Spacehounds of IPC

E >> Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC

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"You know best, Steve. As I said before, I'm with you from now on, in
whatever you think best to do. I know that you think it best to go out
there. Therefore, so do I."

"Well," he said, finally, "I'd better get busy, then--there's a lot to
do before we can start. The radio doesn't come next, after all--the
transmitter and receptor units come ahead of it. They won't mean
wasted labor, in any event, since we'll have to have them in case the
radio fails. You'd better lay in a lot of supplies while I'm working
on that stuff, but don't go out of sight, and yell like fury if
you see anything. We'd both better wear full armor every time we go
out-of-doors--unless I'm all out of control we aren't done with those
savages yet. Even though they may be afraid of the demons of the falls,
I think they'll have at least one more try at us."

While Nadia brought in meat and vegetables and stored them away,
Stevens attacked the problem of constructing the pair of tight-beam,
auto-dirigible transmitter and receptor units which would connect his
great turbo-alternator to the accumulators of their craft, wherever it
might be in space. From the force-field generators of the "Forlorn Hope"
he selected the two most suitable for his purpose, tuned them to the
exact frequency he required, and around them built a complex system of
condensers and coils.

Day after day passed. Their larder was full, the receptor was finished,
and the beam transmitter was almost ready to attach to the
turbo-alternator before the calm was broken.

"Steve!" Nadia shrieked. Glancing idly into the communicator plate, she
had been perfunctorily surveying the surrounding territory. "They're
coming! Thousands of them! They're all over the bench up there, and just
simply pouring down the hills and up the valley!"

"Wish they'd waited a few hours longer--we'd have been gone. However,
we're just about ready for them," he commented grimly, as he stared over
her shoulder into the communicator plate. "We'll make a lot of those
Indians wish that they had stayed at home with their papooses."

"Have you got all those rays and things fixed up?"

"Not as many as I'd like to have. You see, I don't know the composition
of the I-P ray, since it is outlawed to everybody except the police.
Of course I could have found out from Brandon, but never paid any
attention to it. I've got some nice ultra-violet, though, and a short-wave
oscillatory that'll cook an elephant to a cinder in about eight seconds.
We'll keep them amused, no fooling! Glad we had time to cover our open
sides, and it looks as though that meteorite armor we put over the
projectors may be mighty useful, too."

On and on the savages came, massed in formations showing some signs of
rude discipline. This time there was neither shrieking nor yelling; the
weird creatures advanced silently and methodically. Here and there were
massed groups of hundreds, dragging behind them engines which Stevens
studied with interest.

"Hm ... m ... m. Catapults," he mused. "You were right, girl of my
dreams--armor and bows and arrows wouldn't help us much right now.
They're going to throw rocks at us that'll have both mass and momentum.
With those things they can cave in our side-armor, and might even dent
our roof. When one of those projectiles hits, we want to know where it
ain't, that's all."

Stevens cast off the heavily-insulated plug connecting the power plant
leads to his now almost fully charged accumulators, strapped himself and
Nadia into place at the controls, and waited, staring into the plate.
Catapult after catapult was dragged to the lip of the little canyon,
until six of them bore upon the target. The huge stranded springs of
hair, fiber, and sinew were wound up to the limit, and enormous masses
of rock were toilsomely rolled upon the platforms. Each "gunner" seized
his trip, and as the leader shrieked his signal the six ponderous masses
of metalliferous rock heaved into the air as one. But they did not
strike their objective, for as the signal was given, Stevens shot
power into his projectors. The "Forlorn Hope" leaped out of the canyon
and high into the air over the open meadow, just as the six great
projectiles crashed into the ground upon the spot which, an instant
before, she had occupied.

* * * * *

Rudimentary discipline forgotten, the horde rushed down into the canyon
and the valley, in full clamor of their barbaric urgings. Horns and
arms tossed fiercely, savage noises rent the air, and arrows splintered
harmlessly upon steel plate an the mystified and maddened warriors upon
the plain below gave vent to their outraged feelings.

