— But Does Not Arrive

All out—we climb the rest of the way on foot," Stevens told his companion, as the

elevator stopped at the uppermost passenger floor. They walked across the small

circular hall and the guard on duty came to attention and saluted as they approached

him.

     "I have orders to pass you and Miss Newton, sir. Do you know all the

combinations?"

     "I know this good old tub better than the men that built her—I helped calculate

her," Stevens replied, as he stepped up to an apparently blank wall of steel and deftly

manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface. "This is to keep the

passengers where they belong," he explained, as a section of the wall swung backward

in a short arc and slid smoothly aside. "We will now proceed to see what makes her

tick."

     Ladder after ladder of steel they climbed, and bulkhead after bulkhead opened at

Stevens' knowing touch. At each floor the mathematician explained to the girl the

operation of the machinery there automatically at work—devices for heating and

cooling, devices for circulating, maintaining, and purifying the air and the water—in

short, all the complex mechanism necessary for the comfort and convenience of the

human cargo of the liner.

     Soon they entered the conical top compartment, a room scarcely fifteen feet in

diameter, tapering sharply upward to a hollow point some twenty feet above them. The

true shape of the room, however, was not immediately apparent, because of the

enormous latticed beams and girders which braced the walls in every direction. The air

glowed with the violet light of the twelve great ultra-light projectors, like searchlights with

three-foot lenses, which lined the wall. The floor beneath their feet was not a level steel

platform, but seemed to be composed of many lenticular sections of dull blue alloy.

     "We are standing upon the upper lookout lenses, aren't we ?" asked the girl. "Is

that perfectly all x ?"

     "Sure. They're so hard that nothing can scratch them, and of course Roeser's

Rays go right through our bodies, or any ordinary substance, like a bullet through a hole

in a Swiss cheese. Even those lenses wouldn't refract 'em if they weren't solid fields of

force."

     As he spoke one of the ultra-lights flashed around in a short, quick arc, and the

girl saw that instead of the fierce glare she had expected, it emitted only a soft violet

light. Nevertheless she dodged involuntarily and Stevens touched her arm reassuringly.

     "All x, Miss Newton—they're harmless like mice. They hardly ever have to swing

past the vertical, and even if one shines right through you you can look it right in the eye

as long as you want to—it can't hurt you a bit."

     "No ultra-violet at all?"

     "None whatever. Just a color—one of the many remaining crudities of our ultra-

light vision. A lot of good men are studying this thing of direct vision, though, and it won't

be long until we'll have a system that will really work."

     "I think it's all perfectly wonderful!" she breathed. "Just think of traveling in

comfort through empty space, and of actually seeing through seamless steel walls,

without even a sign of a window! How can such things be possible ?"

     "I'll have to go pretty well back," he warned, "and any adequate explanation is

bound to be fairly deep wading in spots. How technical can you stand it ?"

     "I can go down with you middling deep—I took a lot of general science, and

physics through advanced mechanics. Of course I didn't get into any such highly

specialized stuff as sub-electronics or Roeser's Rays, but if you start drowning me I'll

stop you."

     "Fine—with that to go on you can get the idea all x. Let's sit down on this girder.

Roeser didn't do it all, by any means, even though he got popular credit for it—he

merely helped the Martians do it. The whole thing started, of course, when the first

space-rocket hit the moon. It was intensified when Roeser—working up, or rather down,

from radar—so perfected his system that signals were exchanged with Mars; signals

that neither side could develop into intelligible communication.

     "The rocketeers made bigger and better rockets until they finally built one that

could land people safely upon Mars. Roeser, who was a mighty keen bird, was one of

the first voyagers, and he didn't come back. He stayed there, living in a space-suit for

five years, and got a brand-new education. Martian science always was hot, you know,

but they were impractical. They were desperately hard up for water and air, and while

they had a lot of wonderful ideas and theories, they couldn't overcome the practical

technical and technological difficulties in the way of making their ideas work. Now

putting other peoples' ideas to work was Roeser's long suit—don't think that I'm belittling

Roeser at all, either, for he was a brave and far-sighted man, was no mean scientist,

and was certainly one of the best organizers and synchronizers the world has ever

known—and since Martian and Tellurian science complemented each other, so that one

filled in the gaps of the other, it wasn't long until fleets of space-freighters were bringing

in air and water from Venus, which had plenty of both to spare.

     "Having done all he could for the Martians and having learned most of the stuff

he wanted to know, Roeser came back to Tellus and organized Inter-Planetary, with

scientists and engineers on all three planets, and%set to work to improve the whole

system, for the vessels they used then were dangerous — regular mankillers, in fact. At

about this same time Roeser and the Inter-Planetary Corporation, with their really

effective atomic bombs, had a big part in the unification of the world into one nation, so

that wars could no longer interfere with progress.

