Part 8
"Can we see better in here or out there?" he asked.
"In here," said Cliff. "The drone won't be within a ten light-sec range when we hit it. The celestial globe, here, has been juggled up to show both drone and projector. It's rough, but the lack of definition won't bother us. We can understand what's happening--and if it happens as we expect, we'll see it go blooey and be able to reconstruct the event. Stick around."
Linzete came and stood beside them. "I think the sawtooth is not of the proper shape," he suggested.
"Perhaps not," agreed Lane. "But to put any sharper break on it will require another high-power driver stage. I'm hoping it will be adequate."
"The recovery time may seem slow," added Downing. "But remember how much distance it controls."
Linzete nodded dubiously. He was not the type to argue. If these gadget-mad Terrans were going to ruin a second-rate ship on the first try, well, they'd find out soon enough. He hoped they had a stock of radio-controlled drones. They'd need them.
They had--and they probably would need them.
"On target!" came the cry.
* * * * *
Above, the platform swung around. The projector bobbled over in its gimbals and centered on something invisible in the blue sky. The tractor beams took hold invisibly and there was a grunting of the bearings as the whole mechanism anchored itself to the core of the planet.
Then the projector jumped perceptibly. It seemed to gather itself together and pounce. Then the system relaxed, apparently, for the tractor beams died and the bearings resumed their freedom.
Down in the housing, the celestial globe showed a small, outdated cruiser. Speed was apparently zero, for the globe and its detecting and scanning circuits was following it, mile for mile and second by second. A range and velocity computed below the globe gave the data: Nine light-sec range, velocity sixty-six MPS.
The cruiser faltered in flight and the scanners almost passed ahead of it. It faltered momentarily--that was during the time that the projector seemed to gather its energy. As the pounce came, something inside of the cruiser exploded very slowly. It expanded the cruiser slightly here and there; a plate blew off; five or six of the greenhouses shattered in puffs of mild fire; and then the cruiser staggered and continued on at a lower velocity.
"Send out the word," called Lane. "General coverage. That was the first shock."
Laboratories marked the time all over Terra. It would take hours for the shock--if any--to reach the antipodes. What Lane was more interested in was the report from Cal Tech, only a few hundred miles away.
"Linzete, you were right," said Lane. "It'll take time, and we'll need it. But--Hey! Fellows! Get the high-power stage rigged and see what can be done about increasing the sharpness of the sawtooth generator."
The period of waiting was filled with activity. The reports started to come in:
"Cal Tech reports very mild shock."
"Washington indicated almost zero--just a trace."
"O.K., we can stand it," said Lane. "How's the target?"
"Circling Terra. Radius seven light-sec. Velocity fifty-three MPS."
The projector was ready when the drone returned. Again the projector gathered itself together, and the pounce was quite visible. Beneath them, the ground shook violently, and the projector and its mighty platforms rattled in the bearings, held as they were by tractors to the core of Terra.
In the celestial sphere, the cruiser faltered again, and then exploded in a wild blast of sheer flame, white and violent. The radiating gases expanded, passed out of the scope of the scanner, and then the scanner fell away from the scene and roamed aimlessly across the sky, showing a mad whirling pattern of uninteresting stars.
"What happened?" asked Linzete.
"Main target blew up completely. Nothing massive to focus on, so the finders and scanners just roam at will. That's it, Stellor."
"Wait until we get the seismographic reports," cautioned the Martian. "Maybe we can blast a ship to bits at two million miles, but so what if California slides into the San Jacinto fault?"
"Well, there'll be no more attempts until the returns are all in from the labs," said Lane. "I'm taking no more chances." He turned to Linzete. "You'll want the plans, of course?"
The Sscantovian nodded. "I will not require the main circuits, of course. The snatcher portion is just an oversized version of our own invention. What I shall need is the details of the compressing sphere. We were content to tear a section out of the ship. You made a precision slicing operation out of it which pleased us greatly. But this problem of taking the spherical cut and actually compressing the matter inside--then releasing it instantly to create an atomic explosion is far beyond me. We can copy it, but no Sscantovian would ever hope to develop it from the facts here unless he had detailed plans. We--could not understand its operation."
