"I'll say it's sweating—the water is simply streaming off it!" In their plate they saw that moisture was already beginning to condense upon the heat-absorber: moisture running down the fins in streams and creeping over the dull metal floor in sluggish sheets; moisture which, turning into ice in the colder interior of the checkerwork, again became fluid at the inrush of hot, wet Saturnian air.
"There's the signal—all x, Barkovis? By the way it's condensing water, it seems to be functioning again."
"Perfect!" came the Titanian's enthusiastic reply, "You two planet-dwellers have done more in three short hours than the entire force of Titan could have accomplished in months. You have earned, and shall receive, the highest...."
"As you were, ace!" Stevens interrupted, embarrassed. "This job was just like shooting fish down a well, for us. Since you saved our lives, we owe you a lot yet. We're coming out—straight up!"
TheForlorn Hopeshot upward, through mile after mile of steaming fog, until at last she broke through into the light, clear outer atmosphere. Stevens located the Titanian space-ship, and the two vessels once more hurtling together through the ether toward Titan, he turned to his companion.
"Take the controls, will you, Nadia? Think I'll finish up the tube. I brought along a piece of platinum from the power plant, and something that I think is tantalum from Barkovis' description of it. With those and the fractions we melted out, I think I can make everything we'll need."
Now that he had comparatively pure metal with which to work, drawing the leads and filaments was relatively a simple task. Working over the hot-bench with torch and welding projector, he made short work of running the leads through the almost plastic glass of the great tube and of sealing them in place. The plates and grids presented more serious problems; but they were solved and, long before Titan was reached, the tube was out in space, supported by a Titanian tractor beam between the two vessels. Stevens came into the shop, holding a modified McLeod gauge which he had just taken from the interior of the tube. When it had come to equilibrium, he read it carefully and yelled.
"Eureka, little fellow! She's down to where I can't read it, even on this big gauge—so hard that it won't need flashing—harder than any vacuum I ever got on Tellus, even with a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump!"
"But how about occluded and absorbed gas in the filaments and so on when they heat up?" demanded Nadia, practically.
"All gone, ace. I out-gassed 'em plenty out there—seven times, almost to fusion. There isn't enough gas left in the whole thing to make a deep breath for a microbe."
He took up his welding projector and a beam carried him back to the tube. There, in the practically absolute vacuum of space, the last openings in the glass were sealed, and man and great transmitting tube were wafted lightly back into the Terrestrial cruiser.
Hour after hour mirrored Titanian sphere and crude-fashioned terrestrial wedge bored serenely on through space, and it was not until Titan loomed large beneath them that the calm was broken by an insistent call from Titan to the sphere.
"Barkodar, attention! Barkodar, attention!" screamed from the speakers, and they heard Barkovis acknowledge the call.
"The Sedlor have broken through and are marching upon Titania. The order has gone out for immediate mobilization of every unit."
"There's that word 'Sedlor' again—what are they, anyway, Steve?" demanded Nadia.
"I don't know. I was going to ask him when he sprung it on us first, but he was pretty busy then and I haven't thought of it since. Something pretty serious, though—they've jumped their acceleration almost to Tellurian gravity, and none of them can live through much of that."
"Tellurians?" came the voice of Barkovis from the speaker. "We have just...."
"All x—we were on your wave and heard it," interrupted Stevens. "We're with you. What are those Sedlor, anyway? Maybe we can help you dope out something."
"Perhaps—but whatever you do, do not use your heat-projector. That would start a conflagration raging over the whole country, and we shall have enough to do without fighting fire. But it may be that you have other weapons, of which we are ignorant, and I can use a little time in explanation before we arrive. The Sedlor are a form of life, something like your..." he paused, searching through his scanty store of Earthly knowledge, then went on, doubtfully, "perhaps some thing like your insects. They developed a sort of intelligence, and because of their fecundity, adapted themselves to their environment as readily as did man; and for ages they threatened man's supremacy upon Titan. They devoured vegetation, crops, animals, and mankind. After a world-wide campaign, however, they were finally exterminated, save in the neighborhood of one great volcanic crater, which they so honeycombed that it is almost impregnable. All around that district we have erected barriers of force, maintained by a corps of men known as 'Guardians of the Sedlor.' These barriers extend so far into the ground and so high into the air that the Sedlor can neither burrow beneath them nor fly over them. They were being advanced as rapidly as possible, and in a few more years the insects would have been destroyed completely—but now they are again at large. They have probably developed an armor or a natural resistance greater than the Guardians thought possible, so that when the walls were weakened, they came through in their millions, underground and undetected. They are now attacking our nearest city—the one you know, and which you have called Titania."
