black depths of space.
“Well—that, as I may have remarked before, is indisputably and conclusively
that.” Brandon broke the surprised, almost stunned, silence that followed the
unceremonious departure of the visitors. “I don’t know whether to feel relieved at the
knowledge that they won’t bother us, or whether to get mad because they won’t have
anything to do with us.”
He sent the “All x” signal to the pilot, and the Sirius, once more at the
acceleration of Terrestrial gravity, again bored on through space.
CHAPTER 13 Spacehounds Triumphant
Now that the Hexan threat that had so long oppressed the humanity of the Sinus was
lifted the vessel was filled with relief and rejoicing as the pilot laid his course for Europa.
Lounges and saloons resounded with noise as police, passengers, and such of the crew
as were at liberty made merry. The control room, in which were grouped the leaders of
the expedition and the scientists, was orderly enough, but a noticeable undertone of
gladness had replaced the tense and somber air it had known so long.
“Hi, men!” Nadia Stevens and Verna Pickering, arms around each other’s waists,
entered the room and saluted the group gaily before they became a part of it.
” ‘Smatter, girls—tired of dancing already ?” asked Brandon.
“Oh, no—we could dance from now on,” Verna assured him. “But you see, Nadia
hadn’t seen that husband of hers for fifteen minutes, and was getting lonesome. Being
afraid of all you men, she wanted me to come along for moral support. The real reason I
came, though,” and she narrowed her expressive eyes and lowered her voice
mysteriously, “is that you two physicists are here. I want to study my chosen victims a
little longer before I decide over which of you to cast the spell of my fatal charm.”
“But you can’t do that,” he objected, vigorously. “Quince and I are going to settle
that ourselves some day— by shooting dice, or maybe each other, or . . .” he broke off,
listening to an animated conversation going on behind them.
“. . . just simply outrageous!” Nadia was exclaiming. “Here we saved his life, and
I fed him a lot of my candy, and we went to all the trouble of bringing their ship back
here almost to Jupiter for them, and then they simply dashed off without a word of
thanks or anything! And he always acted as though he never wanted to see or hear of
any of us again, ever! Why, they don’t think straight—as Norman would say it, they’re
full of little red ants! Why, they aren’t even human!”
“Sure not.” Brandon turned to the flushed speaker. “They couldn’t be, hardly, with
their makeup. But is it absolutely necessary that all intelligent beings should possess
such an emotion as gratitude ? Such a being without it does seem funny to us, but I
can’t see that its lack necessarily implies anything particularly important. Keep still a
minute,” he went on, as Nadia tried to interrupt him, “and listen to some real wisdom.
Quince, you tell ’em.”
“They are, of course, very highly developed and extremely intelligent; but it
should not be surprising that intelligence should manifest itself in ways quite baffling to
us human beings, whose minds work so differently. They are, however . . . well,
peculiar.”
“I won’t keep still!” Nadia burst out, at the first opportunity. “I don’t want to talk
about those hideous things any more, anyway. Come on, Steve, let’s go up and dance!”
Crowninshield turned to Verna, with the obvious intention of leading her away,
but Brandon interposed.
“Sorry, Crown, but this lady is conducting a highly important psychological
research, so your purely social claims will have to wait until after the scientific work is
done.”
“Why narrow the field of investigation?” laughed the girl. “I’d rather widen it,
myself—I might prefer a general, even to a physicist!”
They went up to the main saloon and joined the melee there, and after one
dance with Verna—all he could claim in that crowd of men—Crowninshield turned to
Brandon.
“You two seem to know Miss Pickering extraordinarily well. Would I be stepping
on your toes if I give her a play ?”
“Clear ether as far as we’re concerned.” Brandon shrugged his shoulders. “She’s
been kicking around under foot ever since she was knee high to a duck—we gave her
her first lessons on a slide-rule.”
“Don’t be dumb, Norman. That woman’s a knockout— a riot—a regular tri-planet
call-out!”
