The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 7 Against Planet X

BOB WAS STILL RUBBING the sleep out of his eyes the next morning as he came onto the field and approached the Lance of Deimos. Others had been up for hours, going over the rough figures and the projected orbit which Jakes had copied hastily while the old astronomer had been studying his next chess move.

It had been hard to imagine why Jakes had decided to pump the old man, just as it was hard to imagine his being good enough at either chess or at “buttering up” to get the information.

But the information on the sheet of paper had an authentic note. Apparently Smedley had been spending all his time studying Planet X. He had the advantage of being two thousand million miles nearer than any other trained observer. He had found a steady change in the orbit, had plotted it, and then checked it with later observation.

According to that, Planet X was heading inward to strike the orbit of Earth, and gaining speed every day. Whatever race was on, it must be driving the whole planet, just as men drove their spaceships, though at considerably less acceleration!

Jakes had claimed he had a headache after the chess session, and had gone to bed. But Bob, Juan and Commander Griffith sat up trying to find a flaw in the figures, without success.

They’d spent more time trying to see how it affected their plans and the value of the flight by Wing Nine, with no decision.

The little line moving up the ramp of the Lance of Deimos grew shorter. The checker took Bob’s card and stamped it with only a casual inspection, and Bob breathed easier. He hadn’t been told not to come; nor had he received orders to accompany the scouting trip.

Apparently his father had forgotten that Bob was supposed to be part of the Wing.

He killed time by putting his few belongings into his little bunk room until it was only a few minutes before take-off. Then he went up quietly to the control room and dropped into the soft acceleration seat that had replaced the older version. His father glanced up, and turned.

“How’d you get here?” he asked sharply.

“Showed my card and was checked in like the rest of your crew. You informed me Wing Nine was taking off this morning, sir, and I’m reporting for duty!”

For a second, something that might have been pain and fear flickered across Griffith’s face.

Then a taut smile replaced it, and there was pride in his slow nod. “Quite right, cadet. There can be no favoritism here. Glad you’re aboard.”

Anderson nodded cheerfully, and even Hoeck managed the ghost of a smile. They looked tense, but with excitement and expectation rather than fear. Bob hadn’t thought about being afraid, until then; surprisingly, he was not. He had the curious feeling that nothing too bad could happen to him in the Lance of Deimos. He knew it was nonsense, but it was pleasant nonsense. In another ship he’d probably have been scared stiff.

Blast-off was at a full five gravities of acceleration. It was Bob’s first experience with the new seats and he was amazed at how much difference they made. They couldn’t completely compensate for the pressure, since he had to be free to move, but it was easier to take five gravities with them than three without.

Outpost dropped behind sharply and was soon lost to sight. Ahead lay Neptune. They swung around the big planet, coming fairly close and letting its pull turn their course toward the place where Planet X would be. Bob noticed that Hoeck had based his course on the orbit Jakes had gotten from Dr. Smedley, and not on the predictions of the official Navy computer.

Then general call sounded in his radio, and he saw his father busy at the microphone. He was telling the personnel of all the ships everything that he had been able to find about the invading planet, including the fact that its orbit was believed to be changing. Most of what he had to say, they had partly learned before, but he obviously hadn’t wanted to brief them while they were still on Outpost. Rumors were not the same as official information to the men.

When his father had finished, the automatic pilot was on and there was little to do in the control room. Anderson’s voice sounded more relaxed, though only his eyes and hands showed through the skin of the seat. “I still don’t see how any race can live out that far from the sun,” he said. “Temperature must be about absolute zero.”

“They’d have to have some way of warming the planet,” Bob’s father answered. “No real science could develop without heat to handle metals. Any planet which can maneuver like a spaceship has a culture too advanced to suit me.”

Bob had his own puzzle. “But how did they escape discovery so long, then?” he wanted to know. “All right, maybe they were too far out for spotting by telescopes before this. But if they were traveling around in their ships, there should be some account of them.”

Griffith nodded. “I heard an unofficial statement that some scientists think the planet doesn’t belong to the sun at all. It may have somehow gotten loose from another star and come clear across space to us. In that case, we didn’t run into this race before because it’s just arriving in this section of the universe.”

