something better has been found, and that nobody knows anything about anything! How
do you get that way?”
“By working with Brandon and Westfall. Those birds have got real brains and
they’re on the track of something that will, in all probability, be as far ahead of Roeser’s
Rays as Our present system is ahead of the science of the seventeenth century.”
“Really ?” she looked at him in astonishment. “Tell me about it.”
“Can’t be done,” he refused. “I don’t know much about it—even they didn’t know
any too much about some of it when I had to come in. And what little I do know I can’t
tell, because it isn’t mine.”
“But you’re working with them, aren’t you?”
“Yes, in the sense that a small boy helps his father run a lathe—they’re the
brains.”
Nadia, disbelieving completely his disclaimer but secretly pleased by his attitude,
replied:
“You would say something like that, of course . . . where do we go from here?”
“Down the lining of the hull, outside the passengers’ quarters, to the upper
dirigible projectors,” and he led the way down a series of steep steel stairways, through
bulkheads and partitions of steel. “One thing I forgot to tell you about—the detectors.
They’re an outgrowth of radar—reflection, you know. Whenever one spots anything it
swings a light on it—that’s what happened when that light swung toward us, up there in
the prow—and automatic calculating machines compute and announce direction,
distance, relative course, and so on.”
“Are there any of those lifeboats, that I have been hearing so much about, near
here?”
“Lots of ’em—here’s one right here.” He opened an insulated door, snapped on a
light, and waved his hand. “You can’t see much of it from here, but it’s a complete
spaceship in itself, capable of maintaining a dozen or fifteen persons during a two-
weeks’ cruise in space.”
“Why isn’t it a good idea to retain them? Accidents are still possible, are they
not?”
“Of course, and there is no question of doing away with them entirely. Modern
ships, however, have only enough of them to take care of the largest number of persons
ever to be carried by the vessel.”
“Has the Arcturus more than she needs ?”
“I’ll say she has, and more of everything else, except room for pay-load.”
“I’ve heard them talking about junking her. I think it’s a shame.”
“So do I, in a way—you see, I helped design her and her sister-ship, the Sirius,
which Brandon and Westfall are using as a floating laboratory. But times change, and
the inefficient must go. She’s a good old tub, but she was built when everybody was
afraid of space, and we had to put every safety factor into her that we could think of. As
a result, she is four times as heavy as she should be, and that takes a lot of extra
power. Her skin is too thick. She has too many batteries of accumulators, too many life-
boats, too many bulkheads and airbreaks, too many and too much of everything. She is
so built that if she should break up out in space, nobody would die if they lived through
the shock—there are so many bulkheads, airbreaks, and lifeboats that no matter how
many pieces she broke up into, the survivors would find themselves in something able
to navigate. That excessive construction is no longer necessary. Modern ships carry ten
times the pay-load on one-quarter of the power that this old battle-wagon uses. Even
though she’s only four years old, she’s a relic of the days when we used to slam through
on the ecliptic route, right through all the meteoric stuff that is always there—trusting to
heavy armor to ward off anything too small for the observers and detectors to locate.
Now, with the observatories and check-stations out in space, fairly light armor is
sufficient, as we route ourselves well away from the ecliptic and so miss all the heavy
stuff. So, bad as I hate to see her go there, the old heap is bound for the junk-yard.”
A few more flights brought them to the upper band of dirigible projectors, which
encircled the hull outside the passengers’ quarters, some sixty feet below the prow.
They were heavy, search-light-like affairs mounted upon massive universal bearings,
free to turn in any direction, each having its converter nestling inside its prodigious field
of force. Stevens explained that these projectors were used in turning the vessel and in
dodging meteorites when necessary, and .they went on through another almost invisible
door into a hall and took an elevator down to the main corridor.
“Well, you’ve seen it, Miss Newton,” Stevens said regretfully, as he led her
toward the captain’s office. “The lower half is full of heavy stuff—accumulators,
machinery, driving projectors, and such junk, so that the center of gravity is below the
center of action of the driving projectors. That makes stable flight possible. It’s all more
or less like what we’ve just seen, and I don’t suppose you want to miss the
dance—anyway, a lot of people want to dance with you.”
“Wouldn’t you just as soon show me the lower half as dance?”
“Rather, lots!”
“So would I. I can dance any time, and I want to see everything. Let’s go!”
Down they went, past battery after battery of accumulators ; climbing over and
around the ever-increasing numbers of huge steel girders and braces; through mazes of
heavily insulated wiring and conduits; past mass after mass of automatic machinery
which Stevens explained to his eager listener. They inspected one of the great driving
projectors, which, built rigidly parallel to the axis of the ship and held immovably in place
by enormous trusses of steel, revealed neither to the eye nor to the ear any sign of the
terrific force it was exerting. Still lower they went, until the girl had been shown
everything, even down to the bottom ultra-lights and stern braces.
“Tired?” Stevens asked, as the inspection was completed.
“Not very, it’s been quite a climb, but I’ve had a wonderful time;”
“So have I,” he declared, positively. “I know what— we’ll stop off in one of these
stern lifeboats and make us a cup of coffee before we climb back. With me ?”
” ‘Way ahead of you!” Nadia accepted the invitation enthusiastically, and they
made their way to the nearest of the miniature space-cruisers. Here, although no
emergency had been encountered in all the four years of the vessel’s life, they found
everything in readiness, and the two soon had prepared and eaten a hearty luncheon.
“Well, I can’t think of any more excuses for monopolizing you, Miss Newton, so I
suppose I’ll have to take you back. Believe me, I’ve enjoyed this more than you can
realize—I’ve . . .”
He broke off and listened, every nerve taut. “What was that ?” he exclaimed.
“What was what? I didn’t hear anything?”
“Something wrong somewhere! I felt a vibration, and anything that’d make this
hunk of steel even quiver must have given us one God-awful nudge. There’s another!”
The girl, painfully tense, felt only a barely perceptible tremor, but the computer,
knowing far better than she the inconceivable strength and mass of that enormous
structure of solidly braced hardened alloy, sprang into action. Leaping to the small
dirigible look-out plate, he turned on the power and swung it upward.
“Great suffering snakes!” he ejaculated, then stood mute, for the plate revealed a
terrible sight. The entire nose of the gigantic craft had been sheared off in two immense
slices as though clipped off by a gigantic sword, and even as they stared, fascinated, at
the sight, the severed slices were drifting slowly away. Swinging the view along the
plane of cleavage, Stevens made out a relatively tiny ball of metal, only fifty feet or so in
diameter, at a distance of perhaps a mile. From this ball there shot a blinding plane of
light, and the Arcturus fell apart at the midsection, the lower half separating clean from
the upper portion, which held the passengers. Leaving the upper half intact, the attacker
began slicing the lower, driving half into thin, disk-shaped sections. As that
incandescent plane of destruction made its first flashing cut through the body of the
Arcturus, accompanied by an additional pyrotechnic display of severed and short-
circuited high-tension leads, Stevens and Nadia suddenly found themselves floating
weightless in the air of the room. Still gripping the controls of the lookout plate, Stevens
caught the white-faced girl with one hand, drew her down beside him, and held her
motionless while his keen mind flashed over all the possibilities of the situation and
planned his course of action.
“They’re apparently slicing us pretty evenly, and by the looks of things one cut is
coming right about here,” he explained rapidly, as he found a flashlight and drew his
companion through the door and along a narrow passage. Soon he opened another