"The word "impossible" in that connection, coming from you, has a queer sound," Westfall said pointedly and Brandon actually blushed.
"That"s right, too--we have got pretty much the same idea in our cosmic intake fields, but we didn"t carry things half as far as they have done.
Huh! They"re flashing us again ... but those thin little beams don"t mean anything. They"re just trying to make us feed them some more, I guess. But we"ve got to hold them back some way--wonder if they can absorb a tractor field?"
The hexans had lashed out a few times with their lighter weapons, but, finding the _Sirius_ unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod and threw the ma.s.s of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt its drag, their screens flared white, and the ma.s.sive Terrestrial s.p.a.ce-ship quivered in every member as that terrific cable of force was snapped.
"They apparently cannot store up the energy of a tractor," commented Westfall, "but you will observe that they have no difficulty in radiating when they care to."
"Those two ideas didn"t pan out so heavy. There"s lots of things not tried yet, though. Our next best bet is to get around in front of him and push back. If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a pressor, they"re really good."
The pilot maneuvered the _Sirius_ into line, directly between Jupiter and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action, Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the center of ma.s.s of the Vorkulian fortress. For a moment it held solidly, then, as the screens of the enemy went into action, it rebounded and glanced off in sparkling, cascading torrents. But the hexans, with all their twisting and turning, could not present to that prodigious beam of force any angle sufficiently obtuse to rob it of half its power, and the driving projectors of the pentagon again burst into activity as the backward-pushing ma.s.s of the _Sirius_ made itself felt. In a short time, however, the wall-screens were again cut off--apparently more power was required to drive them than they were able to deflect.
Although even the enormous tonnage of the Terrestrial cruiser was insignificant in comparison with the veritable mountain of metal to which she was opposed, so that the fiercest thrust of her driving projectors did not greatly affect the monster"s progress; yet Brandon and his cohorts were well content.
"It"s a long trip back to where they came from, and since they wanted to drift all the way, I think they"ll be out of power before they get there," Brandon summed up the situation. "We aren"t losing any power, either, since we are using only a part of our cosmic intake."
In a few hours the struggle had settled down to a routine matter--the _Sirius_ being pushed backward steadily against the full drive of her every projector, contesting stubbornly every mile of s.p.a.ce traversed.
a.s.sured that the regular pilots and lookouts were fully capable of handling the vessel, the scientists were about to resume their interrupted tasks when one of the photographers called them over to look at something he had discovered in one of the lowermost and smallest compartments of the heptagon. All crowded around the screens, and saw pictured there the winged, snake-like form of one of the original crew of the Vorkulian vessel!
"Dead?" Brandon asked.
"Not yet," replied the photographer. "He is twitching a little once in a while, but you see, he"s pretty badly cut up."
"I see he is ... he must have a lot of vitality to have lasted this long--may be he"ll live through it yet. Hold him on the plate, and get his exact measurements." He turned to the communicator. "Doctor von Steiffel? Can you come down to the control room a minute? We may want you to operate upon one of these South Jovians after a while."
"_Himmel! Es ... ist ... der...._" The great surgeon, bearded and ma.s.sive, stared into the plate, and in his surprise started to speak in his native German. He paused, his long, powerful fingers tracing the likeness of the Vorkul upon the plate, then went on: "I would like very much to operate, but, not understanding our intentions, he would, of course, struggle. And when that body struggles--_schrecklichkeit_!" and he waved his arms in a pantomime of wholesale destruction.
"I thought of that--that"s why I am talking to you now instead of when we get to him, two or three days from now. We"ll give you his exact measurements, and a crew of mechanics will, under your direction, sink holes in the steel floor and install steel bands heavy enough to hold him rigid, from tailfins to wing-tips. We"ll hold him there until we can make him understand that we"re friends. It is of the utmost importance to save that creature"s life if possible; because we do not want one of their fortresses launched against us--and in any event, it will not do us any harm to have a friend in the City of the South."
"Right. I will also have prepared some kind of a s.p.a.ce-suit in which he can be brought from his vessel to ours," and the surgeon took the measurements and went to see that the "operating table" and suit were made ready for Kromodeor, the sorely wounded Vorkul.
It was not long until the projectors of the heptagon went out and she lay inert in s.p.a.ce, power completely exhausted. Knowing that the screens of the enemy would absorb any ordinary ray, the scientists had calculated the most condensed beam they could possibly project, a beam which, their figures showed, should be able to puncture those screens by sheer ma.s.s action--puncture them practically instantaneously, before the absorbers could react. To that end they had arranged their circuits to hurl seven hundred sixty-five thousand kilofranks--the entire power of their ma.s.sed acc.u.mulators and their highest possible cosmic intake--in one tiny bar of superlative density, less than one meter in diameter!
Everything ready, Brandon shot in prodigious switches that launched that bolt--a bolt so vehement, so inconceivably intense, that it seemed fairly to blast the very ether out of existence as it tore its way along its carefully predetermined line. The intention was to destroy all the control panels of the absorber screens; parts so vital that without them the great vessel would be helpless, and yet items which the Terrestrials could reconstruct quite readily from their photographs and drawings.
