"What kind of an eye was that—ever see anything like it, Perce?" Brandon demanded.

"I don't think so, though of course we got only an awfully short flash of it. It didn't look like the periscopic eyes that those flying snakes had—looked more like a hexan eye, don't you think? Couldn't very well be hexan, though, in that kind of a ship."

"Don't think so, either. Maybe it's a purely mechanical affair that they use for observing. Anyway, old sons, I don't like the looks of things at all. Quince, you're the brains of this outfit—shift the massive old intellect into high and tell us what to do."

Westfall, staring into the eyepiece of the filar micrometer, finished measuring the apparent size of the heptagon before he turned toward Stevens and Brandon.

"It is hard to decide upon a course of action, since anything that we do may prove to be wrong," he said, slowly. "However, I do not see that this latest development can operate to change the plan we have already adopted; that of running away, straight out from the sun. We may have to increase our acceleration to the highest value the women and babies can stand. A series of observations of our pursuer will, of course, be necessary to decide that point. It would be useless to go to Titan, for they would be powerless to help us. We could not hold their mirror upon either the Sirius or their torpedoes against such forces as that fortress has at her command. Then, too, we might well be bringing down upon them an enemy who would destroy much of their world before he could be stopped. Both Uranus and Neptune are approximately upon our present course. Do the Titanians know anything of either of them, Steve?"

"Not a thing," the computer replied. "They can't get nearly as far as Uranus on their power beam—it's all they can do to make Jupiter. They seem to think, though, that one or more of the satellites of Uranus or Neptune may be inhabited by beings similar to themselves, only perhaps even more so. But considering the difference between what we found on the Jovian satellites and on Titan, I'd say that anything might be out there—on Uranus, Neptune, their satellites, or anywhere else."

"Cancel Uranus, and double that for Neptune," Brandon commanded. "Realize how far away they are?"

"That's right, too," agreed Stevens. "Before we got there, with any acceleration we can use now, this whole mess will be cleaned up, one way or the other."

* * * * *

Westfall completed the series of observations and calculated his results. Then, with a grave face, he went to consult the medical officers. The women, children, and the two Martian scientists were sent to the sick-bay and the acceleration was raised slowly to twenty meters per second per second, above which point the physicians declared they should not go unless it became absolutely necessary. Then the scientists met again—met without Alcantro and Fedanzo, who lay helpless upon narrow hospital bunks, unable even to lift their massive arms.

While Westfall made another series of precise measurements of the super-dreadnought of space so earnestly pursuing them, Brandon stumbled heavily about the room, hands jammed deep into pockets, eyes unseeing emitting clouds of smoke from his villainously reeking pipe. The Venetians, lacking Brandon's physical strength and by nature quieter of disposition, sat motionless; keen minds hard at work. Stevens sat at the calculating machine, absently setting up and knocking down weird and meaningless integrals, while he also concentrated upon the problem before them.

"They are still gaining, but comparatively slowly," Westfall finally reported. "They seem to be...."

"In that case we may be all x," Brandon interrupted, brandishing his pipe vigorously. "We know that they're on a beam—apparently we're the only ones hereabouts having cosmic power. If we can keep away from them until their beam attenuates, we can whittle 'em down to our size and then take them, no matter how much accumulator capacity they've got."

"But can we keep away from them that long?" asked Dol Kenor, pointedly; and his fellow Venerian also had a question to propound:

"Would it not be preferable to lead them in a wide circle, back to a rendezvous with the Space Fleet, which will probably be ready by the time of meeting?"

"I am afraid that that would be useless," Westfall frowned in thought. "Given power, that fortress could destroy the entire Fleet almost as easily as she could wipe out the Sirius alone."

"Kenor's right." Stevens spoke up from the calculator. "You're getting too far ahead of the situation. We aren't apt to keep ahead of them long enough to do much leading anywhere. The Titanians can hold a beam together from Saturn to Jupiter—why can't these snake-folks?"

"Several reasons," Brandon argued stubbornly. "First place, look at the mass of that thing, and remember that the heavier the beam the harder it is to hold it together. Second, there's no evidence that they wander around much in space. If their beams are designed principally for travel upon Jupiter, why should they have any extraordinary range? I say they can't hold that beam forever. We've got a good long lead, and in spite of their higher acceleration, I think we'll be able to keep out of range of their heavy stuff. If so, we'll trace a circle—only one a good deal bigger than the one Amonar suggested—and meet the fleet at a point where that enemy ship will be about out of power."

Thus for hours the scientists argued, agreeing upon nothing, while the Vorkulian fortress crept ever closer. At the end of three days of the mad flight, the pursuing space ship was in plain sight, covering hundreds of divisions of the micrometer screens. But now the size of the images was increasing with extreme slowness, and the scientists of the Sirius watched with strained attention the edges of those glowing green pictures. Finally, when the pictured edges were about to cease moving across the finely-ruled lines, Brandon cut down his own acceleration a trifle, and kept on decreasing it at such a rate that the heptagon still crept up, foot by foot.

"Hey what's the big idea?" Stevens demanded.

"Coax 'em along. If we run away from them they'll probably reverse power and go back home, won't they? Their beam is falling apart fast, but they're still getting so much stuff along it that we couldn't do a thing to stop them. If they think that we're losing power even faster than they are, though, they'll keep after us until their beam's so thin that they'll just be able to stop on it. Then they'll reverse or else go onto their accumulators—reverse, probably, since they'll be a long ways from home by that time. We'll reverse, too, and keep just out of range. Then, when we both have stopped and are about to start back, their beam will be at its minimum and we'll go to work on 'em—foot, horse, and marines. Nobody can run us as ragged as they've been doing and get away with it as long as I'm conscious and stand a chance in the world of hanging one onto their chins in retaliation. I've got a hunch. If it works, we can take those birds alone, and take 'em so they'll stay took. We might as well break up—this is going to be an ordinary job of piloting for a few days, I think. I'm going up and work with the Martians on that hunch. You fellows work out any ideas you want to. Watch 'em close, Mac. Keep kidding 'em along, but don't let them get close enough to puncture us."

