"They may not see us," said Dyann hopefully.
"They have metal detectors. We're done for."
"Vell, ve can only die vunce. Kiss me, sveetheart." Dyann folded Ray in one arm while the other reached for her sword.
The patrol rockets went over the horizon, braking, and swam back. Blast-flames spattered off the valley floor and frozen-gas vapors boiled furiously up toward mighty Jupiter.
The boat telescreen blinked its indicator light. Numbly, Ray tuned it in. The lean hard face of Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp sprang into its frame.
"Ah, there you are," said the Jovian.
"If we surrender," said Ray, "will you give us safe conduct back to Earth?"
"Certainly not. But you may be allowed to live."
Urushkidan spoke from the lab. "Ballantyne, I tink te trouble lies in tis square-wave generator. If we doubled te boltage—"
The first patrol ship sizzled to a landing. Roshevsky-Feldkamp leaned forward till his face seemed to project from the screen and Ray had a wild desire to punch its nose. "So you've been working on our project." He said, "Well, so much the more labor spared us."
Dyann cut loose with a short-range blaster she had located somewhere on the lab ship.
"Urushkidan will die before he surrenders to you," said Ray belligerently.
"I will do noting of te sort," said the Martian. Experimentally, he cut the square-wave generator back into the circuit and turned a dial.
The boat lifted off the ground.
"Hey, there," roared the colonel. "You can't do that!"
The Jovian soldiers who had been pouring from the grounded ship looked stupidly upward.
"Shell them!" snapped the colonel.
Ray slammed the main star drive switch clear over.
There was no feeling of acceleration. They were suddenly floating weightless and Jupiter whizzed past the forward port.
"Stop!" howled the Jovian.
The engine throbbed and sang, energy pulsing in great waves through its shuddering substance. The stars crawled eerily across the ports. "Aberration," gasped Ray. "We're approaching the speed of light."
Space swam and blazed with a million million suns. They bunched near the forward port, thinning out toward the rear, as the ship added its fantastic velocity vector to their light-rays. A distorted pale-green globe grew rapidly before the vessel.
"Vat planet is that up ahead?" pointed Dyann.
"I think—" muttered Ray. He looked out the rearward port. "I think it was Neptune."
"Triumph!" chortled Urushkidan, rubbing his tentacles together. "My teory is confirmed. Not tat it needs confirmation, but now even an Eartman can see tat I am always right. And oh, how tey'll habe to pay!"
The colors of the stars shifted toward blue in front and red behind. Doppler effect, thought Ray wildly. He was probably seeing by radio waves and gamma rays now. How fast were they going, anyway? He should have thought to install some kind of speed gauge. Several times the velocity of light at least.
"Ha, this is fun," laughed Dyann.
"Hmmm—we better stop while we can still see the Solar System," said Ray, and cut the main drive.
The ship kept on going.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthling. "Stop! Whoa!"
"We can't stop," said Urushkidan coolly. "We're in a certain pseudobelocity-state now. Te engine merely accelerates us."
"Well, how in hell do you brake?" groaned Ray.
"I don't know. We'll habe to figure tat out. I tought you knew tis would happen."
"Now I do." Ray floated free of his chair, beating his forehead with his fists. "I hope to heaven we can do it before the food runs out."
Dyann looked at Urushkidan speculatively. "If vorst comes to vorst," she murmured, "roast Martian—"
"Let's get busy," gasped Urushkidan.
It took a week to improvise a braking system. By that time they were no longer very sure where they were.
"This is all my fault," said Dyann contritely. "If I had brought Ormun along she vould have looked after us."
"One thing that worries me," said Ray, "is the Jovians. They aren't fools, and they won't be sitting on their hands waiting for us to come back and give the star drive to Earth."
"First," said Urushkidan snappishly, "tere is te problem of finding our sun."
