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

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!"