Its atmosphere, while less dense than that to which you are accustomed, will
adequately support your life. If we are not detected in the course of the next few hours
we can probably land upon Europa in safety, since its neighborhood is guarded but
loosely. In fact, we have a city there, as yet unsuspected by the hexans, in which our
scientists shall continue to labor after Callisto’s civilization shall have disappeared. We
think that it will be safe to use your power for the short time necessary to effect a
landing. We shall land in a cavern, in a crater already in communication with our city. In
that cavern, instructed and aided by some of us, you will build a rocket vessel—no rays
can be used because of the hexans—in which you will be able to travel to a region close
enough to your Earth so that you can call for help. You will not be able to carry enough
fuel to land there—in fact, nearly all the journey will have to be made without power,
traveling freely in a highly elongated orbit around the sun—but if you escape the hexans
you should be able to reach home safely, in time. It is for the consideration of this plan
that this meeting has been called.”
“Just one question,” Breckenridge spoke. “The hexans are intelligent. Why are
they leaving Europa and Ganymede so unguarded that human beings can move back
there and that we can land there, all undetected?”
“I will answer that question myself,” replied King. “Captain Czuv did not quite do
justice to his own people. It is true that they are being conquered, but for every human
life that is taken a thousand hexans die, and for every human ship that is lost twenty
hexan vessels are annihilated in return. While the hexans are masters of rays, the
humans are equally masters of rockets and explosives. They can hit a perfect score
upon any target in free space whose course and acceleration can be determined, at any
range up to five thousand kilometers. Ray screens are effective only against rays, and
the hexans cannot destroy anything that they cannot see before it strikes them. So it is
that all the vessels of the hexans except those necessary to protect their own
strongholds are being concentrated against Callisto. They cannot spare vessels to
guard uselessly the abandoned satellites. Because of the enormously high gravity of
Jupiter the hexans there are safe from human attack save for comparatively ineffectual
long-range bombardment, but lo is being attacked constantly and it is probable that in a
few more years lo also will be an abandoned world. Some of you may have received the
impression that the hexans are to triumph immediately, but such an idea is wrong. The
humans can, and will, hold out for a hundred years or more unless the enemy perfects a
destructive ray of the type referred to. Even then, I think that our human cousins will
hold out a long time. They are able men, fighters all, and their underground cities are
beautifully protected.”
There was little argument. Most of the auditors could understand that the
suggested course was the best one possible. The remainder were so stunned by the
unbelievable events of the attack that they had no initiative, but were willing to follow
wherever the more valiant spirits led. It was decided that no attempt should be made to
salvage any portion of the Arc turns, since any such attempt would be fraught with
danger and since the wreckage would be of little value. The new vessel was to be
rocket driven, and was to be built of Callistonian alloys. Personal belongings were
moved into lifeboats, doors were closed, and there ensued a painful period of waiting
and of suspense.
The stated hour was reached without event—no hexan scout had come close
enough to them to detect the low-tension radiation of the vital machinery of the Arcturus,
cut as it was to the irreducible minimum and quite effectively grounded as it was by the
enormous mass of her shielding armor. At a signal from Captain Czuv the pilot of each
lifeboat shot his tiny craft out into space and took his allotted place in the formation
following closely behind the Bzarvk, flying toward Europa, now so large in the field of
vision that she resembled more a world than a moon. Captain King, in the Callistonian
vessel, transmitted to Breckenridge the route and flight data given him by the navigator
of the winged craft. The chief pilot, flying “point”, in turn relayed more detailed
instructions to the less experienced pilots of the other lifeboats.
Soon the surface of Europa lay beneath them; a rugged, cratered, and torn
topography of mighty ranges of volcanic mountains. Most of the craters were cold and
lifeless, but here and there a plume of smoke and steam betrayed the presence of vast,
quiescent forces. Straight down one of those gigantic lifeless shafts the fleet of space
craft dropped —straight down a full two miles before the landing signal was given. At
the bottom of the shaft a section of the rocky wall swung aside, revealing the yawning
black mouth of a horizontal tunnel. At intervals upon its roof there winked into being
almost invisible points of light. Along that line of lights the lifeboats felt their way, coming
finally into a huge cavern, against one sheer metal wall of which they parked in an
orderly row. Roll was called, and the Terrestrials walked, as well as they could in the
feeble gravity of the satellite, across the vast chamber and into a conveyance somewhat
resembling a railway coach, which darted away as soon as the doors were shut. For
hundreds of miles that strange tunnel extended, and as the car shot along door after
door of natural rock opened before it, and closed as soon as it had sped through. In
spite of the high velocity of the vehicle it required almost two hours to complete the
journey. Finally, however, it slowed to a halt and the Terrestrial visitors disembarked at
a portal of the Europan city of the Callistonians.
“Attention!” barked Captain King. “The name of this city, as nearly as I can come
to it in English, is ‘WRUSZK’. ‘Roosk’ comes fairly close to it, and is easier to pronounce.
We must finish our trip in small cars, holding ten persons each. We shall assemble
again in the building in which we have been assigned quarters. The driver of each car
will lead his passengers to the council room in which we shall meet.”
“Oh, what’s the use — this is horrible, horrible — we might as well die!” a
nervous woman shrieked, and fainted.
“Such a feeling is, perhaps, natural,” King went on, after the woman had been
revived and quiet had been restored, “but please control it as much as possible. We are
alive and well, and will be able to return to Tellus eventually. Please remember that
these people are putting themselves to much trouble and inconvenience to help us,
desperate as their own situation is, and conduct yourselves accordingly.”
The rebuke had its effect, and with no further protest the company boarded the
small cars, which shot through an opening in the wall and into a street of that strange
subterranean city. Breckenridge, in the last car to leave the portal, studied his
surroundings with interest as his conveyance darted through the gateway. More or less
a fatalist by nature and an adventurer, of course, since no other type existed among the
older spacehounds of the IPC, he was intensely interested in every new phase of their
experience, but was no whit dismayed or frightened.
He found himself seated in a narrow canoe of metal immediately behind the pilot,
who sat at a small control panel in the bow. Propelled by electromagnetic fields above a
single rail upon lightly-touching and noiseless wheels, the Terrestrial pilot saw with keen
appreciation the manner in which switch after switch ahead of them obeyed the
impulses sent ahead from the speeding car. The streets were narrow and filled with
monorails; pedestrians pursued their courses upon walks attached to the walls of the
buildings, far above the level of the streets. The walls were themselves peculiar, rising
as they did stark, unbroken, window-less expanses of metal, merging into and
supporting a massive roof of the same silvery metal. Walls and roof alike reflected a
soft, yet intense, white light. Soon a sliding switch ahead of them shot in and
simultaneously an opening appeared in the blank metal wall of a building. Through the
opening the street-car flew, and as the pilot slowed the canoe to a halt the door slid
smoothly shut behind them. Parking the car beside a row of its fellows, the Callistonian
driver indicated that the Terrestrials were to follow him and led the way into a large hall.
There the others from the Arcturus were assembled, facing Captain King, who was