Galactic Patrol

3: In the Lifeboats

The missile struck, and in the instant of its striking the coldly brilliant stars were blotted from sight in a vast globe of intolerable flame. The pirate's shield had failed, and under the cataclysmic force of that horrific detonation the entire nose–section of the enemy vessel had flashed into incandescent vapor and had added itself to the rapidly expanding cloud of fire. As it expanded the cloud cooled. Its fierce glare subsided to a rosy glow, through which the stars again began to shine. It faded, cooled, darkened—revealing the crippled hulk of the pirate ship. She was still fighting, but ineffectually, now that all her heavy forward batteries were gone.

"Needlers, fire at will!" barked Kinnison, and even that feeble resistance was ended. Keen–eyed needle–ray men, working at spy–ray visiplates, bored hole after hole into the captive, seeking out and destroying the control– panels of the remaining beams and screens.

"Pull 'er up!" came the next order. The two ships of space flashed together, the yawning, blasted–open fore–end of the raider solidly against the Brittania's armored side. A great port opened.

"Now, Bus, it's all yours. Classification to six places, straight A's— they're human or approximately so. Board and storm!"

Back of that port there had been massed a hundred fighting men, dressed in full panoply of space armor, armed with the deadliest weapons known to the science of the age, and powered by the gigantic accumulators of their ship. At their head was Sergeant vanBuskirk, six and a half feet of Dutch Valerian dynamite, who had fallen out of Valerian Cadet Corps only because of an innate inability to master the intricacies of higher mathematics. Now the attackers swept forward in a black–and–silver wave.

Four squatly massive semi–portable projectors crashed down upon their magnetic clamps and in the fierce ardor of their beams the thick bulkhead before them ran the gamut of the spectrum and puffed outward. Some score of defenders were revealed, likewise clad in armor, and battle again was joined. Explosive and solid bullets detonated against and ricocheted from that highly efficient armor, the beams of DeLameter hand–projectors splashed in torrents of man–made lightning off its protective fields of force. But that skirmish was soon over. The semi–portables, whose vast energies no ordinary personal armor could withstand, were brought up and clamped down, and in their holocaust of vibratory destruction all life vanished from the pirates' compartment.

"One more bulkhead and we're in their control room!" vanBuskirk cried. Beam it down!" But when the beamers pressed their switches nothing happened. The pirates had managed to jury–rig a screen generator, and with it had cut the power–beams behind the invading forces. Also they had cut loop–holes in the bulkhead, through which in frantic haste they were trying to bring heavy projectors of their own into alignment. "Bring up the ferral paste," the sergeant commanded. "Get up as close to that wall as you can, so they can't blast us!"

The paste—successor to thermite—was brought up and the giant Dutchman troweled it on in furious swings, from floor up and around in a huge arc and back down to floor. He fired it, and simultaneously some of the enemy gunners managed to angle a projector sharply enough to reach the further ranks of the Patrolmen. Then mingled the flashing, scintillating, gassy glare of the thermite and the raving energy of the pirates' beam to make of that confined space a veritable inferno.

But the paste had done its work, and as the semi–circle of wall fell out the soldiers of the Lens leaped through the hole in the still–glowing wall to struggle handtohand against the pirates, now making a desperate last stand. The semi–portables and other heavy ordnance powered from the Brittania were of course useless. Pistols were ineffective against the pirates' armor of hard alloy, hand–rays were equally impotent against its defensive shields. Now heavy hand–grenades began to rain down among the combatants, blowing Patrolmen and pirates alike to bits—for the outlaw chiefs cared nothing that they killed many of their own men if in so doing they could take toll of the Law. And worse, a crew of gunners was swiveling a mighty projector around upon its hastily– improvised mount to cover that sector of the compartment in which the policemen were most densely massed.

But the minions of the Law had one remaining weapon, carried expressly for this eventuality. The space–axe—a combination and sublimation of battle–axe, mace, bludgeon, and lumberman's picaroon, a massively needle–pointed implement of potentialities limited only by the physical strength and bodily agility of its wielder. Now all the men of the Britannia's storming party were Valerians, and therefore were big, hard, fast, and agile, and of them all their sergeant leader was the biggest, hardest, fastest, and most agile. When the space– tempered apex of that thirty–pound monstrosity, driven by the four–hundred–odd pounds of rawhide and whalebone that was his body, struck pirate armor that armor gave way. Nor did it matter whether or not that hellish beak of steel struck a vital part after crashing through the armor. Head or body, leg or arm, the net result was the same, a man does not fight effectively when he is breathing space in lieu of atmosphere.