“Which would make it even harder to see how they kept it warm,” Anderson said. “Atomic power would work for a while, but eventually they’d run short of power. At the speed they’re making, it would take thousands of years to cross from the nearest star to the sun.”

There were no answers to these questions. Their only hope of finding out was in the faint chance that they would be able to land on X and somehow establish communications. But even Griffith wasn’t too optimistic. If the planet was deliberately swinging down to Earth’s orbit, it didn’t look like too friendly a move.

The ships of Wing Nine went on piling up speed. The seats still worked perfectly, but they had one major disadvantage—a man couldn’t leave them to do anything beyond his immediate reach. Oh, he could stagger a few steps and back, but not enough to be of any use in a possible battle. That would still have to be fought at lower acceleration.

They were already decelerating when Planet X first began to show up on the screen of the telescope. It was a world slightly smaller than Earth, but a mere point on the screen.

“Right where Smedley’s orbit put it,” Griffith commented. “That seems to prove his theory.”

Bob would have been happier if Smedley had been wrong; his faith in the Lance wasn’t quite so strong as he stared out at the impossible planet toward which they were heading.

Hour by hour, it swelled in the screen. Nobody commented when the first sign of clouds showed up. They had known that somehow it had to be a planet warm enough for that—even though heat couldn’t possibly reach them from the sun, which lay over four thousand million miles away and was no more than a bright star on the screen.

It looked like a peaceful world though. The clouds were soft and fleecy, and there were signs of continents and seas below them. Like Earth, this planet seemed bluish-green from space, adding to the appearance of familiarity.

“Commander!” It was Anderson’s voice, suddenly sharp. He had stretched out a hand to point at one section of the screen. “Ships!”

They were tiny specks on the screen, perhaps a hundred of them. But they were in a flying-wing formation, and were moving rapidly. There was no mistaking the fact that it could only be a military force.

“They still might be peaceable,” Griffith said, but he sounded doubtful. “Try to contact them.”

Anderson took over the radio controls, by-passing Sparks, and there was a long, tense wait as the radio beam traveled out across the long distance separating the two groups. Then the answer came back. The Lance bucked faintly, as she had done in the encounter with the black ship. Anderson tried again, and again the ship received a backward jolt. This time it was followed by a blazing sphere of blue fire that sprang up fifty miles ahead of the ships and suddenly exploded. Another jolt was followed by another explosion at the same distance.

“Ultimatum,” Griffith guessed. “Either we go back, or we get that thrown at us. They speak pretty plain language down there!” He punched the intercom quickly. “Bombardiers, ready your lithium bombs!”

These were the most feared weapon of the fleet, and it spoke volumes for the fears of Earth that Wing Nine should have been equipped with the deadly things. Ten of them would be enough to make any world uninhabitable.

“We’ll pass right through them,” Anderson commented. He was licking his lips now, and Bob found that his own were dry. “At our speeds, we won’t even see them when we cut through. They can’t do much damage.”

Griffith made no comment. “All ships on full emergency,” he ordered sharply. “Don’t attack first. If attacked, observe no restrictions. We may be saved by our speed, but don’t count on it!”

There would have been no chance to cut their speed and flee back to Outpost, even if they had tried. Their momentum would carry them near Planet X, even if they used the maximum braking power.

No further threat had come from the black ships, all of which seemed identical with the one they had seen before. They were rushing closer, seeming to leap ahead on the screen. Now they were visible to the naked eye through the quartz viewport. In a fraction of a second they should be diminishing behind Wing Nine.

Suddenly, at a distance of a few miles, they stopped advancing! From full speed ahead, they were instantaneously moving backward to match the speed of Wing Nine exactly, and then seemed to hover motionless in space.

Commander Griffith gasped, and Hoeck’s mouth hung open slackly. No amount of power could do that; no metal known could stand the strain, much less living beings inside them. It represented infinite gravities of acceleration—in fact, it was meaningless. All the laws of momentum made it impossible.

“Cut thrust to one gravity,” Griffith ordered. “Then wait at your battle stations. No hostile moves without orders! Anderson, try to contact them again.”

