The Alien, Raymond F. Jones [free ebook reader for ipad TXT] 📗

the means by which the disruptor worked. It did not penetrate the shell. That was an impossibility. But it unbalanced the forces that held the field in a shell and caused it to rotate. This, in turn, created a tremendous flow of energy through the generators aboard the Lavoisier and shortly would burn them out, leaving the ship the defenseless prey of the Atom Streams.

There was no time to enter the Lavoisier to warn them. Underwood returned with bodiless velocity to the Creagor.

There in the depths of the ship he found the Chief Operator who was directing those beams toward the Lavoisier. With all the power of his abasic organs, he hurled a devastating wave of energy into the man's nerve channels.

The result was shocking to one unaccustomed to killing. The man jerked upright before his panel, staggered uncertainly, and fell across the maze of switches.

There was no time for reaction within Underwood at his merciless first slaying. The complex machinery of the disruptor sputtered to a halt amid the clatter of relays.

Underwood moved into the next sector of the ship where the powerful Atom Stream projectors awaited their prey. He carefully extended the powers of the dor-abasa. It was almost as if he could feel his way along the nerve channels of the operator's mind into the depths of the brain. There he sent forth a sudden, wild command.

The operator unquestioningly spun the wheels that shifted the radiators. They came to rest upon the nearest ship of the fleet.

"Fire!" Underwood commanded.

The operator's fingers closed upon the switches. The Atom Stream lashed into space, tore open the vitals of the sister ship and flung the fragments out into space. Some crashed into other ships, battering them, throwing them off course.

For a moment after the catastrophe, the commanders of the fleet were stunned to inactivity, while confusion swept the ranks. The hysterical cries of the operator who had pulled the switches filled the room.

"I didn't do it!" he screamed. "Something made me—"

Some of the ships were still attacking the Lavoisier. Underwood didn't know how long they could hold out. He sped to the nearest ship where there was milder but no less disrupting confusion as news of the unexplained disaster filtered down to the lowest astro-man.

Underwood sought out the fire control chamber. He fingered his way along the nerve channels of the operator and swung the projectors around. This time the target was the mighty flagship.

The operator gasped with horror as the titanic hull came into view in his sights, yet with unerring accuracy his hands moved the radiators to center exactly on the target.

His fingers pressed the switches.

Soundlessly, the blossom of flame sprang into being where once had been the leviathan of space. Viewplates throughout the fleet suddenly blacked out in protection against that terrible overload. When they came on again, they showed the drifting, helpless hulk of the rear third of the ship.

The immediate objective had been accomplished. The disruptor beams vanished as the eighteen ships converged upon the black hulks to take off any possible survivors.

Underwood seized the moment and diffused his powers until he encompassed the fleet. He spoke and his voice found hearing in every man of those mighty ships.

"Men of Earth! You have sworn allegiance to Demarzule, the Sirenian, because of his might. Now you will swear allegiance to might that is great enough to wipe Demarzule from the face of civilization. I have killed your fellows right in your midst, and destroyed two of your mightiest ships—yet none of you have seen me. You know not how I come into your midst, nor how it is that every man of every ship can hear my voice at once.

"You have betrayed your kind to an alien who has destroyed worlds and ruined Galaxies. You are guilty of the highest treason to mankind. What is there that you can do to wipe out such infamy?

"You can join the forces that will wipe out the monster Demarzule! You can accept the leadership of greater might—or be destroyed. Choose!"

There was a moment of stunned quiet within the ships, then a bedlam that would not die for many minutes.

Underwood withdrew from the fleet and returned to the control room of the Lavoisier. There he found a chaos of despair. Mason had properly diagnosed the weapons the fleet had turned upon the ship.

Though his physical self lay in the sick bay yet, the members of the crew were becoming accustomed to his unexpected voice in their minds. Quickly he told them what he had done. When he finished, he said, "What damage did you suffer, if any, Mason?"

"Only two very doubtful generators left. We couldn't stand another blast like that. Where did they get such machines?"

"I don't know. It's possibly something Toshmere was on the edge of developing. Perhaps some of our own men have worked it out with clues given by Demarzule. There's no telling. The important thing now is that we've got a bear by the tail. For a moment we have the upper hand, but I'm not sure just what will happen when they pull themselves together again. If they don't accept my ultimatum, we may be in a spot."

"And if they do—what are we going to do with a whole fleet of fanatics and dupes?"

"We'll need every ally that we can get now. Undoubtedly word was flashed back to Earth of this disaster before I talked to them. Demarzule knows we're coming and is aware of the power I have. He'll undoubtedly send powerful interceptors to wipe us out. If we can gain control of these ships, we can throw them against his interceptors, and maybe sneak through the Terrestrian defenses. It doesn't matter what happens to every one of us—just so I can get close enough to Demarzule to tangle with him."

At that moment, Captain Dawson approached Mason. "Message from the fleet. They offer to surrender unconditionally."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Auxiliary engines were removed from the hulk of the destroyed flagship. Installed in the Lavoisier, they could easily bring her speed up to that of the fastest ship in the fleet.