Ray looked out the port. The ship was braked and, in the normal space-time state of matter, was floating amidst a wilderness of unfamiliar constellations. "It shouldn't be too hard," he said thoughtfully. "Look, there are the Magellanic Clouds, I think, and we should be able to locate Rigel or some other bright star. That way we can get a fix and locate ourselves relative to Sol."
"Tere are no astronomical tables aboard ship," pointed out Urushkidan, "and I certainly don't clutter my brain wit mere numerical data."
"Vich star is Rigel?" asked Dyann.
"Why—uh—well—that one—no, it might be that one over there—or perhaps—how should I know?" growled Ray.
"We will simply habe to go back te way we came, as nearly as we can judge it," said Urushkidan.
"Maybe ve can find somevun who knows," suggested Dyann.
Ray thought of landing on a planet and asking a winged, three-headed monster, "Pardon me, do you know which way Sol is?" To which the monster would doubtless reply, "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself." He chuckled wryly. They'd encountered a difficulty which all the brave futuristic stories about exploring the Galaxy seemed to have overlooked.
They had headed out in the ecliptic plane, very nearly on a line joining the momentary positions of Jupiter and Neptune. That didn't help much, though, in a boat never meant for interplanetary flight and thus carrying only the ephemerides of the Jovian System. Presumably they had gone in a straight line, so that one of the zodiacal constellations was at their back and should still be recognizable, but the high-velocity distortions of the outside view had precluded anyone's noticing which stars had been where.
Ray floated over to the port and looked out at the eerie magnificence of unknown space. "If I'd been a Boy Scout," he lamented, "I might know the constellations. The thing to do is to head back toward any one which looks halfway familiar, since that must be the one which was at our stern. But I only know Orion and the Big Dipper." He looked at Urushkidan with accusing eyes. "You're the great astrophysicist. Can't you tell one star from another?"
"Certainly not," said the Martian huffily. "No astrophysicist eber looks at de stars if he can help it."
"Oh, you want a con—con—star-picture?" asked Dyann innocently.
Ray said, "I mean one we know, as we see the stars from Sol, or from Centauri. You're nice to look at, honey, but right now I can't help wishing you Varannians were a little more intellectual."
"Oh, I know the stars," said Dyann. "Every noble learns them. Let me see—" She floated around the chamber, from port to port, staring out and muttering to herself. "Oh, yes. There is Kunatha the Hunter-threatened-by-woman-devourin-monster. Not changed much."
"Huh?" Ray and Urushkidan pushed themselves over beside her. "By gosh," said the Earthling, "it does look like Virgo, I think, or one of 'em. Dyann, I love you to pieces."
"Let's get home qvick, then," she beamed. "I vant to be on a planet." During the outward flight she had been somewhat discomforted by discovering the erotic importance of gravity.
"Yousteer us home?" screeched Urushkidan. "How in Nebukadashatbu do you know te stars?"
"I had to learn them," she said. "Every noble on Varann has to know—vat you call it?—astroloyee. How else could ve plan our battles visely?"
"Astrology?" screamed the Martian. "You are an—an—astrologer?"
"Vy, of course. I thought you vere too, but it seems like you Solarians are more backvard than I supposed. Shall I cast your horoscope?"
"Astrology," groaned Urushkidan. He looked ill.
"Well," said Ray helplessly, "I guess it's up to you to pilot us back, Dyann."
"Vy, sure." She jumped into the pilot seat. "Anchors aveigh."
"Brought home by an astrologer," groaned Urushkidan. "Te ignominy of it all."
Ray started the new engine. They could accelerate all the way back and use the brake to stop almost instantly—it shouldn't take long. "All set," he called, and the rising note of power thrummed behind his words.
"Giddap!" yelled Dyann. She swung the ship around and slammed the main drive switch home.
