“Getting the idea now, Kim,” Thorndyke said finally, during a brief lull in his work.
“A sweet system .
. . * * .
“Look at this!” a mechanic interrupted. “Here’s a machine that’s all shot to hell!”
The shielding cover had been torn from a. monstrous fabrication of metal,
apparently a motor or ‘generator of an exceedingly complex type. The insulation of its
coils and windings had fallen away in charred fragments, its copper had melted down in
sluggish, viscous streams.
“That’s what we’re looking for!” Thorndyke shouted. “Check those leads! Alpha!”
“Seven-three-nine-four!” and the minutely careful study went on until.
“That’s enough, we’ve got everything we need now. Have you draftsmen and
photographers got everything down solid?”
“On the boards!” and “In the cans!” rapped out the two reports as one.
“Then let’s go!”
“And go fast!” Kinnison ordered, briskly. “I’m afraid we’re going to run out of time
as it is !”
All hands hurried back into the Brittania, paying no attention to the bodies
littering the decks. So desperate was the emergency, each man knew, that nothing
could be done about the dead, whether friend or foe. Every resource of mechanism, of
brain and of brawn, must needs be strained to the utmost if they themselves were not
soon to be in similar case.
“Can you talk, Nels?” demanded Kinnison of his Communications Officer, even
before the air-lock had closed.
“No, sir, they’re blanketing us solid,” that worthy replied instantly. “Space’s so full
of static you couldn’t drive a power-beam through it, let alone a communicator. Couldn’t
talk direct, anyway — look where we are,” and he pointed out in the tank their present
location.
“Hm . . . m . . . m. Couldn’t have got much farther away without jumping the
galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back there or from the
disturbance. They’re undoubtedly concentrating on us now . . . . . .One of them will
spear us with a tractor, just as sure as hell’s a man-trap . . . . . ‘
The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought in
black intensity. He must get this data back to Base — but how? HOW? Henderson was
already driving the vessel back toward Sol with every iota of her inconceivable top
speed, but it was out of the question even to hope that she would ever get there. The
life of the Brittania was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours — and all
too scant measure, even of them. For there must be hundreds of pirate vessels even
now tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net to cut off her return to Base. Fast
though she was, one of that barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp on a
tractor — and when that happened her flight was done.
Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first-class war-vessel of the public
enemy, it was true, but at what awful cost! One fresh vessel could blast his crippled
mount out of space, nor would there be only one. Within a space of minutes after the
attachment of a tracer the Brittania would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone a
fighters. There was only one chance, and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly, young
Lieutenant Kinnison — now and briefly Captain Kinnison — decided to take it.
“Listen, everybody!” he ordered. “We must get this information back to Base, and
we can’t do it in the Brittania. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in an-
other fight is exactly zero. We’ll have to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the
hope that at least one will be able to get through.
“The technicians and specialists will take all the data they, got — information,
descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything — boil it down, and put it on a spool of tape.
They will make about a hundred copies of it. The crew and the Valerian privates will
man boats starting with Number Twenty One and blast off as soon as you can get your
tapes. Once away, use very little detectable power, or better yet no power at all, until
you’re sure the pirates have chased the Brittania a good many parsecs away from
where you are.
“The rest of us — specialist and the Valerian non-corns -will go last. Twenty
boats, two men to a boat, and each man will have a spool. We’ll start launching when
we’re as far as it’s safe to go. Each boat will be strictly on its own. Do it any way you
can, but some way, any way, get your spool back to Base. There’s no use in me trying
to impress you with the importance of this stuff, you know what it means as well as I do.
“Boatmates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names — and
his own, to make it forty even – on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at
a time. If two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go
back into the pot. Get to work!”
Twice the name of “Kinnison” came out together with that of another skilled in
astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it came out paired with “van-
Buskirk,” to the manifest joy of the giant Valerian and to the approval of the crowd as
well.
“That was a break for me, Kim!” the sergeant called, over the cheers of his
fellows. “I’m sure of getting back now!”
“That’s throwing the off, big fellow — but I don’t know of anybody I’d rather have
at my back than you,” Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.
The pairings were made, DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment
were checked and tested, the spools of tape were sealed in their corrosion-proof
containers and distributed, and Kinnison sat talking with the Master Technician.
“So they’ve solved the problem of the really efficient reception and conversion of
cosmic radiation!” Kinnison whistled softly through his teeth. “And a sun — even a small
one — radiates the energy given off by the annihilation of one-to-several million tone of
matter. per second! SOME power!”
“That’s the story, Skipper, and it explains completely why their ships have been
so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster drives even than the
Brittania’s – they probably will, now that it has become necessary. Also, if the bus-bars
in that receptor-convertor had been a few square centimeters larger in cross-section,
they could have held their wall-shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what? . . . .
. They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution.”
“Whey have atomic motors, the same as ours, just as big and just as efficient,”
Kinnison cogitated. “But those motors are all we have got, while they use them, and at
full power, too, simply as first- stage exciters for the cosmic-energy screens. Blinding
blue blazes, what power! Some of us have got to get back, Verne. If we don’t,
Boskone’s got the whole galaxy by the tail, and civilization is sunk without a trace.”
“I’ll say so, but also I’ll say this for those of us who doe t get back — it won’t be for
lack of trying. Well, better I go check my boat. If I don’t see you again, Kim old man,
clear ether!”
They shook hands briefly and Thorndyke strode away. Enroute, however, he
paused beside the quartermaster and signaled to him to disconnect his communicator.
“Clever lad, Allerdyce!” Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. “Kinds loaded the dice
a trifle once or twice, didn’t you? I don’t think anybody but me smelled a rat, though.
Certainly neither the skipper nor Henderson did, or you’d’ve had it to do over again.”
“At least one team has got to get through,” Allerdyce replied, quietly and
obliquely, “and the strongest teams we can muster will find the going none too easy.
Any team made up of strength and weakness is a weak team. Kinnison, our only
Lensman, is of course the best man aboard this buzz-buggy. Who would you pick for
number two?”
“VanBuskirk, of course, the same as you did. I wasn’t criticizing you, man, I was
complimenting you, and thanking you, in a roundabout way, for giving me Henderson.
He’s got plenty of what it takes, too.”
“It wasn’t ‘vanBuskirk, of course, by any means,’ the quartermaster rejoined. “It’s
mighty hard to figure either you or Henderson third, to say nothing of fourth, in any kind
of company, however fast-mentally and physically. However, it seemed to me that you
fitted in better with the pilot. I could hand-pick only two teams without getting caught at it
— you spotted me as it was — but I think I picked the two strongest teams possible. One
of you will get through — if none of you four can make it, nobody could.”