As that irresistible bolt touched the Vorkulian wall-screen, the spot of contact flared instantaneously through the spectrum and into the black beyond the violet as that screen overloaded locally. Fast as it responded and highly conductive though it was, it could not handle that frightfully concentrated load. In the same fleeting instant of time every molecule of substance in that beam"s path flashed into tenuous vapor--no conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing stiletto of energy--and the main control panel of the Vorkulian wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as rapidly as he could sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle of annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls.
Then, the walls unresisting, he cut in the vastly larger, but infinitely less powerful, I-P ray, and with it systematically riddled the immense heptagon. Out through the gaping holes in the outer walls rushed the dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their ma.s.sed hundreds died.
The _Sirius_ was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main air-lock was against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall of the enemy. There she was anch.o.r.ed by tractor beams, and the two hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full s.p.a.ce equipment, prepared to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense at his controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any hexans that might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment.
General Crowninshield sat beside the physicist at an auxiliary board, phones at ears and four infra-red visiray plates ranged in front of him; ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the attack, no matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might become before the citadel was taken.
The s.p.a.ce-line men--the engineers of weightless combat--led the van, protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up ways of rope, along which the others could advance. Power drills bit savagely into metal, making holes to receive the expanding eyebolts; grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and corner; points of little stress were supported by powerful suction cups; and at intervals were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the many gaps in the metal through which Brandon"s beams had blasted their way; guided by Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the little projector room in which Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There were so many chambers and compartments in the heptagon that it had, of course, been impossible to puncture them all, and in some of the tight rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the general"s eye led his men, and if such a room lay before them, Brandon"s frightful beam entered it first--and where that beam entered, life departed.
But the hexans were really intelligent, as has been said. They had had time to prepare for what they knew awaited them, and they were rendered utterly desperate by the knowledge that, no matter what might happen, their course was run. Their power was gone, and even if the present enemy should be driven off, they would float idly in s.p.a.ce until they died of cold; or, more probably, hurtling toward Jupiter as they were, they would plunge to certain death upon its surface as soon as they came within its powerful gravitational field. Therefore some fifty of the creatures, who had had s.p.a.ce experience in their spherical vessels, had spent the preceding days in manufacturing s.p.a.ce equipment. Let the weight-fiends plan upon detonating magazines of explosives, upon laying mines calculated to destroy the invaders, even the vessel itself and all within it. Let them plan upon any other such idle schemes, which were certain to be foreseen and guarded against by the s.p.a.ce-hardened veterans who undoubtedly moaned that all-powerful and vengeful football of scarred gray metal. s.p.a.ce-fighters were they, and as s.p.a.ce-fighters would they die; taking with them to their own inevitable death a full quota of the enemy.
Thus it came about that the head of the column of police had scarcely pa.s.sed a certain door, when in the room behind it there began to a.s.semble the half-hundred s.p.a.cehounds of the hexans. When the vanguard had approached that room, Crowninshield had inspected it thoroughly with his infra-red beams. He had found it punctured and airless, devoid of life or of lethal devices, and had pa.s.sed on. But now the s.p.a.ce-suited warriors of the horde, guided in their hiding by their own visirays, were ma.s.sing there. When the center of the I-P column reached that door, it burst open. There boiled out into the corridor, into the very midst of the police, fifty demoniacal hexans, fighting with Berserk fury, ruled by but one impulse--to kill.
Hand-weapons flashed viciously, tearing at steel armor and at bulging s.p.a.ce-suits. s.p.a.ce-hooks bit and tore. Pikes and lances were driven with the full power of brawny arms. Here and there could be seen trooper and hexan, locked together in fierce embrace far from any hand-line--six limbs against four, all ten plied with abandon in mortal, hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot combat.
"Give way!" yelled Crowninshield into the ears of his men. "Epstein, back! LeFevre, advance! Get out of block ten--give us a chance to use a beam!"
As the police fell back out of the designated section of the corridor, Brandon"s beam tore through it, filling it from floor to ceiling with a volume of intolerable energy. In that energy walls, doorway, and s.p.a.ce-lines, as well as most of the hexans, vanished utterly. But the beam could not be used again. Every surviving enemy had hurled himself frantically into the thickest ranks of the police and the battle raged fiercer than ever. It did not last long. The ends of the column had already closed in. The police filled the corridor and overflowed into the yawning chasm cut by the annihilating ray. Outnumbered, surrounded upon all sides, above, and below by the Terrestrials, the hexans fought with mad desperation to the last man--and to the last man died. And even though in lieu of their own highly efficient s.p.a.ce-armor they had fought in weak, crude, and hastily improvised s.p.a.ce-suits, which were pitifully inferior to the ray resistant, heavy steel armor of the I-P forces, nevertheless the enormous strength and utter savagery of the hexans had taken toll; and when the advance was resumed, it was with extra lookouts scanning the entire neighborhood of the line of march.
Since the troops had entered the fortress as close to their goal as possible, it was not long until the leading platoon reached the door behind which Kromodeor lay. Tools and cylinders of air were brought up, and the engineers quickly fitted pressure bulkheads across the corridor.
