“Can you talk, Nels?” demanded Kinnison of his Communications Officer, even before the air-lock had closed.
“No, sir, they’re blanketing us solid,” that worthy replied instantly. “Space’s so full of static you couldn’t drive a power-beam through it, let alone a communicator. Couldn’t talk direct, anyway—look where we are,” and he pointed out in the tank their present location.
“Hm…m…m. Couldn’t have got much farther away without jumping the galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back there or from the disturbance. They’re undoubtedly concentrating on us now… One of them will spear us with a tractor, just as sure as hell’s a man-trap…”
The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought in black intensity. He must get this data back to Base—but how? HOW? Henderson was already driving the vessel back toward Sol with every iota of her inconceivable top speed, but it was out of the question even to hope that she would ever get there. The life of the Brittania was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours—and all too scant measure, even of them. For there must be hundreds of pirate vessels even now tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net to cut off her return to Base. Fast though she was, one of that barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp on a tracer—and when that happened her flight was done.
Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first-class war-vessel of the public enemy, it was true, but at what awful cost! One fresh vessel could blast his crippled mount out of space, nor would there be only one. Within a space of minutes after the attachment of a tracer the Brittania would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone’s fighters. There was only one chance; and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly, young Lieutenant Kinnison—now and briefly Captain Kinnison—decided to take it.
“Listen, everybody!” he ordered. “We must get this information back to Base, and we can’t do it in the Brittania. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in another fight is exactly zero. We’ll have to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the hope that at least one will be able to get through.
“The technicians and specialists will take all the data they, got—information, descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything—boil it down, and put it on a spool of tape. They will make about a hundred copies of it. The crew and the Valerian privates will man boats starting with Number Twenty One and blast off as soon as you can get your tapes. Once away, use very little detectable power, or better yet no power at all, until you’re sure the pirates have chased the Brittania a good many parsecs away from where you are.
“The rest of us—specialist and the Valerian non-coms—will go last. Twenty boats, two men to a boat, and each man will have a spool. We’ll start launching when we’re as far as it’s safe to go. Each boat will be strictly on its own. Do it any way you can; but some way, any way, get your spool back to Base. There’s no use in me trying to impress you with the importance of this stuff; you know what it means as well as I do.
“Boatmates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names—and his own, to make it forty even—on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at a time. If two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the pot. Get to work!”
Twice the name of “Kinnison” came out together with that of another skilled in astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it came out paired with “vanBuskirk,” to the manifest joy of the giant Valerian and to the approval of the crowd as well.
“That was a break for me, Kim!” the sergeant called, over the cheers of his fellows. “I’m sure of getting back now!”
“That’s throwing the oil, big fellow—but I don’t know of anybody I’d rather have at my back than you,” Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.
The pairings were made; DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment were checked and tested; the spools of tape were sealed in their corrosion-proof containers and distributed; and Kinnison sat talking with the Master Technician.
“So they’ve solved the problem of the really efficient reception and conversion of cosmic radiation!” Kinnison whistled softly through his teeth. “And a sun—even a small one—radiates the energy given off by the annihilation of one-to-several million tons of matter per second! SOME power!”
“That’s the story, Skipper, and it explains completely why their ships have been so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster drives even than the Brittania’s—they probably will, now that it has become necessary. Also, if the bus-bars in that receptor-convertor had been a few square centimeters larger in cross-section, they could have held their wall-shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what?… They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution.”
“They have atomic motors, the same as ours; just as big and just as efficient,” Kinnison cogitated. “But those motors are all we have got, while they use them, and at full power, too, simply as first-stage exciters for the cosmic-energy screens. Blinding blue blazes, what power! Some of us have got to get back, Verne. If we don’t, Boskone’s got the whole galaxy by the tail, and Civilization is sunk without a trace.”
“I’ll say so, but also I’ll say this for those of us who don’t get back—it won’t be for lack of trying. Well, better I go check my boat. If I don’t see you again, Kim old man, clear ether!”
They shook hands briefly and Thorndyke strode away. Enroute, however, he paused beside the quartermaster and signaled to him to disconnect his communicator.
“Clever lad, Allerdyce!” Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. “Kinda loaded the dice a trifle once or twice, didn’t you? I don’t think anybody but me smelled a rat, though. Certainly neither the skipper nor Henderson did, or you’d’ve had it to do over again.”
