"What's the matter?" he rasped. "What're they down for?"

  "It's nothing serious," the admiral assured him. They're just waiting for additional instructions about our course in the maneuvers."

  "Not serious, huh?" Stone grunted. "I'm not so sure of that. I want to talk to you, and this room's the only place I know where we'll be safe. Can you come down here right away?"

  "Why, certainly," Martin assented.

  "I never paid any attention to our course," the physicist snapped as his visitor entered the laboratory. "What was it?"

  "Take-off exactly at midnight of June nineteenth," Martin recited, watching Stone draw a diagram upon a scratch-pad. "Rise vertically at one and one-half gravities until a velocity of one kilometer per second has been attained, then continue vertical rise at constant velocity. At 6:30.29 A.M. of June twenty-first head directly for the star Regulus at an acceleration of exactly nine hundred eighty centimeters per second. Hold this course for one hour, forty-two minutes, and thirty-five seconds; then drift. Further directions will be supplied as soon thereafter as the courses of the other fleets can be checked."

  "Has anybody computed it?"

  "Undoubtedly the navigators have—why? That is the course Dos-Tev gave us and it must be followed, since he is Admiral-in-Chief of our side, the Blues. One slip may ruin the whole plan, give the Reds, our supposed enemy in these maneuvers, a victory, and get us all disrated."

  "Regardless" we'd better check on our course," Stone growled, unimpressed. "We'll compute it roughly, right here, and see where following these directions has put us." Taking up a slide-rule and a book of logarithms he set to work.

  "That initial rise doesn't mean a thing," he commented after a while, "except to get us far enough away from Earth so that the gravity is small" and to conceal from the casual observer that the effective takeoff is still exactly at midnight."

  Stone busied himself with calculations for many minutes. He stroked his forehead and scowled.

  "My figures are very rough" of course," he said puzzledly at last, "but they show that we've got no more tangential velocity with respect to the sun than a hen has teeth. And you can't tell me that it wasn't planned that way purposely—and not by Dos-Tev, either. On the other hand, our radial velocity, directly toward the sun, which is the only velocity we have, amounted to something over fifty-two kilometers per second when we shut off power and is increasing geometrically under the gravitational pull of the sun. That course smells to high heaven" Martin! DosTev never sent out any such a mess as that. The robots crossed him up, just as sure as hell's a man-trap! We're heading into the sun—and destruction!"

  Without reply Martin called the navigating room. "What do you think of this course, Henderson?" he asked.

  "I do not like it, sir," the officer replied. "Relative to the sun we have a tangenital velocity of only one point three centimeters per second, while our radial velocity toward it is very nearly fifty-three thousand meters per second. We will not be in any real danger for several days, but it should be borne in mind that we have no tangible velocity."

  "You see, Stone, we are in no present danger," Martin pointed out, "and I am sure that Dos-Tev will send us additional instructions long before our situation becomes acute."

  "I'm not," the pessimistic scientist grunted. "Anyway, I would advise calling some of the other Blue fleets on your scrambled wave, for a checkup."

  "There would be no harm in that." Martin called the Communications Officer, and soon:

  "Communications Officers of all the Blue fleets of the Inner Planets, attention!" the message was hurled out into space by the full power of the flagship's mighty transmitter. "Flagship Washington of the Terrestrial Contingent calling all Blue flagships. We have reason to suspect that the course which has been given us is false. We advise you to check your courses with care and to return to your bases if you disc... ."

  Chapter Three

  Battle in Space

  In the middle of the word the radio man's clear, precisely spaced enunciation became a hideous drooling, a slobbering, meaningless mumble. Martin stared into his plate in amazement. The Communications Officer of Martin's ship, the Washington, had slumped down loosely into his seat as though his every bone had turned to a rubber string. His tongue lolled out limply between slacks jaws, his eyes protruded, his limbs jerked and twitched aimlessly.

  Every man visible in the plate was similarly affected—the entire Communications staff was in the same pitiable condition of utter helplessness. But Ferdinand Stone did not stare. A haze of livid light had appeared, gnawing viciously at his spherical protective screen, and he sprang instantly to his instruments.

  "I can't say that I expected this particular development" but I know what they are doing and I am not surprised," Stone said, coolly. "They have discovered the thought band and are broadcasting such an interference on it that no human being not protected against it can think intelligently. There, I have expanded our zone to cover the whole ship. I hope that they don't find out for a few minutes that we are immune, and I don't think they can, as I have so adjusted the screen that it is now absorbing instead of radiating.

  "Tell the captain to put the ship into heaviest possible battle order, everything full on, as soon as the men can handle themselves. Then I want to make a few suggestions." .

  "What happened, anyway?" the Communications Officer" semi-conscious now, was demanding. "Something hit me and tore my brain apart—I couldn't think, couldn't do a thing. My mind was all chewed up by curly pinwheels... ."

