Part 13

Then for weeks Prime Base was the scene of an activity furious indeed. New apparatus was designed and tested; shears for tracers and tractors, generators of screens against cosmic-energy intake, scramblers for the communicators of the enemy, and many other things. Each item was designed and tested, redesigned and retested, until even the most skeptical of the patrol's engineers could no longer find in it anything to criticize. Then, throughout the galaxy, the ships of the patrol were called into their sector bases to be rebuilt.

There were to be two great classes of vessels. Those of the first were to have speed and defense--nothing else. They were to be the fastest things in space, and able to defend themselves against attack. That was all. Vessels of the second class had to be built from the keel upward, since nothing even remotely like them had theretofore been conceived. They were to be huge, ungainly, slow--simply storehouses of incomprehensibly vast powers of offense. They carried projectors of a size and power never before set upon movable foundations, nor were they dependent upon cosmic energy. They carried their own, in bank upon stupendous bank of Gargantuan accumulators. In fact, each of these monstrous floating fortresses was to be able to generate screens of such design and power that no vessel anywhere near them could receive cosmic energy!

This, then, was the bolt which civilization was preparing to hurl against Boskonia. In theory the thing was simplicity itself. The ultra-fast cruisers would catch the enemy, lock on with tractors, and go inert, thus anchoring in space. Then, while absorbing and dissipating everything that the opposition could send, they would put out a peculiarly patterned interference, the center of which could easily be located. The mobile fortresses would then come up, cut off the Boskonians' power intake, and finish up the job.

Not soon was that bolt forged; but in time civilization was ready to launch its stupendous and, it was generally hoped and believed, conclusive attack upon Boskonia. Every sector base and sub-base was ready; the zero hour had been set.

At Prime Base Kimball Kinnison, the youngest Tellurian ever to wear the four silver stripes of captain, sat at the conning plate of the cruiser _Brittania II_, so named at his own request. He thrilled inwardly as he thought of her speed. Such was her force of drive that, streamlined to the ultimate degree although she was, she had special wall shields, and special dissipators to radiate into space the heat of friction of the medium through which she tore so madly. Otherwise she would have destroyed herself in an hour of full blast, even in the hard vacuum of interstellar space!

And in his office Port Admiral Haynes watched a chronometer. Minutes to go--then seconds.

"Clear ether and light landings." His deep voice was gruff with unexpressed emotion. "Five seconds.... QX.... Lift!" And the fleet shot into the air.

* * * * *

The first objective of this solarian fleet was twofold, and this first hop was to be a short one indeed. For the Boskonians had established bases upon both Pluto and Neptune, right here in the solarian system. So close to Prime Base were these bases that only intensive screening and constant vigilance had kept their spy rays out; so powerful were they that the ordinary battleships of the patrol had been impotent against them. Now they were to be removed. Therefore the fleet, cruisers and "maulers" alike, divided into two parts; one part flashing toward Neptune, the other toward slightly more distant Pluto.

Short as was the time necessary to traverse any interplanetary distance, the solarians were detected and were met in force by the ships of Boskone. But scarcely had battle been joined when the enemy began to realize that this was to be a battle the like of which they had never before seen; and when they began to understand it, it was too late. They could not run, and all space was so full of interference that they could not even report to Helmuth what was going on. These first, peculiarly teardrop-shaped vessels of the patrol did not fight at all. They simply held on like bulldogs, taking without response everything that the white-hot projectors could hurl into them.

Their defensive screens radiated fiercely, high into the violet, under the appalling punishment being dealt out to them by the batteries of ship and shore, but they did not go down. Nor did the grip of a single tractor loosen from its anchorage. And in minutes the squat and monstrous maulers came up. Out went their cosmic-energy blocking screens, out shot their tractor beams, and out from the refractory throats of their stupendous projectors there raved the most terrifically destructive forces generable by man.