VanBuskirk perceived the danger to his men in the slowly turning projector and for the first time called his chief. "Kim," he spoke in level tones into his microphone. "Blast that delta–ray, will you?…Or have they cut this beam, so you can't hear me?…Guess they have." "They've cut our communication," he informed his troopers then. "Keep them off me as much as you can and I'll attend to that delta–ray outfit myself."

Aided by the massed interference of his men he plunged toward the threatening mechanism, hewing to right and to left as he strode. Beside the temporary projectormount at last, he aimed a tremendous blow at the man at the deltaray controls, only to feel the axe flash instantaneously to its mark and strike it with a gentle push, and to see his Intended victim float effortless away from the blow. The pirate commander had played his last card, vanBuskirk floundered, not only weightless, but inertialess as well!

But the huge Dutchman's mind, while not mathematical, was even faster than his muscles, and not for nothing had he spent arduous weeks in inertialess tests of strength and skill. Hooking feet and legs around a convenient wheel he seized the enemy operator and jammed his helmeted head down between the base of the mount and the long, heavy steel lever by means of which it was turned. Then, throwing every ounce of his wonderful body into the effort, he braced both feet against the projector's grim barrel and heaved. The helmet flew apart like an eggshell, blood and brains gushed out in nauseous blobs, but the delta–ray projector was so jammed that it would not soon again become a threat.

Then vanBuskirk drew himself across the room toward the main control panel of the warship. Officer after officer he pushed aside, then reversed two double– throw switches, restoring gravity and inertia to the riddled cruiser.

In the meantime the tide of battle had continued in favor of the Patrol. Few survivors though there were of the black–and–silver force, of the pirates there were still fewer, fighting now a desperate and hopeless defensive. But in this combat quarter was not, could not be thought of, and Sergeant vanBuskirk again waded into the fray. Four times more his horribly effective hybrid weapon descended like the hammer of Thor, cleaving and crushing its way through steel and flesh and bone. Then, striding to the control board, he manipulated switches and dials, then again spoke evenly to Kinnison.

"You can hear me now, can't you?…All mopped up—come and get the dope!"

The specialists, headed by Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke, had been waiting strainingly for that word for minutes. Now they literally flew at their tasks, in furious haste, but following rigidly and in perfect coordination a prearranged schedule. Every control and lead, every busbar and immaterial beam of force was traced and checked. Instruments and machines were dismantled, sealed mechanisms were ruthlessly torn apart by jacks or sliced open with cutting beams. And everywhere, every thing and every movement was being photographed, charted, and diagramed.

"Getting the idea now, Kim," Thorndyke said finally, during a brief lull in his work. "A sweet system…* * . "Look at this!" a mechanic interrupted. "Here's a machine that's all shot to hell!"

The shielding cover had been torn from a. monstrous fabrication of metal, apparently a motor or 'generator of an exceedingly complex type. The insulation of its coils and windings had fallen away in charred fragments, its copper had melted down in sluggish, viscous streams.

"That's what we're looking for!" Thorndyke shouted. "Check those leads! Alpha!"

"Seven–three–nine–four!" and the minutely careful study went on until.

"That's enough, we've got everything we need now. Have you draftsmen and photographers got everything down solid?"

"On the boards!" and "In the cans!" rapped out the two reports as one.

"Then let's go!"

"And go fast!" Kinnison ordered, briskly. "I'm afraid we're going to run out of time as it is!"

All hands hurried back into the Brittania, paying no attention to the bodies littering the decks. So desperate was the emergency, each man knew, that nothing could be done about the dead, whether friend or foe. Every resource of mechanism, of brain and of brawn, must needs be strained to the utmost if they themselves were not soon to be in similar case.

"Can you talk, Nels?" demanded Kinnison of his Communications Officer, even before the air–lock had closed.

"No, sir, they're blanketing us solid," that worthy replied instantly. "Space's so full of static you couldn't drive a power–beam through it, let alone a communicator. Couldn't talk direct, anyway—look where we are," and he pointed out in the tank their present location.

"Hm–m–m. Couldn't have got much farther away without jumping the galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back there or from the disturbance. They're undoubtedly concentrating on us now…One of them will spear us with a tractor, just as sure as hell's a man–trap…'

The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought in black intensity. He must get this data back to Base—but how? HOW? Henderson was already driving the vessel back toward Sol with every iota of her inconceivable top speed, but it was out of the question even to hope that she would ever get there. The life of the Brittania was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours—and all too scant measure, even of them. For there must be hundreds of pirate vessels even now tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net to cut off her return to Base. Fast though she was, one of that barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp on a tractor—and when that happened her flight was done.

Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first–class war–vessel of the public enemy, it was true, but at what awful cost! One fresh vessel could blast his crippled mount out of space, nor would there be only one. Within a space of minutes after the attachment of a tracer the Brittania would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone a fighters. There was only one chance, and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly, young Lieutenant Kinnison—now and briefly Captain Kinnison—decided to take it.