"You did understand the main principle, though. You were the one who predicted that the release-time was not fast enough and suggested sharpening the sawtooth generator."
"One may make suggestions without understanding the whole process," purred Linzete. "Your weapon seems to be a success."
"We'll know that when the seismographic reports are all in. Hurling a beam of this kind, doing what we do, may well shake the planet's crust. We hope to extend our range to ten million miles, and we'll know if we can in a few months. If you have any deities, Linzete, you might burn a prayer to 'em."
* * * * *
It was thirty-six hours before the returns were all in. All along the fault-lines of Terra came reports of very mild temblors. Nowhere was there any severe slippage of Terra's crust: the seismographs could find no epicenters, the uncounted tons of rock, under unknown tons of pressure, had slid uniformly, creating a general, little shock.
And Lane grinned. "With little slippages," he said, "we may do away with all severe earthquakes. Releasing the crust-pressures before they build up to a disaster-quantity should help, not hinder. We might continue hitting small targets like this until the distribution of fault-pressures is even all over. Then we can swing the Big Beam."
"What I'm interested in at this point," said Downing, "is the countermeasures group. What if the Loard-vogh get this thing?"
"Billy says that they can't miss getting it eventually. And Billy also says that the countermeasures gang is working on another development. Has something to do with a similar gadget, only the sphere of force can be made to pierce the snatcher--or any other field of force--and remove smaller items inside. Sort of grab the stuff out from the contracting sphere and toss it outside. It might save a lot of the crew, especially since the atomic sphere is necessarily small."
Linzete purred and asked: "Couldn't you compress a whole section of the ship?"
Lane turned. "Billy says we could, but why? Takes that much more power, and the ultimate explosion would do little harm. This way we can grab a hunk the size of a baseball and make quite an atomic blowup out of it. Takes much less power, and the explosion is great."
"I think you'll find," offered Downing, "that it takes just as much power to wreck a ship by crushing it physically as it does to compress a small sphere and then let it explode."
"The atomic explosion takes more," said Lane.
"Then why?"
"Projector-size. We're getting away with swinging a ten-foot bowl around. If we wanted to inclose a whole ship, we'd require a paraboloid about forty times the longest diameter of the ship, just as the ten-foot bowl is forty times the diameter of the compressible sphere. And cutting a section out--well, that's the weapon we had before and decided against because it left a chance for a well-designed ship to lose a section and still carry on, or be repaired. Complete destruction is the only answer."
"In other words, the power input is greater, but the operational power--?"
"The overall power requirements of the atomic sphere projector are about even this way to just crumpling a ship."
"That's what I said," objected Downing.
"I thought you meant just the crushing factor. The difference is made up in the projector elements. Well, that's those. Billy says we can turn this over to the secondary crew, now."
"Then what?"
"I'm going to get six of these made up for each planet. We'll also mount some on the outer planets; and the colonials of Alpha, Procyon, and the rest."
* * * * *
Hotang Lu pounded the table with his little fist. "That weapon might have stopped them!" he snapped. "Why did you stop production?"
"Are you questioning my motives?" asked Thompson quietly.
"Yes!"
"Have you any doubts as to my loyalty?"
"I ... ah ... no."
"And you do not understand my intent?"
"No."
"He's not alone, Billy," put in Kennebec. "What do you intend to do?"
"The use of Terra's secret weapon is critical. It must be employed at exactly the opportune moment, and not one minute before and not one minute after. There must be, for psychological reasons you all know, a certain amount of normal, mine-run fighting before we employ our secret. But I do not want them to be defeated by our might and our weapons. That would be disastrous, for they would return in a few years, and they would return and return, until finally they succeeded in conquering us. We must fight this as I have planned, and when the time is exactly ripe, we shall employ our secret weapon and from that time on, there will be no more carnage, and the Loard-vogh will be conquered."
