Wandl the Invader

by Ray Cummings

  18

  During this time, on the _Star-Streak_, as we and the Wandl fleet madethat preliminary circuit of the Moon, an incident occurred whichchanged everything for me. I had noticed several times as we gatheredin the _Star-Streak's_ forward turret, that Venza and Anita were eyingme. Their expressions were furtive, but I realized that they weretrying to attract my attention.

  We had no opportunity to speak secretly. Molo or Meka, or thatrat-faced guard, were always too near us; and Molo kept me busy withcomputations of our course.

  We rounded the Moon. We gathered with the Wandl fleet some twentythousand miles above the lunar surface, and I watched that shipdescend and land. Like Grantline, I wondered what for. Molo gave me nohint. I saw, through his 'scope, bloated figures in pressure suitsunloading mechanisms. They seemed to be placing huge contact-discs ina circle on the lunar rocks. It was reminiscent of the Wandl gravitystation, and the contact-beam which Molo had planted in Great-NewYork.

  Then at last the girls had an opportunity to whisper to me. A swiftphrase came from Anita. "Gregg! Snap is alive. Hiding on board."

  I gasped. Snap alive?

  "Planning to rescue us. You and he can capture the _Star-Streak_!"

  "Anita! Tell me how."

  "No more now! Our room below--he's near it. He spoke to us."

  No more. She moved away from me. But it was enough. Snap alive! Irecalled that when he fell beside the ship, no one had bothered to godown after the body, and at that time the hull-ports were open.

  After a time Meka took the girls below. I sat with Molo, gazing downat the dark and gloomy surface of the Moon. I had finished themathematical work Molo had given me. My thoughts were with Anita andVenza, down in their cabin now with Meka. Perhaps even now Snap wasjoining them.

  I hardly heard Molo's low, muttered curses, as he set his lenses for aslight alteration of our slow circular course among the Wandl fleet."That fellow at my gravity-shifts acts like a nitwit. He has themdisarranged."

  It snapped me to sudden alertness. "Something wrong, Molo? Nonsense!"

  "These men of my crew answer my controls too slowly. They should jumpwhen my signals come."

  The plates suddenly shifted normally, but there had been an intervalof delay. Molo was puzzled and annoyed. My heart pounded as I wonderedif he would investigate. But he did not.

  "You had better sleep, Haljan. Take advantage now; we shall haveaction presently. Did you figure our emerging curve?"

  I shoved my computations across the table to him. "There."

  "You are quick, Haljan."

  "We should emerge from the Moon's shadow in about two hours."

  "But I will not hold that course. We're staying close near here withthe other vessels, but I want some velocity always. Take your sleep,Haljan."

  I stretched on the narrow floor mattress. The turret was silent.

  I was aroused from a doze by Molo's activities in the turret. Thegirls and Meka were still below. The ever-silent Venusian, squattingin the turret corner, still had his gun upon me.

  I saw that Grantline's ships, over a wide fan-shaped spread, wereadvancing.

  And presently we were engaged in the soundless turmoil of battle. Icannot relate more than fragments, things I saw and experienced,during six or more hours of bursting electronic light and puffs ofdarkness in that spread of battle area within the Moon-shadow. It wasa silent battle of crossing lights, ships a thousand miles apart,gathering velocity with great tangential curves; passing each other ina second; sweeping a thousand miles apart again; turning and comingback. A hundred engagements.

  The _Star-Streak_ was very fast, very mobile, and, unlike all theother Wandl ships, had the allies' own weapons to use against them. Isaw now why they called Molo the terror of the starways!

  We swept into the shadowed battle area. Over all its thousand-milespread were the radiant Wandl gravity-beams, disturbing and impedingthe course of Grantline's ships. There was the luminous gleam ofprojectile rockets, like little comets, soundless, launched by theWandl craft, and the radiance of the rocket-streams which all thevessels were using now for close maneuvering; the glare of Grantline'ssearchlight bombs and his white search-beams to disclose the deadlywhirling discs which the weapons of his vessel must seek out anddestroy. A chaos of silent light, stabbed here and there withGrantline's darkness bombs, bombs of limited local range whichexploded in space and which, for a few minutes duration, absorbed alllight-rays, giving a temporary effect of darkness.

  And then wreckage! Broken, leprous Wandl vessels whose barrage atclose range had been smashed by Grantline's guns; torn and litteredallied ships, struck by the huge exploding comet-projectiles and thewhirling discs; airless hulks, and scattered fragments which no longerresembled a ship at all but only a hull plate or a torn segment ofdome. And little drifting blobs, the survivors in pressure suits whohad leaped from the wreckage; little blobs ignored, whirled away ordrawn forward as by chance the sweeping gravity-beams fell upon them;tiny derelicts, floating stormtossed until the Moon's attractioncaught and pulled them down, or a whirling disc cut through them, orthe distant aura of a bolt shocked them to a merciful death.

  It was a three-dimensional, thousand-mile spread of fantasy infernal.Out of it, after an hour or two, a steady sift of every manner ofwreckage was drifting down upon the Moon. The scene began to blur. Ahaze like glowing star-dust, or the radiance from a comet's tail, wasspreading a weirdly luminous mist, blurring, obscuring the scene. Thiswas the released electrons and the dissipating gases of the space gunsand exploding projectiles, forming dust which glowed in the mingledstarlight and Earthlight.

  The _Star-Streak_ had plunged, during those six or eight hours,through the battle area. Our several encounters were all characterizedby the _Star-Streak's_ extreme flexibility, her speed, mobility, andMolo's reckless skill. We came through unscathed. There is a certainadvantage for the man who seems not to care for his own life. Butthere was an encounter, the last one as it chanced, just before weemerged downward out of the fog and found ourselves no more than athousand miles above the Moon's surface, where our adversary wasequally reckless and only Molo's skill saved us.

  We came upon a Venus police ship. We plunged, as though seeking acollision, and the Venus ship was willing. For a moment of chaos, bothbarrages held against the exchange of bolts. Then we rolled over andtilted down from the impulse of the stern rockets. The passing musthave been within feet, not miles; and in that second, Molo timed ashot to strike at the enemy bottom. It went through their barrage.Behind us, a second later, there was only strewn wreckage of the ship,so finely powdered that it became a silvery radiance, like moonlightshining on a little patch of fog.

  "Not too bad?" Molo gazed around for appreciation. "Not bad, GreggHaljan? Molo is not too unskillful?"

  We hung now close above the Moon's surface, with the battle area overus. Out of the fog up there came the drifting wreckage; and now theWandl ships were coming down, one by one. Not so many of them now; nomore than ten of them emerged.

  Grantline did not follow. His ships withdrew the other way. The foggradually dispersed. Grantline could now take stock of the battle; hehad been victorious. One might call it that, since his percentage ofstrength, numerically, was greater now than when the battle began. Tenremaining Wandl ships, and the allies had about twenty-five.

  Another hour passed. Grantline's twenty-five ships were gathered in aclose group, ten thousand miles above the Moon's surface. Under them,the ten Wandl vessels and the _Star-Streak_ seemed ranging in a fivehundred mile circle. Down through it, on the rocks of the Moon in thefoothills of the Apennines, the mechanism established there abruptlysprang into action.

  It was a giant gravity-beam. Of infinitely greater power than anyWandl vessel could generate, it flung out its spreading, conical ray.

  So this had been the purpose of all the Wandl tactics, to manipulateGrantline into his present position. This gravity-beam, though farsmaller, was comparable to the one used by the Wandl control station.A rock contact
against a huge mass, Wandl, and here, the Moon werenecessary to give the ray its power. No ship could generate such aray, so the Wandlites chose this battleground where they couldestablish themselves upon our deserted Moon.

  The beam had about a hundred foot diameter at its base on the rocks;it passed upward through the circle of Wandl vessels and its spreadbathed all of Grantline's ships at once. An attractive beam, sopowerful that the ships were helpless; against all their efforts theywere pinned and drawn downward. A slight velocity at first, but with atremendous acceleration.

  Within an hour they were hurtling, coming together as they speededdown the narrowing cone of the beam. The ten thousand miles, theirdistance above the Moon, was cut to five thousand. The Wandl shipsdrew aside, keeping well out of range to let them pass; in anotherthirty minutes they would crash against the rocks.

  I gazed in horror from the _Star-Streak's_ turret. We were sidewise tothe angle of the beam. Grantline's ships were pulled together now intoalmost a fifty-mile group. They hung all askew, helplessly pinned,some broadside, some upended. The movement of their fall was so rapidthat even with the naked eye it was apparent.

  "Got them now," Molo chuckled. "This is the end for them, GreggHaljan."

  There were only three of us in the turret: Molo and I, and mywatchful, silent guard who sat cross-legged, with a ray-gun pointed atme.

  Meka and the two girls were below during all the engagement.

  It was over now.

  During this lull Molo had sent the men from the deck gun ports totheir hull quarters. Our decks were empty now; the bridges andcatwalks up here had momentarily no occupants. The _Star-Streak_ hadlittle velocity, only a slow drift downward toward the Moon's surface,which now was only a few hundred miles beneath us.

  The lunar disc was a great dark spread of desolation, with only thesunlight topping the distant horizon limb. And from under us, to theside, was the source of the giant gravity-beam. Over us were thewatch-Wandl vessels, and, still higher, the helpless knot ofGrantline's ships hurtling down.

  "Got them now," Molo repeated. "In another...."

  He never finished. From the open doorway of the turret a figure roseup. Snap! His aspect, even more than his appearance, transfixed me.Snap, with his clothes torn; grimy and spattered with blood; his facepale and gaunt, with hollow, blazing eyes. And above it, the shock ofrumpled red hair. In one hand he clutched a ray-gun, and in the othera blood-stained knife!

  My guard squatting on the floor, half-turned. Snap's bolt met himbefore he could raise his weapon. He tumbled dead almost at my feet.And mingled with the hiss of the bolt was Snap's shout at the unarmedMolo.

  "Into the corner, you! Back up, you damned traitor, else I'll kill youas I've killed everyone else on this ship!"