     "With this introduction I can get down to fundamentals. Molecules are particles of

the first order, and vibrations of the first order include sound, light, heat, electricity,

radio, and so on. Second order, atoms—extremely short vibrations, such as hard X-

rays. Third order, electrons, protons, and so on, with their accompanying Millikan, or

Cosmic Rays. Fourth order, sub-electrons and sub-protons. These, in the material

aspect, are supposed to be the particles of the fourth order, and in the energy aspect

they are known as Roeser's Rays. That is, these fourth-order rays and particles seem to

partake of the nature of both energy and matter. Following me?"

     "Right behind you," she assured him. She had been listening intently, her wide-

spaced brown eyes fastened upon his face.

     "Since these Roeser's Rays, or particles or rays of the fourth order, seem to be

both matter and energy, and since the rays can be converted into what is supposed to

be the particles, they have been thought to be the things from which both electrons and

protons were built. Therefore, everybody except Norman Brandon has supposed them

the ultimate units of creation, so that it would be useless to try to go any further . . ."

     "Why, we were taught that they are the ultimate units!" she protested.

     "I know you were—but we really don't know anything, except what we have

learned empirically, even about our driving forces. What is called the fourth-order

particle is absolutely unknown, since nobody has been able to detect it, to say nothing

of determining its velocity or other properties. It has been assumed to have the velocity

of light only because that hypothesis does not conflict with observational data. I'm going

to give you the generally-accepted idea, since we have nothing definite to offer in its

place, but I warn you that that idea is very probably wrong. There's a lot of deep stuff

down there that hasn't been dug up yet. In fact, Brandon thinks that the product of

conversion isn't what we think it is, at all—that the actual fundamental unit and the

primary mechanism of the transformation lie somewhere below the fourth order, and

possibly even below the level of the ether—but we haven't been able to find a point of

attack yet that will let us get in anywhere. However, I'm getting 'way ahead of our

subject. To get back to it, energy can be converted into something that acts like matter

through Roeser's Rays, and that is the empirical fact underlying the drive of our space-

ships, as well as that of almost all other vehicles on all three planets. Power is

generated by the great waterfalls of Tellus and Venus — water's mighty scarce on Mars,

of course, so most of our plants there use atomics—and is transmitted on tight beams

by means of powerful fields of force to the receptors, wherever they may be. The

individual transmitting fields and receptors are simply matched-frequency units, each

matching the electrical characteristics of some particular and unique beam of force. This

beam is composed of Roeser's Rays, in their energy aspect. It took a long time to work

out this tight-beam transmission of power, but it was fairly simple after they got it."

     He took out a voluminous notebook, at the sight of which Nadia smiled.

     "A computer might forget to dress, but you'd never catch one without a full

magazine pencil and a lot of blank paper," he grinned in reply and went on, writing as he

talked.

     "For any given frequency,  , and phase angle, theta, you integrate, between

limits zero and pi over two, sine theta d. . ."

     "Hold it — I'm sinking!" Nadia exclaimed. "I don't integrate at all unless it is

absolutely necessary. As long as you stick to general science I'm right on your heels,

but please lay off of integrations and all that—most especially lay off of those terrible

electrical integrals. I always did think that they were the most poisonous kind known. I

want only a general idea—that's all that I can understand, anyway."

     "Sure. I forgot—guess I was getting in deeper than is necessary, especially since

this whole thing of beam transmission is pretty crude yet and is bound to change a lot

before long. There is so much loss that when we get more than a few hundred million

kilometers away from a power-plant we lose reception entirely. But to get going again,

the receptors receive the beam and from them the power is sent to the accumulators,

where it is stored. These accumulators are an outgrowth of the storage battery. The

theory of the accumulator is . . ."

     "Lay off of the theory, please!" the listener interrupted. "I understand perfectly

without it. Energy is stored in the accumulators—you put it in and take it out. That's all

that is necessary."

     "I'd like to give you some of the theory—but, after all, it wouldn't add much to

your understanding of the working of things, and it might mix you up, as some of it is

pretty deep stuff. Then, too, it would take a lot of time, and the rest of your friends would

squawk if I kept you here indefinitely. From the accumulators, then, the power is fed to

the converters, each of which is backed by a projector. The converters simply change

the aspect of the rays, from the energy aspect to the material aspect. As soon as this is

done, the highly-charged particles — or whatever they are — thus formed are repelled

by the terrific stationary force maintained in the projector backing the converter. Each

particle departs with a velocity supposed to be that of light, and the recoil upon the

projector drives the vessel, or car, or whatever it is attached to. Still with me?"

     "Struggling a little, but my nose is still above the surface. These particles, being

so infinitesimally small that they cannot even be detected, go right through any

substance without any effect—they are not even harmful."

