He was between me and the little table where Carson's tiny row of vacuum tubes glowed dull-green. And in that second I leaped, head down like a battering ram. With my skull striking his middle he went backward, spun as he tried to get his balance. And he landed, sprawled forward on Carson's little table.
There was a tinkling crash as the de-electronizers short-circuited. A hiss of neutronic flame which in that second with its half-million ultra-pressure oscillating volts, electrocuted the luckless villain who was sprawled there.
I was down on the floor, crawling in the chaos. Amazing, electronic turmoil. The shock of it swiftly spread around the little vessel; made the senses of everyone on board momentarily reel. I was aware of thin slivers of neutronic fire darting upward from the cooking flesh of the sprawling man's body. Neutronic fire that all in that second of deranged current darted throughout the ship. A split second of flash; but in that second the darting tiny slivers of light-fire everywhere were drinking up the weird green glow. The muffled ghastly, toneless sounds of the ship's interior were brought to life. Down on the forepeak Jerome gasped a startled curse. One of his men fell with reeling senses.
And light was here. Normal celestial light, streaming down through our transparent dome where the blazing firmament of stars was now clearly to be seen. We had lost our invisibility! Gone. Irrevocably gone. At least this combat would be upon an equality! Rollins at last had his equal chance with the Phantom raider!
Patrolship-3 was clearly apparent now through our forward dome. I saw Rollins swing his bow toward us. There was a tiny violet flash from his forepeak. The first shot!
It came like a great violet lightning bolt hurtling at us!
There was a puff of electronic light up at our dome-peak. A shower of red-yellow sparks. I held my breath as Rollins' little circle of violet beam struck us full, and clung. A second. Ten seconds, while the shower of sparks sprayed like a little fountain of light-points. Would the outer shell of our dome crack?
It seemed to hold. Ten seconds, and then Rollins' ray snapped off and vanished. A test shot. I knew it was not a weakness of his electronic power. A great, long-range space-gun with a single snap-bolt ordinarily can do little damage. It is the duration of seconds over which the bolt can cling, eating its way with generated interference-heat, fusing and breaking its opposing armored substance.
And this was Rollins' first tentative test. Verifying his range, and our ship's resistance. A conservation of his electronic power. In space-gun battle, the available reserve of battery strength is vital. A long-range gun, with ten seconds of sustained voltage, drains any battery-series faster than the whirling electro-dynamos can build them up. Then there must be an interval of replenishment.
My heart pounded with exultation as the thoughts swept me. Rollins had been grimly desperate, undoubtedly, against an invisible enemy. But his adversary was visible now. An equality of battle; and so Rollins would use his wits, his skill of judgment. This damned murderous Jerome would have all he could do to match tactics with the skilful commander of Patrolship-3!
In those chaotic seconds I was still on the floor near the door of the control room. Inside it the dead, roasted body of my guard lay sprawled face down upon the wreckage of the invisibility-controls. The current there was shut off now. The slivers of light-fire were gone. Down on our forepeak Jerome and his gunners were recovering. Jerome was gazing up, wildly cursing.
I staggered to the little turret-balcony, where Brenda and her father, white-faced, were clinging to its rail.
"That damned fool!" I shouted. "In there—in the turret. He stumbled and fell on the control table."
Would it serve as an excuse? Would the raging Jerome stab at me now with a heat-bolt? Or would he believe me? I felt sure that no one actually had seen what had happened.
"You damned—why—why—" Jerome for that instant glared up at me, his hand instinctively reaching for his belt. But in all the chaos, turning his wrath upon me must have struck him as futile. And it was stricken from his mind by the confusion around him. Acrid choking fumes were swirling through our little vessel, fumes from the deranged current of the de-electronizers. One of Jerome's men dashed up to him.
"A fire on our stern-deck. I put it out."
"Go back to your post." Jerome shoved him away impatiently; turned, came up and went into his turret, and seated himself at his gravity controls.
Through the dome-peak I could see Rollins' ship, going in the opposite direction from us, hurtling past us. Two hundred miles off. In a moment it had passed and was out of range. Then it was turning, mounting in a great arc and hurtling back at us!
Jerome stabbed first. A hit! The violet sword dimly glowing, luminous as it ignited the motes of intervening star-dust, leaped across the narrowing angle and struck with a puff of glare. Jerome held it, clinging. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. I could hear the throb and whir of our dynamos as they struggled with the load. The big dial levers on Jerome's desk quivered, slowly turned backward toward zero as our batteries drained.
For those seconds Rollins took it with no answering shot. Would his forepeak dome hold? I could see the tiny puff of fountain-light there where the violet beam was boring. And then Rollins answered! From his stern-peak this time diagonally away from us, his beam shot out. Not directly at us, but at our bolt-stream. Two great violet rapiers in space, sliding one upon the other. Midway between the vessels they clashed. The interference cut our beam from Rollins' vessel. Out there in space for breathless seconds both the beams held firm. Amazing sight of pyrotechnic beauty, that area where the beams clashed.
Another ten seconds, each of them an eternity. The giant circle of the interference area slowly was backing toward Rollins' ship! Our beam, at reckless full-power now, was pushing it back. Only twenty or thirty miles now from its target.
A buzzer sounded at Jerome's elbow. He reached for his audiphone. The panic-stricken voice of our controlman in the ship's hull sounded:
"Chief! Dynamo bearing running hot! An' we're almost at zero in the main battery."
