CHAPTER XII

They had killed nineteen Graken, and Slough, reloading the clumsy revolver with his tiny hands, presumed that the entire crew was not dead. They had killed nine on their way in here, and had finished off ten more since, as they barged in the door or crept up to it to attack the presumptuous humans.

The queer part of it was that, although Trace had been sweating blood over the instruments for more than a quarter of an hour, no reinforcements had appeared from the other saucers. Slough did not understand this. Certainly a number of those perishing Grakens had sent out frantic messages for aid before they died; and according to the late Glodd's story, such thought-calls should have been heard even over in Europe, Africa, or Asia, let alone in the saucers that were, so to speak, just next door.

The only answer seemed to be that one saucer was expendable. This, considering the Graken's mutual reliance, must mean that every other saucer was engaged in work of the utmost importance--such as forming the chain which would carry Terra through sub-space into the system called Lluagor.

He handed his revolver to Jane Kelly. The girl was pale, but her features were set in strong, determined lines. Slough admired her; she was one of the finest specimens of womankind he had ever seen. "I don't think we can expect more visitors, my dear," he said to her, adding to himself, _unless we find ourselves in another galaxy_. "You keep this ready, however." He went to Trace Roscoe.

Trace gruffed at him. "Don't need you. Get back there."

"Of course you need me. I was an airplane designer, remember? I have some knowledge.... Have you found the electronic device yet?"

Trace turned up a lined and agonized face. After a moment he said, "No. Not yet."

"Keep going, then. I'll start at the other end," said Slough.

The banks and panels were far more intricate even than they had first supposed. Slough believed that the device they were searching for would probably be a type of klystron, considering the ultrahigh-frequency application. Whatever turn the Graken science had taken, he felt the the principles of electronics, being universal, must be those involved in this sub-space travel; and it did not seem reasonable that an electronic mechanism could be very different on Chwosst or Terra or Mars or any where else.

Trace believed this too. He was a pretty fair student of electronics and he doubted that any race could disguise a high vacuum thermionic tube or an amplifying circuit or a thyratron so that he, Sergeant Trace Roscoe, couldn't identify it. The photoelectric cells that opened and closed the doors seemed to be of the same type as those used on this planet for the same function; Trace had taken two minutes off to pry off the cover of the cell in the left wall and inspect the construction. So he ought to know the "kidnap-device" when he came across it.

He glanced at his watch. More than half an hour had passed since they entered the ship.

The race of man hung on his fingers, which fumbled among a myriad esoteric gadgets in search of one which might be no more than a pair of resonant cavities, an anode, a cathode, and a grid. He felt his coolness departing, the sweat of terror stood on his face, he lost the tough-sergeant veneer and became a panting, panicked man.

Then he caught the eye of Jane Kelly, and he bit his lip and told himself off in Gaelic cuss words, and went to his job again with a firmer grip.

And in five minutes he found the device he was hunting.

"Slough!" he shouted, in the bull's roar that once had nearly drowned out the Red guns in Korea. "Slough, come here!" And the small man, who had been six steps away, bounded to his side with his blue eyes wide in astonishment. "Is this it?" asked Trace fiercely. "Am I right, is this it?"

Slough glared at the small recess, and said, "Aha!" It was an intricate and highly specialized form, if he was any judge, of the resonant cavity magnetrons with which he had worked often in the past. He said so, and Trace nodded. "Okay. Now we gimmick it."

"Can I help?" asked the midget, eager as a boy.

"You're damn right. My fingers are too big to get into all the crannies. You do what I tell you; get in behind the tube, like so, with your index finger...."

* * * * *

As Trace ordered and Slough obeyed, the others came round them, still alert for raiders, but eager to listen to the mysterious words which came, sharp and intense, from the sergeant's lips. Now and then Slough would disagree, and they'd argue; Bill began to fidget with apprehension. The words were Greek to him.