* * * * *

Everything worked out practically as Brandon had foretold, and a few days later, their acceleration somewhat less than terrestrial gravity, he called another meeting in the control room. He came in grinning from ear to ear, accompanied by the two Martians, and seated himself at his complex power panel.

"Now watch the professor closely, gentlemen," he invited. "He is going to cut that beam."

"But you can't," protested Pyraz Amonar.

"I know you can't, ordinarily, when a beam is tight and solid. But that beam's as loose as ashes right now. I told you I had a hunch, and Alcantro and Fedanzo worked out the right answer for me. If I can cut it, Quince, and if their screens go down for a minute, shoot your visiray into them and see what you can see."

"All x. How much power are you going to draw?"

"Plenty—it figures a little better than four hundred thousand kilofranks. I'll draw it all from the accumulators, so as not to disturb you fellows on the cosmic intake. We don't care if we do run the batteries down some, but I don't want to hold that load on the bus-bars very long. However, if my hunch is right, I won't be on that beam five minutes before it's cut from Jupiter—and I'll bet you four dollars that you won't see the original crew in that fort when you get into it."

He set upper and lower bands of dirigible projectors to apply a powerful sidewise thrust, and the Sirius darted off her course. Flashing a minute pencil behind the huge heptagon, Brandon manipulated his tuning circuits until a brilliant spot in space showed him that he was approaching resonance with the heptagon's power beam. Micrometer dials were then engaged and the delicate tuning continued until the meters gave evidence that the two beams were precisely synchronized and exactly opposite in phase. Four plunger switches closed, that tiny pilot ray became an enormous rod of force, and as those two gigantic beams met in exact opposition and neutralized each other, a solid wall of blinding brilliance appeared in the empty ether behind the Vorkulian fortress. As that dazzling wall sprang into being, the sparkling green protection died from the walls of the heptagon.

"Go to it, Quince!" Brandon yelled, but the suggestion was entirely superfluous. Even before the wall-screen had died, Westfall's beam was trying to get through it, and when the visiray revealed the interior of the heptagon, the quiet and methodical physicist was shaken from his habitual calm.

"Why, they aren't the winged monsters at all—they're hexans!" he exclaimed.

"Sure they are." Brandon did not even turn his heavily-goggled eyes from the blazing blankness of his own screen. "That was my hunch. Those snakes went about things in a business-like fashion. They didn't strike me as being folks who would pull off such a wild stunt as trying to chase us clear out of the solar system, but a gang of hexans would do just that. Some of them must have captured that ship and, already having it in their cock-eyed brains that we were back of what happened on Callisto, they decided to bump us off if it was the last thing they ever did. That's what I'd do myself, if I were a hexan. Now I'll tell you what's happening back at the home power plant of that ship and what's going to happen next. I'm kicking up a horrible row out there with my interference, and a lot of instruments at the other end of that beam must be cutting up all kinds of didoes, right now. They'll check up on that ship with the expedition, by radio and what-not, and when they find out that it's clear out here—chop! Didn't get to see much, did you?"

"No, they must have switched over to their accumulators almost instantly."

"Yeah, but if they've got accumulator capacity enough to hold off our entire cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I'm a polyp! We're going to take that ship, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his beam—pay me the four, Quince."

The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and Brandon's beam bored on through space, unimpeded. He shut it off and turned to his fellows with a grin—a grin which disappeared instantly as a thought struck him and he leaped back to his board.

"Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!" he snapped, and drove in switch after switch.

"Cosmic intake's gone down to zero!" exclaimed MacDonald, as the Sirius leaped away.

"Had to cut it—they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought of something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if ... it's necessary, all x—we're taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though we're at pretty long range, they've got some horrible projectors, and they were evidently mad enough to waste some power taking a good, solid flash at us—and if we hadn't been expecting it, that flash would have been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me—Great Cat! Look at that meter—and I've had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is drawing five hundred and forty thousand!"

* * * * *

They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after they had seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range any offensive beam could be driven with such unthinkable power—power requiring for its neutralization almost the full output of the prodigious batteries of accumulators carried by the Sirius! Yet for five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against their straining screens, and even Brandon's face grew tense and hard as that frightful attack continued. At the end of twenty-two minutes, however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin and every man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief—the almost unbearable bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.

"Wow!" Brandon shouted. "I thought for a minute they were going to hang to us until we cracked, even if it meant that they'd have to freeze to death out here themselves!"

"It would have meant that, too, don't you think?" asked Stevens.

"I imagine so—don't see how they could possibly have enough power left to get back to Jupiter if they shine that thing on us much longer. Of course, the more power they waste on us, the quicker we can take them; but I don't want much more of that beam, I'll tell the world—I just about had heart failure before they cut off!"

The massive heptagon was now drifting back toward Jupiter at constant velocity. The hexans were apparently hoarding jealously their remaining power, for their wall screens did not flash on at the touch of the visiray. Through unresisting metal the probing Terrestrial beams sped, and the scientists studied minutely every detail of the Vorkulian armament; while the regular observers began to make a detailed photographic survey of every room and compartment of the great fortress. Much of the instrumentation and machinery was familiar, but some of it was so strange that study was useless—days of personal inspection and experiment, perhaps complete dismantling, would be necessary to reveal the secrets hidden within those peculiar mechanisms.

"They're trying to save all the power they can—think I'll make them spend some more," Brandon remarked, and directed against the heptagon a heavy destructive beam. "We don't want them to get back to Jupiter until after we've boarded them and found out everything we want to know. Come here, Quince—what do you make of this?"

