Grace Livingston Hill - "The City of Fire"

Thomas Wentworth Higginson - "Black Rebellion"

Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860"

Charles Darwin - "Observations Geologiques sur les Iles Volcaniques"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Spacehounds of IPC

E >> Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC




"I'm on the upper band--take the lower!" he snapped, but Stevens'
projector was already in action. Trained minds all, they knew that some
intelligence had traced them, and all realized that it was of the utmost
importance to know what and where that intelligence was. Stevens found
the probing frequency in his range and they flashed their own beam along
it, encountering finally one of the monstrous Vorkulian fortresses, far
from Jupiter and almost directly between them and the planet! Its wall
screens were in operation, and no frequency at their command could
penetrate that neutralizing blanket of vibrations.

"What kind of an eye was that--ever see anything like it, Perce?"
Brandon demanded.

"I don't think so, though of course we got only an awfully short flash
of it. It didn't look like the periscopic eyes that those flying snakes
had--looked more like a hexan eye, don't you think? Couldn't very well
be hexan, though, in that kind of a ship."

"Don't think so, either. Maybe it's a purely mechanical affair that they
use for observing. Anyway, old sons, I don't like the looks of things at
all. Quince, you're the brains of this outfit--shift the massive old
intellect into high and tell us what to do."

Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished
measuring the apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward
Stevens and Brandon.

"It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we
do may prove to be wrong," he said, slowly. "However, I do not see that
this latest development can operate to change the plan we have already
adopted; that of running away, straight out from the sun. We may have
to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women and babies
can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will, of course, be
necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to Titan,
for they would be powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror
upon either the _Sirius_ or their torpedoes against such forces as that
fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might well be bringing down
upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world before he could
be stopped. Both Uranus and Neptune are approximately upon our present
course. Do the Titanians know anything of either of them, Steve?"

"Not a thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as
Uranus on their power beam--it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They
seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Uranus or
Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps
even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on
the Jovian satellites and on Titan, I'd say that anything might be out
there--on Uranus, Neptune, their satellites, or anywhere else."

"Cancel Uranus, and double that for Neptune," Brandon commanded.
"Realize how far away they are?"

"That's right, too," agreed Stevens. "Before we got there, with any
acceleration we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way
or the other."

* * * * *

Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his
results. Then, with a grave face, he went to consult the medical
officers. The women, children, and the two Martian scientists were sent
to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly to twenty meters
per second per second, above which point the physicians declared they
should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists
met again--met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon
narrow hospital bunks, unable even to lift their massive arms.

While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the
super-dreadnought of space so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled
heavily about the room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing
emitting clouds of smoke from his villainously reeking pipe. The
Venetians, lacking Brandon's physical strength and by nature quieter of
disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at the
calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and
meaningless integrals, while he also concentrated upon the problem
before them.

"They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly," Westfall finally
reported. "They seem to be...."

"In that case we may be all x," Brandon interrupted, brandishing his
pipe vigorously. "We know that they're on a beam--apparently we're the
only ones hereabouts having cosmic power. If we can keep away from them
until their beam attenuates, we can whittle 'em down to our size and
then take them, no matter how much accumulator capacity they've got."

"But can we keep away from them that long?" asked Dol Kenor, pointedly;
and his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:

"Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a
rendezvous with the Space Fleet, which will probably be ready by the
time of meeting?"

"I am afraid that that would be useless," Westfall frowned in thought.
"Given power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as
easily as she could wipe out the _Sirius_ alone."

"Kenor's right." Stevens spoke up from the calculator. "You're getting
too far ahead of the situation. We aren't apt to keep ahead of them long
enough to do much leading anywhere. The Titanians can hold a beam
together from Saturn to Jupiter--why can't these snake-folks?"

