XV.
In the long-range scanner, the Loard-vogh fleet were but shapeless blobs. In the past hours, they had become detectable, and now were spreading out as the terrific velocity of the Terran fleet dropped down upon them.
"Now?" asked Downing.
"Better wait another minute," suggested Cliff.
"O.K. The judgment of when is best is tough, sometimes."
"Better we should blitz eight or nine of them for sure than to try and get fifteen but miss all but six. And don't forget that we're in the lead. The boys in back will have more time to spread out and get the outlying ships."
"I'd like to stay running free as long as I can," said Stellor.
"It makes us just that harder to detect when we are not radiating," agreed Lane. "Too bad we can't run right on through this way."
"Yeah, but we've got to use echo-ranging for the ordnance directors. We can't just use their radiation as a means. And if we use echo-ranging, that means squirting out the prime signal. That means detection anyway, and we might as well use power, too."
"What's our speed?"
"Point seven nine light."
"Fast enough," grunted Downing. "O.K., let 'em have it!"
At seventy-nine percent of the speed of light, the free-running ships came to life. The drivers went to work at the same time that the first pulse from the ordnance directors went out. The turrets, already trained by hand, moved only seconds of arc to correct for speed, when the pulse-echo returned with the data. And with the return of the second echo, reducing the error, the projectors belched energy.
In the Loard-vogh, detectors screamed and flared. Turrets, directed at random or stowed for travel, whipped around, the projectors rising in elevation. Defensive equipment went to work—but not soon enough.
For a dymodine crossing a dymodine will stop both, but they must be operating simultaneously. The Terran ships fired first, and they hit.
The sky had been serene. There was the star, blazing as a sun should blaze, the only thing in view against a stellar curtain. The ships of both fleets were black, and minutely invisible against the sky. The planets of this star were as much a part of the stellar backdrop as any planets are, even on Earth, and the appearance was just that of a very distant disk, half-dollar size, blinding white, poised against a vast, never ending wall of twinkling points.
Thirty seconds later, man had passed through—and left his mark.
Dymodines flashed incandescent spots that erupted in flaming gases. Snatchers sliced backbone from the ships of the Loard-vogh and they crumpled; some exploding. Three atomic sphere projectors found their mark and three of the Loard-vogh blasted themselves to bits, leaving only expanding masses and hard radiation—against the sky were moving flecks of death; the Universe was spreckled with novae that spread as they were watched.
Death, silent and unspectacular from a distance, struck.
And the Terran ships were through the Loard-vogh fleet and gone.
But not unscathed. Trailing lines of whispy, incandescent vapor from their intrinsic velocity, nine Terran ships traced their lives across the sky.
"Made it! Call base and tell 'em," said Downing.
The connection was already established. "Thompson? We got twenty-two. Thirteen definites and nine more-than-probables. Seven with light damage. Lost nine."
"Good, Stellor. Now don't try it again. They're wise and they'll clean you out."
"I'd like to take my chance on one more run."
"Don't do it. You'll be cleaned."
"But they'll make a base here."
"They'll make it anyway. How's their numbers?"
"Terrific. They've got everything."
Thompson grunted. "I'm not surprised. After all, they have a quarter of the Galaxy full of them, and even though slave labor isn't the best, a planet full of slaves is better than half a planet of free men if you accept that a slave is fifty percent efficient."
"I'm beginning to see futility ahead," said Lane.
"Well, don't. Terra has a secret weapon that will win for us, you know."
"I know, but you can't swing it yet. It's the waiting and the back-breaking fight that must come first."
"Too bad we can't just let 'em roar in close enough to use it all at once."
"Wouldn't work. We've got to wait until the psychological moment. Then—we'll swing it."
"O.K., now what?"
"Don't toss away any more ships. Not right now. Let the Loard-vogh establish their base," explained Billy. "We can't stop 'em anyway. Let them come on in. I want them close enough so we can get at them without having to go all the way out to get them." He thought a moment. "Tell your boys not to use the atomic sphere any more than necessary. You know why."
"We got a few with it."
"All right," answered Thompson. "At that time it was expedient. We had to dent them to make them cautious."
Lane said: "I don't see why we just don't let 'em roar on in close and then use Plan One on them."
