Triplanetary
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Edward Elmer Smith >> Triplanetary
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He shut off the power, turned to Rodebush, and went on:
"Nobody knows how fast this ultra-wave travels, but if it goes as fast
as we did coming out it's certainly moving. I'll give him about thirty
minutes, then shoot in another call."
But in less than two minutes the care-ravaged face of their chief
appeared sharp and clear upon their plates and his voice snapped curtly
from the speaker.
"Thank God you're alive, and twice that the ship works!" he exclaimed.
"You've been gone four hours, eleven minutes, and forty-one seconds, but
never mind about abstract theorizing. Get back here, to Pittsburgh, as
fast as you can drive. That Nevian vessel or another like her is mopping
up the city, and has destroyed half the Fleet already!"
"We'll be back there in nine minutes!" Rodebush snapped into the
transmitter. "Two to get from here to atmosphere, four from atmosphere
down to the Hill, and three to cool off. Notify the full four-shift
crew--everybody we've picked out. Don't need anybody else. Ship,
batteries, and armament are _ready_!"
"Two minutes to atmosphere, and it took ten coming out? Think you can do
it?" Cleveland asked, as Rodebush flipped off the power and leaped to
the control panel.
"We could do it in a few seconds if we had to. We used scarcely any
power at all coming out, and I'm not using very much going back," the
physicist explained rapidly, as he set the dials which would determine
their flashing course.
The master switches were thrown and the pangs of inertialessness again
assailed them--but weaker far this time than ever before--and upon their
lookout plates they beheld a spectacle never before seen by eye of man.
For the ultra-beam, with its heterodyned vision, is not distorted by any
velocity yet attained, as are the ether-borne rays of light. Converted
into light only at the plate, it showed their progress as truly as
though they had been traveling at a pace to be expressed in the ordinary
terms of miles per hour. The yellow star that was the sun detached
itself from the firmament and leaped toward them, swelling visibly,
momentarily, into a blinding monster of incandescence. And toward them
also flung the earth, enlarging with such indescribable rapidity that
Cleveland protested involuntarily, in spite of his knowledge of the
peculiar mechanism of the vessel in which they were.
"Hold it, Fred, hold it! Way 'nuff!" he exclaimed.
"I'm using only ten thousand dynes, so she'll stop herself as soon as we
touch atmosphere, long before she can even begin to heat," Rodebush
explained. "Looks bad, but we'll stop without a jar."
And they did. Weightless and without inertia, gravitation powerless
against her neutralizing generators, the great super-ship came from her
practically infinite velocity to an almost instantaneous halt in the
outermost, most tenuous layer of the earth's atmosphere. Her halt was
but momentary. Inertia restored and gravitation allowed again to affect
her mass, she dropped at a sharp angle downward. More than dropped; she
was forced downward by one full battery of projectors; projectors driven
by iron-powered generators. Soon they were over the Hill, whose violet
screens went down at a word.
Flaming a dazzling white from the friction of the atmosphere through
which she had torn her way, the _Boise_ slowed abruptly as she neared
the ground, plunging toward the surface of the small but deep artificial
lake below the Hill's steel apron. Into the cold waters the space-ship
dove, and even before they could close over her, furious geysers of
steam and boiling water erupted as the stubborn alloy gave up its heat
to the cooling liquid. Endlessly the three necessary minutes dragged
their slow way into time, but finally the water ceased boiling and
Rodebush tore the ship from the lake and hurled her into the gaping
doorway of her dock. The massive doors of the air-locks opened, and
while the full crew of picked men hurried aboard with their personal
equipment, Samms talked earnestly to the two scientists in the control
room.
" ... and about half the fleet is still in the air. They aren't
attacking; they are just trying to keep her from doing much more damage
until you can get there. How about your take-off? We can't launch you
again--the tracks are gone--but you handled her easily enough coming
in?"
"That was all my fault," Rodebush admitted. "I should have neutralized
inertia first, but I had no idea that the fields would extend beyond the
hull, nor that they wouldn't act simultaneously. We'll take her out on
the projectors this time, though, the same as we brought her in--she
handles like a bicycle. The projector blast tears things up a little,
but nothing serious. Have you got that Pittsburgh beam for me yet? We're
about ready to go."
