XIV
The four earthmen watched the fleet of alien ships roar through the airtoward them.
"Now how shall we signal them?" asked Morey, also trying to benonchalant, and failing as badly as Arcot had.
"Don't try the light beam method," cautioned Arcot. The last time theyhad tried to use a light beam signal was when they first contacted theNigrans. The Nigrans thought it was some kind of destruction ray. Thathad started the terrible destructive war of the Black Star.
"Let's just hang here peaceably and see what they do," Arcot suggested.
Motionless, the _Ancient Mariner_ hung before the advancing attack ofthe great battle fleet. The shining hull was a thing of beauty in thegolden sunlight as it waited for the advancing ships.
The alien ships slowed as they approached and spread out in a greatfan-shaped crescent.
Suddenly, the _Ancient Mariner_ gave a tremendous leap and hurtledtoward them at a terrific speed, under an acceleration so great thatArcot was nearly hurled into unconsciousness. He would have been exceptfor the terrific mass of the ship. To produce that acceleration in sogreat a mass, a tremendous force was needed, a force that even made theenemy fleet reel under its blow!
But, sudden as it was, Arcot had managed to push the power into reverse,using the force of the molecular drive to counteract the attraction thealiens had brought to bear.
The whole mighty fabric of the ship creaked as the titanic load cameupon it. They were using a force of a million tons!
The mighty lux beams withstood the stress, however, and the ship came toa halt, then was swiftly backing away from the alien battle fleet.
"We can give them all they want!" said Arcot grimly. He noticed thatWade and Fuller had been knocked out by the sudden blow, but Morey,though slightly groggy, was still in possession of his senses.
"Let's not," Morey remonstrated. "We may be able to make friends withthem, but not if we kill them off."
"Right!" replied Arcot, "but we're going to give them a littledemonstration of power!"
The _Ancient Mariner_ leaped suddenly upward with a speed that defiedthe eyes of the men at the rays of the enemy ships. Then, as they turnedto follow the sudden motion of the ship--_it was not there!_
The _Ancient Mariner_ had vanished!
Morey was startled for an instant as the ship and his companionsdisappeared around him, then he realized what had happened. Arcot hadused the invisibility apparatus!
Arcot turned and raced swiftly far off to one side, behind the strangeships, and hovered over the great cliff that made the edge of the cleftthat was the river bed. Then he snapped the ship into full visibility.
Wade and Fuller had recovered by now, and Arcot started barking outorders. "Wade--Fuller--take the molecular ray, Wade, and tear down thatcliff--throw it down into the valley. Fuller, turn the heat beams onwith all the power you can get and burn that refuse he tears down into aheap of molten lava!
"I'm going to show them what we can do! And, Wade--after Fuller gets itmelted down, throw the molten lava high in the air!"
From the ship, a long pencil of rays, faintly violet from the air theyionized, reached out and touched the cliff. In an instant, it had torndown a vast mass of the solid rock, which came raining down into thevalley with a roaring thunder and threw the dirt of the valley into theair like splashed mud.
Then the violet ray died, and two rays of blinding brilliance reachedout. The rock was suddenly smoking, steaming. Then it became red, dullat first, then brighter and brighter. Suddenly it collapsed into a greatpool of white-hot lava, flowing like water under the influence of thebeams from the ship.
Again the pale violet of the molecular beams touched the rock--which wasnow bubbling lava. In an instant, the great mass of flaming incandescentrock was flying like a glowing meteor, up into the air. It shot up withterrific speed, broke up in mid-air, and fell back as a rain of red-hotstone.
The bright rays died out, but the pale fingers of the molecular beamstraced across the level ground. As they touched it, the solid soilspouted into the air like some vast fountain, to fall back asfrost-covered powder.
The rays that had swung a sun into destruction were at work! What chancehad man, or the works of man against such? What mattered a tiny planetwhen those rays could hurl one mighty sun into another, to blaze up inan awful conflagration that would light up space for a million lightyears around with a mighty glare of light!
