XXII.
Maynard's force swept out from Mephisto, drove in toward Sol, and slipped between Terra and Venus. They passed Sol just outside of the orbit of Mercury and headed outward again.
Just beyond the orbit of Terra, the souped-up detectors flared briefly and then burst into full indication. Maynard smiled wryly and said: "How can any military strategy work when both sides have mental telepathy, even though it is mechanical?"
The Martian task force was plunging into space almost on an opposite course, coming forward under battle acceleration. "We're not having any," snapped Guy.
"They must have heard of the trouble Terra had with us," observed Turretman Holmes. "Maybe they'd like Mephisto?"
"They aren't heading for Terra," said Guy. "Well, we're being attacked, technically. Let's have at them."
The indication in the detector opened, and the pattern of the Martian fleet became clear. Guy shook his head at the perfection of the space lattice. Against the vortex, a perfect space lattice meant ruin.
Into the Martian fleet went Maynard's group. At terrific velocity, the two fleets met, and the vortexes flowed from Guy's ships and ran together in a mad pattern through which there was no place to pass unharmed.
There was a flash of MacMillan fire. Crossed beams radiated, and the space between the ships dotted with blinding flashes of premature torpedoes.
The Martians were more interested in avoiding the toroids, and their fire was desultory. The Terrans were more interested in the Martian ships, and their fire was defensive only.
Then at once, the Martians were through, passed, and inert. They sped on at zero drive, and their courses diverged.
"After 'em!" grunted Maynard. "Get 'em on detectors!"
The Martians went out of sight. The contact-detectors stretched as the two opposing velocities caused the separation to add into the unthinkable miles. Days passed before the velocity of Guy's fleet dropped to turn-back velocity, and more days passed before Guy's ships were within sight of their quarry. By then, no ship was within detector range of its fellow; the sky was clear save for the inert Martian and the pursuing ship.
Slowly, the Leoniad crept up beside the Martian ship. And then as the velocity of Leoniad approached zero relative to the Martian, there was motion in the sky, the detectors flared bright, and the alarm bells rang with ear-splitting loudness. The detector showed a Martian sub-ship at pointer range.
Its barrier had been blasted open by the huge vortex that crept and rolled towards the Leoniad.
"Pilot! Vortex at fourteen—seven ten!"
Leoniad creaked. Ponderously, it swapped ends. A seam split, and the intercom became hoarse with the shrill of escaping air and the cries of the repair crew. An alarm rang loud, which stopped when the split seam was plastered. Acceleration took hold, and the men were nailed to their places. The generator alarm pealed, indicating dangerous overload. More plates creaked as the drivers took the power and strained against the mass and inertia of the Leoniad.
"Not enough!"
The turrets of the Leoniad whipped around and the sub-ship was blasted in a vast, expanding flare.
But its work was done. Though the drivers, straining their best, were fighting the Leoniad into velocity, there was too little time. The vortex caught up with the Leoniad, passed upward from base to top, and went on to die in the remoteness of space.
The breakers blew, the fuses sputtered, and Leoniad went inert.
She coasted away from the Martian at much less than one mile per second.
Maynard bumped gently into the wall of his scanning room and the pain wakened him. Dazedly, he passed a hand over his face, and the movement turned him over in midair. He clutched foolishly at the wall, and then waited until he found a handhold. He handed himself to the floor of the room, and sought the desk.
Forcing himself into the seat, Guy snapped the safety belt and then reached for the communicator.
"Pilot! Technician! Navigator! Isn't there anybody alive on this crate!"
He sat and thought. Something had happened that was not in the books. He'd hit a vortex and had awakened without help. The others—what had happened to them?
The communicator spoke tinnily: "Is there anybody else on this space can?"
"Maynard—who's speaking?"
"You and I are all?" came the return. "This is Hume, the assistant calculator."
"Might as well get together," said Maynard. "Come on in."
"This is Evans, of the Technician's crew. Can I come in, too?"
"Wait a minute, both of you," said Guy. "Go take a look around. Someone else may be alive, too."
