The Black Galaxy

CHAPTER TWELVE Boarders

SHRILL twitterings down below. The voice of Joe the electrician, just coming in the air-lock. "Okay, fellas! If you can make anything outa it you're welcome! Anyhow, it's plenty hot if you can use the power."

His voice died away and the twitterings with it He was taking a group of the small round men into the engine-room, doubtless to show them the condenser-device from the pyramid-ship the Stellaris' crew had looted.

"If we hadn't turned up," said Rod, "those fiends would never have suspected that there were survivors. The colony could have gone on for centuries, building up a new civilization maybe and knowing about space-murderers and working out ways of fighting them when they dared take to space again. But we turned up. We've spoiled that idea!"

He spread out his hands. "Those rats will look for us. They'll find them. If we go away and leave these people here they'll be murdered like the rest of their race. Because of us! And we can't allow that!"

"N-naturally," said Kit distressedly. "Of course we can't. But what can we do?"

"That's what's got to be worked out," Rod told her grimly. "We can depend on the pyramid-ships coming back. And with an answer to our last trick, too!"

He felt something close to despair. There are obligations that cannot be evaded. If the Stellaris had made the race of murderers suspect the existence of a colony, where there was none, that was warfare. But to cause those murderers to search for a colony which did exist was something else. Human beings can't do that sort of thing and go off untroubled.

Joe came in, beaming. "Those little guys are pretty smart" he said contentedly. "They take that condenser that's a power-picker-up an' chirp at each other an' tell me they think they know somethin' that they can figure out that gizmo from. They say they got a hunch it's even the answer to faster-than-light travel. So they go off, cartin' it precious, to see what they see. Okay?"

Rod nodded. He sat scowling at the mass of unfilled spaces which should have been the Stellaris' instrument-board.

"Listen, Joe," he said heavily. "Those pyramid-rats have taken a licking. From us. But they can't leave it at that. They can't stay licked. They've committed so many crimes they can't stop. If any other race gets space travel and they can't wipe that race out the pyramid-people get wiped out. They know it. They can't make friends now. It's too late!"

Joe said amiably, "Those little guys won't make friends, that's sure! Maybe they got squeaky high voices but they know what hate is! They were asking me questions about the cities yonder an' the way I could tell they felt made my hair curl!"

Rod said impatiently, "What do you think the pyramid-ships will come back with? I doubt they're too smart. They made some discoveries and used them for weapons and apparently were satisfied to stop at that. Their ships are no more civilized than a pirate ship in the old days. But they've got to work out some way to handle us. What'll it be?"

Joe sat on the corner of what was intended for a navigator's table, if a navigator should ever acquire star-maps and navigating instruments. He swung one foot.

"What I'd do? Hm—we come out of other-space right in the middle of their fleet an' knock 'em off by dozens before they can slap a beam on us, an' we're gone, still fightin', before they come to—them that's left. If I had to cook up somethin' it'd be to handle a ship that turned up in my lap."

Rod waited, frowning.

"An' it looks to me," said Joe, "like if I thought somebody was goin' to do that I'd have beams goin' out in all directions as soon as I thought he was thinkin' about it. If there was any way to keep 'em from bumping off my own gang—"

Rod jumped. "Right. I keep thinking in terms of our outfitting. But they've got measuring instruments! They can calibrate their beams! They could mount push-pull generators that would kill up to ten thousand miles but not beyond.

"Then they could space their ships fifteen thousand miles apart and have a fifty-percent overlap and a formation that'd fill up the whole solar system! All such a fleet would need to do would be simply to sweep through a solar system and everything in it would be dead! If we charged a formation like that or tried to turn up in its middle ..."

Joe nodded. "Uh-huh. We'd get a dose of push-pull beam that'd knock us off in a hurry."

"And what's more—" Rod's forehead cleared. "Since they haven't got other-space force-fields they probably think we can jump from a standing start to light-speed or better. That would seem to explain our jumping through their beam into their laps!"

Joe swung his foot, unperturbed. "Uh-huh." Then he said,

"Those little guys are pretty good with tools. How much time you think we got?"

"Not much! The ships that escaped have got to get back to base, wherever that may be. They've got to work out a new trick—which will probably be that one—and mount new projectors and calibrate them and then come back. But it won't take long!"

Joe said amiably, "A focused tractor works from the other-space to this. You think it'd work from this to the other space? An' a pressor, too?"

"Why not?" Then Red stared. "Are you thinking of a drone? That would be the trick, of course."

"Yeah," said Joe, grinning. "I'd scare the pants off 'em if they saw the ol' Stellaris amblin' right up to 'em through all the beams they could pour into her, wipin' 'em out copious an' not havin' a whisker curled by the worst they could do. They'd figure they were goners sure!" Then he added, "If we got time to fix it"

"That," said Rod sourly, "is the question!"

It was a very urgent question. And there were others. But answers of a sort were forthcoming for most. As for the time before a refurbished pyramid-fleet could be expected back, the small people could promise some telepathic warning.