Boskonian outer screens scarcely even flickered as they went down before the immeasurable, the incredible violence of that thrust. The second course offered a briefly brilliant burst of violet radiance as it gave way. The inner screen resisted stubbornly as it ran the spectrum in a wildly coruscant display of pyrotechnic splendor; but it, too, went through the ultra-violet and into the black.

Now the wall shield itself--that inconceivably rigid fabrication of pure force, which only the instantaneous detonation of twenty metric tons of "duodec" had ever been known to rupture--was all that barred from the base metal of Boskonian walls the utterly indescribable fury of the maulers' beams. Now force was streaming from that shield in veritable torrents.

So terrible were the conflicting energies there at grips that their neutralization was actually visible and tangible. In sheets and masses, in terrific, ether-racking vortices, and in miles-long, pillaring streamers and flashes, those energies were being hurled away--hurled to all the points of the sphere's full compass, filling and suffusing all near-by space.

The Boskonian commanders stared at their instruments, first in bewildered amazement and then in sheer, stark, unbelieving horror as their power intake dropped to zero and their wall shields began to fail--and still the attack continued in never-lessening power. Surely that beaming _must_ slacken down soon. No conceivable mobile plant could throw such a load for long!

But those mobile plants could--and did. The attack kept up, at the extremely high level upon which it had begun. No ordinary storage cells fed those mighty projectors; along no ordinary busbars were their Titanic amperages borne. Those maulers were designed to do just one thing--to _maul_--and that one thing they did well, relentlessly and thoroughly.

* * * * *

Higher and higher into the spectrum the defending wall shields began to radiate. At the first blast they had leaped almost through the visible spectrum, in one unbearably fierce succession of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, up to a sultry, coruscating, blindingly hard violet. Now the doomed shields began leaping erratically into the ultra-violet. To the eye they were already invisible; upon the recorders they were showing momentary flashes of black.

Soon they went down; and in the instant of each failure one vessel of Boskonia was no more. For, that last defense gone, nothing save unresisting metal was left to withstand the ardor of those ultra-powerful, ravening beams. As has already been said, no substance, however refractory or resistant or inert, can endure even momentarily in such a field of force. Therefore, every atom, alike of vessel and of contents, went to make up the searing, seething burst of brilliant, incandescently luminous vapor which suffused all circumambient space.

Thus passed out of the scheme of things the vessels of the solarian detachment of Boskonia. Not a single vessel escaped; the cruisers saw to that. And then the attack thundered on to the bases themselves. Here the cruisers were useless; they merely formed an observant fringe, the while continuing to so blanket all channels of communication that the doomed bases could send out no word of what was happening to them. The maulers moved up and grimly, doggedly, methodically went to work.

Since a base is always much more powerfully armored than is a battleship, the reduction of these fortresses took longer than had the destruction of the fleet. But the bases could no longer draw power from the Sun or from any other heavenly body, and their other sources of power were comparatively weak. Therefore, their defenses also failed under that never-ceasing assault. Course after course their screens went down, and with the last one went the base. The maulers' beams went through metal and masonry as effortlessly as steel-jacketed bullets go through butter, and bored on, deep into the planet's bedrock, before their frightful force was spent.

Then around and around they spiraled, until nothing whatever was left of the Boskonian works; until only a seething, white-hot lake of molten lava in the midst of the planet's frigid waste was all that remained to show that anything had ever been built there.

Surrender had not been thought of. Quarter or clemency had not been asked, nor offered. Victory, of itself, was not enough. This was, and of stern necessity had to be, a war of utter, complete, and merciless extinction.

XIV.

The enemy strongholds so insultingly close to Prime Base having been obliterated, the solarian fleet sailed on into space. For a few weeks game was plentiful enough. Hundreds of raiding vessels were overtaken and held by the patrol cruisers, then blasted to vapor by the maulers.

