by Anthology
"Well, I can't think of any more excuses for monopolizing you, Miss Newton, so I suppose I'll have to take you back. Believe me, I've enjoyed this more than you can realize--I've...."
He broke off and listened, every nerve taut. "What was that?" he exclaimed.
"What was what? I didn't hear anything?"
"Something screwy somewhere! I felt a vibration, and anything that'd make this mountain of steel even quiver must have given us one gosh-awful nudge. There's another!"
The girl, painfully tense, felt only a barely perceptible tremor, but the computer, knowing far better than she the inconceivable strength and mass of that enormous structure of solidly braced hardened steel, sprang into action. Leaping to the small dirigible look-out plate, he turned on the power and swung it upward.
* * * * *
"Great suffering snakes!" he ejaculated, then stood mute, for the plate revealed a terrible sight. The entire nose of the gigantic craft had been sheared off in two immense slices as though clipped off by a gigantic sword, and even as they stared, fascinated, at the sight, the severed slices were drifting slowly away. Swinging the view along the plane of cleavage, Stevens made out a relatively tiny ball of metal, only fifty feet or so in diameter, at a distance of perhaps a mile. From this ball there shot a blinding plane of light, and the Arcturus fell apart at the midsection, the lower half separating clean from the upper portion, which held the passengers. Leaving the upper half intact, the attacker began slicing the lower, driving half into thin, disk-shaped sections. As that incandescent plane of destruction made its first flashing cut through the body of the Arcturus, accompanied by an additional pyrotechnic display of severed and short-circuited high-tension leads, Stevens and Nadia suddenly found themselves floating weightless in the air of the room. Still gripping the controls of the look-out plate, Stevens caught the white-faced girl with one hand, drew her down beside him, and held her motionless while his keen mind flashed over all the possibilities of the situation and planned his course of action.
"They're apparently slicing us pretty evenly, and by the looks of things, one cut is coming right about here," he explained rapidly, as he found a flashlight and drew his companion through the door and along a narrow passage. Soon he opened another door and led her into a tiny compartment so low that they could not stand upright--a mere cubicle of steel. Carefully closing the door, he fingered dials upon each of the walls of the cell, then folded himself up into a comfortable position, instructed Nadia to do the same, and snapped off the light.
"Please leave it on," the shaken girl asked. "It's so ghastly!"
"We'd better save it, Nadia," he advised, pressing her arm reassuringly, "it's the only light we've got, and we may need it worse later on--its life is limited, you know."
"Later on? Do you think we'll need anything--later on?"
"Sure! Of course they may get us, Nadia, but this little tertiary air-break is a mighty small target for them to hit. And if they miss us, as I think they will, there's a larger room opening off each wall of this one--at least one of which will certainly be left intact. From any one of those rooms we can reach a life-boat. Of course, it's a little too much to expect that any one of the life-boats will be left whole, but they're bulkheaded, too, you know, so that we can be sure of finding something able to navigate--providing we can make our get-away. Believe me, ace, I'm sure glad we're aboard the old Arcturus right now, with all her safety-devices, instead of on one of the modern liners. We'd be sunk right."
"I felt sunk enough for a minute--I'm feeling better now, though, since you are taking it so calmly."
"Sure--why not? A man's not dead until his heart stops beating, you know--our turn'll come next, when they let up a little."
"But suppose they change the width of their slices, and hit this cubby, small as it is?"
"It'd be just too bad," he shrugged. "In that case, we'd never know what hit us, so it's no good worrying about it. But say, we might do something at that, if they didn't hit us square. I can move fairly fast, and might be able to get a door open before the loss of pressure seals it. We'll light the flash ... here, you hold it, so that I can have both hands free. Put both arms around me, just under the arms, and stick to me like a porous plaster, because if I have to move at all, I'll have to jump like chain lightning. Shine the beam right over there, so it'll reflect and light up all the dials at once. There ... hold on tight! Here they come!"