"Look, Nadia! A whole gang of them are smelling around that power plug.
Pretty soon somebody's going to touch a hot spot, and when he does,
we'll cut loose on the rest of them."

The huge insulating plug, housing the ends of the three great cables
leading to the converters of the turbo-alternator, lay innocently upon
the ground, its three yawning holes invitingly open to savage arms. The
chief, who had been inspecting the power-plant, walked along the triplex
lead and joined his followers at its terminus. Pointing with his horns,
he jabbered orders and three red monsters, one at each cable, bent to
lift the plug, while the leader himself thrust an arm into each of the
three contact holes. There was a flash of searing flame and the reeking
smoke of burning flesh--those three arms had taken the terrific no-load
voltage of the three-phase converter system, and the full power of the
alternator had been shorted directly to ground through the comparatively
small resistance of his body.

Stevens had poised the "Forlorn Hope" edgewise in mid-air, so that
the gleaming, heavily armored parabolic reflectors of his projectors,
mounted upon the leading edge of the fortress, covered the scene below.
As the charred corpse of the savage chieftain dropped to the ground,
it seemed to the six-limbed creatures that the demons of the falls had
indeed been annoyed beyond endurance by their intrusion; for, as if in
response to the flash of fire from the power plug, that structure so
peculiarly and so stolidly hanging in the air came plunging down toward
them. From it there reached down twin fans of death and destruction: one
flaming and almost invisibly incandescent violet which tore at the eyes
and excruciatingly disintegrated brain and nervous tissues; the other
dully glowing an equally invisible red, at the touch of which body
temperature soared to lethal heights and foliage burst cracklingly into
spontaneous flame.

In their massed hundreds, the savages dropped where they stood, life
rived away by the torturing ultra-violet, burned away by the blast
of pure heat, or consumed by the conflagrations that raged instantly
wherever that wide-sweeping fan encountered combustible material.
In the face of power supernatural they lost all thought of attack or of
conquest, and sought only and madly to escape. Weapons were thrown away,
the catapults were abandoned, and, every man for himself, the mob fled
in wildest disorder, each striving to put as much distance as possible
between himself and that place of dread mystery, the waterfall.

"Well, I guess that'll hold 'em for a while," Stevens dropped their
craft back into its original quarters in the canyon. "Whether they ever
believed before that this falls was inhabited by devils or not, they
think so now. I'll bet that it will be six hundred Jovian years before
any of them ever come within a hundred kilometers of it again. I'm glad
of it, too, because they'll let our power plant alone now. Well, let's
get going--we've got to make things hum for a while!"

"Why all the rush? You just said that we have scared them away for
good."

"The savages, yes, but not those others. We've just turned loose enough
radiation to affect detectors all over the system, and it's up to us to
get this beam projector set up, get away from here, and get our power
shut off before they can trace us. Snap it up, ace!"

The transmitter unit was installed at the converters, the cable was torn
out, and, having broken the last material link between it and Ganymede,
Stevens hurled the "Forlorn Hope" out into space, using the highest
acceleration Nadia could endure. Hour after hour the massive wedge of
steel bored outward, away from Jupiter; hour after hour Stevens' anxious
eyes scanned his instruments; hour after hour hope mounted and relief
took the place of anxiety as the screens remained blank throughout every
inquiring thrust into the empty ether. But they knew they would have to
keep sharp vigilance.

* * * * *

_Continuing a Thrilling New Serial of Interplanetary Life and Travel
by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D._

_Author of "Skylark of Space," and "Skylark Three"_

PART II

Spacehounds of IPC

_One of the most fascinating mysteries of the heavens is the comet.
It goes through space, gets near enough to the earth to be seen,
and then goes off and disappears in celestial distance. Often it
has a hyperbolic orbit, which would make it impossible to come back.
Yet it may return--apparently contradicting the geometry of conic
sections. This only goes to prove once more that it is risky to say
anything is impossible--even that our hero of this story manages
beautifully, with the aid of Cantrell's Comet, to avoid complete
annihilation while stranded in interstellar space._

_Read "what went before" and then continue the second instalment._

What Went Before:

The Interplanetary Vessel Arcturus sets out for Mars, with
Breckenridge as chief pilot, carrying on board, besides its
regular crew and some passengers, the famous Dr. Stevens,
designer of space ships and computer. He checks computations
made by astronomers stationed in floating observatories, and
after he has located any trouble and suggests a plan for
minimizing the hazards of the trip from the earth to Mars,
he reports his findings and suggestions to Mr. Newton, chief
of the Interplanetary Corporation.