Many Boskonian bases were also reduced. The locations of most of these had long been known to the intelligence service; others were detected or discovered by the fast-flying cruisers themselves. Marauding vessels revealed the sites of others by succeeding in reaching them before being overtaken by the cruisers. Others were found by the tracers and loops of the signal corps.

Very few of these bases were hidden or in any way difficult of access, and most of them fell before the blasts of a single mauler. But if one mauler was not enough, others were summoned until it did fall. One fortress, a hitherto unknown and surprisingly strong Sector Base, required the concentration of every mauler of the solarian fleet; but they were brought up and the fortress fell. As has been said, this was a war of extinction and every pirate base that was found was reduced.

But one day a cruiser found a base which had not even a spy-ray shield up, and a cursory inspection showed it to be completely empty. Machinery, equipment, stores, and personnel had all been evacuated. Suspicious, the patrol vessels stood off and beamed it from afar, but there were no untoward occurrences. The structures simply slumped down into lava, and that was all.

Every base discovered thereafter was in the same condition, and at the same time the ships of Boskone, formerly so plentiful, disappeared utterly from space. Day after day the cruisers sped hither and thither throughout the vast reaches of the void, at the peak of their unimaginably high pace, without finding a trace of any Boskonian vessel. More remarkable still, and for the first time in years, the ether was absolutely free from Boskonian interference.

Following an impulse, Kinnison asked and received permission to take his ship on scouting duty. At maximum blast, he drove toward the Velantian system, to the point at which he had picked up Helmuth's communication line. Along that line he drove for twenty-two solid days, halting only when a considerable distance outside the galaxy. Ahead of him there was nothing whatever except one or two distant and nebulous star clusters. Behind him there extended the immensity of the galactic lens in all its splendor. But Captain Kinnison had no eye for astronomical beauty that day.

* * * * *

He held the _Brittania II_ there for an hour, while he mulled over in his mind what the apparent facts could mean. He knew that he had covered the line, from the point of determination out beyond the galaxy's edge. He knew that his detectors, operating as they had been in clear and undistorted ether, could not possibly have missed a thing as large as Helmuth's base must be, if it had been anywhere near that line; that their effective range was immensely greater than the largest possible error in the determination or the following of the line. There were, he concluded, three possible explanations, and only three.

First, Helmuth's base might also have been evacuated. This was almost unthinkable. From what he himself knew of Helmuth that base would be as nearly impregnable as anything could be made, and it was no more apt to be vacated than was the Prime Base of the patrol. Second, Helmuth might already have the device he himself wanted so badly, and upon which Hotchkiss and the other experts had been at work so long--a detector nullifier. This was possible, distinctly so. Possible enough, at least, to warrant filing the idea for future consideration. Third, that base might not be in the galaxy at all, but in that star cluster out there straight ahead of the _Brittania II_, or possibly in one even farther away. That idea seemed the best of the three. It would necessitate ultra-powerful communicators, of course, but Helmuth could very well have them. It squared up in other ways. Its pattern fitted into the matrix very nicely.

But if that base were out there--it could stay there--for a while. The _Brittania II_ just wasn't enough ship for that job. Too much opposition out there, and not--enough--ship. Or too much ship? But he wasn't ready, yet, anyway. He needed, and would get, another line on Helmuth's base. Therefore, shrugging his shoulders, he whirled his vessel about and set out to rejoin the fleet.

While a full day short of junction, Kinnison was called to his plate, to see upon its lambent surface the visage of Port Admiral Haynes.

"Did you find out anything on your trip?" he asked.

"Nothing definite, sir. Just a couple of things to think about, is all. But I can say that I don't like this at all. I don't like anything about it or any part of it."

"No more do I," agreed the admiral. "It looks very much as though your forecast of a stalemate might be about to eventuate. Where are you headed for now?"

"Back to the fleet."