Ray looked out at the weirdly distorted heavens. "There should be some way to compensate for that aberration," he murmured. "A viewplate using photocells, with the electron beam control-fields hooked into the drive circuit—sure. Simple." He floated back to the lab and began assembling scattered apparatus. In a few hours he emerged with a gadget as uncouth as the engine itself but there was a set of three telescreens which gave clear views in three directions. Dyann smiled and pointed to one of them. "See, now Avalla—the Victorious-warrior-returnin-from-battle-vith-captive-man-slung-across-her-saddle-bow—is taking shape," she said.
"That," said Ray, "is Ursa Major. You Varannians have a fantastic imagination."
A blue-white giant of a sun flamed ahead, prominences seething millions of miles into space. Dyann's eyes sparkled and she applied a sideways vector to the star drive. "Yippee!" she howled.
"Hey!" screamed the Earthman.
They whizzed past the star, playing tag with the reaching flames while Dyann roared out a Centaurian battle chant. Ray's subconscious mind spewed forth every prayer he had even known.
"Okay, ve are past it," said Dyann.
"Don't do such things!" he said weakly.
"Darlin," said the girl, "I think we should spend our honeymoon flyin' through space like this."
The stars blurred past. The Galaxy's conquerors looked at the splendor of open space and ate cold beans out of a can.
"I think," said Dyann thoughtfully, "ve should go first to Varann."
"Alpha Centauri?" asked Urushkidan. "Nonsense. We are going back at once to Uttu and cibilised society."
"Ve may need help at Sol," said the girl. "Ve have been gone—how long—about two veeks? Much could have happened in that time."
"But—but—it's not practical," objected Ray.
Dyann grinned cheerfully. "And how vill you stop me?"
"Varann—oh, well, I've always wanted to see it anyway."
The Centaurian began casting about, steering by the aspect of the sky. Before many hours, she was slanting in toward a double star with a dim red dwarf in the background. "This is it," she said. "This is it."
"Okay," answered Ray. "Now tell me how you find a planet."
"Hmmm—vell—" Dyann scratched her ruddy head.
Ray began to figure it aloud.
"The planets—let me see, now—yeah, they're in the plane of the two stars. They'd have to be. So if you go out to a point in that plane where Alpha A, your sun, seems of about the right size, and then swing in a circle of that radius, you should come pretty close to Varann. It has a good-sized moon, doesn't it, and its color is greenish-blue? Yes, we should be able to spot it."
"You are so clever," sighed Dyann.
"Hah!" sneered Urushkidan.
At a mere fraction of the velocity of light—Ray thought of the consequences of hitting a planet when going faster than light, and wished he hadn't—the spaceboat moved around Alpha A. It seemed only minutes before Dyann pointed and cried joyously, "There ve are. There is home. After many years—home!"
"I would still like to know what we are going to do when we get there," said Urushkidan.
He was not answered. Dyann and Ray were too busy bringing the vessel down into the atmosphere and across the wild surface.
"Kathantuma!" cried the girl. "There is my homeland. See, there is the mountain, old Mother Hastan. There is the city Mayta. Hold on, ve're goin down!"
VI
Mayta was a huddle of thatch-roofed wooden buildings at the foot of a fantastically spired gray castle, sitting amid the broad fields and forests and rivers of Kathantuma with the mountains shining in the far distance. Dyann set the ship down just outside the town, stood up, and stretched her tigress body with an exultant laugh.
"Home!" she cried. "Gravity!"
"Uh—yeah." Ray tried to lift his feet. It went slowly, with some strain—half again the pull of Earth. Urushkidan groaned and wheezed his painful way to a chair and collapsed all over it.
"Let's go!" Dyann snatched up her sword, set the helmet rakishly on her bronze curls, and opened the airlock. When Ray hesitated she reached and yanked him out.
The air was cool and windy, pungent with a million scents of earth and growing things, tall clouds sailing over a high blue heaven, and even the engineer was grateful for it after the stuffiness of the boat. He looked around him. Not far off was a charming rustic cottage. It was like a scene from some forgotten idyll of Earth's old past.
