Islands of Space - John W. Campbell (pdf to ebook reader TXT) 📗

“I think we’d better get moving,” Arcot said. “We can’t let a magnetic ray touch us now; it would kill Torlos. I’m going to cut in the invisibility units, so don’t use the heat beams whatever you do!”

Arcot snapped the ship into invisibility and darted to one side. The enemy ships suddenly halted in their wild rush and looked around in amazement for their opponent.

Arcot was heading for the magnetic force field which surrounded the city when Torlos made a mistake. He turned the powerful heat beam downwards and picked off an enemy battleship. It fell, a blazing wreck, but the ray touched a building behind it, and the ionized air established a conducting path between the ship and the planet.

The apparatus was not designed to make a planet invisible, but it made a noble effort. As a result one of the tubes blew, and the Ancient Mariner was visible again. Arcot had no time to replace the tube; the Satorian fleet kept him too busy.

Arcot drove the ship, shooting, twisting upward; Wade and Morey kept firing the molecular beams with precision. The pale rays reached out to touch the battleship, and wherever they touched, the ships went down in wreckage, falling to the city below. In spite of the odds against it, the Ancient Mariner was giving a good account of itself.

And always, Arcot was working the ship toward the magnetic wall and the base of the city.

Suddenly, giant pneumatic guns from below joined in the battle, hurling huge explosive shells toward the Earth-ship. They managed to hit the Ancient Mariner twice, and each time the ship was staggered by the force of the blast, but the foot-thick armor of lux metal ignored the explosions.

The magnetic rays touched them a few times, and each time Torlos was thrown violently to the floor, but the ship was in the path of the beams for so short a time that he was not badly injured. He more than made up for his injuries with the ray he used, and Morey was no mean gunner, either, judging from the work he was doing.

Three ships attempted to commit suicide in their efforts to destroy the Earthmen. They were only semi-successful; they managed to commit suicide. In trying to crash into the ship, they were simply caught by Morey’s or Wade’s molecular beam and thrown away. Morey actually developed a use for them. He caught them in the beam and used them as bullets to smash the other ships, throwing them about on the molecular ray until they were too cold to move.

Arcot finally managed to reach the magnetic wall.

“Wade!” he called. “Get that projector building!”

A molecular beam reached down, and the black metal dome sailed high into the sky, breaking the solidity of the magnetic wall. An instant later, the Ancient Mariner shot through the gap. In a few moments, they would be far away from the city.

Torlos seemed to realize this. Moving quickly, he pushed Morey away from the molecular beam projector, taking the controls away from him.

He did not realize the power of that ray; he did not know that these projectors could move whole suns out of their orbits. He only knew that they were destructive. They were several miles from the city when he turned the projector on it, after twisting the power control up.

To his amazement, he saw the entire city suddenly leap into the air and flash out into space, a howling meteor that vanished into the cloudbank overhead. Behind it was a deep hole in the planet’s surface, a mighty chasm lined with dark granite.

Torlos stared at it in amazement and horror.

Arcot turned back slowly, and they sailed over the spot where the city had been. They saw a dozen or so battleships racing away from them to spread the news of the disaster; they were the few which had been fortunate enough to be outside the city when the beam struck.

Arcot maneuvered the ship directly over the mighty pit and sank slowly down, using the great searchlights to illuminate the dark chasm. Far, far down, he could see the solid rock of the bottom. The thing was miles deep.

Then Arcot lifted the ship and headed up through the cloud layer and into the bright light of the great yellow sun, above the sea of gray misty clouds.

Arcot signalled Morey, who had come into the control room, to take over the controls of the ship. “Head out into space, Morey. I want to find out why Torlos pulled that last stunt. Wade, will you put a new tube in the invisibility unit?”

“Sure,” Wade replied. “By the way, what happened back there? We were surprised as the very devil to hear you yelling for help; everything seemed peaceful up to then.”

Arcot flexed his bruised hands and grinned ruefully. “Plenty happened.” He went on to explain to Wade and Fuller what had happened in their meeting with the Satorian Commander.

“Nice bunch of people to deal with,” Wade said caustically. “They tried to get everything and lost it all. We would have given them plenty if they’d been decent about it. But what sort of war is this that the people of these two planets are carrying on, anyway?”

“That’s the question I intend to settle,” replied Arcot. “We haven’t had an opportunity to talk to Torlos yet. He had just admitted to me that he was a spy for Nansal when the fun began, and we’ve been too busy to ask questions ever since. Come on, let’s go into the library.”

Arcot indicated to Torlos that he was to go with him. Wade and Fuller followed.

When they had all seated themselves, Arcot began the telepathic questioning. “Torlos, why did you force Morey to leave the ray and then destroy the city? You certainly had no reason to kill all the noncombatant women and children in that city, did you? And why, after I told you absolutely not to use the