by Earl
“It will not be so bad with your people,” said Albermarle consolingly. “A large number of them were moved to other planets by the Migration Commission in preparation for such an occurrence.”
Uaaii’s metallic voice tolled bell-like as Toom bowed his leafy head in resignation and stepped aside.
“We have come to grips with the enemy. Let us hope that we shall emerge as unscathed in future tussles as in this first affair.”
Space was a queer sight to the warriors who dashed through the ether at the furious rate of ten thousand times the speed of light. In back nothing could be seen, for the light rays were left far behind. It was the vast chilling emptiness of a bottomless pit. To the side and up ahead the stars shone with colorful intensity, subtly altered from their appearance when seen from a planet. There were also blinding flashes straight ahead as the probing disintegrator beams puffed into atoms the wandering stones of the void to prevent them from colliding with the ships. At times a star grew to a disc and then a ball, sending its bright rays to the twin spheres, lighting them up like two scintillating jewels.
Inside the ships there was a deathly silence, for the engines were silent in operation. Queer figures stalked about, each astoundingly different from the other in outward form, yet all burning with the same purpose. Citizens they all were of the great Solarian Empire and they had but one aim. One hundred creatures there were in each ship; two hundred souls altogether from some twenty-two different worlds[3] of the Empire. Many of them, whose life spans measured all of 500 Earthly years, were veterans of the War of the Binary Suns, when the people of Sol had successfully resisted invasion from outer space. Once again they were fighting for their glorious Empire; they spent much time peering ahead, waiting for the enemy to appear.
Four Earth days out, which was half way to CX-88, Albermarle gave the order to build up the protective screens. As the skillful operators manipulated the controls, the mists of bound electronic forces swirled around the two ships. A low hum came into being inside the craft, a song of power. Then the protective screens took form as vague shimmering shadows and locked about the ships like the mothering wings of some gigantic benign being.
It was well that this was done for at the end of the fourth day a soft yellow ray shot viciously from CX-88 toward the avengers. It splashed liquidlike on the electronic screen, sent probing fingers of yellow all around for an opening, then flickered out, destroyed by the screen forces. Again and again the enemy sent that yellow ray at the two speeding globes and each time it came it splashed more and more thickly on the screen.
Toom’s figure appeared in Albermarle’s television screen. There was unmistakable sardonic glee on his face.
“The enemy is beginning to tremble, I think. We have warded off two of their most powerful forces already.”
“If they tremble now,” came Xixxus’ voice, mechanically produced like a Venerian’s, “they will shake violently later when they come within range of our own armament.”
“Could that be but now!” exclaimed Toom fiercely, bitterly. “The Blue Beam has played upon my world now for two Earth days. Already reports have come in from the Empire that my people are dying by the millions!” Not many hours after, the yellow ray vanished to be replaced by a pale green beam, that hurtled against the screens and sent up a shower of blinding sparks. For many Earth hours this green ray battered the screens, dissolving into fountains of impotent electrical discharges. Albermarle smiled to himself. The enemy would gradually learn that Solarian science was no mean development, being a composite product of many different kinds of intelligent races. They would learn, as Toom put it, that well-nigh invincible forces, in almost indestructible ships, were descending upon them in a mighty wrath at their cosmic misdemeanors.
The green ray was withdrawn after some time and there was peace for a while.
Then Commander Albermarle called for target practice. Each of the ships tossed out small metal balls and the gunners of the other ship whiffed them into nothingness or otherwise sent them away from the “field of action.”
FROM the funnel-shaped apertures shot powerful repulsion rays which knocked the targets away as a child bats away a stone with a stick. From the copper globes shot streaks of super-high-voltage lightning, fusing the targets, so that they dripped molten in the absolute zero of space. Dim, vaguely-defined disintegrator rays spouted from the metal tubes of the ships’ hulls to touch the target balls into scattering atoms and molecules.