"But if we lead in the wire from this other thing, which has got to be the fuel feed--"

"Why must it be? We don't know it is. I say build up the frequency of oscillation until--"

"Well, then, stick your damn fingers over here and hold this steady while I--"

And so on. Bill was certain that it would never end, that they must be caught at sunrise by an investigating party of the green aliens; but suddenly the midget and the soldier were moving off from the control banks, looking at each other with expressions half smug and half fearful. "Let's get out," said Trace abruptly.

"What did you do?" asked Jane Kelly, as they hurried through the rooms toward the entrance port.

"Gimmicked it," said Trace. His hand fell on her arm and squeezed reassuringly. "The electronic device is now altered so it'll build up an intolerable frequency; it's also connected with the thing we think is the fuel feeder, and with a row of buttons we're almost certain connect with the blasting rays."

They reached the port. "In other words," prompted Jane, "what?"

"In other words, when the ships are set to zoom old Earth into the sub-space subways, this disk is going to blow sky-high; and since they're all connected in series electronically, the whole goddam fleet will explode simultaneously."

They wriggled through the short passage, dropped to the ground. It was very dark on the plain. Patches of snow on the ground showed dark shapes of tree and bush and boulder; after the green light of the saucer, this outer world was dim and full of illusions. Jane thought she saw a Graken approaching, and stifled a scream when she realized it was the shadow of a swooping owl. She said loudly, "I don't like it."

"What?" asked Trace. They were standing in the shadow of the saucer, indecisive.

"I don't like this. It's too easy. It's a let-down." She grasped him by the arms, and he, startled, looked down into her face that was a lovely softened blur in the night. "I'm half Irish too, Trace Roscoe, half pure black Irish; that's the Kelly in me. And I tell you plain, I feel wrong about this. It can't happen so pat, you can't just change a wire or two, hook up this and attach that, and foil the kidnapping of a whole world. There's something wrong, there's a thing missing that's vital."

"Baby," he said, so low that no one heard but the girl, "I can tell you what it is. It's a security on this. Because there's about one chance in a thousand that what we did will work like we want it to. That machinery's out of this world. Half of what we did I can't explain to myself, even. We just made a purblind stab at bollixing the deal."

"It's something else. You're forgetting something. Oh, Trace, Trace," she cried suddenly, gripping him savagely in her anguish, "I know! It's that there's no crew in this saucer, and they aren't coming to fight us! That means they've either taken the earth into their galaxy already, or else that they'll do it without bothering about this saucer--and then where will your fine plan be?"

Trace almost sat down, his body went so limp. "Oh My God," he said slowly in capitals. "I never thought of that."

"You've got to get a crew here," she said, as the others crowded about them stammering their worry and terror. "You've got to get them out of their ships, no matter how busy they are, and let them see that they can take this one over again. They can't know anything that's happened since we killed the last one in there."

"She's right," exclaimed Bill. "We have to create a diversion to suck 'em out of their hidey-holes, Trace."

"The only way is to attack the saucers," he said wearily, "and how we do that with two rayguns and a revolver, heaven only knows."

"Why, we do it with two rayguns and a revolver, then," said Barbara suddenly. "Why not? That next saucer's maybe a hundred feet away. Take a shot at it, for Pete's sake. Try it and see."

Trace inflated his chest and stuck out his jaw and once more he was the complete sergeant. He tore the pistol from Bill's hand, raised it and sent a streak of green death arrowing at the dark bulk of the spacecraft. Playing it along the rim, he tried to strike the oval ports with it; and he did not release the trigger for a full minute. "Now let's see," he said. He looked at Jane and the redhead. "You two take off," he barked. "Head for the hill, pronto." His tone was so unanswerable that they ran, Jane twisting her head back at every third step. Shortly they were out of sight.

Nothing moved, and if there was any damage to the other saucer, it could not be seen from where the men stood. Trace, impatient, was lifting the weapon again, when a green light shone out from the center of the edge.

"Ah," breathed Trace. "We've raised 'em. Now let 'em come, don't stop 'em, and we'll man this death-trap yet!"