Spacehounds of IPC
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Edward Elmer Smith >> Spacehounds of IPC
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"There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends? I was watching you,
and you never turned a hair that time."
"Why, that's right--I never even thought about it--I was so busy
studying that thing out there! I suppose I've got used to it already?"
"Sure--you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go places
and do things! You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the
air-lock and handle the line."
They donned the heavily insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped the
locking plugs of the drag line into their sockets upon the helmets.
"Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?"
"All x."
"On the radio--all x?"
"All x."
"I tested your tanks and heaters--they're all x. But you'll have to
test...."
"I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the
country for the last year, but I didn't know you had to go through it
every time you went out-of-doors! Halves, number one all x, two all x,
three all x...."
"Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-up
is no joke, guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts
are apt to get out of order. You see, a thing to give you fresh air at
normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute space can't be either
simple or fool-proof. They've worked on them for years, but they're
pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you, out in
space, it's just too bad--you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men
are still out there somewhere because of the sloppy check-ups."
"'Scuse it, please--I'll be good," and the careful checking and testing
of every vital part of the space-suits went on.
Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the
coils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its
flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led the
girl into the air-lock.
"Heavens, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse
than the wreckage of the _Arcturus_ was when I wouldn't let you climb
up it--why, I thought comets were _little_, and hardly massive at all!"
exclaimed the girl.
"This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite or even to
the asteroids. There's only a few cubic kilometers of matter there, and,
as I said before, it's a decidedly unusual comet. You know the game?"
"I've got it--and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster than
you can jump over there if any one of those lumps starts to fall on you!
Is this drag line long enough?"
"Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters over
there to where I'm going. So long," and with a light thrust of his feet,
he dove head foremost across the intervening space, a heavy pike held
out ahead of him. Straight as a bullet he floated toward his objective,
a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the shock of his landing
by sliding along the pike-handle as its head struck the mass.
Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor,
and under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kept
on moving, grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevens
sprang, always watching his line of retreat as well as that of his
advance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of apparently solid
metal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his
weapon and was reassured--that object was not only metal, but it was
metal so hard that his pike-head of space-tempered alloy steel did not
make an impression upon its surface. Turning on his helmet light he
swung his heavy hammer repeatedly but could not break off even a small
fragment.
"Found something, Steve?" Nadia's voice came clearly in his ears.
"I'll say I have! A hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size of
an office desk. I can't break off any of it, so I guess we'll have to
grab the whole chunk."
He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that the
loops would not slip, and then, as Nadia tightened the line, he shoved
mightily.
"All x, Nadia, she's coming! Pull in my drag line as I said over there,
and I'll help you land her."
Inside the _Forlorn Hope_ the mass of metal was urged into the shop,
where Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor, before he took
off his space-suit.
"Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is getting
positively _cold_!" Nadia exclaimed.
"Sure. Anything that comes in from space is cold, even if it's been out
only a few minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for nobody knows
how many million years. It didn't get much heat from the sun except
at perihelion, you know, so it's probably somewhere around minus two
hundred and sixty degrees now. I'll have to throw a heater on it for
half an hour before we can touch it. And since this is more or less new
stuff to you, I'll caution you--don't try to touch anything that has
just come in. That hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, even
though they've been out only a little while. Before you touch anything,
blow on it, like this, see? If your breath freezes solid on it, like
that, don't touch it--it's cold."
* * * * *
Under the infra-beams of the heater, the mass of the metal was brought
to room temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools.
Bit by bit the stubborn material was torn from the lump. Through heavy
goggles he watched the incandescent mass in a refractory crucible, in
the heart of the induction furnace.
"What do you think you've got--what you want?"
"I don't know. It wasn't iron--it wouldn't hold a magnet. It's royal
metal of some kind, I think. Base metals mostly melt at around fifteen
hundred, and that crucible is still dry as a bone at better than
seventeen."
"How are you going to separate out the tantalum and the others you want
from the ones that you don't want?"
"I'm afraid that I'm not going to, very well," replied Stevens, with a
wry grimace. "What I don't know about metallurgy would fill a library,
and I'm probably the world's worst chemist. However, by a series of
successive liquations, I hope to separate out fractions that I can
use. Platinum melts somewhere around seventeen-fifty, tantalum about
twenty-nine hundred, and tungsten not until 'way up around thirty-three,
or four hundred--and that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course,
each fraction will probably be an alloy of one kind or another, but
I think maybe I'll be able to make them do."
"But mayn't that whole chunk be a pure metal?"
"It's conceivable, but not probable. There, she's beginning to separate
at just below eighteen hundred! Platinum group coming out now, I
think--platinum, rhodium, iridium, and that gang, you know. While I'm
doing this, you might be getting those five coils into exact resonance,
if you want to."