“At least one team has got to get through,” Allerdyce replied, quietly and obliquely, “and the strongest teams we can muster will find the going none too easy. Any team made up of strength and weakness is a weak team. Kinnison, our only Lensman, is of course the best man aboard this buzz-buggy. Who would you pick for number two?”
“VanBuskirk, of course, the same as you did. I wasn’t criticizing you, man, I was complimenting you, and thanking you, in a roundabout way, for giving me Henderson. He’s got plenty of what it takes, too.”
“It wasn’t ‘vanBuskirk, of course,’ by any means,” the quartermaster rejoined. “It’s mighty hard to figure either you or Henderson third, to say nothing of fourth, in any kind of company, however fast—mentally and physically. However, it seemed to me that you fitted in better with the pilot. I could hand-pick only two teams without getting caught at it—you spotted me as it was—but I think I picked the two strongest teams possible. One of you will get through—if none of you four can make it, nobody could.”
“Well, here’s hoping, anyway. Thanks again. See you again some time, maybe—clear ether!”
Chief Pilot Henderson had, a few minutes since, changed the course of the cruiser from right-line flight to fantastic, zig-zag leaps through space, and now he turned frowningly to Kinnison.
“We’d better begin dumping them out pretty soon now, I think,” be suggested. “We haven’t detected anything yet, but according to the figures it won’t be long now; and after they get their traps set we’ll run out of time mighty quick.”
“Right,” and one after another, but even so several light-years apart in space, eighteen of the small boats were launched into the void. In the control room there were left only Henderson and Thorndyke with vanBuskirk and Kinnison, who were of course to be the last to leave the vessel.
“All right, Hen, now we’ll try out your roulette-wheel director-by-chance,” Kinnison said, then went on, in answer to Thorndyke’s questioning glance. “A bouncing ball on an oscillating table. Every time the ball carroms off a pin it shifts the course through a fairly large, but unpredictable angle. Pure chance—we thought it might cross them up a little.”
Hairline beams were con
nected from panels to pins, and soon four interested spectators looked on while, with no human guidance, the Brittania lurched and leaped even more erratically than she had done under Henderson’s direction. Now, however, the ever-changing vectors of her course were as unexpected and surprising to her passengers as to any possible external observer.
One more lifeboat left the vessel, and only the Lensman and his giant aide remained. While they were waiting the required few minutes before their own departure, Kinnison spoke.
“Bus, there’s one more thing we ought to do, and I’ve just figured out how to do it. We don’t want this ship to fall into the pirates’ hands intact, as there’s a lot of stuff in her that would probably be as new to them as it was to us. They know we got the best of that ship of theirs, but they don’t know what we did or how. On the other hand, we want her to drive on as long as possible after we leave her—the farther away from us she gets, the better our chance of getting away. We should have something to touch off those duodec torpedoes we have left—all seven at once—at the first touch of a spy beam; both to keep them from studying her and to do a little damage if possible—they’ll go inert and pull her up close as soon as they get a tracer on her. Of course we can’t do it by stopping the spy-ray altogether, with a spy-screen, but I think I can establish an R7TX7M field outside our regular screens that will interfere with a TX7 just enough—say one-tenth of one percent—to actuate a relay in the field-supporting beam.”
“One-tenth of one percent of one milliwatt is one microwatt, isn’t it? Not much power, I’d say, but that’s a little out of my line. Go ahead—I’ll observe while you’re busy.”
Thus it came about that, a few minutes later, the immense sky-rover of the Galactic Patrol darted along entirely untenanted. And it was her non-human helmsman, operating solely by chance, that prolonged the chase far more than even the most optimistic member of her crew could have hoped. For the pilots of the pirate pursuers were intelligent, and assumed that their quarry also was directed by intelligence. Therefore they aimed their vessels for points toward which the Brittania should logically go; only and maddeningly to watch her go somewhere else. Senselessly she hurled herself directly toward enormous suns, once grazing one so nearly that the harrying pirates gasped at the foolhardiness of such exposure to lethal radiation. For no reason at all she shot straight backward, almost into a cluster of pirate craft, only to dash off on another unexpected tangent before the startled outlaws could lay a beam against her.
But finally she did it once too often. Flying between two vessels, she held her line the merest fraction of a second too long. Two tractors lashed out and the three vessels flashed together, zone to zone to zone. Then, instantly, the two pirate ships became inert, to anchor in space their wildly fleeing prey. Then spy-beams licked out, to explore the Brittania’s interior.
