Roger Carries On

: Triplanetary

For gray Roger had not perished in the floods of Nevian energy which had

destroyed his planetoid. While those terrific streamers of force

emanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibians'

space-ship were driving into his defensive screens, Roger sat impassive

and immobile at his desk. His hard gray eyes moved methodically over his

instruments and recorders; and after a few minutes he smiled coldly,

while an expression of relief struggled fleetingly to move his

expressionless face. Even though his screens were better than anyone had

supposed, why admit it?



"Baxter, Hartkopf, Chatelier, Anandrusung, Penrose, Nishimura,

Mirsky...." He called off a list of names. "Report to me here at once!"



"The planetoid is lost," he informed his select group of scientists when

they had assembled, "and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes,

which will be the time required for the robots to fill this first

section with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each of

you one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and report

back here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to anyone

else."



They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall Baxter,

perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced a

thought for those they were so brutally deserting.



"I say, it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest of

them; but still, I suppose...."



"You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the

pause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, to

me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all of our

men and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved.

What would you? For the rest it is simply what you call 'the fortune of

war,' no?"



"But the beautiful...." began the amorous Chatelier.



"Hush, fool!" snorted Hartkopf. "One word of that to the ear of Roger

and you too are left behind. Of such non-essentials the Universe is

full, to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to be

disregarded. Und this is a time of schrecklichkeit indeed!"






And through that terrific conduit came speeding package

after package of destruction.]



The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters; to meet again in

the First Section a few minutes before the zero time. Roger's "office"

was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but little

room was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmoved

behind his dials.



"But of what use is it, Roger?" the Russian physicist demanded. "Those

waves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher than

anything heretofore known. Our screens should not have stopped them for

an instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainly

this single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid without

being destroyed."



"There are many things you do not know, Mirsky," came the cold and level

answer. "Our screens, which you think are of your own devising, have

several improvements of my own in the formulae, and would hold forever

had I the power to drive them. The screens of this section, being

smaller, can be held as long as will be found necessary."



"Power!" the dumfounded Russian exclaimed. "Why, we have almost infinite

power--unlimited--sufficient for a lifetime of high expenditure!"



But Roger made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. He

pressed down a tiny lever, and a robot in the power room threw in the

gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians the

stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado the

amphibian--the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of

power afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burn-out and of

exhaustion. Then, all the attention of the Nevians and the greater part

of their power output devoted to the neutralization of that last

desperate thrust, the metal wall of the planetoid opened and the First

Section shot out into space. Full-driven as they were, Roger's screens

flared white as he drove through the temporarily lessened attack of the

Nevians; but in their preoccupation the amphibians did not notice the

additional disturbance and the section tore on, unobserved and

undetected. Far out in space, Roger raised his eyes from the instrument

panel and continued the conversation as though it had not been

interrupted.



"Everything is relative, Mirsky, and you have misused gravely the term

'unlimited.' Our power was, and is, very definitely limited. True, it

then seemed ample for our needs, and is far superior to that possessed

by the inhabitants of any solar system with which I am familiar; but the

beings behind that red screen, whoever they are, have sources of power

as far above ours as ours are above those of the Solarians."



"How do you know?"



"That power, what is it?" "We have, then, the analyses of those fields

recorded!" Came simultaneous questions and explanations.



"Their power-source is very probably the intra-atomic energy of iron;

and if so, much remains to be done before I can proceed with my plan. I

must have the most powerful structure in the known Universe before I can

act. In the light of what I have just learned, the loss of the planetoid

is but a trifle." Roger, as unmoved as one of his own automatons, was

coldly analyzing the situation, thinking the thing through to its

logical conclusion, paying no attention whatever to the losses of life,

time and treasure now behind him.



"But what can you do about it?" growled the Russian.



"Many things. From the charts of the recorders we can compute their

fields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their method

of liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build other

robots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid; one this time

that, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will be suited to my

needs."



"And where will you build it? We are marked. Invisibility now is

useless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyond

that of Pluto!"



"We have already left your Solarian system far behind. We are going to

another system; one far enough removed so that the spy-rays of

Triplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in a

reasonable length of time with the energies at our command. Some fifteen

days will be required for the journey, however, and our quarters are

cramped. Therefore make places for yourselves wherever you can, and

lessen the tedium of those fifteen days by working upon whatever

problems are most pressing in your respective researches."



The gray monster fell silent, immersed in what thoughts no one knew, and

the scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist,

followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed, saturnine American engineer and

inventor, as he made his way to the furthermost cubicle of the section.



"I say, Penrose, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't

mind?"