"Sure I want to," and Nadia made her way across to the short-wave
oscillator and set to work.
After an hour or so, bent over her delicate task, she began to twitch
uneasily, then shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
"What's the idea of staring at me so?" she broke out suddenly. "How do
you expect me to tune these things up if you...." She stopped abruptly,
mouth open in amazement, as she turned toward Stevens. He had not been
looking at her, but he turned a surprised face from his own task at the
sound of her voice. "Excuse me, please, Steve. I don't know what's the
matter with me--must be getting jumpy, I guess."
"I wish that was all, but it isn't!" Face suddenly grim and hard,
Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and shot the beam out into
space. "There's an answer, but that isn't it. You're a fine-tuned
instrument yourself, ace, and you've detected something.... I thought
so! There's the answer--the guy that was looking at you!"
Plainly there was revealed upon the plate a small, spherical space-ship,
very like the one that had attacked and destroyed the _Arcturus_. After
Nadia had taken one glance at it, Stevens shut off the power and leaped
out into the shop. He closed all the bulkhead doors and air-break
openings, then closed and secured the massive insulating door of the
lifeboat in which they had made their headquarters. Then, after they
had again put on the space-suits they had taken off such a short time
before, he extinguished all the lights and hooded the communicator
screen before he ventured again to glance out into the void.
"If I had a brain in my head, instead of the pint of bean soup I've got
up there, we'd have worn these when they cut up the _Arcturus_, and
saved us a lot of mental wear and tear," he remarked. "They were right
there in the lockers all the time, and I knew it!"
"Well, we got away, anyway. You couldn't be expected to think of
everything at once. We didn't have much time, you know."
"No, but I should have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway.
Wonder how they found us? Did they detect us, or did they come out
to this comet after metal, same as we did, and find us accidentally?
However, it all works out the same--they're apparently out to get us.
I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a rabbit fighting back
at a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while
they're getting a square meal ... here they come!"
The enemy sphere launched its flaming plane of force, and the _Forlorn
Hope_ shuddered in every plate and member as its apex was severed
cleanly under the impact. Instantly Stevens hurled his only weapons.
Flaming ultra-violet and dully glowing infra-red, the twin beams lashed
out; but their utmost force was of slight moment to the enormous power
driving the enemy screens. Two circular spots of cherry red in space
were the only results of Stevens' attack, and the next fierce cut
sheared away the two projectors and, incidentally, a full half of the
fifty-inch armor of the leading edge.
"Then we're checking out now?" Nadia asked quietly, as the man's hands
dropped from his useless controls. "I'm sorrier than I can say, lover.
But at least, I'm glad that I can go out with you," and her glorious
eyes were shining with unshed tears.
"Maybe, but snap out of it, girl--our hearts are still beating! We're
not dead yet, and maybe we won't be. Perhaps they want to capture us
alive, as they did before; if so, we may be able to hide out on them
somewhere and pull off another escape. Things don't look very bright, I
know, but we're not checking out until our numbers are actually run up!"
He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer, and stood
tense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control
room, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening;
while the air shrieked outward into space and their suits bulged
suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While they
were in midflight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way
through the control board and through the spot upon which they had been
standing a moment before. As they passed the severed edge, en route into
open spare, Stevens seized a metal brace and clung there, every nerve
taut.
"Something funny here, Nadia," he said after a little, in a low tone.
"They should have made one more cut, to make us absolutely blind and
helpless. As it is, they've clipped off all our projectors, so we can't
move, but I think we've got the whole control compartment of number two
lifeboat untouched. If so, we can look around, anyway. Let's go!"
Floating without effort from fragment to fragment, they made their way
toward the section of their cruiser as yet undamaged. They found an
airlock in working order, and were soon in the second lifeboat, where
Stevens hastily turned on a communicator and peered out into space.
"There they are! There's another stranger out there, too. They're
fighting with her, now--that's probably why they didn't polish us off."
Steel-braced, clumsy helmets touching, the two Terrestrials stared
spell-bound into the plate; watching while the insensately vicious
intelligences within the sphere brought its every force to bear upon
another and larger sphere which was now so close as to be plainly
visible. Like a gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globe
appeared--its smooth and highly-polished surface one enormous, perfect,
spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw flash out that frightful
plane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all too
familiar, and saw it strike full upon the dazzling ball.
"This is awful, ace!" Stevens groaned. "They haven't got ray-screens,
either, and without them they don't stand a chance. No possible
substance can stand up under that beam. When they get done and turn back
to us, we'll have to dive back to where we were."
* * * * *
But that brilliant mirror was not as vulnerable as Stevens had supposed.