"Looks good," he said.
A four-foot arrow hummed past his ear and rang like a gong on the ship's hull.
"Yowp!" Ray dove for shelter. Another arrow zipped in front of him. He whirled at a storm of contralto curses.
There were half a dozen women pouring from the charming rustic cottage, a battle-scarred older one and five tall young daughters, waving swords and axes and spears. A couple of men peered nervously from the door.
"Ha, Ormun!" yelled Dyann. She lifted her sword and dashed to meet the onslaught. The oldest woman caught the amazon's blow on a raised shield and her ax clanged off Dyann's helmet. Dyann staggered, shook her head, and struck out afresh. The others closed in, yelling and jabbing.
Dyann's sword met the nearest ax halfway and broke across. She stooped, picked the woman off her feet, and whirled her over her head. With a shout, she threw the old she-warrior into two of her nearest daughters, and the trio went down in a roar of metal.
Centaurian hospitality, thought Ray.
A backhanded blow sent him reeling. He looked up to see a yellow-haired girl looming over him. Before he could do more than mutter she had slugged him again and thrown him over one brawny shoulder.
Hoofs clattered down the narrow dirt road. A squad of armored women riding animals reminiscent of Percherons, but horned and red of hide, were charging from the town. They swept into the fight, wielding clubbed lances with fine impartiality, and it broke up in a sullen wave of red-splashed femininity. Nobody, Ray saw from his upside-down position, had been killed, but there were plenty of slashes and the intent had certainly been there.
The harsh barking language of Kathantuma rose on either side. Finally an understanding seemed to be reached. One of the riders pointed a mailed hand at Ray's captor and snapped an order. The girl protested, was overruled, and tossed him pettishly to the ground. He recovered consciousness in a minute or two.
Dyann picked him up, tenderly. "Poor Ray," she murmured. "Ve play too rough for you here, huh?"
"What was it all about?" he mumbled.
"Oh, these people vere mad because ve landed in their field, but the qveen's riders stopped the fight in time. It is only lawful to kill people on the regular duellin grounds, inside the city limits. Ve must have law and order, you know."
"I see," said Ray faintly.
It was a large and turbulent crowd which gathered at sunset to hear Dyann speak. She and her companions were on a raised stand in the market square, together with the scarred, arrogant queen and her troop of pikewomen and cavalry. In the guttering red flare of torches, Ray looked down on a surging lake of women, the soldier-peasants of Kathantuma gathered from all the hinterland, brandishing their weapons and beating clangorous shields in lieu of applause. Here and there public entertainers circulated, thinly clad men with flowers twined into their hair and beards, strumming harps and watching with great liquid eyes.
Ray was still not quite sure what the girl's plan was, and by now didn't much care. A combination of the dragging Varannian gravity and the potent Varannian wine made him so sleepy that he could barely focus on the milling crowd. Urushkidan slept the sleep of the just, snoring hideously.
Dyann ended her harangue and the racket of metal and voices shook the surrounding walls. After that there were long-winded arguments which sometimes degenerated into fist fights, until Ray himself dropped off to sleep.
He was shaken awake by Dyann and looked blearily around him. Dawn was streaking the horizon with cold colorless light, and the mob was slowly and noisily dispersing. He groaned as he stretched his stiffened body and tried to brush the dew off his clothes.
"The natural life—Hah!" he said miserably, and sneezed.
"It has been decided," cried the girl. She was still as fresh as the morning, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes ablaze. "They agreed at last, and now the var-vord goes over the land and envoys are bound for Almarro and Kurin to get allies. How soon can ve leave, Ray?"
"Leave?" he asked stupidly. "Leave for where?"
"Vy, for Yupiter, of course!"
"Huh?"
"You are tired, my little bird. Come vith me, and ve shall rest in the castle."
Ray groaned again.