Both men stared at the heptagon, frankly puzzled; for the screens of the strange vessel did not radiate, nor did the material of the walls yield under the terrible force of the beam. The destructive ray simply struck that dull green surface and vanished—disappeared without a trace, as a tiny stream of water disappears into a partially-soaked sponge.

"Do you know what you are doing?" asked Westfall, after a few minutes' thought. "I believe that you are charging their accumulators at the rate of," he glanced at a meter, "exactly thirty-one thousand five hundred kilofranks."

"Great Cat!" Brandon's hand flashed to a switch and the beam expired. "But they can't just simply grab it and store it, Quince—it's impossible!"

"The word 'impossible' in that connection, coming from you, has a queer sound," Westfall said pointedly and Brandon actually blushed.

"That's right, too—we have got pretty much the same idea in our cosmic intake fields, but we didn't carry things half as far as they have done. Huh! They're flashing us again ... but those thin little beams don't mean anything. They're just trying to make us feed them some more, I guess. But we've got to hold them back some way—wonder if they can absorb a tractor field?"

The hexans had lashed out a few times with their lighter weapons, but, finding the Sirius unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod and threw the mass of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt its drag, their screens flared white, and the massive Terrestrial space-ship quivered in every member as that terrific cable of force was snapped.

"They apparently cannot store up the energy of a tractor," commented Westfall, "but you will observe that they have no difficulty in radiating when they care to."

"Those two ideas didn't pan out so heavy. There's lots of things not tried yet, though. Our next best bet is to get around in front of him and push back. If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a pressor, they're really good."

The pilot maneuvered the Sirius into line, directly between Jupiter and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action, Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the center of mass of the Vorkulian fortress. For a moment it held solidly, then, as the screens of the enemy went into action, it rebounded and glanced off in sparkling, cascading torrents. But the hexans, with all their twisting and turning, could not present to that prodigious beam of force any angle sufficiently obtuse to rob it of half its power, and the driving projectors of the pentagon again burst into activity as the backward-pushing mass of the Sirius made itself felt. In a short time, however, the wall-screens were again cut off—apparently more power was required to drive them than they were able to deflect.

Although even the enormous tonnage of the Terrestrial cruiser was insignificant in comparison with the veritable mountain of metal to which she was opposed, so that the fiercest thrust of her driving projectors did not greatly affect the monster's progress; yet Brandon and his cohorts were well content.

"It's a long trip back to where they came from, and since they wanted to drift all the way, I think they'll be out of power before they get there," Brandon summed up the situation. "We aren't losing any power, either, since we are using only a part of our cosmic intake."

In a few hours the struggle had settled down to a routine matter—the Sirius being pushed backward steadily against the full drive of her every projector, contesting stubbornly every mile of space traversed. Assured that the regular pilots and lookouts were fully capable of handling the vessel, the scientists were about to resume their interrupted tasks when one of the photographers called them over to look at something he had discovered in one of the lowermost and smallest compartments of the heptagon. All crowded around the screens, and saw pictured there the winged, snake-like form of one of the original crew of the Vorkulian vessel!

"Dead?" Brandon asked.

"Not yet," replied the photographer. "He is twitching a little once in a while, but you see, he's pretty badly cut up."

"I see he is ... he must have a lot of vitality to have lasted this long—may be he'll live through it yet. Hold him on the plate, and get his exact measurements." He turned to the communicator. "Doctor von Steiffel? Can you come down to the control room a minute? We may want you to operate upon one of these South Jovians after a while."

"Himmel! Es ... ist ... der...." The great surgeon, bearded and massive, stared into the plate, and in his surprise started to speak in his native German. He paused, his long, powerful fingers tracing the likeness of the Vorkul upon the plate, then went on: "I would like very much to operate, but, not understanding our intentions, he would, of course, struggle. And when that body struggles—schrecklichkeit!" and he waved his arms in a pantomime of wholesale destruction.

"I thought of that—that's why I am talking to you now instead of when we get to him, two or three days from now. We'll give you his exact measurements, and a crew of mechanics will, under your direction, sink holes in the steel floor and install steel bands heavy enough to hold him rigid, from tailfins to wing-tips. We'll hold him there until we can make him understand that we're friends. It is of the utmost importance to save that creature's life if possible; because we do not want one of their fortresses launched against us—and in any event, it will not do us any harm to have a friend in the City of the South."

"Right. I will also have prepared some kind of a space-suit in which he can be brought from his vessel to ours," and the surgeon took the measurements and went to see that the "operating table" and suit were made ready for Kromodeor, the sorely wounded Vorkul.

* * * * *

It was not long until the projectors of the heptagon went out and she lay inert in space, power completely exhausted. Knowing that the screens of the enemy would absorb any ordinary ray, the scientists had calculated the most condensed beam they could possibly project, a beam which, their figures showed, should be able to puncture those screens by sheer mass action—puncture them practically instantaneously, before the absorbers could react. To that end they had arranged their circuits to hurl seven hundred sixty-five thousand kilofranks—the entire power of their massed accumulators and their highest possible cosmic intake—in one tiny bar of superlative density, less than one meter in diameter! Everything ready, Brandon shot in prodigious switches that launched that bolt—a bolt so vehement, so inconceivably intense, that it seemed fairly to blast the very ether out of existence as it tore its way along its carefully predetermined line. The intention was to destroy all the control panels of the absorber screens; parts so vital that without them the great vessel would be helpless, and yet items which the Terrestrials could reconstruct quite readily from their photographs and drawings.