The plane of force struck and clung, but could not penetrate it. Broken
up into myriads of scintillating crystals of light, intersecting,
multi-colored rays, and cascading flares of sparkling energy, the beam
was reflected, thrown back, hurled away on all sides into space in
coruscating, blinding torrents. And neither was the monster globe
inoffensive. The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, emit a
flame-erupting something, and close as rapidly as it had opened. That
something was a projectile, its propelling rockets fiercely aflame; as
smoothly brilliant as its mother-ship and seemingly as impervious to the
lethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, it
received the full power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistible
plane of force beat upon it; ultra-violet, infra-red, and heat rays
enveloped it; there were hurled against it all the forces known to the
scientific minds within that fiendishly destructive sphere.
Finally, only a scant few hundreds of yards from its goal, the
protective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive let
go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But now
another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring on
ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three
torpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither
and thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could
not be shaken off. At every dodge and turn, steering rockets burst into
furious activity and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing that
she had at last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in
mad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes
were faster and all three of them struck her at once. There ensued
an explosion veritably space-racking in its intensity; a flash of
incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding into
a vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about and
attached itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the space where had been
the enemy sphere, there was nothing.
A slow-creeping pale blue rod of tangible force reached out from the
great sphere, touched the wreckage of the _Forlorn Hope_, and pulled;
gently, but with enormous power.
"Tractor beams again!" exclaimed Stevens, still at the plate.
"Everybody's got 'em but us, it seems."
"And we can't fight a bit any more, can we?"
"Not a chance--bows and arrows wouldn't do us much good. However, we may
not need 'em. Since they fought that other crew, and haven't blown us
up, they aren't active enemies of ours, and may be friendly. I haven't
any idea who or what they are, since even our communicator ray can't get
through that mirror, but it looks as though our best bet is to act
peaceable and see if we can't talk to them in some way. Right?"
"Right." They stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw that
the great sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that an
indistinct figure stood in an open door, waving to them an unmistakable
invitation to enter the strange vessel.
"Shall we, Steve?"
"Might as well. They've got us foul, and can take us if they want us.
Anyway, we'll need at least a week to fix us up any kind of driving
power, so we can't run--and we probably couldn't get away from those
folks if we had all our power. They haven't blown us up, and they could
have done it easily enough. Besides, they act friendly, so we'd better
meet them half way. Dive!"
Floating toward the open doorway, they were met by another rod of force,
brought gently into the airlock, and supported upright beside the being
who had invited them to visit him. Apparently an empty space-suit stood
there; a peculiarly-fitted suit of some partially transparent, flexible,
glass-like material; towering fully a foot over the head of the tall
Terrestrial. Closer inspection, however, revealed that there was
something inside that suit--a shadowy, weirdly-transparent being,
staring at them with large, black eyes. The door clanged shut behind
them; they heard the faint hiss of inrushing air, and the inner door
opened; but their enveloping suits remained stretched almost as tightly
as ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, and a little
weight was granted them as the space-ship got under way. Stevens waved
his arms vigorously at the stranger, pointing backward toward where he
supposed their own craft to be. The latter waved an arm reassuringly,
pressed a contact, and a section of the wall suddenly became
transparent. Through it Stevens saw with satisfaction that the _Forlorn
Hope_ was not being abandoned; in the grip of powerful tractor beams,
every fragment of the wreckage was following close behind them in their
flight through space.
* * * * *
Stevens and Nadia followed their guide along a corridor, through several
doors, and into a large room, which at first glance seemed empty, but
in which several of the peculiarly transparent people of the craft were
lying about upon cushions. They were undoubtedly human--but what humans!
Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel chests, topped by heads
which, though really large, appeared insignificant because of the
prodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears.
Their skins were a strikingly, livid, pale blue, absolutely devoid of
hair; and their lidless eyes, without a sign of iris, were chillingly
horrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil and
ghastly, transparent blue eyeball.
As the two Terrestrials entered the room, the beings struggled to their
feet and hurried laboriously away. Soon one of them returned, dressed in
an insulating suit, and carrying three sets of head harnesses, connected
by multiplex cables to a large box which he placed upon the floor.
He handed the headsets to the first officer, who in turn placed two of
them at the feet of the Terrestrials, indicating to them that they were
to follow his example in placing them upon their heads, outside the
helmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation,
and in spite of the powerful heaters of their suits, they felt a touch
of frightful cold. The stranger turned a dial, and the two wanderers
from Earth were instantly in full mental communication with Barkovis,
the commander of a space-ship of Titan, the sixth satellite of Saturn!
"Well, I'll be ... say, what is this, anyway?" Steve exclaimed
involuntarily, and Nadia smiled as Barkovis answered with a thought,
clearer than any spoken words.