  Throughout the vast battleship of space men raved briefly in delirium; but, the cause removed, recovery was rapid and complete. Martin explained matters to the captain, that worthy issued orders, and soon the flagship had in readiness all her weapons, both of defense and of offense.

  "Doctor Stone, who knows more about the automatons than does any other human being, will tell us what to do next," the Flight Director said.

  "The first thing to do is to locate them," Stone, now temporary commander" stated crisply. "They have taken over at least one of our vessels, probably one close to us" so as to be near the center of the formation. Radio room, put out tracers on wave point oh oh two seven one ..." He went on to give exact and highly technical instructions as to the tuning of the detectors.

  "We have found them, sir," soon came the welcome report. "One ship, the Dresden, coordinates 42-7963."

  "That makes it bad—very bad," Stone, reflected, audibly. "We can't expand the zone to release another ship from the control of the robots without enveloping the Dresden and exposing ourselves. Can't surprise them they're ready for anything. It's rather long range, too." The vessels of the Fleet were a thousand miles apart, being in open order for high-velocity flight in open space. "Torpedoes would be thrown off by her meteorite deflectors. Only one thing to do, Captain—close in and tear into her with everything you've got."

  "But the men in her!" protested Martin.

  "Dead long ago," snapped the expert. "Probably been animated corpses for days. Take a look if you want to; won't do any harm now. Radio, put us on as many of the Dresden's television plates as you can—besides, what's the crew of one ship compared to the hundreds of thousands of men in the rest of the Fleet? We can't burn her out at one blast" anyway. They've got real brains and the same armament we have" and will certainly kill the crew at the first blast, if they haven't done it already. Afraid it'll be a near thing, getting away from the sun, even with eleven other ships to help us—"

  He broke off as the beam operators succeeded in making connection briefly with the plates of the Dresden. One glimpse" then the visibeams were cut savagely" but that glimpse was enough. They saw that their sistership was manned completely by automatons. In her every compartment men, all too plainly dead, lay wherever they had chanced to fall. The captain swore a startled oath, then bellowed orders; and the flagship" driving projectors fiercely aflame" rushed to come to grips with the Dresden.

  "You intimated something about help," Martin suggested. "Can you release some of the other ships from the automaton's yoke" after all?"

  "Got to—or roast. This is bound to be a battle of attrition—we can't crush her screens alone until her power is exhausted and we'll be in the sun long before then. I see only one possible way out. We'll have to build a neutralizing generator for every lifeboat this ship carries, and send each one out to release one other ship in our Fleet from the robot's grip. Eleven boats—that'll make twelve to concentrate on herabout all that could attack at once" anyway. That way will take so much time that it will certainly be touch-and-go, but it's the only thing we can do, as far as I can see. Give me ten good radio men and some mechanics, and we'll get at it."

  While the technicians were coming on the run Stone issued final instructions:

  "Attack with every weapon you can possibly use. Try to break down the Dresden's meteorite shields" so that you can use our shells and torpedoes. Burn every gram of fuel that your generators will take. Don't try to save it. The more you burn the more they'll have to, and the quicker we can take 'em. We can refuel you easily enough from the other vessels if we get away."

  Then, while Stone and his technical experts labored upon the generators of the screens which were to protect eleven more of the gigantic vessels against the thought destroying radiations of the automatons, and while the computers calculated, minute by minute, the exact progress of the Fleet toward the blazing sun, the flagship Washington drove in upon the rebellious Dresden, her main forward battery furiously aflame. Drove in until the repellor screens of the two vessels locked and buckled. Then Captain Malcolm really opened up.

  That grizzled four-striper had been at a loss—knowing little indeed of the oscillatory nature of thought and still less of the abstruse mathematics in which Ferdinand Stone took such delight—but here was something that he understood thoroughly. He knew his ship, knew her every weapon and her every whim, knew to the final volt and to the ultimate ampere her Gargantuan capacity both to give it and to take it. He could fight his ship—and how he fought her!

  From every projector that could be brought to bear there flamed out against the Dresden beams of energy and of a potency indescribable, at whose scintillant areas of contact the defensive screen of the robot-manned cruiser flared into terribly resplendent brilliance. Every type of lethal vibratory force was hurled, upon every usable destructive frequency. Needle-rays and stabbingly penetrant stilettos of fire thrust and thrust again. Sizzling, flashing planes cut and slashed. The heaviest annihilating and disintegrating beams generable by man clawed and tore in wild abandon.

  And over all and through all the stupendously powerful blanketing beams—so furiously driven that the coils and commutators of their generators fairly smoked and that the refractory throats of their projectors glared radiantly violet and began slowly, stubbornly to volatilize—raved out in all their pyrotechnically incandescent might, striving prodigiously to crush by their sheer power the shielding screens of the vessel of the automatons.

  Nor was the vibratory offensive alone. Every gun, primary or auxiliary" that could be pointed at the Dresden was vomiting smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel as fast as automatic loaders could serve it" and under that continuous, appallingly silent concussion the giant frame of the flagship shuddered and trembled in every plate and member.

