Triplanetary - E. E. Smith (phonics reader TXT) 📗

“Well, that’s another round we lose,” Costigan commented, cheerfully. “A guy can’t mix it very well when he can neither kick, strike, nor bite. I expected those lizards to rough me up then, but they didn’t.”

“They don’t want to hurt us. They want to take us home with them, wherever that is, as curiosities, like wild animals or something,” decided the girl, shrewdly. “They’re pretty bad, of course, but I like them a lot better than I do Roger and his robots, anyway.”

“I think you have the right idea, Miss Marsden,” Bradley rumbled. “That’s it, exactly. I feel like a bear in a cage. I should think you’d feel worse than ever. What chance has an animal of escaping from a menagerie?”

“These animals, lots. I’m feeling better and better all the time,” Clio declared, and her serene bearing bore out her words. “You two got us out of that horrible place of Roger’s, and I’m pretty sure that you will get us away from here, somehow or other. They may think we’re stupid animals, but before you two and the Triplanetary Patrol and the Service get done with them they’ll have another think coming.”

“That’s the old fight, Clio!” cheered Costigan. “I haven’t got it figured out as close as you have, but I get about the same answer. These four-legged fish carry considerably heavier stuff than Roger did, I’m thinking; but they’ll be up against something themselves pretty quick that is no lightweight, believe me!”

“Do you know something, or are you just whistling in the dark?” Bradley demanded.

“I know a little; not much. Engineering and Research have been working on a new ship for a long time; a ship to travel so much faster than light that it can go anywhere in the Galaxy and back in a month or so. New sub-ether drive, new atomic power, new armament, new everything. Only bad thing about it is that it doesn’t work so good yet⁠—it’s fuller of bugs than a Venerian’s kitchen. It has blown up five times that I know of, and has killed twenty-nine men. But when they get it licked they’ll have something!”

“When, or if?” asked Bradley, pessimistically.

“I said when!” snapped Costigan, his voice cutting. “When the Service goes after anything they get it, and when they get it it stays.⁠ ⁠…” He broke off abruptly and his voice lost its edge. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get high, but I think we’ll have help, if we can keep our heads up a while. And it looks good⁠—these are first-class cages they’ve given us. All the comforts of home, even to lookout plates. Let’s see what’s going on, shall we?”

After some experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone of Battle hurling itself toward Roger’s planetoid. They saw the pirate fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary’s massed forces, and with bated breath they watched every maneuver of that epic battle to its savagely sacrificial end. And that same battle was being watched, also with the most intense interest, by the Nevians in their control room.

“It is indeed a bloodthirsty combat,” mused Nerado at his observation plate. “And it is peculiar⁠—or rather, probably only to be expected from a race of such a low stage of development⁠—that they employ only ether-borne forces. Warfare seems universal among primitive types⁠—indeed, it is not so long ago that our own cities, few in number though they are, ceased fighting each other and combined against the semicivilized fishes of the greater deeps.”

He fell silent, and for many minutes watched the furious battle between the two navies of the void. That conflict ended, he watched the Triplanetary fleet reform its battle cone and rush upon the planetoid.

“Destruction, always destruction,” he sighed, adjusting his power switches. “Since they are bent upon mutual destruction I can see no purpose in refraining from destroying all of them. We need the iron, and they are a useless race.”

He launched his softening, converting field of dull red energy. Vast as that field was, it could not encompass the whole fleet, but half of the lip of the gigantic cone soon disappeared, its component vessels subsiding into a sluggishly flowing stream of allotropic iron. The fleet, abandoning its attack upon the planetoid, swung its cone around, to bring the flame-erupting axis to bear upon the formless something dimly perceptible to the ultra-vision of Samms’ observers. Furiously the gigantic composite beam of the massed fleet was hurled, nor was it alone.

For Gharlane had known, ever since the easy escape of his human prisoners, that something was occurring which was completely beyond his experience, although not beyond his theoretical knowledge. He had found the sub-ether closed; he had been unable to make his sub-ethereal weapons operative against either the three captives or the war-vessels of the Triplanetary Patrol. Now, however, he could work in the sub-ethereal murk of the newcomers; a light trial showed him that if he so wished he could use sub-ethereal offenses against them. What was the real meaning of those facts?

He had become convinced that those three persons were no more human than was Roger himself. Who or what was activating them? It was definitely not Eddorian workmanship; no Eddorian would have developed those particular techniques, nor could possibly have developed them without his knowledge. What, then? To do what had been done necessitated the existence of a race as old and as capable as the Eddorians, but of an entirely different nature; and, according to Eddore’s vast Information Center, no such race existed or ever had existed.

Those visitors, possessing mechanisms supposedly known only to the science of Eddore, would also be expected to possess the mental powers which had been exhibited. Were they recent arrivals from some other space-time continuum? Probably not⁠—Eddorian surveys had found no trace of any such life in any reachable plenum. Since it would be utterly fantastic to postulate the unheralded appearance of two such races at practically