Downward the big ship hurtled, toward the now glowing screens of the fortress. Driving jets are not orthodox weapons, but properly applied, they can be deadly ones indeed: and these were being applied with micromatric exactitude.
Down! DOWN! ! The threatened fortress and its neighbors hurled their every beam; Nhalian ships dived frantically at the invader and did their useless best to blast her down.
Down she drove, the fortress’ screens flaming ever brighter under the terrific blast.
Closer! Hotter! Still closer! Hotter still! Nor did the furious flame waver—the Chickladorian was indeed a master pilot.
‘Set up a plus ten, Thlaskin,’ Cloud directed. ‘Air density and temperature are changing. Their beams, too, you know.’ ‘Check. Plus ten, sir—set up.’ ‘Give it to her on the fourth click from … this.’ ‘On, sir.’ The vessel seemed to pause momentarily, to stumble; but the added weight was almost imperceptible.
A bare hundred yards now, and the ship of space was still plunging downward at terrific speed. The screens were furiously incandescent, but were still holding.
A hundred feet. Velocity appallingly high, the enemy’s screens still up. Something had to give now! If that screen stood up the ship would vanish as she struck it, but Thlaskin the Chickladorian made no move and spoke no word. If the skipper was willing to bet his own life on his computations, who was he to squawk? But… he must have miscalculated!
No! While the vessel’s driving projectors were still a few yards away the defending screens exploded into blackness; the awful streams of energy raved directly into the structures be-
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neath. Metal and stone glared white, then flowed—sluggishly at first, but ever faster and more mobile—then boiled coruscantly into vapor.
The cruiser slowed—stopped—seemed to hang for an instant poised. Then she darted upward, her dreadful exhausts continuing and completing the utter devastation.
‘That’s computin’, mister,’ the pilot breathed as he cut the fierce acceleration to a heavenly one thousand. ‘To figure a dive like that to three decimals and have the guts to hold to it cold— skipper, that’s com-pu-iation/’
‘All yours, pilot,’ Cloud demurred. ‘All I did was give you the dope. You’re the guy that made it good. Hurt, anybody?’
Nobody was. ‘QX. We’ll repeat, then, on the other side of the lagoon.’
As the ship began to descend on the new course the vengeful Dhilian fleet arrived. Looping, diving, beaming, oftentimes crashing in suicidal collision, the two factions went maniacally to war. There were no attacks, however, against the plunging Tellurian ship. The Nhalians had learned that they could do nothing about that vessel.
The second fortress fell exactly as the first had fallen. The pilot landed the cruiser in the middle of the shallow lakelet. Cloud saw that the Dhilians, overwhelmingly superior in numbers now, had cleared the air of Nhalian craft.
‘Can you fellows and your ships keep them off my flitter while I take my readings?’
‘We can,’ the natives radiated happily.
Four of the armored boneheads were wearing the semi-portables. They had them perched lightly atop their feeding heads, held immovably in place by two arms apiece. One hand sufficed to operate the controls, leaving two hands free to do whatever else might prove in order.
‘Let us out!’
The lock opened, the Dhilian warriors sprang out and splashed away to meet the enemy, who were already dashing into the lagoon.
Cloud watched pure carnage. He hoped—yes, there they were! The loyalists, seeing that their cause was not lost, after all, had armed themselves and were smashing into the fray.
The Blaster broke out his flitter then, set it down near the vortex, and made his observations. Everything was normal. He
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selected three bombs from his vast stock, loaded them into the tubes, and lofted. He set his screens, adjusted his goggles, and waited; while far above him and wide around him his guardian Dhilian war-vessels toured watchfully, their drumming blasts a reassuring thunder.
He waited, eyeing the sigma curve as it flowed backward from the recording pen, until he got a ten-second prediction. He shot the flitter forward, solving instantaneously the problems of velocity and trajectory. At exactly the correct instant he released a bomb. He cut his drive and went free.
The bomb sped truly, striking the vortex dead center. It penetrated deeply enough. The carefully-weighed charge of duodec exploded; its energy and that of the vortex combining in a detonation whose like no inhabitant of that solar system had ever even dimly imagined.