"What do you use—those high-explosive bombs?"
"The bombs were developed principally for use against them, but proved worse than useless, for we found that when a Sedlor was blown to pieces, each piece forthwith developed into a new, complete creature. Our most efficient weapons are our heat rays—not yours remember—and poison gas. I must prepare our arms."
"Would our heat-ray actually set them afire, Steve?" Nadia asked, as the plate went blank.
"I'll say it would. I'll show you what heat means to them—showing you will be plainer than any amount of explanation," and he shot the visiray beam down toward the city of Titania. Into a low-lying building it went, and Nadia saw a Titanian foundry in full operation. Men clad in asbestos armor were charging, tending, and tapping great electric furnaces and crucibles; shrinking back and turning their armored heads away as the hissing, smoking melt crackled into the molds from their long-handled ladles. Nadia studied the foundry for a moment, interested, but unimpressed.
"Of course it's hot there—foundries alwaysarehot," she argued.
"Yes, but you haven't got the idea yet." Stevens turned again to the controls, following the sphere toward what was evidently a line of battle. "That stuff that they are melting and casting and that is so hot, is not metal, butice!Remember that the vital fluid of all life here, animal and vegetable, corresponding to our water, is probably more inflammable than gasoline. If they can't work on ice-water without wearing suits of five-ply asbestos, what would a real heat-ray do to them? It'd be about like our taking a dive into the sun!"
"Ice!" she exclaimed. "Oh of course—but you couldn't really believe a thing like that without seeing it, could you? Oh, Steve—how utterly horrible!"
The"Barkodar" had dropped down into a line of sister ships, and had gone into action in midair against a veritable swarm of foes. Winged centipedes they were—centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselves along the ground and through the air in furious hordes. From the flying globes emanated pale beams of force, at the touch of which the Sedlor disappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground huge tractors and trucks, manned by masked soldiery, mounted mighty reflectors projecting the same lethal beam. From globes and tanks there sounded a drumming roar and small capsules broke in thousands among the foe; emitting a red cloud of gas in which the centipedes shriveled and died. But for each one that was destroyed two came up from holes in the ground and the battle-line fell back toward Titania, back toward a long line of derrick-like structures which were sinking force-rods into the ground in furious haste.
Stevens flashed on his ultra-violet projector and swung it into the thickest ranks of the enemy. In the beam many of the monsters died, but the Terrestrial ray was impotent compared with the weapons of the Titanians, and Stevens, snapping off the beam with a bitter imprecation, shot the visiray out toward the bare, black cone of the extinct volcano and studied it with care.
"Barkovis, I've got a thought!" he snapped into the microphone. "Their stronghold is in that mountain, and there's millions of them in there yet, coming out along their tunnels. They've got all the vegetation eaten away for miles, so there's nothing much left there to spread a fire if I go to work on that hill, and, I'll probably melt enough water to put out most of the fires I start. Detail me a couple of ships to drop your fire-foam bombs on any little blazes that may spread, and I'll give them so much to worry about at home, that they'll forget all about Titania."
TheForlorn Hopedarted toward the crater, followed closely by two of the dazzling globes. They circled the mountain until Stevens found a favorable point of attack—a stupendous vertical cliff of mingled rock and crystal, upon the base of which he trained his terrific infra-red projector.
"I'm going to draw a lot of power," he warned the Titanians then. "I'm giving this gun everything she'll take."
He drove the massive switches in, and as that dull red beam struck the cliff's base there was made evident the awful effect of a concentrated beam of real and pure heat upon such an utterly frigid world. Vast columns of fire roared aloft, helping Stevens, melting and destroying the very ground as the bodies of the Sedlor in that gigantic ant-heap burst into flames. Clouds of superheated steam roared upward, condensing into a hot rain which descended in destructive torrents upon the fastnesses of the centipedes. As the raging beam ate deeper and deeper into the base of the cliff, the mountain itself began to disintegrate; block after gigantic block breaking off and crashing down into the flaming, boiling, seething cauldron which was the apex of that ravening beam.
Hour after hour Stevens drove his intolerable weapon into the great mountain, teeming with Sedlorean life; and hour after hour a group of Titanian spheres stood by, deluging the surrounding plain with a flood of heavy fumes, through which the holocaust could not spread for lack of oxygen. Not until the mountain was gone—not until in its stead there lay a furiously boiling lake, its flaming surface hundreds of feet below the level of the plain—did Stevens open his power circuits and point the deformed prow of theForlorn Hopetoward Titania.
1(return)The moon subtends an angle of about one-half of a degree.
