Triplanetary

E >> Edward Elmer Smith >> Triplanetary

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"Once out, then what?" asked Bradley, eagerly.

"We'll have to decide that before we start, of course. I'd say make a
break back for our own Solarian system. We know the direction, from our
own observation, and we'll have plenty of power."

"But good Heavens, Conway, it's so far!" exclaimed Clio. "How about
food, water, and air--would we ever get there?"

"You know as much about that as I do. I think so, but of course anything
might happen. This ship is none too big, is considerable slower than the
big space-ship, and we're a long ways from home. Another bad thing is
the food question. The boat is well stocked according to Nevian ideas,
but it's pretty foul stuff for us to eat. However, it's nourishing, and
we'll have to eat it, since we can't carry enough of our own supplies to
the boat to last long. Even so, we may have to go on short rations, but
I think that we'll be able to make it. On the other hand, what happens
if we stay here? We will certainly strike trouble sooner or later, and
we don't know any too much about these ultra-weapons. We are
land-dwellers, and there is mighty little land on this planet. Then,
too, we don't know where to look for what little land there is, and,
even if we could find it, we know that it is all over-run with
amphibians already. There's a lot of things that might be better, but
they might be a lot worse, too. How about it? Do we try it or do we stay
here?"

"We try it!" exclaimed Clio and Bradley as one.

"All right. I'd better not waste any more time talking--let's go!"

Stepping up to the locked and shielded door, he took out a peculiarly
built torch and pointed it briefly at the Nevian lock. There was no
light, no noise, but the massive portal swung smoothly open. They
stepped out and Costigan relocked and reshielded the entrance.

"How ... what ...?" Clio demanded, almost stuttering in her surprise.

"I've been going to school for the last few weeks," Costigan grinned,
"and I've picked up quite a few things here and there--literally as well
as figuratively speaking. Snap it up, guys! Our armor is stored away
with the pieces of the pirates' lifeboat, and I'll feel a lot better
when we've got it on and have hold of a few fresh Lewistons."

They hurried down corridors, up ramps, and along hallways, with
Costigan's spy-ray investigating the course ahead for chance Nevians.
Bradley and Clio were unarmed, but the secret agent had found a piece of
flat metal and had ground it to a razor edge.

"I think I can throw this thing straight enough and fast enough to chop
off a Nevian's head before he can put a paralyzing ray on us," he
explained grimly, but he was not called upon to show his skill with the
improvised cleaver.

As he had concluded from his careful survey, every Nevian was at some
control or weapon, doing his part in that frightful combat with the
denizens of the greater deeps. Their part was open, they were neither
molested nor detected as they ran toward the compartment within which
was sealed all their Terrestrial belongings. The door of that room
opened, as had the other, to Costigan's knowing beam; and all three set
hastily to work. They made up packs of food, filled their capacious
pockets with emergency rations, recharged and buckled on Lewistons and
automatics, donned their armor, and clamped into their external holsters
a full complement of additional weapons.

"Now comes the ticklish part of the business," Costigan informed them.
His helmet was slowly turning this way and that, and the others knew
that through his spy-ray goggles he was studying their route. "There's
only one boat we stand a chance of reaching, and somebody's mighty apt
to see us. There's a lot of detectors up there, and we'll have to cross
a corridor full of communicator beams. There, that line's off ...
scoot!"

At his word they dashed out into the hall and hurried along for minutes,
dodging to right or left as the leader snapped out orders. Finally he
stopped.

"Here's those beams I told you about. We'll have to roll under 'em.
They're less than waist high--right there's the lowest one. Watch me do
it, and when I give you the word, one at a time, you do the same. _Keep
low_--don't let an arm or a leg get up into the path of a ray or they
may see us."

He threw himself flat, rolled upon the floor a yard or so, and scrambled
to his feet. He gazed intently at the blank wall for a space, then:

"Bradley--now!" he snapped, and the Interplanetary captain duplicated
his performance.

But Clio, unused to the heavy and cumbersome space-armor she was
wearing, could not roll in it with any degree of success. When Costigan
barked his order she tried, but stopped, floundering, almost directly
below the invisible network of communicator beams. As she struggled one
mailed arm went up, and Costigan saw in his ultra-goggles the faint
flash as the beam encountered the interfering field. But already he had
acted. Crouching low, he struck down the arm, seized it, and dragged the
girl out of the zone of visibility. Then in furious haste he opened a
nearby door and all three sprang into a tiny compartment.

