The Vorkcul-Hexan War

The city of the Vorkuls, was an immense seven-pointed star. At its center, directly upon

the south pole of Jupiter, rose a tremendous shaft—its cross section likewise a tapering

seven-pointed star—which housed the directing intelligences of the nation. Radiating

from the seven cardinal points of the building were short lanes leading to star-shaped

open plots, from which in turn branched out ways to other stellate areas; ways reaching,

after many such steps, to the towering inner walls of the metropolis. The outer walls, still

loftier and even more massive ramparts of sullen gray-green metal, formed a seamless,

jointless barrier against an utterly indescribable foe; a barrier whose outer faces

radiated constantly a searing, coruscating green emanation. Metal alone could not long

have barred that voracious and implacably relentless enemy, but against that lethal

green emanation even that ravening Jovian jungle could not prevail, but fell back,

impotent. Writhing and crawling, loathsomely palpitant with an unspeakable exuberance

of foul and repellant vigor possible only to such meteorological conditions as obtained

there, it threw its most hideously prolific growths against that radiant wall in vain.

     The short, zig-zag lanes, the ways, and the seven-pointed areas were paved with

a greenish glass. This pavement was intended solely to prevent vegetable growth and

carried no traffic whatever, since few indeed of the Vorkuls have ever been earthbound

and all traffic was in the air. The principal purpose of the openings was to separate and

thus to render accessible by air the mighty buildings which, level upon level, towered

upward, with airships hovering at or anchored to doorways and entrances at every level.

Buildings, entrances, everything visible—all replicated, reiterated, repeated infinite

variations in the one theme, that of the septenate stelliform.

     Color ran riot; masses varied from immense blocks of awe inspiring grandeur to

delicate tracery of sheerest gossamer ; lights flamed and flared in wide bands and in

narrow, flashing pencils—but in all, through all, over all, and dominating all was the

Seven-Pointed Star.

     In and almost filling the space, at least a mile in width, between the inner and the

outer walls were huge, seven-sided structures—featureless, squat, forbidding

heptagons of dull green metal. Nothing living was to be seen in that space. Its pavement

was of solid metal and immensely thick, and that metal, as well as that of the walls, was

burned and blackened and seared as though by numberless exposures to intolerable

flame. In a lower compartment of one of these enormous heptagons Vortel Kromodeor,

First Projector Officer, rested before a gigantic and complex instrument board. He was

at ease—his huge wings folded, his sinuous length coiled comfortably in slack loops

about two horizontal bars. But at least one enormous, extensible eye was always

pointed toward the board, always was at least one nimble and bat-like ear cocked

attentively in the direction of the signal panel.

     A whistling, shrieking ululation rent the air and the officer's coils tightened as he

reared a few feet of his length upright, shooting out half a dozen tentacular arms to

various switches and controls upon his board, while throughout the great heptagon

hundreds of other Vorkuls sprang to attention at their assigned posts of duty. As the

howling wail came to a climax in a blast of sound Kromodeor threw over a lever, as did

every other projector officer in every other heptagon, and there was made plain to any

observer the reason for the burns and scars in the tortured space between the lofty

inner and outer walls of Vorkulia. For these heptagons were the monstrous flying

fortresses which Czuv had occasionally seen from afar, as they went upon some

unusual errand above the Jovian banks of mist, and which Brandon was soon to see in

his visiray screen. The seared and disfigured metal of the pavement and walls was

made so by the release of the furious blasts of energy necessary to raise those untold

thousands of tons of mass against the attraction of Jupiter, more than two and a half

times the gravity of our own world! Vast volumes of flaming energy shrieked from the

ports. Wave upon wave, flooding the heptagons, it dashed back and forth upon the

heavy metal between the walls. As more and more of the inconceivable power of those

Titanic generators was unleashed, it boiled forth in a devastating flood which, striking

the walls, rebounded and leaped vertically far above even those mighty ramparts. Even

the enormous thickness of the highly conducting metal could not absorb all the energy

of that intolerable blast, and immediately beneath the ports new seven-pointed areas of

disfigurement appeared as those terrific flying fortresses were finally wrenched from the

ground and hurled upward.