     "Exactly. Now we are in position to go ahead with the lights, detectors, and so on.

The energy aspect of the rays you can best understand as simply a vibration in the

ether— an extremely short one. While not rigidly scientific, that is close enough for you

and me. Nobody knows what the stuff really is, and it cannot be explained nor

demonstrated by any model or concept in three-dimensional space. Its physical-

mathematical interpretation, the only way in which it can be grasped at all, requires

sixteen co-ordinates in four dimensions, and I don't suppose you'd care to go into that?"

     "I'll say I wouldn't!" she exclaimed, feelingly.

     "Well, anyway, by the use of suitable fields of force it can be used as a carrier

wave. Most of this stuff of the fields of force—how to carry the modulation up and down

through all the frequency changes necessary—was figured out by the Martians ages

ago. Used as a pure carrier wave, with a sender and a receiver at each end, it isn't so

bad— that's why our communicator and radio systems work as well as they do. They

are pretty good, really, but the ultralight vision system is something else again. Sending

the heterodyned wave through steel is easy, but breaking it up, so as to view an object

and return the impulses, was an awful job and one that isn't half done yet. We see

things, after a fashion and at a distance of a few kilometers, by sending an almost

parallel wave from a twin-projector to disintegrate and double back the viewing wave.

That's the way the lookout plates and lenses work, all over the ship— from the master-

screens in the control room to the plates of the staterooms and lifeboats and the

viewing-areas of the promenades. But the whole system is a make-shift, and . . ."

     "Just a minute!" exclaimed the girl. "I and everybody else have been thinking that

everything is absolutely perfect; and yet every single thing you have talked about, you

have ended up by describing as 'unknown', 'rudimentary', 'temporary', or a 'makeshift'.

You speak as though the entire system were a poor thing that will have to do until

something better has been found, and that nobody knows anything about anything! How

do you get that way?"

     "By working with Brandon and Westfall. Those birds have got real brains and

they're on the track of something that will, in all probability, be as far ahead of Roeser's

Rays as Our present system is ahead of the science of the seventeenth century."

     "Really ?" she looked at him in astonishment. "Tell me about it."

     "Can't be done," he refused. "I don't know much about it—even they didn't know

any too much about some of it when I had to come in. And what little I do know I can't

tell, because it isn't mine."

     "But you're working with them, aren't you?"

     "Yes, in the sense that a small boy helps his father run a lathe—they're the

brains."

     Nadia, disbelieving completely his disclaimer but secretly pleased by his attitude,

replied:

     "You would say something like that, of course . . . where do we go from here?"

     "Down the lining of the hull, outside the passengers' quarters, to the upper

dirigible projectors," and he led the way down a series of steep steel stairways, through

bulkheads and partitions of steel. "One thing I forgot to tell you about—the detectors.

They're an outgrowth of radar—reflection, you know. Whenever one spots anything it

swings a light on it—that's what happened when that light swung toward us, up there in

the prow—and automatic calculating machines compute and announce direction,

distance, relative course, and so on."

     "Are there any of those lifeboats, that I have been hearing so much about, near

here?"

     "Lots of 'em—here's one right here." He opened an insulated door, snapped on a

light, and waved his hand. "You can't see much of it from here, but it's a complete

spaceship in itself, capable of maintaining a dozen or fifteen persons during a two-

weeks' cruise in space."

     "Why isn't it a good idea to retain them? Accidents are still possible, are they

not?"

     "Of course, and there is no question of doing away with them entirely. Modern

ships, however, have only enough of them to take care of the largest number of persons

ever to be carried by the vessel."

     "Has the Arcturus more than she needs ?"

     "I'll say she has, and more of everything else, except room for pay-load."

     "I've heard them talking about junking her. I think it's a shame."

     "So do I, in a way—you see, I helped design her and her sister-ship, the Sirius,

which Brandon and Westfall are using as a floating laboratory. But times change, and

the inefficient must go. She's a good old tub, but she was built when everybody was

afraid of space, and we had to put every safety factor into her that we could think of. As

a result, she is four times as heavy as she should be, and that takes a lot of extra

power. Her skin is too thick. She has too many batteries of accumulators, too many life-

boats, too many bulkheads and airbreaks, too many and too much of everything. She is

so built that if she should break up out in space, nobody would die if they lived through

the shock—there are so many bulkheads, airbreaks, and lifeboats that no matter how

many pieces she broke up into, the survivors would find themselves in something able

to navigate. That excessive construction is no longer necessary. Modern ships carry ten

times the pay-load on one-quarter of the power that this old battle-wagon uses. Even

though she's only four years old, she's a relic of the days when we used to slam through

on the ecliptic route, right through all the meteoric stuff that is always there—trusting to

heavy armor to ward off anything too small for the observers and detectors to locate.

