that such an explosion had occurred until the wave-front had reached us. Then, of
course, it would be too late to do anything about it, because what an atomic explosion
wave would do to the dense material of this battleship would be simply nobody’s
business.
“We might get away if one of us had his hands actually on the controls and had his eyes
and his brain right on the job, but that is altogether too much to expect of flesh and blood.
No brain can be maintained at its highest pitch for any length of time.”
“So what?” Loring said laconically. If the chief was not worried about these things, the
henchman would not be worried either.
“So I rigged up a detector that is both automatic and instantaneous. At the first touch of
any unusual vibration it will throw in the full space drive and will shoot us directly away
from the point of disturbance. Now we shall be absolutely safe, no matter what happens.
“We are safe from any possible attack; neither the Fenachrone nor our common enemy,
whoever they are, can harm us. We are safe even from the atomic explosion of the entire
planet. We shall stay here until we get everything that we want. Then we shall go back to
the Green System. We shall find Seaton.”
His entire being grew grim and implacable, his voice became harder and colder even than
its hard and cold wont. “We shall blow him clear out of the ether. The world-yes,
whatever I want of the galaxy-shall be mine!”
4 A WORLD IS DESTROYED
Only a few days were required for the completion of DuQuesne’s Fenachrone education,
since not many of the former officers of the battleship could add much to the already vast
knowledge possessed by the Terrestrial scientist. Therefore the time soon came when
he had nothing to occupy either his vigorous body or his voracious mind, and the self-
imposed idleness irked his active spirit sorely.
“If nothing is going to happen out here we might as well get started back; this present
situation is intolerable,” he declared to Loring, and proceeded to lay spy rays to various
strategic points of the enormous shell of defense, and even to the sacred precints of
headquarters itself.
“They will probably catch me at this, and when they do it will blow the lid off; but since
we are all ready for the break we don’t care now how soon it comes. There’s something
gone sour somewhere, and it may do -us some good to know something about it.”
“Sour? Along what line?”
“The mobilization has slowed down. The first phase went off beautifully, you know, right
on schedule; but lately things have slowed down. That doesn’t seem just right, since their
plans are all dynamic, not static. Of course general headquarters isn’t advertising it to us
outlying captains, but I think I can sense an undertone of uneasiness. That’s why I am
doing this little job of spying, to get the low-down . . . Ah, I thought so! Look here, Doll!
See those gaps on the defense map? Over half of their big ships are not in position -look
at those tracer reports-not a battleship that was out in space has come back, and a lot
of them. are more than a week overdue. I’ll say that’s something we ought to know
about-”
“Observation Officer of the Z12Q, attention!” snapped from the tight-beam headquarters
communicator. “Cut off those spy rays and report yourself under arrest for treason!”
“Not to-day,” DuQuesne drawled. “Besides, I can’t-I am in command here now.”
“Open your visiplate to full aperture!” The staff officer’s voice was choked with fury;
never in his long life had he been so grossly insulted by a mere captain of the line.
DuQuesne opened the plate, remarking to Loring as he did so; “This is the blow-off, all
right. No possible way of stalling him off now, even if I wanted to; and I really want to tell
them a few things before we shove off.”
“Where are the men who should be at stations?” the furious voice demanded.
“Dead,” DuQuesne replied laconically.
“Dead! And you have reported nothing amiss?” He turned from his own microphone, but
DuQuesne and Loring could hear his savage commands:
“K1427-Order the twelfth squadron to bring in the Z12Q!”
He spoke again to the rebellious and treasonable observer: “And you have made your
helmet opaque to the rays of this plate, another violation of the code. Take it off!” The
speaker fairly rattled under the bellowing voice of the outraged general. “If you live long
enough to get here, you will- pay the full penalty for treason, insubordination, and conduct
unbecom—”
“Oh, shut up, you yapping nincompoop!” snapped DuQuesne.
Wrenching off his helmet, he thrust his blackly forbidding face directly before the
visiplate; so that the raging officer stared, from a distance of only eighteen inches, not
into the cowed and frightened face of a guiltily groveling subordinate, but into the proud
and sneering visage of Marc C. DuQuesne, of Earth.
And DuQuesne’s whole being radiated open and supreme contempt, the most gallingly
nauseous dose possible to inflict upon any member of that race of self-styled supermen,
the Fenachrone. As he stared at the Earthman the general’s tirade broke off in the
middle of a word and he fell back speechless-robbed, it seemed, almost of
consciousness by the shock.
“You asked for it-you got it-now just what are you going to do about it?” DuQuesne
spoke aloud, to render even more trenchantly cutting the crackling mental comments as
they leaped across space, each thought lashing the officer like the biting, tearing tip of a
bull-whip.
“Better men than you have been beaten by overconfidence,” he went on, “and better
plans than yours have come to nothing through underestimating the resources in brain
and power of the opposition. You are not the first race in the history of the universe to go
down because of false pride, and you will not be the last. You thought that my comrade
and I bad been taken and killed. You thought so because I wanted you so to think. In
reality we took that scout ship, and when we wanted it we took this battleship as easily.
“We have been here, in the very heart of your defense system, for ten days. We have
obtained everything that we set out to get; we have learned everything that we set out to
learn. If we wished to take it, your entire planet could offer us no more resistance than
did these vessels, but we do not want it.
“Also, after due deliberation, we have decided that the universe would be much better off
without any Fenachrone in it. Therefore your race will of course soon disappear; and
since we do not want your planet, we will see to it that no one else will want it, at least
for some few eons of time to come. Think that over, as long as you are able to think.
Good-by!”
DuQuesne cut off the visiray with a vicious twist and turned to Loring. “Pure boloney, of
course!” he sneered. “But as long as they don’t know that fact it’ll probably hold them for
a while.”
“Better start drifting for home, hadn’t we? They’ll be coming out after us.”
“We certainly had.” DuQuesne strolled leisurely across the room toward the controls.
“We hit them hard, in a mighty tender spot, and they will make it highly unpleasant for us
if we linger around here much longer. ‘But we are in no danger. There is no tracer on this
ship-they use them only on long-distance cruisers-so they’ll have no idea where to look
for us. Also, I don’t believe that they’ll even try to chase us, because I gave them a lot to
think about for some time to come, even if it wasn’t true.”
But DuQuesne had spoken far more truly than he knew -his “boloney”, was in fact a
coldly precise statement of an awful truth even then about to be made manifest. For at
that very moment Dunark of Osnome was reaching for the switch whose closing would
send a detonating current through the thousands of tons of sensitized atomic copper
already placed by Seaton in their deep-buried emplantments upon the noisome planet of
the Fenachrone.
DuQuesne knew that the outlying vessels of the monsters had not returned to base, but
he did not know that Seaton had destroyed them, one and all, in open space; he did not
know that his arch-foe was the being who was responsible for the failure of the
Fenachrone space ships to come back from their horrible voyages.
Upon the other hand, while Seaton knew that there were battleships afloat in the ether
within the protecting screens of the planet, he had no inkling that one of those very
battleships was manned by his two bitterest and most vindictive enemies, the official and