"The inhabitants of all the planets should be friendly; the solar system should be linked together in intercourse for common advancement.
But that is not to be. The hexans will eventually triumph here, and a Jovian system peopled by hexans will have no intercourse with any human civilization save that of internecine war. We, of Callisto, have only one hope--or is it really a hope? In the South Polar country of Jupiter, there dwells a race of beings implacably hostile to the hexans. They seem to invade the country of the hexans frequently, even though they are apparently repulsed each time. Our emissaries to the South Polar country, however, have never returned--those beings, whatever they are, if not actively inimical, certainly are not friendly toward us."
"You know nothing of their nature?"
"Nothing, since our electrical instruments are not sufficiently sensitive to give us more than a general idea of what is transpiring there, and vision is practically useless in that eternal fog. We know, however, that they are far advanced in science, and we are thankful indeed that none of their frightful flying fortresses have been launched against us. They apparently are not interested in the satellites, and it is no doubt due to their unintentional a.s.sistance that we have survived as long as we have."
In the cavern at last, the three men boarded the Callistonian s.p.a.ce-plane and were shot up the crater"s shaft. The voyage to Callisto was uneventful, even uninteresting save at its termination.
The _Bzarvk_, coated every inch as it was with a dull, dead black, completely absorptive outer coating, entered the thin layer of Callisto"s atmosphere in darkest night, with all rockets dead, with not a light showing, and with no apparatus of any kind functioning. Utterly invisible and undetectable, she dove downward, and not until she was well below the crater"s rim did the forward rockets burst into furious life. Then the Terrestrials understood another reason for the immense depth of those shafts other than that of protection from the detectors of the enemy--all that distance was necessary to overcome the velocity of their free fall without employing a negative acceleration greater than the frail Callistonian bodies could endure. From the cavern at the foot of the shaft, a regulation tunnel extended to the Callistonian city of Zbardk. Portal and city were very like Wruszk, upon distant Europa, and soon the terrestrial captain and pilot were in conference with the Council of Callisto.
Months of Earthly time dragged slowly past, months during which King and Breckenridge studied intensively the offensive and defensive systems of Callisto without finding any particular in which they could improve them to any considerable degree. Captain Czuv and his warplane still survived, and it was while the Callistonian commander was visiting his terrestrial guests, that King voiced the discontent that had long affected both men.
"We"re both tired of doing nothing, Czuv. We have been of little real benefit, and we have decided that your ideas of us are all wrong. We are convinced that our personal horsepower can be of vastly more use to you than our brain-power, which doesn"t amount to much. Your whole present policy is one of hiding and sniping. I think that I know why, but I want to be sure. Your vessels carry lots of fuel--why can the hexans outrun you?" Thus did King put his problem.
"They can stand enormously higher accelerations than we can. The very strongest of us loses consciousness at an acceleration of twenty-five meters per second per second, no matter how he is braced, and that is only a little greater than the normal gravity of our enemies upon Jupiter. Their vessels at highest power develop an acceleration of thirty-five meters, and the hexans themselves can stand much more than even that high figure," replied Czuv.
"I thought so. a.s.sume that you traveled at forty-five. Would it disable you permanently, or would you recover as soon as it was lowered?"
"We would recover promptly, unless the exposure had been unduly prolonged. Why?"
"Because," said King, "I can stand an acceleration of fifty-four meters for two hours, and Breckenridge here tests fifty two meters. I can navigate anything, and Breckenridge can observe as well as any of your own men. Build a plane to accelerate at forty-five meters and we will blow those hexans out of the ether. You will have to revive and do the shooting, however--your gunnery is entirely beyond us."
"That is an idea of promise, and one that had not occurred to any of us," Czuv replied and work was begun at once upon the new flyer.
When the super-plane was ready for its maiden voyage, its crew of three studied it as it lay in the catapult at the portal. Dead black as were all the warplanes, its body was twice as large as that of the ordinary vessel, its wings were even more stubby, and its accommodations had been cut to a minimum to make room for the enormous stores of fuel necessary to drive the greatly increased battery of rocket motors and for the extra supply of torpedoes carried. Waving to the group of soldiers and citizens gathered to witness the take-off of the new dreadnought of s.p.a.ce, the three men entered the cramped operating compartment, strapped themselves into their seats, and were shot away. As usual the driving rockets were cut off well below the rim of the shaft, and the vessel rose in a long and graceful curve, invisible in the night. Such was its initial velocity and so slight was the force of gravity of the satellite that they were many hundreds of miles from the exit before they began to descend, and Breckenridge studied his screens narrowly for signs of hexan activity.
"Do you want to try one of your long-range shots when we find one of them?" the pilot asked Czuv.
"No, it would be useless. Between deflection by air-currents and the dodging of the enemy vessels, our effective range is shortened to a few kilometers, and their beams are deadly at that distance. No, our best course is to follow the original plan--to lure them out into s.p.a.ce at uniform acceleration, where we can destroy them easily."
"Right," and Breckenridge turned to King, who was frowning at his controls. "How does she work on a dead stick, Chief?"
"Maneuverability about minus ten at this speed and in this air.
She"d have to have at least fifteen hundred kilometers an hour to be responsive out here. See anything yet?"
"Not yet ... wait a minute! Yes, there"s one now--P-12 on area five.
Give us all the X10 and W27 you can, without using power--we want to edge over close enough so that she can"t help but see us when we start the rockets."
"Be sure and stay well out of range. I"m giving her all she"ll take, but she won"t take much. With these wings she has the gliding angle of a kitchen sink."
"All x--I"m watching the range, close. Wish we had instruments like these on the IPV"s. We"ll have to install some when we get back. All x!
Give her the gun--level and dead ahead!"
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 electro-magnetic 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 pa.s.sing 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-a.s.sembly, 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 electro-magnetic 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 sc.u.m 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 s.p.a.ce-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 antic.i.p.ation.
"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!"