by E. E. Smith
CHAPTER XI
Roger Carries On
For gray Roger had not perished in the floods of Nevian energy which haddestroyed his planetoid. While those terrific streamers of forceemanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibians'space-ship were driving into his defensive screens, Roger sat impassiveand immobile at his desk. His hard gray eyes moved methodically over hisinstruments and recorders; and after a few minutes he smiled coldly,while an expression of relief struggled fleetingly to move hisexpressionless face. Even though his screens were better than anyone hadsupposed, why admit it?
"Baxter, Hartkopf, Chatelier, Anandrusung, Penrose, Nishimura,Mirsky...." He called off a list of names. "Report to me here at once!"
"The planetoid is lost," he informed his select group of scientists whenthey had assembled, "and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes,which will be the time required for the robots to fill this firstsection with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each ofyou one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and reportback here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to anyoneelse."
They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall Baxter,perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced athought for those they were so brutally deserting.
"I say, it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest ofthem; but still, I suppose...."
"You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in thepause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, tome at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all of ourmen and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved.What would you? For the rest it is simply what you call 'the fortune ofwar,' no?"
"But the beautiful...." began the amorous Chatelier.
"Hush, fool!" snorted Hartkopf. "One word of that to the ear of Rogerand you too are left behind. Of such non-essentials the Universe isfull, to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to bedisregarded. Und this is a time of schrecklichkeit indeed!"
And through that terrific conduit came speeding package after package of destruction.]
The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters; to meet again inthe First Section a few minutes before the zero time. Roger's "office"was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but littleroom was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmovedbehind his dials.
"But of what use is it, Roger?" the Russian physicist demanded. "Thosewaves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher thananything heretofore known. Our screens should not have stopped them foran instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainlythis single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid withoutbeing destroyed."
"There are many things you do not know, Mirsky," came the cold and levelanswer. "Our screens, which you think are of your own devising, haveseveral improvements of my own in the formulae, and would hold foreverhad I the power to drive them. The screens of this section, beingsmaller, can be held as long as will be found necessary."
"Power!" the dumfounded Russian exclaimed. "Why, we have almost infinitepower--unlimited--sufficient for a lifetime of high expenditure!"
But Roger made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. Hepressed down a tiny lever, and a robot in the power room threw in thegigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians thestupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado theamphibian--the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource ofpower afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burn-out and ofexhaustion. Then, all the attention of the Nevians and the greater partof their power output devoted to the neutralization of that lastdesperate thrust, the metal wall of the planetoid opened and the FirstSection shot out into space. Full-driven as they were, Roger's screensflared white as he drove through the temporarily lessened attack of theNevians; but in their preoccupation the amphibians did not notice theadditional disturbance and the section tore on, unobserved andundetected. Far out in space, Roger raised his eyes from the instrumentpanel and continued the conversation as though it had not beeninterrupted.
"Everything is relative, Mirsky, and you have misused gravely the term'unlimited.' Our power was, and is, very definitely limited. True, itthen seemed ample for our needs, and is far superior to that possessedby the inhabitants of any solar system with which I am familiar; but thebeings behind that red screen, whoever they are, have sources of poweras far above ours as ours are above those of the Solarians."
"How do you know?"
"That power, what is it?" "We have, then, the analyses of those fieldsrecorded!" Came simultaneous questions and explanations.
"Their power-source is very probably the intra-atomic energy of iron;and if so, much remains to be done before I can proceed with my plan. Imust have the most powerful structure in the known Universe before I canact. In the light of what I have just learned, the loss of the planetoidis but a trifle." Roger, as unmoved as one of his own automatons, wascoldly analyzing the situation, thinking the thing through to itslogical conclusion, paying no attention whatever to the losses of life,time and treasure now behind him.
"But what can you do about it?" growled the Russian.
"Many things. From the charts of the recorders we can compute theirfields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their methodof liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build otherrobots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid; one this timethat, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will be suited to myneeds."