“Oh, she’s all x, as far as that goes. She’s a good little egg, too—not half as
dumb as she acts—and she’s one of the squarest little aces that ever waved a plume;
but as for playing her—too much like our kid sister.”
“Good—me for her!” and they made their way back down to the control room.
Stevens, after his one dance with Nadia, had already returned. Brandon and
Crowninshield found him seated at the calculating machine, continuing a problem which
already filled several pages of his notebook.
” ‘Smarter, Steve ? So glad to see a calculator and some paper that you can’t let
’em alone?”
“Not exactly—just had a thought a day or so ago. Been computing the orbit of the
wreckage of the Arcturus around Jupiter. Think we should salvage it—the upper half, at
least. It was left intact, you know.”
“Hm . . . m . . . m. That’d be nice, all x. Dope enough ?”
“Got the direction solid, from my own observations, but the velocity’s a pretty
rough approximation. But after allowing for my probable error it figures an ellipse of low
eccentricity between the orbits of Io and Europa. Its period is short—about two days.”
“Ain’t it wonderful to have a brain?” Brandon addressed the room at large. “The
kid’s clever. Nobody else would’ve thought of it, except maybe Westfall. Let’s see your
figures. Urn . . . m . . . m. According to that, we’re within an hour of it, right now.” He
turned to the pilot and sketched rapidly.
“Get on this line here, please, and decelerate, so that the stuff’ll catch up with us,
and pass the word to the lookouts. Stevens and I’ll take the bow plates.
” ‘Sa good idea you had, egg,” he went on to Stevens, as they took their places
at main and auxiliary ultra-banks. “Lot of plunder in that ship. Instruments, boats, and
equipment worth millions, besides most of the junk of the passengers — clothes, trunks,
trinkets, and what-not. You’re there, bucko!”
“Thanks, Chief.” They fell silent, watching the instruments carefully, from time to
time making computations from the readings of the acceleration and flight meters.
“There she is!” An alarm bell had finally sounded, the ultra-lights had flared out
into space, and upon both screens there shone out images of the closely clustered
wreckage of the Arcturus. But both men were more interested just then in the
mathematics of the recovery than in the vessel itself.
“Missed it eight minutes of time and eleven divisions on the scale,” reported
Stevens. “Not so good.”
“Not so bad, either—I’ve seen lots worse.” Thus lightly was dismissed a
mathematical feat which, a few years earlier, before the days of I-P computers, would
have been deemed worthy of publication in Philosophical Magazine.
Director Newton was called in, and it was decided that the many smaller
fragments of the vessel were not worth saving; that its upper half was all that they
should attempt to tow the enormous distance back to Tellus. The pace of the Sirius was
adjusted to that of the floating masses, and tractor beams were clamped upon the
undamaged portion of the derelict and upon the two slices from the nose of the craft. A
couple of the larger fragments of wreckage were also taken, to furnish metal for the
repairs which would be necessary. Acceleration was brought slowly up to normal, and
the battle scarred cruiser of the void, with her heavy burden of inert metal, resumed her
interrupted voyage toward Europa; the satellite upon which the passengers and crew of
the ill-fated Arcturus had been so long immured. On she bored through the ether,
detector screens full out and greenly scintillant Vorkulian wall-screens outlining her
football shape in weird and ghastly light; unafraid now of any possible surviving space-
craft of the hexans.
But if the hexans detected her they made no sign. Perhaps their fleet had been
destroyed utterly; perhaps it had been impressed upon even their fierce minds that
those sparkling green screens were not to be molested with impunity. The satellite was
reached without event, and down into the crater landing shaft the two enormous masses
of metal dropped.
Callisto’s foremost citizens were on hand to welcome the Terrestrial rescuers,
and revelry reigned supreme in that deeply buried Europan community. All humanity
celebrated. The Callistonians rejoiced because they were now freed from the age-old
oppression of the hexan hordes; because they could once more extend their civilization