Spacehounds of IPC
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Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC
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"Mother! Claire! Oh, you three wonder-workers!" She addressed
simultaneously the distant Terrestrials and the scientists at her side,
while broken exclamations, punctuated by ominous, crackling snaps, came
from the laboring amplifier.
"Sorry to interrupt," MacDonald's voice broke in, "but you'll have to
hurry it up. Alcantro and Fedanzo are doing their best, but every plate
in my secondary bank's red hot, and you could fry an egg on any one of
my transformers. Even my primary tubes are running hot. She won't hold
together five minutes longer!"
Captain King opened his book, and in that small steel room, unadorned
save for stack upon stack of bookcases, the brief but solemn ceremony
joining two young lives was read--its solemnity only intensified by its
unique accompaniment. For from Brandon at the primary controls, through
the power-room of the _Sirius_ and the relay-station upon Mars, to the
immense Interplanetary transmitter upon Earth, the greatest radio and
television engineers of two planets were fighting overdriven equipment,
trying to hold an almost impossible connection, in order that Nadia
Newton's mother and sister might be present at her wedding, hundreds of
millions of miles distant in space!
"I pronounce you man and wife. Whom God hath joined, let no man put
asunder." The sacred old ritual ended and Captain King picked up
the bride in his great arms as though she were a baby, kissed her
vigorously, and set her down in front of the transmitter. In the midst
of the joyous confusion that ensued a tearing, rattling crash came from
the speaker and the screen went blank.
"There!" lamented MacDonald from the power room. "I knew they'd blow!
There goes my whole secondary bank--eight perfectly good ten-nineteens
all shot to...."
"That's too bad, but it couldn't be helped; they went for a good cause,"
interrupted Brandon. "I'll come down and help clean up the mess."
* * * * *
Leaving the bridal party, he made his way rapidly to the power room,
where he found MacDonald and the two Martians inspecting the smoking
remains of what had been the secondary bank of their powerful
ultra-transmitter. Spare parts in abundance were on hand, and it was
not long until the damaged section was apparently as good as new.
"Now to try her out," Brandon announced. "We want to give her a good
workout, but there's no use trying the I-P stations any more--they're
altogether too hard to handle at this range. Czuv said something about
an unknown race of monstrosities at the south pole of Jupiter--let's try
it on them for a while."
He flung the field of force out into space, as responsive to his will
as a well-trained horse, and guided it toward the southern limb of that
gigantic world. Down and down the projection plunged, through mile after
mile of reeking, steaming fog, impenetrable to earthly eyes. Finally it
came to rest upon the surface, hundreds of feet deep in a lush, dank,
tropical jungle, and Brandon plugged into the Venerian room.
"Kenor? We've got a lot of use for you, if you can come down here for a
while. Thanks a lot." He turned to the Martians. "Luckily, we've got a
couple of infra-red transformers aboard, so we won't have to build one.
You fellows might break one out and shunt it onto this circuit while Dol
Kenor is hunting up something for us to look at.
"Hi, old Infra-Eyes!" he went on, as the Venerian scientist waddled into
the room in his bulging space-suit. "We've got something here that's
right down your alley. Want to see what you can see?"
"Ah, a beautiful scene!" exclaimed Dol Kenor, after one glance into the
plate. "It is indeed a relief, after all this coldness and glare, to
see such a soft, warm landscape--even though I have never expected to
behold quite such a violent bit of jungle," and under his guidance the
projection flashed over hundreds of miles of territory. To the eyes of
the Terrestrials the screen revealed only a blank, amorphous grayness,
through which at times there shot lines and masses of vague and
meaningless form; but the Venerian was very evidently seeing and
enjoying many and diverse scenes.
"There, I think, is what you wish to see first," he announced, as he
finally steadied the controls, and Brandon cut in upon the shunting
screen the infra-red transformer. This device, developed long before to
render possible the use of Terrestrial eyes in the opaque atmosphere of
Venus, stepped up the fog-piercing long waves into the frequencies of
light capable of affecting the earthly retina. Instantly the dull gray
blank of the shunting screen became transformed into a clear and
colorful picture of the great city of the Jovians of the South.
"Great Cat!" Brandon exclaimed. "Flying fortresses is right! They're in
war formation, too, or I'm a polyp! We've got to watch this, Mac, all
of it, and watch it close--it's apt to have a big bearing on what we'll
have to do, before they get done. Better we rig up another set, and put
a relay of observers on this job!"