"Listen, everybody!" he ordered. "We must get this information back to Base, and we can't do it in the Brittania. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in an

other fight is exactly zero. We'll have to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the hope that at least one will be able to get through.

"The technicians and specialists will take all the data they, got— information, descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything—boil it down, and put it on a spool of tape.

They will make about a hundred copies of it. The crew and the Valerian privates will man boats starting with Number Twenty One and blast off as soon as you can get your tapes. Once away, use very little detectable power, or better yet no power at all, until you're sure the pirates have chased the Brittania a good many parsecs away from where you are.

"The rest of us—specialist and the Valerian non–coms—will go last. Twenty boats, two men to a boat, and each man will have a spool. We'll start launching when we're as far as it's safe to go. Each boat will be strictly on its own. Do it any way you can, but some way, any way, get your spool back to Base. There's no use in me trying to impress you with the importance of this stuff, you know what it means as well as I do.

"Boatmates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names—and his own, to make it forty even—on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at a time. If two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the pot. Get to work!"

Twice the name of "Kinnison" came out together with that of another skilled in astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it came out paired with "vanBuskirk," to the manifest joy of the giant Valerian and to the approval of the crowd as well.

"That was a break for me, Kim!" the sergeant called, over the cheers of his fellows. "I'm sure of getting back now!"

"That's throwing the off, big fellow—but I don't know of anybody I'd rather have at my back than you," Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.

The pairings were made, DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment were checked and tested, the spools of tape were sealed in their corrosion–proof containers and distributed, and Kinnison sat talking with the Master Technician.

"So they've solved the problem of the really efficient reception and conversion of cosmic radiation!" Kinnison whistled softly through his teeth. "And a sun—even a small one—radiates the energy given off by the annihilation of one–to–several million tone of matter. per second! SOME power!"

"That's the story, Skipper, and it explains completely why their ships have been so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster drives even than the Brittania's—they probably will, now that it has become necessary. Also, if the bus–bars in that receptor–convertor had been a few square centimeters larger in cross–section, they could have held their wall– shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what?…They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution."

"Whey have atomic motors, the same as ours, just as big and just as efficient," Kinnison cogitated. "But those motors are all we have got, while they use them, and at full power, too, simply as first–stage exciters for the cosmic–energy screens. Blinding blue blazes, what power! Some of us have got to get back, Verne. If we don't, Boskone's got the whole galaxy by the tail, and civilization is sunk without a trace."

"I'll say so, but also I'll say this for those of us who doe t get back— it won't be for lack of trying. Well, better I go check my boat. If I don't see you again, Kim old man, clear ether!"

They shook hands briefly and Thorndyke strode away. Enroute, however, he paused beside the quartermaster and signaled to him to disconnect his communicator.

"Clever lad, Allerdyce!" Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. "Kinds loaded the dice a trifle once or twice, didn't you? I don't think anybody but me smelled a rat, though. Certainly neither the skipper nor Henderson did, or you'd've had it to do over again."

"At least one team has got to get through," Allerdyce replied, quietly and obliquely, "and the strongest teams we can muster will find the going none too easy. Any team made up of strength and weakness is a weak team. Kinnison, our only Lensman, is of course the best man aboard this buzz–buggy. Who would you pick for number two?"

"VanBuskirk, of course, the same as you did. I wasn't criticizing you, man, I was complimenting you, and thanking you, in a roundabout way, for giving me Henderson.

He's got plenty of what it takes, too."

"It wasn't vanBuskirk, of course, by any means," the quartermaster rejoined. "It's mighty hard to figure either you or Henderson third, to say nothing of fourth, in any kind of company, however fast–mentally and physically. However, it seemed to me that you fitted in better with the pilot. I could hand–pick only two teams without getting caught at it—you spotted me as it was—but I think I picked the two strongest teams possible. One of you will get through—if none of you four can make it, nobody could."

"Well, here's hoping, anyway. Thanks again. See you again some time, maybe—clear ether!"

Chief Pilot Henderson had, a few minutes since, changed the course of the cruiser from right–line flight to fantastic, zig–zag leaps through space, and now he turned frowningly to Kinnison.

"We'd better begin dumping them out pretty soon now, I think," be suggested. "We haven't detected anything yet, but according to the figures it won't be long now, and after they get their traps set we'll run out of time mighty quick."

"Right," and one after another, but even so several light–years apart in space, eighteen of the small boats were launched into the void. In the control room there were left only Henderson and Thorndyke with vanBuskirk and Kinnison, who were of course to be the last to leave the vessel.