Jerome disconnected with a grim curse. Another few seconds. The narrowing angle of the hurtling ships had brought them within a hundred miles of each other. And then suddenly, again it was Rollins who was the more cautious. From the tail of his vessel a stream of burning gas suddenly was issuing. A widening fluorescent comet-tail streaming out behind him. And then he was turning, heading away from us! In retreat! The interference area of the two clashing sword-beams broke. The great prismatic spark shower died. Our bolt, plunging through, for a second may have struck the turning, retreating Rollins. No one here could say. Rollins' bolt had snapped off. The image of his ship merged with the gas cloud. Vanished behind its masking cloak.
Jerome snapped off our beam. His face was triumphant; his enemy fleeing, trying to mask his retreat with a cloud of burning gas.
"By Heaven, I've got him!" Jerome was muttering. "Damn' fool, trying to fight the Phantom."
The starfield swung as we turned, headed at the gas-cloud where it hung in a vast luminous fog of prismatic color as though a comet had burst there. Triumphant pursuit of our enemy. But I held my breath.
I found Brenda beside me. Her hand, cold dank, gripped mine. Our eyes met. There was nothing to say. Surely we both knew what little chance we had of coming out of this alive.
The luminous gas-cloud swarmed to the sides as our ship plunged headlong into it. And then we were through it.
There was no warning as Rollins' bolt struck us! He had not tried to escape but was poised here in ambush, bow toward us, no more than fifty miles away, off to one side by skilled calculation so that there was only his narrow bow as our target and we were almost broadside to him!
The bolt struck us midway of the hull in a shower of sparks that mounted up and clouded our instruments. Clinging, full-power beam. Rollins at last striking for the kill! Wildly our guns tried to intercept it. One of our forepeak guns went out of commission with a back-firing burst which shattered it and killed the man at its controls. The fumes of the explosion came wafting up, acrid, choking.
There was a sudden panic of confusion here, but Jerome leaped to his feet with his roaring voice steadying his men. Then two of our guns, stem and bow, stabbed beams that struck the patrolship's bow and clung. But still that blast at our hull persisted. Eating, fusing the metallic hull-plate.
Weird, transfixed drama as the seconds passed. I knew that Rollins now would never yield. This bolt would cling to the limit of his batteries.
The audiphone beside Jerome was screaming with the hull-controlman's panic-stricken voice: "Chief—hull plate is bending—bulging—"
Then I saw, through the shower of sparks outside, that Rollins' ship was edging even closer. One of our two bolts had wavered and broken, with exhausted battery. The other, weakened by all Jerome's reckless firing, was futilely clinging to its target with a shower of sparks paling now by diminished voltage.
And then from the patrolship, little blobs were popping out. Catapulted bombs, hurtling at us with this close, twenty-mile range. Some exploded in mid-space fired by the free electrons which hung heavy here around us. And then one struck us, exploded with a dull concussion against our stern. And then another, and another.
"Jim—Jim dear—goodbye."
Brenda's murmured words brought me suddenly to myself. Only sixty seconds had passed since we burst out of the gas-cloud and Rollins had jumped to finish us. Sixty seconds, but it had brought chaos here on the Phantom ship. My chance! Old Professor Carson beside us was in a daze; white-faced, numbly staring.
"The exit-porte," I muttered. "Brenda, make your father hurry."
Fumes of green-yellow chlorine mingled with oil-smoke, were surging around us as we staggered up the little catwalk from the balcony to the dome-top. Jerome may have seen us. His voice was shouting desperate orders, and curses, but whether at us or not I never knew. A gunner down on the deck fired at us with a hand-ray, but it missed.
"Brenda, hurry! Get your father into a space-suit."
She and I still were garbed in the space-suits from theSeven Stars. In the tiny exit-porte, one of Jerome's crew, himself trying to escape, lunged at me, but I felled him with a blow of my fist into his face. The closing slide-door of the tiny pressure chamber shut away the chaos. Then our suits were inflated; our helmets fixed and we catapulted into the glare of outside space. I flung on my rocket-stream; clung to Brenda and her father. My metal-tipped fingers on the metallic plate of her shoulder made audiphone contact.
"Hold tight, Brenda."
"Yes, Jim."
"I'll tow us."
Horrible, chaotic seconds as the showering electronic sparks from the doomed phantom flyer enveloped us. Indescribable glaring confusion of deranged electricity and fusing, bubbling, flying metal-fragments. Prismatic light that blinded.
We came through it in a moment, out into the starlight with the glaring, staggering vessel, receding behind and above us as my rocket-stream and gravity-plates drew us out of the line of fire. The patrolship was hardly ten miles away now. I signalled with a helmet-flare. Interplanetary Code signal. Rollins saw it; recognized it; answered it!
We hurtled forward. Behind us, well overhead now, Jerome's harried, wavering ship suddenly cracked. With a great burst of interior pressure the dome, to which Rollins' main beam had shifted, abruptly exploded outward. Ghastly, silent explosion. It spewed wreckage. Little hurtling dots of shattered glassite and metal and mangled humans—blobs that spewed out, were caught by the vessel's attraction, finding their orbits so that they circled, gruesome satellites of their convulsed world.
Then the last of Rollins' blasting beams snapped off. Back there the broken ship hung leprous, with fused, still bubbling dome. Like a bent finger of colored light for a moment more it glowed. And then it went dark.
Dead X-flyer among the stars. The end of the dreaded Phantom of the Starways.