"Shut off all the fields of your suits, so that they can't interfere!"
he hissed into the utter darkness. "Not that I'd mind killing a few of
them, but if they start an organized search we're sunk. But even if they
did get a warning by touching your glove, Clio, they probably won't
suspect us. Our rooms are still shielded, and the chances are that
they're too busy to bother much about us, anyway."

He was right. A few beams darted here and there, but the Nevians saw
nothing amiss and ascribed the interference to the falling into the beam
of some chance bit of charged metal. With no further misadventures the
Terrestrials gained entrance to the Nevian lifeboat, where Costigan's
first act was to disconnect one steel boot from his armor of space. With
a sigh of relief he pulled his foot out of it, and from it carefully
poured into the small power-tank of the craft fully thirty pounds of
allotropic iron!

"I pinched it off them," he explained, in answer to amazed and inquiring
looks, "and maybe you don't think it's a relief to get it out of that
boot! I couldn't steal a flask to carry it in, so this was the only
place I could put it in. These lifeboats are equipped with only a couple
of grams of iron apiece, you know, and we couldn't get half-way back to
Tellus on that, even with smooth going; and we may have to fight. With
this much to go on, though, we could go to Andromeda, fighting all the
way. Well, we'd better break away."

Costigan watched his plate closely, and, when the maneuvering of the
great vessel brought his exit port as far away as possible from the
Third City and the warring citadels of the deep, he shot the little
cruiser out and away. Straight out into the ocean it sped, through the
murky red veil, and darted upward toward the surface. The three
wanderers sat tense, hardly daring to breathe, staring into the
plates--Clio and Bradley pushing at metal levers and stepping down hard
upon metal brakes in unconscious efforts to help Costigan dodge the
beams and rods of death flashing so appallingly close upon all sides.
Out of the water and into the air the darting, dodging lifeboat flashed
in safety; but in the air, supposedly free from menace, came disaster.
There was a crunching, grating shock and the vessel was thrown into a
dizzy spiral, from which Costigan finally leveled it into headlong
flight away from the scene of battle. Watching the pyrometers which
recorded the temperature of the outer shell, he drove the lifeboat ahead
at the highest safe atmospheric speed while Bradley went to inspect the
damage.

"Pretty bad, but better than I thought," the captain reported. "Outer
and inner plates broken away on a seam. Inter-wall vacuum all lost, and
we wouldn't hold carpet-rags, let alone air. Any tools aboard?"

"Some--and what we haven't got we'll make," Costigan declared. "We'll
put a lot of distance behind us, then we'll fix her up and get away from
here."

"What are those fish, anyway, Conway?" Clio asked, as the lifeboat tore
along. "The Nevians are bad enough, Heaven knows, but the very idea of
intelligent and _educated_ FISH is enough to drive one mad!"

"You know Nerado mentioned several times the 'semi-civilized fishes of
the greater deeps'?" he reminded her. "I gather that there are at least
three intelligent races here. We know two--the Nevians, who are
amphibians, and the fishes of the greater deeps. The fishes of the
lesser deeps are also intelligent. As I get it, the Nevian cities were
originally built in very shallow water, or perhaps were upon islands.
The development of machinery and tools gave them a big edge on the fish;
and those living in the shallow seas, nearest the islands, gradually
became tributary nations, if not actually slaves. Those fish not only
serve as food, but work in the mines, hatcheries, and plantations, and
do all kinds of work for the Nevians. Those so-called 'lesser deeps'
were conquered first, of course, and all their races of fish are docile
enough now. But the deep-sea breeds, who live in water so deep that the
Nevians can hardly stand the pressure down there, were more intelligent
to start with, and more stubborn besides. But the most valuable metals
here are deep down--this planet is very light for its size, you know--so
the Nevians kept at it until they conquered some of the deep-sea fish,
too, and put 'em to work. But those high-pressure boys were nobody's
fools. They realized that as time went on the amphibians would get
further and further ahead of them in development, so they let themselves
be conquered, learned how to use the Nevians' tools and everything else
they could get hold of, developed a lot of new stuff of their own, and
now they're out to wipe the amphibians off the slate completely, before
they get too far ahead of them to handle."

"And the Nevians are afraid of them, and want to kill them all, as fast
as they possibly can," guessed Clio.

"That would be the logical thing, of course," commented Bradley. "Got
pretty nearly enough distance now, Costigan?"

