fiber capable of retaining its strength and pliability in the heatless depths of
spacesnapped out and curled around DuQuesne’s bulging space suit.
“I thought you’d use an attractor, but this is probably better, at that,” DuQuesne
commented, as he seized the line in a mailed fist.
“Yeah. I haven’t had much practice with them on delicate and accurate work. If I had
missed you with this line I could have thrown it again; but if I missed this opening with you
on a beam and shaved your suit off on this sharp edge, I figured it’d be just too bad.”
The two men again in the control room and the vessel once more leveled out in headlong
flight, Loring broke the silence:
“That idea of being punctured by a meteorite didn’t pan out so heavy. How would it be to
have one of the crew go space-crazy and wreck the boat from the inside? They do that
sometimes, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do. That’s an idea-thanks. I’ll study up on the symptoms. I have a lot more
studying to do, anywaythere’s a lot of stuff I haven’t got yet. This metal, for instance-we
couldn’t possibly build a Fenachrone battleship on Earth. I had no idea that any possible
substance could be as resistant as the shell of this ship is. Of course, there are, many
unexplored areas in these brains here, and quite a few high-class brains aboard our
mother ship that I haven’t even seen yet. The secret of the composition of this metal
must be in some of them.”
“Well, while you’re getting their stuff, I suppose I’d better fly at that job of rebuilding our
drive. I’ll have time enough all right, you think?”
“Certain of it. I have learned that their system is ample. It’s automatic and foolproof.
They have warning long before anything can possibly happen. They can, and do, spot
trouble over a light-week away, so their plans allow one week to perfect their defenses.
You can change the power plant over in three or four days, so we’re well in the clear on
that. I may not be done with my studies by that time, but I shall have learned enough to
take effective action. You work on the drive and keep house. I will study Fenachrone
science and so on, answer calls, make reports, and arrange the details of what is to
happen when we come within the volume of space assigned to our mother ship.”
Thus for days each man devoted himself to his task. Loring rebuilt the power plant of the
short-ranging scout patrol into the terrific open-space drive of the first-line battleships
and performed the simple routines of their Spartan housekeeping. DuQuesne cut himself
short on sleep and spent every possible hour in transferring to his own brain every worth-
while bit of knowledge which had been possessed by the commander and crew of the
patrol ship which he had captured.
Periodically, however, he would close the sending circuit and report the position and
progress of his vessel, precisely on time and observing strictly all the military minutiae
called for by the manual-the while watching appreciatively and with undisguised
admiration the flawless execution of that stupendous plan of defense.
The change-over finished, Loring went in search of DuQuesne, whom he found
performing a strenuous setting-up exercise. The scientist’s face was pale, haggard, and
drawn.
“What’s the matter, chief?” Loring asked. “You look kind of peaked.”
“Peaked is good-I’m just about bushed. This thing of getting a hundred and ninety years
of solid education in a few days would hardly come under the heading of light
amusement. Are you done?”
“gone and checked-O.K.”
“Good! I am, too. It won’t take us long to get to our destination now; our mother ship
should be just about at her post by this time.”
Now that the vessel was approaching the location assigned to it in the plan, and since
DuQuesne had already taken from the brains of the dead Fenachrone all that he wanted
of their knowledge, he threw their bodies into space and rayed them out of existence.
The other corpse he left lying, a bloated and ghastly mass, in the forward compartment
as he prepared to send in what was to be his last flight report to the office of the general
in command- of the plan of defense.
“His high-mightiness doesn’t know it, but that is the last call he is going to get from this
unit,” DuQuesne remarked, leaving the sender and stepping over to the control board.
“Now we can leave our prescribed course and go where we can do ourselves some
good. First, we’ll find the Violet. I haven’t heard of her being spotted and destroyed as a
menace to navigation, so we’ll look her up and start her off for home.”
“Why?” asked the henchman. “Thought we were all done with her.”
“We probably are, but if it should turn out that Seaton is back of all this excitement, our
having her may save us a trip back to the Earth. Ah, there she is, right on schedule! I’ll
bring her alongside and set her controls on a distance squared decrement, so that when
she gets out into free space she’ll have a constant velocity.”
“Think she’ll get out into free space through those screens?”
“They will detect her, of course, but when they see that she is an abandoned derelict and
headed out of their system they’ll probably let her go. It will be no great loss, of course,
if they do burn her: ‘
Thus it came about that the spherical cruiser of the void shot away from the then feeble
gravitation of the vast but distant planet of the Fenachrone. Through the outer detector
screens she tore. Searching beams explored her instantly and thoroughly; but since she
was so evidently a deserted hulk and since the Fenachrone cared nothing now for
impediments to navigation beyond their screens, she was not pursued.
On and on she sped, her automatic controls reducing her power in exact ratio to the
square of the distance attained; on and on, her automatic deflecting detectors swinging
her around suns and solar systems and back upon her original right line; on and on
toward the Green System, the central system of this the First Galaxy-our own native
island universe.
3 DUQUESNE CAPTURES A BATTLESHIP
“Now we’ll get ready to take that battleship.”
DuQuesne turned to his aid as the Violet disappeared from their sight. “Your suggestion
that one of the crew of this ship could have gone space-crazy was sound, and I have
planned our approach to the mother ship on that basis.
“We must wear Fenachrone space suits for three reasons: First, because it is. the only
possible way to make us look even remotely like them, and we shall have to stand a
casual inspection. Second, because it is general orders that all Fenachrone soldiers must
wear suits while at their posts in space. Third, because we shall have lost most of our
air. You can wear one of their suits without any difficulty-the surplus circumference will
not trouble you very much. I, on the contrary, cannot even get into one, since they’re
almost a foot too short.
“I must have a suit on, though, before we board the battleship; so I shall wear my own,
with one of theirs over it-with the feet cut off so that I can get it on. Since I shall not be
able to stand up or to move around without giving everything away because of my length,
I’ll have to be unconscious and folded up so that my height will not be too apparent, and
you will have to be the star performer during the first act.
“But this detailed instruction by word of mouth takes altogether too much time. Put on
this headset and I’ll shoot you the whole scheme, together with whatever additional
Fenachrone knowledge you will need to put the act across.”
A brief exchange of thoughts and of ideas followed. Then, every detail made clear, the
two Terrestrials donned the space suits of the very short, but enormously wide and thick,
monstrosities in semihuman form who were so bigotedly working toward their day of
universal conquest.
DuQuesne picked up in his doubly mailed hands a massive bar of metal. “Ready, Doll?
When I swing this we cross the Rubicon.”
“It’s all right by me. All or nothing-shoot the works!”
DuQuesne swung his mighty bludgeon aloft, and as it descended the telemental recorder
sprang into a shower of shattered tubes, flying coils, and broken insulation. The visiray
appratus went next, followed in swift succession by the superficial air controls, the map
cases, and practically everything else that was breakable; until it was clear to even the
most casual observer that a madman had in truth wrought his frenzied will throughout the
room. One final swing wrecked the controls of the airlocks, and the atmosphere within
the vessel began to whistle out into. the vacuum of space through the broken bleeder