"Mustyou you go back to Ganymede?" Barkovis asked, slowly and thoughtfully. He was sitting upon a crystal bench beside the fountain, talking with Stevens, who, dressed in his bulging space-suit, stood near an airlock of theForlorn Hope. "It seems a shame that you should face again those unknown, monstrous creatures who so inexcusably attacked us both without provocation."
"I'm not so keen on it myself, but I can't see any other way out of it," the Terrestrial replied. "We left a lot of our equipment there, you know; and even if I should build duplicates here, it wouldn't do us any good. These ten-nineteens are the most powerful transmitting tubes known when we left Tellus, but even their fields, dense as they are, can't hold an ultra-beam together much farther than about six astronomical units. So you see we can't possibly reach our friends from here with this tube; and your system of beam transmission won't hold anything together even that far, and won't work on any wave shorter than Roeser's Rays. We may run into some more of those little spheres, though, and I don't like the prospect. I wonder if we couldn't plate a layer of that mirror of yours upon theHopeand carry along a few of those bombs? By the way, what is that explosive—or is it something beyond Tellurian chemistry?"
"Its structure should be clear to you, although you probably could not prepare it upon Tellus because of your high temperature. It is nothing but nitrogen—twenty-six atoms of nitrogen combined to form one molecule of what you would call—N-twenty-six?"
"Wow!" Stevens whistled. "Crystalline, pentavalent nitrogen—no wonder it's violent!"
"We could, of course, cover your vessel with the mirror, but I am afraid that it would prove of little value. The plates are so hot that it would soon volatilize."
"Not necessarily," argued Stevens. "We could live in number one life-boat, and shut off the heat everywhere else. The life-boats are insulated from the structure proper, and the inner and outer walls of the structure are insulated from each other. With only the headquarters lifeboat warm, the outer wall could be held pretty close to zero absolute."
"That is true. The bombs, of course, are controlled by radio, and therefore may be attached to the outer wall of your vessel. We shall be glad to do these small things for you."
The heaters of theForlorn Hopewere shut off, and as soon as the outer shell had cooled to Titanian temperature, a corps of mechanics set to work. A machine very like a concrete mixer was rolled up beside the steel vessel, and into its capacious maw were dumped boxes and barrels of dry ingredients and many cans of sparkling liquid. The resultant paste was pumped upon the steel plating in a sluggish, viscid stream, which spread out into a thick and uniform coating beneath the flying rollers of the skilled Titanian workmen. As it hardened, the paste smoothed magically into the perfect mirror which covered the space-vessels of the satellite; and a full dozen of the mirror explosive bombs of this strange people were hung in the racks already provided.
"Once again I must caution you concerning those torpedoes," Barkovis warned Stevens. "If you use them all, very well, but do not try to take even one of them into any region where it is very hot, for it will explode and demolish your vessel. If you do not use them, destroy them before you descend into the hot atmosphere of Ganymede. The mirror will volatilize harmlessly at the temperature of melting mercury, but the torpedoes must be destroyed. Once more, Tellurians, we thank you for what you have done, and wish you well."
"Thanks a lot foryourhelp—we still owe you something," replied Stevens. "If either of your power-plants go sour on you again, or if you need any more built, be sure to let us know—you can come close enough to the inner planets now on your own beam to talk to us on the ultra-communicator. We'll be glad to help you any way we can—and we may call on you for help again. Goodbye, Barkovis—goodbye, all Titania!"
He made his way through the bitterly cold shop into the control-room of their lifeboat, and while he was divesting himself of his heavy suit, Nadia lifted theForlorn Hopeinto the blue-green sky of Titan, accompanied by an escort of the mirrored globes. Well clear of the atmosphere of the satellite, the terrestrial cruiser shot forward at normal acceleration, while the Titanian vessels halted and wove a pattern of blue and golden rays in salute to the departing guests.
"Well, Nadia, we're off—on a long trek, too."
"Said Wun Long Hop, the Chinese pee-lo," Nadia agreed. "Sure everything's all x, big boy?"
"To nineteen decimals," he declared. "You couldn't squeeze another frank into our accumulators with a proof-bar, and since they're sending us all the power we want to draw, we won't need to touch our batteries or tap our own beam until we're almost to Jupiter. To cap the climax, what it takes to make big medicine on those spherical friends of ours, we've got. We're not sitting on top of the world, ace—we've perched exactly at the apex of the entire universe!"
"How long is it going to take?"
"Don't know. Haven't figured it yet, but it'll bebeaucoupdays," and the two wanderers from far-distant Earth settled down to the routine of a long and uneventful journey.