"How many?" asked another voice. "In case anyone's interested, this is Ted Jones, of the power gang."
"Pete Rivers and I ... I'm Jim Phelps ... are both O.K."
"Wait a minute," said Guy. "Someone run into the turretman's office, and the other go into the navigator's office. If either of them come out of it, let me know immediately."
"Pilot Tinsley, sir. Just came out of it."
"Were you on duty?"
"No, sir. Assistant Pilot Adcock was on the board."
"Oh," answered Guy. "He's still in the greenhouse, then."
"Did you expect him?"
"Dunno," said Guy slowly. "The passage of the vortex effect is leaving this office spherically. Or roughly so. Spread out—"
"Turretman Greene just came to, sir."
"You beat me by ten seconds. Navigator Sampson just took up his interest in life."
"See?" continued Guy. "As I was saying; spread out and cover the ship. Record each awakening time precisely. Later we'll get the dimensions of this can to the fractional millimeter, and we can chart what happened."
As time went on, the communicator took up the clamor, swelling from individual calls to the full cry of the personnel in a regular increase.
The calculator and Guy sat before the plans of the Leoniad and drew lines, scribed curves, and calculated in simple trigonometry. It did not take long. Guy put a pinprick in the plan and said:
"It's right here!"
"You suspected that," answered the other.
"I know—but what's in here that would nullify that effect? It takes heat, work, and superenalin."
"Haven't you anything odd?"
"Nothing that the other ships haven't got ... no, wait ... no, can't be."
"What?"
"Can't possibly be."
"Name it, Maynard. No matter how silly it may seem, that's it!"
"This thought-beam gadget—the heavy-duty one."
"That's it."
"But Mephisto went down under the vortex projector. To the last man. They had these things."
"You fired and fired and fired, though. Hundreds and hundreds of vortexes. The effect is cumulative, I've heard. But for a single shot, Guy, we've got a remedy."
The ship took control as the instrument gang replaced the fuses, threw in the breakers, and reset the balancing controls. The Leoniad swapped ends, raced for the quarry that was invisible in the distance, and took over the Martian.
It was days before the combined fleets were collected again. They converged upon a million cubic miles of space, and mulled around in a mad pattern before they turned and headed for Mephisto.
The commander of the Martians came before Guy.
"I am defeated," said the Martian stiffly. "I would have preferred it at the hands of—"
"One who is not a traitor?" asked Guy. "Marshal Monogon, why am I a traitor?"
"You betrayed your oath."
"My oath," said Guy, "was intended to set up a condition in which a man will do the best thing for his homeland. That I am doing."
"You think so."
"They'll all think so."
"I am defeated," repeated Monogon. "I hope to see the day when you are caught."
"You may, at that."
"But to what end are you working? You fought Terrans. You fight us. Why?"
"Monogon, you have a super vortex machine set up on Phobos. Terra has one on Luna. You now know that the vortex will not kill on a single try. But how much less dead will the entire System be if either of us fires?"
"I ... yes, the speed will permit you to fire once we have fired. You would be able to detect the operation of the projector hours before the toroid envelops Terra."
"And with no one alive to awaken any of us—those who are not on Terra will fight one another to the death—vortexes will be coming from every solid body in the Solar System within a week. Do you think I want that?"
"You hope to accomplish something?" asked Monogon. "What—and how and why?"
"I hope to unify. I cannot appeal directly because of my ... my traitorous past. But Monogon, I can and will fight to the last breath to try my plan. Never forget Ertene, Monogon. They'll be here next, looking for me—or something. They've got to have their trouble, and they well know that a good offense is the best defense. They've got vortexes too, you know. As a last resort, they'll fire on us both. What I've got to do is to hold off both Mars and Terra—and then go out and take Ertene!"
"Madness."
"Necessary. Ertene must be brought in, so that she will depend on Sol and the rest of us."
"You're mad, Guy Maynard. Stark mad. But I agree with you. The vortex is deadly, and with things at the breaking-point as they are now, oblivion is but a step. Can you believe me?"
"Yes," smiled Guy. He tapped the thought-instrument and explained.