"Don't do it. Stay on scouting duty for a while longer. And, unless something more interesting turns up, report back here to base. We have something that may interest you. The boys have been----"

The admiral's picture was broken up into flashes of blinding light and his words became a meaningless, jumbled roar of noise. A distress call had begun to come in, only to be blotted out by a flood of the Boskonian static interference, of which the ether had for so long been clear.

"Got its center located?" Kinnison barked at his communications officer. "They're close--right in our laps!"

"Yes, sir!" And the radio man snapped out numbers.

"Blast!" the captain commanded, unnecessarily; for the alert pilot had already set the course and his levers were even then flashing across their arcs. "I don't know what we can do, since we haven't got a thing to do anything with, if that baby is what I think it is. But believe me, we'll try!"

* * * * *

Toward the center of disturbance shot _Brittania II_, herself emitting now a scream of peculiarly patterned interference which was not only a scrambler of all possible communication throughout that whole sector of the galaxy, but also an imperative call for any mauler within that sector. So close had the _Brittania II_ been to the scene of depredation that for her to reach it required only minutes.

There lay the merchantman and her Boskonian assailant. Emboldened by the cessation of piratical activities, some shipping concern had sent out a freighter, loaded probably with highly "urgent" cargo; and this was the result. The marauder, inert, had gripped her with his tractors and was beaming her into submission. She was resisting, but feebly now; it was apparent that her screens were failing. Her crew must soon open ports in token of surrender, or roast to a man; and they would probably prefer to roast.

Thus the situation in one instant. The next instant it was changed; the Boskonian discovering suddenly that his beams, instead of boring through the weak defenses of the freighter, were not even exciting to a glow the mighty protective envelopes of a cruiser of the patrol.

He switched from the diffused heat beam he had been using upon the merchantman to the hardest, hottest, most penetrating beam of annihilation he mounted--with but little more to show for it and with no better results. For the _Brittania II's_ screens had been designed to stand up almost indefinitely against the most potent beams of any space ship, and they stood up. Increase power as he would, to whatever ruinous overload, the pirate could not break down Kinnison's screens; nor, dodge as he would, could he again get in position to attack his former prey. And eventually the mauler arrived; fortunately it, too, had been fairly close by. Out reached its mighty tractors. Out raved one of its tremendous beams, striking the Boskonian's defenses squarely amidships.

That beam struck and the pirate ship disappeared--but not in a hazily incandescent flare of volatilized metal. The raider disappeared bodily, and still all in one piece. He had put out shears of his own, snapping even the mauler's tractors like threads; and the velocity of his departure was due almost as much to the pressor effect of the patrol beam as it was to the thrust of his own powerful drivers.

It was the beginning of the stalemate Kinnison had foreseen.

"I was afraid of that," the young captain muttered; and, paying no attention whatever to the merchantman, he called the commander of the mauler. At this close range, of course, no possible ether scrambler could interfere with visual apparatus, and there on his plate he saw the face of Clifford Maitland, the man who graduated No. 2 in his own class.

"Hi, Kim, you old space flea!" Maitland exclaimed in delight. "Oh, pardon me, sir," he went on in mock deference, with an exaggerated salute. "To a guy with four jets, I should say----"

"Seal that, Cliff, or I'll climb up you like a squirrel, first chance I get!" Kinnison retorted. "So they've got you skippering one of the big battle wagons, huh? Lucky stiff! Think of a mere infant like you being let play with so much high power. But what'll we do about this heap here?"

"Damn if I know. It isn't covered, so you'll have to tell me, captain."

"Who am I to be passing out orders? As you say, it isn't covered in the book. It's against G I regs for them to be cutting our tractors. But he's all yours, not mine. I've got to flit. You might find out what he's carrying, from where, to where, and why. Then, if you want to, you can escort him either back where he came from or on to where he's going, whichever you think best. If this interference dies out, you'd better report to Prime Base and get some real orders. If it doesn't, use your own judgment, if any. Clear ether, Cliff, I've got to buzz along."

