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

Half the battery of rockets burst into their stuttering, explosive roar of power and the vessel darted away in headlong flight.

"He sees us and is after us—turn her straight up!"

A searing, coruscating finger of flame leaped toward them, but their calculations had been sound—the hexan was harmless at that extreme range. King, under the pilot's direction, kept the plane at a safe distance from the sphere while the satellite grew smaller and smaller behind them and Czuv lapsed quietly into unconsciousness.

"He's been out for quite a while. Far enough?" asked King.

"All x now, I guess—don't believe they can see the flash from here. Cut!"

The rockets died abruptly and a blast from the side ports threw the plane out of the beam—and once out of it, beyond range of the electromagnetic detectors as they were their coating of absolute black rendered the craft safe from observation. One dirigible rocket remained in action, its exhaust hidden from the enemy by the body of the vessel, and Captain Czuv soon recovered his senses.

"Wonderful, gentlemen!" he exclaimed, as he manipulated the delicate controls of his gunnery panel. "This is the first time in history that a Callistonian vessel has escaped from a hexan by speed alone."

An instantaneously extinguished flare of incandescence marked the passing of the hexan sphere into nothingness, and the cruiser shot back toward Callisto in search of more prey. It was all too plentiful, and twenty times the drama was reenacted before approaching day made it necessary for Czuv to take the controls and dive the vessel into the westermost landing-shaft of Zbardk. A rousing and enthusiastic welcome awaited them, and joy spread rapidly when their success became known.

"Now we know what to do, and we had better do it immediately, before they get our system figured out and increase their own power." King reported to the Council. "You might send a couple of ships to Europa and bring back as many of the Tellurian officers as want to come and can be spared from the work there. They all test above forty-five meters, and they can learn this stuff in short order. While they're coming, your engineers can be building more ships like this one."

The new vessel did not make another voyage until nine sister ships were ready and manned, each with two Terrestrial officers and one Callistonian gunner. All ten took to the ether at once, and the hexan fleet melted away like frost-crystals before a summer sun. A few weeks of carnage and destruction and not a hexan was within range of the detectors of Callisto—they were gone!

"This is the first time in years that Callisto's air has been free of the hexans," Czuv said, thoughtfully. "With your help we have reduced their strength to a fraction of what it was, but they have not given up. They will return, with a higher acceleration than even you Terrestrials, powerful as you are, can stand."

"Certainly they will, but you will be no worse off than you were before—you can return to your own highly effective tactics."

"We are infinitely better off for your help. You have given us a new lease on life...."

He broke off as a flaring light sprang into being upon the portal board and the observer of Exit One made his report—there was a hexan vessel in the air, location 425 over VJ-42.

"There's one left! Let us get him! No, he's ours!" Confused shouts arose from the bull-pen; but the original superplane was at the top of the call-board and accordingly King, Breckenridge, and Czuv embarked upon an expedition more hazardous far than they had supposed—an expedition whose every feature was relayed to those in the portal by the automatic lookouts upon the rims and which was ended before a single supporting Callistonian plane could be launched.

For the enemy vessel was not the last of the low-powered hexan vessels, as everyone had supposed—it was the first of the high-powered craft, arriving long before its appearance was expected. Before its terrific acceleration and savage onslaught, the superplane might as well have been stationary and unarmed. After his long dive downward, King could not even leave the atmosphere—the hexan was upon them within a few seconds, even though the stupendous battery of rockets, full driven, had roared almost instantly into desperate action. Bomb after bomb Breckenridge hurled, with full radio control, fighting with every resource at his command, but in vain. The frightful torpedoes were annihilated in mid-flight; and nose, tail-assembly, and wings were sheared neatly from the warplane by a sizzling plane of force. Side rockets and torpedo tubes were likewise sliced away and the helpless body of the Callistonian cruiser, falling like a plummet, was caught and held by a tractor ray. Captor and captive settled toward the ground.

"This is a signal honor," observed Captain Czuv when he had revived. "It has been many, many cycles since they have taken Callistonians captive. They kill us at every opportunity. Is it your custom to destroy yourselves in a situation such as this?"

"It is not. While we live there is hope."

"Not ours. Unless they have made enormous strides in psychological mechanisms, they cannot tear from our minds any secrets we really wish to keep. That is useless," he went on, as King lifted a hand-weapon. "You will have no opportunity whatever to use it," and he was right.

A searing beam of energy drove them out of the vessel, then electromagnetic waves burned every metallic object out of their possession. Burning rays herded them into the hexan sphere and into a small room, whose door clanged shut behind them.

"Ah, two are humans of a strange breed!" a snarling voice barked from the wall, in the Callistonian language. "Our deductions were accurate, as usual—it is to the humans of Planet Three, whose bodies are a trifle less puny than those of the humanity of the satellites, that we owe our recent reverses. However, those reverses were merely temporary—humanity, no matter what its breed, shall very shortly disappear from the satellites. Now, you scum of the Solar System, you shall be permitted to witness an entrancing spectacle on the way to our headquarters, where all your knowledge is to be taken from you before you die, lingeringly and horribly. There is a strange space-vessel nearing us probably searching for the one we took and which you dogs of Callisto must have been fortunate enough to take from us before we could study and kill its human cargo. Watch its destruction and cringe—and know, in your suffering, that the more you suffer, the greater shall be our enjoyment."

"I believe that," King acknowledged. As all three prisoners stared at the wall-screen, upon which was pictured a huge football of scarred grey steel, Czuv was amazed to see the faces of Breckenridge and King light up with fierce smiles of pleasure and anticipation.

"You dissemble well," remarked the Callistonian. "That will rob them of much pleasure."

"They'll get robbed of more than that," King returned. "This is too good to keep, and since they cannot understand English, I'll tell you something. I told you about Stevens. He apparently wasn't killed, as we thought. He must have escaped, and there is the result. That ship there is far from innocent—her being so far out of range of any of our power-plants proves that. That vessel is the Sirius—the research laboratory of the IPC—the Inter-Planetary Corporation! It carries the greatest scientific minds of three of the inner planets, and it is loaded with pure poison or it wouldn't be here. Oh, you hexans, what you have got coming to you!"