Part 21

"Uh-huh. Ever since Murdoch took a swing at Venus Equilateral, I've been sort of wishing that we could concoct something big enough and dangerous enough to keep us free from any other wiseacres. Remember, we stand out there like a sore thumb. We are as vulnerable as a half pound of butter at a banquet for starving Armenians. The next screwball that wants to control the system will have to control Venus Equilateral first. And the best things we can concoct to date include projectile-tossing guns at velocities less than the speed of our ships, and an electron-shooter that can be overcome by coating the ship with any of the metal-salts that enhance secondary transmission."

"Remind me to requisition a set of full-sized tubes when we return. Might as well have some fun."

"O.K., you can have 'em. Which brings us back to the present. Question: Was that an abortive attempt upon our ship, or was that a mistaken try at melting a meteor?"

"I know how to find out. Let's call Chuck Thomas and have him get on the rails. We can have him request Terran Electric to give us any information they may have on energy beams to date."

"They'd tell you?" scorned Arden.

"If they write _no!_ and we find out that they did, we'll sue 'em dead. They're too shaky to try anything deep right now."

"Going to make it an official request, hey?"

"Right. From the station, it'll go out in print, and their answer will be on the 'type, too, since business etiquette requires it. They'll get the implication if they're on the losing end. That'll make them try something slick. If they're honest, they'll tell all."

"That'll do it all right," said Walt. "They're too shaky to buck us any more. And if they are trying anything, it'll show."

* * * * *

The rest of the trip was without incident. They put in at Canalopsis and found Keg Johnson with an official 'gram waiting for them. Don Channing ripped it open and read:

VENUS EQUILATERAL

ATTENTION DR. CHANNING:

NO PROJECT FOR ENERGY BEAM CAPABLE OF REMOVING METEORS UNDER WAY AT TERRAN ELECTRIC, OR AT ANY OF THE SUBSIDIARY COMPANIES. IDEAS SUGGESTED ALONG THESE LINES HAVE BEEN DISPROVEN BY YOUR ABORTIVE ATTEMPT OF A YEAR AGO, AND WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED UNLESS THEORY IS SUBSTANTIATED IN EVERY WAY BY PRACTICAL EVIDENCE.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, WE WILL DELVE INTO THE SUBJECT FROM ALL ANGLES. PLEASE ADVISE.

TERRAN ELECTRIC CO. BOARD OF LEGAL OPERATIONS MARK KINGMAN, LL.D.

Channing smiled wryly at Keg Johnson and told him of their trouble.

"Oh?" said Keg with a frown. "Then you haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Hellion Murdoch has been on the loose for weeks."

"Weeks!" yelled Channing.

"Uh-huh. He feigned gangrene, was taken to the base hospital, where he raised hob in his own inimitable way. He blasted the communications set-up completely, ruined three spaceships, and made off with the fourth. The contact ship just touched there recently and found hell brewing. If they hadn't had a load of supplies and prisoners for the place, they wouldn't have known about it for months, perhaps."

"So! Brother Murdoch is loose again. Well! The story dovetails in nicely."

"You think that was Hellion himself?"

"I'd bet money on it. The official report on Hellion Murdoch said that he was suffering from a persecution complex, and that he was capable of making something of it if he got the chance. He's slightly whacky, and dangerously so."

"He's a brilliant man, isn't he?"

"Quite. His name is well known in the circles of neurosurgery. He is also known to be an excellent research worker in applied physics."

"Nuts, hey?" asked Walt.

"Yeah, he's nuts. But only in one way, Walt. He's nuts to think that he is smarter than the entire solar system all put together. Well, what do we do now?"

"Butter ourselves well and start scratching for the answer. That betatron trick will not work twice. There must be something."

"O.K., Walt, we'll all help you think. I'm wondering how much research he had to do to develop that beam. After all, we were five thousand miles away, and he heated us up. He must've thought that we were a meteor--and another thing, too--he must've thought that his beam was capable of doing something at five thousand miles' distance or he wouldn't have tried. Ergo he must have beaten that two hundred mile bugaboo."

