tubes.
“All right, Doll, do your stuff!” DuQuesne directed crisply, and threw himself headlong into
a corner, falling into an inert, grotesque huddle.
Loring, now impersonating the dead commanding officer of the scout ship, sat down at
the manual sender, which had not been seriously damaged, and in true Fenachrone
fashion laid a beam to the mother ship.
“Scout ship K3296, Sublieutenant Grenimar commanding, sending emergency distress
message,” he tapped out fluently. “Am not using telemental recorder, as required by
regulations, because nearly all instruments wrecked. Private 244C14, on watch, suddenly
seized with space insanity, smashed air valves, instruments, and controls. Opened lock
and leaped out into space. I was awake and got into suit before my room lost pressure.
My other man, 397B42, was unconscious when I reached him, but believe I got him into
his suit soon enough so that his life can be saved by prompt aid. 244C14 of course dead,
but I recovered his body as per general orders and am saving it so that brain lesions may
be studied by College of Science. Repaired this manual sender and have ship under
partial control. Am coming toward you, decelerating to stop in fifteen minutes. Suggest
you handle this ship with beam when approach as I have no fine controls. Signing off
K3296.”
“Superdreadnought Z12Q, acknowledging emergency distress message of scout ship
K3296,” came almost instant answer. “Will meet you and handle you as suggested.
Signing off-Z12Q.”
Rapidly the two ships of space drew together; the patrol boat now stationary with
respect to the planet, the huge battleship decelerating at maximum. Three enormous
beams reached out and, held at prow, midsection, and stern, the tiny flier was drawn
rapidly but carefully against the towering side of her mother ship. The double seals
engaged and locked; the massive doors began to open.
Now came the most crucial point of DuQuesne’s whole scheme. For that warship carried
a complement of nearly a hundred men, and ten or a dozen of them-the lock commander,
surgeons and orderlies certainly, and possibly a corps of mechanics as well-would be
.massed in the airlock room behind those slowly opening barriers. But in that scheme’s –
very audacity lay its great strength-its almost complete assurance of success. For what
Fenachrone, with the inborn consciousness of superiority that was his heritage, would
even dream that two members of any alien race would have the sheer, brazen effrontery
to dare to attack a full-manned Class Z superdreadnought, one of the most formidable
structures that had ever lifted its stupendous mass into the ether?
But DuQuesne so dared. Direct action had always been his forte. Apparently impossible
odds had never daunted him. He had always planned his coups carefully, then followed
those plans coldly and ruthlessly to their logical and successful conclusions. Two men
could do this job very nicely, and would so do it. DuQuesne had chosen Loring with care.
Therefore he lay at ease in his armor in front of the slowly opening portal, calmly certain
that the iron nerves of his assassin aid would not weaken for even the instant necessary
to disrupt his carefully laid plan.
As soon as the doors had opened sufficiently to permit ingress, Loring went through them
slowly, carrying the supposedly unconscious man with care. But once inside the opaque
walls of the lock room, that slowness became activity incarnate. DuQuesne sprang
instantly to his full height, and before the clustered officers could even perceive that
anything was amiss, four sure hands had trained upon them the deadliest hand weapons
known to the science of their own race.
Since DuQuesne was overlooking no opportunity of acquiring knowledge, the heads were
spared; but as the four furious blasts of vibratory energy tore through those massive
bodies, making of their every internal organ a mass of disorganized protoplasmic pulp,
every Fenachrone in the room fell lifeless to the floor before he could move a hand in
self-defense.
Dropping his weapons, DuQuesne wrenched off his helmet, while Loring with deft hands
bared the head of the senior officer of the group upon the floor. Headsets flashed out-
were clamped into place-dials were set-the scientist shot power into the tubes,
transferring into his own brain an entire section of the dead brain before him.
His senses reeled under the shock, but he recovered quickly, and even as he threw off
the phones Loring slammed down over his head the helmet of the Fenachrone.
DuQuesne was now commander of the airlocks, and the break in communication had
been of such short duration that not the slightest suspicion had been aroused. He
snapped out mental orders to the distant power room, the side of the vessel opened, and
the scout ship was drawn within.
“All tight, sir,” he reported to the captain, and the Z12Q began to retrace her path in
space.
DuQuesne’s first objective had been attained without untoward incident. The second
objective, the control room, might present more difficulty, since its occupants would be
scattered. However, to neutralize this difficulty, the Earthly attackers could work with
bare hands and thus with the weapons with which both were thoroughly familiar.
Removing their gauntlets, the two men ran lightly toward that holy of Fenachrone holies,
the control room. Its door was guarded, but DuQuesne had known that it would be –
wherefore the guards went down before they could voice a challenge. The door crashed
open and four heavy, long barreled automatics began vomiting forth a leaden storm of
death. Those pistols were gripped in accustomed and steady hands; those hands in turn
were actuated by the ruthless brains of heartless, conscienceless, and merciless killers.
His second and major objective gained, DuQuesne proceeded at once to consolidate his
position. Pausing only to learn from the brain of the dead captain the exact technique of
procedure, he summoned into the sanctum, one at a time, every member of the gigantic
vessel’s crew. Man after man they came, in answer to the summons of their all-powerful
captain-and man after man they died.
Take the educator and get some of their surgeon’s skill,” DuQuesne directed curtly, after
the last member of the crew had been accounted for. “Take off the heads and put them
where they’ll keep. Throw the rest of the rubbish out. Never mind about this captain-I
want to study him.”
Then, while Loring busied himself at his grisly task, DuQuesne sat at the captain’s bench,
read the captain’s brain, and sent in to general headquarters the captain’s regular routine
reports.
“All cleaned up. Now what?” Loring was as spick-and-span, as calmly unruffled, as
though he were reporting in one of the private rooms of the Perkins Café. “Start back to
the Earth?”
“Not yet.” Even though DuQuesne had captured his battleship, thereby performing the
almost impossible, he was not yet content. “There are a lot of things to learn here yet,
and I think that we had better stay here as long as possible and learn them; provided we
can do so without incurring any extra risks. As far as actual flight goes, two men can
handle this ship as well as a hundred, since her machinery is all automatic. Therefore we
can run away any time.
“We could not fight, however, as it takes about thirty men to handle her weapons. But
fighting would do no good, anyway, because they could outnumber us a hundred to one
in a few hours. All of which means that if we go out beyond the detector screens we will
not be able to come back we had better stay here, so as to be able to take advantage of
any favorable developments.”
He fell silent, frowningly concentrated upon some problem obscure to his companion. At
last he went to the main control panel and busied himself with a device of photo cells,
coils, and kino bulbs; whereupon Loring set about preparing a long-delayed meal.
“It’s all hot, chief-come and get it,” the aid invited, when he saw that his superior’s
immediate task was done. “What’s the idea? Didn’t they have enough controls there
already?”
“The idea is, Doll, not to take any unnecessary chances. Ah, this goulash hits the spot!”
DuQuesne ate appreciatively for a few minutes in silence, then went on: “Three things
may happen to interfere with the continuation of our search for knowledge. First, since
we are now in command of a Fenachrone mother ship, I have to report to headquarters
on the telemental recorder, and they may catch me in a slip any minute, which will mean
a massed attack. Second, the enemy may break through the Fenachrone defenses and
precipitate a general engagement. Third, there is still the bare possibility of that cosmic
explosion I told you about.
“In that connection, it is quite obvious that an atomic explosion wave of that type would
be propagated with the velocity of light. Therefore, even though our ship could run away
from it, since we have an acceleration of five times that velocity, yet we could not see