Spacehounds of IPC by E. E. Smith (e books for reading .TXT) 📖

frequency, staring into the brilliant blankness of his micrometer screen as he did so. After a few minutes of search the screen darkened somewhat, revealing the image of the Jovian globe. Brandon instantly shifted into that one channel the entire power of his attack; steadying the controls to bring the sphere of the Jovians into the sharpest possible focus, knowing that he had found the open slit and that through it there was pouring upon the enemy the full power of his terrible weapon.

In the fraction of a second before the Jovians could detect the attack and close the slit, he saw a portion of the wall of their vessel flare into white heat and literally explode outward in puffs and gouts of flaming, molten metal and of incandescent gases. But the thrust, savage as it was, had not been fatal and the enemy countered instantly. Now that the crushing force of the full-coverage attack was lessened for a moment, through another slit there poured a beam of energy equal to the Terrestrials' own—a beam of such intense power that the outer screen of the Sirius flared from red through the spectrum, to and beyond the violet, and went black in less than a second, and the inner screen had almost gone down before Brandon's lightning hands could restore the complete coverage that so effectively blanketed the forces of the enemy.

"Well, we're back to the status quo," announced Brandon, calmly. "It's a good gag they didn't have time to locate our working slit—if they had pushed that stuff through our open channel, we'd have gotten frizzled up some around the edges. As it was, we got the edge on that exchange—take it from your Uncle Dudley, Quince, that bird knows that he's been nudged!"

Again he searched the entire band for an opening, but could find none. The enemy had apparently retired into a tightly closed shell of energy. The small vessel no longer struggled, nor even moved, but was merely resisting passively.

"Not an open channel, not even one for him to work through—he can't wiggle. Well, that won't get him anything. We're so much bigger than he is, that we can outlast him and will get him some time, since he's bound to run out of power before we do. I don't believe he can receive anything, sealed up as he is, and he can't have accumulators enough more efficient than ours to make up the difference, can he, Quince?"

"It is quite possible. For instance, although we have never heard of any progress being made along such lines, it has been pointed out repeatedly that synthesis of a radio-active element of very high atomic weight would theoretically yield an almost perfect accumulator—one many thousands of times as efficient as ours in mass-to-energy ratio. Then, too, you realize, of course, that there is a bare possibility that intra-atomic energy may not be absolutely impossible."

"Nix on that, Quince. I'll stand for a lot, but not for that last idea! It's hard to say that anything's impossible, of course, except things made so by definition or by being contrary to observational facts, but the best work shows that intra-atomic energy is just about as impossible as anything can well be. It has been shown pretty conclusively that all ordinary matter is already in its most stable state, so that work must be done upon any ordinary atom to decompose it. Besides, if he had either radioactive accumulators or intra-atomic energy, he would have cut us up long ago. Nope, the answer is that he's probably yelled for help and is trying to hold out until it gets here," was Brandon's rejoinder.

"What can we do about it?" asked Quince.

"Don't know yet. I do know, though, that we aren't half as ready for trouble as I thought we were. There's a dozen things I want to do that I can't because we haven't got the stuff. Don't say 'I told you so,' either—I know you did! You're the champion ground-and-lofty thinker of the century. Alcantro!"

"Here!"

"Round up the gang, will you, and figure me out a screen and a set of meters that will indicate an open band? We lose too much time feeling around anyhow, and we're too apt to take one on the chin while we're doing it. Also, you ought to make it so it'll shoot a jolt into the opening, while you're at it," said Brandon.

"We shall begin at once," and the massive Martian as he replied, stepped over to the calculating machine.

"Well, Quince, we can't do much to him this way—he's crawled into a hole and pulled the hole in after him. Gosh, I wish we had more stuff!"

"After all, we have everything whose necessity and practicability could have been foreseen in the light of our information. We can, of course, go further."

"You chirped it! But we can't let things ride this way or we'll get our hair singed. We'll have to decorate him with the grand slam, I guess."

"Yes, it seems as though the time for emergency measures has arrived."

"Put everything on the center of the band?"

"That is probably the best frequency to use in a case of this kind."