As if by a giant plow, the valley was torn and rent in great streaks bythe pale violet rays of the molecular force. Wade tore loose a giantboulder and sent it rocketing into the heavens. It came down with aterrific crash minutes later, to bury itself deep in the soil as itsplintered into fragments.
Suddenly the _Ancient Mariner_ was jerked violently again. Evidentlyundaunted by their display of power, the aliens' rays had gripped theEarthmen's ship again and were drawing it with terrific acceleration.But this time the ship was racing toward the city, caught by the beam ofone of the low-built, sturdy buildings that housed the protective rayprojectors.
Again Arcot threw on the mighty power units that drove the ship, bracingthem against the pull of the beam.
"Wade! Use the molecular ray! Stop that beam!" Arcot ordered.
The ship was stationary, quivering under the titanic forces thatstruggled for it. The enemy fleet raced toward them, trying to come tothe aid of the men in the tower.
The pale glow of the molecular beam reached out its ghostly finger andtouched the heavy-walled ray projector building. There was a suddenflash of discharging energy, and the tower was hurled high in the air,leaving only a gaping hole in the ground.
Instantly, with the collapse of the beam that held it, the _AncientMariner_ shot backward, away from the scene of the battle. Arcot snappedoff the drive and turned on the invisibility apparatus. They hungmotionless, silent and invisible in the air, awaiting developments.
In close formation, one group of ships blocked the opening in the wallof rays that the removal of one projector building had caused. Threeother ships went to investigate the wreck of the building that hadfallen a mile away.
The rest of the fleet circled the city, darting around, searchingfrantically for the invisible enemy, fully aware of the danger ofcollision. The unnerving tension of expecting it every second made themerratic and nervous to the _n_th degree.
"They're sticking pretty close to home," said Arcot. "They don't seem tobe too anxious to play with us."
"They don't, do they?" Morey said, looking angry. "They might at leasthave been willing to see what we wanted. I want to investigate someother cities. Come on!" He had thoroughly enjoyed the rest at the littlemountain lake, and he was disappointed that they had been driven away.Had they wanted to, he knew, they could easily have torn the entire cityout by the roots!
"I think we ought to smash them thoroughly," said Wade. "They'recertainly inhospitable people!"
"And I, for one, would like to know what that attraction ray was," saidFuller curiously.
"The ray is easily understood after you take a look at the wreck itmade of some of these instruments," Arcot told him. "It was projectedmagnetism. I can see how it might be done if you worked on it for awhile. The ray simply attracted everything in its path that wasmagnetic, which included our lux metal hull.
"Luckily, most of our apparatus is shielded against magnetism. The fewthings that aren't can be repaired easily. But I'll bet Wade finds hisgear in the galley thrown around quite a bit."
"Where do we go from here, then?" Wade asked.
"Well, this world is bigger than Earth," said Morey. "Even if they'reafraid to go out of their cities to run farms, they must have othercities. The thing that puzzles me, though, is how they do it--I don'tsee how they can possibly raise enough food for a city in the area theyhave available!"
"'People couldn't possibly live in hydrogen instead of oxygen'," Arcotquoted, grinning. "That's what they told me when I made my littleannouncement at the meeting on the Black Star situation. The onlytrouble was
--they did. That suggestion of yours meets the same fate,Morey!"
"All right, you win," agreed Morey. "Now let's see if we can find theother nations on this world more friendly."
Arcot looked at the sun. "We're now well north of the equator. We'll goup where the air is thin, put on some speed, and go into the southtemperate zone. We'll see if we can't find some people there who aremore peaceably inclined."
Arcot cut off the invisibility tubes. Instantly, all the enemy ships inthe neighborhood turned and darted toward them at top speed. But theshining _Ancient Mariner_ darted into the deep blue vault of the sky,and a moment later was lost to their view.
"They had a lot of courage," said Arcot, looking down at the city as itsank out of sight. "It doesn't take one-quarter as much courage to fighta known enemy, no matter how deadly, as it does to fight an unknownenemy force--something that can tear down mountains and throw theirforts into the air like toys."