How do you equip an army of barbarians still in the early Iron Age to cross four and a third light-years of space?
A preliminary question, perhaps is, Do you want to?
Ray emphatically didn't, but he had very little choice in the matter. He was soon given forcibly to understand that men kept their place and did as they were commanded.
He went to Urushkidan and poured out his sorrows. The Martian, after an abortive attempt to steal the spaceship and sneak home, had been given a room in one of the castle towers and was covering large sheets of local parchment with equations. This place, thought Ray, has octopuses in the belfry.
"They want to go to Jupiter and fight the Jovians," he said.
"What of it?" asked Urushkidan, lighting his pipe. He had found that dried bark could be smoked. "Tey may eben succeed. Primitibes habe often obercome more adbanced and better armed hosts. Read te history of Eart sometime."
"But they'll take us along."
"Oh. Oh-oh! Tat is different." The Martian riffled through his papers. "Let me see, I tink Equations 549 trough 627 indicate—yes, here we are. It is possible to project te same type of dribing beam as we use in te faster-tan-light engine so as to impart a desired belocity bector to external objects. Toward or away from you. Or—look here, differentiation of tis equation shows it would be equally simple to break intranuclear bonds by trowing only a certain type of particle into te pseudo-condition. Te atom would ten feed on its own energy."
Ray looked at him in awe. "You," he whispered, "have just invented the tractor beam, the pressor beam, the disintegrator, and the all-purpose, all-fuel atomic motor."
"I habe? Is tere money in tem?"
Ray went to work.
The three expeditions from Sol had left a good deal of assorted supplies and equipment behind for the use of later arrivals. Most of this had been stored in a local temple, and sacrifices were made yearly to the digital computer. It took an involved theological argument to obtain the stuff—the point that Ormun had to be rescued was conceded to be a good one, but it wasn't till the high priestess suddenly disappeared that the material was forthcoming.
The Ballantyne-Urushkidan circuits were simple things, once you knew how to make them. With the help of a few tolerably skilled smiths, Ray hammered out enough of the new-type atomic generators to lift the fleet off Varann and across to Sol. He built the drive-circuits carefully, designing them to burn out after landing again on Varann. The prospect of the amazon planet's people flitting whither they pleased in the Galaxy was not one any sane man could cheerfully contemplate.
The spaceships were mere hulks of varnished and greased hardwood, equipped with airlocks and slapped together by the carpenters of Mayta in a few weeks. The crossing would be made so rapidly that heating and air plants wouldn't be needed. Once the haywired star drives were installed, a pilot sketchily trained for each vessel, and every hull crammed with a couple of hundred yelling warriors, the fleet was ready to go.
They poured in, ten times as many as the thirty ships could hold, riding and hiking from the farthest of the continent's little kingdoms to be in on the most glorious piracy of their dreams. Only Dyann cared much about Ormun, who was after all merely her personal joss, and only Ray gave a good damn about the menace of Jupiter. The rest came to fight and steal and see new countries. They were especially eager to kidnap husbands—the polyandrous system of Varann worked undue hardships on many women, and Dyann shrewdly gave preference to the unmarried in choosing her followers.
As to the practicability of the whole insane idea—Ray didn't dare think about it.
Three hectic months after his arrival at Centauri, the barbarian fleet left for Sol.
Jupiter swam enormously in the forward ports, diademed with the bitter glory of open space, growing and growing as the ship rushed closer. Ray pushed his way through the restless crowd of armed women that jammed the boat. "Dyann," he pleaded, "couldn't I at least call up Earth and find out what's happened?"
"Vy, I suppose so," she said, not taking her eyes off the swelling giant before them. "But be qvick, please."
The human fiddled with the telescreen. Three months ago the notion of calling over nearly half a billion miles with that undersized thing would have been merely ridiculous. But that was another byproduct of Urushkidan's theory. You used an electron wave with unlimited velocity as a carrier beam for your radio photons. It induced a similar effect in the other transmitter. No distance diminution. No time lag. Anyway, not within the limits of anything so small as the Solar System. Ray got the standard wavelength of the U.N. public relations office, the only one which he could call freely without going through a lot of red tape.