     High in the air, another signal wailed up and down a peculiar scale of sound and

the mighty host of vessels formed smoothly into symmetrical groups of seven. Each

group then moved with mathematical precision into its allotted position in a complex

geometrical formation—a gigantic, seven-ribbed, duplex cone in space. The flagship

flew at the apex of this stupendous formation; behind, and protected by, the full power

of the other floating citadels of the forty nine groups of seven. Due north the amazing

armada sped in rigorous alignment, flying along a predetermined meridian— due north!

     At the end of his watch Kromodeor relinquished his board to the officer relieving

him and shot into the air, propelled by the straightening of the powerful coils of his

snake-like body and tail. Wings half spread, lateral and vertical ruddering fins outthrust,

he soared across the room toward a low opening. Just before they struck the wall upon

either side of the doorway the great wings snapped shut, the fins retracted, and the long

and heavy body struck the floor of the passage without a jar. With a wriggling,

serpentine motion he sped like a vibrant arrow along the hall and into a wardroom.

There, after a brief glance around the room, he coiled up beside a fellow officer who

with one eye was negligently reading a scroll held in three or four hands; while with

another eye, poised upon its slender pedicle, he watched a moving picture upon a

television screen.

     "Hello, Kromodeor," Wixill, Chief Power Officer greeted the newcomer in the

wailing, hissing language of the Vorkuls. He tossed the scroll into the air, where it

instantly rolled into a tight cylinder and shot into an opening in the wall of the room.

"Glad to see you. Books and shows are all right on practice cruises, but I can't seem to

work up much enthusiasm about such things now."

     Kromodeor elevated an eye and studied the screen, upon which, to the

accompaniment of whistling, shrieking sound, whirled and gyrated an interlacing group

of serpentine forms.

     "A good show, Wixill," the projector officer replied, "but nothing to hold the

attention of men engaged in what we are doing. Think of it! After twenty years of

preparation—two long lifetimes—and for the first time in our history, we are actually

going to war!"

     "I have thought of it at length. It is disgusting. Compelled to traffic with an alien

form of life! Were it not to end in the extinction of those unspeakable hexans, it would be

futile to the point of silliness. I cannot understand them at all. There is ample room upon

this planet for all of us. Our races combined are not using one seven-thousandth of its

surface. You would think that they would shun all strangers. Yet for ages have they

attacked us, refusing to let us alone, until finally they forced us to prepare means for

their destruction. They seem as senselessly savage as the jungle growths, and, but for

their very evident intelligence, one would class them as such. You would think that,

being intelligent, and being alien to us, they would not have anything to do with us in

any way, peacefully or otherwise. However, their intrusions and depredations are about

to end."

     "They certainly are. Vorkulia has endured much—too much—but I am glad that

our forefathers did not decide to exterminate them sooner. If they had, we could not

have been doing this now."

     "There speaks the rashness of youth, Kromodeor. It is a violation of all our

instincts to have any commerce with outsiders, as you will learn as soon as you see one

of them. Then, too, we will lose heavily. Since we have studied their armaments so long,

and have subjected every phase of the situation to statistical analysis, it is certain that

we are to succeed—but you also know at what cost."

     "Two sevenths of our force, with a probable error of one in seven," replied the

younger Vorkul. "And because that figure cannot be improved within the next seven

years and because of the exceptional weakness of the hexans due to their

unexpectedly great losses upon Callisto, we are attacking at this time. Their spherical

vessels are nothing, of course. It is in the reduction of the city that we will lose men and

vessels. But at that, each of us has five chances in seven of returning, which is good

enough odds—much better than we had in that last expedition into the jungle. But by

the Mighty Seven, I shall make myself wrap around one hexan, for my brother's sake,"

and his coils tightened unconsciously. "Hideous, repulsive monstrosities! Creatures so

horrible should not be allowed to live—they should have been tossed over the wall to

the jungle ages ago!" Kromodeor curled out an eye as he spoke, and complacently

surveyed the writhing cylinder of sinuous, supple power that was his own body.

     "Better avoid contact work with them if possible," cautioned Wixill. "You might not

be able to unwrap, and to touch one of them is almost unthinkable. Speaking of

wrapping, you know that they are putting on the finals of the contact work in the star this

evening. Let's watch them."

