conclusion is not. You graduated Number One, and in every respect save experience
you are as well qualified to command as is any captain of, the Fleet, and since the
Brittania is such a radical departure from any conventional type, battle experience is not
a prerequisite. Therefore if she holds together through one engagement she is yours for
good. In other words, to make up for the possibility of having yourself scattered all over
space, you have a chance to win that ten years’ rating you mentioned a minute ago, all
in one trip. Fair enough?”
“Fair? It’s fine — wonderful! And thanks a . . . . .”
“Never mind the thanks until you get back. You were about to comment, I
believe, upon the impossibility of using explosives against a free opponent?”
“It can’t be impossible, of course, since the Brittania has
been built. I just don’t quite see how it could have been made effective.”
“You lock to the pirate with tractors, screen to screen — about ten kilometers.
You blast a hole through his screens to his wall-shield. The muzzle of the Q-gun
mounts as annular multiplex projector which puts out a Q-type tube of force — Q47SM9,
to be exact. As you can see from the type formula, this helix extends the gun-barrel
from ship to ship and confines the propellent gases behind the projectile, where they
belong. When the shell strikes the wall-shield of the pirate and detonates, something
will have to give wayall the Brains agree that twenty tons of duodec, attaining a
temperature of about forty million degrees absolute in less than one micro-second,
simply cannot be confined.
“The tube and tractors, being pure force and computed for this particular
combination of explosions, will hold, and our physicists have calculated that the ten-
kilometer column of inert propellent gases will offer so much inertia and resistance that
any possible wall-shield will have to go down. That is the point that cannot be tried out
experimentally — it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the pirates may have
been able to develop wall-screens as powerful as our Q-type helices, even though we
have not.
“It should not be necessary to point out to you that if they have been able to
develop a wall-shield that will stand up under those conditions, the back-blast through
the breech of the Q-gun will blow the Brittania apart as though she were so much
matchwood. That is only one of the chances — and perhaps not the greatest one — that
you and your crew will have to take. They are all volunteers, by the way, and will get
plenty of extra rating if they come through alive. Do you want the job?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, Chief — you know I want it !”
“Of course, but I had to go through the formality of asking, sometime. But to get
on with the discussion, this pirate situation is entirely out of control, as you already
know. We doe t even know whether Boskone is a reality, a figurehead, a symbol, or
simply a figment of an old-time Lensman’s imagination. But whoever or whatever
Boskone really is, some being or some group of beings has perfected a mighty efficient
organization of outlaws, so efficient that we haven’t even been able to locate their main
base.
“And you may as well know now a fact that is not yet public property — that even
conveyed vessels are no longer safe. The pirates have developed ships of a new and
extraordinary type, ships that are much faster than our heavy battleships, and yet vastly
more heavily armed than our fast cruisers. Thus, they can outfight any Patrol vessel
that can catch them, and can out-run anything of ours armed heavily enough to stand
up against their beams.”
“That accounts for the recent heavy losses,” Kinnison mused.
“Yes,” Haynes went on, grimly. “Ship after ship of our best has been blasted out
of the ether, doomed before it pointed a beam, and more will be. We cannot force an
engagement on our terms, we must fight them where and when they please.
“That is the present intolerable situation. We must learn what the pirates’ new
power-system is. Our scientists say that it may be anything, from cosmic-energy
receptors and converters down to a controlled space-warp — whatever that may be.
Anyway, they haven’t been able to duplicate it, so it is up to us to find out what it is. The
Brittania is the tool our engineers have designed to get that information. She is the
fastest thing in space, developing at full blast an inert acceleration of ten gravities.
Figure out for yourself what velocity that means free in open space!”
“You have just said that we can’t have everything in one ship,” Kinnison said,
thoughtfully. “What did they sacrifice to get that speed?”
“All the conventional offensive armament,” Haynes replied frankly. “She has no
long-range beams at all, and only enough short-range stuff to help drive the Q-helix
through the enemy’s screens. Practically her only offense is the Qgun. But she has
plenty of defensive screens, she has speed enough to catch anything afloat, and she
has the Q-gun — which we hope will be enough.
“Now well go over the general plan of action. The engineers will go into all the
technical details with you, during a test flight that will last as long as you like. When you
and your crew’are thoroughly familiar with every phase of her operation, bring the
engineers back here to Base and go out on patrol.
“Now we’ll go over the general plan of action. Then engineers will go into all the
technical details with you, during a test flight that will last as long as you like. When you
and your crew are thoroughly familiar with every phase of her operation, bring the
engineers back here to Base and go out on patrol.
“Somewhere in the galaxy you will find a pirate vessel of the new type. You lock
to him, as I said before. You attach the Q-gun well forward, being sure that the point of
attachment is far enough away from the power-rooms so that the essential mechanisms
will not be destroyed. You board and storm — another revival of the technique of older
time. Specialists in your crew, who will have done nothing much up to that time, will
then find out what our scientists want to know. If at all possible they will send it in
instantly via tight-beam communicator. If for any reason it should be impossible for
them to communicate, the whole thing is again up to you.”
The Port Admiral paused, his eyes boring into those of the younger man, then
went on impressively.
“That information MUST get back to Base. If it does not, the Brittania is a failure,
we will be back right where we started from, the slaughter of our men and the
destruction of our ships will continue unchecked. As to how you are to do it we cannot
give even general instructions. All I can say is that you have the most important
assignment in the Universe today, and repeat — that information MUST GET BACK TO
BASE. Now come aboard and meet your crew and the engineers.”
Under the expert tutelage of the designers and builders of the Brittania
Lieutenant Kinnison drove her hither and thither through the trackless wastes of the
galaxy. Inert and free, under every possible degree of power he maneuvered her,
attacking imaginary foes and actual meteorites with equal zeal. Maneuvered and
attacked until he and his ship were one, until he reacted automatically to her slightest
demand until he and every man of his eager and highly trained crew knew to the final
volt and to the ultimate ampere her gargantuan capacity both to give it and to take it.
Then and only then did he return to Base, unload the engineers, and set out
upon the quest. Trail after trail he followed, but all were cold. Alarm after alarm he
answered, but always he arrived too late, arrived to find gutted merchantman and
riddled Patrol vessel, with no life in either and with nothing to indicate in which direction
the marauders might have gone.
Finally, however.
“QBT! Calling QBT!” The Britannia’s code call blared from the sealed-band
speaker, and a string of numbers followed — the spatial coordinates of the luckless
vessel’s position.
Chief Pilot Henry Henderson punched the figures upon his locator, and in the
“tank” — the enormous, minutely cubed model of the galaxy — there appeared a redly
brilliant point of light. Kinnison rocketed out of his narrow bunk, digging sleep out of his
eyes, and shot himself into place beside the pilot.
“Right in our laps !” he exulted. “Scarcely ten light-years away! Start scrambling
the ether(” and as the vengeful cruiser darted toward the scene of depredation all space
became filled with blast after blast of static interference through which, it was hoped,