"Wouldn't work that way. They are too numerous. Before Plan One is efficient, we must give them a tough fight. Otherwise they will not understand that we mean business. We'll win only after we convince the Loard-vogh that we are worthy opponents in their own type of fighting. Otherwise they will wipe us out by sheer weight of numbers despite Plan One."
"I know," grumbled Lane. "We've been through all that."
"Well, then you know that Plan One will work only after a certain number of them have reason to fear our arms."
"O.K., Billy, we're coming in."
"No—not yet. Head in for Procyon IV and wait for them there. Give them as good a fight as you can."
Inward swept the grand fleet of the Loard-vogh. The other six planets of Procyon were push-overs; the Loard-vogh hit the planetary defenses, knocked them down by outnumbering them, and landed. The colonial population headed for the hills and hid out. And as the mop-up squads beat the bush, many of them did not come back. Yet it was futility, for Vorgan's vicious minions held the planets eventually.
But on Procyon IV, they had trouble.
The fleet came down in a multiple line and encircled IV. Terran forces fought back.
Up-shooting beams crossed with the Loard-vogh weapons and made the air a seething hell. Snatchers ripped the bellies out of ships, and from the ships there came answering snatchers that gouged spheroidal chunks out of the planet along with the projector crews and hurled them aside.
Nuisance weapons—air torpedoes and space mines—floated freely and exploded, filling the air with flying slabs of metal.
And then forty of the finest made a landing. They forced their way to the defended surface, scoured the ground beneath them with a solid curtain of energy, and scarred the countryside until nothing was left to stop them. They landed, set up a vast circle, and into the center of the circle there poured a constant stream of Loard-vogh transports.
"All right!" barked Lane. "Get the heavies over!"
"Heavies on the way!"
"And bring up the atomic spheres."
Twenty of the atomic sphere projectors came zooming over, suspended on tractors. They dropped on the circle and the tractors anchored them to the solid core of IV.
The paraboloids swung over and gouged pieces out of the center of the Loard-vogh camp and let them blast loose with their atomic fire. The Loard-vogh died like flies under the terrible energy—and like flies they came on, replacing those gone.
The air above the camp was seething. The ground below bubbled molten in spots. The periphery was a raving, solid mass of sheer energy. The bubble between the Loard-vogh forces and the Terrans was shimmering energy that pulsated in and out like the beating of an irregular heart.
And in spite of the utter madness of trying to enter that holocaust, the Loard-vogh poured in. One man made the safety of the inner shields to every hundred that came, and that one in a hundred multiplied, added to those already there, until the shell of murderous energy swelled of its own incompressible contents of Loard-vogh material and men.
The shell expanded, moved outward against the fire. The atomic spheres moved backwards, and as they moved they were silent. The Loard-vogh took advantage of the silence to shove farther. A salient fingered out—
"Cut it!" snapped Downing.
"With what?" asked Hayes, the commander.
"Drive in there—they're cutting off projector seven."
The salient swept out, forcing Terran arms back. It curved around, swept back, and had Number Seven within the loop. The pocket closed and the bitterly contested area was a wide bulge on the edge of a circle.
Another landing took place.
And another, not more than a mile away.
And then across the plains of Planet IV, of Procyon, there rolled endless, countless mile after mile of ground equipment. The heavy portables started to hurl their might as soon as they came in sight, and the Terrans were pinched.
Pinched between an embattled circle and a closing circle. The inner circle expanded, the outer circle contracted.
Downing's ship roared into the concentric fire, its turrets whipping back and forth and spitting sheer energy. Behind him there sped the twenty-four ships of his command. Into the holocaust they drove, piercing the Loard-vogh line momentarily. The hole widened briefly, and then closed down behind them. Englobed, the flight pressed close together and fought outward.
It was stalemate—and yet nine of them dropped as inert, flaming masses.
"Enough!" called Stellor. "Back!"
And his flight formed, was forced apart, and reformed. They drove for the inside again and ran up against a solid wall of ships.
Downing's flight dwindled. Pressing close, the Loard-vogh fired their torrents of energy into Downing's ships at projector-burst range. One by one the ships flamed and went down in a smoke-trailing comet.
"Help?" snapped Lane over the sub-communicator.
"Stay out—" started Downing. He was cut off as his command burst into flaming, violent death.
Thompson's voice came over the interstellar band. "Better retreat now," he said.