"There isn't enough distance on the planet to suit me," Costigan
replied. "We'll need all we can get. A full diameter away from that crew
of amphibians is too close for comfort--their detectors are keen."

"Then they can detect us?" Clio asked. "Oh, I wish they hadn't hit
us--we'd have been away from here long ago."

"So do I," Costigan assented, feelingly. "But they did--no use
squawking. We can rivet and weld those seams and pump out the shell, and
we'd have to fill our air-tanks to capacity for the trip, anyway. And
things could be a lot worse--we are still breathing air!"

In silence the lifeboat flashed onward, and half of Nevia's mighty globe
was traversed before it was brought to a halt, in the emptiest reaches
of the planet's desolate and watery waste. Then in furious haste the two
officers set to work, again to make their small craft sound and
spaceworthy.

CHAPTER VI

Worm, Submarine, and Freedom

Since both Costigan and Bradley had often watched their captors at work
during the long voyage from the Solar System to Nevia, they were quite
familiar with the machine tools of the amphibians. Their stolen
lifeboat, being an emergency craft, of course carried full repair
equipment; and to such good purpose did the two officers labor that even
before their air-tanks were fully charged, all the damage had been
repaired.

The lifeboat lay motionless upon the mirror-smooth surface of the ocean.
Captain Bradley had opened the upper port and the three stood in the
opening, gazing in silence toward the incredibly distant horizon, while
powerful pumps were forcing the last possible ounces of air into the
practically unbreakable storage cylinders. Mile upon strangely flat mile
stretched that waveless, unbroken expanse of water, merging finally into
the violent redness of the Nevian sky. The sun was setting; a vast ball
of purple flame dropping rapidly toward the horizon. Darkness came
suddenly as that seething ball disappeared, and the air became bitterly
cold, in sharp contrast to the pleasant warmth of a moment before. And
as suddenly clouds appeared in blackly banked masses and a cold, driving
rain began to beat down in torrents.

"Br-r-r, it's cold! Let's go in--Oh! _Shut the door!_" Clio shrieked,
and leaped wildly down into the compartment below, out of Costigan's
way, for he and Bradley also had seen slithering toward them the
frightful arm of the Thing.

Almost before the girl had spoken Costigan had leaped to the levers, and
not an instant too soon; for the tip of that horrible tentacle flashed
into the rapidly narrowing crack just before the door clanged shut. As
the powerful toggles forced the heavy screw threads into engagement and
drove the massive disk home into its bottle-tight, insulated seat, that
grisly tip fell severed to the floor of the compartment and lay there,
twitching and writhing with a loathsome and unearthly vigor. Two feet
long the piece was, and larger than a strong man's leg. It was armed
with spiked and jointed metallic scales, and instead of sucking disks it
was equipped with a series of _mouths_--mouths filled with sharp
metallic teeth which gnashed and ground together furiously, even though
sundered from the horrible organism which they were designed to feed.

The little submarine shuddered in every plate and member as monstrous
coils encircled her and tightened inexorably in terrific, rippling
surges eloquent of mastodonic power; and a strident vibration smote
sickeningly upon Terrestrial eardrums as the metal spikes of the
monstrosity crunched and ground upon the outer plating of their small
vessel. Costigan stood unmoved at the plate, watching intently; hands
ready upon the controls. Due to the artificial gravity of the lifeboat
it seemed perfectly stationary to its occupants. Only the weird
gyrations of the pictures upon the lookout screens showed that the craft
was being shaken and thrown about like a rat in the jaws of a terrier;
only the gauges revealed that they were almost a mile below the surface
of the ocean already, and were still going downward at an appalling
rate. Finally Clio could stand no more.

"Aren't you going to do something, Conway?" she cried.

"Not unless I have to," he replied, composedly. "I don't believe that he
can really hurt us, and if I use a ray of any kind I'm afraid that it
will kick up enough disturbance to bring Nerado down on us like a hawk
after a chicken. However, if he takes us much deeper I'll have to go to
work on him. We're getting down pretty close to our limit, and the
bottom's a long way down yet."

Deeper and deeper the lifeboat was dragged by its dreadful opponent,
whose spiked teeth still tore savagely at the tough outer plating of the
craft until Costigan reluctantly threw in his power switches. Against
the full propellant thrust the monster could draw them no lower, but
neither could the lifeboat make any headway toward the surface. The
Terrestrial then turned on his rays, but found that they were
ineffective. So closely was the creature wrapped around the submarine
that his weapons could not be brought to bear upon it without melting
the vessel's own outer skin.

