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

Vorkulia, the city of the Vorkuls, was an immense seven-pointed star. At its center, directly upon the south pole of Jupiter, rose a tremendous shaft—its cross-section likewise a tapering seven-pointed star—which housed the directing intelligence of the nation. Radiating from the seven cardinal points of the building were short lanes leading to star-shaped open plots, from which in turn branched out ways to other stellate areas; ways reaching, after many such steps, to the towering inner walls of the metropolis. The outer walls, still loftier and even more massive ramparts of sullen gray-green metal, formed a seamless, jointless barrier against an utterly indescribable foe; a barrier whose outer faces radiated constantly a searing, coruscating green emanation. Metal alone could not long have barred that voracious and implacably relentless enemy, but against that lethal green emanation even that ravening Jovian jungle could not prevail, but fell back, impotent. Writhing and crawling, loathesomely palpitant with an unspeakable exuberance of foul and repellent vigor, possible only to such meteorological conditions as obtained there, it threw its most hideously prolific growths against that radiant wall in vain.

The short, zig-zag lanes, the ways, and the seven-pointed areas were paved with a greenish glass. This pavement was intended solely to prevent vegetable growth and carried no traffic whatever, since few indeed of the Vorkuls have ever been earth-bound and all traffic was in the air. The principal purpose of the openings was to separate, and thus to render accessible by air, the mighty buildings which, level upon level, towered upward, with airships hovering at or anchored to doorways and entrances at every level. Buildings, entrances, everything visible—all replicated, reiterated, repeated infinite variations in the one theme, that of the septenate stelliform.

Color ran riot; masses varied from immense blocks of awe-inspiring grandeur to delicate tracery of sheerest gossamer; lights flamed and flared in wide bands and in narrow, flashing pencils—but in all, through all, over all, and dominating all was the Seven-Pointed Star.

In and almost filling the space, at least a mile in width, between the inner and the outer walls were huge, seven-sided structures—featureless, squat, forbidding heptagons of dull green metal. No thing living was to be seen in that space. Its pavement was of solid metal and immensely thick, and that metal, as well as that of the walls, was burned and blackened and seared as though by numberless exposures to intolerable flame. In a lower compartment of one of these enormous heptagons Vortel Kromodeor, First Projector Officer, rested before a gigantic and complex instrument board. He was at ease—his huge wings folded, his sinuous length coiled comfortably in slack loops about two horizontal bars. But at least one enormous, extensible eye was always pointed toward the board, always was at least one nimble and bat-like ear cocked attentively in the direction of the signal panel.

A whistling, shrieking ululation rent the air and the officer's coils tightened as he reared a few feet of his length upright, shooting out half a dozen tentacular arms to various switches and controls upon his board, while throughout the great heptagon, hundreds of other Vorkuls sprang to attention at their assigned posts of duty. As the howling wail came to a climax in a blast of sound Kromodeor threw over a lever, as did every other projector officer in every other heptagon, and there was made plain to any observer the reason for the burns and scars in the tortured space between the lofty inner and outer walls of Vorkulia. For these heptagons were the monstrous flying fortresses which Czuv had occasionally seen from afar, as they went upon some unusual errand above the Jovian banks of mist, and which Brandon was soon to see in his visiray screen. The seared and disfigured metal of the pavement and walls was made so by the release of the furious blasts of energy necessary to raise those untold thousands of tons of mass against the attraction of Jupiter, more than two and a half times the gravity of our own world! Vast volumes of flaming energy shrieked from the ports. Wave upon wave, flooding the heptagons, it dashed back and forth upon the heavy metal between the walls. As more and more of the inconceivable power of those Titanic generators was unleashed, it boiled forth in a devastating flood which, striking the walls, rebounded and leaped vertically far above even those mighty ramparts. Even the enormous thickness of the highly conducting metal could not absorb all the energy of that intolerable blast, and immediately beneath the ports new seven-pointed areas of disfigurement appeared as those terrific flying fortresses were finally wrenched from the ground and hurled upward.

High in the air, another signal wailed up and down a peculiar scale of sound and the mighty host of vessels formed smoothly into symmetrical groups of seven. Each group then moved with mathematical precision into its allotted position in a complex geometrical formation—a gigantic, seven-ribbed, duplex cone in space. The flagship flew at the apex of this stupendous formation; behind, and protected by, the full power of the other floating citadels of the forty-nine groups of seven. Due north, the amazing armada sped in rigorous alignment, flying along a predetermined meridian—due north!