Lane answered. Here in the scanning-ship, the torrent of energy and deafening sound was gone, and only peaceful quiet reigned. Save for the constantly swirling fire in the battle plotter globes and the everlasting flicker of pilot lights, there was no evidence of the swift, concentrated hell that went on in the space between spheres that approached one another.
"Downing tried it," he said.
"Get many?"
"Swapped his entire twenty-five for forty-one of the Loard-vogh before they got him."
"Not at all bad," answered Thompson.
"I'd like to try it—?"
"Nope. Better collect Downing and the rest and haul tail for Terra. We're about due for the big show."
"Downing is—"
"Back," answered Stellor, opening the door. "I'm sorry to be late, fellas. They asked me about the fight out there in the hall and I stopped to chat. I didn't know you were on the line, Billy."
"Well, how was the fight?"
"Fierce. I'd hate to get into one like that, for real. Billy, will the personnel snatcher save enough of our men to lick them?”
"Saving every man aboard a doomed ship at the moment of destruction with the individual snatcher globes is a good way of not losing a man," explained Billy. "But it doesn't save materiel. They've got both, in plenty. We'll have to fall back on the secret."
"But when?" asked Lane.
"When the time is ripe. And not one moment before."
Thompson rang off. And then with a concentrated effort, the Solarian forces drove upward in a piercing needle of ships. They broke through, not without loss, and made their escape into the sky. When they landed on Terra, every ship was crammed to discomfort with men from stricken ships—literally snatched from the jaws of death with the personnel snatcher.
In numbers enough to take a whole planet, the Loard-vogh landed on Umbriel and overran it in an hour. Inward they swept to Titan and the Saturnian colonies. Inward they came to overrun Callisto and Ganymede.
Downward they dropped to Phobos and Deimos, where they set up vast projectors and hurled the attack upon Mars. Simultaneously they fell upon Venus—a monstrous horde of ships. Systematically they went through the Evening Star taking area after area, and they held Mars in their grip at the same time that Venus fell to their hordes.
"God—their numbers," groaned Cliff Lane. "I'd hoped that they might find it tough to hold everything and still hurl fresh equipment into Sol."
"They are numberless," said Hotang Lu.
The Loard-vogh swept into Terra.
Terra, the home of man. Terra, the mighty. Terra, defended as few planets were defended against the legions of Vorgan, Lord of All.
Despite the humans on Venus and Mars, they were still colonies compared to the home planet. Knowing that massed energy might hold out, all Solar defenses had been moved to Terra. Let Terra hold out and eventually mankind would recover, expand, and then drive the enemy back.
And when the Loard-vogh came to Terra, they found it defended against them.
Nowhere on Terra was there a place to land in safety. They took dead Luna easily and hurried to set up a long-range beam. Atomic spheres of unheard-of size reached upward from Terra and Luna sparkled with mighty atomic storms. Whole detachments of the Loard-vogh flamed into incandescence as the super-atomics bit fifty-foot spheres out of the face of Luna, compressed the matter itself, and let it explode.
They made a landing in Siberia and the encampment burst with a roar that shook the earth.
Overhead they roared, raining down energy that never reached through the upthrust beams. The cities were fortresses that hurled power into the sky, and though the shattered wrecks of the Loard-vogh dropped like rain, none of them reached Earth in large enough pieces to do any damage. The air took on a metallic smell, and ozone fixed out as the stratosphere shimmered in the grip of a torrent of energy beams that crossed and nullified one another.
Across the face of Terra, the high-power transmission beams hurled energy back and forth. Energy to feed the projectors that fenced with the ships of the Loard-vogh. Beams that ran on sublevel energy and could not be cut.
In the master room, there was a huge globe, wired with multicolored lights. And as the battle swept back and forth over the face of Terra, the lights changed from dark red to violet, depending upon the power drain of that district. Master technicians, making lightning calculations in a mathematical medium adapted for power work, viewed the globe and pressed buttons that hurled relay-impulses across Terra to switch and divert power for the needy locations. Their hope was to maintain a medium red all over instead of bright violet here and almost-black red there.
The Mongolian sector flamed violet after the Siberian attempt was made. Power was switched from Africa, raising the dark continent higher into the red and lowering the dangerous violet of the Mongolian sector. A sortie hit Africa, and the area pulsed briefly into the yellow and died before the technician could hit his button.