They gave Saturn and his spectacular rings a wide berth and sped on, with ever-increasing velocity. Past the outer satellites, on and on, the good shipForlorn Hopeflew into the black-and-brilliant depths of interplanetary space. Saturn was an ever-diminishing disk beneath them: above them was Jupiter's thin crescent, growing ever larger and more bright, and the Monarch of the Solar System, remaining almost stationary day after day, increasing steadily in apparent diameter and in brilliance.
Althoughthe voyage from Titan to Ganymede was long, it was not monotonous, for there was much work to be done in the designing and fabrication of the various units which were to comprise the ultra-radio transmitting station. In the various compartments of theForlorn Hopethere were sundry small motors, blowers, coils, condensers, force-field generators, and other items which Stevens could use with little or no alteration; but for the most part he had to build everything himself. Thus it was that time passed quickly; so quickly that Jupiter loomed large and the Saturnian beam of power began to attenuate almost before the Terrestrials realized that their journey was drawing to an end.
"Our beam's falling apart fast," Stevens read his meters carefully, then swung his communicator beam toward Jupiter. "We aren't getting quite enough power to hold our acceleration at normal—think I'll cut now, while we're still drawing enough to let the Titanians know we're off their beam. We've got lots of power of our own now; and we're getting pretty close to enemy territory, so they may locate that heavy beam. Have you found Ganymede yet?"
"Yes, it will be on the other side of Jupiter by the time we get there. Shall I detour, or put on a little more negative and wait for it to come around to this side?"
"Better wait, I think. The farther away we stay from Jupiter and the major satellites, the better."
"All x—it's on. Suppose we'd better start standing watches, in case some of them show up?"
"No use," he dissented. "I've been afraid to put out our electromagnetic detectors, as they could surely trace them in use. Without them, we couldn't spot an enemy ship even if we were looking right at it, except by accident; since they won't be lighted up and it's awfully hard to see anything out here, anyway. We probably won't know they're within a million kilometers until they put a beam on us. Barkovis says that this mirror will reflect any beam they can use, and I've already got a set of photo-cells in circuit to ring an alarm at the first flash off of our mirror plating. I'd like to get in the first licks myself, but I haven't been able to dope out any way of doing it. So you might as well sleep in your own room, as usual, and I'll camp here right under the panel until we get to Ganymede. There's a couple of little things I just thought of, though, that may help some; and I'm going to do 'em right now."
Putting on his space-suit, he picked up a power drill and went out into the bitter cold of the outer structure. There he attacked the inner wall of their vessel, and the carefully established inter-wall vacuum disappeared in a screaming hiss of air as the tempered point bit through plate after plate.
"What's the idea, Steve?" Nadia asked, when he had re-entered the control room. "Now you'll have all that pumping to do over again."
"Protection for the mirrors," he explained. "You see, they aren't perfect reflectors. There's a little absorption, so that some stuff comes through. Not much, of course; but enough to kill some of those Titanians and almost enough to ruin their ship got through in about ten minutes, and only one enemy was dealing it out. We can stand more than they could, of course, but the mirror itself won't stand much more heat than it was absorbing then. But with air in those spaces instead of vacuum, and with the whole mass of theHope, except this one lifeboat, as cold as it is, I figure that there'll be enough conduction and convection through them to keep the outer wall and the mirror cold—cool enough, at least, to hold the mirror on for an hour. If only one ship tackles us, it won't be bad—but I figure that if there's only one, we're lucky."
Stevens'fears were only too well grounded, for during the "evening" of the following day, while he was carefully scanning the heavens for some sign of enemy craft, the alarm bell over his head burst into its brazen clamor. Instantly he shot out the detectors and ultra-lights and saw not one, but six of the deadly globes—almost upon them, at point-blank range! One was already playing a beam of force upon theForlorn Hope, and the other five went into action immediately upon feeling the detector impulses and perceiving that the weapon of their sister ship had encountered an unusual resistance in the material of that peculiarly mirrored wedge. As those terrific forces struck her, the terrestrial cruiser became a vast pyrotechnic set piece, a dazzling fountain of coruscant brilliance: for the mirror held. The enemy beams shot back upon themselves and rebounded in all directions, in the same spectacular exhibition of frenzied incandescence which had marked the resistance of the Titanian sphere to a similar attack.
