The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ even for an instant while a ship is upon a planet’s surface, the consequences are usually highly disastrous. For in the neutralization of inertia there is no magic, no getting of something for nothing, no violation of Nature’s law of the conservation of matter and energy. The instant that force becomes inoperative the ship possesses exactly the same velocity, momentum, and inertia that it possessed at the instant the force took effect. Thus, if a space-ship takes off from Earth, with its orbital velocity of about eighteen and one-half miles per second relative to the sun, goes free, dashes to Mars, lands free, and then goes inert, its original velocity, both in speed and in direction, is instantly restored; with consequences better imagined than described. Such a velocity of course might take the ship harmlessly into the air; but it probably would not.

      Inertialess vessels do not ordinarily load freight. They do, however, take on passengers, especially military personnel accustomed to open-space maneuvers in powered space-suits. Men and ship must go inert—separately, of course—immediately after leaving the planet, so that the men can match their intrinsic velocity to the ship’s; but that takes only a very small fraction of the time required for an inert landing.

      Hence the Prometheus landed free, and so did Kinnison. He stepped out, fully armored against Valeria’s extremely heavy atmosphere, and laboring a trifle under its terrific gravitation, to be greeted cordially by Lieutenant vanBuskirk, whose fighting men were already streaming aboard the freighter.

      “Hi, Kim!” the Dutchman called, gaily. “Everything went off like clockwork. Won’t hold you up long—be blasting off in ten minutes.”

      “Ho, Lefty!” the Lensman acknowledged, as cordially, but saluting the newly commissioned officer with an exaggerated formality. “Say, Bus, I’ve been doing some thinking. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to .”

      “Uh-uh, it would not,” denied the fighter, positively. “I know what you’re going to say—that you want in on this party—but don’t say it.”

      “But I .” Kinnison began to argue.

      “Nix,” the Valerian declared flatly. “You’ve got to stay with your speedster. No room for her inside; she’s clear full of cargo and my men. You can’t clamp on outside, because that would give the whole thing away. And besides, for the first and last time in my life I’ve got a chance to give a Gray Lensman orders. Those orders are to stay out of and away from this ship—and I’ll see to it that you do, too, you little Tellurian shrimp! Boy, what a kick I get out of that!”

      “You would, you big, dumb Valerian ape—you always were a small-souled type!” Kinnison retorted. “Piggy-piggy . Haynes, huh?”

      “Uh-huh.” VanBuskirk nodded. “How else could I talk so rough to you and get away with it? However, don’t feel too bad—you aren’t missing a thing, really. It’s in the cans already, and your fun is up ahead somewhere. And by the way, Kim, congratulations. You had it coming. We’re all behind you, from here to the Magellanic Clouds and back.”

      “Thanks. The same to you, Bus, and many of ’em. Well, if you won’t let me stow away, I’ll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether—or rather, I hope it’s full of pirates by tomorrow morning. Won’t be, though, probably; don’t imagine they’ll move until we’re almost there.”

      And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs of uneventful voyage.

      Part of the time he spent in the speedster dashing hither and yon. Most of it, however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler; to the armored side of which his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps while he slept and ate, gossiped and read, exercised and played with the mauler’s officers and crew, in deep-space comradery. It so happened, however, that when the long-awaited attack developed he was out in his speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.

      Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed up, locked on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily—scarcely enough to warm up the defensive screens—and Kinnison probed into the pirate with his spy-ray.

      “Terrestrials—North Americans!” he exclaimed, half-aloud, startled for an instant. “But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and over half the crew were New York gangsters.”

      “The blighter’s got his spy-ray screens up,” the pilot was grumbling to his captain. The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the Lensman; he would have understood equally well any other possible form of communication or of thought exchange. “That wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”

      If Helmuth or one of the other able minds at Grand Base had been directing that attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had shown a flash of feeling that, with a little encouragement, might have grown into a suspicion. But the captain was not an imaginative man. Therefore:

      “Nothing was said about it, either way,” he replied. “Probably the mate’s on duty—he isn’t one of us, you know. The captain will open up. If he doesn’t do it pretty quick I’ll open her up myself . there, the port’s opening. Slide a little forward . . . hold it! Go get ’em, men!”

      Men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the freighter’s locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the portal something happened that was most decidedly not on the program. The outer port slammed shut and its toggles drove home!

      “Blast those screens! Knock them down—get in there with a spy-ray!” barked the pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and valiant souls who, like Gildersleeve, led in person the attacks of his cut-throats. He emulated instead the higher Boskonian officials and directed his raids from the safety of his control-room; but, as has been intimated, he was not exactly like those officials. It was only after it was too late that he became suspicious. “I wonder if somebody could have double-crossed us? . Highjackers?”

      “We’ll bally soon know,” the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the spy-ray got through, revealing a very shambles.

      For vanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were they a crew—unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent by internal mutiny, strife, and slaughter—such as the pirates had expected to find.

      Instead, the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to their own. Not only in the strength and agility of its units, but also in that at least one semi-portable projector commanded every corridor of the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors most of the pirates died instantly, not knowing what struck them.

      They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it as it came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They knew that the pirates’ armor could withstand for minutes any hand-weapon’s beams, and they disdained to remount the heavy semi-portables. They came in with their space-axes, and at the sight the pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not escape. The toggles of the exit port were socketed and locked.

      Therefore the storming party died to the last man; and, as vanBuskirk had foretold, it was scarcely even a struggle. For ordinary armor is so much tin-plate against a Valerian swinging a space-axe.

      The spy-ray of the pirate captain got through just in time to see the ghastly finale of the massacre, and his face turned first purple, then white.

      “The Patrol!” he gasped. “Valerians—a whole company of them! I’ll say we’ve been double-crossed!”

      “Righto—we’ve been jolly well had,” the pilot agreed. “You don’t know the half of it, either. СКАЧАТЬ