The targets were released in a variety of ways, undulating, circling, speeding like bullets, or merely floating, and seldom did the trained gunners let one of them tarry long unmolested. Toom himself took over one of the lightning guns, and Uaaii, who stood beside him, could see the prophetic sparkle in his saucer eyes as he expertly flicked target after target. He was imagining that each of them was a ship of the enemy. Uaaii sympathised with him, for every minute the reports came in from the Empire that Toom’s people, the Jovians, were being decimated in legions.
But now there occurred something that immediately stopped the target practice. A shock ran through both ships and the velocity indicators showed a decided drop in speed. Albermarle, suspecting it to be caused by the enemy, set the scientists to determine what it was that had so slowed them. They reported soon after that an invisible force, powerfully repulsive, was resisting their flight forward. Right after this the pilot reported that despite his efforts, the ship was being turned aside from its course, slowly and inexorably. A moment later Toom’s voice burst in and reported the same thing occurring to his ship. The enemy, with a repulsive force, was shoving them aside and at the same time reducing their velocity.
“We must do something, Commander Albermarle,” said Toom. “At this rate we will never see CX-88!”
“We cannot get any more out of the engines,” returned Albermarle thoughtfully. “They are already working at their top limit. Let us try changing direction so that the beam will lose us.”
Accordingly, with the two pilots of the twin ships working as one, the war craft suddenly swung sideward. After a time Albermarle gave the order to straighten out again. With a surge of power the ships leaped ahead at full velocity in the right direction.
“Slipped out of their hands!” boomed the Jovian.
But Albermarle was less optimistic. He stood waiting expectantly. Then it came again—a pounding shock and the velocity needle dipped.
“Can’t escape them that way,” said Albermarle. “They have an eye on us.”
His chest-phone buzzed and the head scientist, a Martian, spoke:
“I have a suggestion, Commander Albermarle. If we can split the beam and make it flow beside us, the drag will be eliminated.”
“Good. Have your staff work on that.”
In their completely equipped laboratory, the scientists analyzed the beam, plotted its make-up, and rapidly constructed a cone of force to split it. This cone was built up and enlarged until it engulfed both the ships. Immediately the craft darted ahead and the velocity needles climbed to top speed.
With the uncanny ability the enemy seemed to have of knowing everything that occurred, the repulsive beam was withdrawn as the splitting cone nullified its effect.
The enemy made no further move during the sixth and seventh Earth days of the voyage. At the beginning of the seventh, CX-88 emerged from the Heavens as a slowly growing disc. Excitement reigned aboard as the lair of the senders of the abominable Blue Beam loomed closer and closer. One and all they eagerly awaited the grand moment when they could descend upon the cowardly enemy like a bolt from God.
As the two ships drew nearer to the sun, the protective screens which had shimmered ghost-like in the starlight of space, faded into invisibility in the strong sunlight, so that the craft sparkled bare and distinct. Pitifully insignificant they seemed as the giant planetary system of CX-88 became recognizable.
It was when the planets had grown to pea-size that the enemy ships appeared. In a vast horde, like bees swarming to a new hive, the bullet craft hur
tled up from their sun, their black hulls shining like armor in the sunlight.
Commander Albermarle called a halt when the enemy was sighted.
Toom’s excited features appeared in the television screen.
“Look at them. They come in countless numbers, cowards that they are. But they will see what two lone ships can do to them.”
The enemy horde came to a stop some distance away as if mocking the two ships that dared to face their numberless might. They had no formation but crowded densely in a black mass. Then they leaped forward.
Now Commander Albermarle barked sharply into his mouthpiece:
“Attention! Battle Formation! At the enemy!”
CHAPTER III
THE RED BEAMS
THE two diamond hulled ships of the Solarian Empire swung in a line parallel to the swiftly approaching enemy and separated till there were five miles of space between them. Then, at Albermarle’s signal, a livid stream of translucence flowed from each ship to meet in the middle of the space between them. The two ends of the discharges fused into one another to make an intangible rope linking one ship to another. Then the billowing material began to pulsate and glow brightly like a writhing snake.
