You see, we don’t know who or what we are up against. The only thing we know is that
they’ve got us beat a hundred ways, and we’ve got to act accordingly. We’ve got to
chance it sometime, though, if we ever get away, so we might as well do it now. I’ll put it
on very short range first, and see what we can see. By the small number of cells we’ve
got here I’m afraid they’ve split us up lengthwise, too—so that instead of having a whole
slice of the old watermelon to live in, we’ve got only about a sixth of one—shaped about
like a piece of restaurant pie. One thing I can do, though. I’ll turn on the communicator
receiver and put it on full coverage—maybe we can hear something useful.”
Putting a little power upon the visiray plate, he moved the point of projection a
short distance from their hiding-place, so that the plate showed a view of the wreckage.
The upper half of the vessel was still intact, the lower half a jumble of sharply-cut
fragments. From each of the larger pieces a brilliant ray of tangible force stretched
outward.
Suddenly their receiver sounded behind them, as the high-powered transmitter in
the telegraph room tried to notify headquarters of their plight.
“Arcturus attacked and cut up being taken tow . . .”
Rapidly as the message was uttered the transmitter died with a rattle in the
middle of a word, and Nadia looked at Stevens with foreboding in her eyes.
“They’ve got something, that’s one thing sure, to be able to neutralize our
communicator beams that way,” he admitted. “Not so good—we’ll have to play this dose
to our vests, girl!”
“Are you just trying to cheer me up, or do you really think we have a chance?”
she demanded. “I want to know just where we stand.”
“I’m coming clean with you, no kidding. If we can get away”, we’ll be all x,
because I’ll bet a farm that by this time Brandon’s got everything those birds have, and
maybe more. They beat us to it, that’s all. I’m kind of afraid, though, that getting away
isn’t going to be quite as simple as shooting fish down a well.”
Far ahead of them a port opened, a lifeboat shot out at its full power, and again
their receiver tried to burst into sound, but it was a vain attempt. The sound died before
one complete word could be uttered, and the lifeboat, its power completely neutralized
by the rays of the tiny craft of the enemy, floated gently back toward the mass of its
parent and accompanied it in its headlong flight. Several more lifeboats made the
attempt, as the courageous officers of the Arcturus, some of whom had apparently
succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the captors, launched the little shells from various
ports; but as each boat issued its power was neutralized and it found itself dragged
helplessly along in the grip of one of those mysterious, brilliant rays of force. At least
one hidden officer must have been watching the fruitless efforts, for the next lifeboat to
issue made no attempt, either to talk or to flee, but from it there flamed out into space a
concentrated beam of destruction—the terrible ray of annihilation, against which no
known substance could endure for a moment; the ray which had definitely outlawed
war. But even that frightful weapon was useless— it spent its force harmlessly upon an
impalpable, invisible barrier, a hundred yards from its source, and the bold lifeboat
disappeared in one blinding explosion of incandescence as the captor showed its real
power in retaliation. Stevens, jaw hard-set, leaped away from the screen, then brought
himself up so quickly that he skated across the smooth steel floor. Shutting off the
lookout plate, he led the half-fainting girl across the room to a comfortable seat and sat
down beside her—raging, but thoughtful. Nadia soon recovered.
“Why are you acting so contrary to your nature—is it because of me?” she
demanded. “A dozen times I’ve seen you start to do something and then change your
mind. I will not be a load on you nor hinder you in anything you want to do.”
“I told your father I’d look after you, and I’m going to do it,” he replied, indirectly. “I
would do it anyway, of •course—even if you are ten or twelve years older than I thought
you were.”
“Yes, Dad never has realized that I’m more than eight years old. I see—you were
going out there and be slaughtered?” He flushed, but made no reply. “In that case I’m
glad I’m here—that would have been silly. I think we’d better hold that council of war you
mentioned a while ago, don’t you?”
“All x. I need a smoke—do you indulge?”
“No, thanks. I tried it a few times at school, but never liked it.”
He searched his pockets, bringing to light an unopened package and a battered
remnant which proved to contain one delapidated cigarette. He studied it thoughtfully.
“I’ll smoke this wreck,” he decided, “while it’s still smokable. We’ll save the rest of
them—I’m afraid it’ll be a long time between smokes. Well, let’s confer!”
“This will have to be a one-sided conference, since I don’t imagine that any of my
ideas will prove particularly helpful. You talk and I’ll listen.”
“You can’t tell what ideas may be useful—chip in any time you feel the urge.
Here’s the dope as I see it. They’re highly intelligent creatures and are in all probability
neither Martians nor Venerians, since if any of them had any such stuff as that some of
us would have known about it, and besides, I don’t believe they would have used it in
just that way. Mercury is not habitable, at least for organic beings; and we have never
seen any sign of any other kind of inhabitants who could work with metals and rays.
They’re probably from Jupiter, although possibly from further away. I say Jupiter
because I would think, from the small size of the ship, that it may be still in the
experimental stage, so that they probably didn’t come from any further away than
Jupiter. Then, too, if they’d been very numerous, somebody would have sighted one
before. I’d give my left leg and four fingers for one good look at the inside of that ship.”
“Why didn’t you take it, then ? You never even looked toward it, after that one
first glimpse.”
“I’ll say I didn’t—the reason being that they may have automatic detectors, and
as I have suggested before, our system “of vision is so crude that its use could be
detected with a clothesline or a basket full of scrap iron. But to resume. Their aim is to
capture, not destroy, since they haven’t killed anybody except the one crew that
attacked them. Apparently they want to study us or something. However, they don’t
intend that any of us shall get away, nor even send out a word of what has happened to
us. Therefore it looks as though our best bet is to hide now, and try to sneak away on
them after a while—direct methods won’t work. Right?”
“You sound lucid. Is there any possibility of getting back, though, if we got
anywhere near Jupiter? It’s so far away!”
“It’s a long stretch, no fooling, from Jupiter to any of the planets where we have
power-plants—particularly now, when Mars and Tellus are subtending an angle of
something more then ninety degrees at the sun, and Venus is between the two, while
Jupiter is clear across the sun from all three of them. Even when Jupiter is in mean
opposition to Mars, it is still some five hundred and fifty million kilometers away, so you
can form some idea as to how far it is from our nearest plant now. No, if we expect to
get back under our own power, we’ve got to break away pretty quick—these lifeboats
have very little accumulator capacity, and the receptors are useless above about three
hundred million kilometers . . .”
“But it’ll take us a long time to go that far, won’t it ?” “Not very. Our own ships,
using only the acceleration of gravity, and both plus and minus at that, make the better
than four hundred million kilometers of the long route to Mars in five days. These birds
are using almost that much acceleration, and I don’t see how they do it. They must have
a tractor ray. Brandon claimed that such a thing was theoretically possible, but Westfall
and I couldn’t see it. We ragged him about it a lot—and he was right. I thought of course
they’d drift with us, but they are using power steadily. They’ve got some system!”
“Suppose they could be using intra-atomic energy ?” “Could be.” The man
frowned in concentration. “Piles as we know them can’t be that small and portable,