As that irresistible bolt touched the Vorkulian wall-screen, the spot of contact flared instantaneously through the spectrum and into the black beyond the violet as that screen overloaded locally. Fast as it responded and highly conductive though it was, it could not handle that frightfully concentrated load. In the same fleeting instant of time every molecule of substance in that beam's path flashed into tenuous vapor—no conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing stiletto of energy—and the main control panel of the Vorkulian wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as rapidly as he could sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle of annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls. Then, the walls unresisting, he cut in the vastly larger, but infinitely less powerful, I-P ray, and with it systematically riddled the immense heptagon. Out through the gaping holes in the outer walls rushed the dense atmosphere of Jupiter, and the hexans in their massed hundreds died.

The Sirius was brought up beside the heptagon, so that her main air-lock was against one of the yawning holes in the green metal wall of the enemy. There she was anchored by tractor beams, and the two hundred picked men of the I-P police, in full space equipment, prepared to board the gigantic fortress of the void. Brandon sat tense at his controls, ready to send his beam ahead of the troopers against any hexans that might survive in some as yet unpunctured compartment. General Crowninshield sat beside the physicist at an auxiliary board, phones at ears and four infra-red visiray plates ranged in front of him; ready through light or darkness to direct and oversee the attack, no matter where it might lead or how widely separated the platoons might become before the citadel was taken.

The space-line men—the engineers of weightless combat—led the van, protected by the projectors of their fellows. Theirs the task to set up ways of rope, along which the others could advance. Power drills bit savagely into metal, making holes to receive the expanding eyebolts; grappling hooks seized fast every protuberance and corner; points of little stress were supported by powerful suction cups; and at intervals were strung beam-fed lanterns, illuminating brilliantly the line of march. Through compartments and down corridors they went, bridging the many gaps in the metal through which Brandon's beams had blasted their way; guided by Crowninshield along the shortest feasible path toward the little projector room in which Kromodeor, the wounded Vorkul, lay. There were so many chambers and compartments in the heptagon that it had, of course, been impossible to puncture them all, and in some of the tight rooms were groups of hexans, anxious to do battle. But the general's eye led his men, and if such a room lay before them, Brandon's frightful beam entered it first—and where that beam entered, life departed.

But the hexans were really intelligent, as has been said. They had had time to prepare for what they knew awaited them, and they were rendered utterly desperate by the knowledge that, no matter what might happen, their course was run. Their power was gone, and even if the present enemy should be driven off, they would float idly in space until they died of cold; or, more probably, hurtling toward Jupiter as they were, they would plunge to certain death upon its surface as soon as they came within its powerful gravitational field. Therefore some fifty of the creatures, who had had space experience in their spherical vessels, had spent the preceding days in manufacturing space equipment. Let the weight-fiends plan upon detonating magazines of explosives, upon laying mines calculated to destroy the invaders, even the vessel itself and all within it. Let them plan upon any other such idle schemes, which were certain to be foreseen and guarded against by the space-hardened veterans who undoubtedly moaned that all-powerful and vengeful football of scarred gray metal. Space-fighters were they, and as space-fighters would they die; taking with them to their own inevitable death a full quota of the enemy.

* * * * *

Thus it came about that the head of the column of police had scarcely passed a certain door, when in the room behind it there began to assemble the half-hundred spacehounds of the hexans. When the vanguard had approached that room, Crowninshield had inspected it thoroughly with his infra-red beams. He had found it punctured and airless, devoid of life or of lethal devices, and had passed on. But now the space-suited warriors of the horde, guided in their hiding by their own visirays, were massing there. When the center of the I-P column reached that door, it burst open. There boiled out into the corridor, into the very midst of the police, fifty demoniacal hexans, fighting with Berserk fury, ruled by but one impulse—to kill.

Hand-weapons flashed viciously, tearing at steel armor and at bulging space-suits. Space-hooks bit and tore. Pikes and lances were driven with the full power of brawny arms. Here and there could be seen trooper and hexan, locked together in fierce embrace far from any hand-line—six limbs against four, all ten plied with abandon in mortal, hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot combat.

"Give way!" yelled Crowninshield into the ears of his men. "Epstein, back! LeFevre, advance! Get out of block ten—give us a chance to use a beam!"

As the police fell back out of the designated section of the corridor, Brandon's beam tore through it, filling it from floor to ceiling with a volume of intolerable energy. In that energy walls, doorway, and space-lines, as well as most of the hexans, vanished utterly. But the beam could not be used again. Every surviving enemy had hurled himself frantically into the thickest ranks of the police and the battle raged fiercer than ever. It did not last long. The ends of the column had already closed in. The police filled the corridor and overflowed into the yawning chasm cut by the annihilating ray. Outnumbered, surrounded upon all sides, above, and below by the Terrestrials, the hexans fought with mad desperation to the last man—and to the last man died. And even though in lieu of their own highly efficient space-armor they had fought in weak, crude, and hastily improvised space-suits, which were pitifully inferior to the ray resistant, heavy steel armor of the I-P forces, nevertheless the enormous strength and utter savagery of the hexans had taken toll; and when the advance was resumed, it was with extra lookouts scanning the entire neighborhood of the line of march.

Since the troops had entered the fortress as close to their goal as possible, it was not long until the leading platoon reached the door behind which Kromodeor lay. Tools and cylinders of air were brought up, and the engineers quickly fitted pressure bulkheads across the corridor. There was a screaming hiss from the valves, the atmosphere in that walled-off space became dense, and mechanics attacked with their power drills the door of the projector room. It opened, and four husky orderlies rapidly but gently encased the long body of the Vorkul in the space-suit built especially to receive it. As that monstrous form in its weirdly bulging envelope was guided through the air-locks into the Sirius, Crowninshield barked orders into his transmitter and the police reformed. They would now systematically scour the fortress, to wipe out any hexans that might still be in hiding; to discover and destroy any possible traps or infernal machines which the enemy might have planted for their undoing.

Assured that the real danger to the Sirius was over and that his presence was no longer necessary, Brandon turned his controls over to an assistant and went up to the Venerian rooms, where von Steiffel and his staff were to operate upon the Vorkul. There, in the dense, hot air, but little different now from the atmosphere of Jupiter, Kromodeor lay; bolted down to the solid steel of the floor by means of padded steel straps. So heavy were the bands that he could not possibly break even one of them; so closely were they spaced that he could scarcely have moved a muscle had he tried. But he did not try—so near death was he that his mighty muscles did not even quiver at the trenchant bite of the surgeon's tools. Von Steiffel and his aides, meticulously covered with sterile gowns, hoods, and gloves, worked in most rigidly aseptic style; deftly and rapidly closing the ghastly wounds inflicted by the weapons of the hexans.

"Hi, Brandon," the surgeon grunted as he straightened up, the work completed. "I did not use much antiseptic on him. Because of possible differences in blood chemistry and in ignorance of his native bacteria, I depended almost wholly upon asepsis and his natural resistance. It is a good thing that we did not have to use an anaesthetic. He is in bad shape, but if we can feed him successfully, he may pull through."

"Feed him? I never thought of that. What d'you suppose he eats?"

"I have an idea that it is something highly concentrated, from his anatomy. I shall try giving him sugar, milk chocolate, something of the kind. First I shall try maple syrup. Being a liquid, it is easily administered, and its penetrating odor also may be a help."

* * * * *

A can of the liquid was brought in and to the amazement of the Terrestrials, the long, delicate antennae of the Vorkul began to twitch as soon as the can was opened. Motioning hastily for silence, von Steiffel filled a bowl and placed it upon the floor beneath Kromodeor's grotesque nose. The twitching increased, until finally one dull, glazed eye brightened somewhat and curled slowly out upon its slender pedicle, toward the dish. His mouth opened sluggishly and a long, red tongue reached out, but as his perceptions quickened, he became conscious of the strangers near him. The mouth snapped shut, the eye retracted, and heaving, rippling surges traversed that powerful body as he struggled madly against the unbreakable shackles of steel binding him to the floor.

"Ach, kindlein!" The surgeon bent anxiously over that grotesque but frightened head; soothing, polysyllabic German crooning from his bearded lips.

"Here, let's try this—I'm good on it," Stevens suggested, bringing up the Callistonian thought exchanger. All three men donned headsets, and sent wave after wave of friendly and soothing thoughts toward that frantic and terrified brain.

"He's got his brain shut up like a clam!" Brandon snorted. "Open up, guy—we aren't going to hurt you! We're the best friends you've got, if you only knew it!"

"Himmel, und he iss himself killing!" moaned von Steiffel.

"One more chance that might work," and Brandon stepped over to the communicator, demanding that Verna Pickering be brought at once. She came in as soon as the air-locks would permit, and the physicist welcomed her eagerly.

"This fellow's fighting so he's tearing himself to pieces. We can't make him receive a thought, and von Steiffel's afraid to use an anaesthetic. Now it's barely possible that he may understand hexan. I thought you wasted time learning any of it, but maybe you didn't—see if you can make him understand that we're friends."

The girl flinched and shrank back involuntarily, but forced herself to approach that awful head. Bending over, she repeated over and over one harsh, barking syllable. The effect of that word was magical. Instantly Kromodeor ceased struggling, an eye curled out, and that long, supple tongue flashed down and into the syrup. Not until the last sticky trace had been licked from the bowl did his attention wander from the food. Then the eye, sparkling brightly now, was raised toward the girl. Simultaneously four other eyes arose, one directed at each of the men and the other surveying his bonds and the room in which he was. Then the Vorkul spoke, but his whistling, hissing manner of speech so garbled the barking sounds of the hexan words he was attempting to utter, that Verna's slight knowledge of the language was of no use. She therefore put on one of the headsets, motioning the men to do the same, and approached Kromodeor with the other, repeating the hexan word of friendly import. This time the Vorkul's brain was not sealed against the visitors and thoughts began to flow.

"You've used those things a lot," Brandon turned to Stevens in a quick aside. "Can you hide your thoughts?"

"Sure—why?"

"All I can think of is that power system of theirs, and he'd know what we were going to do, sure. And I'd better be getting at it anyway. So you can wipe that off your mind with a clear conscience—the rest of us will get everything they've got there. Your job's to get everything you can out of this bird's brain. All x?"

"All x."

"Why, you didn't put yours on!" Verna exclaimed.

"No, I don't think I'll have time. If I get started talking to him now, I'd be here from now on, and I've got a lot of work to do. Steve can talk to him for me—see you later," and Brandon was gone.

He went directly to the Vorkulian fortress, bare now of hexan life and devoid of hexan snares and traps. There he and his fellows labored day after day learning every secret of every item of armament and equipment aboard the heptagon.

"Did you finish up today, Norm?" asked Stevens one evening. "Kromodeor's coming to life fast. He's able to wiggle around a little now, and is insisting that we take off the one chain we keep on him and let him use a plate, to call his people."

"All washed up. Guess I'll go in and talk to him—you all say he's such an egg. With this stuff off my mind I can hide it well enough. By the way, what does he eat?" And the two friends set out for the Venerian rooms.

"Anything that's sweet, apparently, with just enough milk to furnish a little protein. Won't eat meat or vegetables at all—von Steiffel says they haven't got much of a digestive tract, and I know that they haven't got any teeth. He's already eaten most all the syrup we had on board, all of the milk chocolate, and a lot of the sugar. But none of us can get any kind of a raise out of him at all—not even Nadia, when she fed him a whole box of chocolates."

"No, I mean what does he eat when he's home?"

"It seems to be a sort of syrup, made from the juices of jungle plants, which they drag in on automatic conveyors and process on automatic machinery. But he's a funny mutt—hard to get. Some of his thoughts are lucid enough, but others we can't make out at all—they are so foreign to all human nature that they simply do not register as thoughts at all. One funny thing, he isn't the least bit curious about anything. He doesn't want to examine anything, doesn't ask us any questions, and won't tell us anything about anything, so that all we know about him we found out purely by accident. For instance, they like games and sports, and seem to have families. They also have love, liking, and respect for others of their own race—but they seem to have no emotions whatever for outsiders. They're utterly inhuman—I can't describe it—you'll have to get it for yourself."

"Did you find out about the Callistonians who went to see them?"

"Negatively, yes. They never arrived. They probably couldn't see in the fog and must have missed the city. If they tried to land in that jungle, it was just too bad!"

"That would account for everything. So they're strictly neutral, eh? Well, I'll tell him 'hi,' anyway." Now in the sickroom, Brandon picked up the headset and sent out a wave of cheery greeting.

To his amazement, the mind of the Vorkul was utterly unresponsive to his thoughts. Not disdainful, not inimical; not appreciative, nor friendly—simply indifferent to a degree unknown and incomprehensible to any human mind. He sent Brandon only one message, which came clear and coldly emotionless.

"I do not want to talk to you. Tell the hairy doctor that I am now strong enough to be allowed to go to the communicator screen. That is all." The Vorkul's mind again became an oblivious maze of unintelligible thoughts. Not deliberately were Kromodeor's thoughts hidden; he was constitutionally unable to interest himself in the thoughts or things of any alien intelligence.

"Well, that for that." A puzzled, thoughtful look came over Brandon's face as he called von Steiffel. "A queer duck, if there ever was one. However, their ship will never bother us, that's one good thing; and I think we've got about everything of theirs that we want, anyway."

The surgeon, after a careful examination of his patient, unlocked the heavy collar with which he had been restraining the over-anxious Vorkul, and supported him lightly at the communicator panel. As surely as though he had used those controls for years Kromodeor shot the visiray beam out into space. One hand upon each of the several dials and one eye upon each meter, it was a matter only of seconds for him to get in touch with Vorkulia. To the Terrestrials the screen was a gray and foggy blank; but the manifest excitement shrieking and whistling from the speaker in response to Kromodeor's signals made it plain that his message was being received with enthusiasm.

"They are coming," the Vorkul thought, and lay back, exhausted.

"Just as well that they're comin' out here, at that," Brandon commented. "We couldn't begin to handle that structure anywhere near Jupiter—in fact, we wouldn't want to get very close ourselves, with passengers aboard."

Such was the power of the Vorkulian vessels that in less than twenty hours another heptagon slowed to a halt beside the Sirius and two of its crew were wafted aboard.

They were ushered into the Venerian room, where they talked briefly with their wounded fellow before they dressed him in a space-suit, which they filled with air to their own pressure. Then all three were lifted lightly into the air, and without a word or a sign were borne through the air-locks of the vessel, and into an opening in the wall of the rescuing heptagon. A green tractor beam reached out, seizing the derelict, and both structures darted away at such a pace that in a few minutes they had disappeared in the black depths of space.

"Well—that, as I may have remarked before, is indisputably and conclusively that." Brandon broke the surprised, almost stunned, silence that followed the unceremonious departure of the visitors. "I don't know whether to feel relieved at the knowledge that they won't bother us, or whether to get mad because they won't have anything to do with us."

He sent the "All x" signal to the pilot and the Sirius, once more at the acceleration of Terrestrial gravity, again bored on through space.



CHAPTER XIII

Spacehounds Triumphant

Now that the hexan threat that had so long oppressed the humanity of the Sirius was lifted, that dull gray football of armor steel was filled with relief and rejoicing as the pilot laid his course for Europa. Lounges and saloons resounded with noise as police, passengers, and such of the crew as were at liberty made merry. The control room, in which were grouped the leaders of the expedition and the scientists, was orderly enough, but a noticeable undertone of gladness had replaced the tense air it had known so long.

"Hi, men!" Nadia Stevens and Verna Pickering, arms around each other's waists, entered the room and saluted the group gaily before they became a part of it.

"'Smatter, girls—tired of dancing already?" asked Brandon.

"Oh, no—we could dance from now on," Verna assured him. "But you see, Nadia hadn't seen that husband of hers for fifteen minutes, and was getting lonesome. Being afraid of all you men, she wanted me to come along for moral support. The real reason I came, though," and she narrowed her expressive eyes and lowered her voice mysteriously, "is that you two physicists are here. I want to study my chosen victims a little longer before I decide over which of you to cast the spell of my fatal charm."

"But you can't do that," he objected, vigorously. "Quince and I are going to settle that ourselves some day—by shooting dice, or maybe each other, or...." he broke off, listening to an animated conversation going on behind them.

"... just simply outrageous!" Nadia was exclaiming. "Here we saved his life, and I fed him a lot of my candy, and we went to all the trouble of bringing their ship back here almost to Jupiter for them, and then they simply dashed off without a word of thanks or anything! And he always acted as though he never wanted to see or hear of any of us again, ever! Why, they don't think straight—as Norman would say it, they're full of little red ants! Why, they aren't even human!"

"Sure not." Brandon turned to the flushed speaker. "They couldn't be, hardly, with their make-up. But is it absolutely necessary that all intelligent beings should possess such an emotion as gratitude? Such a being without it does seem funny to us, but I can't see that its lack necessarily implies anything particularly important. Keep still a minute," he went on, as Nadia tried to interrupt him, "and listen to some real wisdom. Quince, you tell 'em."

"They are, of course, very highly developed and extremely intelligent; but it should not be surprising that intelligence should manifest itself in ways quite baffling to us human beings, whose minds work so differently. They are, however ... well, peculiar."

"I won't keep still!" Nadia burst out, at the first opportunity. "I don't want to talk about those hideous things any more, anyway. Come on, Steve, let's go up and dance!"