"Several reasons," Brandon argued stubbornly. "First place, look at the
mass of that thing, and remember that the heavier the beam the harder
it is to hold it together. Second, there's no evidence that they wander
around much in space. If their beams are designed principally for travel
upon Jupiter, why should they have any extraordinary range? I say they
can't hold that beam forever. We've got a good long lead, and in spite
of their higher acceleration, I think we'll be able to keep out of range
of their heavy stuff. If so, we'll trace a circle--only one a good deal
bigger than the one Amonar suggested--and meet the fleet at a point
where that enemy ship will be about out of power."

Thus for hours the scientists argued, agreeing upon nothing, while
the Vorkulian fortress crept ever closer. At the end of three days of
the mad flight, the pursuing space ship was in plain sight, covering
hundreds of divisions of the micrometer screens. But now the size of
the images was increasing with extreme slowness, and the scientists
of the _Sirius_ watched with strained attention the edges of those
glowing green pictures. Finally, when the pictured edges were about
to cease moving across the finely-ruled lines, Brandon cut down his
own acceleration a trifle, and kept on decreasing it at such a rate
that the heptagon still crept up, foot by foot.

"Hey what's the big idea?" Stevens demanded.

"Coax 'em along. If we run away from them they'll probably reverse power
and go back home, won't they? Their beam is falling apart fast, but
they're still getting so much stuff along it that we couldn't do a thing
to stop them. If they think that we're losing power even faster than
they are, though, they'll keep after us until their beam's so thin that
they'll just be able to stop on it. Then they'll reverse or else go onto
their accumulators--reverse, probably, since they'll be a long ways from
home by that time. We'll reverse, too, and keep just out of range. Then,
when we both have stopped and are about to start back, their beam will
be at its minimum and we'll go to work on 'em--foot, horse, and marines.
Nobody can run us as ragged as they've been doing and get away with it
as long as I'm conscious and stand a chance in the world of hanging one
onto their chins in retaliation. I've got a hunch. If it works, we can
take those birds alone, and take 'em so they'll _stay_ took. We might as
well break up--this is going to be an ordinary job of piloting for a few
days, I think. I'm going up and work with the Martians on that hunch.
You fellows work out any ideas you want to. Watch 'em close, Mac. Keep
kidding 'em along, but don't let them get close enough to puncture us."

* * * * *

Everything worked out practically as Brandon had foretold, and a few
days later, their acceleration somewhat less than terrestrial gravity,
he called another meeting in the control room. He came in grinning from
ear to ear, accompanied by the two Martians, and seated himself at his
complex power panel.

"Now watch the professor closely, gentlemen," he invited. "He is going
to cut that beam."

"But you can't," protested Pyraz Amonar.

"I know you can't, ordinarily, when a beam is tight and solid. But
that beam's as loose as ashes right now. I told you I had a hunch, and
Alcantro and Fedanzo worked out the right answer for me. If I can cut
it, Quince, and if their screens go down for a minute, shoot your
visiray into them and see what you can see."

"All x. How much power are you going to draw?"

"Plenty--it figures a little better than four hundred thousand
kilofranks. I'll draw it all from the accumulators, so as not to
disturb you fellows on the cosmic intake. We don't care if we do run the
batteries down some, but I don't want to hold that load on the bus-bars
very long. However, if my hunch is right, I won't be on that beam five
minutes before it's cut from Jupiter--and I'll bet you four dollars that
you won't see the original crew in that fort when you get into it."

He set upper and lower bands of dirigible projectors to apply a
powerful sidewise thrust, and the _Sirius_ darted off her course.
Flashing a minute pencil behind the huge heptagon, Brandon manipulated
his tuning circuits until a brilliant spot in space showed him that he
was approaching resonance with the heptagon's power beam. Micrometer
dials were then engaged and the delicate tuning continued until the
meters gave evidence that the two beams were precisely synchronized and
exactly opposite in phase. Four plunger switches closed, that tiny pilot
ray became an enormous rod of force, and as those two gigantic beams met
in exact opposition and neutralized each other, a solid wall of blinding
brilliance appeared in the empty ether behind the Vorkulian fortress. As
that dazzling wall sprang into being, the sparkling green protection
died from the walls of the heptagon.