"We don't know that the two hundred mile bugaboo is still bugging in space," said Walt, slowly. "That's set up so that the ionization-by-products are not dangerous. Also, he's not transmitting power from station to station, et cetera. He's ramming power into some sort of beam and to the devil with losses external to his equipment. The trouble is, darn it, that we'll have to spend a month just building a large copy of my miniature set-up."

"A month is not too much time," agreed Channing. "And Murdoch will take a swing at us as soon as he gets ready to reach. We can have Chuck start building the big tubes immediately, can't we?"

"Just one will be needed. We'll use one of the standard solar intake tubes that we're running the station from. There's spare equipment aplenty. But the transmitter-terminal tube will take some building."

"Can we buy one from Terran Electric?"

"Why not? Get the highest rating we can. That should be plenty. Terran probably has them in stock, and it'll save us building one."

"What is their highest rating?"

"Two hundred megawatts."

"O.K. I'll send 'em a coded requisition with my answer to their letter."

"What are you going to tell 'em?"

"Tell 'em not to investigate the energy-gun idea unless they want to for their own reasons," Channing grinned. "They'll probably assume--and correctly--that we're going to tinker ourselves."

"And?"

"Will do nothing since it is an extra-planetary proposition. Unless it becomes suitable for digging tunnels, or melting the Martian ice cap," laughed Channing.

* * * * *

Mark Kingman took the letter to Murdoch, who was hidden in the depths of the _Black Widow_. Hellion read it twice, and then growled.

"They smell something sure," he snarled. "Why didn't we make that a perfect hit!"

"What are we going to do now?"

"Step up our plans. They'll have this thing in a few weeks. Hm-m-m. They order a transmitter terminal tube. Have you got any in stock?"

"Naturally. Not in stock, but available for the Northern Landing power-line order."

"You have none, then. You will have some available within a few days. That half-promise will stall them from making their own, and every day that they wait for your shipment is a day in our favor. To keep your own nose clean, I'll tell you when to ship the tube. It'll be a few days before I strike."

"Why bother?" asked Kingman. "They won't be around to call names."

"No, but their friends will, and we want to keep them guessing."

"I see. Those tubes are huge enough to cause comment, and there will be squibs in all papers telling of the giant tube going to Venus Equilateral, and the Sunday supplements will all break out in wild guesses as to the reason why Venus Equilateral wants a two-hundred megawatt tube. Too bad you couldn't keep your escape a secret a while longer."

"I suppose so. It was bound to be out sooner or later anyway. A good general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment's notice without sacrificing. We'll win through."

The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the _Black Widow_ took shape. The super-tubes were installed, and Murdoch worked in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the course-integrators and to accommodate high velocities and to correct for the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference in velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation.

And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking place. The correspondence by 'type was growing into a reasonable pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were not finished. The big tubes were finished, but rejected because of electrode misalignments. The big tubes were in the rework department. The big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were rejected because the maximum power requirements were not met. They were returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department. You have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two-hundred megawatt tubes really is.

So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which marked the mythical date of 'if'--_If_ Venus Equilateral had started their own manufacturing on the day they were first ordered from Terran Electric, they would have been finished and available.

Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were shipped. They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived, and the gang at the relay station went to work on them.

But Walt Franks shook his head. "Don, we'll be caught like a sitting rabbit."

"I know. But--?" answered Channing.

There was no answer to that question, so they went to work again.

The news of Murdoch's first blow came that day. It was a news report from the Interplanetary Network that the Titan Penal Colony had been attacked by a huge black ship of space that carried a dome-shaped turret on the top. Beams of invisible energy burned furrows in the frozen ground, and the official buildings melted and exploded from the air pressure within them. The Titan station went off the ether with a roar, and the theorists believed that Murdoch's gang had been augmented by four hundred and nineteen of the Solar System's most vicious criminals.

"That rips it wide open," said Channing. "Better get the folks to withstand a siege. I don't think they can take us."

"That devil might turn his beams on the station itself, though," said Walt.

"He wants to control communications."