Crowninshield turned to Verna, with the obvious intention of leading her away, but Brandon interposed.

"Sorry, Crown, but this lady is conducting a highly important psychological research, so your purely social claims will have to wait until after the scientific work is done."

"Why narrow the field of investigation?" laughed the girl. "I'd rather widen it, myself—I might prefer a general, even to a physicist!"

They went up to the main saloon and joined the melee there, and after one dance with Verna—all he could claim in that crowd of men—Crowninshield turned to Brandon.

"You two seem to know Miss Pickering extraordinarily well. Would I be stepping on your toes if I give her a play?"

"Clear ether as far as we're concerned." Brandon shrugged his shoulders. "She's been kicking around under foot ever since she was knee high to a duck—we gave her her first lessons on a slide rule."

"Don't be dumb, Norman. That woman's a knock-out—a riot—a regular tri-planet call-out!"

"Oh, she's all x, as far as that goes. She's a good little scout, too—not half as dumb as she acts—and she's one of the squarest little aces that ever waved a plume; but as for playing her—too much like our kid sister."

"Good—me for her!" and they made their way back down to the control room.

Stevens, after his one dance with Nadia, had already returned. Brandon and Crowninshield found him seated at the calculating machine, continuing a problem which already filled several pages of his notebook.

"'Smatter, Steve? So glad to see a calculator and some paper that you can't let them alone?"

"Not exactly—just had a thought a day or so ago. Been computing the orbit of the wreckage of the Arcturus around Jupiter. Think we should salvage it—the upper half, at least. It was left intact, you know."

"H ... m ... m. That would be nice, all right. Dope enough?"

"Got the direction solid, from my own observations; the velocity's a pretty rough approximation though. But after allowing for my probable error, it figures an ellipse of low eccentricity, between the orbits of Io and Europa. Its period is short—about two days."

"Isn't it wonderful to have a brain?" Brandon addressed the room at large. "The kid's clever. Nobody else would have thought of it, except maybe Westfall. Let's see your figures. Um ... m ... m. According to that, we're within an hour of it, right now." He turned to the pilot and sketched rapidly.

"Get on this line here, please, and decelerate, so that the stuff'll catch up with us, and pass the word to the lookouts. Stevens and I will take the bow plates.

"That's a good idea," he went on to Stevens, as they took their places at main and auxiliary ultra-banks. "Lot of plunder in that ship. Instruments, boats, and equipment worth millions, besides most of the junk of the passengers—clothes, trunks, trinkets, and what-not. You're there, bucko!"

"Thanks, Chief," ... and they fell silent, watching the instruments carefully, and from time to time making computations from the readings of the acceleration and flight meters.

"There she is!" An alarm bell had finally sounded, the ultra-lights had flared out into space, and upon both screens there shone out images of the closely clustered wreckage of the Arcturus. But both men were more interested just then in the mathematics of the recovery than in the vessel itself.

"Missed it eight minutes of time and eleven divisions on the scale," reported Stevens. "Not so good."

"Not so bad either—I've seen worse computation." Thus lightly was dismissed a mathematical feat which, a few years earlier, before the days of I-P computers, would have been deemed worthy of publication in "The Philosophical Magazine."

* * * * *

Director Newton was called in, and it was decided that the many small fragments of the vessel were not worth saving; that its upper half was all that they should attempt to tow the enormous distance back to Tellus. The pace of the Sirius was adjusted to that of the floating masses, and tractor beams were clamped upon the undamaged portion of the derelict, and upon the two slices from the nose of the craft. A couple of the larger fragments of wreckage were also taken, to furnish metal for the repairs which would be necessary. Acceleration was brought slowly up to normal, and the battle-scarred cruiser of the void, with her heavy burden of inert metal, resumed her interrupted voyage toward Europa; the satellite upon which the passengers and crew of the ill-fated Arcturus had been so long immured. On she bored through the ether, detector screens full out and greenly scintillant Vorkulian wall-screens outlining her football shape in weird and ghastly light; unafraid now of any possible surviving space-craft of the hexans.

But if the hexans detected her, they made no sign. Perhaps their fleet had been destroyed utterly; perhaps it had been impressed upon even their fierce minds that those sparkling green screens were not to be molested with impunity! The satellite was reached without event and down into the crater landing shaft the two enormous masses of metal dropped.

Callisto's foremost citizens were on hand to welcome the Terrestrial rescuers, and revelry reigned supreme in that deeply buried Europan community. All humanity celebrated. The Callistonians rejoiced because they were now freed from the age-old oppression of the hexan hordes; because they could once more extend their civilization over the Jovian satellites and live again their normal lives upon the surface of those small worlds.

The Terrestrials were almost equally enthusiastic in the reunion that marked the end of the long imprisonment of the refugees.

As soon as the hull of the Arcturus had been warmed sufficiently to permit inspection, its original passengers were allowed to visit it briefly, to examine and to reclaim their belongings. Of course, some damage had been done by the cold of interplanetary space, but in general everything was as they had left it. Stevens and Nadia were among the first permitted aboard. They went first to the control room, where Stevens found his bag still lying behind Breckenridge's desk, where he had thrown it when he first boarded the vessel. Then they made their way up to Nadia's stateroom, which they found in meticulous order and spotless in its cleanliness—there is neither dust nor dirt in space. Nadia glanced about the formal little room and laughed up at her husband.

"Funny, isn't it, sweetheart, how little we know what to expect? Just think how surprised I would have been, when I left this room, if I had been told that I would have a husband before I got back to it!"

Breckenridge's first thought was for his precious triplex automatic chronometer, which he found, of course, "way off"—six and three-tenths seconds fast. Having corrected the timepiece from that of the Sirius, he immersed himself in the other delicate instruments of his department—and he was easy to find from that time on.