"Here it is, Doctor Rodebush," came the secretary's voice, and upon the
screen there flashed into being the view of the events transpiring above
that doomed city. "The dock is empty and sealed against your blast," and
thereupon "Good-bye, and power to your tubes!" came Samms' ringing
voice.
As the words were being spoken, mighty blasts of power raved from the
driving projectors and the immense mass of the super-ship shot out
through the portals and upward into the stratosphere. Through the
tenuous atmosphere the huge ship rushed with ever-mounting speed, and
while the hope of Triplanetary drove eastward Rodebush studied the
ever-changing scene of battle upon his plate and issued detailed
instructions to the highly trained specialists manning every offensive
and defensive weapon.
But the Nevians did not wait to join battle until the newcomers arrived.
Their detectors were sensitive--operative over untold thousands of
miles--and the ultra-screen of the Hill had already been noted by the
invaders as the earth's only possible source of trouble. Thus the
departure of the _Boise_ had not gone unnoticed, and the fact, that, not
even with his most penetrant rays could he see into her interior, had
already given the Nevian commander some slight concern. Therefore, as
soon as it was determined that the great ship was being directed toward
Pittsburgh the fish-shaped cruiser of the void went into action.
High in the stratosphere, speeding eastward, the immense mass of the
_Boise_ slowed abruptly, although no projector had slackened its effort.
Cleveland, eyes upon interferometer grating and spectrophotometer
charts, fingers flying over calculator keys, grinned as he turned toward
Rodebush.
"Just as you thought, Skipper; an ultra-band pusher. C4V63L29. Shall I
give him a little pull?"
"Not yet; let's feel him out a little before we force a close-up. We've
got plenty of mass. See what he does when I put full push on the
projectors."
As the full power of the Terrestrial vessel was applied the Nevian was
forced backward, away from the threatened city, against the full drive
of her every projector. Soon, however, the advance was again checked,
and both scientists read the reason upon their plates. The enemy had put
down re-enforcing rods of tremendous power. Three compression members
spread out fanwise behind her, bracing her against the low mountainside,
while one huge tractor beam was thrust directly downward, holding in an
unbreakable grip a cylinder of earth extending deep down into bedrock.
"Two can play at that game!" And Rodebush drove down similar beams, and
forward-reaching tractors as well. "Strap yourselves in solid,
everybody!" he sounded a general warning. "Something is going to give
way somewhere soon, and when it does we'll get a jolt!"
And the promised jolt did indeed come soon. Prodigiously massive and
powerful as the Nevian was, the _Boise_ was even more massive and more
powerful; and as the already enormous energy feeding the tractors,
pushers, and projectors was raised to its inconceivable maximum, the
vessel of the enemy was hurled upward, backward; and that of earth shot
ahead with a bounding leap that threatened to strain even her mighty
members. The Nevian anchor-rods had not broken; they had simply pulled
up the vast cylinders of solid rock that had formed their anchorages.
"Grab him now!" Rodebush yelled, and even while an avalanche of falling
rock was burying the countryside, Cleveland snapped a tractor ray upon
the flying fish and pulled tentatively.
Nor did the Nevian now seem averse to coming to grips. The two warring
super-dreadnaughts darted toward each other, and from the invader there
flooded out the dread crimson opacity which had theretofore meant the
doom of all things Solarian. It flooded out and engulfed the immense
mass of humanity's hope in its spreading cloud of redly impenetrable
murk. But not for long. Triplanetary's super-ship boasted no ordinary
Terrestrial defense, but was sheathed in screen after screen of
ultra-vibrations: imponderable walls, it is true, but barriers
impenetrable to any unfriendly wave. To the outer screen the red veil of
the Nevians clung tenaciously, licking greedily at every square inch of
the shielding sphere of force, but unable to find an opening through
which to feed upon the steel of the _Boise_'s armor.
"Get back--'way back! Go back and help Pittsburgh!" Rodebush drove an
ultra-communicator beam through the murk to the instruments of the
Terrestrial admiral; for the surviving warships of the Fleet--its most
powerful units--were hurling themselves forward, to plunge into that red
destruction. "None of you will last a second in this red field. And
watch out for a violet field pretty soon--it'll be worse than this. We
can handle them alone, I think; but if we can't, there's nothing in the
System that can help us!"