"What can it possibly be, anyway, and what can we do about it?" Clio
asked.

"I thought at first it was something like a devilfish, or possibly an
overgrown starfish, but it's too flat, and has no body that I can see,"
Costigan made answer. "It must be a kind of flat worm. That doesn't
sound reasonable--the thing must be all of a hundred meters long--but
there it is. The only thing left to do now, as I see it, is to try to
boil him alive."

He closed other circuits, diffusing a terrific beam of pure heat, and
the water all about them burst into furious clouds of steam. The boat
leaped upward as the metallic fins of the gigantic worm fanned vapor
instead of water, but the creature neither released its hold nor ceased
its relentlessly grinding attack. Minute after minute went by, but
finally the worm dropped limply away--cooked through and through;
vanquished only by death.

"Now we've put our foot in it, clear to the knee!" Costigan exclaimed,
as he shot the lifeboat upward at its maximum power. "Look at that! I
knew that Nerado could trace us, but I didn't have any idea that _they_
could. It's a good thing these ultra-vision plates don't need light to
see by or we'd be _'spurlos versenkt'_ in a hurry!"

Staring with Costigan into the plate, Bradley and the girl saw, not the
Nevian sky-rover they had expected, but a fast submarine cruiser, manned
by the frightful fishes of the greater deeps. It was coming directly
toward the lifeboat, and even as Costigan hurled the little vessel off
at an angle and then upward into the air one of the deadly offensive
rods, tipped with its glowing ball of pure destruction, flashed through
the spot where they would have been had they held their former course.

But powerful as were the propellant forces and fiercely though Costigan
applied them, the denizens of the deep clamped a tractor ray upon the
flying vessel before it had gained a mile of altitude. Costigan aligned
his every driving projector as his vessel came to an abrupt halt in the
invisible grip of the beam, then experimented with various dials.

"There ought to be some way of cutting that beam," he pondered audibly,
"but I don't know enough about their system to do it, and I'm afraid to
monkey around with things too much, because I might accidentally release
the screens we've already got out, and they're stopping altogether too
much stuff for us to do without them right now."

He frowned as he studied the flaring defensive screens, now radiating an
incandescent violet under the concentration of the forces being hurled
against them by the warlike fishes, then stiffened suddenly.

"I thought so--they _can_ shoot 'em!" he exclaimed, throwing the
lifeboat into a furious corkscrew turn, and the very air blazed into
flaming splendor as a dazzlingly scintillating ball of energy sped past
them and high into the air beyond.

Then for minutes a spectacular battle raged. The twisting, turning,
leaping airship, small as she was agile, kept on eluding the explosive
projectiles of the fishes, and her screens neutralized and re-radiated
the full power of the attacking beams. More--since Costigan did not need
to think of sparing his iron, the ocean around the great submarine began
furiously to boil under the full-driven offensive beams of the tiny
Nevian ship. But escape Costigan could not. He could not cut that
tractor beam and the utmost power of his drivers could not wrest the
lifeboat from its tenacious clutch. And slowly but inexorably the ship
of space was being drawn downward toward the ship of ocean's depths.
Downward, in spite of the utmost possible effort of every projector and
penetrator, and the two Terrestrial spectators, sick at heart, looked
once at each other. Then they looked at Costigan, who, jaw hard set and
eyes unflinchingly upon his plate, was concentrating his attack upon one
turret of the green monster as they settled lower and lower.

"If this is ... if our number is going up, Conway," Clio began,
unsteadily.

"Not yet, it isn't!" he snapped. "Keep a stiff upper lip, girl. We're
still breathing air, and the battle's not over yet!"

Nor was it; but it was not Costigan's efforts, mighty though they were,
that ended the attack of the fishes of the greater deeps. The tractor
beam snapped without warning, and so prodigious were the forces being
exerted by the lifeboat that, as it hurled itself away, the three
passengers were thrown violently to the floor, in spite of the powerful
gravity controls. Scrambling up on hands and knees, bracing himself as
best he could against the terrific forces, Costigan managed finally to
force a hand up to his panel. He was barely in time; for even as he cut
the driving power to its normal value the outer shell of the lifeboat
was blazing at white heat from the friction of the atmosphere through
which it had been tearing with such an insane acceleration!

"Oh, I see--Nerado to the rescue," Costigan commented, after a glance
into the plate. "I hope that those fish blow him clear out of the
Galaxy!"