Now, with the observatories and check-stations out in space, fairly light armor is

sufficient, as we route ourselves well away from the ecliptic and so miss all the heavy

stuff. So, bad as I hate to see her go there, the old heap is bound for the junk-yard."

     A few more flights brought them to the upper band of dirigible projectors, which

encircled the hull outside the passengers' quarters, some sixty feet below the prow.

They were heavy, search-light-like affairs mounted upon massive universal bearings,

free to turn in any direction, each having its converter nestling inside its prodigious field

of force. Stevens explained that these projectors were used in turning the vessel and in

dodging meteorites when necessary, and .they went on through another almost invisible

door into a hall and took an elevator down to the main corridor.

     "Well, you've seen it, Miss Newton," Stevens said regretfully, as he led her

toward the captain's office. "The lower half is full of heavy stuff—accumulators,

machinery, driving projectors, and such junk, so that the center of gravity is below the

center of action of the driving projectors. That makes stable flight possible. It's all more

or less like what we've just seen, and I don't suppose you want to miss the

dance—anyway, a lot of people want to dance with you."

     "Wouldn't you just as soon show me the lower half as dance?"

     "Rather, lots!"

     "So would I. I can dance any time, and I want to see everything. Let's go!"

     Down they went, past battery after battery of accumulators ; climbing over and

around the ever-increasing numbers of huge steel girders and braces; through mazes of

heavily insulated wiring and conduits; past mass after mass of automatic machinery

which Stevens explained to his eager listener. They inspected one of the great driving

projectors, which, built rigidly parallel to the axis of the ship and held immovably in place

by enormous trusses of steel, revealed neither to the eye nor to the ear any sign of the

terrific force it was exerting. Still lower they went, until the girl had been shown

everything, even down to the bottom ultra-lights and stern braces.

     "Tired?" Stevens asked, as the inspection was completed.

     "Not very, it's been quite a climb, but I've had a wonderful time;"

     "So have I," he declared, positively. "I know what— we'll stop off in one of these

stern lifeboats and make us a cup of coffee before we climb back. With me ?"

     " 'Way ahead of you!" Nadia accepted the invitation enthusiastically, and they

made their way to the nearest of the miniature space-cruisers. Here, although no

emergency had been encountered in all the four years of the vessel's life, they found

everything in readiness, and the two soon had prepared and eaten a hearty luncheon.

     "Well, I can't think of any more excuses for monopolizing you, Miss Newton, so I

suppose I'll have to take you back. Believe me, I've enjoyed this more than you can

realize—I've . . ."

     He broke off and listened, every nerve taut. "What was that ?" he exclaimed.

     "What was what? I didn't hear anything?"

     "Something wrong somewhere! I felt a vibration, and anything that'd make this

hunk of steel even quiver must have given us one God-awful nudge. There's another!"

     The girl, painfully tense, felt only a barely perceptible tremor, but the computer,

knowing far better than she the inconceivable strength and mass of that enormous

structure of solidly braced hardened alloy, sprang into action. Leaping to the small

dirigible look-out plate, he turned on the power and swung it upward.

     "Great suffering snakes!" he ejaculated, then stood mute, for the plate revealed a

terrible sight. The entire nose of the gigantic craft had been sheared off in two immense

slices as though clipped off by a gigantic sword, and even as they stared, fascinated, at

the sight, the severed slices were drifting slowly away. Swinging the view along the

plane of cleavage, Stevens made out a relatively tiny ball of metal, only fifty feet or so in

diameter, at a distance of perhaps a mile. From this ball there shot a blinding plane of

light, and the Arcturus fell apart at the midsection, the lower half separating clean from

the upper portion, which held the passengers. Leaving the upper half intact, the attacker

began slicing the lower, driving half into thin, disk-shaped sections. As that

incandescent plane of destruction made its first flashing cut through the body of the

Arcturus, accompanied by an additional pyrotechnic display of severed and short-

circuited high-tension leads, Stevens and Nadia suddenly found themselves floating

weightless in the air of the room. Still gripping the controls of the lookout plate, Stevens

caught the white-faced girl with one hand, drew her down beside him, and held her

motionless while his keen mind flashed over all the possibilities of the situation and

planned his course of action.

     "They're apparently slicing us pretty evenly, and by the looks of things one cut is

coming right about here," he explained rapidly, as he found a flashlight and drew his

companion through the door and along a narrow passage. Soon he opened another

door and led her into a tiny compartment so low that they could not stand upright—a

mere cubicle of steel. Carefully closing the door, he fingered dials upon each of the

walls of the cell, then folded himself up into a comfortable position, instructed Nadia to

do the same, and snapped off the light.