"When you're dealing with the Loard-vogh, there's no better way to skin a cat than to grab the skin at the neck and pull," scowled Downing. "Choking them to death with cream will not work. I spent three weeks there, remember, and I tell you, Billy, you can not temporize with them!"
Kennebec shook his head at Billy, "I wonder if your practice of getting what you want without fighting for it mightn't be carried too far."
"We are a million million in population," said Billy. "That's counting the Solar Combine plus the colonial outposts. This fight we're facing can not be won in another way. They outnumber us a million to one--think of that! To win, every Solarian must kill one million Loard-vogh! And that," he concluded bitterly, "makes us all come out even!"
"There isn't a man in this sector that wouldn't prefer to die protecting his own than to knuckle under Loard-vogh rule."
"I know--"
"Billy, I can not permit this order to continue," said Kennebec. "We must not permit them to take Terra!"
"Then you're overriding my order?"
"I am--and I pray that the procrastination isn't fatal."
Downing frowned. "Look, Billy, remember this: The Loard-vogh fear us as we are! Otherwise they would not be mobilizing against us. Despite the million-to-one ratio, they fear us and our heredity. We can and will win!"
"We'll win, never fear," said Billy. "But we'll win only if we play it properly."
"And properly means to fight with every weapon that we have."
"Spore bombs?"
"That's but one thing."
"They'll help--only to make the other trillion Loard-vogh mad. Douse a few planets and thousands of others will muster."
Billy Thompson thought for a moment and then answered: "Really, it makes little difference how we fight. We'll win anyway. Go ahead and build your gadgets."
He left, and Hotang Lu nodded. "I pray there is time left. Time to build smaller ones, too, that will fit the ships of the Solar Guard. Time to manufacture the necessary fighting equipment. Time to ... ah, always we are fighting time. I curse the lack of time."
And then the Tlemban added: "I am mystified. In my cosmos, if a secret weapon is worthy of use, it is worthy of use from the time it is discovered. I am puzzled--but then, I do not understand your secret weapon. It sounds foolish to me."
Kennebec spent the next three hours trying to make the Tlemban understand, and finally gave up.
XIV.
Lindoo strode into the presence of Vorgan, Lord of All, and handed an aide a scroll for the record. The Lord of All nodded and said nothing. Nor was there anything to say that had not been said previously. Any further discussion would be merely re-contemplation of ideas. The proof was four months off.
It would take four long months between this day--when Lindoo handed Vorgan's aide the scroll, giving the official date and time of I-second, when the invasion spearhead of the Loard-vogh blasted upward from the locus and headed for Sol--to the time when the first of the advance flight reached the Solar Sector.
Four months of just sheer waiting. Four months which the gadget-mad Terrans would use in preparation after the grand fleet of the Loard-vogh was a-space, and growing flight-weary.
Four months, full of intership bickerings and man-to-man fights because the quarters were too confined.
For the Loard-vogh were a quarrelsome race, and their fighting men trained to viciousness. It is not strange that with four months, cooped up in shells of steel, they should take to fighting among themselves. It was strictly against the regulations, of course, because the Lord of All wanted his fighting men to kill the enemy. Yet a fighting man will fight if he has nothing else to do, and for four long months there would be absolutely nothing to do. The Loard-vogh fighting man knew little else but battle. Trained from youth to be hard, vicious, and ruthless, he knew nothing of the art of killing time. Confinement made him more vicious when released, and the officers overlooked a given percentage of fights among the men. It was better that the ultimate viciousness be great than to have their men soft with other arts.
A goodly supply of other arts among the Loard-vogh would cause less casualties. Had they been mentally and physically trained to carve ivory, play chess, tie knots, or build spacecraft in bottles, their lives would have been less violent, including the madness with which they drove forward their attack.