But Stevens was not idle. In the instant of launching his detectors, as fast as he could work the trips, four of the frightful nitrogen bombs of Titan—all that he could handle at once—shot out into space, their rocket-tubes flaring viciously. The enemy detectors of course located the flying torpedoes immediately, but, contemptuous of material projectiles, the spheres made no attempt to dodge, but merely lashed out upon them with their ravening rays. So close was the range that they had no time to avoid the radio-directed bombs after discovering that their beams were useless against the unknown protective covering of those mirrored shells. There were four practically simultaneous detonations—silent, but terrific explosions as the pent-up internal energy of solid pentavalent nitrogen was instantaneously released—and the four insensately murderous spheres disappeared into jagged fragments of wreckage, flying wildly away from the centers of explosion. One great mass of riven and twisted metal was blown directly upon the fifth globe, and Nadia stared in horrified fascination at the silent crash as the entire side of the ship crumpled inward like a shell of cardboard under the awful impact. That vessel was probably out of action, but Stevens was taking no chances. As soon as he had clamped a pale blue tractor rod upon the sixth and last of the enemy fleet, he drove a torpedo through the gaping wall and into the interior of the helpless war-vessel. There he exploded it, and the awful charge, detonated in that confined space, literally tore the globular space-ship to bits.
"We'll show these jaspers what kind of trees make shingles!" he gritted between clenched teeth; and his eyes, hard now as gray iron, fairly emitted sparks as he launched four torpedoes upon the sole remaining globe of the squadron of the void. "I've had a lot of curiosity to know just what kind of unnatural monstrosities can possibly have such fiendish dispositions as they've got—but beasts, men or devils, they'll find they've grabbed something this time they can't let go of," and fierce blasts of energy ripped from the exhausts as he drove his missiles, at their highest possible acceleration, toward the captive sphere so savagely struggling at the extremity of his tractor beam.
But that one remaining vessel was to prove no such easy victim as had its sister ships. Being six to one, and supposedly invincible, the squadron had been overconfident and had attacked carelessly, with only its crippling slicing beams instead of its more deadly weapons of total destruction; and so fierce and hard had been Stevens' counter-attack that five of its numbers had been destroyed before they realized what powerful armament was mounted by that apparently crude, helpless, and innocuous wedge. The sixth, however, was fully warned, and every resource at the command of its hellish crew was now being directed against theForlorn Hope.
Sheets, cones, and gigantic rods of force flashed and crackled. Space was filled with silent, devastating tongues of flame. TheForlorn Hopewas dragged about erratically as the sphere tried to dodge those hurtling torpedoes; tried to break away from the hawser of energy anchoring her so solidly to her opponent. But the linkage held, and closer and closer Stevens drove the fourfold menace of his frightful dirigible bombs. Pressor beams beat upon them in vain. Hard driven as those pushers were, they could find no footing, but were reflected at many angles by that untouchable mirror and their utmost force scarcely impeded the progress of the rocket-propelled missiles. Comparatively small as the projectiles were, however, they soon felt the effects of the prodigious beams of heat enveloping them, and torpedo after torpedo exploded harmlessly in space as their mirrors warmed up and volatilized. But for each bomb that was lost, Stevens launched another, and each one came closer to its objective than had its predecessor.
Made desperate by the failure of his every beam, the enemy commander thought to use material projectiles himself—weapons abandoned long since by his race as antiquated and inefficient, but a few of which were still carried by the older types of vessels. One such shell was found and launched—but in the instant of its launching Stevens' foremost bomb struck its mark and exploded. So close were the other three bombs, that they also let go at the shock; and the warlike sphere, hemmed in by four centers of explosions, flew apart—literally pulverized. Its projectile, so barely discharged, did not explode—it was loaded with material which could be detonated only by the warhead upon impact or by a radio signal. It was, however, deflected markedly from its course by the force of the blast, so that instead of striking theForlorn Hopein direct central impact, its head merely touched the apex of the mirror-plated wedge. That touch was enough. There was another appalling concussion, another blinding glare, and the entire front quarter of the terrestrial vessel had gone to join the shattered globes.
Between the point of explosion and the lifeboats there had been many channels of insulation, many bulkheads, many air-breaks, and compartment after compartment of accumulator cells. These had borne the brunt of the explosion, so that the control room was unharmed, and Stevens swung his communicator rapidly through the damaged portions of the vessels.
"How badly are we hurt, Steve—can we make it to Ganymede?"
Nadia was quietly staring over his shoulder into the plate, studying with him the pictures of destruction there portrayed as he flashed the projector from compartment to compartment.
"We're hurt—no fooling—but it might have been a lot worse," he replied, as he completed the survey. "We've lost about all of our accumulators, but we can land on our own beam, and landing power is all we want, I think. You see, we're drifting straight for where Ganymede will be, and we'd better cut out every bit of power we're using, even the heaters, until we get there. This lifeboat will hold heat for quite a while, and I'd rather get pretty cold than meet any more of that gang. I figured eight hours just before they met us, and we were just about drifting then. I think it is safe to say seven hours blind."