It was a source of vast energy. From the very ether of space this undulating rod of energy extracted titanic forces to be used in battle. It flowed into the ships and pooled into giant accumulators, ready to be loosed in any of a number of ways.
From the nearing enemy fleet darted a kaleidoscope of visible rays. They hurtled to the motionless globes, with the quivering line of white incandescence between them, and licked eagerly around the electronic screens, seeking an entrance. Yellow rays splashed like soft mud and crept octopus-like around the screen. Green rays showered in glowing sparks that never touched the diamond hulls. Violet rays struck like a gimlet only to flick out suddenly. Large, blunt metallic objects streamed crazily up to burst into electric dust on the screen. Smaller objects that looked like cubes of sugar sprang up and pounded at the screens, dissolving into white puffs of vapor.
But the electronic screens remained adamant, completely shielding off the hulls from contact with any of the rays or bombs.
Then the Solarians struck. The powerful energies of the ether were loosed from the accumulators. From the copper globes sparkled a steady stream of lightning bolts which fused the black ships like so much butter. From the funnel-apertures sprang repulsion rays, which dashed black ships backward so forcefully as to cause them to ram and smash dozens of others. From the ray tubes issued invisible disintegrator beams, which flicked the black ships into puffs of vapor that diffused instantaneously in space.
In less time than it takes to tell it, there were gaping holes in the mass of black ships where they had been fused, disintegrated, or smashed to jagged bits. But they came on undaunted and completely surrounded the two Solarian ships, sending their rays and bombs at them in furious abandon. So unorganized were they and so demoralized by the steady bite of the diamond ships’ armament, that the black ships often destroyed each other in their wild attack. The carnage was still further increased by black ships that inadvertently touched the rod of pulsating energy connecting the Solarian ships, for they would violently burst into fragments, piercing near-by craft with meteoric lumps moving at frightful velocity. Many of these pieces of exploded ships pelted on the diamond hulls of the Solarian ships, affecting them not in the least.
The repulsion-ray gunners, connected by radio, quickly worked out and put into effect a particularly devastating strategem. At a signal all the gunners on the same side of the ships as the rod of etheric energy, would direct their rays straight into the mass of black ships between them. Pushed by the repulsion rays from both sides, the unlucky enemy craft would be crushed together like a mass of egg-shells. Then a concerted oblique push would send this interlocking mass swirling like a tiny planet into the melee of black ships above and below, to smash further dozens to bits.
“They can’t last much longer,” said Albermarle, speaking to the other ship.
“Surely not. Half their number is gone already,” came the metallic voice of Uaaii.
“Where is Toom?”
“He is seated at one of the repulsion guns, Commander Albermarle. He could not stand by merely issuing commands, so he left me in charge and took over a gun.”
Albermarle smiled momentarily, then barked several orders, having seen a group of black ships dashing full tilt at his ship in an attempt to ram it. The watchful disintegrator gunners puffed them to tenuous vapor.
QUITE suddenly space became clear; the pyrotechnics of colored rays faded, and the remnant of the enemy fleet fled precipitately.
“Shall we give chase?” asked Uaaii. “We could follow them to their base and destroy it.”
“No,” commanded Albermarle. “We have a more important task to do for the present.”
Toom’s face appeared in the television screen. His large eyes sparkled with grim joy.
“I feel much better now, Commander Albermarle. I can safely estimate I destroyed a hundred ships myself! And yet that is but a tithe of the numbers I would wish to send to oblivion!”
“Yes, but we have a bigger score than that to settle, Toom. They have killed citizens of the Solarian Empire numbering many billions. We will pay back that heavy debt soon, but first we must find the source of the Blue Beam and destroy the projector once and for all. Every added second it continues to radiate its beam adds thousands to the death list back home.”
Albermarle connected with the pilots.
“Send the ships down to the Blue Beam.”