"Then you can also believe me when I offer you my aid?"
"Yes."
"I'll make no move against Mars, understand."
"I'll not ask you to. You'll go to—"
The radiation alarm broke.
"What's up?" asked Maynard.
"Nothing dangerous. We just uncovered a Terran crate trying to run through us under a barrier."
Maynard looked at Monogon. "We'd better hurry," he told the Martian. "They'll be tearing up the Solar System before we can stop them."
The combined fleet increased its acceleration towards Mephisto.
The spaceport on Mephisto became a mad place. Terran ships stood plate to plate against Martian ships, and the sky above the port was interlaced with the invisible communication beams that connected incoming and outgoing ships. At no time was the sky ever completely clear of spacecraft.
They came in sight out of the clear black sky of the moonlet, and hovered until the ship before them had landed. Then they dropped slowly into the landing place assigned to them, coming to a full landing just in time to see the next ship begin to drop. Another ship would come from outer space at this time, and assume the hovering area, awaiting its turn.
Ships took off at the same rate. But unlike the cumbersome landing feat, they leaped upward into the sky, running a direction-beam before them, and disappeared in seconds.
The nerve center of this activity was a squat building on the edge of the port. In it worked Maynard's spies—his agents provocateur. A black chamber of intense men, all working their shifts over huge mental projectors.
Solarian shipping was being completely disrupted.
No ship took off from any of the spaceports without Guy's knowledge. And no cargo worth having ever reached its destination. Mephisto was becoming the most valuable planet-system in the Solar sphere, for the cargoes that were pirated and brought to Mephisto were those items that Terra and Mars could not find in plenty at home.
The capture of single ships had gone on unchecked for a long time. Then protection began to go with the shipping, and finally the spacelines were running in full convoys that sported constellation craft for protection. But Guy's fleet collected the constellation craft as easily as they caught tramp spacers. When a spaceship is going a thousand miles per second, a barrier-sown toroid could burst from space before the huge ship. It was a matter of dropping the toroid so close to the nose of the ship that the turreted AutoMacs had no time to answer the impulses that came from the detector-couplers. The huge ship plunged through the toroid, and left the rest of the unprotected convoy for Maynard's choice.
And when they sent decoys, Maynard's men ignored them. Only when the carriers held valuable material did they suffer.
The ships of Ertene came in for their share. Guy worried about the thought-beam instrument that he had left there; he knew that no sensible world would adhere to a program of destroying such a device. One of the main thought-beam jobs was continually directed at Ertene and the thought-beam instrument that Guy had left. So far, they had done nothing but use the thing locally. It would not reach Mephisto by a billion miles, and so Guy knew his secret was safe.
At least for the time being.
But molesting Ertene on Ertene's own ground was not possible; once they came within range of Ertene's thought-beam, the secret of avoiding the vortex would be out. Only those ships of Ertene that came outside of range were taken—and they were all too few.
But there are ways of starting trouble—
The intercom pealed in Maynard's office. "Andrew has escaped," came the message.
Maynard smiled. "Good. As we planned?"
"According to clockwork," came the amused answer. "He bopped Timmy over the head with that hunk of plastic, used the same plastic rod to pry his way out of the house, and then he took off like a demon in the Ursiad's lifeship."
"I wonder what he thought we had it out for," laughed Guy. "Also I wonder what he thought we were using to keep him in?"
"He's not too well informed. He knows, for instance, that we can avoid the vortex—and that some sort of mind-reading gadget is available. Furthermore, he knows that there is one on Ertene. Nothing about the stuff, understand, but just that such a thing exists."
"That's the ticket," smiled Guy. "Now we'll get action!"
Detector operation of the following events were impossible. In their place, the men in Maynard's black chamber controlled a model of the System, synchronized with others throughout the Mephistan system of planet and moons.
And for the first time in history, Mars and Terra took off in battle array and headed together in the same direction. And Mephisto followed them, watching all the way.
At nightside, the combined fleets dropped onto Ertene, showered the area with toroids, and landed. They forced the heavy doors open and emerged again with the machine.