"Oh, they had courage, all right," Morey conceded, "but I wish theyhadn't been quite so anxious to display it!"
They were high above the ground now, accelerating with a force of onegravity. Arcot cut the acceleration down until there was just enough toovercome the air resistance, which, at the height they were flying, wasvery low. The sky was black above them, and the stars were showingaround the blazing sun. They were unfamiliar stars in unfamiliarconstellations--the stars of another universe.
In a very short time, the ship was dropping rapidly downward again, thehorizontal power off. The air resistance slowed them rapidly. Theydrifted high over the south temperate zone. Below them stretched theseemingly endless expanse of a great blue-green ocean.
"They don't lack for water, do they?" Wade commented.
"We could pretty well figure on large oceans," Arcot said. "The land isgreen, and there are plenty of clouds."
Far ahead, a low mass of solid land appeared above the blue of thehorizon. It soon became obvious that it was not a continent they wereapproaching, but a large island, stretching hundreds of miles north andsouth.
Arcot dropped the ship lower; the mountainous terrain had become sobroken that it would be impossible to detect a city from thirty milesup.
The green defiles of the great mountains not only provided goodcamouflage, but kept any great number of ships from attacking the sides,where the ray stations were. The cities were certainly located with aneye for war! Arcot wondered what sort of conflict had lasted so longthat cities were designed for perpetual war. Had they never had peace?
"Look!" Fuller called. "There's another city!" Below them, situated in alittle natural bowl in the mountains, was another of the cone cities.
Wade and Fuller manned the ray projectors again; Arcot dropped the shiptoward the city, one hand on the _reverse_ switch in case theinhabitants tried to use the magnetic beam again.
At last, they had come quite low. There were no ships in the air, andno people in sight.
Suddenly, the outside microphone picked up a low, humming sound. A long,cigar-shaped object was heading toward the ship at high speed. It hadbeen painted a dark, mottled green, and was nearly invisible againstbackground of foliage beneath the ship.
"Wade! Catch that on the ray!" Arcot commanded sharply, moving the shipto one side at the same time. Instantly, the guided missile turned andkept coming toward them.
Wade triggered the molecular beam, and the missile was suddenly dashingtoward the ground with terrific speed. There was a terrific flash offlame and a shock wave of concussion. A great hole gaped in the ground.
"They sure know their chemistry," remarked Wade, looking down at thegreat hole the explosion had torn in the ground. "That wasn't atomic,but on the other hand, it wasn't dynamite or TNT, either! I'd like toknow what they use!"
"Personally," said Arcot angrily, "I think that was more or less agentle hint to move on!" He didn't like the way they were beingreceived; he had wanted to meet these people. Of course, the otherplanet might be inhabited, but if it wasn't--
"I wonder--" said Morey thoughtfully. "Arcot, those people wereobviously warned against our attack--probably by that other city. Now,we've come nearly halfway around this world; certainly we couldn't havegone much farther away and still be on the planet. And we find this cityin league with the other! Since this league goes halfway around theworld, and they expected us to do the same, isn't it fair to assume,just on the basis of geographical location, that all this world is inone league?"
"Hmmm--an interplanetary war," mused Arcot. "That would certainly provethat one of the other planets is inhabited. The question is--which one?"
"The most probable one is the next inner planet, Aphrodite," repliedMorey.
Arcot fired the ship into the sky. "If your conclusions arecorrect--and I think they are--I see no reason to stay on this planet.Let's go see if their neighbors are less aggressive!"
With that, he shot the ship straight up, rotating the axis until it waspointing straight away from the planet. He increased the accelerationuntil, as they left the outer fringes of the atmosphere, the ship washitting a full four gravities.
"I'm going to shorten things up and use the space control," Arcot said."The gravitational field of the sun will drain a lot of our energy out,but so what? Lead is cheap, and before we're through, we'll have plentyor I'll know the reason why!"
Dr. Richard Arcot was angry--boiling all the way through!