cordial greeting.
“Ho, Verna!” both men exclaimed, and came to their feet as they welcomed the
smiling, graceful newcomer.
“Sit down here, Verna—we have hardly started,” West-fall invited, and Brandon
looked at the girl in assumed surprise as she seated herself in the proffered chair.
“Well, Verna, it’s like this . . .” he began.
“That’s enough!” she broke in. “That phrase always was your introduction to one
of the world’s greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the first time you have had
time even to eat like civilized beings, so I’ll forgive you this once. Why all the registering
of amazement, Norman ?”
“I’m astonished that you aren’t being monopolized by some husband or other.
Surely the officers of the Arcturus weren’t so dumb that they’d stand for your still being
Verna Picketing, were they?”
“Not dumb, Norman, no. Far from it—just the opposite, in fact. I’m still working for
my M.R.S. degree, but I haven’t succeeded in snaring it yet. You’d be surprised at how
cagy those officers got after a few of them had been captured. But they are just like any
other hunted game, I suppose — the antelopes that survive get pretty wild, you know,”
she concluded, plaintively.
“Well, that certainly is one tough break for a poor little girl,” Brandon
sympathized. “I could cry a bucket of tears, just thinking about it. Quince, our little Nell,
here, ain’t been done right by. I’m bashful and you’re a woman-hater, but between us,
some way, we’ve simply got to take steps.”
“You might take longer steps than you think.” Verna laughed, her regular, white
teeth and vivid coloring emphasized by her olive skin and her startling hair, black as
Brandon’s own. “Perhaps I would like a scientist even better than an I-P officer. The
more I think of it, the surer I am that Nadia Newton had the right idea. I believe that I’ll
catch a physicist, too—either of you would do quite nicely, I think,” and she studied the
two men carefully.
Westfall, the methodical and precise, had never been able to defend himself
against Verna Pickering’s badinage, but Brandon’s ready tongue took up the challenge.
“Verna, if you really decided to get any living man, he wouldn’t stand a chance in
the world,” he declared. “If you’ve already made up your mind that I’m your meat, I’ll
come down like Davy Crockett’s coon. But if either of us will do, that’ll give us each a
fifty-fifty chance to escape your toils. What say we play a game of freeze-out to decide
it?”
“Fine, Norman! When shall we play ?”
“Oh, between Wednesday and Thursday, any week you say,” and the two fenced
on, banteringly but skillfully, with Westfall an appreciative and unembarrassed listener.
Dinner over, Brandon and Westfall went back to the control room, where they
found Stevens already seated at one of the master screens.
“All x, Perce?”
“All x. The observers report no registrations during the last two watches,” and the
three fell into discussion. Long they talked, studying every angle of the situation
confronting them; until suddenly a speaker rattled furiously and an enormous, staring
eye filled both master plates. Brandon’s hand flashed to a switch, but the image
disappeared even before he could establish the full-coverage ray screen.
“I’m on the upper band—take the lower!” he snapped, but Stevens’ projector was
already in action. Trained minds all, they knew that some intelligence had traced them,
and all realized that it was of the utmost importance to know what and where that
intelligence was. Stevens found the probing frequency in his range and they flashed
their own beam along it, encountering finally one of the monstrous Vorkulian fortresses,
far from Jupiter and almost directly between them and the planet! Its wall screens were
in operation, and no frequency at their command could penetrate that neutralizing
blanket of vibrations.
“What kind of an eye was that—ever see anything like it, Perce?” Brandon
demanded.
“I don’t think so, though of course we got only an awfully short flash of it. It didn’t
look like the periscopic eyes that those flying snakes had—looked more like a hexan
eye, don’t you think? Couldn’t very well be hexan, though, in that kind of a ship.”
“Don’t think so, either. Maybe it’s a purely mechanical affair that they use for
observing. Anyway, old sons, I don’t like the looks of things at all. Quince, you’re the
brains of this outfit—shift the massive old intellect into high and tell us what to do.”
Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished measuring the
apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward Stevens and Brandon.
“It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we do may prove
to be wrong,” he said, slowly. “However, I do not see that this latest development can
operate to change the plan we have already adopted; that of running away, straight out
from the sun. We may have to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women
and babies can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will of course be
necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to Titan, for they would be
powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror upon either the Sirius or their
torpedoes against such forces as that fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might
well be bringing down upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world
before he could be stopped. Both Uranus and Neptune are approximately upon our
present course. Do the Titanians know anything of either of them, Steve?”
“Not a thing,” the computer replied. “They can’t get nearly as far as Uranus on
their power beam—it’s all they can do to make Jupiter. They seem to think, though, that
one or more of the satellites of Uranus or Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to
themselves, only perhaps even more so. But considering the difference between what
we found on the Jovian satellites and on Titan, I’d say that anything might be out
there—on Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, their satellites, or anywhere else.”
“Cancel Uranus, double that for Neptune and quadruple it for Pluto,” Brandon
commanded. “Realize how far away they are?”
“That’s right, too,” agreed Stevens. “Before we got there, with any acceleration
we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way or the other.”
Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his results. Then,
with a grave face, he went to consult the medical officers. The women, children, and the
two Martian scientists were sent to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly
to twenty meters per second per second, above which point the physicians declared
they should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists met
again—met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon narrow hospital
bunks, unable even to lift their massive arms.
While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the super-
dreadnaught of space so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled heavily about the
room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing, emitting clouds of smoke from
his villainously reeking pipe. The Venerians, lacking Brandon’s physical strength and by
nature quieter of disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at
the calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and meaningless
integrals while he also concentrated upon the problem before them.
“They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly,” Westfall finally reported. “They
seem to be . . .”
“In that case we may be all x,” Brandon interrupted, brandishing his pipe
vigorously. “We know that they’re on a beam—apparently we’re the only ones
hereabout having cosmic power. If we can keep away from ’em until their beam
attenuates, we can whittle ’em down to our size and then take ’em, no matter how much
accumulator capacity they’ve got.”
“But can we keep away from them that long?” asked Dol Kenor, pointedly; and
his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:
“Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a rendezvous
with the Space Fleet, which will probably be ready by the time of meeting?”
“I am afraid that that would be useless,” Westfall frowned in thought. “Given
power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as easily as she could wipe
out the Sirius alone.”
“Kenor’s right.” Stevens spoke up from the calculator, “You’re getting too far
ahead of the situation. We aren’t apt to keep ahead of them long enough to do much
leading anywhere. The Titanians can hold a beam together from Saturn to Jupiter—why
can’t these snake folks ?”
“Several reasons,” Brandon argued stubbornly. “First place, look at the mass of
that thing, and remember that the heavier the beam the harder it is to hold it together.
Second, there’s no evidence that they wander around much in space. If their beams are