Forward went the grand fleet. In the lead were the fleet fighter ships, and following them were the second wave craft. Third came the heavy supercraft, the backbone of the grand fleet of the Loard-vogh. A day behind came the mop-up transports, crammed to the space cocks with fighting men, their nerves already on edge after a short day or two of flight.
And bringing up the rear were the myriad upon myriad of supply ships, replacement carriers, machine-shop craft, and even space-going foundries. Heavy ships laden with munitions and generating equipment; craft that could anchor to the sunward side of an inner planet and hurl megawatt after megawatt of power to the fighting ships for their power-coffers. Huge--frameworks--with the equipment exposed to space. Planet docks for the repair of ships damaged in fight.
Forward drove this horde; forward into the Solar Sector. An all-conquering mass.
Silently and invisibly they sped in a long, cylindrical space pattern.
Object, Terra.
* * * * *
Not unmindful of danger, Sol was working furiously. Factories, their dies rusting the yard, were turning out parts for the atomic sphere. Dymodines fairly rattled off of production lines and were installed in the minor ships. Modines, the personal side-arm miniature of the dymodine, came with a rush down the production-line conveyors and slid into wrapping machines; were wrapped against all destructive, natural forces and then were packed in boxes for shipment.
Planet-mounted snatchers came to location by skytrain in parts and were assembled on the spot by skilled technicians.
The vast machines that generated the atomic sphere were being assembled and shipped to the several places. Here they went together, fitted bit by bit by machinists and technical men who worked furiously against time to complete the job before the Loard-vogh came.
They were many years building the original Palomar telescope, but this was war, and the techniques of fabrication had advanced since then. Perhaps the experience gained in that monstrous job--and in other mighty projects, some war-driven, some peace-measures--gave Sol the technical skill she needed. There would be no matter of years, this time. It was a matter of four very short months.
One hundred and twenty days. Just one small third of a year. And there is a saturation point in the manpower curve; just because one man can dig a well in sixty days, it is no sign that sixty men can dig the well in one day. They could, mathematically, but you can't get sixty men with shovels in a three-foot circle either mathematically or physically.
So time bore on relentlessly. Time that for the Loard-vogh seemed endlessly droning by was racing like fury for the laboring Terrans.
For at the same instant that Vorgan was groaning about the four-month wait, Thompson was complaining about the utter impossibility of getting anything done in four months.
What hurt Vorgan's sleep most of all was the fact that he feared that Terra knew of the imminent invasion.
Terra knew, and that spoiled their sleep, too.
But they did not tell Vorgan that they knew. If the Lord of All had known for certain, he would have slept better, for the uncertainty would have been removed.
For four long months, Vorgan's vicious crew of Loard-vogh warriors drove through space, and then they deployed in battle array. Their nerves tautened, and the personal fighting ceased, for the chances of battle with a legal enemy stayed their hands against their fellows.
They knew that they were approaching enemy territory. Their first glimpse of trouble would be a mushrooming blast in the sky--or even several simultaneous explosions.
The first that went up would be a deadly signal that near by, or dead ahead, their hated enemy was making his advance stand. That was the gamble. They each pinned their hopes on being the watcher. Let another ship go up in fire and flame. In this game, where no man could help another, none even considered the idea of wanting death in preference to another. For one man's life was exactly as good as any other man's at this point--for until the initial shock wave hit, neither was doing a thing.
They were on the offensive, the Loard-vogh. They were breaching a system that their leaders feared enough to break the Master Plan and send forth a full grand fleet to take this sector that lay more than a thousand light-years from the frontier of Loard-vogh conquest.
As the Loard-vogh was on the offensive, the first move had been taken--by them. The next move was up to Sol. And that retaliation would take place soon was not doubted by any man.
* * * * *
Fifty light-years from Sol they slowed and alerted. They wondered, those leaders of that invasion, when the blow would fall. Was it wiser to wait until the enemy was alert? To wait until the enemy was waiting for the first detector alarm seemed brash. The Loard-vogh method was to strike like a hidden snake, and beat the enemy to the ground before he knew what was waiting for him.