"Go to it, Quince!" Brandon yelled, but the suggestion was entirely
superfluous. Even before the wall-screen had died, Westfall's beam was
trying to get through it, and when the visiray revealed the interior of
the heptagon, the quiet and methodical physicist was shaken from his
habitual calm.

"Why, they aren't the winged monsters at all--they're _hexans_!"
he exclaimed.

"Sure they are." Brandon did not even turn his heavily-goggled eyes
from the blazing blankness of his own screen. "That was my hunch. Those
snakes went about things in a business-like fashion. They didn't strike
me as being folks who would pull off such a wild stunt as trying to
chase us clear out of the solar system, but a gang of hexans would do
just that. Some of them must have captured that ship and, already having
it in their cock-eyed brains that we were back of what happened on
Callisto, they decided to bump us off if it was the last thing they ever
did. That's what I'd do myself, if I were a hexan. Now I'll tell you
what's happening back at the home power plant of that ship and what's
going to happen next. I'm kicking up a horrible row out there with my
interference, and a lot of instruments at the other end of that beam
must be cutting up all kinds of didoes, right now. They'll check up on
that ship with the expedition, by radio and what-not, and when they find
out that it's clear out here--chop! Didn't get to see much, did you?"

"No, they must have switched over to their accumulators almost
instantly."

"Yeah, but if they've got accumulator capacity enough to hold off our
entire cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I'm a polyp! We're
going to take that ship, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never
dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his beam--pay me the four, Quince."

The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and
Brandon's beam bored on through space, unimpeded. He shut it off and
turned to his fellows with a grin--a grin which disappeared instantly
as a thought struck him and he leaped back to his board.

"Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!" he snapped, and
drove in switch after switch.

"Cosmic intake's gone down to zero!" exclaimed MacDonald, as the
_Sirius_ leaped away.

"Had to cut it--they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought
of something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if ... it's necessary,
all x--we're taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though
we're at pretty long range, they've got some horrible projectors, and
they were evidently mad enough to waste some power taking a good, solid
flash at us--and if we hadn't been expecting it, that flash would have
been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me--Great Cat! Look at that
meter--and I've had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is
drawing five hundred and forty thousand!"

* * * * *

They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after
they had seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range
any offensive beam could be driven with such unthinkable power--power
requiring for its neutralization almost the full output of the
prodigious batteries of accumulators carried by the _Sirius_! Yet for
five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against
their straining screens, and even Brandon's face grew tense and hard
as that frightful attack continued. At the end of twenty-two minutes,
however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin and every
man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief--the almost unbearable
bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.

"Wow!" Brandon shouted. "I thought for a minute they were going to hang
to us until we cracked, even if it meant that they'd have to freeze to
death out here themselves!"

"It would have meant that, too, don't you think?" asked Stevens.

"I imagine so--don't see how they could possibly have enough power left
to get back to Jupiter if they shine that thing on us much longer. Of
course, the more power they waste on us, the quicker we can take them;
but I don't want much more of that beam, I'll tell the world--I just
about had heart failure before they cut off!"

The massive heptagon was now drifting back toward Jupiter at constant
velocity. The hexans were apparently hoarding jealously their remaining
power, for their wall screens did not flash on at the touch of the
visiray. Through unresisting metal the probing Terrestrial beams sped,
and the scientists studied minutely every detail of the Vorkulian
armament; while the regular observers began to make a detailed
photographic survey of every room and compartment of the great fortress.
Much of the instrumentation and machinery was familiar, but some of it
was so strange that study was useless--days of personal inspection and
experiment, perhaps complete dismantling, would be necessary to reveal
the secrets hidden within those peculiar mechanisms.