As he spoke, a jarring shudder shook one side of their hiding-place, then, a moment later, the phenomenon was repeated, but with much less force, upon the other side. Stevens sighed with relief, took the light, and extinguished it.
"Missed us clean!" he exulted. "Now, if they don't find us, we're all set."
"How can they possibly find us? I seem to be always worried about the wrong things, but I should think that their finding us would be the least of our troubles."
"Don't judge their vision system by ours--they've got everything, apparently. However, their apparatus may not be delicate enough to spot us in a space this small when their projectors flash through it, as they probably will. Then, too, there's a couple of other big items in our favor--nobody else is in the entire lower half, since all this machinery down here is either automatic or else controlled from up above, so they won't be expecting to see anybody when they get down this far; and we aren't at all conspicuous. We're both dressed in gray--your clothes in particular are almost exactly the color of this armor-plate--so altogether we stand a good chance of being missed."
"What shall we do now?"
"Nothing whatever--wish we could sleep for a couple of hours, but of course there's no hope of that. Stretch out here, like that--you can't rest folded up like an accordion--and I'll lie down diagonally across the room. There's just room for me that way. That's one advantage of weightlessness--you can lie down standing on your head, and go to sleep and like it. But I forgot--you've never been weightless before, have you? Does it make you sick?"
"Not so much, now, except that I feel awfully weird inside. I was horribly dizzy and nauseated at first, but it's going away."
* * * * *
"That's good--it makes lots of people pretty sick. In fact, some folks get awfully sick and can't seem to get used to it at all. It's the canals in the inner ear that do most of it, you know. However, if you're as well as that already, you'll be a regular spacehound in half an hour. I've been weightless for weeks at a stretch, out in the Sirius, and now I've got so I really like it. Here, we'd better keep in touch." He found her hand and tucked it under his arm. "Stabilize our positions more, besides keeping us from getting too lonesome, here in the dark," he concluded, in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Thanks for saying 'us'--but you would, wouldn't you?" and a wave of admiration went through her for the real and chivalrous manhood of the man with whom she had been forced by circumstances to cast her lot. "How long must we stay here?"
"As long as the air lasts, and I'd like to stay here longer than that. We don't want to move around any more than we absolutely have to until their rays are off of us, and we have no way of knowing how long that will be. Also, we'd better keep still. I don't know what kind of an audio system they've got, but there's no use taking unnecessary chances."
"All x--I'm an oyster's little sister," and for many minutes the two remained motionless and silent. Now and then Nadia twitched and started at some vague real or imaginary sound--now and then her fingers tightened upon his biceps--and he pressed her hand with his great arm in reassurance and understanding. Once a wall of their cell resounded under the impact of a fierce blow and Stevens instantly threw his arm around the girl, twisting himself between her and the threatened wall, ready for any emergency. But nothing more happened; the door remained closed, the cell stayed bottle-tight, and time wore slowly on. All too soon the unmistakable symptoms of breathing an unfit atmosphere made themselves apparent and Stevens, after testing each of the doors, drew the girl into a larger room, where they breathed deeply of the fresh, cool air.
"How did you know that this room was whole?" asked Nadia. "We might have stepped out into space, mightn't we?"
"No; if this room had lost its tightness, the door wouldn't have opened. They won't open if there's a difference of one kilogram pressure on the two sides. That's how I knew that the room we were in at first was cut in two--the door into that air-break wouldn't move."
"What comes next?"
"I don't know exactly what to do--we'd better hold a little council of war. They may have gone..." Stevens broke off as the structure began to move, and they settled down upon what had been one of the side-walls. Greater and greater became the acceleration, until their apparent weight was almost as much as it would have been upon the Earth, at which point it became constant. "... but they haven't," he continued the interrupted sentence. "This seems to be a capture and seizure, as well as an attack, so we'll have to take the risk of looking at them. Besides, it's getting cold in here. One or two of the adjoining cells have apparently been ruptured and we're radiating our heat out into space, so we'll have to get into a life-boat or freeze. I'll go pick out the best one. Wonder if I'd better take you with me, or hide you and come back after you?"