"Go ahead. Ordinarily it's dangerous to be a cackling hen anywhere

around him, but he can't hear anything here now. His system is pretty

well shot to pieces. You want to know all I know about Roger?"



"Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, you

know. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you know

what I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wondering

whether he really is human. He knows too much, about too many things.

He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems, to visit which would

require life-times. Then, too, he has dropped remarks which would imply

that he actually saw things that happened long before any living man

could possibly have been born. Finally, he looks--well, peculiar--and

certainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been able

to learn nothing about him; as you have said, such talk as this aboard

the planetoid was impossible."



"You needn't worry about being paid your price; that's one thing. If we

live--and that was part of the agreement, you know--we will all get what

we sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already made

millions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Chatelier has had and

will have his women, Anandrusung and Nishimura their cherished revenges.

Hartkopf his power, and so on." He eyed the other speculatively, then

went on:



"I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance and

since you should know what the rest of us do. You're in the same boat

with us and tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip, that

may or may not be true, but I know one very startling fact. Here it is.

My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in connection

with certain things I myself saw on the planetoid, prove beyond question

that our Roger went to Harvard University at the same time he did. Roger

was a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted that he was marked,

like this," and the American sketched a cabalistic design.



"What!" Baxter exclaimed. "An adept of North Polar Jupiter--them?"



"Yes. That was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was those

medicine-men--really high-caliber scientists--that prolonged that war

so...."



"But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped out

it was proved a lot of hocus-pocus...."



"Some of it was, but most of it wasn't," Penrose interrupted in turn.

"I'm not asking you to believe anything except that one fact; I'm just

telling you the rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knew

things and did things that take a lot of explaining. Now for the gossip,

none of which is guaranteed. Roger is undoubtedly of Tellurian

parentage, and the story is that his father was a moon-pirate, his

mother a Greek adventuress. When the pirates were chased off the moon

they went to Ganymede, you know, and some of them were captured by the

Jovians. It seems that Roger was born at an instant of time sacred to

the adepts, so they took him on. He worked his way up through the

Forbidden Society as all adepts did, by various kinds of murder and job

lots of assorted deviltries, until he got clear to the top--the

seventy-seventh mystery...."



"The secret of eternal youth!" gasped Baxter, awed in spite of himself.



"Right, and he stayed Chief Devil, in spite of all the efforts of all

his ambitious sub-devils to kill him, until the turning-point of the

First Jovian War. He cut away then in a space-ship, and ever since then

he has been working--and working hard--on some stupendous plan of his

own that nobody else has ever got even an inkling of. That's the story.

True or not, it explains a lot of things that no other theory can touch.

And now I think you'd better shuffle along; enough of this is a great

plenty!"



Baxter went to his own cubby, and each man of the adept's cold-blooded

crew methodically took up his task. True to prediction, in fifteen days

a planet loomed beneath them and their vessel settled through a reeking

atmosphere toward a rocky and forbidding plain. Then for another day

they plunged along, a few thousand feet above the surface of that

strange world, while Roger with his analytical detectors sought the most

favorable location from which to wrest the materials necessary for his

program of construction.



It was a world of cold; its sun was distant, pale, and wan. It had

monstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhed

and fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever and

anon a struggling part broke from its parent plant and darted away in

independent existence; leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by a

fellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform color--a

lurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, some

cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous,

inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were

the animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciously

through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like,

bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a

dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses--to

kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking

wilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, its

appalling ferocity and horror.



"There should be intelligence, of a kind," he mused, and swept the

surface of the planet with an exploring beam. "Ah, yes, there is a city,

of sorts," and in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon a

metal-walled city of roundly conical buildings.



Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttled

formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel

by means of a tractor ray. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the

floor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like metal-studded mass of leathery

substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet

it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated

of rage and of hatred.



"Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet," Roger commented.

"Such creatures are useless to us; we can build robots in half the time

required for their subjugation and training. Still, it should not be

permitted to carry back what it may have learned of us." As he spoke the

adept threw the peculiar being out into the air and dispassionately

rayed it out of existence.



"That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot."

Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. "The

evenest-tempered man in town--mad all the time!"



Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of

raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweeping

beams denuded a great circle of life, and into that circle leaped

robots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants and

power; robots insensible alike to that bitter cold and to that noxious

atmosphere.



