can come loaded for bear; they’re bad medicine. Call us occasionally, to keep us
informed as to when to expect you, but don’t call too often. We don’t want them locating
you, and if they should locate us through your ray or ours, it would be just too bad. So-
long. Stevens and Newton.”
Nadia had insisted upon staying up and had been brewing pot after pot of her
substitute for coffee while he sat at the key; and it was almost daylight when he finally
shut off the power and arose, his right arm practically paralyzed from the unaccustomed
strain of hours of telegraphing.
“Well, sweetheart, that’s that!” he exclaimed in relief. “Brandon and Westfall are
on the job. Nothing to do now but wait, and study up on our own account on those
Jovians’ rays. This has been one long day for us, though, little ace of my heart, and I
suggest that we sleep for about a week!”
CHAPTER 8
Callisto to the Rescue
All humanity of Callisto, the fourth major satellite of Jupiter, had for many years been
waging a desperate and apparently hopeless defense against invading hordes of six-
limbed beings. Every city and town had long since been reduced to level fields of lava
by the rays of the invaders. Every building and every trace of human civilization had
long since disappeared from the surface of the satellite. Far below the surface lay the
city of Zbardk, the largest of the few remaining strongholds of the human race. At one
portal of the city a torpedo-shaped, stubby-winged rocket plane rested in the carriage of
a catapult. Near it the captain addressed briefly the six men normally composing his
crew.
“Men, you already know that our cruise today is not an ordinary patrol. We are to
go to One, there to destroy a base of the hexans. We have perhaps one chance in ten
thousand of returning. Therefore I am taking only one man—barely enough to operate
the plane. Volunteers step one pace forward.”
The six stepped forward as one man, and a smile came over the worn face of
their leader as he watched them draw lots for the privilege of accompanying him to
probable death. The two men entered the body of the torpedo, sealed the openings, and
waited.
“Free exits?” snapped the Captain of the Portal, and twelve keen-eyed observers
minutely studied screens and instrument panels connected to the powerful automatic
lookout stations beneath the rims of the widely separated volcanic craters from which
their craft could issue into Callisto’s somber night.
“No hexan radiation can be detected from Exit Eight,” came the report. The
Captain of the Portal raised an arm in warning, threw in the guides, and the two
passengers were hurled violently backward, deep into their cushioned seats, as the
catapult shot their plane down the runway. As the catapult’s force was spent automatic
trips upon the undercarriage actuated the propelling rockets and mile after mile, with
rapidly mounting velocity, the plane sped through the tube. As the exit was approached
the tunnel described a long vertical curve, so that when the opening into the shaft of the
crater was reached and the undercarriage was automatically detached the vessel was
projected almost vertically upward. Such was its velocity and so powerful was the liquid
propellant of its rocket motors that the eye could not follow the flight of the warship as it
tore through the thin layer of the atmosphere and hurled itself out into the depths of
space.
“Did we get away ?” asked the captain, hands upon his controls and eyes upon
his moving chart of space.
“I believe so, sir,” answered the other officer, at the screens of the six periscopic
devices which covered the full sphere of vision. “No reports from the rim, and all
screens blank.”
“Good!” Once more a vessel had issued from the jealously secret city of Zbardk
without betraying its existence to the hated and feared hexans.
For a time the terrific rocket motors continued the deafening roar of their
continuous explosions, then, the desired velocity having been attained, they were cut
out and for hours the good ship Bzarvk hurtled on through the void at an enormous but
constant speed toward the distant world of One, which it was destined never to reach.
“Captain Czuv! Hexan radiation, coordinates twenty two, fourteen, area six!”
cried the observer, and the commander swung his own telescopic finder into the
indicated region. His hands played over course and distance plotters for a brief minute,
and he stared at his results in astonishment.
“I never heard of a hexan traveling that way before,” he frowned. “Constant
negative acceleration and in a straight line. He must think that we have been cleared
out of the ether. Almost parallel to us and not much faster—even at this long range it is
an easy kill unless he starts dodging, as usual.”
As he spoke he snapped a switch and from a port under the starboard wing there
shot out into space a small package of concentrated destruction—a rocket-propelled,
radio controlled torpedo. The rockets of the tiny missile were flaming, but that flame was
visible only from the rear and no radio beam was upon it. Czuv had given it precisely the
direction and acceleration necessary to make it meet the hexan sphere in central impact
provided that sphere maintained its course and acceleration unchanged.
“Shall I direct the torpedo in case the hexan shifts?” asked the officer.
“I think not. They can, of course, detect any wave at almost any distance, and at
the first sign of radio activity they would locate and destroy the bomb. They also, in all
probability, would destroy us. I would not hesitate to attack them on that account alone,
but we must remember that we are upon a more important mission than attacking one
hexan ship. We are far out of range of their electro-magnetic detectors, and our torpedo
will have such a velocity that they will have no time to protect themselves against it after
detection. Unless they shift in the next few seconds they are lost.
This is the most perfect shot I ever had at one of them, but one shot is all I dare
risk—we must not betray ourselves.”
Course, lookout, and rank forgotten, the little crew of two stared into the narrow
field of vision, set at its maximum magnification. The instruments showed that the
enemy vessel was staying upon its original course. Very soon the torpedo came within
range of the detectors of the hexans. But as Captain Czuv had foretold, the detection
was a fraction of a second too late, rapidly as their screens responded, and the two men
of Zbardk uttered together a short, fierce cry of joy as a brilliant flash of light announced
the annihilation of the hexan vessel.
“But hold!” The observer stared into his screen. “Upon that same line, but now at
constant velocity, there is still a very faint radiation, of a pattern I have never seen
before.”
“I think . . . I believe . . .” the captain was studying the pattern, puzzled. “It must
be low-frequency, low-tension electricity, which is never used, so far as I know. It may
be some new engine of destruction, which the hexan was towing at such a distance that
the explosion of our torpedo did not destroy it. Since there are no signs of hexan activity
and since it will not take much fuel, we shall investigate that radiation.”
Tail and port-side rockets burst into roaring activity and soon the plane was
cautiously approaching the mass of wreckage, which had been the IPV Arcturus.
“Human beings, although of some foreign species!” exclaimed the captain, as his
vision-ray swept through the undamaged upper portion of the great liner and came to
rest upon Captain King at his desk.
Although the upper ultra-lights of the Terrestrial vessel had been cut away by the
hexan plane of force, jury lights had been rigged, and the two commanders were soon
trying to communicate with each other. Intelligible conversation was of course
impossible, but King soon realized that the visitors were not enemies. At their
pantomimed suggestion he put on a space-suit and wafted himself over to the airlock of
the Callistonian warplane. Inside the central compartment, the strangers placed over his
helmet a heavily wired harness, and he found himself instantly in full mental
communication with the Callistonian commander. For several minutes they stood silent,
exchanging thoughts with a rapidity impossible in any language; then, dressed in space-
suits, both leaped lightly across the narrow gap into the still open outer lock of the
Terrestrial liner. King watched Czuv narrowly after the pressure began to collapse his
suit, but the stranger made no sign of distress. He had been right in his assurance that
the extra pressure would scarcely inconvenience him. King tore off his helmet, issued a
brief order, and soon every speaker in the Arcturus announced: