Islands of Space by Jr. John W. Campbell
XXI
The party descended to the ground floor and walked out to the ship. Theyfiled into the airlock, and in the power room they looked in amazementat the tiny machines that ran the ship. The long black cylinder of themain power unit for the molecular drive looked weak and futile comparedto the bulky machines that ran their own ships. The power storage coils,with their fields of intense, dead blackness, interested the Physicistimmensely.
The ship was a constant source of wonder to them all. They investigatedthe laboratory and then went up to the second floor. Morey and Fullergreeted them at the door, and each of the four Earthmen took a grouparound the ship, explaining as they went.
The library was a point of great interest, exceeded only by the controlroom. Arcot found some difficulty in taking care of all his visitors;there were only four chairs in the control room. The Three could sitdown, but Arcot needed the fourth chair to pilot the ship. The rest ofthe party had to hold on as best they could, which was not too difficultfor men of such physical strength; they were accustomed to highaccelerations in their elevators.
Morey, Wade, and Fuller strapped themselves into the seats at the rayprojectors at the sides and stern.
Arcot wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ship's armamentfirst, and then the maneuverability. He picked a barren hillside for thefirst demonstration. It was a great rocky cliff, high above the timberline, towering almost vertically a thousand feet above them.
Wade triggered his molecular projector, and a pale beam reached outtoward the cliff. Instantly, the cliff leaped ten miles into the air,whining and roaring as it shot up through the atmosphere. Then itstarted to fall. Heated by its motion through the air, it struck themountaintop as a mass of red hot rock which shattered into fragmentswith a terrific roar! The rocks rolled and bounced down themountainside, their path traced by a line of steam clouds.
Then, at Arcot's order, the heat beams were all turned on the mountainat full power. In less than a minute, the peak began to melt, sendingstreamers of lava down the sides. The beams began to eat out a crater inthe center, where the rock began to boil furiously under the terrificenergy of the heat beams.
Then Arcot shut off the heat beams and turned on the molecular ray.
The molecules of the molten rock were traveling at high velocities--theheat was terrific. Arcot could see that the rock was boiling quitefreely. When the molecular beam hit it, every one of those fast movingmolecules shot upward together! With the roar of a meteor, it plungedtoward space at five miles a second!
It had dropped to absolute zero when the beam hit it, but at that speedthrough the air, it didn't stay cold long! Arcot followed it up in the_Ancient Mariner_. It was going too slowly for him. The air had slowedit down and heated it up, so Arcot hit it with the molecular ray again,converting the heat back into velocity.
By the time they reached free space, Arcot had maneuvered the lump ofrock into an orbit around the planet.
"Tharlano," he thought at the Astronomer, "your planet now has a newsatellite!"
"So I perceive!" replied Tharlano. "Now that we are in space, can we usethe instrument you told me of?"
Arcot established the ship in an orbit twenty thousand miles from theplanet and led them back to the observatory, where Morey had alreadytrained the telectroscope on the planet below. There wasn't much to see;the amplification showed only the rushing ground moving by so fast thatthe image blurred.
He turned it to Sator. It filled the screen as they increased the power,but all they could see was billowing clouds. Another poor subject.
Morey showed Tharlano, the Astronomer, how to use the controls, and hebegan to sweep the sky with the instrument, greatly pleased with itsresolving ability and tremendous magnification.
The Military Leader of the Three pointed out that the Satorians stillhad a weapon that was reported deadly, and they were in imminent dangerunless Arcot's inventions were applied at once. All the way back toNansal, they spent the time discussing the problem in the _AncientMariner_'s Library.
It was finally agreed that the necessary plans and blueprints were to begiven to the Nansalians, who could start production at once. The biggestproblem was in the supply of lux and relux, which, because of their vastenergy-content, required the atomic converters of the _Ancient Mariner_to make them. The Earthmen agreed to supply the power and the necessarymaterials to begin operations.
When the ship landed, a meeting of the manufacturers was called. Fullerdistributed prints of the microfilmed plans for the equipment that hehad packed in the library, and the factory engineers worked from them tobuild the necessary equipment.
The days that followed were busy days for Earthmen and Nansalians alike.
The Nansalians were fearful of the consequences of the weapon that theSatorians were rumored to have. The results of their investigationsthrough their agents had, so far, resulted only in the death of thesecret service men. All that was known was exactly what the Satorianswanted them to know; the instrument was new, and it was deadly.
On the other hand, the Satorians were not entirely in the dark as to theprogress of Nansal, as Arcot and Morey discovered one day.
After months of work designing and tooling up the Nansalian factories,making the tools to make the tools to make the war material needed, andtraining the engineers of Nansal all over the planet to produce theequipment needed, Arcot and Morey finally found time to take a few daysoff.
Tharlano had begun a systematic search of the known nebulae, comparingthem with the photographs the Earthmen had given him, and looking for agalaxy with two satellite star clouds of exactly the right size anddistance from the great spiral.
After months of work, he had finally picked one which filled the billexactly! He invited Arcot and Morey to the observatory to confirm hisfindings.
The observatory was located on the barren peak of a great mountain morethan nine miles high. It was almost the perfect place for anastronomical telescope. Here, well above the troposphere, the air wasthin and always clear. The solid rock of the mountain was far fromdisturbing influences which might cause any vibration in the telescope.
The observatory was accessible only from a spaceship or air flyer, and,at that altitude, had to be pressurized and sealed against the thin,cold air outside. Within, the temperature was kept constant to afraction of a degree to keep thermal expansion from throwing the mirrorout of true.
Arcot and Morey, accompanied by Tharlano and Torlos, settled the_Ancient Mariner_ to the landing field that had been blasted out of therock of the towering mountain. They went over to the observatory andwere at once admitted to the airlock.
The floor was of smoothed, solid rock, and in this, the great clockwhich timed and moved the telescope was set.
The entire observatory was, of course, surrounded by a magnetic shield,and it was necessary to make sure there were no enemy ships aroundbefore using the telescope, because the magnetic field affected thelight rays passing through it.
The mirror for the huge reflecting telescope was nearly three hundredinches in diameter, and was powerful enough to spot a spaceship leavingSator. Its military usefulness, however, was practically nil, sincepainting the ships black made them totally invisible.
There were half a dozen assistants with Tharlano at the observatory atall times, one of them in charge of the great file of plates that werekept on hand. Every plate made was printed in triplicate, to preventtheir being destroyed in a raid. The original was kept at theobservatory, and copies were sent to two of the largest cities onNansal. It was from this file that Tharlano had gathered the datanecessary to show Arcot his own galaxy.
Tharlano was proudly explaining the telescope to Arcot, realizing thatthe telectroscope was far better, but knowing that the Earthmen wouldappreciate this triumph of mechanical perfection. Arcot and Morey wereboth intensely interested in the discussion, while Torlos, slightlybored by a subject he knew next to nothing about, was examining the restof the observatory.
Suddenly, he cried out i
Quick as a flash, Torlos pushed the two men behind the great tube of thetelescope. He leaped over it and across the room, and disappeared intothe supply room. There was the noise of a scuffle, another crack from apneumatic pistol, and the sudden crash and tinkle of broken glass.
Suddenly, the figure of a man described a wide arc as it flew out of thesupply room and landed with a heavy crash on the floor. Instantly,Torlos leaped at him. There was a trickle of blood from his leftshoulder, but he gripped the man in his giant arms, pinning him to thefloor. The struggle was brief. Torlos simply squeezed the man's chest inhis arms. There was the faint creak of metal, and the man's chest beganto bend! In a moment, he was unconscious.
Torlos pulled a heavy leather belt off of the unconscious man and tiedhis arms with it, wrapping it many times around the wrists, and waspicking the man up when Tharlano arrived, followed by Arcot and Morey.Torlos smiled broadly.
"This is one Satorian spy that won't report. I could have finished himwhen I got my hold on him, but I wanted to take him before the Councilfor questioning. He'll be all right; I just dented his chest a little."
"We owe our lives to you again, Torlos," Arcot told him gravely. "Butyou certainly risked your life; the bullet might well have penetratedyour heart instead of striking a rib, as it seems to have done."
"Rib? What is a rib?" The thought concept seemed totally unfamiliar toTorlos.
Arcot looked at him oddly, then reached out and ran an exploratory handover Torlos' chest. It was smooth and solid!
"Morey!" Arcot exclaimed. "These men have no ribs! Their chest is assolid as their skulls!"
"Then how do they breathe?" Morey asked.
"How do you breathe? I mean most of the time. You use your diaphragm andyour abdominal muscles. These people do, too!"
Morey grinned. "No wonder Torlos jumped in front of that bullet! Hedidn't have as much to fear as we do--he had a built-in bullet proofvest! You'd have to shoot him in the abdomen to reach any vital organ."
Arcot turned back to Torlos. "Who is this man?"
"Undoubtedly a Satorian spy sent to murder you Earthmen. I saw themuzzle of his pistol as he was aiming and jumped in the way of thebullet. There is not much damage done."
"We'd better get back to the city," Arcot said. "Fuller and Wade mightbe in danger!"
They bundled the Satorian spy into the ship, where Morey tied himfurther with thin strands of lux cable no bigger than a piece of string.
Torlos looked at it and shook his head. "He will break that as soon ashe awakens, without even knowing it. You forget the strength of ourpeople." Morey smiled and wrapped the cord around Torlos' wrists.