The black ships matched the change in acceleration at once. They gave no answer to Anderson’s signals for a period of perhaps ten minutes.

Then abruptly one of them flashed up to the Lance. There was a faint sound of metal on metal from the hull. The air seemed to grow tense, and a faint feeling of strain hit at Bob’s body. For a moment his eyes blurred. Then the black ship was leaping ahead to its original position.

But now they were turned around and headed back toward Neptune—and obviously speeding back at the speed they had been making toward X before! Only a fraction of a second had passed, but their speed had been reversed and the whole ship turned about!

Bob had barely time to gasp before the fear telescreen showed black ships swinging the other ships of Wing Nine after them.

Bob’s father had grabbed for the microphone, but he was too late. One of the Wing captains had taken that for an attack. The dazzling lance of a proton rifle struck against the black ship, driving its screen up to a blinding blue, and the other ships were instantly following suit.

“Stop it! Cease fire immediately!” Griffith called. But the fury had started, and it was too late to quit.

Now one of the black ships leaped for the Navy ship that had fired first. With it went one of the blue spheres of ball lightning that had been exploded in space. This time it seemed to sink into the Navy ship, leisurely and without fuss. The ship suddenly exploded, leaving only dust where it had been!

Commander Griffith groaned. “Lithium bombs!” he ordered tensely. It was too late now to hold off the battle. All they could do was to hope the dread weapons would end it in their favor.

At close quarters, the result was instantaneous. Fury beyond description blazed out as a lithium bomb hit one of the black ships. And even their screens couldn’t take that. The bulk of the Planet X ship seemed to slump and melt in on itself. Bob saw it eaten away in the radar screen; automatic screens had covered all other viewing plates and ports, to keep the fatal radiation out of the Navy ships. Even through airless space, the shock wave of exploding atoms hit the Lance, and made her buck under them.

Twenty lithium bombs had been released against the leading Planet X ships. Some targets were duplicated, but seventeen of the black ships disappeared on the first salvo.

The second salvo went off almost as quickly, but some of the black ships were leaping away at impossible speeds. This time less than a dozen of the aliens were destroyed. The rest were now at too great a distance for quick destruction.

But more bombs were on their way. Bright green streaks on the radar screen showed their paths—and suddenly showed them turning over and heading back toward the ships of Wing Nine!

Griffith yanked at the controls, and a full ten gravities of pressure hit at Bob as the Lance leaped ahead. Other ships were doing the same, but some had been too slow. They were abruptly caught in the inferno of their own exploding bombs.

There was no time to count damages. Griffith piled on the acceleration steadily, heading back for Outpost. “Full retreat,” he was ordering. “Break ranks and separate. Some ships have to get back to base to report!”

One ship from the Wing must have had a foolhardy captain, because another lithium bomb was launched then. From a black ship, a sphere of lightning touched it and exploded it harmlessly. Then more spheres came rushing toward the ships, the black ships diving after them.

Bob had had too much. He buried his eyes by turning his head into the seat, until the explosions were over. When he looked again, the black ships were massed solidly behind them, and there were only three of the twenty Wing ships still operating.

The black ships darted forward in a solid wall, then halted. But all the fools in Griffith’s command had already been killed off. There was no one left to go in for bravado or useless attack on the aliens. The three ships that were left of the Navy forces were all heading homeward at their top acceleration, spreading apart as they went.

The black ships re-formed into another flying wedge and began to fade back toward Planet X.

Bob’s father picked up his microphone as he cut the acceleration back to a bearable level.

“All ships report,” he ordered wearily.

“Carter of the Mimas Arrow, here.”

“Wolff of the Achilles Arrow, here.”

“Form up behind me,” Griffith ordered them. “And prepare your reports. Radio silence until we reach Outpost. We can’t let this leak out.”

He cut the connection. His face was worn and old and there was no life in his eyes.

Bob knew how he felt. His own mind was a turmoil of disbelief, fright, misery, and complete hopelessness. They had gone out to try to prevent a war. And now they were going back, completely defeated, to report that the war had already come as a result of their mission.

A war they obviously could never win!