And now the hitherto passive screen of the super-ship became active. At
first invisible, it began to glow in livid, violet light, and as the
glow brightened to unbearable intensity the entire spherical shield
began to increase in size. Driven outward from the super-ship as a
center, its advancing surface of seething energy consumed the crimson
murk as a billow of blast-furnace heat consumes a cloud of snowflakes in
the air above its shaft. Nor was the red death-mist all that was
consumed. Between that ravening surface and the armor skin of the
_Boise_ there was nothing. No debris, no atmosphere, no vapor, no single
atom of material substance--the first time in Terrestrial experience
that an absolute vacuum had ever been attained!
Stubbornly contesting every foot of way lost, the Nevian fog retreated
before the violet sphere of nothingness. Back and back it fell,
disappearing altogether from all space as the violet tide engulfed the
enemy vessel; but the flying fish did not disappear. Her triple screens
flashed into furiously incandescent splendor and she entered, unscathed,
that vacuous sphere, which collapsed instantly into an enormously
elongated ellipsoid, at each focus a madly warring ship of space.
Then in that tube of vacuum was waged a spectacular duel of
ultra-weapons--weapons impotent in air, but deadly in empty space.
Beams, rays, and rods of Titanic power smote cracklingly against
ultra-screens equally capable. Time after time each contestant ran the
gamut of the spectrum with his every available ultra-force, only to find
all channels closed. For minutes the terrible struggle went on, then:
"Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, Dutton!" Rodebush called into his
transmitter. "Ready? Can't touch him on the ultra, so I'm going onto the
macro-bands. Give him everything you have as soon as I collapse the
violet. Go!"
At the word the violet barrier went down, and with a crash as of a
disrupting Universe the atmosphere rushed into the void. And through the
hurricane there shot out the deadliest material weapons of Triplanetary.
Torpedoes--non-ferrous, ultra-screened, beam-dirigible torpedoes charged
with the most effective forms of material destruction known to man.
Cooper hurled his canisters of penetrating gas, Adlington his atomic
iron explosive bombs, Spencer his indestructible armor-piercing
projectiles, and Dutton his shatterable flasks of the quintessence of
corrosion--a sticky, tacky liquid of such dire potency that only one
rare Solarian element could contain it. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred
were thrown as fast as automatic machinery could launch them; and the
Nevians found themselves adversaries not to be despised. Size for size,
their screens were quite as capable as those of the _Boise_. The
Nevians' destructive rays glanced harmlessly from their shields, and the
Nevians' elaborate screens, neutralized at impact by those of the
torpedoes, were impotent to impede their progress. Each projectile must
needs be caught and crushed individually by beams of the most prodigious
power; and while one was being annihilated dozens more were rushing to
the attack. Then, while the twisting, dodging invader was busiest with
the tiny but relentless destroyers, Rodebush launched his heaviest
weapon.
The macro-beams! Prodigious streamers of bluish-green flame which tore
savagely through course after course of Nevian screen! Malevolent fangs,
driven with such power and velocity that they were biting into the very
walls of the enemy vessel before the amphibians knew their defensive
shells of force had been punctured! And the emergency screens of the
invaders were equally futile. Course after course was sent out, only to
flare viciously through the spectrum and to go black!
Outfought at every turn, the now frantically dodging Nevian leaped away
in headlong flight, only to be brought to a staggering, crashing halt as
Cleveland nailed her with a tractor beam. But the Terrestrials were to
learn that the Nevians held in reserve a means of retreat. The tractor
snapped--sheared off squarely by a sizzling plane of force--and the
fish-shaped cruiser faded from Cleveland's sight, just as the _Boise_
had disappeared from the communicator plates of Radio Center, back in
the Hill, when she was launched. But though the plates in the control
room could not hold the Nevian, she did not vanish beyond the ken of
Randolph, now Communications Officer in the super-ship. For, warned and
humiliated by his losing one speeding vessel from his plates in Radio
Center, he was now ready for any emergency. Therefore as the Nevian
fled, Randolph's spy-ray held her, automatically behind it as there was
the full output of twelve special banks of iron-driven power tubes; and
thus it was that the vengeful Terrestrials flashed immediately along the
Nevians' line of flight. Inertialess now, pausing briefly from time to
time to enable the crew to accustom themselves to the new sensations,
the _Boise_ pursued the invader; hurtling through the void with a
velocity unthinkable.