CHAPTER XI
The Vorkul-Hexan War
Vorkulia, the city of the Vorkuls, was an immense seven-pointed
star. At its center, directly upon the south pole of Jupiter, rose a
tremendous shaft--its cross-section likewise a tapering seven-pointed
star--which housed the directing intelligence of the nation. Radiating
from the seven cardinal points of the building were short lanes leading
to star-shaped open plots, from which in turn branched out ways to other
stellate areas; ways reaching, after many such steps, to the towering
inner walls of the metropolis. The outer walls, still loftier and even
more massive ramparts of sullen gray-green metal, formed a seamless,
jointless barrier against an utterly indescribable foe; a barrier whose
outer faces radiated constantly a searing, coruscating green emanation.
Metal alone could not long have barred that voracious and implacably
relentless enemy, but against that lethal green emanation even that
ravening Jovian jungle could not prevail, but fell back, impotent.
Writhing and crawling, loathesomely palpitant with an unspeakable
exuberance of foul and repellent vigor, possible only to such
meteorological conditions as obtained there, it threw its most
hideously prolific growths against that radiant wall in vain.
The short, zig-zag lanes, the ways, and the seven-pointed areas
were paved with a greenish glass. This pavement was intended solely
to prevent vegetable growth and carried no traffic whatever, since few
indeed of the Vorkuls have ever been earth-bound and all traffic was in
the air. The principal purpose of the openings was to separate, and
thus to render accessible by air, the mighty buildings which, level
upon level, towered upward, with airships hovering at or anchored to
doorways and entrances at every level. Buildings, entrances, everything
visible--all replicated, reiterated, repeated infinite variations in
the one theme, that of the septenate stelliform.
Color ran riot; masses varied from immense blocks of awe-inspiring
grandeur to delicate tracery of sheerest gossamer; lights flamed and
flared in wide bands and in narrow, flashing pencils--but in all,
through all, over all, and dominating all was the Seven-Pointed Star.
In and almost filling the space, at least a mile in width,
between the inner and the outer walls were huge, seven-sided
structures--featureless, squat, forbidding heptagons of dull green
metal. No thing living was to be seen in that space. Its pavement was
of solid metal and immensely thick, and that metal, as well as that of
the walls, was burned and blackened and seared as though by numberless
exposures to intolerable flame. In a lower compartment of one of these
enormous heptagons Vortel Kromodeor, First Projector Officer, rested
before a gigantic and complex instrument board. He was at ease--his huge
wings folded, his sinuous length coiled comfortably in slack loops about
two horizontal bars. But at least one enormous, extensible eye was
always pointed toward the board, always was at least one nimble and
bat-like ear cocked attentively in the direction of the signal panel.
A whistling, shrieking ululation rent the air and the officer's coils
tightened as he reared a few feet of his length upright, shooting out
half a dozen tentacular arms to various switches and controls upon his
board, while throughout the great heptagon, hundreds of other Vorkuls
sprang to attention at their assigned posts of duty. As the howling wail
came to a climax in a blast of sound Kromodeor threw over a lever, as
did every other projector officer in every other heptagon, and there was
made plain to any observer the reason for the burns and scars in the
tortured space between the lofty inner and outer walls of Vorkulia.
For these heptagons were the monstrous flying fortresses which Czuv
had occasionally seen from afar, as they went upon some unusual errand
above the Jovian banks of mist, and which Brandon was soon to see in
his visiray screen. The seared and disfigured metal of the pavement
and walls was made so by the release of the furious blasts of energy
necessary to raise those untold thousands of tons of mass against the
attraction of Jupiter, more than two and a half times the gravity of our
own world! Vast volumes of flaming energy shrieked from the ports. Wave
upon wave, flooding the heptagons, it dashed back and forth upon the
heavy metal between the walls. As more and more of the inconceivable
power of those Titanic generators was unleashed, it boiled forth in
a devastating flood which, striking the walls, rebounded and leaped
vertically far above even those mighty ramparts. Even the enormous
thickness of the highly conducting metal could not absorb all the
energy of that intolerable blast, and immediately beneath the ports new
seven-pointed areas of disfigurement appeared as those terrific flying
fortresses were finally wrenched from the ground and hurled upward.