A blurred face looked out at him. He hadn't refined his circuits to the point of eliminating distortion, and the U.N. official resembled something seen through ten feet of rippled water—at least, his image did. But the voice was clear enough. "Who is this, please?"
"Ray Ballantyne, returning from Alpha Centauri on the first faster-than-light spaceship. Calling from the vicinity of Jupiter."
"This is no time for joking. Who the devil are you and what do you want? Please report."
"I want to give the U.N. Patrol the secret of faster-than-light travel. Stand by to record."
"Hey!" screamed Urushkidan. "I neber said I'd gibe—"
Dyann put her foot on his head and pushed him against the floor.
"Oh, well," he said. "Trough te incredible generosity of myself, ten, te secret is made freely abailable—"
"Ready to record?" asked Ray tightly.
"I said your humor is in very bad taste," said the official, and switched off with an ugly scowl.
Ray blinked weakly at the set for a while. Then he tuned in on Earth broadcasts until he caught a news program. Jupiter had declared war a month ago, defeated the U.N. navy in a running battle off Mars, seized bases on Luna, and was threatening atomic bombardment of Earth unless terms were met. "Oh, gosh," said Ray.
"Such an inbasion could only be launched, on a shoestring," said Urushkidan. "Te U.N. still has bases closer to home, it can cut Jobian supply lines—"
"And meanwhile poor old Earth is reduced to radioactive rubbish," said Ray gloomily. "And those gruntbrains in charge won't believe I've got the decisive weapon to save them."
"Would you beliebe such a claim?"
"No, but this is different, damn it."
"Ganymede dead ahead," shouted Dyann. "Stand by for action! Get ready to make a landing."
VII
The flagship-spaceboat slanted into the moon's atmosphere with a whoop and a holler, blazed across the ragged surface, and lowered outside the great dome of Ganymede City. The clumsy hulks behind her wallowed after at a more leisurely pace.
Lacking spacesuits, the amazons were faced with a certain problem of entry. Dyann hovered over the spaceport and opened her disintegrators full blast. The port disappeared in a sudden tornado of boiling rock and leaping blue fires. When she had sunk a fifty-foot pit, she went down into it, hung before the side of it facing the city, and narrowed the dis-beam to a drill. In moments she had cut a tunnel through to the lower levels of the city.
Air began streaming out, ghost-white with freezing water vapor, but it would take quite a few minutes for the pressure within to fall dangerously low. Meanwhile Dyann sailed blithely through her tunnel, disintegrated various walls and bulkheads to clear a landing space, and set down amid the ruins of the city's factory level.
"All out!" she cried. "Hai, Kathantuma!"
Ray buckled on his helmet with shaking fingers, drew his sword, and followed her out the airlock, more because of the press of bodies behind than from any desire for glory. In fact, he admitted to himself, he was scared witless. Only Urushkidan stayed behind—the lucky devil.
The rest of the barbarian fleet streamed in one by one, landing clumsily and discharging their clamorous hordes. When the clear area was filled, they landed on top of each other and the armored warriors jumped down in a flash of edged metal. After they were all in, Urushkidan projected a beam and melted the passageway shut against the escape of air and heat. Also, thought Ray sickly, against a quick retreat.
"Hoo, hah!" Dyann's sword shrieked in the air above the helmeted heads of her milling army. She started down the nearest corridor, running and bounding and whooping. The amazons were hard on her heels, and the racket of clashing armor and girlish voices was shattering.
Up a long staircase, five steps at a time, into the hall beyond that, spilling out over a broad plaza—
A machine gun raved and Ray saw three Centaurians tumble to the floor. As he dove for it himself, he looked across the square and into the muzzle of the thing where it sat in one of the branch corridors. There might be only a skeleton garrison left in the city but it had reacted with terrifying swiftness. Ray tried to dig through the metal floorplates.
