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

For the first time in many days Brandon and Westfall sat at dinner in the main dining room of the Sirius. They were enjoying greatly the unaccustomed pleasure of a leisurely, formal meal; but still their talk concerned the projection of pure forces instead of subjects more appropriate to the table; still their eyes paid more attention to diagrams drawn upon scraps of paper than to the diners about them.

"But I tell you, Quince, you're full of little red ants, clear to the neck!" Brandon snorted, as Westfall waved one of his arguments aside. "You must have had help to get that far off—no one man could possibly be as wrong as you are. Why, those fields absolutely will...."

"Hi, Quincy! Hi, Norman!" a merry voice interrupted. "Still fighting as usual, I see! What kind of knights are you, anyway, to rescue us poor damsels in distress, and then never even know that we're alive?" A tall, willowy brunette had seen the two physicists as she entered the saloon, and came over to their table, a hand outstretched to each in cordial greeting.

"Ho, Verna!" both men exclaimed, and came to their feet as they welcomed the smiling, graceful newcomer.

"Sit down here, Verna—we have hardly started," Westfall invited, and Brandon looked at the girl in assumed surprise as she seated herself in the proffered chair.

"Well, Verna, it's like this...." he began.

"That's enough!" she broke in. "That phrase always was your introduction to one of the world's greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the first time you have had time even to eat like civilized beings, so I'll forgive you this once. Why all the registering of amazement, Norman?"

"I'm astonished that you aren't being monopolized by some husband or other. Surely the officers of the Arcturus weren't so dumb that they'd stand for your still being Verna Pickering, were they?"

"Not dumb, Norman, no. Far from it. But I'm still working for my M. R. S. degree, and I haven't succeeded in snaring it yet. You'd be surprised at how cagy those officers got after a few of them had been captured. But they are just like any other hunted game, I suppose—the antelopes that survive get pretty wild, you know," she concluded, plaintively.

"Well, that certainly is one tough break for a poor little girl," Brandon sympathized. "Quince, our little Nell, here, hasn't been done right by. I'm bashful and you're a woman-hater, but between us, some way, we've simply got to take steps."

"You might take longer steps than you think," Verna laughed, her regular, white teeth and vivid coloring emphasized by her olive skin and her startling hair, black as Brandon's own. "Perhaps I would like a scientist better than an I-P officer, anyway. The more I think of it, the surer I am that Nadia Newton had the right idea. I believe that I'll catch me a physicist, too—either of you would do quite nicely, I think," and she studied the two men carefully.

Westfall, the methodical and precise, had never been able to defend himself against Verna Pickering's badinage, but Brandon's ready tongue took up the challenge.

"Verna, if you really decided to get any living man he wouldn't stand a chance in the world," he declared. "If you've already made up your mind that I'm your meat, I'll come down like Davy Crockett's coon. But if either of us will do, that'll give us each a fifty-fifty chance to escape your toils. What say we play a game of freeze-out to decide it?"

"Fine, Norman! When shall we play?"

"Oh, between Wednesday and Thursday, any week you say," and the two fenced on, banteringly but skilfully, with Westfall an appreciative and unembarrassed listener.

Dinner over, Brandon and Westfall went back to the control room, where they found Stevens already seated at one of the master screens.

"All x, Perce?"

"All x. The observers report no registrations during the last two watches," and the three fell into discussion. Long they talked, studying every angle of the situation confronting them; until suddenly a speaker rattled furiously and an enormous, staring eye filled both master plates. Brandon's hand flashed to a switch, but the image disappeared even before he could establish the full-coverage ray screen.

"I'm on the upper band—take the lower!" he snapped, but Stevens' projector was already in action. Trained minds all, they knew that some intelligence had traced them, and all realized that it was of the utmost importance to know what and where that intelligence was. Stevens found the probing frequency in his range and they flashed their own beam along it, encountering finally one of the monstrous Vorkulian fortresses, far from Jupiter and almost directly between them and the planet! Its wall screens were in operation, and no frequency at their command could penetrate that neutralizing blanket of vibrations.

"What kind of an eye was that—ever see anything like it, Perce?" Brandon demanded.

"I don't think so, though of course we got only an awfully short flash of it. It didn't look like the periscopic eyes that those flying snakes had—looked more like a hexan eye, don't you think? Couldn't very well be hexan, though, in that kind of a ship."

"Don't think so, either. Maybe it's a purely mechanical affair that they use for observing. Anyway, old sons, I don't like the looks of things at all. Quince, you're the brains of this outfit—shift the massive old intellect into high and tell us what to do."

Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished measuring the apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward Stevens and Brandon.

"It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we do may prove to be wrong," he said, slowly. "However, I do not see that this latest development can operate to change the plan we have already adopted; that of running away, straight out from the sun. We may have to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women and babies can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will, of course, be necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to Titan, for they would be powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror upon either the Sirius or their torpedoes against such forces as that fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might well be bringing down upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world before he could be stopped. Both Uranus and Neptune are approximately upon our present course. Do the Titanians know anything of either of them, Steve?"

"Not a thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as Uranus on their power beam—it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Uranus or Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on the Jovian satellites and on Titan, I'd say that anything might be out there—on Uranus, Neptune, their satellites, or anywhere else."

"Cancel Uranus, and double that for Neptune," Brandon commanded. "Realize how far away they are?"

"That's right, too," agreed Stevens. "Before we got there, with any acceleration we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way or the other."

Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his results. Then, with a grave face, he went to consult the medical officers. The women, children, and the two Martian scientists were sent to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly to twenty meters per second per second, above which point the physicians declared they should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists met again—met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon narrow hospital bunks, unable even to lift their massive arms.

While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the super-dreadnought of space so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled heavily about the room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing emitting clouds of smoke from his villainously reeking pipe. The Venetians, lacking Brandon's physical strength and by nature quieter of disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at the calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and meaningless integrals, while he also concentrated upon the problem before them.

"They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly," Westfall finally reported. "They seem to be...."

"In that case we may be all x," Brandon interrupted, brandishing his pipe vigorously. "We know that they're on a beam—apparently we're the only ones hereabouts having cosmic power. If we can keep away from them until their beam attenuates, we can whittle 'em down to our size and then take them, no matter how much accumulator capacity they've got."

"But can we keep away from them that long?" asked Dol Kenor, pointedly; and his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:

"Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a rendezvous with the Space Fleet, which will probably be ready by the time of meeting?"

"I am afraid that that would be useless," Westfall frowned in thought. "Given power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as easily as she could wipe out the Sirius alone."

"Kenor's right." Stevens spoke up from the calculator. "You're getting too far ahead of the situation. We aren't apt to keep ahead of them long enough to do much leading anywhere. The Titanians can hold a beam together from Saturn to Jupiter—why can't