As they'd known of their race's death by the absence of any emotions to perceive, and of the coming of looters on the planet by their scorn, and of the landing of the Stellaris by the much more sympathetic emotions of its occupants at sight of the murdered cities—so they could know of the space-fleet's return.

But they could not get the slightest inkling of any technical improvements in the enemy ships by their psychic gift. They simply couldn't read thoughts—only feelings.

Feverish activity commenced. The small people began to make a double of the Stellaris—a double in appearance only.

It was a mere shell of thin metal put over a frame that would hold it in shape. Some of their technicians began a feverish duplication of the fighting-device on the Stellaris' bow.

The arc-welders from the ship welded that in place and so released tractors that had anchored it. Joe ran cables into the control-room and set up something like adequate indicators—getting the needed instruments from the colony's small store.

Work went on frantically in the Stellaris' flotation-bulges too. There was no time to build new sections to the ship but the flotation-bulges now served no purpose.

Heavily insulated inside, with heating-elements provided, they could accommodate a great addition to the hydroponic gardens which kept the ship's air fresh. The small folk, too, had plants which would serve to excellent purpose. They would provide food in vast quantities.

The matter of food for the first time was solved. The colonists had plenty and the colony had necessarily been staffed with technologists needed for its survival. The dieticians discussed matters in great detail with the several humans. They made tests. They painstakingly experimented.

In two days from the Stellaris' landing, the diet of its human crew was wholly bearable. There was a close approximation of bread, and a very near similitude of three or four different vegetables—but the ones from the ship's air-rooms still tasted better.

There was even a pretty good imitation of steak, which the dietitians assured Kit contained all the needed amino-acid chains the human being required, plus the fats they had begun hungrily to crave. It was not exactly right—not exactly—but it was a great deal better than they'd had.

The real triumph, however, was in the technical department The little round men used the same plastic "vacuum-tube" that Rod had salvaged from the planet They had two others, which were smaller. They used the condenser-device from the pyramid-ship also for power.

The imitation Stellaris was an empty shell but for a complex, heavily-built device in its very center. That device did not include a drive, because there were reinforced plates on which the real Stellaris could focus tractor and pressor-beams, so that its pseudo-twin could be maneuvered and moved from a distance.

But in place of the drive there were tiny beams focused on devices in the Stellaris which performed the functions of cables. The power in those beams would vary to communicate information to the Stellaris even in other-space. And the little men dismantled the four televisors and set their scanners in the giant robot they were constructing. The receiving-screens went in the Earth-ship's control-room.

Altogether an incredible lot was done. The Earth-ship was no longer alone. She had a fighting-ship for companion, unmanned, to be sure, but which had at least five times the power-supply of the parent vessel and her fighting-beam was deadly.

With many hands to work on it, all inspired alike by hatred and equipped with skill, that fighting-beam was a monstrous engine for destruction.

The push-pull beams were ingeniously designed to scan all space with fifty times the rapidity of the first device and to linger briefly on any found target.

They had the power of a generator designed to supply a metropolis, plus two smaller generators intended to furnish a colony not only with ordinary power but the means of combating a strange environment plus a power-unit from an enemy space-ship itself. The beam of this single ship should have nearly the range of a fleet-broadcast of the enemy.

But it was, of course, a robot.

Two days passed—three—four. Then there were twitterings in all the compartments of the Stellaris as the round little colonists crowded into it. They carried small possessions.

They had already moved stores and highly useful supplies into the ship's unfinished storage-rooms. They were, to all intents and purposes, abandoning their colony, because their entire solar system would be blasted when the pyramid-fleet returned. And the Stellaris seemed crowded.

It was necessary. Twenty of the little folk had been on watch since the beginning. They sat in a circle, holding hands in a quaint absorption.

They were aware, of course, of the emotions of their fellows and of the humans around them. But they carefully ignored those sensations.

They must have felt a curious loneliness as they listened or watched—however the process could be described by which they waited for the sensations of alien presences which would tell of the return of the enemy fleet.

It was coming. It was coming fast. The air-lock was sealed. The Stellaris thrust up-ward on those invisible stilts which were pressor-beams and Rod drew the pseudo-ship after him as cloud-banks swirled around the Earth-ship.

He had controls for this ship, now. He swung it past the Stellaris as it wallowed in the impenetrable mist.

He sent the drone out of atmosphere into space.

Warm hands clasped him urgently. Twitterings.

They had meaning.

"It seems that they come faster than light. They are very triumphant. Their emotions suggest that they will slow to visibility only after they enter this system and that they will flash through it, destroying everything in an instant without any possibility of reply."

"That," said Rod with some confidence, "is what they think!"

An hour later he no longer had confidence. An hour later the Stellaris was beaten, its drone crippled. It fled madly through other-space while the pyramid-ship systematically wrought destruction upon all the planets of the yellow sun. If any life had remained it no longer did so.