The air was suddenly thick and whistling. A solid rain of spears and arrows loosed. It didn't leave much of the machine gun crew. One of the amazon officers—they had some notion of firearms—picked up the .50-caliber under one arm. When a squad of Jovian soldiers appeared down the hallway, she held it against her knee and used it tommy-gun style. It worked.
Ray was carried along by the tide. In this weird struggle, modern firearms weren't of decisive use. Boiling through the miles of gloomy hallways and narrow apartments, the fight was almost entirely hand-to-hand, and that was exactly what the Varannians loved.
Dyann vaulted over a row of bodies and hit a Jovian squad with all her mass and momentum. She trampled two men underfoot while her sword howled in a shearing arc around her. A Jovian grenadier hurled his pineapple in her direction. She snatched it out of the air and tossed it back. Wildly, he caught it and threw it again. Dyann laughed and pitched it once more—very shortly before it went off. Turning, she skewered one Jovian, kicked another in the belly, used her sword's guard as a knuckle-duster against a third, and cut down a fourth in almost the same motion. The squad broke up.
Ray saw an inviting door and scurried for it. There was a bed to hide under. Two Jovian soldiers came in at that moment, fleeing the barbarians.
Ray's helmet and cuirass were as good as a uniform, or he would have shouted "Hail, Wilder!" As it was, the nearest man lunged at him with a bayonet. Ray's sword clattered against the weapon, driving it briefly aside. The Jovian snarled and probed inward, but a bayonet is clumsy compared to a well-handled blade and Ray had done a little fencing. He beat the assault back and thrust under the fellow's guard.
The other man had been circling, trying to get in on the fun. Now he charged. Ray whirled to meet him and tripped on his scabbard. He clanged to the floor and the rushing Jovian tripped on him. Ray got on the man's back, pulled off his helmet, and beat his head against the floor.
Rising, he checked the two rifles. Empty—the Jovians must have used all their clips in an attempt to stem the Centaurian thrust, which explained their choice of cold steel against him. But they had full cartridge belts. Ray reloaded one of the guns and felt better.
Peering carefully out the door, he saw that the fight had moved somewhere else. He started back toward the ships, the safest place he could think of.
As he rounded a corner a tommy-gun blast nearly took his head off. He yelled, dropped to the floor just in time, and let the gun fall from his hands.
A hard boot slammed against his ribs. "Get up!"
He lurched to his feet and stared into the faces of a Jovian detachment, the black-clad elite guard of the dictator himself. Martin Wilder the Great huddled in their midst. Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp was at their head, in charge of Jupiter's home defense, Ray thought wildly, and tried to stretch his arms higher.
"Ballantyne!" The Jovian officer glared at him for a long moment. "So you are responsible."
"I had nothing to do with it, so help me I didn't," protested Ray between the clattering of his teeth.
"You brought these savages in, you and your damned faster-than-light engine. If it weren't for your hostage value, I'd shoot you now. As it is, I'll wait till later. March!"
They went carefully down the glutted hall-street. The Centaurians had been picking up souvenirs from every shop and apartment they passed. "Don't think this will accomplish anything," said Wilder pompously. "You may have driven us from our capital, but we have already called for help from the other cities—from the whole Jovian System. The fleet is on its way."
So the amazons had taken Ganymede City. And now they'd be too busy looting to think about counterattacks from outside. Ray groaned.
"We have to get out of here, sir," said Roshevsky-Feldkamp. "We don't want you to be caught in the fighting."
"No, no, that would never do," said Wilder quickly.
"There is a military airlock this way, with spacesuits. We can get out on the surface."
"I will strike a new medal," chattered the dictator. "The Defense of the Homeland Medal."