     They slid to the floor and wriggled away in perfect "step"—undulating along in

such nice synchronism that their adjacent sides, only a few inches apart, formed two

waving, rigidly parallel lines. Deep in the lower part of the fortress they entered a large

assembly room, provided with a raised platform in the center and having hundreds of

short, upright posts in lieu of chairs; most of which were already taken by spectators.

The two officers curled their tails comfortably around two of the vacant pillars, elevated

their heads to a convenient level of sight, and directed each an eye or two upon the

stage. This was of course heptagonal. Its sides, like those of the mighty flying forts

themselves, were not straight, but angled inward sufficiently to make the platform a

seven-pointed star. The edge was outlined by a low rail, and bulwark and floor were

padded with thick layers of a hard, but smooth and yielding fabric.

     In this star-shaped ring two young Vorkuls were contending for the championship

of the fleet in a contest that seemed to combine most of the features of wrestling,

boxing, and bar-room brawling, with no holds barred. Four hands of each of the

creatures held heavy leather billies, and could be used only in striking with those

weapons, the remaining hands being left free to employ as the owner saw fit. Since the

sport was not intended to be lethal, however, the eyes and other highly vulnerable parts

were protected by metal masks, and the wing ribs were similarly guarded by leathern

shields. The guiding fins, being comparatively small and extremely tough, required no

protection.

     "We're just in time," Kromodeor whistled. "The main bout is nicely on. See

anyone from the flagship? I might stake a couple of korpels that Sintris will paint the

symbol upon his wing."

     "Most of their men seem to be across the star," Wixill replied, and both beings fell

silent, absorbed in the struggle going on in the ring.

     It was a contest well worth watching. Wing crashed against mighty wing and the

lithe, hard bodies snapped and curled this way and that, almost faster than the eye

could follow, in quest of advantageous holds. Above the shrieking wails of the crowd

could be heard the smacks and thuds of the eight flying clubs as they struck against the

leather shields or against tough and scaly hides. For minutes the conflict raged, with no

advantage apparent. Now the fighters were flat upon the floor of the star, now dozens of

feet in the air above it, as one or the other sought to gain a height from which to plunge

downward upon his opponent; but both stayed upon or over the star—to leave its

boundaries was to lose disgracefully.

     Then, high in air, the visiting warrior thought that he saw an opening and

grappled. Wings crashed in fierce blows, hands gripped and furiously wrenched. Two

powerful bodies, tapering smoothly down to equally powerful tails, corkscrewed around

each other viciously, winding up into something resembling tightly-twisted lamp cord;

and the two Vorkuls, each helpless, fell to the mat with a crash. Fast as was Zerexi, the

gladiator from the flagship, Sintris was the merest trifle faster. Like the straightening of a

twisted spring of tempered steel that long body uncoiled as they struck the floor, and up

under those shielding wings—an infinitesimal fraction of a second slow in

interposing—that lithe tail sped. Two lightning loops flashed around the neck of the

visitor and tightened inexorably. Desperately the victim fought to break that terrible

strangle hold, but every maneuver was countered as soon as it was begun. Beating

wings, under whose frightful blows the very air quivered, were met and parried by wings

equally capable. Hands and clubs were of no avail against that corded cable of sinew,

and Sintris, his head retracted between his wings and his own hands re-enforcing that

impregnable covering over his head and neck, threw all his power into his

tail—tightening, with terrific, rippling surges, that already throttling band about the throat

of his opponent. Only one result was possible. Soon Zerexi lay quiet, and a violet beam

of light flared from a torch at the ringside, bathing both contenders. At the flash the

winner disengaged himself from the loser, and stood by until the latter had recovered

the use of his paralyzed muscles. The two combatants then touched wing tips in salute

and flew away together, over the heads of the crowd; plunging into a doorway and

disappearing as the two officers uncoiled from their "seats" and wriggled out into the

corridor.

     "Fine piece of contact work," said Wixill, thoughtfully. "I'm glad that Sintris won,

but I did not expect him to win so easily. Zerexi shouldn't have gone into a knot so early

against such a fast man."

     "Oh, I don't know," argued Kromodeor. "His big mistake was in that second body

check. If he had blocked the sixth arm with his fifth, taken out .the fourth and second

with his third, and then gone in with . . ." and so, quite like two Earthly experts after a

good boxing match, the friends argued the fine points of the contest long after they had

reached their quarters.

     Day after day the vast duplex cone of Vorkulian fortresses sped toward the north

pole of the great planet, with a high and constant velocity. Day after day the complex

geometrical figure in space remained unchanged; no unit deviating measurably from its

precise place in the formation. Over rapacious jungles, over geysers spouting hot water,

over sullenly steaming rivers and seas, over boiling lakes of mud, and high over gigantic

volcanoes in uninterrupted eruptions of cataclysmic violence the Vorkulian phalanx

flew—, straight north. The equatorial regions, considerably hotter then the poles, were

traversed with practically no change in scenery—it was a world of steaming fog, of

jungle, of hot water, of boiling, spurting mud, and of volcanoes. Not of such mild and

sporadic volcanic outbreaks as we of green Terra know, but of gigantic primordial

volcanoes, in terrifyingly continuous performances of frightful intensity. Due north the

Vorkulian spearhead was hurled, far into the northern hemisphere before the rigorous

geometrical alignment was altered.

     "All captains, attention!" Finally, in a high latitude, the flagship sent out final

instructions. "The hexans have detected us, and our long range observers report that

they are coming to meet us in force. We will now go into the whirl, and proceed with the

maneuvers exactly as they have been planned. Whirl!"

     At the command each vessel began to pursue a tortuous spiral path. Each group

of seven circled slowly about its own axis, as though each structure were attached

rigidly to a radius rod, and at the same time spiraled around the line of advance in such

fashion that the whole gigantic cone, wide open maw to the fore, seemed to be boring

its way through the air.

     "Lucky again!" Kromodeor, in the wardroom, turned to Wixill as the two prepared

to take their respective watches. "It looks as though the first action would come while

we're on duty. I've got just one favor to ask—if you have to economize on power, let

Number One alone, will you?"

     "No fear of that," Wixill hissed, with the Vorkulian equivalent of a chuckle. "We

have abundance of power for all of you projector officers. But don't waste any of it, or I'll

cut you down five ratings!"

     "You're welcome. When I shine old Number One on any hexan work, one flash is

all we'll take. See you at supper," and, leaving his superior at the door of the power

room, Kromodeor wriggled away to his station upon the parallel horizontal bars before

his panel.

     Making sure that his tail coils were so firmly clamped that no possible lurch or

shock could throw him out of position, he set an eye toward each of his sighting

screens, even though he knew that it would be long before those comparatively short

range instruments would show anything except friendly vessels. Then, ready for any

emergency, he scanned his one "live" screen—the one upon which were being flashed

the pictures and reports secured by the high-powered instruments of the observers.

     With the terrific acceleration employed by the hexan spheres, it was not long until

the leading squadron of fighting globes neared the Vorkulian war-cone. This advance

guard was composed of the new, high-acceleration vessels. Their crews, with the innate

blood-lust and savagery of their breed, had not even entertained the thought of

accommodating their swifter pace to that of the main body of the fleet. These vast, slow-

moving structures were no more to be feared than those similar ones whose visits they

had been repulsing for twenty long Jovian years—by the time the slower spheres could

arrive upon the scene there would be nothing left for them to do. Therefore, few in

number as were the vessels of the vanguard, they rushed to the attack. In one blinding

salvo they launched their supposedly irresistible planes of force — dazzling, scintillating

planes under whose fierce power the studying, questing, scouting fortresses previously

encountered had fled back southward; cut, beaten, and crippled. These spiraling

monsters, however, did not pause or waver in their stolidly ordered motion. As the

hexan planes of force flashed out the dull green metal walls broke into a sparkling green

radiance, against which the Titanic bolts spent themselves in vain. Then there leaped

out from the weird brilliance of the walls of the fortresses great shafts of pale green

luminescence—tractor ray after gigantic tractor ray, which seized upon the hexan

spheres and drew them ruthlessly into the yawning open end of that gigantic cone.

