XXII
The Nansalian fleet was already outside the city and hard at it. Thefight was on! But Arcot saw that the fight was one-sided in the extreme.Ship after ship of the Nansalian fleet seemed to burst into sudden,inexplicable flame and fall blazing against another of their own ships!It seemed as though some irresistible attraction drew the ships togetherand smashed them against each other in a blaze of electric flame, whilethe ships of Sator did nothing but stay far off to one side and dodgethe rays of the Nansalian ships.
Quickly, Arcot turned to Torlos. "Torlos, go out! Leave the ship! We canwork better when you aren't here, since we don't have to worry aboutexposure to magnetic rays. I don't like to make you miss this, but it'sfor your world!"
Torlos showed his disappointment; he wanted to be in this battle. But herealized that what the Earthman said was true. Their weak, stone boneswere completely immune to the effects of even the most powerful magneticray.
He nodded. "I'll go. Good Luck! And give them a few shots for me!"
He turned and ran down the corridor to the airlock. As soon as he wasoutside, Arcot lifted the ship.
It had taken less than a minute to get into the air, but in thatminute, the Nansalian fleet had taken a terrific beating. Arcot noticedthat the few ships of Sator that had been hit smashed into the groundwith a terrible blaze of violet light that left nothing but a pile offused metal.
"They've got something, all right," Arcot thought to himself as he drovethe _Ancient Mariner_ into battle.
It would be impossible for the Nansalians to lower their magneticscreen, even for a second, so Arcot simply aimed the ship toward it andturned on the power.
"Hold on!" he called as they struck it. The ship reeled and sanksuddenly planetward, then it bounced up and outward. They were throughthe wall.
The rooms were suddenly oppressively hot, and the molecular cooler wasstruggling to lower it. "We made it," Morey said triumphantly, "but theeddy currents sure heated up the hull!"
They were out of the city now, speeding toward the battle. Following aprearranged system, the Nansalian ships retreated, leaving the Earthmena free hand. They needed no help!
Wade, Fuller, and Morey began to lash out with the molecular beams,smashing the Satorian ships in on themselves, crushing them to theground, where they exploded in violet flame.
Wade and Fuller began to work together. Wade caught one ship in themolecular ray, and Fuller hit with a heat beam. Like some titanic broomthey swept it around at dozens of miles a second, leaping, twisting,smashing ship after ship. Like a snowball, the lump of glowing metalgrew with each crash, till a dozen ships had fallen into it. It was anew broom, and it swept clean!
Then a magnetic beam caught the _Ancient Mariner_. With a shock, itslowed down at a terrific rate. Then Arcot turned on more power, andsimply dragged the other ship along by its own magnetic beam! Wade torethe ship loose with his molecular beam, but the mighty mass of metalthat had been his broom was gone, a glowing mass of metal on the ground.
"We haven't seen that new weapon yet," Morey called.
"Can't find us!" Arcot replied into the intercom. The sun was setting,and the blazing red star was lighting the ship, making it seem like aball of fire when still and a flashing streak of red light when inmotion.
Ship after ship of the Satorians was going down before the three beamsof the Earth ship; the great fleet was dissolving like a lump of sugarin boiling water.
Suddenly, just ahead of them, an enemy ship drove toward them withobvious intent to ram; if his magnetic beam caught them, and drew themtowards him, there would be a head-on collision.
Wade caught it with a molecular beam, and it became a blazing wreck onthe ground.
"All rays off!" Arcot called. As soon as they were off, Arcot hit aswitch, and the _Ancient Mariner_ vanished.
Arcot drove the invisible ship high above the battle. Below, theSatorians were searching wildly for the ship. They knew it must besomewhere near, and feared that at any second it might materializebefore them with its deadly rays.
Arcot stayed above them for nearly a minute while the ships belowtwisted and turned, wildly seeking him. Then they went into formationagain and started back for the city.
"That's what I wanted!" Arcot said grimly. "In formation, they're likesitting ducks!" He dropped the ship like a plummet while the rayoperators prepared to sweep the formation with their beams.
Suddenly the _Ancient Mariner_ was visible again. Simultaneously, threerays leaped down and bathed the formation in their pale radiance. Thefront ranks vanished, and the line broke, attacking the ship that hungabove them now. Four magnetic beams hit the _Ancient Mariner_ at once!Arcot couldn't pull away from all four, and his gunners couldn't tellwhich ships were holding them.
All at once, the men felt a violent electrical shock! The air about themwas filled with the blue haze of the electric weapon they had seen!
Instantly, the magnetic beams left them, and they saw behind them asingle Satorian ship heading toward them, surrounded by that same bluishhalo of light. A suicide ship!
