The Skylark of Space - E. E. Smith (e book reading free txt) 📗

it I couldn’t have let go. We’ll block that game quick enough, though. Thick, dry gloves covered with rubber are all that is necessary. It’s a good thing for all of us that you have those fancy condensite handles on your levers, Seaton.”

“That was how they got Dunark, undoubtedly,” said Crane, as he sent a brief message to the girls, assuring them that all was well, as he had been doing at every respite. “But why were we not overcome at the same time?”

“They must have had the current tuned to iridium, and had to experiment until they found the right wave for steel,” Seaton explained.

“I should think our bar would have exploded, with all that current. They must have hit the copper range, too?”

Seaton frowned in thought before he answered.

“Maybe because it’s induced current, and not a steady battery impulse. Anyway, it didn’t. Let’s go!”

“Just a minute,” put in Crane. “What are they going to do next, Dick?”

“Search me. I’m not used to my new Osnomian mind yet. I recognize things all right after they happen, but I can’t seem to figure ahead⁠—it’s like a dimly-remembered something that flashes up as soon as mentioned. I get too many and too new ideas at once. I know, though, that the Osnomians have defenses against all these things except this last stunt of the charged guns. That must be the new one that Mardonale stole from Kondal. The defenses are, however, purely Osnomian in character and material. As we haven’t got the stuff to set them up as the Osnomians do, we’ll have to do it our own way. We may be able to dope out the next one, though. Let’s see, what have they given us so far?”

“We’ve got to hand it to them,” responded DuQuesne, admiringly. “They’re giving us the whole range of wavelengths, one at a time. They’ve given us light, both ultraviolet and visible, sound, infra-sound, and electricity⁠—I don’t know what’s left unless they give us a new kind of X-rays, or Hertzian, or infrared heat waves, or⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s it, heat!” exclaimed Seaton. “They produce heat by means of powerful wave-generators and by setting up heavy induced currents in the armor. They can melt arenak that way.”

“Do you suppose we can handle the heat with our refrigerators?” asked Crane.

“Probably. We have a lot of power, and the new arenak cylinders of our compressors will stand anything. The only trouble will be in cooling the condensers. We’ll run as long as we have any water in our tanks, then go dive into the ocean to cool off. We’ll try it a whirl, anyway.”

Soon the Skylark was again dealing out death and destruction in the thick of the enemy vessels, who again turned from the devastation of the helpless city to destroy this troublesome antagonist. But in spite of the utmost efforts of light-waves, sound-waves, and high-tension electricity, the space-car continued to take its terrible toll. As Seaton had foretold, the armor of the Skylark began to grow hot, and he turned on the full power of the refrigerating system. In spite of the cooling apparatus, however, the outer walls finally began to glow redly, and, although the interior was comfortably cool, the ends of the rifle-barrels, which were set flush with the surface of the revolving arenak globes which held them, softened, rendering the guns useless. The copper repellers melted and dripped off in flaming balls of molten metal, so that shells once more began to crash against the armor. DuQuesne, with no thought of quitting apparent in voice or manner, said calmly:

“Well, it looks as though they had us stopped for a few minutes. Let’s go back into space and dope out something else.”

Seaton, thinking intensely, saw a vast fleet of enemy reinforcements approaching, and at the same time received a wireless call directed to Dunark. It was from the grand fleet of Kondal, hastening from the bordering ocean to the defense of the city. Using Dunark’s private code, Seaton told the Karbix, who was in charge of the fleet, that the enemy had a new invention which would wipe them out utterly without a chance to fight, and that he and his vessel were in control of the situation; and ordered him to see that no Kondalian ship came within battle range of a Mardonalian. He then turned to Crane and DuQuesne, his face grim and his fighting jaw set.

“I’ve got it doped right now. Give the Lark speed enough and she’s some bullet herself. We’ve got four feet of arenak, they’ve got only an inch, and arenak doesn’t even begin to soften until far above a blinding white temperature. Strap yourselves in solid, for it’s going to be a rough party from now on.”

They buckled their belts firmly, and Seaton, holding the bar toward their nearest antagonist, applied twenty notches of power. The Skylark darted forward and crashed completely through the great airship. Torn wide open by the forty-foot projectile, its engines wrecked and its helicopter-screws and propellers completely disabled, the helpless hulk plunged through two miles of empty air, a mass of wreckage.

Darting hither and thither, the space-car tore through vessel after vessel of the Mardonalian fleet. She was an embodied thunderbolt; a huge, irresistible, indestructible projectile, directed by a keen brain inside it⁠—the brain of Richard Seaton, roused to his highest fighting pitch and fighting for everything that man holds dear. Tortured by the terrible silent waves, which, now that the protecting vacuum had been destroyed, were only partially stopped by the fur suits; shaken and battered by the terrific impacts and the even greater shocks occurring every second as the direction of the vessel was changed; made sick and dizzy by the nauseating swings and lurches as the Skylark spun about the central chamber; Seaton’s wonderful physique and his nerves of steel stood him in good stead in this, the supreme battle of his life, as with teeth tight-locked and eyes gray and hard as the fracture of high-carbon