quickly; so quickly that Jupiter loomed large and the Saturnian beam of power began to
attenuate almost before the Terrestrials realized that their journey was drawing to an
end.
“Our beam’s falling apart fast,” Stevens read his meters carefully, then swung his
communicator beam toward Jupiter. “We aren’t getting quite enough power to hold our
acceleration at normal—think I’ll cut now, while we’re still drawing enough to let the
Titanians know we’re off their beam. We’ve got lots of power of our own now; and we’re
getting pretty close to enemy territory, so that they may locate that heavy beam. Have
you found Ganymede yet?”
“Yes, it will be on the other side of Jupiter by the time we get there. Shall I detour,
or put on a little more negative and wait for it to come around to this side ?”
“Better wait, I think. The further away we stay from Jupiter and the major
satellites, the better.”
“All x—it’s on. Suppose we’d better start standing watches, in case some of them
show up?”
“No use,” he dissented. “I’ve been afraid to put out our electro-magnetic
detectors, as they could surely trace them in use. Without them, we couldn’t spot an
enemy ship even if we were looking right at it, except by accident; since they won’t be
lighted up and it’s awfully hard to see anything out here, anyway. We probably won’t
know that they’re within a million kilometers until they put a beam on us. Barkovis says
that this mirror will reflect any beam they can use, and I’ve already got a set of photo-
cells in circuit to ring an alarm at the first flash off of our mirror plating. I’d like to get in
the first licks myself, but I haven’t been able to dope out any way of doing it. So you
might as well sleep in your own room, as usual, and I’ll camp here right under the panel
until we get to Ganymede. There’s a couple of little things I just thought of, though, that
may help some; and I’m going to do ’em right now.”
Putting on his space-suit, he picked up a power drill and went out into the bitter
cold of the outer structure. There he attacked the inner wall of their vessel, and the
carefully-established inter-wall vacuum disappeared in a screaming hiss of air as the
tempered point bit through plate after plate.
“What’s the idea, Steve?” Nadia asked, when he had re-entered the control
room. “Now you’ll have all that pumping to do over again.”
“Protection for the mirrors,” he explained. “You see, they aren’t perfect reflectors.
There’s a little absorption, so that some stuff comes through. Not much, of course; but
enough to kill some of those Titanians and almost enough to ruin their ship got through
in about ten minutes, and only one enemy was dealing it out. We can stand more than
they could, of course, but the mirror itself won’t stand much more heat than it was
absorbing then. But with air in those spaces instead of vacuum, and with the whole
mass of the Hope except this one lifeboat as cold as it is, I figure that there’ll be enough
conduction and convection through them to keep the outer wall and the mirror
cold—cool enough, at least, to hold the mirror on for an hour. If only one ship tackles us
it won’t be bad—but I figure that if there’s only one, we’re lucky.”
Stevens’ fears were only too well grounded, for during the “evening” of the
following day, while he was carefully scanning the heavens for some sign of enemy
craft, the alarm bell over his head burst into its brazen clamor. Instantly he shot out the
detectors and ultra-lights and saw not one, but six of the deadly globes—almost upon
them, at point-blank range! One was already playing a beam of force upon the Forlorn
Hope, and the other five went into action immediately upon feeling the detector
impulses and perceiving that the weapon of their sister ship had encountered an
unusual resistance in the material of that peculiarly mirrored wedge. As those terrific
forces struck her the Terrestrial cruiser became a vast pyrotechnic set-piece, a dazzling
fountain of coruscant brilliance: for the mirror held. The enemy beams shot back upon
themselves and rebounded in all directions, in the same spectacular exhibition of
frenzied incandescence which had marked the resistance of the Titanian sphere to a
similar attack.
But Stevens was not idle. In the instant of launching his detectors, as fast as he
could work the trips, four of the frightful nitrogen bombs of Titan—all that he could
handle at once—shot out into space, their rocket-tubes flaring viciously. The enemy
detectors of course located the flying torpedoes immediately, but, contemptuous of
material projectiles, the spheres made no attempt to dodge, but merely lashed out upon
them with their ravening rays. So close was the range that they had no time to avoid the
radio-directed bombs after discovering that their beams were useless against the
unknown protective covering of those mirrored shells. There were four practically
simultaneous detonations—silent, but terrific explosions as the pent-up internal energy
of solid pentavalent nitrogen was instantaneously released—and the four insensately
murderous spheres disappeared into jagged fragments of wreckage, flying wildly away
from the centers of explosion. One great mass of riven and twisted metal was blown
directly upon the fifth globe, and Nadia stared in horrified fascination at the silent crash
as the entire side of the ship crumpled inward like a shell of cardboard under the awful
impact. That vessel was probably out of action, but Stevens was taking no chances. As
soon as he had clamped a tractor rod upon the sixth and last of the enemy fleet he
drove a torpedo through the gaping wall and into the interior of the helpless war-vessel.
There he exploded it, and the awful charge, detonated in that confined space, literally
tore the globular space-ship to bits.
“We’ll show these jaspers what kind of trees make shingles!” he gritted between
clenched teeth; and his eyes, hard now as gray iron, fairly emitted sparks as he
launched four torpedoes upon the sole remaining globe of the squadron of the void.
“I’ve had a lot of curiosity to know just what kind of unnatural monstrosities can possibly
have such fiendish dispositions as they’ve got—but beasts, men, or devils, they’ll find
they’ve grabbed something this time they can’t let go of,” and fierce blasts of energy
ripped from the exhausts as he drove his missiles, at their highest possible acceleration,
toward the captive sphere so savagely struggling at the extremity of his tractor beam.
But that one remaining vessel was to prove no such easy victim as had its sister
ships. Being six to one, and supposedly invincible, the squadron had been
overconfident and had attacked carelessly, -with only its crippling slicing beams instead
of its more deadly weapons of total destruction ; and so fierce and hard had been
Stevens’ counter-attack that five of its numbers had been destroyed before they realized
what powerful armament was mounted by that apparently crude, helpless, and
innocuous wedge. The sixth, however, was fully warned, and every resource at the
command of its hellish crew was now being directed against the Forlorn Hope.
Sheets, cones, and gigantic rods of force flashed and crackled. Space was filled
with silent, devastating tongues of flame. The Forlorn Hope was dragged about
erratically as the sphere tried to dodge those hurtling torpedoes; tried to break away
from the hawser of energy anchoring her so solidly to her opponent. But the linkage
held, and closer and closer Stevens drove the fourfold menace of his frightful dirigible
bombs. Pressor beams beat upon them in vain. Hard driven as those pushers were they
could find no footing, but were reflected at obtuse angles by that untouchable mirror and
their utmost force scarcely impeded the progress of the rocket-propelled missiles.
Comparatively small as the projectiles were, however, they soon felt the effects of the
prodigious beams of heat enveloping them, and torpedo after torpedo exploded
harmlessly in space as their mirrors warmed .up and volatilized. But for each bomb that
was lost Stevens launched another, and each one came closer to its objective than had
its predecessor.
Made desperate by the failure of his every beam, the enemy commander thought
to use material projectiles himself—weapons abandoned long since by his race as
antiquated and inefficient, but a few of which were still carried “by the older types of
vessels. One such shell was found and launched—but in the instant of its launching
Stevens’ foremost bomb struck its mark and exploded. So close were the other three
bombs that they also let go at the shock; and the warlike sphere, hemmed in by four
centers of explosion, flew apart—literally pulverized. Its projectile, so barely discharged,
did not explode—it was loaded with material which could be detonated only by the
warhead upon impact or by a radio signal. It was, however, deflected markedly from its