  And from every launching-tube there were streaming the deadliest missiles known to science; radio-dirigible torpedoes which, looping in vast circles to attain the highest possible measure of momentum, crashed against the Dresden's meteorite deflectors in Herculean efforts to break them down; and, in failing to do so, exploded and filled all space with raging flame and with flying fragments of metal.

  Captain Malcolm was burning his stores of fuel and munitions at an appalling rate, careless alike of exhaustion of reserves and of service-life of equipment. All his generators were running at a shockingly ruinous overload, his every projector was being used so mercilessly that not even their powerful refrigerators, radiating the transported heat into the interplanetary cold from the dark side of the ship, could keep their refractory linings in place for long.

  And through raging beam, through blasting ray, through crushing force; through storm of explosive and through rain of metal the Dresden remained apparently unscathed. Her screens were radiating high into the violet, but they showed no sign of weakening or of going down. Neither did the meteorite deflectors break down. Everything held. Since she was armed as capably as was the flagship and was being fought by inhumanly intelligent monstrosities, she was invulnerable to any one ship of the Fleet as long as her generators could be fed.

  Nevertheless, Captain Malcolm was well content. He was making the Dresden burn plenty of irreplaceable fuel, and his generators and projectors would last long enough. His ship, his men, and his weapons could and would carry the load until the fresh attackers should take it over; and carry it they did. Carried it while Stone and his over-driven crew finished their complicated mechanisms and flew out into space toward the eleven nearest battleships of the Fleet.

  They carried it while the computers, grim-faced and scowling now, jotted down from minute to minute the enormous and rapidly-increasing figure representing their radial velocity. Carried it while Earth's immense armada, manned by creatures incapable of even the simplest coherent thought or purposeful notion, plunged sickeningly downward in its madly hopeless fall, with scarcely a measurable trace of tangential velocity, toward the unimaginable inferno of the sun.

  Eventually, however the shielded lifeboats approached their objectives and expanded their screens to enclose them. Officers recovered, airlocks opened, and the lifeboats, still radiating protection, were taken inside. Explanations were made, orders were given, and one by one the eleven vengeful super-dreadnoughts shot away to join the flagship in abating the Menace of the Machine.

  No conceivable structure, however armed or powered, could long withstand the fury of the combined assault of twelve such superb battle craft, and under that awful concentration of force the screens of the doomed ship radiated higher and higher into the ultra-violet, went black, and failed. And, those mighty defenses down, the end was practically instantaneous.

  No unprotected metal can endure even momentarily the ardor of such beams, and they played on, not only until every plate and girder of the vessel and every nut, bolt, and rivet of its monstrous crew had been blasted out of all semblance to what it had once been, but until every fragment of metal had not only been liquefied, but had been completely volatilized.

  At the instant of cessation of the brain-scrambling activities of the automatons the Communications Officer had begun an insistent broadcast. Aboard all of the ships there were many who did not recover—who would be helpless imbeciles during the short period of life left to them but soon an intelligent officer was at every control and each unit of the Terrestrial Contingent was exerting its maximum thrust at a right angle to its line of fall.

  And now the burden was shifted from the fighting staff to the no less able engineers and computers. To the engineers the task of keeping their mighty engines in such tune as to maintain constantly the peak acceleration of three Earth gravities; to the computers that of so directing their ever-changing course as to win every possible centimeter of precious tangential velocity.

  Chapter Four

  The Sun's Gravity

  Ferdinand Stone was hollow-eyed and gaunt from his practically sleepless days and nights of toil, but he was as grimly resolute as ever. Struggling against the terrific weight of three gravities he made his way to the desk of the Chief Computer and waited while that worthy, whose leaden hands could scarcely manipulate the instruments of his profession, finished his seemingly endless calculations.

  "We will escape the sun's mighty attraction, Doctor Stone, with approximately half a gravity to spare," the mathematician reported finally. "Whether we will be alive or not is another question. There will be heat, which our refrigerators may or may not be able to handle; there will be radiations which our armor may or may not be able to stop. You, of course, know a lot more about those things than I do."

  "Distance at closest approach?" snapped Stone.

  "Two point twenty-nine times ten to the ninth meters from the sun's center," the computer shot back instantly. "That is, one million five hundred ninety thousand kilometers—only two point twenty-seven radii-from the arbitrary surface. What do you think of our chances, sir?"

  "It will probably be a near thing—very near," the physicist replied, thoughtfully. "Much, however, can be done. We can probably tune our defensive screens to block most of the harmful radiations, and we may be able to muster other defenses. I will analyze the radiations and see what we can do about neutralizing them."

  "You will go to bed," directed Martin, crisply. "There will be lots of time for that work after you get rested up. The doctors have been reporting that the men who did not recover from the robots' broadcast are dying under this acceleration. With those facts staring us in the face, however, I do not see how we can reduce our power."

 

1 2 3