     "Please leave it on," the shaken girl asked. "It's so ghastly!"

     "We'd better save it, Nadia," he advised, pressing her arm reassuringly. "It's the

only light we've got, and we may need it worse later on—its life is limited, you know."

     "Later on? Do you think we'll need anything— later on?"

     "Sure! Snap out of it, ace! Of course they may get us, but this little tertiary air-

break is a mighty small target for them to hit. And if they miss us, as I think they will,

there's a larger room opening off each wall of this one—at least one of which will

certainly be left intact. From any one of those rooms we can reach a life-boat. Of

course, it's a little too much to expect that any one of the lifeboats will be left whole, but

they're bulkheaded, too, you know, so that we can be sure of finding something able to

navigate—providing we can make our get-away. I'm mighty glad we're aboard the old

Arcturus right now, with all her safety-devices, instead of on one of the modern liners.

We'd be sunk right."

     "I felt sunk enough for a minute—I'm feeling better now, though, since you are

taking it so calmly."

     "Sure—why not? A guy's not dead until his heart stops beating, you know—our

turn'll come next, when they let up a little."

     "But suppose they change the width of their slices, and hit this cubby, small as it

is?"

     "It'd be just too bad," he shrugged. "In that case, we'd never know what hit us, so

it's no good worrying about it. But say, we might do something at that, if they didn't hit

us square. I can move fairly fast, and might be able to get a door open before the loss of

pressure seals it. We'll light the flash . . . here, you hold it, so that I can have both hands

free. Put both arms around me, just under the arms, and stick to me like a porous

plaster, because if I have to move at all I'll have to jump like chain lightning. Shine the

beam right over there, so it'll reflect and light up all the dials at once. There . . . hold on

tight! Here they come!"

     As he spoke, a jarring shudder shook one side of their hiding-place, then, a

moment later, the phenomenon was repeated, but with much less force, upon the other

side. Stevens sighed with relief, took the light, and extinguished it.

     "Missed us clean!" he exulted. "Now, if they don't find us, we're all set."

     "How can they possibly find us? I seem to be always worried about the wrong

things, but I should think that their finding us would be the least of our troubles."

     "Don't judge their vision system by ours—they've got everything, apparently.

However, their apparatus may not be delicate enough to spot us in a space this small

when their projectors flash through it, as they probably will. Then, too, there's a couple

of other big items in our favor— nobody else is in the entire lower half, since all this

machinery down here is either automatic or else controlled from up above, so they won't

be expecting to see anybody when they get down this far; and we aren't at all

conspicuous.

     We're both dressed in gray—your clothes in particular are almost exactly the

color of this armor-plate—so altogether we stand a good chance of being missed."

     "What shall we do now?"

     "Nothing whatever—wish we could sleep for a couple of hours, but of course

there's no hope of that. Stretch out here, like that—you can't rest folded up like an

accordion— and I'll lie down diagonally across the room. There's just room for me that

way. That's one advantage of weightlessness—you can lie down standing on your head,

and go to sleep and like it. But I forgot—you've never been weightless before, have you

? Does that continuous-fall sensation make you sick?"

     "Not so much, now, except that I feel awfully weird inside. I was horribly dizzy

and nauseated at first, but it's going away."

     "That's good—it makes lots of people pretty sick. In fact, some folks get awfully

sick and can't seem to get used to it at all. It's the canals in the inner ear that do most of

it, you know. However, if you're as well as that already, you'll be a regular spacehound

in half an hour. I've been weightless for weeks at a stretch, out in the Sirius, and now

I've got so I really like it. Here, we'd better keep in touch." He found her hand and

tucked it under his arm. "Stabilize our positions more, besides keeping us from getting

too lonesome, here in the dark," he concluded, in a matter-of-fact voice.

     "Thanks for saying 'us' — but you would, wouldn't you?" and a wave of

admiration went through her for the real and chivalrous manhood of the man with whom

she had been forced by circumstances to cast her lot. "How long must we stay here?"

     "As long as the air lasts, and I'd like to stay here longer than that. We don't want

to move around any more than we absolutely have to until their rays are off of us, and

we have no way of knowing how long that'll be. Also, we'd better keep still. I don't know

what kind of an audio system they've got, but there's no use taking unnecessary

chances."

     "All x—I'm an oyster's little sister," and for many minutes the two remained

motionless and silent. Now and then Nadia twitched and started at some vague real or

imaginary sound—now and then her fingers tightened upon his biceps—and he pressed

her hand with his arm in reassurance and understanding. Once a wall of their cell

resounded under the impact of a fierce blow and Stevens instantly threw his arm around

the girl, twisting himself between her and the threatened wall, ready for any emergency.