"With the sub-electron beams we now have, he could do it on a mere piece of the station. Not perfectly, but he'd get along."

"Fine future," gritted Channing. "This is a good time to let this project coast, Walt. We've got to start in from the beginning and walk down another track."

"It's easy to say, chum."

"I know it. So far, all we've been able to do is take energy from the solar intake beams and spray it out into space. It goes like the arrow that went--we know not where."

"So?"

"Forget these gadgets. Have Chuck hook up the solar intake tubes to the spotter and replace the cathodes with pure thorium. I've got another idea."

"O.K., but it sounds foolish to me."

Channing laughed. "We'll stalemate him," he said bitterly, and explained to Walt. "I wonder when Murdoch will come this way?"

"It's but a matter of time," said Walt. "My bet is as soon as he can get here with that batch of fresh rats he's collected."

* * * * *

Walt's bet would have collected. Two days later, Hellion Murdoch flashed a signal into Venus Equilateral and asked for Channing.

"Hello, Hellion," answered Channing. "Haven't you learned to keep out of our way?"

"Not at all," answered Murdoch. "You won't try that betatron on me again. This ship is coated with four-tenths of an inch of lithium metal, which according to the books will produce the maximum quantity of electrons under secondary emission. If not the absolute maximum, it is high enough to prevent your action."

"No," agreed Channing. "We won't try the betatron again. But, Murdoch, there are other things."

"Can they withstand these," asked Murdoch. The turret swiveled until the triple-mount of tubes looked at Venus Equilateral.

"Might try," said Channing.

"Any particular place?" countered Murdoch.

"Hit the south end. We can best afford to lose that," answered Channing.

"You're either guessing, or hoping I won't fire, or perhaps praying that whatever you have for protection will work," said Murdoch flatly. "Otherwise you wouldn't talk so smooth."

"You black-hearted baby-killing rotter," snarled Don Channing. "I'm not chinning with you for the fun of it. You'll shoot anyway, and I want to see how good you are. Get it over with, Murdoch."

"What I have here is plenty good," said Murdoch. "Good enough. Do you know about it?"

"I can guess, but you tell me."

"Naturally," said Hellion. He explained in detail. "Can you beat that?"

"We may not be able to outfire you," gritted Channing, "but we may be able to nullify your beam."

"Nonsense!" roared Murdoch. "Look, Channing, you'd best surrender."

"Never!"

"You'd rather die?"

"We'd rather fight it out. Come in and get us."

"Oh, no. We'll just shoot your little station full of holes. Like the average spaceship, your station will be quite capable of handling communications even though the air is all gone. Filling us full of holes wouldn't do a thing; you see, we're wearing spacesuits."

"I guessed that. No, Murdoch, we have nothing to shoot at you this time. All we can do is hold you off until you get hungry. You'll get hungry first, since we're self-sufficient."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime we're going to try a few things out on your hull. I rather guess that you'll try out a few things on the station. But at the present, you can't harm us and we can't harm you. Stalemate, Murdoch!"

"You're bluffing!" stormed Murdoch.

"Are you afraid to squirt that beam this way?" asked Channing tauntingly. "Or do you know it will not work?"

"Why are you so anxious to get killed?"

"We're very practical, out here on Venus Equilateral," said Don. "There's no use in our working further if you have something that is really good. We'd like to know our chances before we expend more effort along another line."

"That's not all--?"

"No. Frankly, I'm almost certain that your beam won't do a thing to Venus Equilateral."

"We'll see. Listen! Turretman! Are you ready?"

Faintly, the reply came, and Channing could hear it. "Ready!"

"Then fire all three. Pick your targets at will. One blast!"