Stevens then takes Nadia, Mr. Newton's beautiful young daughter,
on a specially conducted sight-seeing tour of the Arcturus and
thoroughly explains to her all of the works of the vessel. Nadia
has herself had a good science education. While they are down at
the bottom of the ship--nearing the end of their tour--Stevens
feels a barely perceptible movement of the vessel from its course.
When he turns on the visiplate, he is horrified to find that a
mysterious ray of unparalleled power has neatly sliced the Arcturus
in several places.

Nadia and Stevens are completely separated from the rest of the
crew and passengers of the ship, so they get into a lifeboat,
which is equipped for a limited amount of space travel. Despite
the strict and apparently effective vigilance of the enemy
destroyer, Stevens and Nadia make their getaway in the lifeboat,
which they aptly call "Forlorn Hope," and finally make a safe
landing on Ganymede, where Stevens plans to build a power-plant
and a radio transmitter, to enable him to communicate with the
earth or with the IPV Sirius, which is used by Westfall and Brandon
(two of the world's best scientists) as a floating laboratory.

With the very scant apparatus and material available, Stevens
sets to work on his power plant. Just as they have it completed
and ready to start for Cantrell's Comet, where Stevens believes
he can obtain the necessary metal for his giant transmitting
tube, they experience a close call with carnivorous plants on the
satellite and later with savage inhabitants, which precipitates
their trip to the comet.

CHAPTER V

Cantrell's Comet

Far out in space, Jupiter, a tiny moon and its satellites mere
pin-points of light, Stevens turned to his companion with a grin.

"Well, Nadia, old golf-shootist, here's where we turn spacehounds again.
Hope you like it better this time, because I'm afraid that we'll have to
stay weightless for quite a while." He slowly throttled down the mighty
flow of power, and watched the conflicting emotions play over Nadia's
face in her purely personal battle against the sickening sensations
caused by the decrease in their acceleration.

"I'm sorry as the dickens, sweetheart," he went on, tenderly, and the
grin disappeared. "Wish I could take it for you, but...."

"But there are times when we've got to fight our own battles and bury
our own dead," she interrupted, gamely. "Cut off the rest of that power!
I'm _not_ going to be sick--I _won't_ be a--what do you spacehounds call
us poor earth-bound dubs who can't stand weightlessness--weight-fiends,
isn't it?"

"Yes; but you aren't...."

"I know I'm not, and I'm not going to be one, either! I'm all x,
Steve--it's not so bad now, really. I held myself together that time,
anyway, and I feel lots better now. Have you found Cantrell's Comet yet?
And why so sure all of a sudden that they can't find us? That power beam
still connects us to Ganymede, doesn't it? Maybe they can trace it."

"At-a-girl, ace!" he cheered. "I'll tell the world you're no
weight-fiend--you're a spacehound right. Most first-trippers, at this
stage of the game, wouldn't be caring a whoop whether school kept or
not, and here you're taking an interest in all kinds of things already.
You'll do, girl of my heart--no fooling!"

"Maybe, and maybe you're trying to kid somebody," she returned, eyeing
him intently. "Or maybe you just don't want to answer those questions
I asked you a minute ago."