"Why?" demanded Clio. "I should think that you'd...."

"Think again," he advised her. "The worse Nerado gets licked the better
for us. I don't really expect that, but if they can keep him busy long
enough, we can get far enough away so that he won't bother about us any
more."

As the lifeboat tore upward through the air at the highest permissible
atmospheric velocity Bradley and Clio peered over Costigan's shoulders
into the plate, watching in absorbed interest the scene which was being
kept in focus upon it. The Nevian ship of space was plunging downward in
a long, slanting dive, her terrific beams of force screaming out ahead
of her. The rays of the little lifeboat had boiled the waters of the
ocean; those of the parent craft seemed literally to blast them out of
existence. All about the green submarine there had been volumes of
furiously-boiling water and dense clouds of vapor; now water and fog
alike disappeared, converted into transparent superheated steam by the
blasts of Nevian energy. Through that tenuous gas the enormous mass of
the submarine fell like a plummet, her defensive screens flaming an
almost invisible violet, her every offensive weapon vomiting forth solid
and vibratory destruction toward the Nevian cruiser so high in the
angry, scarlet heavens.

For miles the submarine dropped, until the frightful pressure of the
depth drove water into Nerado's beam faster than his forces could
volatilize it. Then in that seething funnel there was waged desperate
conflict. At that funnel's wildly turbulent bottom lay the submarine,
now apparently trying to escape, but held fast by the tractor rays of
the space-ship; at its top, smothered almost to the point of
invisibility by billowing masses of steam, hung poised the Nevian
cruiser.

As the atmosphere had grown thinner and thinner with increasing altitude
Costigan had regulated his velocity accordingly, keeping the outer shell
of the vessel at the highest temperature consistent with safety. Now
beyond measurable atmospheric pressure, the shell cooled rapidly and he
applied full touring acceleration. At an appalling and constantly
increasing speed the miniature space-ship shot away from the strange,
red planet; and smaller and smaller upon the plate became its picture.
Long since the great vessel of the void had plunged beneath the surface
of the sea, more closely to come to grips with the vessel of the fishes;
for a long time nothing of the battle had been visible save immense
clouds of steam, blanketing hundreds of square miles of the ocean's
surface. But just before the picture became too small to reveal details
a few tiny dark spots appeared above the banks of cloud, now brilliantly
illuminated by the rays of the rising sun--dots which might have been
fragments of either vessel, blown bodily from the depths of the ocean
and, riven asunder, hurled high into the air by the incredible forces at
the command of the other.

Nevia a tiny moon and the fierce blue sun rapidly growing smaller in the
distance, Costigan swung his visiray beam into the line of travel and
turned to his companions.

"Well, we're off," he said, scowling. "I hope it was Nerado that got
blown up back there, but I'm afraid it wasn't. He whipped two of those
submarines that we know of, and probably half their fleet besides.
There's no particular reason why that one should be able to take him, so
it's my idea that we should get ready for great gobs of trouble.

"They'll chase us, of course; and I'm afraid that with their immense
power, they'll catch us."

"But what can we do, Conway?" asked Clio.

"Several things," he grinned. "I managed to get quite a lot of dope on
that paralyzing ray and some of their other stuff, and we can install
the necessary equipment in our suits easily enough."

They removed their armor, and Costigan explained in detail the changes
which must be made in the Triplanetary field generators. All three set
vigorously to work--the two officers deftly and surely; Clio uncertainly
and with many questions, but with undaunted spirit. Finally, having done
all they could do to strengthen their position, they settled down to the
watchful routine of the flight, with every possible instrument set to
detect any sign of the pursuit they so feared.

CHAPTER VII

The Hill

[Illustration:

Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened, and he
glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the
rocket-plane which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking
her terrific speed to match the slower pace of the gigantic
ship of war.]

The heavy cruiser _Chicago_ hung motionless in space, thousands of miles
distant from the warring fleets of space-ships so viciously attacking
and so stubbornly defending the planetoid of the enemy. In the captain's
sanctum Lyman Cleveland crouched tensely above his ultra-cameras, his
sensitive fingers touching lightly their micrometric dials. His body was
rigid, his face was set and drawn. Only his eyes moved: flashing back
and forth between the observation plates and smoothly-running rolls
which were feeding into the cameras the hardened steel tapes upon which
were being magnetically recorded the frightful scenes of carnage and
destruction there revealed.

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