The lights in Venus Equilateral brightened. The thousands of line-voltage meters went from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and forty volts, and the line-frequency struggled with the crystal-control and succeeded in making a ragged increase from sixty to sixty point one five cycles per second. The power-output meters on the transmitting equipment went up briefly, and in the few remaining battery-supply rooms, the overload and overcharge alarms clanged until the automatic adjusters justified the input against the constant load. One of the ten-kilowatt modulator tubes flashed over in the audio-room and was immediately cut from the operating circuit; the recording meters indicated that the tube had gone west forty-seven hours prior to its expiration date due to filament overload. A series of fluorescent lighting fixtures in a corridor of the station that should have been dark because of the working hours of that section flickered into life and woke several of the workers, and down in the laboratory, Wes Farrell swore because the fluctuating line had disrupted one of his experiments, giving him reason to doubt the result. He tore the thing down, and began once more; seventy days' work had been ruined.

"Well," said Channing cockily, "is that the best you can do?"

"You--!"

"You forgot," reminded Channing, "that we have been working with solar power, too. In fact, we discovered the means to get it. Go ahead and shoot at us, Murdoch. You're just giving us more power."

"Cease firing!" exploded Murdoch.

"Oh, don't," cheered Don. "You forgot that those tubes, if aligned properly, will actually cause bending of the energy-beam. We've got load-terminal tubes pointing at you, and your power beam is bending to enter them. You did well, though. You were running the whole station with plenty to spare. We had to squirt some excess into space. Your beams aren't worth the glass that's in them!"

"Stalemate, then," snarled Murdoch. "Now _you_ come and get _us_. We'll leave. But we'll be back. Meanwhile, we can have our way with the shipping. Pilot! Course for Mars! Start when ready!"

* * * * *

The _Black Widow_ turned and streaked from Venus Equilateral as Don Channing mopped his forehead. "Walt," he said, "that's once I was scared to death."

"Me, too. Well, we got a respite. Now what?"

"We start thinking."

"Right. But of what?"

"Ways and--Hello, Wes. What's the matter?"

Farrell entered and said: "They broke up my job. I had to set it up again, and I'm temporarily free. Anything I can do to help?"

"Can you dream up a space-gun?"

Farrell laughed. "That's problematical. Energy guns are something strange. Their output can be trapped and used to good advantage. What you need is some sort of projectile, I think."

"But what kind of projectile would do damage to a spaceship?"

"Obviously the normal kinds are useless. Fragmentation shells would pelt the exterior of the hull with metallic rain--if and providing you could get them that close. Armor-piercing would work, possibly, but their damage would be negligible since hitting a spacecraft with a shell is impossible if the ship is moving at anything at all like the usual velocities. Detonation shells are a waste of energy, since there is no atmosphere to expand and contract. They'd blossom like roses and do as much damage as a tossed rose."

"No projectiles, then."

"If you could build a super-heavy fragmentation and detonation shell, and combine it with armor-piercing qualities, and could hit the ship, you might be able to stop them. You'd have to pierce the ship, and have the thing explode with a terrific blast. It would crack the ship because of the atmosphere trapped in the hull--and should be fast enough to exceed the compressibility of air. Also it should happen so fast that the air leaving the hole made would not have a chance to decrease the pressure. The detonation would crack the ship, and the fragmentation would mess up the insides to boot, giving two possibilities. But if both failed and the ship became airless, they would fear no more detonation shells. Fragments would always be dangerous, however."

"So now we must devise some sort of shell--"

"More than that. The meteor-circuits would intercept the incoming shell and it would never get there. What you'd need is a few hundred pounds of 'window.' You know, strips of tin foil cut to roughly a quarter-wave length of the meteor detecting radar. That'll completely foul up his directors and drive-couplers. Then the big one, coming in at terrific velocity."

"And speaking of velocity," said Walt Franks, "the projectile and the rifle are out. We can get better velocity with a constant-acceleration drive. I say torpedoes!"

"Naturally. But the aiming? Remember, even though we crank up the drive to fifty G, it takes time to get to several thousand miles per second. The integration of a course would be hard enough, but add to it the desire of men to evade torpedoes--and the aiming job is impossible."

"We may be able to aim them with a device similar to the one Chuck Thomas is working with. Murdoch said his hull was made with lithium?"

"Coated with," said Channing.

"Well. Set the alloy-selectivity disk to pure lithium, and use the output to steer the torpedo right down to the bitter end."