North America caught it next, and power came from Antarctica to drive the invaders away. The Mongolian effort stopped and the map died into black. The extra power went into North America and it became a less dangerous color.
And then the Panamanian district flared up. Into the violet it went, and the switches flew to drive power into the isthmus. Spreckled all over the globe were minor flarings, and they all increased as the Panama Zone took more and more power and still crept upward and upward.
It was all very much like a game of chess here in Terra's Master Power Distribution Center. But on Panama, another scene was taking place.
Four thousand of the Loard-vogh dropped to ground, driven by sheer power and as they landed, they anchored themselves to the crust of Terra.
A super-atomic reached over and its sphere of energy clutched—another atomic sphere.
Their inflexible beams strained against one another. Wrestling in subelectronic space, pulling and straining against one another. The crust of Terra groaned and the fault-lines rubbed and heaved. The inflexible beams pulled, trying to up-root the other—and both were anchored to the crust of the planet.
Luckily, the beams broke before the very surface of Terra gave. The backlash shook Terra to the core and the tidal waves lashed out against the shorelines. The ground shook, and the resulting quakes did what the Loard-vogh had not been able to do. The quakes shook earthly damage into the cities of Terra.
The energy continued to pour into the Loard-vogh planethead. The air shimmered and burst away from the hemisphere of terror, and the resulting convections drew fresh air in to be heated to almost-incandescence and driven upward.
Hotang Lu faced Billy Thompson bitterly. "This secret weapon of yours," he demanded, "it was to win for us?"
"It is," said Billy.
"IS? Is it not time that it be used? The Loard-vogh are upon the planet itself. Death looks us in the face."
"It is not yet time."
"Once before you were under their control," said Hotang Lu sharply. "Your actions now—and for the past weeks of terror—lead me to believe you are again."
"I am not."
"And who can prove it?" argued Hotang Lu.
Kennebec shook his head. "He is the one who might prove it—if you cannot trust him, who can be trusted?"
"For this, Toralen Ki died," said Hotang Lu bitterly. "My friend—dead! He died in the hope that this very thing would not happen. He met death quickly, even argued with you for the chance. A friend walked into the valley of the shadow for Terra, and Terra sits by and spits on his life by doing nothing. I would—"
"Stop it," snarled Billy Thompson. "You and your ideas. You simple fools. To think that you believed that one small system could come up ten thousand years of evolution in a year and beat a quarter of the Galaxy! I'm fighting your battle, and yet I curse you all! Have you ever stopped to think that if it were not for you and Toralen Ki, we would not be in this killing battle? To die for an ideal is all right. Toralen Ki died happy, at least! He believed that he had done his part, and no more could he do. Fine! The Loard-vogh would have ignored us for another three thousand years if you had not come here and stirred us up. Now we reap the seed of your foolishness.
"Terra writhes under the energies poured out by more ships than we have men! Gone and lost are our hopes, and our peaceful future. Our secret weapon? Our secret weapon will be successful—and from then on Terra must ever be alert and on guard. Think you the Loard-vogh will bow to us? Our secret weapon must be used from now on, every day, every minute of every day from the time we unleash it to the end of eternity.
"And if you hadn't stirred us to it, peace would reign on Terra for another three thousand years."
Hotang Lu stepped back a pace, but faced the angry Terran firmly. "And your children's children, three thousand years removed would have this fight to make."
"So what? Does that bother me? Can I grow anxious over the certain knowledge that the Universe may end ten to fifty years from now? Who can predict? Perhaps three thousand years more of evolution and science would bring forth a weapon far superior to their best. And if we remained in mental ignorance, well—is the worm unhappy? Does the beetle miss the trappings of civilization? Does the ant know of Earth moving machinery? Does the bee employ electricity?
"So we fight another race's lost battle for them, brought about by them, hurled upon our shoulders by them, and you, their representative, question my motives. The secret weapon will be unleashed in time."
"Be careful lest you cut the line too fine," warned Hotang Lu. "You are my mental superior in capability, but not in training."
"Showing the fallacy of your actions," snapped Thompson. "Had you been wiser, you would have known that the untrained ability to be a genius is less important than a normal man working at high intensity. Question your own judgment, Hotang Lu. And worry—in retrospect!”
