amount of heat from the current of hot, moist air I spoke about. It’s a sweet
system—we’ll have to rig up one between Tellus and the moon. Or even between the
Equator and the Arctic Circle there’d be enough thermal differential to give us a million
kilofranks. We haven’t got the all x signal yet, but it’s working—look at it sweat as it
cools down!”
“I’ll say it’s sweating—the water is simply streaming off it!” In their plate they saw
that moisture was already beginning to condense upon the heat-absorber; moisture
running down the fins in streams and creeping over the dull metal floor in sluggish
sheets; moisture which, turning into ice in the colder interior of the checkerwork, again
became fluid at the inrush of hot, wet Saturnian air.
“There’s the signal—all x, Barkovis? By the way it’s condensing water, it seems
to be functioning again.”
“Perfect!” came the Titanian’s enthusiastic reply. “You two planet-dwellers have
done more in three short hours than the entire force of Titan could have accomplished
in months. You have earned, and shall receive, the highest. . .”
“As you were, ace!” Stevens interrupted, embarrassed. “This job was just like
shooting fish down a well, for us. Since you saved our lives, we owe you a lot yet. We’re
coming out—straight up!”
The Forlorn Hope shot upward, through mile after mile of steaming fog, until at
last she broke through into the light, dear outer atmosphere. Stevens located the
Titanian space-ship, and, the two vessels once more hurtling together through the ether
toward Titan, he turned to his companion.
“Take the controls, will you, Nadia? Think I’ll finish up the tube. I brought along a
piece of platinum from the power plant, and something that I think is tantalum, from
Barkovis’ description of it. With those and the fractions we melted out, I think I can make
everything we’ll need.”
Now that he had comparatively pure metal with which to work, drawing the leads
and filaments was relatively a simple task. Working over the hot-bench with torch and
welding projector, he made short work of running the leads through the glass of the
great tube and of sealing them in place. The plates and grids presented more serious
problems; but they were solved and, long before Titan was reached, the tube was out in
space, supported by a Titanian tractor beam between the two vessels. Stevens came
into the shop, holding a modified McLeod gauge which he had just taken from the
interior of the tube. When it had come to equilibrium he read it carefully and yelled.
“Eureka, little fellow! She’s down to where I can’t read it, even on this big
gauge—so hard that it won’t need flashing—harder than any vacuum I ever got on
Tellus, even with a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump!”
“But how about occluded and adsorbed gas in the filaments and so on when they
heat up?” demanded Nadia, practically.
“All gone, ace. I out-gassed ’em plenty out there— seven times, almost to fusion.
There isn’t enough gas left in the whole thing to make a deep breath for a microbe.”
He took up his welding projector and a beam carried him back to the tube. There,
in the practically absolute vacuum of space, the last openings in the glass were sealed,
and man and great transmitting tube were wafted lightly back into the Terrestrial cruiser.
Hour after hour mirrored Titanian sphere and crudely fashioned Terrestrial wedge
bored serenely on through space, and it was not until Titan loomed large beneath them
that the calm was broken by an insistent call from Titan to the sphere.
“Barkodar, attention! Barkodar, attention!” screamed from the speakers, and they
heard Barkovis acknowledge the call.
“The Sedlor have broken through and are marching upon Titania. The order has
gone out for immediate mobilization of every unit.”
“There’s that word ‘Sedlor’ again—what are they, anyway, Steve?” demanded
Nadia.
“I don’t know. I was going to ask him when he sprung it on us first, but he was
pretty busy then and I haven’t thought of it since. Something pretty serious, though —
they’ve jumped their acceleration almost to Tellurian gravity, and none of them can live
through much of that.”
“Tellurians?” came the voice of Barkovis from the speaker. “We have just. . .”
“All x—we were on your wave and heard it,” interrupted Stevens. “We’re with
you. What are those Sedlor, anyway? Maybe we can help you dope out something.”
“Perhaps—but whatever you do, do not use your heat-projector. That would start
a conflagration raging over the whole country, and we shall have enough to do without
fighting fire. But it may be that you have other weapons, of which we are ignorant, and I
can use a little time in explanation before we arrive. The Sedlor are a form of life,
something like your . . .” he paused, searching through his scanty store of Earthly
knowledge, then went on, doubtfully, “perhaps something like your insects. They
developed a sort of intelligence, and because of their fecundity adapted themselves to
their environment as readily as did man; and for ages they threatened man’s supremacy
upon Titan. They devoured vegetation, crops, animals, and mankind. After a world-wide
campaign, however, they were finally exterminated, save in the neighborhood of one
great volcanic crater, which they so honeycombed that it is impregnable. All around that
district we have erected barriers of force, maintained by a corps of men known as
‘Guardians of the Sedlor’. These barriers extend so far into the ground and so high into
the air that the Sedlor can neither burrow beneath them nor fly over them. They were
being advanced as rapidly as possible, and in a few more years the insects would have
been destroyed completely—but now they are again at large. They have probably
developed an armor or a natural resistance greater than the Guardians thought
possible, so that when the walls were weakened, they came through in their millions,
underground and undetected. They are now attacking our nearest city—the one you
know, and which you have called Titania.”
“What do you use—those high-explosive bombs?”
“The bombs were developed principally for use against them, but proved worse
than useless, for we found that when a Sedlor was blown to pieces, each piece forthwith
developed into a new, complete creature. Our most efficient weapons are our heat
rays—not yours, please remember—and poison gas. I must prepare our arms.”
“Would our heat-ray actually set them afire, Steve?” Nadia asked, as the plate
went blank.
“I’ll say it would. I’ll show you what heat means to them—showing you will be
plainer than any amount of explanation,” and he shot the visiray beam down toward the
city of Titania. Into a low-lying building it went, and Nadia saw a Titanian foundry in full
operation. Men clad in asbestos armor were charging, tending, and tapping great
electric furnaces and crucibles, shrinking back and turning their armored heads away as
the hissing, smoking melt crackled into the molds from their long-handled ladles. Nadia
studied the foundry for a moment; interested, but unimpressed.
“Of course it’s hot there—foundries always are hot,” she argued.
“Yes, but you haven’t got the idea yet.” Stevens turned again to the controls,
following the sphere toward what was evidently a line of battle. “That stuff that they are
melting and casting, and that is so hot, is not metal, but ice! Remember that the vital
fluid of all life here, animal and vegetable, corresponding to our water, is probably more
inflammable than gasoline. If they can’t work on ice-water without wearing suits of five-
ply asbestos, what would a real heat-ray do to them? It’d be about like our taking a dive
into the sun!”
“Ice!” she exclaimed. “Oh, of course—but you couldn’t really believe a thing like
that without seeing it, could you ? Oh, Steve—how utterly horrible!”
The Barkodar had dropped down into a line of sister ships, and had gone into
action in midair against a veritable swarm of foes. Winged centipedes they
were—centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselves along the ground and through
the air in furious hordes. From the flying globes emanated pale beams of force, at the
touch of which the Sedlor disappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground huge tractors
and trucks, manned by masked soldiery, mounted mighty reflectors projecting the same
lethal beam. From globes and tanks there sounded a drumming roar, and small
capsules broke in thousands among the foe; emitting a red cloud of gas in which the
centipedes shriveled and died. But for each one that was destroyed two came up from
holes in the ground, and the battle-line fell back toward Titania, back toward a long line
of derrick-like structures which were sinking force-rods into the ground in furious haste.
Stevens flashed on his ultra-violet projector and swung it into the thickest ranks
of the enemy. In the beam many of the monsters died, but the Terrestrial ray was
impotent compared with the weapons of the Titanians, and Stevens, snapping off the