But nothing more happened, the door remained closed, the cell stayed bottle-tight, and

time wore slowly on. All too soon the unmistakable symptoms of breathing an unfit

atmosphere made themselves apparent and Stevens, after testing each of the doors,

drew the girl into a larger room, where they breathed deeply of the fresh, cool air.

     "How did you know that this room was whole ?" asked Nadia. "We might have

stepped out into space, mightn't we?"

     "No; if this room had lost its tightness the door wouldn't have opened. They won't

open if there's a difference of one kilogram pressure on the two sides. That's how I

knew that the room we were in at first was cut in two— the door into that air-break

wouldn't move."

     "What comes next?"

     "I don't know exactly what to do—we'd better hold a little council of war. They

may have gone . . ." Stevens broke off as the structure began to move, and they settled

down upon what had been one of the side-walls. Greater and greater became the

acceleration, until their apparent weight was almost as much as it would have been

upon the Earth, at which point it became constant. ". . . but they haven't," he continued

the interrupted sentence. "This seems to be a capture and seizure, as well as an attack,

so we'll have to take the risk of looking at them. Besides, it's getting cold in here. One or

two of the adjoining cells have apparently been ruptured and we're radiating our heat

out into space, so we'll have to get into a lifeboat or freeze. I'll go pick out the best one.

Wonder if I'd better take you with me, or hide you and come back after you ?"

     "Don't worry about that—I'm coming with you," Nadia declared, positively.

     "Just as well, probably," he assented, and they set out. A thorough exploration of

all the tight connecting cells revealed that not a lifeboat within their reach remained

intact, but that habitable and navigable portions of three such craft were available.

Selecting the most completely equipped of these, they took up their residence therein

by entering it and closing the massive insulating door. Stevens disconnected all the

lights save one, and so shielded that one before turning it on that it merely lightened the

utter darkness into a semi-permeable gloom. He then stepped up to the lookout plate,

and with his hand upon the control, pondered long the possible consequences of what

he wished to do.

     "What harm would it do to take just a little peek?"

     "I don't know—that's the dickens of it. Maybe none, and then again, maybe a lot.

You see, we don't know who or what we are up against. The only thing we know is that

they've got us beat a hundred ways, and we've got to act accordingly. We've got to

chance it sometime, though, if we ever get away, so we might as well do it now. I'll put it

on very short range first, and see what we can see. By the small number of cells we've

got here I'm afraid they've split us up lengthwise, too—so that instead of having a whole

slice of the old watermelon to live in, we've got only about a sixth of one—shaped about

like a piece of restaurant pie. One thing I can do, though. I'll turn on the communicator

receiver and put it on full coverage—maybe we can hear something useful."

     Putting a little power upon the visiray plate, he moved the point of projection a

short distance from their hiding-place, so that the plate showed a view of the wreckage.

The upper half of the vessel was still intact, the lower half a jumble of sharply-cut

fragments. From each of the larger pieces a brilliant ray of tangible force stretched

outward.

     Suddenly their receiver sounded behind them, as the high-powered transmitter in

the telegraph room tried to notify headquarters of their plight.

     "Arcturus attacked and cut up being taken tow . . ."

     Rapidly as the message was uttered the transmitter died with a rattle in the

middle of a word, and Nadia looked at Stevens with foreboding in her eyes.

     "They've got something, that's one thing sure, to be able to neutralize our

communicator beams that way," he admitted. "Not so good—we'll have to play this dose

to our vests, girl!"

     "Are you just trying to cheer me up, or do you really think we have a chance?"

she demanded. "I want to know just where we stand."

     "I'm coming clean with you, no kidding. If we can get away", we'll be all x,

because I'll bet a farm that by this time Brandon's got everything those birds have, and

maybe more. They beat us to it, that's all. I'm kind of afraid, though, that getting away

isn't going to be quite as simple as shooting fish down a well."

     Far ahead of them a port opened, a lifeboat shot out at its full power, and again

their receiver tried to burst into sound, but it was a vain attempt. The sound died before

one complete word could be uttered, and the lifeboat, its power completely neutralized

by the rays of the tiny craft of the enemy, floated gently back toward the mass of its

parent and accompanied it in its headlong flight. Several more lifeboats made the

attempt, as the courageous officers of the Arcturus, some of whom had apparently

succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the captors, launched the little shells from various

ports; but as each boat issued its power was neutralized and it found itself dragged

helplessly along in the grip of one of those mysterious, brilliant rays of force. At least

one hidden officer must have been watching the fruitless efforts, for the next lifeboat to

issue made no attempt, either to talk or to flee, but from it there flamed out into space a

concentrated beam of destruction—the terrible ray of annihilation, against which no

known substance could endure for a moment; the ray which had definitely outlawed

war. But even that frightful weapon was useless— it spent its force harmlessly upon an

impalpable, invisible barrier, a hundred yards from its source, and the bold lifeboat

disappeared in one blinding explosion of incandescence as the captor showed its real

power in retaliation. Stevens, jaw hard-set, leaped away from the screen, then brought

himself up so quickly that he skated across the smooth steel floor. Shutting off the

lookout plate, he led the half-fainting girl across the room to a comfortable seat and sat

down beside her—raging, but thoughtful. Nadia soon recovered.