"And where will you build it? We are marked. Invisibility now isuseless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyondthat of Pluto!"
"We have already left your Solarian system far behind. We are going toanother system; one far enough removed so that the spy-rays ofTriplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in areasonable length of time with the energies at our command. Some fifteendays will be required for the journey, however, and our quarters arecramped. Therefore make places for yourselves wherever you can, andlessen the tedium of those fifteen days by working upon whateverproblems are most pressing in your respective researches."
The gray monster fell silent, immersed in what thoughts no one knew, andthe scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist,followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed, saturnine American engineer andinventor, as he made his way to the furthermost cubicle of the section.
"I say, Penrose, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don'tmind?"
"Go ahead. Ordinarily it's dangerous to be a cackling hen anywherearound _him_, but he can't hear anything here now. His system is prettywell shot to pieces. You want to know all I know about Roger?"
"Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, youknow. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you knowwhat I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wonderingwhether he really _is_ human. He knows too much, about too many things.He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems, to visit which wouldrequire life-times. Then, too, he has dropped remarks which would implythat he actually saw things that happened long before any living mancould possibly have been born. Finally, he looks--well, peculiar--andcertainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been ableto learn nothing about him; as you have said, such talk as this aboardthe planetoid was impossible."
"You needn't worry about being paid your price; that's one thing. If welive--and that was part of the agreement, you know--we will all get whatwe sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already mademillions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Chatelier has had andwill have his women, Anandrusung and Nishimura their cherished revenges.Hartkopf his power, and so on." He eyed the other speculatively, thenwent on:
"I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance andsince you should know what the rest of us do. You're in the same boatwith us a
nd tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip, thatmay or may not be true, but I know one very startling fact. Here it is.My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in connectionwith certain things I myself saw on the planetoid, prove beyond questionthat our Roger went to Harvard University at the same time he did. Rogerwas a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted that he was marked,like this," and the American sketched a cabalistic design.
"What!" Baxter exclaimed. "An adept of North Polar Jupiter--_them?_"
"Yes. That was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was thosemedicine-men--really high-caliber scientists--that prolonged that warso...."
"But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped outit was proved a lot of hocus-pocus...."
"Some of it was, but most of it wasn't," Penrose interrupted in turn."I'm not asking you to believe anything except that one fact; I'm justtelling you the rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knewthings and did things that take a lot of explaining. Now for the gossip,none of which is guaranteed. Roger is undoubtedly of Tellurianparentage, and the story is that his father was a moon-pirate, hismother a Greek adventuress. When the pirates were chased off the moonthey went to Ganymede, you know, and some of them were captured by theJovians. It seems that Roger was born at an instant of time sacred tothe adepts, so they took him on. He worked his way up through theForbidden Society as all adepts did, by various kinds of murder and joblots of assorted deviltries, until he got clear to the top--theseventy-seventh mystery...."
"The secret of eternal youth!" gasped Baxter, awed in spite of himself.
"Right, and he stayed Chief Devil, in spite of all the efforts of allhis ambitious sub-devils to kill him, until the turning-point of theFirst Jovian War. He cut away then in a space-ship, and ever since thenhe has been working--and working hard--on some stupendous plan of hisown that nobody else has ever got even an inkling of. That's the story.True or not, it explains a lot of things that no other theory can touch.And now I think you'd better shuffle along; enough of this is a greatplenty!"
Baxter went to his own cubby, and each man of the adept's cold-bloodedcrew methodically took up his task. True to prediction, in fifteen daysa planet loomed beneath them and their vessel settled through a reekingatmosphere toward a rocky and forbidding plain. Then for another daythey plunged along, a few thousand feet above the surface of thatstrange world, while Roger with his analytical detectors sought the mostfavorable location from which to wrest the materials necessary for hisprogram of construction.
