Triplanetary
CHAPTER III
Fleet Against Planetoid
One of the newest and fleetest of the Law Enforcement Vessels of theTriplanetary League, the heavy cruiser _Chicago_, of the North AmericanDivision of the Tellurian Contingent, plunged stolidly throughinterplanetary vacuum. For five long weeks she had patrolled herallotted volume of space. In another week she would report back to thecity whose name she bore, where her space-weary crew, worn by their long"trick" in the awesomely oppressive depths of the limitless void, wouldenjoy to the full their fortnight of refreshing planetary leave.
She was performing certain routine tasks--charting meteorites, watchingfor derelicts and other obstructions to navigation, checking inconstantly with all scheduled space-ships in case of need, and soon--but primarily she was a warship. She was a mighty engine ofdestruction, hunting for the unauthorized vessels of whatever power orplanet it was, that had not only defied the Triplanetary League, butwere evidently attempting to overthrow it; attempting to plunge theThree Planets back into the ghastly sink of bloodshed and destructionfrom which they had so recently emerged. Every space-ship within rangeof her powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowlymoving points of light; one upon a great micrometer screen, the other inthe "tank"--the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of theentire Solar System.
A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clangedbrazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously aspeaker roared forth its message of a ship in dire peril.
"Sector alarm! N. A. T. _Hyperion_ gassed with Vee-Two. Nothingdetectable in space, but...."
The half-uttered message was drowned out in a crackling roar ofmeaningless noise, the orderly signals of the bell became a hideousclamor, and the two points of light which had marked the location of theliner disappeared in widely spreading flashes of the same high-poweredinterference. Observers, navigators, and control officers were alikedumfounded. Even the captain, in the shell-proof, shock-proof, anddoubly ray-proof retreat of his conning compartment, was equally at aloss. No ship or thing could _possibly_ be close enough to be sendingout interfering waves of such tremendous power--yet there they were!
"Maximum acceleration, straight for the point where the _Hyperion_ waswhen her tracers went out," the captain ordered, and through the fringeof that widespread interference he drove a solid beam, reportingconcisely to G. H. Q. Almost instantly the emergency call-out cameroaring in--every vessel of the Sector, of whatever class or tonnage,was to concentrate upon the point in space where the ill-fated liner hadlast 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 theQuartermaster's Department, deep down below the generator rooms, nothought was given to such minor matters as the disappearance of a_Hyperion_. The inventory did not balance, and two Q. M. privates weretrying, profanely, and without much success, to find the discrepancy.
"Charged cells for model DF Lewistons, none requisitioned, on handeighteen thous...." The droning voice broke off short in the middle of aword and the private stood rigid, in the act of reaching for anotherslip, every faculty concentrated upon something, imperceptible to hiscompanion.
"Come on, Cleve--snap it up!" the second commanded, but was silenced bya 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 itsolid. Maybe I'll see you again some time. If not, so long!"
The inventory sheets fell unheeded from his hand, and his fellow privatestared after him in amazement as he strode over to the desk of theofficer in charge. That officer also stared as the hitherto easy-goingand gold-bricking Cleve saluted briskly, showed him something flat inthe palm of his left hand, and spoke.
"I've just got some of the funniest orders ever put out,Lieutenant"--his voice was low and intense--"but they came from 'way,'way up. I'm to join the brass hats in the Center. You'll know about itdirectly, I imagine. Cover me up as much as you can, will you?" And hewas gone.
Unchallenged he made his way to the control room, and his curt "urgentreport for the Captain" admitted him there without question. But when heapproached the sacred precincts of the Captain's own and inviolate room,he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by no less a personage than theOfficer of the Day.
" ... and report yourself under arrest immediately!" the O. D. concludedhis brief but pointed speech.
"You were right in stopping me, of course," the intruder conceded,unmoved. "I wanted to get in there without giving everything away, ifpossible, but it seems that I can't. Well, I've been ordered by VirgilSamms to report to the Captain, at once. See this? Touch it!" He heldout a flat, insulated disk, cover thrown back to reveal a tiny goldenmeteor, at the sight of which the officer's truculent manner alteredmarkedly.
"I've heard of them, of course, but I never saw one before," and theofficer touched the shining symbol lightly with his finger, jerkingbackward involuntarily as there shot through his whole body a thrillingsurge of power, shouting into his very bones an unpronounceablesyllable--the password of the Secret Service. "Genuine or not, it getsyou to the Captain. He'll know, and if it's a fake you'll be breathingspace in five minutes."
