need it. Since these small ships are designed for purely local scout work, though, they
are comparatively slow and would certainly be destroyed in any such cosmic explosion
as is manifestly a possibility. That possibility is very remote, it is true, but it should be
taken into consideration.”
“So what? You’re talking yourself around a circle, right back to where you started from.”
“Only, considering the thing from all angles.” DuQuesne was unruffled. “We have lots of
time, since it will take them quite a while to perfect this formation. To finish the summing
up-we want to use this vessel, but is it safe? It is. Why? Because the Fenachrone, having
had atomic energy themselves for a long time, are thoroughly familiar with its possibilities
and have undoubtedly perfected screens through which. no such bomb could penetrate.
“Furthermore, we can install the highspeed drive in this ship in a few days-I gave you all
the dope on it over the educator, you know-so that we’ll be safe, whatever happens.
That’s the safest plan, and it will work. So you move the stores and our most necessary
personal belongings in here while I’m figuring out an orbit for the Violet. We don’t want
her anywhere near us, and yet we want her to be within reaching distance while we are
piloting this scout ship of ours to the place where she is supposed to be in Plan X821 S.”
“What are you going to do that for-to give them a chance to knock us off?”
“No. I need some time to study these brains, and it will take some time for that battleship
mother ship of ours to get into her assigned position, where we can steal her most
easily.” DuQuesne, however, did not at once remove his headset, but remained standing,
where he was, silent and thoughtful.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Loring. “I’m thinking the same thing you are. Suppose that it is Seaton
that’s got them all hot and bothered this way?”
“The thought has occurred to me several times, and I have considered it at length,”
DuQuesne admitted at-last. “However, I have concluded that it is not Seaton. For if it is,
he must have a lot more stuff than I think he has. I do not believe that he can possibly
have learned that much in the short time he has had to work in. I may be wrong, of
course; but the immediately necessary steps toward the seizure of that battleship remain
unchanged whether I am right or wrong; whether or not Seaton was the cause of this
disturbance.”
The conversation definitely at an end, Loring again encased himself in his space suit and
set to work. For hours he labored, silently and efficiently, at transferring enough of their
Earthly possessions and stores to render possible an extended period of living aboard
the vessel of the Fenachrone.
He had completed that task and was assembling the apparatus and equipment
necessary for the rebuilding of the power plant before DuQuesne finished the long and
complex computations involved in determining the direction and magnitude of the force
required to give the Violet the exact trajectory he desired. The problem was finally solved
and checked, however, and DuQuesne rose to his feet, closing his book of nine-place
logarithms with a snap.
“All done with the Violet, Doll?” he asked, donning his armor.
“Yes ”
“Fine! I’ll go aboard and push her off, after we do a little stage-setting here. Take that
body there-I don’t need it any more, since he didn’t know much of anything, anyway and
toss it into the nose compartment. Then shut that bulkhead door, tight. I’m going to drill a
couple of holes through there from the Violet before I give her the gun.”
“I see-going to make us look disabled, whether we are or not, huh?”
“Exactly! We’ve got to have a good excuse for our visirays being out of order. I can make
reports all right on the communicator, and send and receive code messages and orders,
but we certainly couldn’t stand a close-up inspection on a visiplate. Also, we’ve got to
have some kind of an excuse for signaling to and approaching our mother battleship. We
will have been hit and punctured by a meteorite. Pretty thin excuse, but it probably will
serve for as long a time as we will need.”
After DuQuesne had made sure that the small compartment in the prow of the vessel
contained nothing of use to them, the body of one of the Fenachrone was thrown
carelessly into it, the air-tight bulkhead was closed and securely locked, and the chief
marauder stepped into the airlock.
“As soon as I get her exactly on course and velocity, I’ll step out into space and you can
pick me up;” he directed briefly, and was gone.
In the Violet’s engine room DuQuesne released the anchoring attractor beams and
backed off to a few hundred yards’ distance. He spun a couple of wheels briefly, pressed
a switch, and from the Violet’s heaviest needle-ray projector there flashed out against
the prow of the scout patrol a pencil of incredibly condensed destruction.
Dunark, the crown prince of Kondal, had developed that stabbing ray as the culminating
ultimate weapon of ten thousand years of Osnomian warfare: and, driven by even the
comparatively feeble energies known to the denizens of the Green System before
Seaton’s advent, no known substance had been able to resist for more than a moment its
corrosively, annihilatingly poignant thrust.
And now this furious stiletto of pure energy, driven by the full power of four hundred
pounds of disintegrating atomic copper, at this point-blank range, was hurled against the
mere inch of transparent material which comprised the skin of the tiny cruiser. DuQuesne
expected no opposition, for with a beam less potent by far he bad consumed utterly a
vessel built of arenak-arenak, that Osnomian synthetic which is five hundred times as
strong, tough, and hard as Earth’s strongest, toughest, and hardest alloy steel.
Yet that annihilating needle, of force struck that transparent surface and rebounded from
it in scintillating torrents of fire. Struck and rebounded,,. struck and clung; boring in
almost imperceptibly as its irresistible energy tore apart, electron by electron, the
surprisingly obdurate substance of the cruiser’s wall. For that substance.. was the
ultimate synthetic-the one limiting material possessing the utmost measure of strength,
hardness, tenacity, and rigidity theoretically possible to any substance built up from the
building blocks of ether-borne electrons. This substance, developed by the master
scientists of the Fenachrone, was in fact identical with the Norlaminian synthetic metal,
inoson, from which Rovol and his aids had constructed for Seaton his gigantic ship of
space-Skylark Three.
For five long minutes DuQuesne held that terrific beam against the point of attack, then
shut it off; for it had consumed less than half the thickness of the scout patrol’s outer
skin. True, the focal area of the energy was an almost invisibly violet glare of
incandescence, so intensely hot that the concentric shading off through blinding white,
yellow, and bright-red heat brought the zone of dull red far down the side of the vessel;
but that awful force had had practically no effect upon the space worthiness of the
stanch little craft.
“No use, Loring!” DuQuesne spoke calmly into the transmitter inside his face-plate. True
scientist that he was, he neither expressed nor felt anger or bafflement when an idea
failed to work, but abandoned it promptly and completely, without rancor or repining. “No
possible meteorite could puncture that shell. Stand by!”
He inspected the power meters briefly, made several readings through the filar
micrometer of number six visiplate, and checked the vernier readings of the great circles
of the gyroscopes against the figures in his notebook. Then, assured that the Violet was
following precisely the predetermined course, he entered the airlock, waved a bloated
arm at the watchful Loring, and coolly stepped off into space. The heavy outer door
clanged shut behind him, and the globular ship of space rocketed onward; while
DuQuesne fell with a sickening acceleration toward the mighty planet of the Fenachrone,
so many thousands of miles below.
That fall did not long endure. Loring, now a space pilot second to none, had held his
vessel even with the Violet; matching exactly her course, pace, and acceleration at a
distance of barely a hundred feet. He had cut off all his power as DuQuesne’s right foot
left the Osnomian vessel, and now falling man and plunging scout ship plummeted
downward together at the same mad pace; the man drifting slowly toward the ship
because of the slight energy of his step into space from the Violet’s side and beginning
slowly to turn over as he fell. So good had been Loring’s spacemanship that the scout did
not even roll; DuQuesne was still opposite her starboard airlock when Loring stood in its
portal and tossed a space line to his superior. This line-a small, tightly stranded cable of