[Illustration: _At the bottom of a shaft a section of the rocky wall
swung aside, revealing the yawning black mouth of a horizontal tunnel.
At intervals upon its roof there winked into being almost invisible
points of light. Along that line of lights the life-boats felt their
way, coming finally into a huge cavern...._]

"No, that's straight data, right on zero across the panel," he assured
her. "And as for your questions, they're easy. No, I haven't looked for
the comet yet, because we'll have to drift for a couple of days before
we'll be anywhere near where I think it is. No, they can't trace us,
because there is now nothing to trace, unless they can detect the
slight power we are using in our lights and so on--which possibility is
vanishingly small. Potentially, our beam still exists, but since we are
drawing no power, it has no actual present existence. See?"

"Uh-uh," she dissented. "I can't say that I can quite understand how
a beam can exist potentially and yet not be there actually enough to
trace. Why, a thing has to be actual or not exist at all--you can't
possibly have something that is nothing. It doesn't make sense. But
lay off those integrations of yours, please," as now armed with a
slate-pencil, Stevens began to draw a diagram upon a four-foot sheet of
smooth slate. "You know that your brand of math is over my head like a
circus tent, so we'll let it lie. I'll take your word for it. Steve--if
you're satisfied, it's all x with me."

"I think I can straighten you out a little, by analogy. Here's a rough
sketch of a cylinder, with shade and shadow. You've had descriptive
geometry, of course, and so know that a shadow, being simply a
projection of a material object upon a plane, is a two-dimensional
thing--or rather, a two-dimensional concept. Now take the shade, which
is, of course, this entire figure here, between the cylinder casting
the shadow and the plane of projection. You simply imagine that there
is a point source of light at your point of projection: it isn't really
there. The shade, then, of which I am drawing a picture, has only a
potential existence. You know exactly where it is, you can draw it, you
can define it, compute it, and work with it--but still it doesn't exist;
there is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from any other volume of
air, and it cannot be detected by any physical or mechanical means. If,
however, you place a light at the point of projection, the shade becomes
actual and can be detected optically. By a sufficient stretch of the
imagination, you might compare our beam to that shade. When we turn our
power on, the beam is actual; it is a stream of tangible force, and as
such can be detected electrically. When our switches here are open,
however, it exists only potentially. There is no motion in the ether,
nothing whatever to indicate that a beam had ever actually existed
there. With me?"

"Floundering pretty badly, but I see it after a fashion. You physicists
are peculiar freaks--where we ordinary mortals see actual, solid,
heavy objects, you see only empty space with a few electrons and things
floating around in it; and yet where we see only empty space, you can
see things 'potentially' that may never exist at all. You'll be the
death of me yet, Steve! But I'm wasting a lot of time. What do we do
now?"

"We get busy on the big tube. You might warm up the annealing oven and
melt me that pot of glass, while I get busy on the filament supports,
plate brackets, and so on." Both fell to work with a will, and hours
passed rapidly and almost silently, so intent was each upon his own
tasks.

"All x, Steve." Nadia broke the long silence. "The pyrometer's on the
red, and the oven's hot," and the man left his bench. Taking up a long
paddle and an even longer blowpipe, he skimmed the melt to a dazzlingly
bright surface and deftly formed a bubble.

"I just love to talk at you when you've got your mouth full of a
blowpipe." Nadia eyed him impishly and tucked her feet beneath her,
poised weightless as she was. "I've got you foul now--I can say anything
I want to, and you can't talk back, because your bubble will lose its
shape if you do. Oh, isn't that a beauty! I never saw you blow anything
that big before," and she fell silent, watching intently.

Slowly there was being drawn from the pot a huge, tapering bulb of hot,
glistening glass, its cross-section at the molten surface varying as
Stevens changed the rate of draw or the volume of air blown through the
pipe. Soon that section narrowed sharply. The glass-blower waved his
hand and Nadia severed the form neatly with a glowing wire, just above
the fluid surface of the glass remaining in the pot. Pendant from the
blowpipe, the bulb was placed over the hot-bench, where Stevens, now
begoggled, begloved, and armed with a welding torch, proceeded to fuse
into the still, almost plastic, glass sundry necks, side-tubes, supports
and other attachments of peculiar pattern. Finally the partially
assembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remain
at a high and constant temperature until its filaments, grids, and
plates had been installed. Eventually, in that same oven, it would be
allowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of days.