"Don't worry about that--I'm coming with you," Nadia declared, positively.
"Just as well, probably," he assented, and they set out. A thorough exploration of all the tight connecting cells revealed that not a lifeboat within their reach remained intact, but that habitable and navigable portions of three such craft were available. Selecting the most completely equipped of these, they took up their residence therein by entering it and closing the massive insulating door. Stevens disconnected all the lights save one, and so shielded that one before turning it on that it merely lightened the utter darkness into a semi-permeable gloom. He then stepped up to the lookout plate, and with his hand upon the control, pondered long the possible consequences of what he wished to do.
"What harm would it do to take just a little peek?"
"I don't know--that's the dickens of it. Maybe none, and then again, maybe a lot. You see, we don't know who or what we are up against. The only thing we know is that they've got us beat a hundred ways, and we've got to act accordingly. We've got to chance it sometime, though, if we can ever get away, so we might as well do it now. I'll put it on very short range first, and see what we can see. By the small number of cells we've got here I'm afraid they've split us up lengthwise, too--so that instead of having a whole slice of the old watermelon to live in, we've got only about a sixth of one--shaped about like a piece of restaurant pie. One thing I can do, though. I'll turn on the communicator receiver and put it on full coverage--maybe we can hear something useful."
Putting a little power upon the visiray plate, he moved the point of projection a short distance from their hiding-place, so that the plate showed a view of the wreckage. The upper half of the vessel was still intact, the lower half a jumble of sharply-cut fragments. From each of the larger pieces a brilliant ray of tangible force stretched outward. Suddenly their receiver sounded behind them, as the high-powered transmitter in the telegraph room tried to notify headquarters of their plight.
"Arcturus attacked and cut up being taken tow...."
Rapidly as the message was uttered the transmitter died with a rattle in the middle of a word, and Nadia looked at Stevens with foreboding in her eyes.
"They've got something, that's one thing sure, to be able to neutralize our communicator beams that way," he admitted. "Not so good--we'll have to play this close to our vests, girl!"
"Are you just trying to cheer me up, or do you really think we have a chance?" she demanded. "I want to know just where we stand."
"I'm coming clean with you, no kidding. If we can get away, we'll be all x, because I'll bet a farm that by this time Brandon's got everything those birds have, and maybe more. They beat us to it, that's all. I'm kind of afraid, though, that getting away isn't going to be quite as simple as shooting fish down a well."
* * * * *
Far ahead of them a port opened, a lifeboat shot out at its full power, and again their receiver tried to burst into sound, but it was a vain attempt. The sound died before one complete word could be uttered, and the lifeboat, its power completely neutralized by the rays of the tiny craft of the enemy, floated gently back toward the mass of its parent and accompanied it in its headlong flight. Several more lifeboats made the attempt, as the courageous officers of the Arcturus, some of whom had apparently succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the captors, launched the little shells from various ports; but as each boat issued, its power was neutralized and it found itself dragged helplessly along in the grip of one of those mysterious, brilliant rays of force. At least one hidden officer must have been watching the fruitless efforts, for the next lifeboat to issue made no attempt, either to talk or to flee, but from it there flamed out into space a concentrated beam of destruction--the terrible ray of annihilation, against which no known substance could endure for a moment; the ray which had definitely outlawed war. But even that frightful weapon was useless--it spent its force harmlessly upon an impalpable, invisible barrier, a hundred yards from its source, and the bold lifeboat disappeared in one blinding explosion of incandescence as the captor showed its real power in retaliation. Stevens, jaw hard-set, leaped from the screen, then brought himself up so quickly that he skated across the smooth steel floor. Shutting off the lookout plate, he led the half-fainting girl across the room to a comfortable seat and sat down beside her--raging, but thoughtful. Nadia soon recovered.