* * * * *
High in the air, another signal wailed up and down a peculiar scale of
sound and the mighty host of vessels formed smoothly into symmetrical
groups of seven. Each group then moved with mathematical precision into
its allotted position in a complex geometrical formation--a gigantic,
seven-ribbed, duplex cone in space. The flagship flew at the apex of
this stupendous formation; behind, and protected by, the full power
of the other floating citadels of the forty-nine groups of seven.
Due north, the amazing armada sped in rigorous alignment, flying along
a predetermined meridian--due north!
At the end of his watch Kromodeor relinquished his board to the officer
relieving him and shot into the air, propelled by the straightening of
the powerful coils of his snake-like body and tail. Wings half spread,
lateral and vertical ruddering fins outthrust, he soared across the room
toward a low opening. Just before they struck the wall upon either side
of the doorway the great wings snapped shut, the fins retracted, and the
long and heavy body struck the floor of the passage without a jar. With
a wriggling, serpentine motion he sped like a vibrant arrow along the
hall and into a wardroom. There, after a brief glance around the room,
he coiled up beside a fellow officer who, with one eye, was negligently
reading a scroll held in three or four hands; while with another eye,
poised upon its slender pedicle, he watched a moving picture upon a
television screen.
"Hello, Kromodeor," Wixill, Chief Power Officer[2] greeted the newcomer
in the wailing, hissing language of the Vorkuls. He tossed the scroll
into the air, where it instantly rolled into a tight cylinder and shot
into an opening in the wall of the room. "Glad to see you. Books and
shows are all right on practice cruises, but I can't seem to work up
much enthusiasm about such things now."
[Footnote 2: In order to avoid all unnecessary strain upon the memory of
the reader, all titles, etc., have been given in the closest possible
English equivalent, instead of in an attempted transliteration of the
foreign word. This particular officer has no counterpart upon Tellurian
vessels. He is the second in command of a Vorkulian fortress, his
function being to supervise all expenditure of power.--E. E. S.]
Kromodeor elevated an eye and studied the screen, upon which, to the
accompaniment of whistling, shrieking sound, whirled and gyrated an
interlacing group of serpentine forms.
"A good show, Wixill," the projector officer replied, "but nothing to
hold the attention of men engaged in what we are doing. Think of it!
After twenty years of preparation--two long lifetimes--and for the first
time in our history, we are actually going to war!"
"I have thought of it at length. It is disgusting. Compelled to traffic
with an alien form of life! Were it not to end in the extinction of
those unspeakable hexans, it would be futile to the point of silliness.
I cannot understand them at all. There is ample room upon this planet
for all of us. Our races combined are not using one seven-thousandth
of its surface. You would think that they would shun all strangers.
Yet for ages have they attacked us, refusing to let us alone, until
finally they forced us to prepare means for their destruction. They
seem as senselessly savage as the jungle growths, and, but for their
very evident intelligence, one would class them as such. You would
think that, being intelligent and being alien to us, they would not
have anything to do with us in any way, peacefully or otherwise.
However, their intrusions and depredations are about to end."
"They certainly are. Vorkulia has endured much--too much--but I am glad
that our forefathers did not decide to exterminate them sooner. If they
had, we could not have been doing this now."
"There speaks the rashness of youth, Kromodeor. It is a violation of all
our instincts to have any commerce with outsiders, as you will learn as
soon as you see one of them. Then, too, we will lose heavily. Since we
have studied their armaments so long, and have subjected every phase of
the situation to statistical analysis, it is certain that we are to
succeed--but you also know at what cost."
"Two-sevenths of our force, with a probable error of one in seven,"
replied the younger Vorkul. "And because that figure cannot be improved
within the next seven years and because of the exceptional weakness of
the hexans due to their unexpectedly great losses upon Callisto, we are
attacking at this time. Their spherical vessels are nothing, of course.
It is in the reduction of the city that we will lose men and vessels.
But at that, each of us has five chances in seven of returning, which is
good enough odds--much better than we had in that last expedition into
the jungle. But by the Mighty Seven, I shall make myself wrap around one
hexan, for my brother's sake," and his coils tightened unconsciously.