     "Why are you acting so contrary to your nature—is it because of me?" she

demanded. "A dozen times I've seen you start to do something and then change your

mind. I will not be a load on you nor hinder you in anything you want to do."

     "I told your father I'd look after you, and I'm going to do it," he replied, indirectly. "I

would do it anyway, of •course—even if you are ten or twelve years older than I thought

you were."

     "Yes, Dad never has realized that I'm more than eight years old. I see—you were

going out there and be slaughtered?" He flushed, but made no reply. "In that case I'm

glad I'm here—that would have been silly. I think we'd better hold that council of war you

mentioned a while ago, don't you?"

     "All x. I need a smoke—do you indulge?"

     "No, thanks. I tried it a few times at school, but never liked it."

     He searched his pockets, bringing to light an unopened package and a battered

remnant which proved to contain one delapidated cigarette. He studied it thoughtfully.

"I'll smoke this wreck," he decided, "while it's still smokable. We'll save the rest of

them—I'm afraid it'll be a long time between smokes. Well, let's confer!"

     "This will have to be a one-sided conference, since I don't imagine that any of my

ideas will prove particularly helpful. You talk and I'll listen."

     "You can't tell what ideas may be useful—chip in any time you feel the urge.

Here's the dope as I see it. They're highly intelligent creatures and are in all probability

neither Martians nor Venerians, since if any of them had any such stuff as that some of

us would have known about it, and besides, I don't believe they would have used it in

just that way. Mercury is not habitable, at least for organic beings; and we have never

seen any sign of any other kind of inhabitants who could work with metals and rays.

They're probably from Jupiter, although possibly from further away. I say Jupiter

because I would think, from the small size of the ship, that it may be still in the

experimental stage, so that they probably didn't come from any further away than

Jupiter. Then, too, if they'd been very numerous, somebody would have sighted one

before. I'd give my left leg and four fingers for one good look at the inside of that ship."

     "Why didn't you take it, then ? You never even looked toward it, after that one

first glimpse."

     "I'll say I didn't—the reason being that they may have automatic detectors, and

as I have suggested before, our system "of vision is so crude that its use could be

detected with a clothesline or a basket full of scrap iron. But to resume. Their aim is to

capture, not destroy, since they haven't killed anybody except the one crew that

attacked them. Apparently they want to study us or something. However, they don't

intend that any of us shall get away, nor even send out a word of what has happened to

us. Therefore it looks as though our best bet is to hide now, and try to sneak away on

them after a while—direct methods won't work. Right?"

     "You sound lucid. Is there any possibility of getting back, though, if we got

anywhere near Jupiter? It's so far away!"

     "It's a long stretch, no fooling, from Jupiter to any of the planets where we have

power-plants—particularly now, when Mars and Tellus are subtending an angle of

something more then ninety degrees at the sun, and Venus is between the two, while

Jupiter is clear across the sun from all three of them. Even when Jupiter is in mean

opposition to Mars, it is still some five hundred and fifty million kilometers away, so you

can form some idea as to how far it is from our nearest plant now. No, if we expect to

get back under our own power, we've got to break away pretty quick—these lifeboats

have very little accumulator capacity, and the receptors are useless above about three

hundred million kilometers . . ."

     "But it'll take us a long time to go that far, won't it ?" "Not very. Our own ships,

using only the acceleration of gravity, and both plus and minus at that, make the better

than four hundred million kilometers of the long route to Mars in five days. These birds

are using almost that much acceleration, and I don't see how they do it. They must have

a tractor ray. Brandon claimed that such a thing was theoretically possible, but Westfall

and I couldn't see it. We ragged him about it a lot—and he was right. I thought of course

they'd drift with us, but they are using power steadily. They've got some system!"

     "Suppose they could be using intra-atomic energy ?" "Could be." The man

frowned in concentration. "Piles as we know them can't be that small and portable,

because of the shielding necessary . . . but Brandon and Westfall have been doing a lot

of arguing . . . anyway, I don't see that it makes any difference to us. We'll just have to

admit that they've got a better power system than we have—as of now. Well, maybe

we've given them time enough to get over being suspicious; let's see if we can sneak

away from them."

