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

of mutual extermination; upon the three outer satellites humanity in undisturbed and unthreatened peace. Five worlds, each ignorant of life upon any other.

"As I have said, the hexans of Jupiter were, and are, diabolically intelligent. Driven probably by their desire to see what lay beyond their atmosphere of eternal cloud, to the penetration of which their eyesight was attuned, they developed the space-ship; and effected a safe landing, first upon the barren, airless moonlet nearest them, and then upon fruitful Io. There they made common cause with the hexans against the humans, and in space of time Ionian humanity ceased to exist. Much traffic and interbreeding followed between the hexans of Jupiter and those of Io, resulting in time in a race intermediate in size between the parent stocks and equally at home in the widely variant air pressures and gravities of planet and satellite. Soon their astronomical instruments revealed the cities of Europa to their gaze, and as soon as they discovered that the civilization of Europa was human, they destroyed it utterly, with the insatiable blood lust that is their heritage.

"In the meantime the human civilizations of Ganymede and Callisto had also developed instruments of power. Observing the cities upon the other satellites, many scientists studied intensively the problem of space navigation, and finally there was some commerce between the two outer satellites at favorable times. Finally, vessels were also sent to Io and to Europa, but none of them returned. Knowing then what to expect, Ganymede and Callisto joined forces and prepared for war. But our science, so long attuned to the arts of peace, had fallen behind lamentably in the devising of more and ever more deadly instruments of destruction. Ganymede fell, and in her fall we read our own doom. Abandoning our cities, we built anew underground. Profiting from lessons learned full bloodily upon Ganymede, we resolved to prolong the existence of the human race as long as possible.

"The hexans were, and are masters of the physical science. They command the spectrum in a way undreamed of. Their detectors reveal etheric disturbances at unbelievable distances, and they have at their beck and call forces of staggering magnitude. Therefore in our cities is no electricity save that which is wired, shielded, and grounded; no broadcast radio; no source whatever of etheric disturbances save light—and our walls are fields of force which we believe to be impenetrable to any searching frequency capable of being generated. Now I am able to picture to you the present.

"We are the last representatives of the human race in the Jovian planetary system. Our every trace upon the surface has been obliterated. We are hiding in our holes in the ground, coming out at night by stealth so that our burrows shall not be revealed to the hexans. We are fighting for time in which our scientists may learn the secrets of power—and fearing, each new day, that the enemy may have so perfected their systems of rays that they will be able to detect us and destroy us, even in our underground and heavily shielded retreats, by means of forces even more incomprehensible than those they are now employing.

"Therefore, friends, you see how little we are able to do for you, we a race fighting for our very existence and doomed to extinction save for a miracle. We cannot take you to Callisto, for it is besieged by the hexans and the driving forces of your lifeboats, practically broadcast as they are, would be detected and we should all be destroyed long before we could reach safety. Captain King and I have pondered long and have been able to see only one course of action. We are drifting at constant velocity, using no power, and with all save the most vitally necessary machinery at rest. Thus only may we hope to avoid detection during the next two hours.

"Our present course will take us very close to Europa, which the hexans believe to be like Ganymede, entirely devoid of civilized life. Its original humanity was totally destroyed, and all its civilized hexans are finding shelter from our torpedoes upon Jupiter until we of Callisto shall likewise have been annihilated. The temperature of Europa will suit you. Its atmosphere, while less dense than that to which you are accustomed, will adequately support your life. If we are not detected in the course of the next few hours we can probably land upon Europa in safety, since its neighborhood is guarded but loosely. In fact, we have a city there, as yet unsuspected by the hexans, in which our scientists will continue to labor after Callisto's civilization shall have disappeared. We think that it will be safe to use your power for the short time necessary to effect a landing. We shall land in a cavern, in a crater already in communication with our city. In that cavern, instructed and aided by some of us, you will build a rocket vessel—no rays can be used because of the hexans—in which you will be able to travel to a region close enough to your earth so that you can call for help. You will not be able to carry enough fuel to land there—in fact, nearly all the journey will have to be made without power, traveling freely in a highly elongated orbit around the sun—but if you escape the hexans, you should be able to reach home safely, in time. It is for the consideration of this plan that this meeting has been called."

"Just one question," Breckenridge spoke. "The hexans are intelligent. Why are they leaving Europa and Ganymede so unguarded that human beings can move back there and that we can land there, all undetected?"

"I will answer that question myself," replied King. "Captain Czuv did not quite do justice to his own people. It is true that they are being conquered, but for every human life that is taken, a thousand hexans die, and for every human ship that is lost, twenty hexan vessels are annihilated in return. While the hexans are masters of rays, the humans are equally masters of explosives and of mechanisms. They can hit a perfect score upon any target in free space whose course and acceleration can be determined, at any range up to five thousand kilometers, and they have explosives thousands of times as powerful as any known to us. Ray screens are effective only against rays, and the hexans cannot destroy anything they cannot see before it strikes them. So it is that all the hexan vessels except those necessary to protect their own strongholds, are being concentrated against Callisto. They cannot spare vessels to guard uselessly the abandoned satellites. Because of the enormously high gravity of Jupiter the hexans there are safe from human attack save for ineffectual long-range bombardment, but Io is being attacked constantly and it is probable that in a few more years Io also will be an abandoned world. Some of you may have received the impressions that the hexans are to triumph immediately, but such an idea is wrong. The humans can, and will, hold out for a hundred years or more unless the enemy perfects a destructive ray of the type referred to. Even then, I think that our human cousins will hold out a long time. They are able men, fighters all, and their underground cities are beautifully protected."