"But can't they detect us anyway? They may have sent out a call, you know."
"If we aren't using any power for anything, their electromagnetics are the only things we'll register on, and they're mighty short-range finders. Even if they should get that close to us, they'll probably think we're meteoric, since we'll be dead to their other instruments. Luckily we've got lots of air, so the chemical purifiers can handle it without power. I'll shut off everything and we'll drift it. Couldn't do much of anything, anyway—even our shop out there won't hold air. But we can have light. We've got acetylene emergency lamps, you know, and we don't need to economize on oxygen."
"Perhaps we'd better run in the dark. Remember what you told me about their possible visirays, and that you've got only two bombs left."
"All x; that would be better. If I forget it, remind me to blow up those before we hit the atmosphere of Ganymede, will you?" He opened all the power switches, and, every source of ethereal vibrations cut off, theForlorn Hopedrifted slowly on, now appearing forlorn indeed.
Sevenhours dragged past: seven age-long hours during which the two sat tense, expecting they knew not what, talking only at intervals and in subdued tones. Stevens then snapped on the communicator beam just long enough to take an observation upon Ganymede. Several such brief glimpses were taken; then, after a warning word to his companion, he sent out and exploded the nitrogen bombs. He then threw on the power, and the vessel leaped toward the satellite under full acceleration. Close to the atmosphere it slanted downward in a screaming, fifteen-hundred-mile drive; and soon the mangled wedge dropped down into the little canyon, which for so long had been "home."
"Well, colonel, home again!" Stevens exulted as he neutralized the controls. "There's that falls, our power plant, the catapults, 'n' everything. Now, unless something interrupts us again; we'll run up our radio tower and give Brandon the long yell."
"How much more have you got to do before you can start sending?"
"Not an awful lot. Everything built—all I've got to do is assemble it. I should be able to do it easily in a week. Hope nothing else happens—if I drag you into any more such messes as those we've just been getting out of by the skin of our teeth, I'll begin to wish that we had started out at first to drift it back to Tellus in theHope. Let's see how much time we've got. We should start shooting one day after an eclipse, so that we'll have five days to send. You see, we don't want to point our beam too close to Jupiter or to any of the large satellites, because the enemy might live there and might intercept it. We had an eclipse yesterday—so one week from today, at sunrise, I start shooting."
"But Earth's an evening star now; you can't see it in the morning."
"I'm not going to aim at Tellus. I'm shooting at Brandon, and he's never there for more than a week or two at a stretch. They're prowling around out in space somewhere almost all the time."
"Then how can you possibly hope to hit them?"
"It may be quite a job of hunting, but not as bad as you might think. They probably aren't much, if any, outside the orbit of Mars, and they usually stay within a couple of million kilometers or so of the Ecliptic, so we'll start at the sun and shoot our beam in a spiral to cover that field. We ought to be able to hit them inside of twelve hours, but if we don't, we'll widen our spiral and keep on trying until we do hit them."
"Heavens, Steve! Are you planning on telegraphing steadily for days at a time?"
"Sure, but not by hand, of course—I'll have an automatic sender and automatic pointers."
Stevens had at his command a very complete machine-shop, he had an ample supply of power, and all that remained for him to do was to assemble the parts which he had built during the long journey from Titan to Ganymede. Therefore, at sunrise of the designated day, he was ready, and, with Nadia hanging breathless over his shoulder, he closed the switch, a toothed wheel engaged a delicate interrupter, and a light sounder began its strident chatter.
"Ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven ganymede point oh four seven..." endlessly the message was poured out into the ether, carried by a tight beam of ultra-vibrations and driven by forces sufficient to propel it well beyond the opposite limits of the orbit of Mars.
"What does it say? I can't read code."
Stevens translated the brief message, but Nadia remained unimpressed.
"But it doesn't say anything!" she protested. "It isn't addressed to anybody, it isn't signed—it doesn't tell anybody anything about anything."
"It's all there, ace. You see, since the beam is moving sidewise very rapidly at that range and we're shooting at a small target, the message has to be very short or they won't get it all while the beam's on 'em—it isn't as though we were broadcasting. It doesn't need any address, because nobody but theSiriuscan receive it—except possibly the Jovians. They'll know who's sending it without any signature. It tells them that Ganymede wants to receive a message on the ultra-band centering on forty-seven thousandths. Isn't that enough?"