     Then, in each group of seven, similar great streamers of energy reached out from

fortress to fortress, until each group was welded into one mighty unit by twenty-one

such bands of force. The unit formed, a ray from each of its seven component

structures seized upon a designated sphere, and under the combined power of those

seven tractors the luckless globe was literally snapped into the center of mass of the

Vorkulian unit. There seven dully gleaming red pressor rays leaped upon it, backed by

all the power of seven gigantic fortresses, held rigidly in formation by the unimaginable

mass of the structures and by their twenty-one prodigious tractor beams. Under that

awful impact the screens and walls of the hexan spheres were exactly as effective as so

many structures of the most tenuous vapor. The red glare of the vortex of those beams

was lightened momentarily by a flash of brighter color, and through the foggy

atmosphere there may have flamed briefly a drop or two of metal that was only

liquefied. The red and green beams snapped out, the peculiar radiance died from the

metal walls, and the gigantic duplex cone of the Vorkuls bored serenely northward—as

little marked or affected by the episode as is a darting swift who, having snapped up a

chance insect in full flight, darts on.

     "Great Cat!" Far off in space, Brandon turned from his visiray screen and wiped

his brow. "Czuv certainly chirped it, Perce, when he called those things flying fortresses.

But who, what, why, and how? We didn't see any apparatus that looked capable of

generating or handling those beams—and of course when they got started their screens

cut us off. Wish we could have made some sense out of their language—like to know a

few of their ideas— find out whether we can't get on terms with them some way or

other. Funny-looking wampuses, but they've got real brains. If they have it in mind to

take us on next, old son, it'll be just . . . too . . . bad!"

     "And then some," agreed Stevens. "They've got something—no fooling. It looks

like the hexans are going to get theirs, good and plenty, pretty soon—and then what? I'd

give my left lung and four front teeth for one look at their controls in action."

     "You and me both—'sfunny, the way those green ray-screens stick to the walls,

instead of being spherical, as you'd expect . . . should think they'd have to radiate from

a center, and so be spherical," Brandon cogitated. "However, we've got nothing

corkscrewy enough to go through 'em, so we'll have to stand by. We'll stay inside

whenever possible, look on from outside when we must, but all the time picking up

whatever information we can. In the meantime, now that we've got our passengers, old

Doctor Westfall prescribes something that he says is good for what ails us.

Distance—lots of distance, straight out from the sun—and I wouldn't wonder if we'd

better take his prescription."

     The two Terrestrial observers relapsed into silence, staring into their visiray

plates, searching throughout the enormous volume of one of those great fortresses in

another attempt to solve the mystery of the generation and propagation of the incredible

manifestations of energy which they had just witnessed. Scarcely had the search

begun, however, when the visirays were again cut off sharply—the rapidly-advancing

main fleet of the hexans had arrived and the scintillant Vorkulian screens were again in

place.

     True to hexan nature, training and tradition the fleet, hundreds strong, rushed

savagely to the attack. Above, below, and around the far-flung cone the furious globes

dashed, attacking every Vorkulian craft viciously with every resource at their command;

with every weapon known to their diabolically destructive race. Planes of force stabbed

and slashed, concentrated beams of annihilation flared fiercely through the reeking

atmosphere, gigantic aerial bombs and torpedoes were hurled with full radio control

against the unwelcome visitors—with no effect. Bound together in groups of seven by

the mighty bands of force, the Vorkulian units sailed calmly northward, spiraling along

with not the slightest change in formation or velocity. The frightful planes and beams of

immeasurable power simply spent themselves harmlessly against those sparklingly

radiant green walls—seemingly as absorbent to energy as a sponge is to water, since

the eye could not detect any change in the appearance of the screens under even the

fiercest blasts of the hexan projectors. Bombs, torpedoes, and all material projectiles

were equally futile—they exploded harmlessly in the air far from their objectives, or

disappeared at the touch of one of those dark, dull-red pressors. And swiftly, but calmly

and methodically as at a Vorkulian practice drill, the heptagons were destroying the

hexan fleet. Seven mighty tractors would lash out, seize an attacking sphere, and snap

it into the center of mass of the unit of seven. There would be a brief flash of dull red, a

still briefer flare of incandescence, and the impalpable magnets would leap out to seize

another of the doomed globes. It was only a matter of moments until not a hexan vessel

remained; and the Vorkulian juggernaut spiraled onward, now at full acceleration,

toward the hexan stronghold dimly visible far ahead of them—a vast city built around

Jupiter's northern pole.

     At the controls of his projector, Kromodeor spun a dial with a many-fingered,

flexible hand and spoke.

     "Wixill, I am being watched again — I can feel very plainly that strange

intelligence watching everything I do. Have the tracers located him?"