It made them nervous.
And a psychologist who had studied both the Loard-vogh and the Terran minds from a dispassionate standpoint made the observation that the Loard-vogh might have been better equipped to cope with a slashing surprise attack, but were completely baffled by the obvious foolishness of waiting.
Three days Terran went by, and the secondary waves of Loard-vogh came up, adding to the general confusion. Orders rang through space and the following waves of the grand fleet slowed so that utter confusion would not hamper their action.
Then, eight days after the first arrivals, and still with no attack, the Loard-vogh decided to move in another ten light-years. A star twinkled there. It had been this stellar outpost that the Loard-vogh feared. Their methods of defense would have been to arm every planet of this star with energy enough to reach three light-years into space and crush any oncomer. They were wise. They gave a three-times plus safety factor just because their Lord of All was afraid of Terra.
And they admitted that they, too, feared Terra.
With slow care, the spearhead moved forward. The grand fleet moved in waves once again. Slow, overcautious waves, and they worried all the way. They knew. They knew that it would come any minute now.
But nothing came at five light-years from the star. And at three light-years there was not a sign in their detector systems. A single light-year gave them the same indication, and they swarmed about the star--now a blazing sun, and searched the heavens about them for the sign of enemy activity. They gave the seven planets a wide berth, and would stay away until they were very certain--
So this was the feared and hated Solar Sector? Not even an outpost. Not a scout. Not a sign of activity!
The Loard-vogh took a deep breath and sighed in relief. And while they were letting their breath out, Sol struck--and hard!
XV.
In the long-range scanner, the Loard-vogh fleet were but shapeless blobs. In the past hours, they had become detectable, and now were spreading out as the terrific velocity of the Terran fleet dropped down upon them.
"Now?" asked Downing.
"Better wait another minute," suggested Cliff.
"O.K. The judgment of when is best is tough, sometimes."
"Better we should blitz eight or nine of them for sure than to try and get fifteen but miss all but six. And don't forget that we're in the lead. The boys in back will have more time to spread out and get the outlying ships."
"I'd like to stay running free as long as I can," said Stellor.
"It makes us just that harder to detect when we are not radiating," agreed Lane. "Too bad we can't run right on through this way."
"Yeah, but we've got to use echo-ranging for the ordnance directors. We can't just use their radiation as a means. And if we use echo-ranging, that means squirting out the prime signal. That means detection anyway, and we might as well use power, too."
"What's our speed?"
"Point seven nine light."
"Fast enough," grunted Downing. "O.K., let 'em have it!"
At seventy-nine percent of the speed of light, the free-running ships came to life. The drivers went to work at the same time that the first pulse from the ordnance directors went out. The turrets, already trained by hand, moved only seconds of arc to correct for speed, when the pulse-echo returned with the data. And with the return of the second echo, reducing the error, the projectors belched energy.
In the Loard-vogh, detectors screamed and flared. Turrets, directed at random or stowed for travel, whipped around, the projectors rising in elevation. Defensive equipment went to work--but not soon enough.
For a dymodine crossing a dymodine will stop both, but they must be operating simultaneously. The Terran ships fired first, and they hit.
The sky had been serene. There was the star, blazing as a sun should blaze, the only thing in view against a stellar curtain. The ships of both fleets were black, and minutely invisible against the sky. The planets of this star were as much a part of the stellar backdrop as any planets are, even on Earth, and the appearance was just that of a very distant disk, half-dollar size, blinding white, poised against a vast, never ending wall of twinkling points.
Thirty seconds later, man had passed through--and left his mark.
Dymodines flashed incandescent spots that erupted in flaming gases. Snatchers sliced backbone from the ships of the Loard-vogh and they crumpled; some exploding. Three atomic sphere projectors found their mark and three of the Loard-vogh blasted themselves to bits, leaving only expanding masses and hard radiation--against the sky were moving flecks of death; the Universe was spreckled with novae that spread as they were watched.
Death, silent and unspectacular from a distance, struck.