It was a world of cold; its sun was distant, pale, and wan. It hadmonstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhedand fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever andanon a struggling part broke from its parent plant and darted away inindependent existence; leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by afellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform color--alurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, somecactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous,inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous werethe animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciouslythrough that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like,bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with adankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses--tokill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reekingwilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, itsappalling ferocity and horror.
"There should be intelligence, of a kind," he mused, and swept thesurface of the planet with an exploring beam. "Ah, yes, there is a city,of sorts," and in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon ametal-walled city of roundly conical buildings.
Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttledformless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vesselby means of a tractor ray. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon thefloor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like metal-studded mass of leatherysubstance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yetit radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentratedof rage and of hatred.
"Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet," Roger commented."Such creatures are useless to us; we can build robots in half the timerequired for their subjugation and training. Still, it should not bepermitted to carry back what it may have learned of us." As he spoke theadept threw the peculiar being out into the air and dispassionatelyrayed it out of existence.
"That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot."Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. "Theevenest-tempered man in town--mad all the time!"
Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements ofraw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweepingbeams denuded a great circle of life, and into that circle leapedrobots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants andpower; robots insensible alike to that bitter cold and to that noxiousatmosphere.
But the outlaws were not to win a foothold upon that inimical planeteasily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weirdvegetation of the circle's bare edge there scuttled and poured along ahorde of the metal-studded men--if "men" they might be called--who,ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. Mowed down by hundreds, stillthey came on; willing, it seemed to expend any number of lives in orderthat one living creature might once touch a robot with one out-thrustmetallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash as of lightning,the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease and metal, and the robotwent down out of control. Recalling his remaining automatons, Roger sentout a shielding screen, against which the defenders of their planetraged in impotent fury. For days they hurled themselves and their everyforce against that impenetrable barrier, then withdrew: temporarilystopped, but by no means acknowledging defeat.
Then, while Roger and his cohorts directed affairs from within theircomfortable and now sufficiently roomy vessel, there came into beingaround it an industrial city of metal, peopled by metallic and insensatemechanisms. Mines were sunk, furnaces were blown in, smelters belchedforth into the already unbearable air their sulphurous fumes, rollingmills and machine shops were built and equipped: and as fast as newenterprises were completed additional robots were ready to man them. Inrecord time the heavy work of girders, members, and plates was wellunder way; and shortly thereafter light, deft, and multi-fingeredmechanical men began the interminable task of building and installingthe prodigious amount of precise machinery required for the vaststructure. Roger was well content: but one day he was rudely awakenedfrom his dream of complete isolation.
Even though he had no reason to believe that there was anythingdangerous within hundreds of millions of miles, it was Roger's cautiouscustom to release the screens from time to time, in order to allow hisdetectors to range out. This day, as he sent out his beams, his hardgray eyes grew even harder.
"Mirsky! Nishimura! Come here!" he snapped, and showed them upon hisplate an enormous sphere of steel, its rays flaming viciously. "Is thereany doubt whatever in your minds as to the System to which that shipbelongs?"
"None at all--Triplanetarian," replied the Russian. "While larger thanany I have seen before, its construction is unmistakable. They managedto trace us, and are testing out their weapons before attacking. Do weattack or do we run away?"
"If Triplanetarian, and it surely is, we attack," coldly. "This onesection is armed and powered to defeat Triplanetary's entire navy. Weshall take that ship, and shall add its slight resources to our own. Andit may even be that they have picked up the three who escaped me.... Ihave never yet been balked for long. Yes, we shall take that vessel. Andthose three sooner or later. Bradley I care nothing about ... butCostigan handled me ... and the woman...." Diamond-hard eyes glaredbalefully at the urge of thoughts to a clean and normal mindunthinkable.
"To your posts," he ordered. "The robots will continue to function undertheir automatic controls during the short time it
will require to abatethis nuisance."