Projector at the ready, the Officer of the Day followed Cleve into theHoly of Holies. There the grizzled four-striper touched the goldenmeteor lightly, then drove his piercing gaze deep into the unflinchingeyes of the younger man. But that captain had won his high rank neitherby accident nor by "pull"--he understood at once.
"It _must_ be an emergency," he growled, half-audibly, still staring athis lowly Q. M. clerk, "to make Samms uncover his whole organization."He turned and curtly dismissed the wondering O. D. Then: "All right! Outwith it!"
"Serious enough so that every one of us afloat has just received ordersto reveal himself to his commanding officer and to anyone else, ifnecessary to reach that officer at once--orders never before issued. Theenemy have been located. They have built a base, and have ships betterthan our best. Base and ships cannot be seen nor detected by any etherwave. However, the Service has been experimenting for years with a newtype of communicator beam; and, while pretty crude yet, it was given tous when the _Dione_ went out without leaving a trace. One of our men wasin the _Hyperion_, managed to stay alive, and has been sending data. Iam instructed to attach my new phone set to one of the universal platesin your conning room, and to see what I can find."
"Go to it!" The captain waved his hand and the operative bent to histask.
"Commanders of all vessels of the Fleet!" The Headquarters speaker,receiver sealed upon the wave-length of the Admiral of the Fleet, brokethe long silence. "All vessels, in sectors L to R, inclusive, willinterlock location signals. Some of you have received, or will receiveshortly, certain communications from sources which need not bementioned. Those commanders will at once send out red K4 screens.Vessels so marked will act as temporary flagships. Unmarked vessels willproceed at maximum to the nearest flagship, grouping about it inregulation squadron cone in order of arrival. Squadrons most distantfrom objective point designated by flagship observers will proceedtoward it at maximum; squadrons nearest it will decelerate or reversevelocity--that point must not be approached until full Fleet formationhas been accomplished. Heavy and Light Cruisers of all other sectorsinside the orbit of Mars ..." the orders went on, directing themobilization of the stupendous forces of the League, so that they wouldbe in readiness in the highly improbable event of the failure of themassed power of seven sectors to reduce the pirate base.
In those seven sectors perhaps a dozen vessels threw out enormousspherical screens of intense red light, and as they did so their tracerpoints upon all the interlocked lookout plates also became ringed aboutwith red. Toward those crimson markers the pilots of the unmarkedvessels directed their courses at their utmost power; and while thewhite lights upon the lookout plates moved slowly toward and clusteredabout the red
ones--the ultra-instruments of the Secret Serviceoperatives were probing into space, sweeping the neighborhood of thecomputed position of the pirate's stronghold.
But the object sought was so far away that the small spy-ray sets of theSecret Service men, intended as they were for close-range work, wereunable to make contact with the invisible planetoid for which they wereseeking. In the captain's sanctum of the _Chicago_, the operativestudied his plate for only a minute or two, then shut off his power andfell into a brown study, from which he was rudely aroused.
"Aren't you even going to _try_ to find them?" demanded the captain.
"No," Cleve returned shortly. "No use--not half enough power or control.I'm trying to think ... maybe ... say, Captain, will you please have theChief Electrician and a couple of radio men come in here?"
They came, and for hours, while the other ultra-wave men searched theapparently empty ether with their ineffective beams, the three technicalexperts and the erstwhile Quartermaster's clerk labored upon a huge andcomplex ultra-wave projector--the three blindly and with doubtfulquestions; the one with sure knowledge at least of what he was trying todo. Finally the thing was done, the crude but efficient graduatedcircles were set, and the tubes glowed redly as their solidly massedoutput was driving into a tight beam of ultra-vibration. "There it is,sir," Cleve reported, after some ten minutes of delicate manipulation,and the vast structure of the miniature world flashed into being uponhis plate. "You may notify the fleet--co-ordinates H 11.62, RA124-31-16, and Dx about 173.2."
The report made and the assistants out of the room, the captain turnedto the observer and saluted gravely.
"We have always known, sir, that the Service had _men_; but I had noidea that any one man could possibly do, on the spur of the moment, whatyou have just done--unless that man happened to be Lyman Cleveland."
"Oh, it doesn't ..." the observer began, but broke off, mutteringunintelligibly at intervals; then swung the visiray beam toward theearth. Soon a face appeared upon the plate, the keen but careworn faceof Virgil Samms!