"He was easier to take than I thought he would be," Cleveland grunted,
staring into the plate.
"I thought he had more stuff, too," Rodebush assented; "but I guess
Costigan got almost everything they had. If so, with all our own stuff
and most of theirs besides, we should be able to take them. They must
have neutralization, too, to take off like that; and if it's one hundred
per cent we'll never catch them ... but it isn't--there they are!"
"And this time I'm going to hold her or burn out all our generators
trying," Cleveland declared, grimly. "Are you fellows down there able to
handle yourselves yet? Fine! Start throwing out your cans!"
Space-hardened veterans all, the other Terrestrial officers had fought
off the horrible nausea of inertialessness, just as Rodebush and
Cleveland had done. Again the ravening green macro-beams tore at the
flying cruiser, again the mighty frames of the two space-ships shuddered
sickeningly as Cleveland clamped on his tractor rod, again the highly
dirigible torpedoes dashed out with their freights of death and
destruction. And again the Nevian shear-plane of force slashed at the
Terrestrial's tractor beam; but this time the mighty puller did not give
way. Sparkling and spitting high-tension sparks, the plane bit deeply
into the stubborn rod of energy. Brighter, thicker, and longer grew the
discharges as the gnawing plane drew more and more power; but in direct
ratio to that power the rod grew larger, denser, and ever harder to cut.
More and more vivid became the pyrotechnic display of electric
brilliance, until suddenly the entire tractor rod disappeared. At the
same instant a blast of intolerable flame erupted from the _Boise_'s
flank and the whole enormous fabric of her shook and quivered under the
force of a terrific detonation.
"Randolph! I don't see them! Are they attacking or running?" Rodebush
demanded. He was the first to realize what had happened.
"Running--fast!"
"Just as well, perhaps, but get their line. Adlington!"
"Here!"
"Good! Was afraid you were gone--that was one of your bombs, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Well launched, just inside the screens. Don't see how it could
have detonated unless something hot and hard struck it in the tube; it
would need about that much time to explode. Good thing it didn't go off
any sooner, or none of us would have been here. As it is, Area Six is
pretty well done in, but the bulkheads held the damage to Six. What
happened?"
"We don't know, exactly. Both generators on the tractor beam went out.
At first, I thought that was all, but my neutralizers are dead and I
don't know what else. When the G-4's went out the fusion must have
shorted the neutralizers. They would make a mess; it must have burned a
hole down into number six tube. Cleveland and I will come down, and
we'll all look around."
Donning space-suits, the scientists let themselves into the damaged
compartment through the emergency air-locks, and what a sight they saw!
Both outer and inner walls of alloy armor had been blown away by the
awful force of the explosion. Jagged plates hung awry; bent, twisted,
and broken. The great torpedo tube, with all its intricate automatic
machinery, had been driven violently backward and lay piled in hideous
confusion against the backing bulkheads. Practically nothing remained
whole in the entire compartment.
"Nothing much we can do here," Rodebush said finally, through his
transmitter, "Let's go see what number four generator room looks like."
That room, although not affected by the explosion from without, had been
quite as effectively wrecked from within. It was still stiflingly hot;
its air was still reeking with the stench of burning lubricant,
insulation, and metal; its floor was half covered by a semi-molten mass
of what had once been vital machinery. For with the burning out of the
generator bars the energy of the disintegrating allotropic iron had had
no outlet, and had built up until it had broken through its insulation
and in an irresistible flood of power had torn through all obstacles in
its path of neutralization.
"Hm-m-m. Should have had an automatic shut-off--one detail we
overlooked," Rodebush mused. "The electricians _can_ rebuild this stuff
here, though--that hole in the hull is something else again."
"I'll say it's something else," the grizzled Chief Engineer agreed.
"She's lost all her spherical strength--anchoring a tractor with this
ship now would turn her inside out. Back to the nearest Triplanetary
shop for us, I would say."
"Come again, Chief!" Cleveland advised the engineer. "None of us would
live long enough to get there. We can't travel inertialess until the
repairs are made, so if they can't be made without very much traveling,
it's just too bad."