     By short and infrequent applications of power to the dirigible projectors of the life-

boat, Stevens slowly shifted the position of the fragment which bore their craft until it

was well clear of the other components of the mass of wreckage. He then exerted a

very small retarding force, so that their bit would lag behind the procession, as though it

had accidentally been separated. But the crew of the captor were alert, and no sooner

did a clear space show itself between them and the mass than a ray picked them up

and herded them back into place. Stevens then nudged other pieces so that they fell

out, only to see them also rounded up. For hour after hour he kept trying—doing nothing

sufficiently energetic to create any suspicion, but attempting everything he could think of

that offered any chance of escape from the clutches of their captors. Immovable at the

plate, his hands upon the controls, he performed every insidious maneuver his agile

brain could devise, but he could not succeed in separating their vehicle from its fellows.

Finally, after a last attempt which was foiled as easily as its predecessors, he shut off

his controls and turned to his companion with a grin.

     "I didn't think I could get away with it—they're keen, that gang—but I had to keep

at it as long as it would have done us any good."

     "Wouldn't it do us any good now ?"

     "Not a bit—we're going so fast that we couldn't stop —we're out of even radio

range of our closest power-plant. We'll have to put off any more attempts until they slow

us down. Then, fairly close to at least one of the moons of Jupiter, we'll have our best

chance—so good, in fact, that I really think we can make it."

     "But what good would that do us, if we couldn't get back?" Dire foreboding

showed in her glorious eyes.

     "Lots of things not tried yet, girl, and we'll try 'em all. First, we get away. Second,

we try to get in touch with Norman Brandon. . . . ."

     "How ? No known radio will carry half that far."

     "No, but I think that an as yet unknown radio may be able to—and there is a bare

possibility that I'll be able to communicate."

     "Oh, wonderful — that lifts a frightful load off my mind," she breathed.

     "But just a minute — I said I'd come clean with you, and I will. The odds are all

against us, no matter what we do. If that unknown radio won't work — and it probably

won't—there are several other things we can try, but they're all pretty slim chances.

Even if we get away, it'll probably be about the same thing as though you were to be

marooned on a desert island without any tools, and with your rescue depending upon

your ability to build a high-powered radio station with which to call to a mainland for

help. However, if we don't try to get away, our only alternative is letting them know we're

here, and joining our friends in captivity."

     "And then what?"

     "Your guess is as good as mine. Imprisonment and restraint, certain; death,

possible; return to Earth, almost certainly impossible—life as guests, highly improbable."

     "I'm with you, Steve, all the way."

     "Well, it's 'way past sleep-time1—we've both been awake better than fifty hours.

I'm all in and you look like a spent force. We'll get us a bite of supper and turn in."

     An appetizing supper was prepared from the abundant stores and each ate a

heartier meal than either would have believed possible. Stevens considered his

unopened package of cigarettes, then regretfully put it back into his pocket still

unopened and turned to Nadia.

     "You might as well sleep here, and I'll go in there. If anything scares you, yell.

Good-night, little fellow."

     "Wait a minute, Steve." Nadia flushed, and her brown eyes and black eyebrows,

in comparison with her golden-blonde hair, lent her face a quizzical, elfin expression

that far belied her feelings as she stared straight into his eyes. "I've never even been

away from the Earth before, and with all this happening, I'm simply scared to death. I've

been trying to hide it, but I couldn't stand it alone, and we're going to be together too

long and too close for senseless conventions to affect us. There's two bunks over there,

close together—why don't you sleep in one of them ?"

     He returned her steadfast gaze for a moment in silence.

     "All x with me," he answered, keeping out of his voice all signs of the tenderness

he felt for her, and of his very real admiration for her straightforward conduct in a

terrifying situation. "You trust me, then?"

     "Trust you! Don't be silly—I know you! I know you, and I know Brandon and

Westfall—I know what you've done, and exactly the kind of men you are. Trust you?

Don't be a sap!"

     "Thanks, Nadia," and promises were made and received in a clasp from which

Nadia's right hand, strong as it was, emerged slightly damaged.

     "By the way, what is your first name, fellow-traveler ?" she asked in lighter vein.

"Nobody, not even Dad or Breckie, ever seems to call you anything but 'Steve' when

they talk about you." She was amazed at the effect of her innocent question,-for

Stevens flushed to his hair and spluttered.

     "It's Percy!" he snorted. "Percival Van Schravendyck Stevens. Wouldn't that tear

it?"

     "Why, I think Percival's a real nice name!"

     "Silence!" he hissed in burlesque style. "Young woman, I have revealed to you a

secret known to but few living creatures. On your very life, keep it inviolate!"

     "Oh, very well, if you insist. Good-night. . . . . Steve!" and she gave him a radiant

and honest smile; the first smile he had seen since the moment of the attack.