"Hello, Lyman." His voice came clearly from the speaker, and the Captaingasped--his ultra-wave observer and sometime clerk was Lyman Clevelandhimself, probably the greatest living expert in beam transmission! "Iknew that you'd do something, if it could be done. How about it--can theothers install similar sets on their ships? I'm betting that theycan't."
"Probably not," Cleveland frowned in thought. "This is a patchworkaffair, made of gunny-sacks and hay-wire. I'm holding it together bymain strength and awkwardness, and even at that it's apt to go to piecesany minute."
"Can you rig it up for photography?"
"I think so. Just a minute--yes, I can. Why?"
"Because there's something going on out there that neither we nor theso-called pirates know anything about. The Admiralty seems to think thatit's the Jovians again, but we don't see how it can be--if it is, theyhave developed a lot of stuff that none of our agents has evensuspected," and he recounted briefly what Costigan had reported to him,concluding: "Then there was a burst of interference--on the_ultra-band_, mind you--and I've heard nothing from him since. ThereforeI want you to stay out of the battle entirely. Stay as far away from itas you can and still get good pictures of everything that happens. Iwill see that orders are issued to the _Chicago_ to that effect."
"But listen ..."
"Those are orders!" snapped Samms. "It is of the utmost importance thatwe know every detail of what is going to happen. The answer is pictures.The only possibility of obtaining pictures is that machine you have justdeveloped. If the fleet wins, nothing will be lost. If the fleetloses--and I am not half as confident of success as the Admiral is--the_Chicago_ doesn't carry enough power to decide the issue, and we willhave the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we'veprobably lost Conway Costigan to-day, and we don't want to lose _you_,too."
Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but thegrizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth Jovian War that he was, was notconvinced.
"We'll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms!" he declared.
"You just think you will, Captain. I have suggested, as forcibly aspossible, that the general attack be withheld until after a thoroughinvestigation is made, but the Admiralty will not listen. They see theadvisability of withdrawing a camera ship, but that is as far as theywill go."
"And that's plenty far enough!" growled the _Chicago's_ commander, asthe beam snapped off. "Mr. Cleveland, I don't like the idea of runningaway under fire, and I won't do it without direct orders from theAdmiral."
"Of course you won't--that's why you are going...."
He was interrupted by a voice from the Headquarters speaker. The captainstepped up to the plate and, upon being recognized, he received theexact orders which had been requested by the Chief of the SecretService--now not as secret as it had been heretofore.
Thus it was that the _Chicago_ reversed her acceleration, cut off herred screen, and fell rapidly behind, while the vessels following her intheir loose cone formation shot away toward another crimson-flaringleader. Farther and farther back she dropped, back to the limiting rangeof the ultra-cameras upon which Cleveland and his highly trainedassistants were furiously and unremittingly at work. And during all thistime the forces of the seven sectors had been concentrating. The pilotvessels, with their flaming red screens, each followed by a cone ofspace-ships, drew closer and closer together, approaching the_Fearless_--the British super-dreadnaught which was to be the flagshipof the Fleet--the mightiest and heaviest space-ship which had yet liftedher stupendous mass into the ether.
Now, systematically and precisely, the great Cone of Battle was cominginto being; a formation developed during the Jovian Wars while theforces of the Three Planets were fighting in space for their verycivilizations' existence, and one never used since the last space-fleetsof Jupiter's murderous hordes had been wiped out.
The mouth of that enormous hollow cone was a ring of scout patrols, thesmallest and most agile vessels of the fleet. Behind them came asomewhat smaller ring of light cruisers, then rings of heavy cruisersand of light battleships, and finally of heavy battleships. At the apexof the cone, protected by all the other vessels of the formation and inbest position to direct the battle, was the flagship. In this formationevery vessel was free to use her every weapon, with a minimum of dangerto her sister ships; and yet, when the gigantic main projectors wereoperated along the axis of the formation, from the entire vast circle ofthe cone's mouth there flamed a cylindrical field of force of suchintolerable intensity that in it no conceivable substance could endurefor a moment!