"They're trying to save all the power they can--think I'll make them
spend some more," Brandon remarked, and directed against the heptagon a
heavy destructive beam. "We don't want them to get back to Jupiter until
after we've boarded them and found out everything we want to know. Come
here, Quince--what do you make of this?"

Both men stared at the heptagon, frankly puzzled; for the screens of the
strange vessel did not radiate, nor did the material of the walls yield
under the terrible force of the beam. The destructive ray simply struck
that dull green surface and vanished--disappeared without a trace, as a
tiny stream of water disappears into a partially-soaked sponge.

"Do you know what you are doing?" asked Westfall, after a few minutes'
thought. "I believe that you are charging their accumulators at the rate
of," he glanced at a meter, "exactly thirty-one thousand five hundred
kilofranks."

"Great Cat!" Brandon's hand flashed to a switch and the beam expired.
"But they can't just simply grab it and store it, Quince--it's
impossible!"

"The word 'impossible' in that connection, coming from you, has a queer
sound," Westfall said pointedly and Brandon actually blushed.

"That's right, too--we have got pretty much the same idea in our cosmic
intake fields, but we didn't carry things half as far as they have done.
Huh! They're flashing us again ... but those thin little beams don't
mean anything. They're just trying to make us feed them some more, I
guess. But we've got to hold them back some way--wonder if they can
absorb a tractor field?"

The hexans had lashed out a few times with their lighter weapons,
but, finding the _Sirius_ unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were
stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod
and threw the mass of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen
green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt its drag, their screens
flared white, and the massive Terrestrial space-ship quivered in every
member as that terrific cable of force was snapped.

"They apparently cannot store up the energy of a tractor," commented
Westfall, "but you will observe that they have no difficulty in
radiating when they care to."

"Those two ideas didn't pan out so heavy. There's lots of things not
tried yet, though. Our next best bet is to get around in front of him
and push back. If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a
pressor, they're really good."

The pilot maneuvered the _Sirius_ into line, directly between Jupiter
and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action,
Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the
center of mass of the Vorkulian fortress. For a moment it held solidly,
then, as the screens of the enemy went into action, it rebounded and
glanced off in sparkling, cascading torrents. But the hexans, with all
their twisting and turning, could not present to that prodigious beam of
force any angle sufficiently obtuse to rob it of half its power, and the
driving projectors of the pentagon again burst into activity as the
backward-pushing mass of the _Sirius_ made itself felt. In a short time,
however, the wall-screens were again cut off--apparently more power was
required to drive them than they were able to deflect.

Although even the enormous tonnage of the Terrestrial cruiser was
insignificant in comparison with the veritable mountain of metal to
which she was opposed, so that the fiercest thrust of her driving
projectors did not greatly affect the monster's progress; yet Brandon
and his cohorts were well content.

"It's a long trip back to where they came from, and since they wanted
to drift all the way, I think they'll be out of power before they get
there," Brandon summed up the situation. "We aren't losing any power,
either, since we are using only a part of our cosmic intake."

In a few hours the struggle had settled down to a routine matter--the
_Sirius_ being pushed backward steadily against the full drive of her
every projector, contesting stubbornly every mile of space traversed.
Assured that the regular pilots and lookouts were fully capable
of handling the vessel, the scientists were about to resume their
interrupted tasks when one of the photographers called them over to look
at something he had discovered in one of the lowermost and smallest
compartments of the heptagon. All crowded around the screens, and saw
pictured there the winged, snake-like form of one of the original crew
of the Vorkulian vessel!

"Dead?" Brandon asked.

"Not yet," replied the photographer. "He is twitching a little once in
a while, but you see, he's pretty badly cut up."

"I see he is ... he must have a lot of vitality to have lasted this
long--may be he'll live through it yet. Hold him on the plate, and get
his exact measurements." He turned to the communicator. "Doctor von
Steiffel? Can you come down to the control room a minute? We may want
you to operate upon one of these South Jovians after a while."