     "No, they haven't been able to synchronize with his wave yet. Either he is using a

most minute pencil or, what is more probable, he is on a frequency which we do not

ordinarily use. However, I agree with you that it is not a malignant intelligence. All of us

have felt it, and none of us senses enmity. Therefore it is not a hexan—it may be one of

those strange creatures of the satellites, who are, of course, perfectly harmless."

     "Harmless, but unpleasant," returned Kromodeor. "When we get back I'm going

to find his beam myself and send a discharge along it that will end his spying upon me. I

do not . . ."

     A wailing signal interrupted the conversation, and every Vorkul in the vast fleet

coiled even more tightly about his bars, for the real battle was about to begin. The city of

the hexans lay before them, all her gigantic forces mustered to repel the first real

invasion of her long and warlike history. Mile after mile it extended, an orderly labyrinth

of spherical buildings arranged in vast interlocking series of concentric circles—a city of

such size that only a small part of it was visible, even to the infra-red vision of the

Vorkulians. Apparently the city was unprotected, having not even a wall. Outward from

the low, rounded houses of the city's edge there reached a wide and verdant plain,

which was separated from the jungle by a narrow moat of shimmering liquid— a liquid of

such dire potency that across it even those frightful growths could neither leap nor

creep.

     But as the Vorkulian phalanx approached—now shooting forward and upward

with maximum acceleration, screaming bolts of energy naming out for miles behind

each heptagon as the full power of its generators was unleashed— it was made clear

that the homeland of the hexans was far from unprotected. The verdant plain

disappeared in a blast of radiance, revealing a transparent surface, through which could

be seen masses of machinery filling level below level, deep into the ground as far as the

eye could reach; and from the bright liquid of the girdling moat there shot vertically

upward a coruscantly refulgent band of intense yellow luminescence. These were the

hexan defenses, heretofore invulnerable and invincible. Against them any ordinary war-

craft, equipped with ordinary weapons of offense, would have been as pitifully impotent

as a naked baby attacking a battleship. But now those defenses were being challenged

by no ordinary craft; it had taken the mightiest intellects of Vorkulia two long lifetimes to

evolve the awful engine of destruction which was hurling itself forward and upward with

an already terrific and constantly increasing speed.

     Onward and upward flashed the gigantic duplex cone, its entire whirling mass

laced and latticed together into one mammoth unit by green tractor beams and red

pressors. These tension and compression members, of unheard-of power, made of the

whole fleet of three hundred forty three fortresses a single stupendous structure—a

structure with all the strength and symmetry of a cantilever truss! Straight through that

wall of yellow vibrations the vast truss drove, green walls flaming blue defiance as the

absorbers overloaded: its doubly-braced tip rearing upward, into and beyond the

vertical, as it shot through that searing yellow wall. Simultaneously from each heptagon

there flamed downward a green shaft of radiance, so that the whole immense circle of

the cone's mouth was one solid tractor beam, fastening upon and holding in an

unbreakable grip mile upon mile of the hexan earthworks.

     Practically irresistible force and supposedly immovable object! Every loose article

in every heptagon had long since been stored in its individual shock-proof compartment,

and now every Vorkul coiled his entire body in fierce clasp about mighty horizontal bars:

for the entire kinetic energy of the untold millions of tons of mass comprising the cone,

at the terrific measure of its highest possible velocity, was to be hurled upon those

unbreakable linkages of force which bound the trussed aggregation of Vorkulian

fortresses to the deeply-buried intrenchments of the hexans. The gigantic composite

tractor beam snapped on and held. Inconceivably powerful as that beam was, it

stretched a trifle under the incomprehensible momentum of those prodigious masses of

metal, almost halted in their terrific flight. But the war-cone was not quite halted; the

calculations of the Vorkulian scientists had been accurate. No possible artificial

structure, and but few natural ones — in practice maneuvers entire mountains had been

lifted and hurled for miles through the air—could have withstood the incredible violence

of that lunging, twisting, upheaving impact. Lifted bodily by that impalpable hawser of

force and cruelly wrenched and twisted by its enormous couple of angular momentum,

the hexan works came up out of the ground as a waterpipe comes up in the teeth of a

power shovel. The ground trembled and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete

masonry, and masses of metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of

diabolical machinery was torn from its bed.

