There was the crash of a heavy-duty oil switch.
That was all.
Crackles of electricity flashed back and forth through the Station, and the smell of ozone arose. Electric light filaments leaned over crazily, trying to touch the inner walls of the glass. Panes of glass ran blue for an instant, and the nap of the carpets throughout the Station stood bolt upright. Hair stood on end, touched the plastic helmet dome, discharged, fell to the scalp, raised again and discharged, fell once more, and then repeated this raising and falling, again and again and again. Electric clocks ran crazily, and every bit of electronic equipment on the Station began to act in an unpredictable manner.
Then things settled down again as the solar emission charged the Station to equilibrium.
Aboard the ship, it was another story. The celestial globe of the meteor spotter blazed once in a blinding light and then went completely out of control. It danced with pin points of light, and the coupler that was used to direct the guns went crazy. Turrets tried to swivel, but the charge raised hob with the electronic controls, and the guns raised once and then fell, inert. One of them belched flame and fire, and the shell went wild. The carefully balanced potentials in the driver tubes was upset, and the ship lost headway. The heavy ion stream from the driving cathode bent and spread, touching the dynodes in the tube. The resulting current brought them to a red heat, and they melted down and floated through the evacuated tube in round droplets. Instruments went wild, and gave every possible answer, and the ship became a bedlam of ringing bells and flashing danger lights.
But the crew was in no shape to appreciate the display. From metal parts in the ship there appeared coronas that reached for the unprotected men, and seared their flesh. And since their gravity-apparent was gone, they floated freely through the air, and came in contact with highly charged walls, ceiling, and floor; to say nothing of the standard metal furniture.
It was a sorry bunch of pirates that found themselves in a ship-without-motive-power that was beginning to leave their circular course on a tangent that would let them drop into the Sun.
"That's my answer, Murdoch!" snapped Channing. "Watch your second ship!"
"You young devil," shouted Murdoch, "what did you do?"
"You never thought that it would be an electronics engineer that made the first energy gun, did you, Murdoch? I'm now going to take a shot at No. 3!"
No. 3's turrets swiveled around and from the guns flashes of fire came streaming. Channing punched his lever savegely, and once again the Station was tortured by the effects of its own offensive.
Ship No. 3 suffered the same fate as No. 2.
Then, seconds later, armor-piercing shells began to hit Venus Equilateral. They hit, and because of the terrific charge, they began to arc at the noses. The terrible current passed through the fuses, and the shells exploded on contact instead of boring inside before detonation. Metal was bent and burned, but only a few tiny holes resulted. As the charge on the Station approached equilibrium once more, men ran with torches to seal these holes.
"Murdoch," said Channing, "I want you!"
"Come and get me."
"Land—or die!" snapped Channing in a vicious tone. "I'm no humanitarian, Murdoch. You'd be better off dead!"
"Never," said Hellion Murdoch.
Channing punched the lever for the third time, but as he did, Murdoch's ship leaped forward under several G. The magnets could not change in field soon enough to compensate for this change in direction, and the charge failed to connect as a bull's-eye. It did expend some of its energy on the tail of the ship. Not enough to cripple the vessel, but theHippocratestook on a charge of enough value to make things hard on the crew.
Metal sparked, and instruments went mad. Meters wound their needles against the end pegs. The celestial globe glinted in a riot of color and then went completely dead. Gun servers dropped their projectiles as they became too heavily charged to handle, and they rolled across the turret floors, creating panic in the gun crews. The pilot fought the controls, but the charge on his driver tubes was sufficient to make his helm completely unpredictable. The panel sparked at him and seared his hands, spoiling his nervous control and making him heavy-handed.
"Murdoch," cried Channing in a hearty voice, "that was a miss! Want a hit?"
Murdoch's radio was completely dead. His ship was yawing from side to side as the static charges raced through the driver tubes. The pilot gained control after a fashion, and decided that he had taken enough. He circled the Station warily and began to make a shaky landing at the South end.
Channing saw him coming, and with a glint in his eye, he pressed the lever for the fourth and last time.
Murdoch's ship touched the landing stage just after the charge had been driven out into space. The heavy negative charge on theHippocratesmet the heavy positive charge on Venus Equilateral. The ship touched, and from that contact, there arose a cloud of incandescent gas. The entire charge left the ship at once, and through that single contact. When the cloud dissipated, the contact was a crude but efficient welded joint that was gleaming white-hot.
Channing said to Walt: "That's going to be messy."
Inside of theHippocrates, men were still frozen to their handholds. It was messy, and cleaning up theHippocrateswas a job not relished by those who did it.
But cleaning up Venus Equilateral was no small matter either.
Weeks went by before the snarled-up instruments were repaired. Weeks in which the capturedHippocrateswas repaired, too, and used to transport material and special supplies from Terra, and Venus, and Mars. Weeks in which the service from planet to planet was interrupted and erratic.
Then one day, service was restored, and life settled down to a reasonable level. It was after this time that Walt and Channing found time to spend an idle hour together. Walt raised his glass and said: "Here's to electrons!"
"Yeah," grinned Channing. "Here's to electrons. Y'know, Walt, I was a little afraid that space might become a sort of wild West show, with the ships bristling with space guns and betatrons and stuff like that. In which case you'd have been a stinking benefactor. But if the recoil is as bad as the output—and Newton said that it must be—I can't see ships cluttering up their insides with stuff that'll screw up their instruments and driver tubes. But the thing that amuses me about the whole thing is the total failure you produced."
"Failure?" asked Walt. "What failed?"
"Don't you know? Have you forgotten? Do you realize that spaceships are still ducking around meteors instead of blasting them out of the way with the Franks Electron Gun? Or did you lose sight of the fact that this dingbat started out in life as a meteor-sweeper?"
Walt glared over the rim of his glass, but he had nothing to say.
THE END.