"Fine. Now the armor-piercing qualities."

"Can we drill?"

"Nope. At those velocities, impact would cause detonation, the combined velocities would look like a detonation wave to the explosive. After all, darned few explosives can stand shock waves that propagate through them at a few thousand miles per second."

"O.K. How do we drill?"

"We might drill electrically," suggested Farrell, "Put a beam in front?"

"Not a chance," grinned Channing. "The next time we meet up with Hellion Murdoch, he'll have absorbers ready for use. We taught him that one, and Murdoch is not slow to learn."

"So how do we drill?"

"Wes, is that non-arcing alloy of yours very conductive?"

"Slightly better than aluminum."

"Then I've got it! We mount two electrodes of the non-arcing alloy in front. Make 'em heavy and of monstrous current carrying capacity. Then we connect them to a condenser made of Farrell's super-dooper dielectric."

"You bet," said Walt grinning. "We put a ten microfarad condenser in front, only it'll be one hundred and thirty farads when we soak it in Farrell's super-dielectric. We charge it to ten thousand volts, and let it go."

"We've got a few experimental jobs," said Channing. "Those inerts. The drones we were using for experimental purposes. They were radio controlled, and can be easily converted to the aiming circuits."

"Explosives?"

"We'll get the chemistry boys to brew us a batch."

"Hm-m-m. Remind me to quit Saturday," said Walt. "I wonder how a ten farad condenser would drive one of those miniatures...."

"Pretty well, I should imagine. Why?"

"Why not mount one of the miniatures on a gunstock and put a ten farad condenser in the handle. Make a nice side arm."

"Good for one shot, and not permanently charged. You'd have to cut your leakage down plenty."

"Could be. Well, we'll work on that one afterwards. Let's get that drone fixed."

"Let's fix up all the drones we have. And we'll have the boys load up as many as they can of the little message canisters with the windows. The whole works go at once with the same acceleration, with the little ones running interference for the big boy."

"Murdoch invited us to 'come and get him'," said Channing in a hard voice. "That, I think we'll do!"

* * * * *

Four smouldering derelicts lay in absolute wreckage on or near the four great spaceports of the solar system. Shipping was at an unequalled standstill, and the communications beams were loaded with argument and recriminations and pleas as needed material did not arrive as per agreement. Three ships paid out one dollar each gross ton in order to take vital merchandise to needy parties, but the mine-run of shipping was unable to justify the terrific cost.

And then Don Channing had a long talk with Keg Johnson of Interplanetary Transport.

One day later, one of Interplanetary's larger ships took off from Canalopsis without having paid tribute to Murdoch. It went free--completely automatic--into the Martian sky and right into Murdoch's hands. The pirate gunned it into a molten mass and hurled his demands at the system once more, and left for Venus, since another ship would be taking off from there.

In the _Relay Girl_, Don Channing smiled. "That finds Murdoch," he told Walt. "He's on the standard course for Venus from Mars."

"Bright thinking," commented Walt. "Bait him on Mars and then offer him a bite at Venus. When'll we catch him?"

"He's running, or will be, at about three G, I guess. We're roaring along at five and will pass Mars at better than four thousand miles per second. I think we'll catch and pass the _Black Widow_ at the quarter-point, and Murdoch will be going at about nine hundred miles per. We'll zoom past, and set the finder on him, and then continue until we're safely away. If he gets tough, we'll absorb his output, though he's stepped it up to the point where a spacecraft can't take too much concentrated input."

"That's how he's been able to blast those who went out with absorbers?"

"Right. The stuff on the station was adequate to protect but an ordinary ship couldn't handle it unless the ship were designed to absorb and dissipate that energy. The beam-tubes would occupy the entire ship, leaving no place for cargo. Result: A toss-up between paying off and not carrying enough to make up the difference."

"This is Freddie," spoke the communicator. "The celestial globe has just come up with a target at eight hundred thousand miles."

"O.K., Freddie. That must be the _Black Widow_. How'll we pass her?"

"About thirty thousand miles."

"Then get the finders set on that lithium-coated hull as we pass."