designed principally for travel upon Jupiter, why should they have any extraordinary
range ? I say they can’t hold that beam forever. We’ve got a good long lead, and in spite
of their higher acceleration I think we’ll be able to keep out of range of their heavy stuff.
If so, we’ll describe a circle—only one, a good deal bigger than the one Amonar
suggested—and meet the fleet at a point where that enemy ship will be about out of
power.”
Thus for hours the scientists argued, agreeing upon nothing, while the Vorkulian
fortress crept ever closer. At the end of three days of the mad flight the pursuing
spaceship was in plain sight, covering hundreds of divisions of the micrometer screens.
But now the size of the images was increasing with extreme slowness, and the
scientists of the Sirius watched with strained attention the edges of those glowing green
pictures. Finally, when the pictured edges were about to cease moving across the
finely-ruled lines, Brandon cut down his own acceleration a trifle, and kept on
decreasing it at such a rate that the heptagon still crept up, foot by foot.
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Stevens demanded.
“Coax ’em along. If we run away from ’em they’ll probably reverse power and go
back home, won’t they? Their beam is falling apart fast, but they’re still getting so much
stuff along it that we couldn’t do a thing to stop them. If they think that we’re losing
power even faster than they are, though, they’ll keep after us until their beam’s so thin
that they’ll just be able to stop on it. Then they’ll reverse or else go onto their
accumulators—reverse, probably, since they’ll be a long ways from home by that time.
We’ll reverse, too, and keep just out of range. Then, when we both have stopped and
are about to start back, their beam will be at its minimum and we’ll go to work on
’em—foot, horse, and marines. Nobody can run us as ragged as they’ve been doing
without me doing my damndest to return the compliment. I’ve got a hunch. If it works we
can take those birds and take ’em so they’ll stay took. We might as well break up— this
is going to be an ordinary job of piloting for a few days, I think. I’m going up and work
with the Martians on that hunch. You fellows work out any ideas you want to. Watch ’em
close, Mac. Keep kidding ’em along, but don’t let ’em get close enough to puncture us.”
Everything worked out practically as Brandon had foretold, and a few days later,
their acceleration somewhat less than Terrestrial gravity, he called another meeting in
the control room. He came in grinning from ear to ear, accompanied by the two
Martians, and seated himself at his complex power panel.
“Now watch the professor closely, gentlemen,” he invited. “He is going to cut that
beam.”
“But you can’t,” protested Pyraz Amonar.
“I know you can’t, ordinarily, when a beam is tight and solid. But that beam’s as
loose as ashes right now. I told you I had a hunch, and Alcantro and Fedanzo worked
out the right answer for me. If I can cut it, Quince, and if their screens go down for a
minute, shoot your visiray into them and see what you can see.”
“All x. How much power are you going to draw ?”
“Plenty—it figures a little better than four hundred thousand kilofranks. I’ll draw it
all from the accumulators, so as not to disturb you fellows on the cosmic intake. We
don’t care if we do run the batteries down some, but I don’t want to hold that load on the
bus-bars very long. However, if my hunch is right I won’t be on that beam five minutes
before it’s cut from Jupiter—and I’ll bet you four dollars that you won’t see the original
crew in that fort when you get into it.”
He set upper and lower bands of dirigible projectors to apply a powerful sidewise
thrust, and the Sirius darted off her course. Flashing a minute pencil behind the huge
heptagon, Brandon manipulated his tuning circuits until a brilliant spot in space showed
him that he was approaching resonance with the heptagon’s power beam. Micrometer
dials were then engaged and the delicate tuning continued until the meters gave
evidence that the two beams were precisely synchronized and exactly opposite in
phase. Four plunger switches closed, that tiny pilot ray became an enormous rod of
force, and as those two gigantic beams met in exact opposition and neutralized each
other a solid wall of blinding brilliance appeared in the empty ether behind the Vorkulian
fortress. As that dazzling wall sprang into being the sparkling green protection died from
the walls of the heptagon.
“Go to it, Quince!” Brandon yelled, but the suggestion was entirely superfluous.
Even before the wall-screen had died Westfall’s beam was trying to get through it, and
when the visiray revealed the interior of the heptagon the quiet and methodical physicist
was shaken from his habitual calm.
“Why, they aren’t the winged monsters at all—they’re hexans!” he exclaimed.
“Sure they are.” Brandon did not even turn his heavily-goggled eyes from the
blazing blankness of his own screen. “That was my hunch. Those snakes went about
things in a business-like fashion. They didn’t strike me as being folks who would pull off
such a wild stunt as trying to chase us clear out of the solar system, but a gang of
hexans would do just that. Some of them must have captured that ship and, already
having it in their cock-eyed brains that we were back of what happened on Callisto, they
decided to bump us off if it was the last thing they ever did. That’s what I’d do myself, if I
were a hexan. Now I’ll tell you what’s happening back at the home power plant of that
ship and what’s going to happen next. I’m kicking up a horrible row out there with my
interference, and a lot of instruments at the other end of that beam must be cutting up
all kinds of didoes, right now. They’ll check up on that ship with the expedition, by radio
and whatnot, and when they find out that it’s clear out here—chop! Didn’t get to see
much, did you?”
“No, they must have switched over to their accumulators almost instantly.”
“Yeah, but if they’ve got accumulator capacity enough to hold off our entire
cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I’m a polyp! We’re going to take that
ship, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his
beam—pay me the four, Quince.”
The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and
Brandon’s beam bored on through space, unimpeded. He shut it off and turned to his
fellows with a grin—a grin which disappeared instantly as a thought struck him and he
leaped back to his board.
“Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!” he snapped, and drove in
switch after switch.
“Cosmic intake’s gone down to zero!” exclaimed Mac-Donald, as the Sirius
leaped away.
“Had to cut it—they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought of
something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if . . . it’s necessary, all x—we’re
taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though we’re at pretty long range,
they’ve got some horrible projectors, and they were evidently mad enough to waste
some power taking a good, solid flash at us—and if we hadn’t been expecting it, that
flash would have been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me—Great Cat! Look at that
meter—and I’ve had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is drawing five
hundred and forty thousand!”
They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after they had
seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range any offensive beam could
be driven with such unthinkable power—power requiring for its neutralization almost the
full output of the prodigious batteries of accumulators carried by the Sirius! Yet for five,
ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against their straining screens,
and even Brandon’s face grew tense and hard as that frightful attack continued. At the
end of twenty two minutes, however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin
and every man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief — the almost unbearable
bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.
“Wow!” Brandon shouted. “I thought they were going to hang to us until we
cracked, even if it meant that they’d have to freeze to death out here themselves!”
“It would have meant that, too, don’t you think ?” asked Stevens.
“I imagine so—don’t see how they could possibly have enough power left to get
back to Jupiter if they shine that thing on us much longer. Of course, the more power