The noxious gases and the pall of smoke and pulverized debris blew aside; the frightful waves of lava quieted down. The vortex was out and would remain out. The Blaster drove back to the cruiser and put his flitter away.
‘Oh—you did it! Thanks! I didn’t believe that you—that anybody—really could!’ Luda was almost hysterical in her joyous relief.
‘Nothing to it,’ Cloud deprecated. ‘How are you doing on the mopping up?”
‘Practically clean,’ Luda answered, grimly. ‘We now know who is who. Those who fought against us or who did not fight for us are, or very soon will be, dead. But the Nhalian fleet comes. Does yours? Ours takes off in moments.’
‘Wait a minute!’ Cloud sat down at his plate, made observations and measurements, calculated mentally. He turned on his communicator and conferred briefly.
‘The Nhalian fleet will be here in seven hours and eighteen minutes. If your people go out to meet them it will mean a war that not even the Patrol can stop without destroying most of the ships and men both of you have in space. The Patrol task force will arrive in seven hours and thirty one minutes. Therefore, I suggest that you hold your fleet here, in formation but quiescent, under instructions not to move until you order them to, while you and I go out and see if we can’t stop the Nhalians.’
‘Stop them!’ Luda’s thought was not at all ladylike. ‘What with, pray?’
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‘I don’t know,’ Cloud confessed, ‘but it wouldn’t do any harm to try, would it?”
‘Probably not. We’ll try.’
All the way out Cloud pondered ways and means. As they neared the onrushing fleet he thought at Luda:
‘Darjeeb is undoubtedly with that fleet. He knows that this is the only inertialess ship in this part of space. He wants it more than anything else in the universe. Now if we could only make him listen to reason … if we could make him see …’
He broke off. No soap. You couldn’t explain ‘green’ to a man born blind. These folks didn’t know and wouldn’t believe what real fire-power was. The weakest vessel in this oncoming task-force could blast both of these boneheads’ fleets into a radiant gas in fifteen seconds flat—and the superdreadnoughts’ primaries would be starkly incredible to both Luda and Darjeeb. They simply had to be seen in action to be believed; and then it would be too late.
These people didn’t stand the chance of a bug under a sledgehammer, but they’d have to be killed before they’d believe it. A damned shame, too. The joy, the satisfaction, the real achievement possible only through cooperation with each other and with the millions of races of Galactic Civilization—if there were only some means of making them believe …
‘We—and they—do believe,’ Luda broke into his somber musings.
‘Huh? What? You do? You were listening?’
‘Certainly. At your first thought I put myself en rapport with Darjeeb, and he and our peoples listened to your thoughts.’
‘But… you really believe me?’
‘We all believe. Some will cooperate, however, only as far as it will serve their own ends to do so. Your Lensmen will undoubtedly have to kill that insect Darjeeb and others of his kind in the interest of lasting peace.’
The insulted Nhalian drove in a protesting thought, but Luda ignored it and went on:
‘You think, then, Tellurian, that your Lensmen can cope with even such as Darjeeb of Nhal?’
‘I’ll say they can!’
‘It is well, then. Come aboard, Darjeeb—unarmed and un-armored, as I am—and we will together go to confer with these visiting Lensmen of Galactic Civilization. It is understood that
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there will be no warfare until our return.’
‘Holy Klono!’ Cloud gasped. ‘He wouldn’t do that, would he?’
‘Certainly.’ Luda was surprised at the question. ‘Although he is an insect, and morally and ethically beneath contempt, he is, after all, a reasoning being.’
‘QX.’ Cloud was dumbfounded, but tried manfully not to show it.
Darjeeb came aboard. He was heavily bandaged and most of his hands were useless, but he seemed to bear no ill-will. Cloud gave orders; the ship flashed away to meet the Patrolmen.
The conference was held. The boneheads, after being taken through a superdreadnought and through a library by Lensmen as telepathic as themselves, capitulated to Civilization immediately and whole-heartedly.
‘You won’t need me any more, will you, admiral?’ Cloud asked then.
‘I don’t think so—no. Nice job, Cloud.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be on my way, then; the people I picked up must be off my ship by this time. Clear ether.’