"All right, Hen, now we'll try out your roulette–wheel director–by– chance," Kinnison said, then went on, in answer to Thorndyke's questioning glance. "A bouncing ball on an oscillating table. Every time the ball carroms off a pin it shifts the course through a fairly large, but unpredictable angle. Pure chance—we thought it might cross them up a little."

Hairline beams were connected from panels to pins, and soon four interested spectators looked on while, with no human guidance, the Brittania lurched and leaped even more erratically than she had done under Henderson's direction. Now, however, the ever–changing vectors of her course were as unexpected and surprising to her passengers as to any possible external observer.

One more lifeboat left the vessel, and only the Lensman and his giant aide remained. While they were waiting the required few minutes before their own departure, Kinnison spoke.

"Bus, there's one more thing we ought to do, and I've just figured out how to do it. We don't want this ship to fall into the pirates' hands intact, as there's a lot of stuff in her that would probably be as new to them as it was to us. They know we got the best of that ship of theirs, but they don't know what we did or how. On the other hand, we want her to drive on as long as possible after we leave her—the farther away fron2 us she gets, the better our chance of getting away. We should have something to touch off those duodec torpedoes we have left—all seven at once—at the first touch of a spy beam, both to keep them from studying her and to do a little damage if possible—they'll go inert and pull her up close as soon as they get a tracer on her. Of course we can't do it by stopping the spy–ray altogether, with a spyscreen, but I think I can establish an R7TX7M field outside our regular screens that will interfere with a TX7 just enough—say one–tenth of one percent—to actuate a relay in the field–supporting beam."

"One–tenth of one percent of one milliwatt is one microwatt, isn't it? Not much power, I'd say, but that's a little out of my line. Go ahead—IM observe while you're busy."

Thus it came about that, a few minutes later, the immense sky–rover of the Galactic Patrol darted along entirely untenanted. And it was her non–human helmsman, operating solely by chance, that prolonged the chase far more than even the most optimistic member of her crew could have hoped. For the pilots of the pirate pursuers were Intelligent,.and assumed that their quarry also was directed by intelligence. Therefore they aimed their vessels for points toward which the Brittania should logically go, only and maddeningly to watch her go somewhere else. Senselessly she hurled herself directly toward enormous suns, once grazing one so nearly that the harrying pirates gasped at the foolhardiness of such exposure to lethal radiation. For no reason at all she shot straight backward, almost into a cluster of pirate craft, only to dash off on another unexpected tangent before the startled outlaws could lay a beam against her.

But finally she did it once too often. Flying between two vessels, she held her line the merest fraction of a second too long. Two tractors lashed out and the three vessels flashed together, zone to zone to zone. Then, instantly, the two pirate ships became inert, to anchor in apace their wildly fleeing prey. Then spy–beams licked out, to explore the Brittania's interior.

At the touch of those beams, light and delicate as they were, the relay clicked and the torpedoes let go. Those frightful shells were so designed and so charged that one of them could demolish any inert structure known to man, what of seven? There was an explosion to stagger the imagination and which must be left to the imagination, since no words in any language of the galaxy can describe it adequately.

The Brittania, literally blown to bits, more–than–half fused and partially volatilized by the inconceivable fury of the outburst, was hurled in all directions in streamers, droplets, chunks, and masses, each component part urged away from the center of pressure by the ragingly compressed gases of detonation. Furthermore, each component was now of course inert and therefore capable of giving up its full measure of kinetic energy to any inert object with which it should come in contact.

One mass of wreckage, so fiercely sped that its victim had time neither to dodge nor become inertialess, crashed full against the side of the nearer attacker. Meteorite screens flared brilliantly violet and went down. The full– driven wall–shield held, but so terrific was the concussion that what few of the crew were not killed outright would take no interest in current events for many hours to come.

The other, slightly more distant attacker was more fortunate. Her commander had had time to render her inertialess, and as she rode lightly away, ahead of the outermost, most tenuous fringe of vapor, he reported succinctly to his headquarters all that had transpired. There was a brief interlude of silence, then a speaker gave tongue.

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone," snapped from it. "Your report is neither complete nor conclusive. Find, study, photograph, and bring in to headquarters every fragment and particle pertaining to the wreckage, paying particular attention to all bodies or portions thereof."

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!" roared from the general–wave unscrambler. "Commanders of all vessels, of every class and tonnage, upon whatever mission bound, attention! The vessel referred to in our previous message has been destroyed, but it is feared that some or all of her personnel were allowed to escape. Every unit of that personnel must be killed before he has opportunity to communicate with any Patrol base. Therefore cancel your present orders, whatever they may be, and proceed at maximum blast to the region previously designated. Scour that entire volume of space. Beam out of existence every vessel whose papers do not account unquestionably for every intelligent being aboard. Investigate every possible avenue of escape. More detailed orders will be given each of you upon your nearer approach to the neighborhood under search."