Up they drove, into the Ertinian sky, and away. Ertene came to life then, and vortex projectors hurled their toroids into the sky after the fleeting ships of Sol.
Sol's ships scattered and avoided the toroids, and then answered by dropping their own onto a greater area than before. They silenced those that might give danger, and then sped away in a die-true line for Sol. From Ertene there arose the Ertinian fleet to give chase.
Normally, Terra could have out-distanced them, for they had the head start in an accelerative race. But Mars could not keep that killing pace, and Terra was forced to hang back; they hoped to best Ertene in full battle, if escape were impossible.
Conquest would give them Ertene, and that would have been desirable, too. But conquest of Ertene was planned for the future, and well-planned.
So Ertene caught up with the slower fleet of Sol, and the two intermingled.
Space filled with the myriad winking spots of prematured torpedoes. Gouts of released energy burst in empty space as crossed MacMillans backfired. Energy bombs were strewn as a matter of course to prevent the operation of sub-ships, and the milling mass circled in a battle plan that no space marshal had ever planned.
The ship that had Ertene's thought-beam was known. Battle centered about it, and it became evident that neither side cared to direct its fire in that direction. The whirling melee spread out into a vast sphere of fighting ships, with the thief in the middle. Wide spread the battle; the thickness of the fighting globe dropping as the sphere increased.
Maynard smiled. "Now!" he said.
And from the Leoniad there dropped a torpedo in a barrier. Invisibly and indetectably it sped, led by the radiation from the thief. Through the fighting globe it went safely, and inside, where no bit of stray energy filled space. Not even detector beams entered this space, and the men in the thief looked out on all sides at the mighty globular battle with wonder. They realized that this fight was over them, and that because of their loot—the thought-beam instrument—neither side would strike at them.
But the barrier-covered torpedo found them. The barrier hid the torpedo from them, but the barrier permitted the detecting radiation to enter and energize the director.
The thief exploded in one coruscating flash. The white-hot gases expanded rapidly, wildly, cooling as they spread.
Action stopped.
Had this been a fight on land between men, they would have turned as one and looked at the ruin. They would have stood elbow to elbow with their enemies, and wondered. Both sides knew the value of what they were fighting for, and they knew the other side knew its value, too. Loss of the thief stunned them beyond belief—
And stunned them beyond the desire to fight one another.
The flashing lights of prematured torpedoes died as the mechanical finders still worked on the already-launched missiles. No more came from the tubes, and gradually the flaring died, leaving the ether clear of crackling radiation.
Far-flung detectors flared, and the cardex machines in hundreds of ships purred, and came up with a single answer. It was called aloud, and on the throats of a million men, Terrans, Ertinians, and Martians, there came the single word:
"Leoniad!"
With no order from High Command, every ship turned and headed for the Leoniad.
The Leoniad lazed along, waiting. Just ahead of MacMillan range, the Leoniad ran before the combined fleets. From all sides there came the rest of Maynard's fleet, making a space pattern about the Leoniad.
Within the Solarian fleet, quick orders and consultations passed. The fleet took battle shape, spread out, and gave chase according to plan. Their space pattern became that which was developed by the Terran command to avoid sown toroids, and in comparative safety, they settled down to the long, stern chase.
Before them, Maynard's fleet ran easily. Forward-flying toroids died abruptly, killed by the anti-radiations of Guy's high-powered projectors; torpedoes were sought and prematured in space; and MacMillan fire was not answered save to cross the oncoming beam with a backward-flung beam. The initial flurry of fire stopped, then, and the chase became a matter of hare and hounds.
The Solarian fleets were forcing the flight. Mephisto's fleet was obviously running to their base. That meant, to the Solarians, that at midway, there must be a turnover maneuver so that Mephisto's fleet could decelerate for their landing. Then they would catch up, for the velocity attained by Maynard's outfit must be forced down. The Solarians were not trying to effect a Mephistan landing, but were after the other fleet. They would not turnover at mid-point, and then they could catch that fleet of pirates that stayed just out of range.