"Why are you acting so contrary to your nature--is it because of me?" she demanded. "A dozen times I've seen you start to do something and then change your mind. I will not be a load on you nor hinder you in anything you want to do."
"I told your father I'd look after you, and I'm going to do it," he replied, indirectly. "I would do it anyway, of course--even if you are ten or twelve years older than I thought you were."
"Yes, Dad never has realized that I'm more than eight years old. I see--you were going out there and be slaughtered?" He flushed, but made no reply. "In that case I'm glad I'm here--that would have been silly. I think we'd better hold that council of war you mentioned a while ago, don't you?"
"I need a smoke--do you indulge?"
"No thanks. I tried it a few times at school, but never liked it."
He searched his pockets, bringing to light an unopened package and a tattered remnant which proved to contain one dilapidated cigarette. He studied it thoughtfully. "I'll smoke this wreck," he decided, "while it's still smokable. We'll save the rest of them--I'm afraid it'll be a long time between smokes. Well, let's confer!"
"This will have to be a one-sided conference. I don't imagine that any of my ideas will prove particularly helpful. You talk and I'll listen.
"You can't tell what ideas may be useful--chip in any time you feel the urge. Here's the dope, as I see it. They're highly intelligent creatures and are in all probability neither Martians nor Venerians. If any of them had any such stuff as that, some of us would have known about it and, besides, I don't believe they would have used it in just that way. Mercury is not habitable, at least for organic beings; and we have never seen any sign of any other kind of inhabitants who could work with metals and rays. They're probably from Jupiter, although possibly from further away. I say Jupiter, because I would think, judging from the small size of the ship, that it may still be in the experimental stage, so that they probably didn't come from any further away than Jupiter. Then, too, if they were very numerous, somebody would have sighted one before. I'd give my left leg and four fingers for one good look at the inside of that ship."
"Why didn't you take it, then? You never even looked toward it, after that one first glimpse."
"I'll say I didn't--the reason being that they may have automatic detectors, and as I have suggested before, our system of vision is so crude that its use could be detected with a clothesline or a basket full of scrap iron. But to resume: Their aim is to capt
ure, not destroy, since they haven't killed anybody except the one crew that attacked them. Apparently they want to study us or something. However, they don't intend that any of us shall get away, nor even send out a word of what has happened to us. Therefore it looks as though our best bet is to hide now, and try to sneak away on them after a while--direct methods won't work. Right?"
"You sound lucid. Is there any possibility of getting back, though, if we got anywhere near Jupiter? It's so far away!"
"It's a long stretch from Jupiter to any of the planets where we have power-plants, all right--particularly now, when Mars and Tellus are subtending an angle of something more than ninety degrees at the sun, and Venus is between the two, while Jupiter is clear across the sun from all three of them. Even when Jupiter is in mean opposition to Mars, it is still some five hundred and fifty million kilometers away, so you can form some idea as to how far it is from our nearest planet now. No, if we expect to get back under our own power, we've got to break away pretty quick--these lifeboats have very little accumulator capacity, and the receptors are useless above about three hundred million kilometers...."
"But it'll take us a long time to go that far, won't it?"
"Not very. Our own ships, using only the acceleration of gravity, and both plus and minus at that, make the better than four hundred million kilometers of the long route to Mars in five days. These birds are using almost that much acceleration, and I don't see how they do it. They must have a tractor ray. Brandon claimed that such a thing was theoretically possible, but Westfall and I couldn't see it. We ragged him about it a lot--and he was right. I thought, of course, they'd drift with us, but they are using power steadily. They've got some system!"
"Suppose they could be using intra-atomic energy? We were taught that it was impossible, but you've shattered a lot of my knowledge today."
"I wouldn't want to say definitely that it is absolutely impossible, but the deeper we go into that line, the more unlikely intra-atomic energy power-plants become. No, they've got a real power-transmission system--one that can hold a tight beam together a lot farther than anything we have been able to develop, that's all. Well, we've given them quite a lot of time to get over any suspicion of us, let's see if we can sneak away from them."