"I don't see how we could support our jacks...." The engineer paused,
then went on. "If you can't give me Mars or Tellus, how about some other
planet? I don't care about atmosphere, or about anything but mass. I can
stiffen her up in three or four days if I can sit down on something
heavy enough to hold our jacks and presses; but if we have to rig up
space-cradles around the ship herself it'll take a long time--months,
probably. Haven't got a spare planet on hand, have you?"
"We might have, at that," Rodebush made surprising answer. "A couple of
seconds before we engaged we were heading toward a sun with at least two
planets. I was just getting ready to dodge them when we cut the
neutralizers, so they should be fairly close somewhere--yes, there's the
sun, right over there. Rather pale and small; but it's close,
comparatively speaking. We'll go back up into the control room and find
out about the planets."
The strange sun was found to have three large and easily located
children, and observation showed that the crippled space-ship could
reach the nearest of these in about five days. Power was therefore fed
to the driving projectors, and each scientist, electrician, and mechanic
bent to the task of repairing the ruined generators; rebuilding them to
handle any load which the converters could possibly put upon them. For
two days the _Boise_ drove on; then her acceleration was reversed, and
finally a landing was effected upon the forbidding, rocky soil of the
strange world.
It was larger than the earth, and of a somewhat stronger gravitation.
Although its climate was bitterly cold, even in its short daytime, it
supported a luxuriant but outlandish vegetation. Its atmosphere, while
rich enough in oxygen and not really poisonous, was so rank with
indescribably fetid vapors as to be scarcely breathable.
But these things bothered the engineers not at all. Paying no attention
to temperature or to scenery and without waiting for chemical analysis
of the air, the space-suited mechanics leaped to their tasks; and in
only a little more time than had been mentioned by the chief engineer
the hull and giant frame of the super-ship were as staunch as of yore.
"All right, Skipper!" came finally the welcome word. "You might try her
out with a fast hop around this world before you shove off in earnest."
Under the fierce blast of her projectors the vessel leaped ahead, and
time after time, as Rodebush hurled her mass upon tractor beam or
pressor, the engineers sought in vain for any sign of weakness. The
strange planet half girdled and the severest tests passed flawlessly,
Rodebush reached for his neutralizer switches. Reached and paused,
dumfounded, for a brilliant purple light had sprung into being upon his
panel and a bell rang out insistently.
"What the blue blazes!" Rodebush shot out an exploring beam along the
detector line and gasped. He stared, mouth open, then yelled:
"_Roger_ is here, rebuilding his planetoid! _STATIONS ALL_!"
CHAPTER XI
Roger Carries On
For gray Roger had not perished in the floods of Nevian energy which had
destroyed his planetoid. While those terrific streamers of force
emanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibians'
space-ship were driving into his defensive screens, Roger sat impassive
and immobile at his desk. His hard gray eyes moved methodically over his
instruments and recorders; and after a few minutes he smiled coldly,
while an expression of relief struggled fleetingly to move his
expressionless face. Even though his screens were better than anyone had
supposed, why admit it?
"Baxter, Hartkopf, Chatelier, Anandrusung, Penrose, Nishimura,
Mirsky...." He called off a list of names. "Report to me here at once!"
"The planetoid is lost," he informed his select group of scientists when
they had assembled, "and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes,
which will be the time required for the robots to fill this first
section with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each of
you one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and report
back here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to anyone
else."
They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall Baxter,
perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced a
thought for those they were so brutally deserting.
"I say, it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest of
them; but still, I suppose...."
"You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the
pause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, to
me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all of our
men and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved.
What would you? For the rest it is simply what you call 'the fortune of
war,' no?"
"But the beautiful...." began the amorous Chatelier.
"Hush, fool!" snorted Hartkopf. "One word of that to the ear of Roger
and you too are left behind. Of such non-essentials the Universe is
full, to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to be
disregarded. Und this is a time of schrecklichkeit indeed!"
[Illustration:
And through that terrific conduit came speeding package
after package of destruction.]
The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters; to meet again in
the First Section a few minutes before the zero time. Roger's "office"
was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but little
room was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmoved
behind his dials.
"But of what use is it, Roger?" the Russian physicist demanded. "Those
waves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher than
anything heretofore known. Our screens should not have stopped them for
an instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainly
this single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid without
being destroyed."
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