"And afterward we will take those ships." Roshevsky-Feldkamp's hard face lit with a terrible glee. "And then the stars are ours."
"Hoo-ah!"
The shout rang down the hallway. Ray saw a Centaurian band, staggering under armloads of assorted plunder, emerge from a side passage. The Jovians brought their rifles up.
Something like an atomic bomb hit the group from the rear. Dyann's war-cry shrieked above the sudden din. She hadn't been altogether a fool.
Ray was shoved back against the wall by the sudden whirlpool of struggling bodies. He ducked as a Varannian sword whistled overhead. Dyann was wading in among the Jovians, kicking, striking, hewing like a maniac. She split one enemy apart, pitched another into a third, turned around and chopped loose. Her warriors got to work at her side.
A panting Jovian backed up close to Ray, lifting his rifle anew to shoot down the bronze-haired girl. The Earthmen thoughtfully removed the soldier's pistol from its holster and shot him.
"My little hero!" cried Dyann happily. "I love you so much!" She beat down another man's gun and broke his head.
The fight ended. Most of the Jovians had simply been knocked galley-west and submitted in a stunned way to being bound and hoisted to Varannian shoulders. Ray had a glimpse of Martin Wilder the Great and Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp being dragged off by a squat and muscular amazon with a silly smirk on her sword-scarred face. They were destined for her harem, and he couldn't think of two people he'd rather have it happen to.
Only there were those Jovian ships—
Ray had no way, just then, of knowing that Urushkidan had prudently taken the spaceboat outside again and was using its long-range beams to disintegrate the fleet as it came down. He hummed an old Martian work song to himself as he did. There are times when even a philosopher must take measures.
Official banquets are notoriously dull affairs, and the present celebration was no different. That the Luna-based invaders had capitulated on hearing of the disaster at home, that a democratic government with U.N. membership had been set up for a permanently disarmed Jupiter, and that the stars were open to mankind, seemed to call forth only bigger and better platitudes.
Ray Ballantyne, drowsy with food and cocktails, nearly snowblind with white tablecloth, would have fallen asleep except for the fact that his shoes pinched him. So he listened with some surprise to the president of his alma mater telling what an outstanding student he had been. As a matter of fact, he recalled, he'd damn near been expelled.
Urushkidan, crammed into a Martian-designed tuxedo, smoked a thoughtful pipe at his right and made calculations on the tablecloth. Dyann Korlas, her shining hair braided around a stolen Jovian tiara, looked stunning in a low-cut evening gown on his left. The dagger at her waist was to set a new fashion on Earth, but there had been some confusion when she insisted on having Ormun the Terrible placed in front of her and grace said to the idol. Oh, well.
"—and this dauntless genius of science, whom his university is pleased to honor with a doctorate of law—"
She leaned over and whispered in his ear—it could only be heard for three yards around—"Ray, vat vill you do now?"
"I dunno," he murmured back. "I want to get a patent on that damn interstellar drive before Urushkidan does, but after that—well—"
"It vas a lot of fun vile it lasted, vasn't it?" Dyann's smile was wistful. "But I have been thinking, Ray. I am goin' back to Varann and carve me out a throne. You—vell, Ray, you are too fine and beautiful for such rough vork. You belon here, in the glamor and bright lights, not out vith a lot of coarse unruly vomen who might hurt you."
"You know," he said, "I think you've got something there."
"I vill alvays remember you," she said sentimentally. "Maybe some day ven ve are old, ve can meet again and bore the youth vith talk of our great days." She looked around. "If only ve could sneak out of here now and have a farevell party of our own—I know a bar—"
"Hmmm." Ray stroked his chin. "This calls for tactics. If we could sort of slump down in our chairs, as if we were tired—and Lord, I am!—and gradually sink out of sight, we could crawl under the table and through that door—"
As he crept from the hall, Ray heard Urushkidan, called on for a speech, begin the detailed exposition of his latest theory.