Part 19 (2/2)

”How'd they do it?” asked Wade.

Torlos kept silent, and helped Morey replace the coils of lead wire with others from stock.

”Same way we tickled them,” replied Arcot, carefully studying the control instruments, ”with the gravity ray! We knew all along that gravitational fields drank out the energy--they simply pulled it out faster than we could pump it in, and used four different rays on us doing it. Which speaks well for a little s.h.i.+p! But they burned off the relux on one room here, and it's a wreck. The molecs. .h.i.t everything in it. Looks like something bad,” called Arcot. The room was Morey's, but he'd find that out himself. ”In the meantime, see if you can tell where we are. I got loose from their rays by going on both the high speed time-field and the s.p.a.ce control at full, with all generators going full blast. Man, they had a stranglehold on us that time! But wait till we get that new s.h.i.+p turned out!”

With the telectroscope they could see what was happening. The terrific bombardment of rays was continuing, and the fleets were locked now in a struggle, the combined fleets of Earth and Venus and of Nansal, far across the void. Many of the terrestrian, or better, Solarian s.h.i.+ps, were equipped with s.p.a.ce distortion apparatus, now, and had some measure of safety in that the attractive rays of the Thessians could not be so concentrated on them. In numbers was safety; Arcot had been endangered because he was practically alone at the time they attacked.

But it was obvious that the Solarian fleet was losing. They could not compete with the heavier s.h.i.+ps, and now the frequent flaming bursts of light that told of a s.h.i.+p caught in the new deadly ray showed another danger.

”I think Earth is lost if you cannot aid it soon, Arcot, for other Thessian s.h.i.+ps are coming,” said Stel Felso Theu softly.

From out of the plane of the planetary orbits they were coming, across s.p.a.ce from some other world, a fleet of dozens of them. They were visible as one after another leapt into normal time-rates.

”Why don't they fight in advanced time?” asked Morey, half aloud.

”Because the genius that designed that apparatus didn't think of it.

Remember, Morey, those s.h.i.+ps have their time apparatus connected with their power apparatus so that the power has to feed the time continuously. They have no coils like ours. When they advance their time, they're weakened every other way.

”We need that new s.h.i.+p. Are we going to make it?” demanded Arcot.

”Take weeks at best. What chance?” asked Morey.

”Plenty; watch.” As he spoke, Arcot pulled open the time controls, and spun the s.h.i.+p about. They headed off toward a tiny point of light far beyond. It rushed toward them, grew with the swiftness of an exploding bomb, and was suddenly a great, rough fragment of a planet hanging before them, miles in extent.

”Eros,” explained Wade laconically to Torlos. ”Part of an ancient planet that was destroyed before the time of man, or life on Earth. The planet got too near the sun when its...o...b..t was irregular, and old Sol pulled it to pieces. This is one of the pieces. The other asteroids are the rest.

All planetary surfaces are made up of great blocks; they aren't continuous, you know. Like blocks of concrete in a building, they can slide a bit on each other, but friction holds them till they slip with a jar and we have earthquakes. This is one of the planetary blocks. We see Eros from Earth intermittently, for when this thing turns broadside it reflects a lot of light; edge on it does not reflect so much.”

It was a desolate bit of rock. Bare, airless, waterless rock, of enormous extent. It was contorted and twisted, but there were no great cracks in it for it was a single planetary block.

Arcot dropped the s.h.i.+p to the barren surface, and anch.o.r.ed it with an attractive ray at low concentration. There was no gravity of consequence on this bit of rock.

”Come on, get to work. s.p.a.ce suits, and rush all the apparatus out,”

snapped Arcot. He was on his feet, the power of the s.h.i.+p in neutral now.

Only the attractor was on. In the shortest possible time they got into their suits, and under Arcot's direction set up the apparatus on the rocky soil as fast as it was brought out. In all, less than fifteen minutes were needed, yet Arcot was hurrying them more and more. Torlos'

tremendous strength helped, even on this gravitationless world, for he could accelerate more quickly with his burdens.

At last it was up for operation. The artificial matter apparatus was operated by cosmic power, and controlled by mental operation, or by mathematical formula as they pleased. Immediately Arcot set to work. A giant hollow cylinder drilled a great hole completely through the thin, curved surface of the ancient planetary block, through twelve miles of solid rock--a cylinder of artificial matter created on a scale possible only to cosmic power. The cylinder, half a mile across, contained a huge plug of matter. Then the artificial matter contracted swiftly, compressing the matter, and simultaneously treating it with the tremendous fields that changed its energy form. In seconds it was a tremendous ma.s.s of cosmium.

A second smaller cylinder bored a plug from the rock, and worked on it.

A huge ma.s.s of relux resulted. Now other artificial matter tools set to work at Arcot's bidding, and cut pieces from his huge ma.s.ses of raw materials, and literally, quick as thought, built a great framework of them, anch.o.r.ed in the solid rock of the planetoid.

Then a tremendous plane of matter formed, and neatly bisected the planetoid, two great flat pieces of rock were left where one had been--miles across, miles thick--planetary chips.

On the great framework that had been constructed, four tall shafts of cosmium appeared, and each was a hollow tube, up the center of which ran a huge cable of relux. At the peak of each mile-high shaft was a great globe. Now in the framework below things were materializing as Arcot's flying thoughts arranged them--great tubes of cosmium with relux element--huge coils of relux conductors, insulated with microscopic but impenetrable layers of cosmium.

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