     A portion of that conduit fully thirty miles in length was in the air, a twisted,

flaming inferno of wrecked generators, exploding ammunition, and broken and short-

circuited high-tension leads before the hexans could themselves cut it and thus save the

remainder of their fortifications. With resounding crashes the structure parted at the

weakened points, the furious upheaval stopped, and, the tractor beams shut off, the

shattered, smoking, erupting mass of wreckage fell in clashing, grinding ruin upon the

city.

     The enormous duplex cone of the Vorkuls did not attempt to repeat the

maneuver but divided into two single cones, one of which darted toward each point of

rupture. There, upon the broken and unprotected ends of the hexan cordon their points

of attack lay: theirs the task to eat along that annular fortress, no matter what the

opposition might bring to bear —to channel in its place a furrow of devastation until the

two cones, their work complete, should meet at the opposite edge of the city. Then what

was left of the cones would separate into individual heptagons, which would so

systematically blast every hexan thing into nothingness as to make certain that never

again would they resume their insensate attacks upon the Vorkuls. Having counted the

cost and being grimly ready to pay it, the implacable attackers hurled themselves upon

their objectives.

     Here were no feeble spheres of space, commanding only the limited energies

transmitted to their small receptors through the ether. Instead there were all the

offensive and defensive weapons developed by hundreds of generations of warrior-

scientists; wielding all the incalculable power capable of being produced by the massed

generators of a mighty nation. But for the breach opened in the circle by the irresistible

surprise attack, they would have been invulnerable and, hampered as they were by the

defenseless ends of what should have been an endless ring, the hexans took heavy toll.

     The heptagons, massive and solidly braced as they were, and anchored by

tractor beams as well, shuddered and trembled throughout their mighty frames under

the impact of fiercely-driven pressors. Sullenly radiant green wall-screens flared brighter

and brighter as the Vorkulian absorbers and dissipators, mighty as they were, continued

more and more to overload; for there were being directed against them beams from the

entire remaining circumference of the stronghold. Every deadly frequency and

emanation known to the fiendish hexan intellect, backed by the full power of the city,

was poured out against the invaders in sizzling, shrieking bars, bands, and planes of

frenzied incandescence. Nor was vibratory destruction alone. Armor-piercing projectiles

of enormous size and weight were hurled—diamond-hard, drill-headed projectiles which

clung and bored upon impact. High-explosive shells, canisters of gas, and the frightful

aerial bombs and radio-dirigible torpedoes of highly scientific war—all were thrown with

lavish hand, as fast as the projectors could be served. But thrust for thrust, ray for ray,

projectile for massive projectile, the Brobdingnagian creations of the Vorkuls gave back

to the hexans.

     The material lining of the ghastly moat was the only substance capable of

resisting the action of its contents, and now, that lining destroyed by the uprooting of the

fortress, that corrosive, brilliantly mobile liquid cascaded down into the trough and

added its hellish contribution to the furious scene. For whatever that devouring fluid

touched flared into yellow flame, gave off clouds of lurid, strangling vapor, and

disappeared. But through yellow haze, through blasting frequencies, through clouds of

poisonous gas, through rain of metal and through storm of explosive the two cones

ground implacably onward, their every offensive weapon centered upon the fast-

receding exposed ends of the hexan fortress. Their bombs and torpedoes ripped and

tore into the structure beneath the invulnerable shield and exploded, demolishing and

hurling aside like straws walls, projectors, men, and vast mountains of earth. Their

terrible rays bored in, softening, fusing, volatilizing metal, short-circuiting connections,

destroying life far ahead of the point of attack; and, drawn along by the relentlessly

creeping composite tractor beam, there progressed around the circumference of the

hexan city two veritable Saturnalia of destruction—uninterrupted, cataclysmic

detonations of sound and sizzling, shrieking, multi-colored displays of pyrotechnic

incandescence combining to form a spectacle of violence incredible.

     But the heptagons could not absorb nor radiate indefinitely those torrents of

energy, and soon one greenishly incandescent screen went down. Giant shells pierced

the green metal walls, giant beams of force fused and consumed them. Faster and

faster the huge heptagon became a shapeless, flowing mass, its metal dripping away in

flaming gouts of brilliance; then it disappeared utterly in one terrific blast as some

probing enemy ray reached a vital part. The cone did not pause nor waver. Many of its

component units would go down, but it would go on—on and on until every hexan trace

had disappeared or until the last Vorkulian heptagon had been annihilated.