"Hideous, repulsive monstrosities! Creatures so horrible should not
be allowed to live--they should have been tossed over the wall to
the jungle ages ago!" Kromodeor curled out an eye as he spoke, and
complacently surveyed the writhing cylinder of sinuous, supple power
that was his own body.
"Better avoid contact work with them if possible," cautioned Wixill.
"You might not be able to unwrap, and to touch one of them is almost
unthinkable. Speaking of wrapping, you know that they are putting on the
finals of the contact work in the star this evening. Let's watch them."
They slid to the floor and wriggled away in perfect "step"--undulating
along in such nice synchronism that their adjacent sides, only a few
inches apart, formed two waving rigidly parallel lines. Deep in the
lower part of the fortress they entered a large assembly room, provided
with a raised platform in the center and having hundreds of short,
upright posts in lieu of chairs; most of which were already taken by
spectators. The two officers curled their tails comfortably around two
of the vacant pillars, elevated their heads to a convenient level of
sight and directed each an eye or two upon the stage. This was, of
course, heptagonal. Its sides, like those of the mighty flying forts
themselves, were not straight, but angled inward sufficiently to make
the platform a seven-pointed star. The edge was outlined by a low rail,
and bulwark and floor were padded with thick layers of a hard but smooth
and yielding fabric.
* * * * *
In this star-shaped ring two young Vorkuls were contending for the
championship of the fleet in a contest that seemed to combine most of
the features of wrestling, boxing, and bar-room brawling, with no holds
barred. Four hands of each of the creatures held heavy leather billies,
and could be used only in striking with those weapons, the remaining
hands being left free to employ as the owner saw fit. Since the sport
was not intended to be lethal, however, the eyes and other highly
vulnerable parts were protected by metal masks, and the wing ribs
were similarly guarded by leathern shields. The guiding fins, being
comparatively small and extremely tough, required no protection.
"We're just in time," Kromodeor whistled. "The main bout is nicely on.
See anyone from the flagship? I might stake a couple of korpels that
Sintris will paint the symbol upon his wing."
"Most of their men seem to be across the star," Wixill replied, and both
beings fell silent, absorbed in the struggle going on in the ring.
It was a contest well worth watching. Wing crashed against mighty wing
and the lithe, hard bodies snapped and curled this way and that, almost
faster than the eye could follow, in quest of advantageous holds. Above
the shrieking wails of the crowd could be heard the smacks and thuds of
the eight flying clubs as they struck against the leather shields or
against tough and scaly hides. For minutes the conflict raged, with no
advantage apparent. Now the fighters were flat upon the floor of the
star, now dozens of feet in the air above it, as one or the other sought
to gain a height from which to plunge downward upon his opponent; but
both stayed upon or over the star--to leave its boundaries was to lose
disgracefully.
Then, high in air, the visiting warrior thought that he saw an opening
and grappled. Wings crashed in fierce blows, hands gripped and furiously
wrenched. Two powerful bodies, tapering smoothly down to equally
powerful tails, corkscrewed around each other viciously, winding up into
something resembling tightly twisted lamp cord; and the two Vorkuls,
each helpless, fell to the mat with a crash. Fast as was Zerexi, the
gladiator from the flagship, Sintris was the merest trifle faster.
Like the straightening of a twisted spring of tempered steel that long
body uncoiled as they struck the floor, and up under those shielding
wings--an infinitesimal fraction of a second slow in interposing--that
lithe tail sped. Two lightning loops flashed around the neck of the
visitor and tightened inexorably. Desperately the victim fought to break
that terrible strangle hold, but every maneuver was countered as soon
as it was begun. Beating wings, under whose frightful blows the very air
quivered, were met and parried by wings equally capable. Hands and clubs
were of no avail against that corded cable of sinew, and Sintris, his
head retracted between his wings and his own hands reenforcing that
impregnable covering over his head and neck, threw all his power into
his tail--tightening, with terrific, rippling surges, that already
throttling band about the throat of his opponent. Only one result was
possible. Soon Zerexi lay quiet, and a violet beam of light flared from
a torch at the ringside, bathing both contenders. At the flash the
winner disengaged himself from the loser, and stood by until the latter
had recovered the use of his paralyzed muscles. The two combatants then
touched wing tips in salute and flew away together, over the heads of
the crowd; plunging into a doorway and disappearing as the two officers
uncoiled from their "seats" and wriggled out into the corridor.