Overcrowded as the Sirius already was, it was decided that the original complement of the Arcturus should occupy their former quarters aboard her during the return trip. To this end, corps of mechanics set to work upon the salvaged hulk. Heavy metal work was no novelty to the Callistonian engineers and mechanics, and the Sirius also was well equipped with metal-working machines and men. Thus the prow was welded; armored, insulating air-breaks were built along the stern, which was the plane of hexan cleavage, electrical connections were restored; and lastly, a set of the great Vorkulian wall-screen generators, absorbers, and dissipators was installed, with sufficient accumulator capacity for their operation. Director Newton studied this installation in silence for some time, then went in search of Brandon.

"I hadn't considered the possibility of being attacked again between here and Tellus, but there's always the chance," he admitted. "If you think that there is any danger, we will crowd them all into the Sirius. It will not be at all comfortable, but it will be better than having any more of us killed."

"With that outfit they'll be as safe as we will," the scientist assured him. "They can stand as much grief as we can. We'll do the fighting for the whole outfit from here, and anything we meet will have to take us before they can touch them. So they had better ride it there, where they'll have passengers' accommodations and be comfortable. As to danger, I don't know what to expect. They may all be gone and they may not. We're going to expect trouble every meter of the way in, though, and be ready for it."

Everything ready and thoroughly tested, and stream of power flowing into the Arcturus from the cosmic receptors of her sister ship, the passengers and their new possessions were moved into their former quarters. There was a brief ceremony of farewell, the doors of the airlocks were closed, the careful check-out was gone through, and the driving projectors of the Sirius lifted both great vessels up the shaft, slowly and easily. And after them, as long as they could be seen, stared the thousands of Callistonians who thronged the great shaft's floor. Many of the spectators were not, strictly speaking, Callistonians at all. They were really Europans, born and reared in that hidden city which was to have been the last stronghold of Callisto's civilization. In that throng were hundreds who had never before seen the light of the sun nor any of the glories of the firmament, hundreds to whom that brief glimpse was a foretaste of the free and glorious life which was soon to be theirs.

Up and up mounted that powerful tug-boat of space, with her heavy barge, falling smoothly upward at normal acceleration. Below her first Europa, then mighty Jupiter, became moons growing smaller and smaller. In their stateroom Nadia's supple waist writhed in the curve of Stevens' arm as she turned and looked up at him with sparkling eyes.

"Well, big fellow, how does it feel to be out of a job? Or are you going over there every day on a tractor beam to work, as Norman suggested?"

"Not on your sweet young life!" he exclaimed. "Norm thought he was kidding somebody, but it registered zero. It gives me the pip to loaf around when there's a lot of work to do, but this is entirely different. Nothing's driving us now, and a fellow's entitled to at least one honeymoon during his life. And what a honeymoon this is going to be, little spacehound of my heart! Nothing to do but love you all the way from here to Tellus! Whoopee!"

"Oh, there's a couple of other things to do," she reminded him gaily. "You've got to smoke a lot of good cigarettes, I must eat a lot of Delray's chocolates, and we both really should catch up on eating fancy cooking. Speaking of eating, isn't that the second call for dinner? It is!" and they went along the narrow hall toward the elevator. To these two the long journey was to seem all too short.

Long though the voyage was, it was uneventful. The occupants of the two vessels were in constant touch with each other by means of the communicators, and there was also much visiting back and forth in person. Stevens and Nadia came often to the Sirius, and were accompanied frequently by Verna Pickering, who claimed anew her ancient right of "kicking around under foot," wherever Brandon and Westfall might chance to be—and at such times General Crowninshield was practically certain to appear. And upon days when the beautiful brunette did not appear, the commandant generally found it necessary to inspect in person something in the Arcturus.

Day after day passed, and even the new and ultra-powerful detector screens of the Sirius remained unresponsive and cold. Day after day the plates before the doubled lookouts and observers remained blank. Power flowed smoothly and unfailingly into the cosmic receptors, and the products of conversion were discharged with equal smoothness and regularity from the forty-five gigantic driving projectors. The tractor beam held its heavy burden easily and the generators functioned perfectly. And finally a planet began to loom up in the stern lookout plates.

Verna, the irrepressible, was in the control room of the Sirius, quarreling adroitly with Brandon and deftly flirting with Crowninshield. Glancing into the control screen she saw the planet in its end block, then studied the instruments briefly.

"We're heading for Mars!" she declared with conviction. "I thought it looked that way yesterday, but supposed it must be only apparent—a trick of piloting or something about the orbit. I thought of course you were taking us back home—but you can't possibly get to Tellus on any such course as this!"

"Sure not," Brandon replied easily. "Certainly it's Mars. Isn't that where the Arcturus started out for? Whoever said we were going to Tellus? Of course, if any of the passengers want to go right back the IPC will undoubtedly furnish transportation gratis. But paste this in your hat, Verna, for future reference—when spacehounds start out to go anywhere they go there, even if they have to spend a year or so on minus time to do it!"

Closer and closer they approached the red planet, swinging around in a wide arc in order to make their course coincide exactly with the pilot ray of check station M14, which was now precisely in its scheduled location in space. At the chief pilot's desk in the control room of the Arcturus, Breckenridge checked in with the station, then calculated rapidly the instant of their touching the specially-built bumper platforms of spring steel, hemp, and fiber which awaited them upon the Martian dock of the Interplanetary Corporation. Within range of the terminal, he plugged into it, waited until the tiny light flashed its green message of attention, and reported.

"IPV Arcturus; Breckenridge, Chief Pilot; trip number forty-three twenty-nine. Checking in—four hundred forty-six days, fifteen hours, eleven minutes, thirty-eight and seven-tenths seconds minus!"

THE END.

Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories July, August and September 1931. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.