At the end of his watch Kromodeor relinquished his board to the officer relieving him and shot into the air, propelled by the straightening of the powerful coils of his snake-like body and tail. Wings half spread, lateral and vertical ruddering fins outthrust, he soared across the room toward a low opening. Just before they struck the wall upon either side of the doorway the great wings snapped shut, the fins retracted, and the long and heavy body struck the floor of the passage without a jar. With a wriggling, serpentine motion he sped like a vibrant arrow along the hall and into a wardroom. There, after a brief glance around the room, he coiled up beside a fellow officer who, with one eye, was negligently reading a scroll held in three or four hands; while with another eye, poised upon its slender pedicle, he watched a moving picture upon a television screen.

"Hello, Kromodeor," Wixill, Chief Power Officer2 greeted the newcomer in the wailing, hissing language of the Vorkuls. He tossed the scroll into the air, where it instantly rolled into a tight cylinder and shot into an opening in the wall of the room. "Glad to see you. Books and shows are all right on practice cruises, but I can't seem to work up much enthusiasm about such things now."

Kromodeor elevated an eye and studied the screen, upon which, to the accompaniment of whistling, shrieking sound, whirled and gyrated an interlacing group of serpentine forms.

"A good show, Wixill," the projector officer replied, "but nothing to hold the attention of men engaged in what we are doing. Think of it! After twenty years of preparation—two long lifetimes—and for the first time in our history, we are actually going to war!"

"I have thought of it at length. It is disgusting. Compelled to traffic with an alien form of life! Were it not to end in the extinction of those unspeakable hexans, it would be futile to the point of silliness. I cannot understand them at all. There is ample room upon this planet for all of us. Our races combined are not using one seven-thousandth of its surface. You would think that they would shun all strangers. Yet for ages have they attacked us, refusing to let us alone, until finally they forced us to prepare means for their destruction. They seem as senselessly savage as the jungle growths, and, but for their very evident intelligence, one would class them as such. You would think that, being intelligent and being alien to us, they would not have anything to do with us in any way, peacefully or otherwise. However, their intrusions and depredations are about to end."

"They certainly are. Vorkulia has endured much—too much—but I am glad that our forefathers did not decide to exterminate them sooner. If they had, we could not have been doing this now."

"There speaks the rashness of youth, Kromodeor. It is a violation of all our instincts to have any commerce with outsiders, as you will learn as soon as you see one of them. Then, too, we will lose heavily. Since we have studied their armaments so long, and have subjected every phase of the situation to statistical analysis, it is certain that we are to succeed—but you also know at what cost."

"Two-sevenths of our force, with a probable error of one in seven," replied the younger Vorkul. "And because that figure cannot be improved within the next seven years and because of the exceptional weakness of the hexans due to their unexpectedly great losses upon Callisto, we are attacking at this time. Their spherical vessels are nothing, of course. It is in the reduction of the city that we will lose men and vessels. But at that, each of us has five chances in seven of returning, which is good enough odds—much better than we had in that last expedition into the jungle. But by the Mighty Seven, I shall make myself wrap around one hexan, for my brother's sake," and his coils tightened unconsciously. "Hideous, repulsive monstrosities! Creatures so horrible should not be allowed to live—they should have been tossed over the wall to the jungle ages ago!" Kromodeor curled out an eye as he spoke, and complacently surveyed the writhing cylinder of sinuous, supple power that was his own body.

"Better avoid contact work with them if possible," cautioned Wixill. "You might not be able to unwrap, and to touch one of them is almost unthinkable. Speaking of wrapping, you know that they are putting on the finals of the contact work in the star this evening. Let's watch them."

They slid to the floor and wriggled away in perfect "step"—undulating along in such nice synchronism that their adjacent sides, only a few inches apart, formed two waving rigidly parallel lines. Deep in the lower part of the fortress they entered a large assembly room, provided with a raised platform in the center and having hundreds of short, upright posts in lieu of chairs; most of which were already taken by spectators. The two officers curled their tails comfortably around two of the vacant pillars, elevated their heads to a convenient