by Anthology
Through countless thousands of generations the Martians had become acclimated to a planet having little air, less water, and characterized by abrupt transitions from searing heat to bitter cold: from blinding light to almost impenetrable darkness. Eight feet tall and correspondingly massive, they could barely stand against the gravitational force of the Earth, almost three times as great as that of Mars, but the two Martian scientists struggled to their feet as the Terrestrials entered.
"As you were, fellows--lie down again and take it easy." Brandon suggested in the common Interplanetarian tongue. "We'll be away from here very soon, then we can ease off."
"We greet our friends standing as long as we can stand," and, towering a full two feet above Brandon's own six-feet-two, Alcantro and Fedanzo in turn engulfed his comparatively tiny hand in a thick-shelled paw and lifted briefly the inner lids of quadruply-shielded eyes. For the Martian skin is not like ours. It is of incredible thickness; dry, pliable, rubbery, and utterly without sensation: heavily lined with fat and filled throughout its volume with tiny air-cells which make it an almost perfect non-conductor of heat and which prevent absolutely the evaporation of the precious moisture of the body. For the same reasons their huge and cat-like eyes are never exposed, but look through sealed, clear windows of membrane, over which may be drawn at will one or all of four pairs of lids--lids transparent, insensible, non-freezable, air-spaced insulators. Even the air they exhale carries from their bodies a minimum of the all-important heat and moisture, for the passages of their nostrils do not lead directly to the lungs, as do ours. They are merely the intakes for a tortuous system of tubes comprising a veritable heat-exchanger, so that the air finally expelled is in almost perfect equilibrium with the incoming supply in temperature and in moisture content. A grayish tan in color, naked and hairless--though now, out of deference to Terrestrial conventions, wearing light robes of silk--indifferent alike to any extreme of heat or cold, light or darkness: such were the two forbidding beings who arose to greet their Terrestrial friends, then again reclined.
"I suppose that you have been given to drink?" Westfall made sure that they had been tendered the highest hospitality of Mars.
"We have drunk full deeply, thanks; and it was not really necessary, for we drank scarcely three weeks ago."
Brandon and Westfall turned then and greeted the two Venerians, as different from the Martians as they were from the Terrestrials. Of earthly stature, form, and strength, yet each was encased in a space-suit stretched like a drum-head, and would live therein or in the special Venerian rooms of the vessel as long as the journey should endure. For the atmosphere of Venus is more than twice as dense as ours, is practically saturated with water-vapor, carries an extremely high concentration of carbon dioxide, and in their suits and rooms is held at a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. The lenses of their helmets were of heavy, yellowish-red composition, protecting their dead-white skins and red eyes from all actinic rays--for the Venerian lives upon the bottom of an everlasting sea of fog and his thin epidermis, utterly without pigmentation, burns and blisters as frightfully at the least exposure to actinic light as does ours at the touch of a red-hot iron.
Out in space at last, cruising idly with the acceleration set at a point bearable for the Martians, Westfall called the meeting to order and outlined the situation facing them. Brandon then handed around folios of papers, upon which the Venerians turned the invisible infra-red beams of the illuminators upon their helmets, thus flooding them with the "light" to which their retinas were most responsive.
"Here's the data," Brandon began. "As you see from Sheet 1, we can already draw any amount of power we shall need from cosmic radiation alone...."
"Perpetual motion--ridiculous!" snapped from the sending disk upon the helmet of the master of mechanism.
"Not at all, Amonar," put in his fellow Venerian, "any more than a turbo-generator at the foot of a waterfall is perpetual motion. Those radiations originate we know not where, probably as a result of intra-atomic reactions. The fields of force of our hosts merely intercept these radiations, as a water-driven turbine intercepts the water. We merely use a portion of their energy before permitting them to go on, to we know not what end. Truly you have made a notable achievement in science, Tellurian friends, and we congratulate you upon its accomplishment. Please proceed."
"Upon the following sheets are described the forces employed by the Jovians, as we shall call them until we find out who or what they really are. We will discuss these forces later. For each force we have already calculated a screen, and we have also calculated various other forces of our own, with which we hope to arm ourselves before we reach Ganymede. The problems facing us are complex, since there are some nine thousand forcebands of the order in which we are working, each differing from all the others as much as torque differs from tension, or as much as red differs from green. Therefore we have appealed to you for help, knowing that we could do but little alone. Alcantro and Fedanzo will supervise the construction of the generators of the various fields from these calculations. Dol Kenor will correlate power and electricity to and with the fields. Westfall and I will help work out the theoretical difficulties as they arise. Pyraz Amonar, who can devise and build a machine to perform any conceivable mechanical task, will help us all in the many mechanical difficulties we shall certainly encounter. Discussion of any point is now in order."