"Free landings, space hound!"

"Now, Vic"--Kinnison turned to his pilot--"we've got urgent business at base. And when I say 'urgent' I don't mean perchance. Let's see you burn a hole in the ether." And that worthy snapped his levers over to maximum blast.

* * * * *

The _Brittania II_ made the run to Prime Base in a few days, and scarcely had she touched ground when Kinnison was summoned to the office of the port admiral. As soon as he was announced, Haynes brusquely cleared his office and sealed it against any possible form of intrusion or eavesdropping before he spoke. He had aged noticeably since these two had had that memorable conference in this same room. His face was lined and careworn; his eyes and his entire mien bore witness to days and nights of sleeplessly continuous work.

"You were right, Kinnison," he began, abruptly. "A stalemate it is, a hopeless deadlock. I called you in to tell you that Hotchkiss has your nullifier done, and that it works perfectly against all long-range stuff. It works fairly well on vision, except at close range. Against electromagnetics, however, it is not very effective. About all that can be done, it seems, is to shorten the range; it has not been possible, as yet, to develop a screen against magnetism. Perhaps we expected too much."

"I can get by with that, I think. I will be out of electromagnetic range most of the time, and nobody watches their electros very close, anyway. Thanks a lot. It's ready to install?"

"Doesn't need installation. It's such a little thing you can put it in your pocket. It's self-contained and will work anywhere."

"Better and better. In that case I'll need two of them--and a ship. I would like to have one of those new automatic speedsters.[4] Lots of legs, cruising range, and screens. Only one beam, but I probably won't use even that one so----"

[Footnote 4: Unlike the larger war vessels of the patrol, speedsters are very narrow in proportion to their length, and in their design nothing is considered save speed and maneuverability. Very definitely they are not built for comfort. Thus, although their gravity plates are set for horizontal flight, they have braking jets, under jets, side jets, and top jets, as well as driving jets; so that in inert maneuvering any direction whatever may seem "down," and that direction may change with bewildering rapidity.

Nothing can be loose in a speedster. Everything, even to the food supplies in the refrigerators, must be clamped into place. Sleeping is done in hammocks, not in beds. All seats and resting places have heavy safety straps, and there are no loose items of furniture or equipment anywhere on board.

Because they are designed for the utmost possible speed in the free condition, speedsters are extremely cranky and tricky in inert flight, unless they are being handled upon their under jets, which are designed and placed specifically and only for inert flight.

Some of the ultra-fast vessels of the pirates, as will be brought out later, were also of this shape and design.]

"Going _alone_?" interrupted Haynes. "Better take a battle cruiser, at least. I don't like the idea of your going out there alone."

"I don't particularly relish the prospect, either. But it's got to be that way. The whole fleet, maulers and all, isn't enough to do by force what's got to be done, and even two men are too many to do it in the only way it can be done. You see, sir----"

"No explanations, please. It's on the spool, where we can get it if we need it. Are you informed as to the latest developments?"

"No, sir. I heard a little coming in, but not much."

"We are almost back where we were before you took off in the _Brittania II_. Commerce is almost at a standstill, all over the galaxy. All shipping firms are practically idle. But that is neither all of it nor the worst of it. You may not realize how important interstellar trade is; but as a result of its stoppage general business has slowed down tremendously. As is only to be expected, perhaps, complaints are coming in by the thousand because we have not already blasted the pirates out of space, and demands that we do so at once. They do not understand the true situation, nor realize that we are doing all that we can do. We cannot send a mauler with every freighter and liner, and mauler-escorted vessels are the only ones to arrive at their destinations."

"But why? With tractor shears on all ships, how can they hold them?" asked Kinnison.

"Magnets!" snorted Haynes. "Plain, old-fashioned electromagnets. No pull to speak of, at a distance, of course, but with the raider running free, a millionth of a dyne is enough. Close up--lock on--board and storm--all done!"