"Fine piece of contact work," said Wixill, thoughtfully. "I'm glad that
Sintris won, but I did not expect him to win so easily. Zerexi shouldn't
have gone into a knot so early against such a fast man."
"Oh, I don't know," argued Kromodeor. "His big mistake was in that
second body check. If he had blocked the sixth arm with his fifth, taken
out the fourth and second with his third, and then gone in with...." and
so, quite like two early experts after a good boxing match, the friends
argued the fine points of the contest long after they had reached their
quarters.
Day after day the vast duplex cone of Vorkulian fortresses sped
toward the north pole of the great planet, with a high and constant
velocity. Day after day the complex geometrical figure in space remained
unchanged, no unit deviating measurably from its precise place in the
formation. Over rapacious jungles, over geysers spouting hot water,
over sullenly steaming rivers and seas, over boiling lakes of mud, and
high over gigantic volcanoes, in uninterrupted eruptions of cataclysmic
violence, the Vorkulian phalanx flew--straight north. The equatorial
regions, considerably hotter than the poles, were traversed with
practically no change in scenery--it was a world of steaming fog,
of jungle, of hot water, of boiling, spurting mud, and of volcanoes.
Not of such mild and sporadic volcanic outbreaks as we of green Terra
know, but of gigantic primordial volcanoes, in terrifyingly continuous
performances of frightful intensity. Due north the Vorkulian spearhead
was hurled, before the rigorous geometrical alignment was altered.
"All captains, attention!" Finally, in a high latitude, the flagship
sent out final instructions. "The hexans have detected us and our long
range observers report that they are coming to meet us in force. We will
now go into the whirl, and proceed with the maneuvers exactly as they
have been planned. Whirl!"
At the command, each vessel began to pursue a tortuous spiral path.
Each group of seven circled slowly about its own axis, as though each
structure were attached rigidly to a radius rod, and at the same time
spiraled around the line of advance in such fashion that the whole
gigantic cone, wide open maw to the fore, seemed to be boring its way
through the air.
"Lucky again!" Kromodeor, in the wardroom, turned to Wixill as the two
prepared to take their respective watches. "It looks as though the first
action would come while we're on duty. I've got just one favor to ask,
if you have to economize on power, let Number One alone, will you?"
"No fear of that," Wixill hissed, with the Vorkulian equivalent of a
chuckle. "We have abundance of power for all of your projector officers.
But don't waste any of it, or I'll cut you down five ratings!"
"You're welcome. When I shine old Number One on any hexan work, one
flash is all we'll take. See you at supper," and, leaving his superior
at the door of the power room, Kromodeor wriggled away to his station
upon the parallel horizontal bars before his panel.
Making sure that his tail coils were so firmly clamped that no possible
lurch or shock could throw him out of position, he set an eye toward
each of his sighting screens, even though he knew that it would be long
before those comparatively short range instruments would show anything
except friendly vessels. Then, ready for any emergency, he scanned his
one "live" screen--the one upon which were being flashed the pictures
and reports secured by the high-powered instruments of the observers.
* * * * *
With the terrific acceleration employed by the hexan spheres, it
was not long until the leading squadron of fighting globes neared
the Vorkulian war-cone. This advance guard was composed of the new,
high-acceleration vessels. Their crews, with the innate blood-lust
and savagery of their breed, had not even entertained the thought of
accommodating their swifter pace to that of the main body of the fleet.
These vast, slow-moving structures were no more to be feared than those
similar ones whose visits they had been repulsing for twenty long
Jovian years--by the time the slower spheres could arrive upon the scene
there would be nothing left for them to do. Therefore, few in number
as were the vessels of the vanguard, they rushed to the attack. In one
blinding salvo they launched their supposedly irresistible planes of
force--dazzling, scintillating planes under whose fierce power the
studying, questing, scouting fortresses previously encountered had fled
back southward; cut, beaten, and crippled. These spiraling monsters,
however, did not pause or waver in their stolidly ordered motion.
As the hexan planes of force flashed out, the dull green metal walls
broke into a sparkling green radiance, against which the Titanic
bolts spent themselves in vain. Then there leaped out from the weird
brilliance of the walls of the fortresses great shafts of pale green
luminescence--tractor ray after gigantic tractor ray, which seized
upon the hexan spheres and drew them ruthlessly into the yawning
open end of that gigantic cone.
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