At the touch of those beams, light and delicate as they were, the relay clicked and the torpedoes let go. Those frightful shells were so designed and so charged that one of them could demolish any inert structure known to man, what of seven? There was an explosion to stagger the imagination and which must be left to the imagination, since no words in any language of the galaxy can describe it adequately.
The Brittania, literally blown to bits, more-than-half fused and partially volatilized by the inconceivable fury of the outburst, was hurled in all directions in streamers, droplets, chunks, and masses; each component part urged away from the center of pressure by the ragingly compressed gases of detonation. Furthermore, each component was now of course inert and therefore capable of giving up its full measure of kinetic energy to any inert object with which it should come in contact.
One mass of wreckage, so fiercely sped that its victim had time neither to dodge nor become inertialess, crashed full against the side of the nearer attacker. Meteorite screens flared brilliantly violet and went down. The full-driven wall-shield held; but so terrific was the concussion that what few of the crew were not killed outright would take no interest in current events for many hours to come.
The other, slightly more distant attacker was more fortunate. Her commander had had time to render her inertialess, and as she rode lightly away, ahead of the outermost, most tenuous fringe of vapor, he reported succinctly to his headquarters all that had transpired. There was a brief interlude of silence, then a speaker gave tongue.
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone,” snapped from it. “Your report is neither complete nor conclusive. Find, study, photograph, and bring in to headquarters every fragment and particle pertaining to the wreckage, paying particular attention to all bodies or portions thereof.”
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!” roared from the general-wave unscrambler. “Commanders of all vessels, of every class and tonnage, upon whatever mission bound, attention! The vessel referred to in our previous message has been destroyed, but it is feared that some or all of her personnel were allowed to escape. Every unit of that personnel must be killed before he has opportunity to communicate with any Patrol base. Therefore cancel your present orders, whatever they may be, and proceed at maximum blast to the region previously designated. Scour that entire volume of space. Beam out of existence every vessel whose papers do not account unquestionably for every intelligent being aboard. Investigate every possible avenue of escape. More detailed orders will be given each of you upon your nearer approach to the neighborhood under search.”
CHAPTER
4
Escape
PACE-SUITED COMPLETE except for helmets, and with those ready to hand, Kinnison and vanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their life-boat as it drifted inert through inter-stellar space. Kinnison was poring over charts taken from the Brittania’s pilot room; the sergeant was gazing idly into a detector plate.
“No clear ether yet, I don’t suppose,” the captain remarked, as he rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.
“No let-up for a second; they’re not taking any chances at all. Found out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn’t it?”
“Yeah. Not close, though, even for a ship—out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited around here, either, to say nothing of being civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don’t think I’ve ever been out here before; have you?”
“Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it’ll be before it’s safe for us to blast off?”
“Can’t start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power.”
“We may be in for a spell of waiting, then…” VanBuskirk broke off suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. “Help, Noshabkeming, help! Look at that!”
“Blinding blue blazes!” Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate. “With all macro-universal space and all eternity to play around in, why in all space’s hells did she have to come back here and now?”
For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the Brittania and her two pirate captors!
“Better go free, hadn’t we?” whispered vanBuskirk.
“Damn!” Kinnison grunted. “At this range they’d spot us in a split second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal’s our only chance. We’ll be able to dodge any flying chunks, I think…there she goes!”
From their coign of vantage the two Patrolmen saw their gallant ship’s terrific end; saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment; saw the other escape inertialess; saw her disappear.
The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute passed and nothing happened.
“Why don’t they do something?” he burst out, finally. “They know we’re here—there i
sn’t a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can see us from there, with no detectors at all!”
“Asleep, unconscious, or dead,” vanBuskirk diagnosed, “and they’re not asleep. Believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. She must’ve been hit hard enough to lay her whole crew out cold…and say, she’s got a standard emergency inlet port—how about it, huh?”
Kinnison’s mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their only duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft, detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all nearby space so full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, vanBuskirk’s wild idea was actually the safest course!
“All right, Bus, well try it. We’ll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets.”
The lifeboat flashed against the pirate’s armored side and the sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand-magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating, toward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its Galactic Standard controls.
In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too,” he went on, eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it against a panel thus obscuring a multiple lens.
“That’s the eye overlooking the control room,” he explained unnecessarily. “We can’t cut their headquarters with beams without creating suspicion, but we don’t want them looking around in here until after we’ve done a little stage-setting.”
Galactic Patrol Page 4