* * * * *

Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done either
by automatic machinery or by highly skilled specialists in labor--for
these two, thrown upon their own resources, had long since learned how
much specialization may be represented by the most commonplace article.
Whenever they needed a thing they did not have--which happened every
day--they had either to make it or else, failing in that, to go back and
build something that would enable them to manufacture the required item.
Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the
day's work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two
days the two jacks-of-all-trades worked at many lines and with many
materials before Stevens called a halt.

"All x, Nadia. It's time for us to stop tinkering and turn into
astronomers. We've been out for fifty I-P hours, and we'd better begin
looking around for our heap of scrap metal," and, the girl at the
communicator plate and Stevens at their one small telescope, they began
to search the black, star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell's Comet.

"According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours right
ascension, and something like plus twenty degrees declination. My
figures aren't accurate, though, since I'm working purely from memory,
so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran to the Pleiades."

"But the directions will change as we go along, won't they?"

"Not unless we pass it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight at
it, I think."

"I don't see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have
much tail?"

"Very little--it's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't have
much of a tail so far away from the sun. Hope it's got some of its tail
left, though, or we may miss it entirely."

Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into their
instruments, then Stevens left the telescope and went over to his slate.

"Looks bad, ace--we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat,
too. You'd better...."

"Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it
_is_ a comet, and quite close--it's got a little bit of a dim tail."

Stevens leaped to the communicator plate, and, blond head pressed close
to brown, the two wayfarers studied the faint image of the wanderer of
the void.

"That's it, I just _know_ it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer,
you're a blinding flash and a deafening report!"

"Yeah--missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," he
replied, grinning, "and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stations
for being four thousand off. However, I could have done worse--I could
easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only half of it."
He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound
sigh of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became
manageable by the ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.

"Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve--this is much
better!" she exclaimed.

"Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're a
spacehound just the same--you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.

Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his
course sharply, then, after a measured time interval, again made careful
readings.

"That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, and
he reduced their negative acceleration by a third. "There--we'll be just
about traveling with it when we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P.
of my bosom, our supper's been on minus time for hours. What say we
shake it up?"

"I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking the
savory Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours
before.

"Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"

"Sleep, by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won't
arrive before ten o'clock tomorrow, I-P time," and, tired out by the
events of the long day, man and maid sought their beds and plunged into
dreamless slumber.

While they slept, the "Forlorn Hope" drove on through the void at a
terrific but constantly decreasing velocity; and far off to one side,
plunging along a line making a sharp angle with their own course, there
loomed larger and larger the masses which made up the nucleus of
Cantrell's Comet.

Upon awakening, Stevens' first thought was for the comet, and he
observed it carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the
control room. Looming large in the shortened range of the plate, their
objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its enormous velocity
betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly
brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was
a wild jumble of separate fragments; a conglomerate, heterogeneous
aggregation of rough and jagged masses varying in size from grains of
sand up to enormous chunks, which upon Earth would have weighed millions
of tons. Pervading the whole nucleus, a slow, indefinite movement was
perceptible--a vague writhing and creeping of individual components
working and slipping past and around each other as they all rushed
forward in obedience to the immutable cosmic law of gravitation.

"Oh, isn't that wonderful!" Nadia breathed. "Think of actually going to
visit a comet! It sort of scares me, Steve--it's so creepy and crawly
looking. We're awfully close, aren't we?"

"Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just
to be on the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and you
bring me over something to eat."

"All x, Chief!" and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching
closely the ever-increasing bulk of the comet.

* * * * *

For many minutes he swung the _Forlorn Hope_ in a wide curve approaching
the mountain of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.

"Hold everything, Nadia--power's going off in a minute!" He shut off the
beam; then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the
comet, he applied a small voltage to one dirigible projector. Darting
the beam here and there, he so corrected their flight that they were
precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his
switches, and the _Forlorn Hope_ hurtled on. Apparently motionless, it
was now a part of Cantrell's Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated
ellipse about the Master of our Solar System, the Sun.

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