There was a screaming hiss from the valves, the atmosphere in that walled-off s.p.a.ce became dense, and mechanics attacked with their power drills the door of the projector room. It opened, and four husky orderlies rapidly but gently encased the long body of the Vorkul in the s.p.a.ce-suit built especially to receive it. As that monstrous form in its weirdly bulging envelope was guided through the air-locks into the _Sirius_, Crowninshield barked orders into his transmitter and the police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might have planted for their undoing.
a.s.sured that the real danger to the _Sirius_ was over and that his presence was no longer necessary, Brandon turned his controls over to an a.s.sistant and went up to the Venerian rooms, where von Steiffel and his staff were to operate upon the Vorkul. There, in the dense, hot air, but little different now from the atmosphere of Jupiter, Kromodeor lay; bolted down to the solid steel of the floor by means of padded steel straps. So heavy were the bands that he could not possibly break even one of them; so closely were they s.p.a.ced that he could scarcely have moved a muscle had he tried. But he did not try--so near death was he that his mighty muscles did not even quiver at the trenchant bite of the surgeon"s tools. Von Steiffel and his aides, meticulously covered with sterile gowns, hoods, and gloves, worked in most rigidly aseptic style; deftly and rapidly closing the ghastly wounds inflicted by the weapons of the hexans.
"Hi, Brandon," the surgeon grunted as he straightened up, the work completed. "I did not use much antiseptic on him. Because of possible differences in blood chemistry and in ignorance of his native bacteria, I depended almost wholly upon asepsis and his natural resistance. It is a good thing that we did not have to use an anaesthetic. He is in bad shape, but if we can feed him successfully, he may pull through."
"Feed him? I never thought of that. What d"you suppose he eats?"
"I have an idea that it is something highly concentrated, from his anatomy. I shall try giving him sugar, milk chocolate, something of the kind. First I shall try maple syrup. Being a liquid, it is easily administered, and its penetrating odor also may be a help."
A can of the liquid was brought in and to the amazement of the Terrestrials, the long, delicate antennae of the Vorkul began to twitch as soon as the can was opened. Motioning hastily for silence, von Steiffel filled a bowl and placed it upon the floor beneath Kromodeor"s grotesque nose. The twitching increased, until finally one dull, glazed eye brightened somewhat and curled slowly out upon its slender pedicle, toward the dish. His mouth opened sluggishly and a long, red tongue reached out, but as his perceptions quickened, he became conscious of the strangers near him. The mouth snapped shut, the eye retracted, and heaving, rippling surges traversed that powerful body as he struggled madly against the unbreakable shackles of steel binding him to the floor.
"_Ach, kindlein_!" The surgeon bent anxiously over that grotesque but frightened head; soothing, polysyllabic German crooning from his bearded lips.
"Here, let"s try this--I"m good on it," Stevens suggested, bringing up the Callistonian thought exchanger. All three men donned headsets, and sent wave after wave of friendly and soothing thoughts toward that frantic and terrified brain.
"He"s got his brain shut up like a clam!" Brandon snorted. "Open up, guy--we aren"t going to hurt you! We"re the best friends you"ve got, if you only knew it!"
"Himmel, und he iss himself killing!" moaned von Steiffel.
"One more chance that might work," and Brandon stepped over to the communicator, demanding that Verna Pickering be brought at once. She came in as soon as the air-locks would permit, and the physicist welcomed her eagerly.
"This fellow"s fighting so he"s tearing himself to pieces. We can"t make him receive a thought, and von Steiffel"s afraid to use an anaesthetic.
Now it"s barely possible that he may understand hexan. I thought you wasted time learning any of it, but maybe you didn"t--see if you can make him understand that we"re friends."
The girl flinched and shrank back involuntarily, but forced herself to approach that awful head. Bending over, she repeated over and over one harsh, barking syllable. The effect of that word was magical. Instantly Kromodeor ceased struggling, an eye curled out, and that long, supple tongue flashed down and into the syrup. Not until the last sticky trace had been licked from the bowl did his attention wander from the food.
Then the eye, sparkling brightly now, was raised toward the girl.
Simultaneously four other eyes arose, one directed at each of the men and the other surveying his bonds and the room in which he was. Then the Vorkul spoke, but his whistling, hissing manner of speech so garbled the barking sounds of the hexan words he was attempting to utter, that Verna"s slight knowledge of the language was of no use. She therefore put on one of the headsets, motioning the men to do the same, and approached Kromodeor with the other, repeating the hexan word of friendly import. This time the Vorkul"s brain was not sealed against the visitors and thoughts began to flow.
"You"ve used those things a lot," Brandon turned to Stevens in a quick aside. "Can you hide your thoughts?"
"Sure--why?"
"All I can think of is that power system of theirs, and he"d know what we were going to do, sure. And I"d better be getting at it anyway. So you can wipe that off your mind with a clear conscience--the rest of us will get everything they"ve got there. Your job"s to get everything you can out of this bird"s brain. All x?"
"All x."
"Why, you didn"t put yours on!" Verna exclaimed.