"He can't control, so we'll push him down close to the ground before we go to work on him—so we don't have so far to fall if anything goes screwy with the works. Here's hoping nothing gives away!"

The Sirius, almost against the flaming screens of the Jovian, and both vessels very close to the surface of the satellite, Brandon tested the power leads briefly, adjusted dials and coils, then touched the button which actuated the relays—relays which in turn drove home the gigantic switches that launched a fearsome and as yet untried weapon. Instantly released, the full seven hundred thousand kilofranks of their stupendous batteries of accumulators drove into the middle frequency of the attacking band, and Brandon's heart was in his mouth as he stared into the plate to see what would happen. He saw! Everything in the Sirius held fast, and under the impact of the inconceivable plane of force, the screens of the enemy vessel flared instantly into an even more intense incandescence and in that same fleeting instant went down, and all defenses vanished as the metal sphere fell apart into two halves, as would an apple under the full blow of a broad-axe.

Brandon quickly shut off his power and stared in relief into the central compartment of the globular ship of space, now laid open, and saw there figures, one or two of which were moving weakly. As he looked, one of these feebly attempted to raise a peculiar, tubular something toward a helplessly fettered body. Even as Brandon snatched away the threatening weapon with a beam of force, he recognized the captive.

"Great Cat, there's Breckenridge!" he gasped, and directed a lifting beam upon the bound and unconscious prisoner. Rapidly, but carefully, he was brought through the double airlock and into the control room, where his shackles were cut away and where he soon revived under vigorous and skilful treatment.

"Any more of you in there? Did I hit any of you with that beam?" demanded Brandon, intensely, as soon as Breckenridge showed signs of understanding.

"King's in there somewhere, and there's a Callistonian human being that you mustn't kill," the chief pilot replied, weakly and with great effort in every word. "Don't believe that you hit anybody direct, but the shock was pretty bad." Having delivered his message, he lay back, exhausted.

"All x. Crown, give me a squad...."

"Not on your life!" barked the general. "This is my job and I'll do it myself. Your job is fighting the Sirius—stay with it!"

"Not in seven thousand years—I'm in on this, too," Brandon protested, but was decisively overruled by Newton.

"You belong right here at this board, since no one else can handle it the way you can. Stay here!" he commanded.

"All right," grudgingly assented the physicist, and held the Sirius upright, with her needle-sharp stern buried a few feet deep in the ground.

He watched the wreckage jealously while Crowninshield and forty helmeted men issued from the service door in the lower ultra-light compartment and advanced upon the two halves of the enemy vessel. As no hostile demonstrations ensued, scaling ladders were quickly placed and with weapons at the alert the police boarded the hemispheres, manacled the still helpless beings visible, and, after laying down a fog of stupefying gas, vanished into compartments beyond the metal partitions. After a short time they reappeared and climbed down the scaling ladders, carrying several inert forms, and Brandon spoke into his transmitter.

"King all x, Crowninshield?"

"I think so. Not being in the control room he was not as badly shocked by the passage of the beam as were Breckenridge and those you saw. The things in the other rooms were about ready to fight, so we gave them a little whiff of tritylamin, but Captain King will be as good as ever in a few minutes."

"Fine business!" The police entered the Sirius, the service doors clanged shut, and Brandon turned to Westfall.

"While they're coming up, I guess I'll pick up Perce and Miss Newton. We'd better get them aboard and beat it, while we're all in one piece!"

But even before he could send out the exploring beam of his communicator, the voice of Stevens came from the receiver.

"Hi, Brandon and Westfall! We've watched the whole show. Congratulations, fellows! Welcome to Ganymede! You are in our valley—we're upstream from you about three hundred meters; just below the falls, on the meadow side."

"All x," Brandon acknowledged. "We saw you. Come on out where we can pick you up. We've got to get away from here, and get away fast!"

"We'll carry off the pieces of that ship, too, Quince—we may be able to get a lot of pointers from it," and Brandon swung mighty tractor beams upon the severed halves of the Jovian vessel, then extended a couple of smaller rays to meet the two little figures racing across the smooth green meadow toward the Sirius.