Part 18 (1/2)
”You told me so yourself, indirectly. Who else in the three worlds could possibly call him 'Sammy?' You are hard, of course, but you must be so-and I never did like soft men, anyway. And you brawl in a good cause. You are very much a man, my Conway; a real, real man, and I love you! Now, if they catch us, all right-we'll die together, at least!” she finished, intensely.
”You're right, sweetheart, of course,” he admitted. ”I don't believe that I could really let you let me go, even though I know you ought to,” and their hands locked together even more firmly than before. ”If we ever get out of this jam I'm going to kiss you, but this is no time to be taking off your helmet. In fact, I'm taking too many chances with you in keeping your s.h.i.+elds off. Snap 'em on again-they ought to be getting fairly close by this time.”
Hands released and armor again tight, Costigan went over to join Bradley at the control board.
”How are they coming, Captain?” he asked.
”Not so good. Quite a ways off yet. At least an hour, I'd say, before a cruiser can get within range.”
”I'll see if I can locate any of the pirates chasing us. If I do it'll be by accident; this little spy-ray isn't good for much except close work. I'm afraid the first warning we'll have will be when they take hold of us with a tractor or spear us with a needle. Probably a beam, though; this is one of their emergency lifeboats and they wouldn't want to destroy it unless they have to. Also, I imagine that Roger wants us alive pretty badly. He has unfinished business with all three of us, and I can well believe that his 'not particularly pleasant extinction' will be even less so after the way we rooked him.”
”I want you to do me a favor, Conway.” Clio's face was white with horror at the thought of facing again that unspeakable creature of gray. ”Give me a gun or something, please. I don't want him ever to look at me that way again, to say nothing of what else he might do, while I'm alive.”
”He won't,” Costigan a.s.sured her, narrow of eye and grim of jaw. He was, as she had said, hard. ”But you don't want a gun. You might get nervous and use it too soon. I'll take care of you at the last possible moment, because if he gets hold of us we won't stand a chance of getting away again.”
For minutes there was silence, Costigan surveying the ether in all directions with his ultra-wave device. Suddenly he laughed, and the others stared at him in surprise.
”No, I'm not crazy,” he told them. ”This is really funny; it had never occurred to me that the ether-walls of all these s.h.i.+ps make them invisible. I can see them, of course, with this sub-ether spy, but they can't see us! I knew that they should have overtaken us before this. I've finally found them. They've pa.s.sed us, and are now tacking around, waiting for us to do something so that they can see us! They're heading right into the Fleet-they think they're safe, of course, but what a surprise they've got coming to them!”
But it was not only the pirates who were to be surprised. Long before the pirate s.h.i.+p had come within extreme visibility range of the Triplanetary Fleet it lost its invisibility and was starkly outlined upon the lookout plates of the three fugitives. For a few seconds the pirate craft seemed unchanged, then it began to glow redly, with a red that seemed to become darker as it grew stronger. Then the sharp outlines blurred, puffs of air burst outward, and the metal of the hull became a viscous, fluid-like something, flowing away in a long, red streamer into seemingly empty s.p.a.ce. Costigan turned his ultra-gaze into that s.p.a.ce and saw that it was actually far from empty. There lay a vast something, formless and indefinite even to his sub-etheral vision; a something into which the viscid stream of transformed metal plunged. Plunged and vanished.
Powerful interference blanketed his ultra-wave and howled throughout his body; but in the hope that some parts of his message might get through he called Samms, and calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had just happened. He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the smallest detail, while their tiny craft was drawn inexorably toward a redly impermeable veil; continued it until their lifeboat, still intact, shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move. He was conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a voluntary muscle would obey his will!
CHAPTER 9
FLEET AGAINST PLANETOID
One of the newest and fleetest of the patrol vessels of the Triplanetary League, the heavy cruiser Chicago of the North American Division of the Tellurian Contingent, plunged stolidly through interplanetary vacuum. For five long weeks she had patrolled her allotted volume of s.p.a.ce. In another week she would report back to the city whose name she bore, where her s.p.a.ce-weary crew, worn by their long ”tour” in the awesomely oppressive depths of the limitless void, would enjoy to the full their fortnight of refres.h.i.+ng planetary leave.
She was performing certain routine tasks-charting meteorites, watching for derelicts and other obstructions to navigation, checking in constantly with all scheduled s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps in case of need, and so on-but primarily she was a wars.h.i.+p. She was a mighty engine of destruction, hunting for the unauthorized vessels of whatever power or planet it was that had not only defied the Triplanetary League, but was evidently attempting to overthrow it; attempting to plunge the Three Planets back into the ghastly sink of bloodshed and destruction from which they had so recently emerged. Every s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p within range of her powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowly-moving points of light; one upon a greater micrometer screen, the other in the ”tank,” the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of the entire Solar System.
A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously a speaker roared forth its message of a s.h.i.+p in dire peril.
”Sector alarm! N.A.T. Hyperion ga.s.sed with Vee-Two. Nothing detectable in s.p.a.ce, but....”
The half-uttered message was drowned out in a crackling roar of meaningless noise, the orderly signals of the bell became a hideous clamor, and the two points of light which had marked the location of the liner disappeared in widely spreading flashes of the same high-powered interference. Observers, navigators, and control officers were alike dumbfounded. Even the captain, in the sh.e.l.l-proof, shock-proof, and doubly ray-proof retreat of his conning compartment, was equally at a loss. No s.h.i.+p or thing could possibly be close enough to be sending out interfering waves of such tremendous power-yet there they were!
”Maximum acceleration, straight for the point where the Hyperion was when her tracers went out,” the captain ordered, and through the fringe of that widespread interference he drove a solid beam, reporting concisely to GHQ. Almost instantly the emergency call-out came roaring in-every vessel of the Sector, of whatever cla.s.s or tonnage, was to concentrate upon the point in s.p.a.ce where the ill-fated liner had last been known to be.
Hour after hour the great globe drove on at maximum acceleration, captain and every control officer alert and at high tension. But in Quartermasters' Department, deep down below the generator rooms, no thought was given to such minor matters as the disappearance of a Hyperion. The inventory did not balance, and two Q.M. privates were trying, profanely and without success, to find the discrepancy.
”Charged calls for Mark Twelve Lewistons, none requisitioned, on hand eighteen thous....” The droning voice broke off short in the middle of a word and the private stood rigid, in the act of reaching for another slip, every faculty concentrated upon something imperceptible to his companion.
”Come on, Cleve-snap it up!” the second commanded, but was silenced by a vicious wave of the listener's hand.
”What!” the rigid one exclaimed. ”Reveal ourselves! Why, it's.... Oh, all right.... Oh, that's it ... uh-huh ... I see ... yes, I've got it solid. So long!”
The inventory sheets fell unheeded from his hand, and his fellow private stared after him in amazement as he strode over to the desk of the officer in charge. That officer also stared as the hitherto easy-going and gold-bricking Cleve saluted crisply, showed him something flat in the palm of his left hand, and spoke.
”I've just got some of the funniest orders ever put out, lieutenant, but they came from 'way, 'way up. I'm to join the bra.s.s hats in the Center. You'll know all about it directly, I imagine. Cover me up as much as you can, will you?” and he was gone.