"_One moment!_" A strange voice roared from the speakers. "Consideryourselves under arrest, by order of the Triplanetary Council! Surrenderand you shall receive impartial hearing; fight us and you shall nevercome to trial. From what we have learned of Roger, we do not expect himto surrender, but if any of you other men wish to avoid immediate death,leave your vessel at once. We will come back for you later."
"Any of you wishing to leave this vessel have my full permission to doso," Roger announced, disdaining any reply to the challenge of the_Boise_. "Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoidarea after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attackin one minute."
"Would not one do better by stopping on?" Baxter, in the quarters of theAmerican, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. "Ishould leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win; but I donot fancy that it can, do you?"
"That ship? _One_ Triplanetary ship against _us_?" Penrose laughedraucously. "Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that therewas any chance of us losing; but there isn't, so I'm staying. I knowwhich side _my_ bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that'sall. Not bluffing exactly, either, because they'll go through with it aslong as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have--they'll die tryingevery time, instead of running away, even when they know they're lickedbefore they start. They don't use good judgment."
"None of you are leaving? Very well, you each know what to do," cameRoger's emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, headvanced a lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air.
Toward the poised _Boise_ Roger steered. Within range, he flung out aweapon new-learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing orcreature, the red converter-field of the Nevians. For Roger's analyticaldetectors had stood him in good stead during those frightful minutes inthe course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Nerado'ssuperhuman attack; in such good stead that from the records of thoseingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstructnot only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screensemployed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. Witha vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeatedthe most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear insuch a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlativelyarmed and powered? Well it was for his peace of mind that he had noinkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attackingwas in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical "super-ship" ofTriplanetary's Secret Service; nor that its already unprecedentedarmament had been re-enforced, thanks to that hated Costigan, withRoger's own every worth-while idea, as well as with every weapon anddefense known to that arch-Nevian, Nerado!
Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, andinstantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rodebush atthe controls down, the men of the Secret Service countered with waveafter wave and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and materialdestruction. No thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship couldenter their minds. The outlaws had each been given a chance tosurrender, and each had refused it. Refusing, they knew, as theTriplanetarians knew and as all modern readers know, meant that theywere staking their lives upon victory. For with modern armaments it isseldom indeed that a single man lives through the defeat in battle of awar-vessel of space.
Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not reach even_Boise_'s screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor asRodebush neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone offorce; but even that all-devouring zone could not touch Roger'speculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed.Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams ofhigh-tension high-frequency current in whose paths the most stubbornmetals would be volatilized instantly; all iron-driven, every deadly andtorturing vibration known was hurled against that screen; but it, too,was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam wasdissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscatingtorrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, andDutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes--and still it held.But Roger's fiercest blasts and heaviest projectiles were equallyimpotent against the force-shields of the super-ship. The adept, havingno liking for a battle upon anything like equal terms, sought safety inflight, only to be brought to a crashing, stunning halt by a massivetractor beam.
"That must be that sixth-phase polycyclic screen that Conway reportedon," Cleveland frowned in thought. "I've been doing a lot of work onthat, and I think I've calculated an opener for it, Fred, but I'll haveto have number ten projector and the whole output of number ten powerroom. Can you let me play with that much juice for a while? All right,Blake, tune her up to fifty-five thousand--there, hold it! Now, youother fellows, listen! I'm going to try to drill a hole through thatscreen with a hollow, quasi-solid beam: like a diamond drill cutting outa core. You won't be able to shove anything into the hole from outsidethe beam, so you'll have to steer your cans out through the centralorifice of number ten projector--that'll be cold, since I'm going to useonly the edge. I don't know how long I'll be able to hold the hole open,though so shoot them along as fast as you can. Ready? Here goes!"
He pressed a series of contacts. Far below, in number ten converterroom, massive switches drove home and the enormous mass of the vesselquivered under the terrific reaction of the newly-calculated,semi-material beam of energy that was hurled out, backed by themightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of Triplanetary'ssuper-dreadnaught. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerableenergy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struckRoger's hitherto impenetrable wall. Struck and clung, grinding, boringin, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact ofcylinder and shield the pirates' screen radiated scintillating torrentsof cracking, streaming sparks, lightning-like in length and inintensity.
Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through! PiercedRoger's polycyclic screen; exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls! Andnow, concentrated upon one point, flamed out in seemingly redoubled furyTriplanetary's raging rays--in vain. For even as they could notpenetrate the screen, neither could they penetrate the wall ofCleveland's drill, but rebounded from it in the cascaded brilliance ofthwarted lightning.
"Oh, what a dumb-bell I am!" groaned Cleveland. "Why, oh why didn't Ihave somebody rig up a secondary SX7 beam on Ten's inner rings? Hop toit, will you, Blake, so that we'll have it in case they are able to stopthe cans?"
But the pirates could not stop all of Triplanetary's projectiles, nowhurrying along inside the pipe as fast as they could be driven. In fact,for a few minutes desperate Roger, knowing that he faced his long life'sgravest crisis, paid no attention to them at all, nor to any of his ownuseless offensive weapons: he struggled only and madly to break awayfrom the savage grip of the _Boise_'s tractor rod. Futile. He couldneither cut nor stretch that inexorably anchoring beam. Then he devotedhis every resource to the closing of that unbelievable breach in hisshield; the barrier which through all previous emergencies had keptdeath at bay. Equally futile. His most desperate efforts resulted onlyin more frenzied displays of incandescence along the curved surface ofcontact of that penetrant cylinder. And through that terrific conduitcame speeding package after package of destruction. Bombs, andarmor-piercing shells, gas shells, and shells of poisonous and corrosivefluids followed each other in close succession. The surviving scientistsof the planetoid, expert gunners and ray-men all, destroyed many of theprojectiles, but it was not humanly possible to frustrate them all. Andthe breach could not be forced shut against the all but irresistibleforce of Cleveland's "opener". And with all his power Roger could notshift his vessel's position in the grip of Triplanetary's tractorssufficiently to bring a projector to bear upon the super-ship along thenow unprotected axis of that narrow, but deadly tube.
Thus it was that the end came soon.
A war-head touched steel plating andthere ensued a world-wracking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide,helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the strickenhulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled.Explosive bombs literally tore the pirate vessel to fragments, whilevials of pure corrosion dissolved her substance into dripping corruptionand reeking gases filled every cranny of the wreckage as its torn anddismembered fragments began their long plunge to the ground. Thespace-ship followed the pieces down, and Rodebush sent out an exploringray.
" ... resistance was such that it was necessary to use corrosive, andship and contents were completely disintegrated," he dictated into hisvessel's log, some time later. "While there were of course no remainsrecognizable as human, it is practically certain that Roger and his lasteleven men died.
"Look here, Fred," Cleveland called his attention to the plate, uponwhich was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of the ghastlyplanet, wreaking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything withinthe circle bared by Roger. "I was just going to suggest that we clean upthat planetoid Roger started, but I see that the local boys areattending to it."
"Just as well, perhaps. I would like to stay and study these people alittle while, but we must get back on the trail of the Nevians," and the_Boise_ leaped away into space, toward the line of flight of theamphibians.
They reached that line and along it they traveled at full normal blast.As they traveled their detecting receivers and amplifiers were reachingout with their utmost power; ultra-instruments capable of renderingaudible any signal originating within many light-years of them, upon anyknown frequency. And constantly at least two men were listening to thoseinstruments with every sense concentrated in their ears.Listening--straining to distinguish in the deafening roar of backgroundnoise from the over-driven tubes any sign of voice or signal.Listening--while, millions upon untold millions of miles beyond even theprodigious reach of those ultra-instruments, three human beings, pittedagainst overwhelming odds, were even then sending out into empty spacean almost hopeless appeal for the aid so desperately needed!
