's position in the grip of triplanetary's tractors, sufficiently to bring a projector to bear upon the supership, along the now unprotected axis of that narrow but deadly tube. Thus it was that the end came soon. A warhead touched steel plating and there ensued a world-racking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide, helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the stricken hulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled. Explosive bombs literally tore the pirate vessel to fragments, while vials of pure corrosion dissolved her substance into dripping corruption and reeking gases, filled every cranny of the wreckage as its torn and dismembered fragments began their long plunge to the ground. The spaceship followed the pieces down, and Rautabusch sound out and exploring ray. Resistance was such that it was necessary to use corrosive, and ship and contents were completely disintegrated. He dictated into his vessel's log some time later. While there were, of course, no remains recognizable as human, it is practically certain that Roger and his last eleven men died. Look here, Fred! Cleveland called his attention to the plate, upon which was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of the ghastly planet, reeking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything within the circle, bared by Roger. I was just going to suggest that we clean up that planetoid Roger started, but I see that the local boys are attending to it. Just as well, perhaps. I would like to stay and study these people a little while, but we must get back on the trail of the Nevians, and the Boise leaped away into space toward the line of flight of the amphibians. They reached that line, and along it they traveled at full normal blast. As they traveled, their detecting receivers and amplifiers were reaching out with their utmost power, ultra-instruments capable of rendering audible any signal originating within many light-years of them upon any known frequency, and constantly at least two men were listening to those instruments with every sense concentrated in their ears. Listening, straining to distinguish in the deafening roar of background noise from the over-driven tubes any sign of voice or signal. Listening, while millions upon untold millions of miles beyond even the prodigious reach of those ultra-instruments, three human beings pitted against overwhelming odds were even then sending out into empty space an almost hopeless appeal for the aid so desperately needed. End of chapter.