"Maybe. But suppose some of them live right here on Ganymede—you'll be shooting right through the ground all night—or suppose that even if they don't live here, that they can find our beam some way? Or suppose that Brandon hasn't got his machine built yet, or suppose that it isn't turned on when our beam passes them, or suppose they're asleep then? A lot of things might happen."
"Not so many, ace—your first objection is the only one that hasn't got more holes in it than a sieve, so I'll take it first. Since our beam is only a meter in diameter here and doesn't spread much in the first few million kilometers, the chance of direct reception by the enemy, even if they do live here on Ganymede, is infinitesimally small. But I don't believe that they live here—at least, they certainly didn't land on this satellite. As you suggest, however, it is conceivable that they may have detector screens delicate enough to locate our beam at a distance; but since in all probability that means a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, I think it highly improbable. We've got to take the same risk anyway, no matter what we do, whenever we start to use any kind of driving power, so there's no use worrying about it. As for your last two objections, I know Brandon and I know Westfall. Brandon will have receivers built that will take in any wave possible of propagation, and Westfall, the cautious old egg, will have them running twenty-four hours a day, with automatic recorders, finders, and everything else that Brandon can invent—and believe me, sweetheart, that's a lot of stuff!"
"It's wonderful, the way you three men are," replied Nadia thoughtfully, reading between the lines of Stevens' utterance. "They knew that you were on theArcturus, of course—and they knew that if you were alive you'd manage in some way to get in touch with them. And you, away out here after all this time, are superbly confident that they are expecting a call from you. That, I think, is one of the finest things I ever heard of."
"They're two of the world's best—absolutely." Nadia looked at him, surprised, for he had not seen anything complimentary to himself in her remark. "Wait until you meet them. They're men, Nadia—real men. And speaking of meeting them—please try to keep on loving me after you meet Norm Brandon, will you?"
"Don't be a simp!" her brown eyes met his steadily. "You didn't mean that—you didn't even say it, did you?"
"Back it comes, sweetheart! But knowing myself and knowing those two...."
"Stop it! If Norman Brandon or Quincy Westfall had been here instead of you, or both of them together, we'd have been here from now on—we wouldn't even have gotten away from the Jovians!"
"Nowit's your turn to back water, guy!"
"Well, maybe, a little—if both of them were here, they ought to equal you in some things. Brandon says himself that he and Westfall together make one scientist—Dad says he says so."
"You don't want to believe everything you hear. Neither of them will admit that he knows anything or can do anything—that's the way they are."
"Dad has told me a lot about them—how they've always been together ever since their undergraduate days. How they studied together all over the world, even after they'd been given all the degrees loose. How they even went to the other planets to study—to Mars, where they had to live in space-suits all the time, and to Venus, where they had to take ultra-violet treatments every day to keep alive. How they learned everything that everybody else knew and then went out into space to find out things that nobody else ever dreamed of. How you came to join them, and what you three have done since. They're fine, of course—but they aren'tyou," she concluded passionately.
"No, thank Heaven! I know you love me, Nadia, just as I love you—you know I never doubted it. But you'll like them, really. They're a wonderful team. Brandon's a big brute, you know—fully five centimeters taller than I am, and he weighs close to a hundred kilograms—and no lard, either. He's wild, impetuous, always jumping at conclusions and working out theories that seem absolutely ridiculous, but they're usually sound, even though impractical. Westfall's the practical member—he makes Norm pipe down, pins him down to facts, and makes it possible to put his hunches and wild flashes of genius into workable form. Quince is a...."
"Nowyoupipe down! I've heard you ravesomuch about those two—I'd lots rather rave about you, and with more reason. I wish that sounder would start sounding."
"Our first message hasn't gone half way yet. It takes about forty minutes for the impulse to get to where I think they are, so that even if they got the first one and answered it instantly, it would be eighty minutes before we'd get it. I sort of expect an answer late tonight, but I won't be disappointed if it takes a week to locate them."
"I will!" declared the girl, and indeed, very little work was done that day by either of the castaways.
Slowly the day wore on, and the receiving sounder remained silent. Supper was eaten as the sun dropped low and disappeared, but they felt no desire to sleep. Instead, they went out in front of the steel wall, where Stevens built a small campfire. Leaning back against the wall of their vessel, they fell into companionable silence, which was suddenly broken by Stevens.
"Nadia, I just had a thought. I'll bet four dollars I've wasted a lot of time. They'll certainly have automatic relays on Tellus, to save me the trouble of hunting for them, but like an idiot I never thought of it until just this minute, in spite of the speech I made you about them. I'm going to change those directors right now."
"That's quite a job, isn't it?"
"No, only a few minutes."