So with the small laboratory ship, Lavoisier, as flagship, the ravaged and reorganized fleet turned once again toward Earth. As the long days in space passed while they sped Earthward at incredible velocities, the physicists and engineers turned the Lavoisier into a deadly warship, the equal of any in their fleet. New and more powerful Atom Stream projectors were installed, and massive disruptor units were built into previous areas of more peaceful uses.

And while they hurled through the vault of space, Underwood moved from ship to ship by means of his abasic senses, testing, examining and filtering out the men of the battle crews.

If he could have afforded pity, all he possessed would have been expended upon them, for they were a pitiable lot. He knew that their standards of values had been scattered again by their defeat at his hands. If their belief in the invincibility of Demarzule, and themselves because they were the Disciples of Demarzule, had not been so great, their defeat would have been less easy. Underwood was thankful for the conceit that rendered them vulnerable when defeat hove in sight.

Their allegiance to him was no stable thing, he knew. But most of them were willing to throw their loyalties with the scientists because they hungered for leadership with a neurotic longing, and the power that could silently and unseen wipe out two of the Great One's warships was surely a power to command their respect. So they reasoned in their bewildered minds.

Underwood removed from the key places those who were doubtful and rebellious, and he spoke to them daily throughout the long voyage, sometimes reasoning, sometimes commanding, but always with a display of power that they had to respect. In the end he felt he had a set of crews as trustworthy as Earthmen could be made in this culture of doubt and universal disregard of trust and honesty.

He practised constantly in perfecting the powers of the abasa, and as his facility grew, so did his regard for the little offshoot of Dragboran culture that had flourished upon the barren little moon. Such powers as he possessed would have meant suicide to his own race. Sometimes he wondered if he could himself endure their temptations long enough to accomplish his goal. Certainly, with that completed, he would have the organs removed. Their call to power, wealth, and the misappropriation were almost more than any human mind in this stage of evolution could endure.

Almost in Earth's own front yard, at the orbit of Mars, the first signs of the coming struggle appeared. The lookout called his warning. A score of fast interceptors were leaving Earth, headed in their direction.

Underwood wished that he'd paid more attention to the military arts. He dared trust none of the warriors who were his by conquest, for he could not appear to be less than they in any respect. But neither he nor any of the other scientists were competent to lead a complex military unit, such as his fleet represented, into the vortex of battle.

Yet he must do what had to be done. He formed the fleet into a massive tactical cylinder with the Lavoisier at the center and the remainder of the ships at the periphery. There would be no fancy maneuvering, only blunt, smashing force, every erg of it that could be generated within the hulls of those warships.

The entropy dissipators were already at work absorbing a fraction of the momentum that had carried the fleet across the reaches of space, but as it drove into the heart of the Solar System, its velocity was still immeasurable by Solarian standards.

The interceptors were powerless to match that speed in so short a time, but one wave approached on a near collision course, with the fury of all its disruptors and Atom Streams bearing upon the fleet.

The effect was negligible, however, as the fleet smashed by, its own weapons flaming.

But that passage meant nothing. If the Lavoisier were to attempt a landing, it couldn't continue to hurl by at such velocities, for already it was passing Earth.

Underwood, though, was satisfied as he opened his physical eyes in the control room and abandoned the abasic senses for a return to his normal self.

"I'm sure my useful range with these powers is at least eighty thousand miles. Jandro ought to have been able to examine the Dragboran planet by means of the abasa, but maybe he didn't realize it. I know that my own range is increasing constantly."

"What do you intend to do?" asked Terry. "Are you going to try a landing or attack Demarzule without going down?"

"I believe we'll be safer to remain in space. If we can maneuver into an orbit of fifty thousand miles or so from Earth, and can hold off the attacks long enough for me to find Demarzule, that ought to be our greatest chance of success. If we landed we'd be sitting ducks."

There was general agreement with Underwood's estimate, though no one aboard the ship felt very much confidence in their ability to hold off the attacks they knew were coming. They kept reminding themselves that it was not important to save themselves or their ships. What mattered to give Underwood an adequate opportunity to hurl the powers of the abasic weapons at Demarzule. After that, chance would have to take care of the rest.

The hurtling projectile turned long after it had passed Earth. The entropy dissipators absorbed the flaming energy of the ships' flight and dispersed it into space to recreate the infinitesimal particles that had been broken down to obtain that energy.

So, as the fleet braked its momentum and turned into an ever-tightening spiral, the interceptors swept down once more.

The thundering mass that was the fleet held its course now. Torrents of energy, slashed from the hearts of incalculable numbers of atoms, washed into space from the throats of the great radiators aboard the battleships. Three of the interceptors went down in that barrage before their own force shields went up.

It became a fantastic battle between almost irresistible forces. Both the Atom Stream and the disruptor beams could be fired only through a hiatus in the force shell, but such an opening was itself vulnerable to the enemy fire of Atom Streams. Therefore, the technique of warfare between similarly armed forces consisted of rapidly shifting the attack from radiator to radiator in a given vessel, so that no single opening would exist long enough for the enemy to concentrate fire upon that spot.

The interceptors were too small to mount the equipment for such defense tactics. Their only value lay in maneuverability. Slashing across the lanes of the battleships, their beams could cross the radiator pattern in unpredictable courses. The laws of chance were sometimes with them and their Atom Streams struck an opening directly. Regardless