     In one of the lowermost heptagons, one bearing the full brunt of the hexan

armament, Kromodeor reared upright as his projector controls went dead beneath his

hands. Finding his communicator screens likewise lifeless, he slipped to the floor and

wriggled to the room of the Chief Power Officer, where he found Wixill idly fingering his

controls.

     "Are we out?" asked Kromodeor, tersely.

     "All done," the Chief Power Officer calmly replied. "We have power left, but we

cannot use it, as they have crushed our screens and are fusing our outer walls. Two out

of seven chances, and we drew one of them. We are still working on the infra band,

over across on the Second's board, but we won't last long . . ."

     As he spoke the mighty fabric lurched under them, and only their quick and

powerful tails, darting in lightning loops about the bars, saved them from being battered

to death against the walls as the heptagon was hurled end over end by a stupendous

force. With a splintering crash it came to rest upon the ground.

     "I wonder how that happened ? They should have rayed us out or exploded us,"

Kromodeor pondered. The Vorkuls, with their inhumanly powerful, sinuous bodies, were

scarcely affected by the shock of that frightful fall.

     "They must have had a whole battery of pressors on us when our greens went

out—they threw us half-way across the city, almost into the gate we made first," Wixill

replied, studying the situation of the vessel in the one small screen still in action. "We

aren't hurt very badly—only a few holes that they are starting to weld already. When the

absorber and dissipator crews get them cooled down enough so that we can use power

again, we'll go back."

     But they were not to resume their place in the attack. Through the holes in the

still-glowing walls hexan soldiery were leaping in steady streams, fighting with the

utmost savagery of their bloodthirsty natures, urged on by the desperation born of the

knowledge of imminent defeat and total destruction. Hand-weapons roared, flashed,

and sparkled; heavy bars crashed and thudded against crunching bones; mighty bodies

and tails whipped crushingly about six-limbed forms which wrenched and tore with

monstrously powerful hands and claws. Fiercely and valiantly the Vorkuls fought, but

they were outnumbered by hundreds and only one outcome was possible.

     Kromodeor was one of the last to go down. Weapons long since exhausted, he

unwrapped his deadly coils from about a dead hexan and darted toward a store-room,

only to be cut off by a horde of enemies. Throwing himself down a vertical shaft, he flew

toward a tiny projector-locker in the lowermost part of one of the great star's points, the

hexans in hot pursuit. He wrenched the door open, and even while searing planes of

force were riddling his body he trained the frightful weapon he had sought. He pressed

the contact, and a burst of intolerable flame swept the entire passage clear of life.

Weakly he struggled to go out into the aisle, but his muscles refused to do the bidding of

his will and he lay there, twitching feebly.

     In the power room of the heptagon a hexan officer turned fiercely to another, who

was offering advice.

     "Vorkuls? Bah!" he snarled, viciously. "Our race is finished. Die we must, but we

shall take with us the one enemy who above all others needs destruction!" and he

hurled the captured Vorkulian fortress into the air.

     As the heptagon lurched upward the massive door of a lower projector locker

clanged shut and Kromodeor collapsed in a corner, his consciousness blotted out.

                         *  *  *  *  *

     "Well, that certainly tears it! That's a . . . I . . ." Stevens' ready vocabulary failed

him and he turned to Brandon, who was still staring narrow-eyed into the plate,

watching the destruction of the hexan city.

     "They've got something, all x—you've got to hand it to 'em," Brandon replied.

"Here we thought we knew something about forces and physical phenomena in

general—and those birds've forgotten more than we ever will know. Just one of those

things could take the whole I-P fleet, armed as we are now, any morning before

breakfast, just for setting-up exercises. We've got to do something about it—but what ?"

     "It's by me—you tell 'em. There may be an out somewhere, but I don't see it,"

and Stevens' gloomy tone matched his words.

     Highly trained scientists both, they had been watching that which transcended all

the science of the inner planets and knew themselves outclassed immeasurably.

     "Only one thing to do, as I see it," Brandon cogitated. "That's to keep on going

straight out, the way we're headed now. We'd better call a council of war, to dope out a

line of action."