* * * * *
Step by step and equation after equation the calculations and plans were gone over, until every detail was clear in each mind. Then the men bent to their tasks; behind them not only the extraordinarily complete facilities of that gigantic workshop which was the Sirius; but also the full power of the detachment of police--the very cream of the young manhood of the planet. Week after toilsome week the unremitting labor went on, and little by little the massive cruiser of the void became endowed with an offensive and defensive armament incredible. An armament conceived in the fertile and daring brain of a sheer genius, guided only by the knowledge that such things were already in existence somewhere; reduced to working theory by a precise, mathematical logician; translated into fields of force by the greatest known experts; powered by the indefatigable efforts of an electrical wizard; made possible by the artful mechanical devices of the greatest inventor that three worlds had ever known! Thus it was that they approached Ganymede, ready, with blanketing screens full out, save for one narrow working band, and with a keen-eyed observer at every plate. When even the hyper-critical Westfall was convinced that their preparations were as complete as they could be made with the limited information at hand, Brandon directed a beam upon the satellite and tapped off a brief message:
"stevens ganymede will arrive in about ten hours direct carrier beam toward sun we can detect it and will follow it to wherever you are sirius."
"ipv sirius," came the reply, "everything here, all x glad to see you thanks newton and stevens."
Brandon, at the controls, scanning his screens narrowly, dropped the vessel down to within a mile or two of the point of origin of Stevens' carrier beam without incident; then spoke to Westfall, at his side, with a grin.
"Nice layout the kid's got down there, Quince. It's too bad--don't look like we're going to get any action for our money a-tall. 'Sa shame, too--what's the use of wasting it, now that we've got it all made?"
"We are not done yet," cautioned Westfall, and even as he spoke an alarm bell burst into strident clamor--one of their far-flung detector screens was telling the world that it had encountered a dangerous frequency. The new ultra-lights flared instantly along the line automatically laid down by the detector, and upon the closely ruled micrometer screen of Brandon's desk there glowed in natural color the image of a globular space-ship, approaching them with terrific speed.
"Men all stationed, of course, Crown?"
"Stationed and ready." Crowninshield, phones at his ears and microphone at his lips, was staring intently into his own plate.
"Kinda think I'll d
o most of it from here, but you can't always tell. If they get inside my guard you all know what to do."
"All x."
Expecting another such hollow victory as the other Hexan vessel had won over the defenseless Arcturus, the small stranger flashed nearer and nearer that huge and featureless football of armor steel. Within range, she launched her flaming plane of energy, but this time that Jovian sheet of force did not encounter unprotected and non-resisting steel. Upon the outer ray-screen, flaming white into incandescent defense, the furious bolt spent itself, and in the instant of the launching of the searing blade of flame, Brandon had gone into action. Switch after switch drove home, and one after another those frightful fields of force, those products of the mightiest minds of three planets, were hurled out against the tiny Jovian sphere. Driven as they were by the millions upon millions of horsepower stored in the accumulators of the Sirius they formed a coruscating spherical shell of intolerable energy all around the enemy vessel, but even their prodigious force was held at bay by the powerful defensive screens of the smaller space-ship. But attack the Jovian could not, every resource at her command being necessary to fend off the terrific counter-attack of her intended prey, and she turned in flight. Small and agile as she was, the enormous mass of the Sirius precluded any possibility of maneuvering with the Jovian, but Brandon had no intention of maneuvering. Rapid as the motions of the stranger were and frantic as was her dodging, the terrific forces of the tractor beams of the Interplanetary Vessel held her in an unbreakable grip, and although she dragged the massive Sirius hither and thither, she could not escape.
"Hm ... m ... m," mused Brandon. "We seem to be getting nowhere fast. How much power we using, Mac, and how much have we got coming in?"
"Output eighty-five thousand kilofranks," replied MacDonald, the first assistant. "Intake forty-nine thousand."
"Not so good--can't hold out forever at that rate. Shove out the receptor screens to the limit and drive 'em. They figure a top of sixty thousand, but we ought to pick up a little extra from that blaze out there. Drive 'em full out or up to sixty-five, whichever comes first. Can't seem to crush his screens, so I guess we'll have to try something else," and a thoughtful expression came over his face as he slowly extended his hand toward another switch, with a questioning glance at Westfall.
"Better not do that yet, Norman. Use that only as a last resort, after everything else has failed."
"Yeah--I'm scared to death of trying it, and it isn't necessary yet. He must have an open slit somewhere to work through, just as we have. I'll feel around for it a while."
"Is there any way of hetrodyning the new visiray upon the exploring frequency?"
"Hm ... m.... Never thought of that--it would be nice, too.... I think we can do it, too. Watch 'em, Quince, and holler if they start anything."
He abandoned his desk and established the necessary connections between the visiray apparatus and the controls of his board. There was a fierce violet-white glare from the plate as he closed the switch, and he leaped back with his hands over his eyes, temporarily blinded.
"Wow, that's hot stuff!" he exclaimed. "It works, all x, to the queen's taste," as he donned his heavy ray-goggles and resumed his place.
After making certain that the visiray was precisely synchronized and phased with the searching frequency, he built up the power of that beam until it was using twenty thousand kilofranks. Then, by delicately manipulating the variable condensers and inductances of his sensitive shunting relay circuits, he slowly shifted that frightful rod of energy from frequency to 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'l
l 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.