There was little argument. Most of the auditors could understand that the suggested course was the best one possible. The remainder were so stunned by the unbelievable events of the attack that they had no initiative, but were willing to follow wherever the more valiant spirits led. It was decided that no attempt should be made to salvage any portion of the Arcturus, since any such attempt would be fraught with danger and since the wreckage would be of little value. The new vessel was to be rocket driven and was to be built of Callistonian alloys. Personal belongings were moved into lifeboats, doors were closed, and there ensued a painful period of waiting and suspense.

The stated hour was reached without event—no hexan scout had come close enough to them to detect the low-tension radiation of the vital machinery of the Arcturus, cut as it was to the irreducible minimum and quite effectively grounded as it was by the enormous mass of her shielding armor. At a signal from Captain Czuv the pilot of each lifeboat shot his tiny craft out into space and took his allotted place in the formation following closely behind the Bzarvk, flying toward Europa, now so large in the field of vision that she resembled more a world than a moon. Captain King, in the Callistonian vessel, transmitted to Breckenridge the route and flight data given him by the navigator of the winged craft. The chief pilot, flying "point," in turn relayed more detailed instructions to the less experienced pilots of the other lifeboats.

Soon the surface of Europa lay beneath them; a rugged, cratered, and torn topography of mighty ranges of volcanic mountains. Most of the craters were cold and lifeless; but here and there a plume of smoke and steam betrayed the presence of vast, quiescent forces. Straight down one of those gigantic lifeless shafts the fleet of space craft dropped—straight down a full two miles before the landing signal was given. At the bottom of the shaft a section of the rocky wall swung aside, revealing the yawning black mouth of a horizontal tunnel. At intervals upon its roof there winked into being almost invisible points of light. Along that line of lights the lifeboats felt their way, coming finally into a huge cavern, against one sheer metal wall of which they parked in an orderly row. Roll was called, and the terrestrials walked, as well as they could in the feeble gravity of the satellite, across the vast chamber and into a conveyance somewhat resembling a railway coach, which darted away as soon as the doors were shut. For hundreds of miles that strange tunnel extended, and as the car shot along door after door of natural rock opened before it, and closed as soon as it had sped through. In spite of the high velocity of the vehicle, it required almost two hours to complete the journey. Finally, however, it slowed to a halt and the Terrestrial visitors disembarked at a portal of the Europan city of the Callistonians.

"Attention!" barked Captain King. "The name of this city, as nearly as I can come to it in English, is WRUZK. 'Roosk' comes fairly close to it and is easier to pronounce. We must finish our trip in small cars, holding ten persons each. We shall assemble again in the building in which we have been assigned quarters. The driver of each car will lead his passengers to the council room in which we shall meet."

"Oh, what's the use—this is horrible, horrible—we might as well die!" a nervous woman shrieked, and fainted.

"Such a feeling is, perhaps, natural," King went on, after the woman had been revived and quiet had been restored, "but please control it as much as possible. We are alive and well, and will be able to return to Tellus eventually. Please remember that these people are putting themselves to much trouble and inconvenience to help us, desperate as their own situation is, and conduct yourselves accordingly."

The rebuke had its effect, and with no further protest the company boarded the small cars, which shot through an opening in the wall and into a street of that strange subterranean city. Breckenridge, in the last car to leave the portal, studied his surroundings with interest as his conveyance darted through the gateway. More or less a fatalist by nature and an adventurer, of course, since no other type existed among the older spacehounds of the IPC, he was intensely interested in every new phase of their experience, and was no whit dismayed or frightened.

He found himself seated in a narrow canoe of metal, immediately behind the pilot, who sat at a small control panel in the bow. Propelled by electromagnetic fields above a single rail, upon lightly touching and noiseless wheels, the terrestrial pilot saw with keen appreciation the manner in which switch after switch ahead of them obeyed the impulses sent ahead from the speeding car. The streets were narrow and filled with monorails; pedestrians pursued their courses upon walks attached to the walls of the buildings, far above the level of the streets. The walls were themselves peculiar, rising as they did stark, unbroken, windowless expanses of metal, merging into and supporting a massive roof of the same silvery metal. Walls and roof alike reflected a soft, yet intense, white light. Soon a sliding switch ahead of them shot in and simultaneously an opening appeared in the blank metal wall of a building. Through the opening the street-car flew, and as the pilot slowed the canoe to a halt, the door slid smoothly shut behind them. Parking the