The artificial planet of metal was now close enough so that it wasvisible to the ultra-vision of the Secret Service men, so plainlyvisible that the warships of the pirates were seen issuing from theenormous air-locks. As each vessel shot out into space it sped straightfor the approaching fleet without waiting to go into any formation--grayRoger believed his structures invisible to Triplanetary eyes, thoughtthat the presence of the fleet was the result of mathematicalcalculations, and was convinced that his mighty vessels of the voidwould destroy even that vast fleet without themselves becoming known. Hewas wrong. The foremost globes were allowed actually to enter the mouthof that conical trap before an offensive move was made. Then thevice-admiral in command of the fleet touched a button, andsimultaneously every generator in every Triplanetary vessel burst intofurious activity. Instantly the hollow volume of the immense cone becamea coruscating hell of resistless energy, an inferno which, with thevelocity of light, extended itself into a far-reaching cylinder ofrapacious destruction. Ether-waves they were, it is true, but vibrationsdriven with such fierce intensity that the screens of deflectionsurrounding the pirate vessels could not handle even a fraction of theirawful power. Invisibility lost, their defensive screens flared briefly;but even the enormous force backing Roger's inventions, greater far thanthat of any single Triplanetary vessel, could not hold off theincredible violence of the massed attack of the hundreds of mightyvessels
composing the Fleet. Their defensive screens flared briefly,then went down; their great spherical hulls first glowing red, thenshining white, then in a brief moment exploding into flying masses ofred hot, molten, and gaseous metal.
A full two-thirds of Roger's force was caught in that raging,incandescent beam; caught and obliterated: but the remainder did notretreat to the planetoid. Darting out around the edge of the cone at astupendous acceleration, they attacked its flanks and the engagementbecame general. But now, since enough beams were kept upon each ship ofthe enemy so that invisibility could not be restored, each Triplanetarywar vessel could attack with full efficiency. Magnesium flares andstar-shells illuminated space for a thousand miles, and from every unitof both fleets was being hurled every item of solid, explosive, andvibratory destruction known to the highly scientific warfare of thatage. Offensive beams, rods and daggers of frightful power struck andwere neutralized by defensive screens equally capable; the long rangeand furious dodging made ordinary solid or high-explosive projectilesuseless; and both sides were filling all space with such a volume ofblanketing frequencies that such radio-dirigible torpedoes as werelaunched could not be controlled, but darted madly and erraticallyhither and thither, finally to be exploded harmlessly in mid-space bythe touch of some fiercely insistent, probing beam of force.
Individually, however, the pirate vessels were far more powerful thanthose of the fleet, and that superiority soon began to make itself felt.The power of the smaller ships began to fail as their accumulatorsbecame discharged under the awful drain of the battle, and vessel aftervessel of the Triplanetary fleet was hurled into nothingness by theconcentrated blasts of the pirates' rays. But the Triplanetary forceshad one great advantage. In furious haste the Secret Service men hadbeen altering the controls of the radio-dirigible torpedoes, so thatthey would respond to ultra-wave control; and, few in number though theywere, each was highly effective.
A hard-eyed observer, face almost against his plate and both hands andboth feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propellingrockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescentrods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfectcontrol; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-bornesignals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blastof its detonation one entire panel of the stricken battleship vanished,crumpled and broken. It should have been out, cold--but, to theamazement of the observers, it kept on fighting with scarcely lessenedpower! Three more of the frightful space-bombs had to be exploded init--it had to be reduced to junk--before its terrible rays went out; Nota man in that great fleet had even an inkling of the truth; that thosegreat vessels, those terrible engines of destruction, did not contain asingle living creature: that they were manned and fought by automatons;robots controlled by keen-eyed, space-hardened veterans inside theplanetoid so distant by means of tight, interference-proof communicatorbeams!
But they were to receive an inkling of it. As ship after ship of thepirate fleet was blown to pieces, Roger realized that his navy wasbeaten, and forthwith all his surviving vessels darted toward the apexof the cone, where the heaviest battleships were stationed. There eachhurled itself upon a Triplanetary warship, crashing to its owndestruction, but in that destruction insuring the loss of one of theheaviest vessels of the enemy. Thus passed the _Fearless_, and twenty ofthe finest space-ships of the fleet as well. But the ranking officerassumed command, the war-cone was re-formed, and, yawning maw to thefore, the great formation shot toward the pirate stronghold, now near athand. It again launched its stupendous cylinder of annihilation, buteven as the mighty defensive screens of the planetoid flared intoincandescently furious defense, the battle was interrupted and piratesand Triplanetarians learned alike that they were not alone in the ether.
Space became suffused with a redly impenetrable opacity, and throughthat indescribable pall there came reaching huge arms of forceincredible; writhing, coruscating beams of power which glowed a baleful,although almost imperceptible, red. A vessel of unheard-of armament andpower, hailing from a distant solar system of the Galaxy, had come torest in that space. For months her commander had been investigating sunafter sun in quest of one precious substance. Now his detectors hadfound it; and, feeling neither fear of Triplanetarian weapons norreluctance to sacrifice those thousands of Triplanetarian lives, he wasabout to take it!