“Ready in positions, Captain Kendall,” called the war-pilot as the little green lights appeared on his board.
“Test discharges on maximum,” ordered Kendall. He turned to Cole. “You start the automatic key?”
“Right, Captain.”
“All shipshape?”
“Right as can be. Accumulators at thirty-seven per cent, thanks to the loaf out here. They ought to pick up our signal back on Jupiter, he’s nearest now. The station on Europa will get it.”
“Talbot—we are only to investigate if the ship is as reported. Have you seen any signs of her?”
“No sir, and the signals are blank.”
“I’ll work from here.” Kendall took his position at the commanding control. Cole made way for him, and moved to the power board. One by one he tested the automatic doors, the pressure bulkheads. Kendall watched the instruments as one after another of the weapons were tested on momentary full discharge—titanic flames of five million volt protons. Then the ship thudded to the chatter of the Garnell rifles.
Tensely the men watched the planet ahead, white, yet barely visible in the weak sunlight so far out. It was swimming slowly nearer as the tiny ship gathered speed.
Kendall cast a glance over his detector-instruments. The radio network was undisturbed, the magnetic and electric fields recognized only the slight disturbances occasioned by the planet itself. There was nothing, noth—
Five hundred miles away, a gigantic ship came into instantaneous being. Simultaneously, and instantaneously, the various detector systems howled their warnings. Kendall gasped as the thing appeared on his view screen, with the scale-lines below. The scale must be cock-eyed. They said the ship was fifteen hundred feet in diameter, and two thousand long!
“Retreat,” ordered Kendall, “at maximum acceleration.”
Talbot was already acting. The gyroscopes hummed in their castings, and the motors creaked. The T-247 spun on her axis, and abruptly the acceleration built up as the ion-rockets began to shudder. A faint smell of “heat” began to creep out of the converter. Immense “weight” built up, and pressed the men into their specially designed seats—
The gigantic ship across the way turned slowly, and seemed to stare at the T-247. Then it darted toward them at incredible speed till the poor little T-247 seemed to be standing still, as sailors say. The stranger was so gigantic now, the screens could not show all of him.
“God, Buck—he’s going to take us!”
Simultaneously, the T-247 rolled, and from her broke every possible stream of destruction. The ion-rocket flames swirled abruptly toward her, the proton-guns whined their song of death in their housings, and the heavy pounding shudder of the Garnell guns racked the ship.
Strangely, Kendall suddenly noticed, there was a stillness in the ship. The guns and the rays were still going—but the little human sounds seemed abruptly gone.
“Talbot—Garnet—” Only silence answered him. Cole looked across at him in sudden white-faced amazement.
“They’re gone—” gasped Cole.
Kendall stood paralyzed for thirty seconds. Then suddenly he seemed to come to life. “Neutrons! Neutrons —and water tanks! Old Nichols was right—” He turned to his friend. “Cole—the tender—quick.” He darted a glance at the screen. The giant ship still lay alongside. A wash of ions was curling around her, splitting, and passing on. The pinprick explosions of the Garnell shells dotted space around her—but never on her.
Cole was already racing for the tender lock. In an instant Kendall piled in after him. The tiny ship, scarcely ten feet long, was powered for flights of only two hours acceleration, and had oxygen for but twenty-four hours for six men, seventy-two hours for two men—maybe. The heavy door was slammed shut behind them, as Cole seated himself at the panel. He depressed a lever, and a sudden smooth push shot them away from the T-247.
“DON’T!” called Kendall sharply as Cole reached for the ion-rocket control. “Douse those lights!” The ship was dark in dark space. The lighted hull of the T-247 drifted away from the little tender—further and further till the giant ship on the far side became visible.
“Not a light—not a sign of fields in operation.” Kendall said, unconsciously speaking softly. “This thing is so tiny, that it may escape their observation in the fields of the T-247 and Pluto down there. It’s our only hope.”
“What happened? How in the name of the planets did they kill those men without a sound, without a flash, and without even warning us, or injuring us?”
“Neutrons—don’t you see?”
“Frankly, I don’t. I’m no scientist—merely a technician. Neutrons aren’t used in any process I’ve run across.”
“Well, remember they’re uncharged, tiny things. Small as protons, but without electric field. The result is they pass right through an ordinary atom without being stopped unless they make a direct hit. Tungsten, while it has a beautifully high melting point, is mostly open space, and a neutron just sails right through it, or any heavy atom. Light atoms stop neutrons better—there’s less open space in ’em. Hydrogen is best. Well—a man is made up mostly of light elements, and a man stops those neutrons—it isn’t surprising it killed those other fellows invisibly, and without a sound.”
“You mean they bathed that ship in neutrons?”
“Shot it full of ’em. Just like our proton guns, only sending neutrons.”
“Well, why weren’t we killed too?”
“’Water stops neutrons,’ I said. Figure it out.”
“The rocket-water tanks—all around us! Great masses of water—” gasped Cole. “That saved us?”
“Right. I wonder if they’ve spotted us.”
The stranger ship was moving slowly in relation to the T-247. Suddenly the motion changed, the stranger spun—and a giant lock appeared in her side, opened. The T-247 began to move, floated more and more rapidly straight for the lock. Her various weapons had stopped operating now, the hoppers of the Garnell guns exhausted, the charge of the accumulators aboard the ship down so low the proton guns had died out.
“Lord—they’re taking the whole ship!”
“Say—Cole, is that any ship you ever heard of before? I don’t think that’s just a pirate!”
“Not a pirate—what then?”
“How’d he get inside our detector screens so fast? Watch—he’ll either leave, or come after us—” The T-247 had settled inside the lock now, and the great metal door closed after it. The whole patrol ship had been swallowed by a giant. Kendall was sketching swiftly on a notebook, watching the vast ship closely, putting down a record of its lines, and formation. He glanced up at it, and then down for a few more lines, and up at it—
The stranger ship abruptly dwindled. It dwindled with incredible speed, rushing off along the line of sight at an impossible velocity, and abruptly clicking out of sight, like an image on a movie-film that has been cut, and repaired after the scene that showed the final disappearance.
“Cole—Cole—did you get that? Did you see—do you understand what happened?” Kendall was excitedly shouting now.
“He missed us,” Cole sighed. “It’s a wonder—hanging out here in space, with the protector of the T-247’s fields gone.”
“No, no, you asteroid—that’s not it. He went off faster than light itself!”
“Eh—what? Faster than light? That can’t be done—”
“He did it, I know he did. That’s how he got inside our screens. He came inside faster than the warning message could relay back the information. Didn’t you see him accelerate to an impossible speed in an impossible time? Didn’t you see how he just vanished as he exceeded the speed of light, and stopped reflecting it? That ship was no ship of this solar system!”
“Where did he come from then?”
“God only knows, but it’s a long, long way off.”
