conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing stiletto of energy—and the
main control panel of the Vorkulian wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as
rapidly as he could sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle
of annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls. Then, the walls
unresisting, he cut in the vastly larger, but infinitely less powerful, I-P ray, and with it
systematically riddled the immense heptagon. Out through the gaping holes in the outer
walls rushed the dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their massed
hundreds died.
The Sirius was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main air-lock was
against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall of the enemy. There she was
anchored by tractor beams, and the two hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full
space equipment, prepared to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense
at his controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any hexans that
might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment. General Crowninshield sat
beside the physicist at an auxiliary board, phones at ears and four infra-red visiray
plates banked in front of him; ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the
attack, no matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might
become before the citadel was taken.
The space-line men—the engineers of weightless combat —led the van,
protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up ways of rope, along
which the others could advance. Power drills bit savagely into metal, making holes to
receive the expanding eyebolts; grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and
corner; and at intervals were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of
march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the many gaps
in the metal through which Brandon’s beams had blasted their way; guided by
Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the little projector room in which
Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There were so many chambers and
compartments in the heptagon that it had of course been impossible to puncture them
all, and in some of the tight rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the
general’s eye led his men, and if such a room lay before them Brandon’s frightful beam
entered it first—and where that beam entered, life departed.
But the hexans were really intelligent, as has been said. They had had time to
prepare for what they knew awaited them, and they were rendered utterly desperate by
the knowledge that, no matter what might happen, their course was run. Their power
was gone, and even if the present enemy should be driven off, they would float idly in
space until they died of cold; or, more probably, hurtling toward Jupiter as they were,
they would plunge to certain death upon its surface as soon as they came within its
powerful gravitational field. Therefore some fifty of the creatures, who had had space
experience in their spherical vessels, had spent the preceding days in manufacturing
space equipment. Let the weight-fiends plan upon detonating magazines of explosives,
upon laying mines calculated to destroy the invaders, even the vessel itself and all
within it. Let them plan upon any other such idle schemes, which were certain to be
foreseen and guarded against by the space-hardened veterans who undoubtedly
manned that all-powerful and vengeful football of scarred gray metal. Space-fighters
were they, and as space-fighters would they die; taking with them to their own inevitable
death a full quota of the enemy.
Thus it came about that the head of the column of police had scarcely passed a
certain door when in the room behind it there began to assemble the half-hundred
space-hounds of the hexans. When the vanguard had approached that room
Crowninshield had inspected it thoroughly with his infra-red beams. He had found it
punctured and airless, devoid of life or of lethal devices, and had passed on. But now
the space-suited warriors of the horde, guided in their hiding by their own visirays, were
massing there. When the center of the I-P column reached that door it burst open.
There boiled out into the corridor, into the very midst of the police, fifty demoniacal
hexans, fighting with berserk fury, ruled by but one impulse—to kill.
Hand-weapons flashed viciously, tearing at steel armor and at bulging space-
suits. Space-hooks bit and tore. Pikes and lances were driven with the full power of
brawny arms. Here and there could be seen trooper and hexan, locked together in
fierce embrace far from any hand-line — six limbs against four, all ten plied with
abandon in mortal, hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot combat.
“Give way!” yelled Crowninshield into the ears of his men. “Epstein, back!
LeFevre, advance! Get out of block ten—give us a chance to use a beam!”
As the police fell back out of the designated section of the corridor Brandon’s
beam tore through it, filling it from floor to ceiling with a volume of intolerable energy. In
that energy walls, doorway, and space-lines, as well as most of the hexans, vanished
utterly. But the beam could not be used again. Every surviving enemy had hurled
himself frantically into the thickest ranks of the police and the battle raged fiercer than
ever. It did not last long. The ends of the column had already closed in. The police filled
the corridor and overflowed into the yawning chasm cut by the annihilating ray.
Outnumbered, surrounded upon all sides, above, and below by the Terrestrials, the
hexans fought with mad desperation to the last man—and to the last man died. And
even though in lieu of their own highly efficient space-armor they had fought in weak,
crude, and hastily improvised space-suits which were pitifully inferior to the ray-
resistant, heavy steel armor of the I-P forces, nevertheless the enormous strength and
utter savagery of the hexans had taken toll; and when the advance was resumed it was
with extra lookouts scanning the entire neighborhood of the line of march.
Since the troops had entered the fortress as close to their goal as possible, it was
not long until the leading platoon reached the door behind which Kromodeor lay. Tools
and cylinders of air were brought up, and the engineers quickly fitted pressure
bulkheads across the corridor. There was a screaming hiss from the valves, the
atmosphere in that walled-off space became dense, and mechanics attacked with their
power drills the door of the projector room. It opened, and four husky orderlies rapidly
but gently encased the long body of the Vorkul in the space-suit built especially to
receive it. As that monstrous form in its weirdly bulging envelope was guided through
the air-locks into the Sirius, Crowninshield barked orders into his transmitter and the
police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to wipe out any
hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and destroy any possible traps or infernal
machines which the enemy might have planted for their undoing.
Assured that the real danger to the Sirius was over and that his presence was no
longer necessary, Brandon turned his controls over to an assistant and went up to the
Venerian rooms, where von Steiffel and his staff were to operate upon the Vorkul.
There, in the dense, hot air, but little different now from the atmosphere of Jupiter,
Kromodeor lay; bolted down to the solid steel of the floor by means of padded steel
straps. So heavy were the bands that he could not possibly break even one of them; so
closely were they spaced that he could scarcely have moved a muscle had he tried. But
he did not try—so near death was he that his mighty muscles did not even quiver at the
trenchant bite of the surgeon’s tools. Von Steiffel and his aides, meticulously covered
with sterile gowns, hoods, and gloves, worked in most rigidly aseptic style; deftly and
rapidly closing the ghastly wounds inflicted by the weapons of the hexans.
“Hi, Brandon,” the surgeon grunted as he straightened up, the work completed. “I
did not use much antiseptic on him. Because of possible differences in blood chemistry
and in ignorance of his native bacteria, I depended almost wholly upon asepsis and his
natural resistance. It is a good thing that we did not have to use an anaesthetic. He is in
bad shape, but if we can feed him successfully, he may pull through.”
“Feed him ? I never thought of that. What d’you suppose he eats ?”
“I have an idea that it is something highly concentrated, from his anatomy. I shall
try giving him sugar, milk chocolate, something of the kind. First I shall try maple syrup.
Being a liquid it is easily administered, and its penetrating odor also may be a help.”
A can of the liquid was brought in and to the amazement of the Terrestrials the
long, delicate antennae of the Vorkul began to twitch as soon as the can was opened.