"_Himmel! Es ... ist ... der...._" The great surgeon, bearded and
massive, stared into the plate, and in his surprise started to speak
in his native German. He paused, his long, powerful fingers tracing the
likeness of the Vorkul upon the plate, then went on: "I would like very
much to operate, but, not understanding our intentions, he would, of
course, struggle. And when that body struggles--_schrecklichkeit_!" and
he waved his arms in a pantomime of wholesale destruction.

"I thought of that--that's why I am talking to you now instead of when
we get to him, two or three days from now. We'll give you his exact
measurements, and a crew of mechanics will, under your direction, sink
holes in the steel floor and install steel bands heavy enough to hold
him rigid, from tailfins to wing-tips. We'll hold him there until we can
make him understand that we're friends. It is of the utmost importance
to save that creature's life if possible; because we do not want one of
their fortresses launched against us--and in any event, it will not do
us any harm to have a friend in the City of the South."

"Right. I will also have prepared some kind of a space-suit in which
he can be brought from his vessel to ours," and the surgeon took the
measurements and went to see that the "operating table" and suit were
made ready for Kromodeor, the sorely wounded Vorkul.

* * * * *

It was not long until the projectors of the heptagon went out and
she lay inert in space, power completely exhausted. Knowing that the
screens of the enemy would absorb any ordinary ray, the scientists had
calculated the most condensed beam they could possibly project, a beam
which, their figures showed, should be able to puncture those screens by
sheer mass action--puncture them practically instantaneously, before the
absorbers could react. To that end they had arranged their circuits to
hurl seven hundred sixty-five thousand kilofranks--the entire power of
their massed accumulators and their highest possible cosmic intake--in
one tiny bar of superlative density, less than one meter in diameter!
Everything ready, Brandon shot in prodigious switches that launched that
bolt--a bolt so vehement, so inconceivably intense, that it seemed
fairly to blast the very ether out of existence as it tore its way along
its carefully predetermined line. The intention was to destroy all the
control panels of the absorber screens; parts so vital that without them
the great vessel would be helpless, and yet items which the Terrestrials
could reconstruct quite readily from their photographs and drawings.

As that irresistible bolt touched the Vorkulian wall-screen, the spot
of contact flared instantaneously through the spectrum and into the
black beyond the violet as that screen overloaded locally. Fast as it
responded and highly conductive though it was, it could not handle that
frightfully concentrated load. In the same fleeting instant of time
every molecule of substance in that beam's path flashed into tenuous
vapor--no conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing
stiletto of energy--and the main control panel of the Vorkulian
wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as rapidly as he could
sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle of
annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls.
Then, the walls unresisting, he cut in the vastly larger, but infinitely
less powerful, I-P ray, and with it systematically riddled the immense
heptagon. Out through the gaping holes in the outer walls rushed the
dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their massed hundreds
died.

The _Sirius_ was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main
air-lock was against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall
of the enemy. There she was anchored by tractor beams, and the two
hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full space equipment, prepared
to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense at his
controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any
hexans that might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment.
General Crowninshield sat beside the physicist at an auxiliary board,
phones at ears and four infra-red visiray plates ranged in front of him;
ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the attack, no
matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might
become before the citadel was taken.

The space-line men--the engineers of weightless combat--led the van,
protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up
ways of rope, along which the others could advance. Power drills bit
savagely into metal, making holes to receive the expanding eyebolts;
grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and corner; points of
little stress were supported by powerful suction cups; and at intervals
were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of
march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the
many gaps in the metal through which Brandon's beams had blasted their
way; guided by Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the
little projector room in which Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There
were so many chambers and compartments in the heptagon that it had, of
course, been impossible to puncture them all, and in some of the tight
rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the general's eye
led his men, and if such a room lay before them, Brandon's frightful
beam entered it first--and where that beam entered, life departed.

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