Torlos looked amused and pulled. His smile vanished. He pulled harder.His huge muscles bulged and writhed in great ridges along his arms. Thethin cord remained complacently undamaged. Torlos relaxed and grinnedsheepishly.
"You win," he thought. "I'll make no more comments on the things I seeyou do."
They returned to the capital at once. Arcot shoved the speed up as highas he dared, for Torlos felt there might be some significance in theattempt to remove Arcot and Morey. Wade and Fuller had already beenwarned by radio, and had immediately retired to the Council Room of theThree. The members of the Investigation Board joined them to questionthe prisoner upon his arrival.
When they arrived, Arcot and Morey went in with Torlos, who was carryingthe struggling, shackled spy over his shoulder.
The Earthmen watched while the expert interrogators of the InvestigationBoard questioned the prisoner. The philosophy of Norus did not permittorture, even for a vicious enemy, but the questioners were shrewd andingenious in their methods. For hours, they took turns poundingquestions at the prisoner, cajoling, threatening, and arguing.
They got nowhere. Solidly, the prisoner stuck by his guns. Why had hetried to shoot the Earthmen? He didn't know. What were his orders fromSator? Silence. What were Sator's plans? Silence. Did he know anythingof the new weapon? A shrug of the shoulders.
Finally, Arcot spoke to the Chief Investigation Officer. "May I try myluck? I think I'm powerful enough to use a little combination ofhypnosis and telepathy that will get the information out of him." TheInvestigator agreed to try it.
Arcot walked over as if to inspect the prisoner. For an instant, the manlooked defiantly at Arcot. Arcot glared back. At the same time, hispowerful mind reached out and began to work subtly within the prisoner'sbrain. Slowly, a helpless, blank expression came over the man's faceas his eyes remained fixed on Arcot's own. The man was as helplesslybound mentally as the lux cable bound him physically.
For a full quarter of an hour, the two men, Earthmen and Satorian, stoodlocked in a frozen tableau, staring into each other's eyes. Theonlookers waited in watchful silence.
Finally, Arcot turned and shook his head, as if to clear it. As he didso, the spy slumped forward in his chair, unconscious.
Arcot rubbed his own temples and spoke in English to Morey. "Some job!You'll have to tell them what I found out; my head is splitting! With aheadache like this, I can't communicate.
"Torlos was right; they were trying to get rid of all four of us. We'rethe only ones who can operate the ship, and that ship is the onlydefense against them.
"He knows several other spies here in the city, and we can, I think,practically wipe out the Satorian spy system all over the planet withthe information he gave me and what we can get from others we arrest.
"Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything about the new weapon; thehigher-ups aren't telling anyone, not even their own men. I get the ideathat only those on board the ships using it will know about it beforethe attack.
"An attack is planned, and very soon. He didn't know when. We can onlylie in readiness and do everything we can to help these people withtheir work."
While Morey relayed this information to the Investigating Board and theCouncil, Wade was talking in low tones to Arcot.
"They had a lot of workmen bring twenty tons of lead wire on board thisevening, and the distilled water tanks are full. The tanks are full ofoxygen, and they gave us some synthetic food which we can eat.
"They have it all over us in the field of chemistry. They've found thesecret of catalysis, and can actually synthesize any catalytic agentthey want. They can make any possible reaction go in either directionat any rate they desire.
"They took a slice of flesh from my arm and analyzed it down to the lastdetail. From that, they were able to predict what sort of food we wouldneed to eat. They can actually synthesize living things!
"I've tried the food they made, and it has a very good flavor. Theyguaranteed it would have all the necessary ingredients, right down tothe smallest trace element!
"We're fully stocked for a long trip. The Three said it was their firstconsideration that we should be able to return to our homes."
"How about their armament?" Arcot asked. He was holding his head in hishands to ease the throbbing ache within it.
"Each city has a projector supplied by the regular power station on topof their central building. The molecular ray, of course; they stilldon't have enough power to run a heat beam.
"We didn't have time to make more than one for each city, but this onewill give the Satorians a nasty time if they come near it. It worksnicely through the magnetic screen, so it won't be necessary for them tolower the barrier to shoot."
Morey had finished telling the Council what Arcot had discovered fromthe prisoner, and the Councilmen were leaving one by one to go to theirduties in preparing for the attack.
"I think we had best go back to the _Ancient Mariner_," Arcot said. "Ineed an aspirin and some sleep."
"Same here," agreed Fuller. "These men make me feel as though I werelazy. They work for forty or fifty hours and think nothing of it. Thenthey snooze for five hours and they
They asked Torlos to stand guard on the ship while they got some muchneeded sleep, and Torlos consented readily after getting the permissionof the Supreme Three. The Earthmen were returned to their ship underheavy guard to prevent further attempts at assassination.
It was seven hours after they had gone to sleep that it came.
Through the ship came the low hum that rose quickly to a screeching callof danger--the warning! The city was under attack!