Arcot accelerated away from it as Fuller hit it with a molecular beam.The ship reeled and stopped, and the _Ancient Mariner_ pulled away fromit rapidly. Then, the frost-covered ship of the dead came on, stillheading for them!
Arcot turned and went off to the right, but like a pursuing Nemesis, thestrange ship came after them in the shortest, most direct route!
The molecular beams were useless now; there was no molecular energy leftin the frozen hulk that accelerated toward them. Suddenly, the twoenvelopes of blue light touched and coalesced! A great, blinding arcleaped between the two ships as the speeding Satorian hull smashedviolently against the side of the _Ancient Mariner_! The men duckedautomatically, and were hurled against their seat-straps with tremendousforce. There was a rending, crashing roar, a sea of flame--and darkness.
They could only have been unconscious a few seconds, for when the fogwent away, they could see the glowing mass of the enemy ship stillfalling far beneath them. The lux wall where it had hit was stillglowing red.
"Morey!" Arcot called. "You all right? Wade? Fuller?"
"Okay!" Morey answered.
So were Wade and Fuller.
"It was the lux hull that saved us," Arcot said. "It wouldn't break, andthe temperature of the arc didn't bother it. And since it wouldn't carrya current, we didn't get the full electrical effect.
"I'm going to convince those birds that this ship is made of somethingthey can't touch! We'll give them a real show!"
He dived downward, back into the battle.
It was a show, all right! It was impossible to fight the Earth ship. Theenemy had to concentrate four magnetic rays on it to use their electricweapon, and they could only do that by sheer luck!
And even that was of little use, for they simply lost one of their ownships without harming the _Ancient Mariner_ in the least.
Ship after ship crumpled in on itself like crushed tinfoil or hurleditself violently to the ground as the molecular beams touched them. TheSatorian fleet was a fleet no longer; it was a small collection ofdisorganized ships whose commanders had only one thought--to flee!
The few ships that were left spearheaded out into space, using every bitof acceleration that the tough bodies of the Satorians could stand. Witha good head start, they were rapidly escaping.
"We can't equal that acceleration," said Wade. "We'll lose them!"
"Nope!" Arcot said grimly. "I want a couple of those ships, and I'mgoing to get them!"
At four gravities of acceleration, the _Ancient Mariner_ drove after thefleeing ships of Sator, but the enemy ships soon dropped rapidly fromsight.
Twenty five thousand miles out in space, Arcot cut the acceleration."We'll catch them now, I think," he said softly. He pushed the littlered switch for an instant, then opened it. A moment before, the planetNansal had been a huge disc behind them. Now it was a tiny thing, a fullmillion miles away.
It took the Satorian fleet over an hour to
reach them. They appeared asdim lights in the telectroscope. They rapidly became larger. Arcot hadextinguished the lights, and since they were on the sunward side of theapproaching ships, the _Ancient Mariner_ was effectively invisible.
"They're going to pass us at a pretty good clip," Morey said quietly."They've been accelerating all this time."
Arcot nodded in agreement. "We'll have to hit them as they come towardus. We'd never get one in passing."
As the ships grew rapidly in the plate, Arcot gave the order to fire!
The molecular rays slashed out toward the onrushing ships, picking themoff as fast as the beams could be directed. The rays were invisible inspace, so they managed to get several before the Satorians realized whatwas happening.
Then, in panic, they scattered all over space, fleeing madly from theimpossible ship that was firing on them. They knew they had left itbehind, yet here it was, waiting for them!
"Let them go," Arcot said. "We've got our specimens, and the rest cancarry the word back to Sator that the war is over for them."
It was several hours later that the _Ancient Mariner_ approached Nansalagain, bringing with it two Satorian ships. By careful use of the heatbeam and the molecular beam, the Earthmen had managed to jockey the twobattle cruisers back to Nansal.
It was nighttime when they landed. The whole area around the city wasilluminated by giant searchlights. Men were working recovering thebodies of the dead, aiding those who had survived, and examining thewreckage.
Arcot settled the two Satorian ships to the ground, and landed the_Ancient Mariner_.
Torlos sprinted over the ground toward them as he saw the great silvership land. He had been helping in the examination of the wrecked enemyships.
"Have they attacked anywhere else on the planet?" Arcot asked as heopened the airlock.
Torlos nodded. "They hit five other cities, but they didn't use as big afleet as they did here. The plan of battle seems to have been for theships with the new weapons to hit here first and then hit each of theother cities in turn. They didn't have enough to make a full-scaleattack; evidently, your presence here made them desperate.
"At any rate, the other cities were able to beat off the magnetic beamships with the projectors of molecular beams."
"Good," Arcot thought. "Then the Nansal-Sator war is practically over!"