"It is a thought-exchanger. I do not know its fundamental mechanism,
since we did not invent it and since I have had little time to study
it. The apparatus, practically as you see it here, was discovered but a
short time ago, in a small, rocket-propelled space-ship which we found
some distance outside of the orbit of Jupiter. Its source of power had
been destroyed by the cold of outer space, but re-powering it was, of
course, a small matter. The crew of the vessel were all dead. They
were, however, of human stock, and of a type adapted for life upon
a satellite. I deduce, from your compact structure, your enormous
atmospheric pressure, and your, to us, unbelievably high body
temperature, that you must be planet-dwellers. I suppose that you
are natives of Jupiter?"
"Not quite." Stevens had in a measure recovered from his stunned
surprise. "We are from Tellus, the third planet," and he revealed
rapidly the events leading up to their present situation, concluding:
"The people in the other sphere were, we believe, natives of Jupiter or
of one of the satellites. We know nothing of them, since we could not
look through their screens. You rescued us from them; do you not know
them?"
"No. Our visirays also were stopped by their screens of force--screens
entirely foreign to our science. This is the first time that any
vessel from our Saturnian system has ever succeeded in reaching the
neighborhood of Jupiter. We came in peace, but they attacked us at sight
and we were obliged to destroy them. Now we must hurry back to Titan,
for two reasons. First, because we are already at the extreme limit
of our power range and Jupiter is getting further and further away
from Saturn. Second because our mirrors, which we had thought perfect
reflectors of all frequencies possible of generation, are not perfect.
Enough of those forces came through the mirrors to volatilize half our
crew, and in a few minutes more none of us would have been left alive.
Why, in some places our very atmosphere became almost hot enough to melt
water! If another of those vessels should attack us, in all probability
we should all be lost. Therefore we are leaving as rapidly as is
possible."
"You are taking the pieces of our ship along--we do not want to encumber
you."
"It is no encumbrance, since we have ample supplies of power. In fact,
we are now employing the highest acceleration we Titanians can endure
for any length of time."
Stevens pondered long, forgetting that his thoughts were plain as print
to the Titanian commander. Thank Heaven these strangers had sense enough
to be friendly--all intelligent races should be friends, for mutual
advancement. But it was a mighty long stretch to Saturn and this
acceleration wasn't so much. How long would it take to get there? Could
they get back? Wouldn't they save time by casting themselves adrift,
making the repairs most urgently needed, and going back to Ganymede
under their own power? But would they have enough power left in the
wreck to get even that far? And how about the big tube? He was
interrupted by an insistent thought from Barkovis.
"You will save time, Stevens, by coming with us to Titan. There we shall
aid you in repairing your vessel and in completing your transmitting
tube, in which we shall be deeply interested. Our power plants shall
supply you with energy for your return journey until you are close
enough to Jupiter to recover your own beam. You are tired. I would
suggest that you rest--that you sleep long and peacefully."
"You seem to be handling the _Forlorn Hope_ without any trouble--the
pieces aren't grinding at all. We'd better live there, hadn't we?"
"Yes that would be best, for all of us. You could not live a minute here
without your suits; and, efficiently insulated as those suits are, yet
your incandescent body temperature makes our rooms unbearably hot--so
hot that any of us must wear a space-suit while in the same room with
you, to avoid being burned to death."
"The incandescently hot" Terrestrials were wafted into the open airlock
of their lifeboat upon a wand of force, and soon had prepared a long
overdue supper, over which Stevens cast his infectious, boyish grin at
Nadia.
"Sweetheart, you are undoubtedly a 'warm number,' and you have often
remarked that I 'burn you up.' Nevertheless I think that we were both
considerably surprised to discover that we are both hot enough actually
to consume persons unfortunate enough to be confined in the same room
with us!"
"You're funny, Steve--like a crutch," she rebuked him, but smiled back,
an elusive dimple playing in one lovely brown cheek. "Looking right
through anybody is too ghastly for words, but I think they're perfectly
all x, anyway, in spite of their being so hideous and so cold-blooded!"
CHAPTER VI
A Frigid Civilization
"Hi, Percival Van Schravendyck Stevens!" Nadia strode purposely into
Stevens' room and seized him by the shoulder. "Are you going to sleep
all the way to Saturn? You answered me when I pounded on the partition
with a hammer, but I don't believe that you woke up at all. Get up,
you--breakfast will be all spoiled directly!"
"Huh?" Stevens opened one sluggish eye; then, as the full force of the
insult penetrated his consciousness, he came wide awake. "Lay off those
names, ace, or you'll find yourself walking back home!" he threatened.
"All x by me!" she retorted. "I might as well go home if you're going
to sleep _all_ the time!" and she widened her expressive eyes at him
impishly as she danced blithely back into the control room. As she went
out she slammed his door with a resounding clang, and Stevens pried
himself out of his bunk one joint at a time, dressed, and made himself
presentable.
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