"Do it in the morning; you've done enough for one day—maybe you've hit them already, any way."
They again became silent, watching Jupiter, an enormous moon some seven degrees in apparent diameter.
"Steve, I simply can't get used to such a prodigious moon! Look at the stripes, and look at that perfectly incredible...."
A gong sounded and they both jumped to their feet and raced madly into theHope. The ultra-receiver had come to life and the sounder was chattering insanely—someone was sending with terrific speed, but with perfect definition and spacing.
"That's Brandon's fist—I'd know his style anywhere," Stevens shouted, as he seized notebook and pencil.
"Tell me what it says, quick, Steve!" Nadia implored.
"Can't talk—read it!" Stevens snapped. His hand was flying over the paper, racing to keep up with the screaming sounder.
"...ymede all x stevens ganymede all x stevens ganymede all x placing and will keep sirius on plane between you and tellus circle fifteen forty north going tellus first send full data spreading beam to cover circle fifteen forty quince suggests possibility this message intercepted and translated personally I think such translation impossible and that he is wilder than a hawk but just in case they should be supernaturally intelligent...."
Stevens stopped abruptly and stared at the vociferous sounder.
"Don't stop to listen—keep on writing!" commanded Nadia.
"Can't," replied the puzzled mathematician. "It doesn't make sense. It sounds intelligent—it's made up of real symbols of some kind or other, but they don't mean a thing to me."
"Oh, I see—he's sending mush on purpose. Read the last phrase!"
"Oh, sure—'mush' is right," and with no perceptible break the signals again became intelligible.
"... if they can translate that they are better scholars than we are signing off until hear from you brandon."
Thesounder died abruptly into silence and Nadia sobbed convulsively as she threw herself into Stevens' arms. The long strain over, the terrible uncertainty at last dispelled, they were both incoherent for a minute—Nadia glorifying the exploits of her lover, Stevens crediting the girl herself and his two fellow-scientists with whatever success had been achieved. A measure of self-control regained, Stevens cut off his automatic sender, changed the adjustments of his directors and cut in his manually operated sending key.
"What waves are you using, anyway?" asked Nadia, curiously. "They must be even more penetrating than Roeser's Rays, to have such a range, and Roeser's Rays go right through a planet without even slowing up."
"They're of the same order as Roeser's—that is, they're sub-electronic waves of the fourth order—but they're very much shorter, and hence more penetrating. In fact, they're the shortest waves yet known, so short that Roeser never even suspected their existence."
"Suppose there's a Jovian space-ship out there somewhere that intercepts our beams. Couldn't they locate us from it?"
"Maybe, and maybe not—we'll just have to take a chance on that. That goes right back to what we were talking about this morning. They might be anywhere, so the chance of hitting one is very small. It isn't like hitting theSirius, because we knew within pretty narrow limits where to look for her, and even at that we had to hunt for her for half a day before we hit her. We're probably safe, but even if they should have located us, we'll probably be able to hide somewhere until theSiriusgets here. Well, the quicker I get busy sending the dope, the sooner they can get started."
"Tell them to be sure and bring me all my clothes they can find, a gallon of perfume, a barrel of powder, and a carload of Delray's Fantasie chocolates—I've been a savage so long that I want to wallow in luxury for a while."
"I'll do that—and I want some real cigarettes!"
Stevens first sent a terse, but complete account of everything that had happened to theArcturus, and a brief summary of what he and Nadia had done since the cutting up of the IPV. The narrative finished, he launched into a prolonged and detailed scientific discussion of the enemy and their offensive and defensive weapons. He dwelt precisely and at length upon the functioning of everything he had seen. Though during the long months of their isolation he had been too busy to do any actual work upon the weapons of the supposed Jovians, yet his keen mind had evolved many mathematical and physical deductions, hypotheses, and theories, and these he sent out to theSirius, concluding:
"There's all the dope I can give you. Figure it out, and don't come at all until you can come loaded for bear; they're bad medicine. Call us occasionally, to keep us informed as to when to expect you, but don't call too often. We don't want them locating you, and if they should locate us through your ray or ours, it would be just too bad. So-long. Stevens and Newton."
Nadia had insisted upon staying up and had been brewing pot after pot of her substitutes for coffee while he sat at the key; and it was almost daylight when he finally shut off the power and arose, his right arm practically paralyzed from the unaccustomed strain of hours of telegraphing.
"Well, sweetheart, that's that!" he exclaimed in relief. "Brandon and Westfall are on the job. Nothing to do now but wait, and study up on our own account on those Jovians' rays. This has been one long day for us, though, little ace, and I suggest that we sleep for about a week!"