A moment later a piping voice answered: “The Blue Beam, Commander Albermarle, is invisible. It is nowhere to be seen!”
Toom and Albermarle looked at each other puzzled.
“Could they have stopped it for the very reason we are here?”
“Then back!” cried Albermarle. “Back some two Earth hours in space where I last remember seeing it. That is the only way we will know whether it is off or not.”
“There it is!” cried Toom two hours later during which time they had partially retraced their trip in the void. “Just below us.”
“Lower ships and follow the Blue Beam!” ordered Albermarle.
Obediently, the two globular craft sank to a position just above the ghostly Blue Beam and trailed it toward CX-88.
“It’s gone!” said Uaaii puzzled suddenly.
Albermarle ordered the ships backward and then forward paralleling the ray. At a certain point it became invisible and could not be seen up ahead in the direction of CX-88, although it stabbed as viciously as ever to the back.
“What cunning people,” commented Xixxus. “They have made the Blue Beam invisible as it comes from their projector so that it will be untraceable.”
Albermarle spent a moment in thought. Then he called the scientists.
“See if you can trace the Blue Beam by instruments.”
The report of the scientists came back an hour later as the two ships yet hovered over the breaking point of the colored and invisible parts of the Blue Beam.
“There is no instrument that will follow the Blue Beam, Commander Albermarle. It seems to be charged with some static force that scatters all effort to measure its direction of flow. We have tried sighting also in a line parallel to the beam, but, oddly enough, this line runs through space in between the planets of CX-88, never once nearing one of them!”
Toom shook his head angrily.
“And every moment we delay, my people die!”
Commander Albermarle sucked in his breath slowly and whistled it out, puckering his brow in thought. Then he contacted the radio room.
“Call the astronomical station on Titan moon of Saturn and ask if they can trace the beam to a certain planet of CX-88.”
“In the meantime,” he continued, speaking to Toom, “we will scout around CX-88 and perhaps we may find out something.”
But while the two ships were yet streaming toward their des
tination, a report came from the radio room.
“The Titan Astronomers will attempt that difficult task, Commander Albermarle, and will report in a few Earth hours. But I have here another report. The Blue Beam has left Jupiter and is now centered on Earth!”
Only in one way did Commander Albermarle show how that tore his heart. His teeth clicked suddenly shut like a vise.
“We will not delay any longer,” he said grimly. “Full speed ahead! We will raze every planet to the ground till they cry for mercy!”
“Good!” echoed Toom enthusiastically.
Like gigantic thunderbolts, the two spheres leaped toward CX-88. Inside were ten score determined, grimly eager warriors. The last report from the Empire had crystallized their resolve into mighty anger, for Earth had long been recognized as the keynote, the very heart of the Solarian Empire. They must strike and strike quickly lest the Empire become a shambles of crazed, ungoverned peoples; lest the cooperation of the planets of Sol become shattered by the scourge of the Blue Beam.
UNERRINGLY, the globular vehicles sped to the outermost of the planets and hovered above it like a vulture. Then the pulsating rod of energy came into being between them and they began to circle the planet. Utilizing the mighty power of the ether energies, the craft extended invisible tentacles of attraction to the planet. Once this force firmly anchored them some fifty miles above ground, they increased their revolution more and more till they spanned the planet’s circumference in a short five minutes. Centrifugal force was offset by the firm anchorage of the tentacular gravitation fields.
“Now!” shouted Albermarle.
As one, all the disintegrators that could point downward poured forth their rays, fed by the rod of etheric energy. Where the broad concentrated rays touched the ground, a trail of white puffs arose. Cities, people, anything on the surface of the planet were whiffed into flying motes.
The maneuver had been planned to the last item. The two interlocked ships, circling like super-fast satellites, changed their plane of operation every revolution so that new area was constantly bared to the titanic, blended disintegrator ray. To the inhabitants of the planet it must have seemed a visitation from a god, for to them the two diamond-hulled ships would be invisible because of their rapid motion across the sky.