Spacehounds of IPC, E. E. Smith [best books to read for students TXT] 📗

us easily. By the time we get back here, they probably will have quit looking for us, if they look at all. Then too, I expect these savages to follow us up. What say, little ace—do we try it or do we stay here?"

"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 as 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.