But the outlaws were not to win a foothold upon that inimical planet

easily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weird

vegetation of the circle's bare edge there scuttled and poured along a

horde of the metal-studded men--if "men" they might be called--who,

ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. Mowed down by hundreds, still

they came on; willing, it seemed to expend any number of lives in order

that one living creature might once touch a robot with one out-thrust

metallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash as of lightning,

the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease and metal, and the robot

went down out of control. Recalling his remaining automatons, Roger sent

out a shielding screen, against which the defenders of their planet

raged in impotent fury. For days they hurled themselves and their every

force against that impenetrable barrier, then withdrew: temporarily

stopped, but by no means acknowledging defeat.



Then, while Roger and his cohorts directed affairs from within their

comfortable and now sufficiently roomy vessel, there came into being

around it an industrial city of metal, peopled by metallic and insensate

mechanisms. Mines were sunk, furnaces were blown in, smelters belched

forth into the already unbearable air their sulphurous fumes, rolling

mills and machine shops were built and equipped: and as fast as new

enterprises were completed additional robots were ready to man them. In

record time the heavy work of girders, members, and plates was well

under way; and shortly thereafter light, deft, and multi-fingered

mechanical men began the interminable task of building and installing

the prodigious amount of precise machinery required for the vast

structure. Roger was well content: but one day he was rudely awakened

from his dream of complete isolation.



Even though he had no reason to believe that there was anything

dangerous within hundreds of millions of miles, it was Roger's cautious

custom to release the screens from time to time, in order to allow his

detectors to range out. This day, as he sent out his beams, his hard

gray eyes grew even harder.



"Mirsky! Nishimura! Come here!" he snapped, and showed them upon his

plate an enormous sphere of steel, its rays flaming viciously. "Is there

any doubt whatever in your minds as to the System to which that ship

belongs?"



"None at all--Triplanetarian," replied the Russian. "While larger than

any I have seen before, its construction is unmistakable. They managed

to trace us, and are testing out their weapons before attacking. Do we

attack or do we run away?"



"If Triplanetarian, and it surely is, we attack," coldly. "This one

section is armed and powered to defeat Triplanetary's entire navy. We

shall take that ship, and shall add its slight resources to our own. And

it may even be that they have picked up the three who escaped me.... I

have never yet been balked for long. Yes, we shall take that vessel. And

those three sooner or later. Bradley I care nothing about ... but

Costigan handled me ... and the woman...." Diamond-hard eyes glared

balefully at the urge of thoughts to a clean and normal mind

unthinkable.



"To your posts," he ordered. "The robots will continue to function under

their automatic controls during the short time it will require to abate

this nuisance."



"One moment!" A strange voice roared from the speakers. "Consider

yourselves under arrest, by order of the Triplanetary Council! Surrender

and you shall receive impartial hearing; fight us and you shall never

come to trial. From what we have learned of Roger, we do not expect him

to surrender, but if any of you other men wish to avoid immediate death,

leave your vessel at once. We will come back for you later."



"Any of you wishing to leave this vessel have my full permission to do

so," Roger announced, disdaining any reply to the challenge of the

Boise. "Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoid

area after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attack

in one minute."



"Would not one do better by stopping on?" Baxter, in the quarters of the

American, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. "I

should leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win; but I do

not fancy that it can, do you?"



"That ship? One Triplanetary ship against us?" Penrose laughed

raucously. "Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that there

was any chance of us losing; but there isn't, so I'm staying. I know

which side my bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that's

all. Not bluffing exactly, either, because they'll go through with it as

long as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have--they'll die trying

every time, instead of running away, even when they know they're licked

before they start. They don't use good judgment."



"None of you are leaving? Very well, you each know what to do," came

Roger's emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, he

advanced a lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air.



Toward the poised Boise Roger steered. Within range, he flung out a

weapon new-learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing or

creature, the red converter-field of the Nevians. For Roger's analytical

detectors had stood him in good stead during those frightful minutes in

the course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Nerado's

superhuman attack; in such good stead that from the records of those

ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct

not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens

employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With

a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated

the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in

such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively

armed and powered? Well it was for his peace of mind that he had no

inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking

was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical "super-ship" of

Triplanetary's Secret Service; nor that its already unprecedented

armament had been re-enforced, thanks to that hated Costigan, with

Roger's own every worth-while idea, as well as with every weapon and

defense known to that arch-Nevian, Nerado!



Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, and

instantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rodebush at

the controls down, the men of the Secret Service countered with wave

after wave and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and material

destruction. No thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship could

enter their minds. The outlaws had each been given a chance to

surrender, and each had refused it. Refusing, they knew, as the

Triplanetarians knew and as all modern readers know, meant that they

were staking their lives upon victory. For with modern armaments it is

seldom indeed that a single man lives through the defeat in battle of a

war-vessel of space.



Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not reach even

Boise's screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor as

Rodebush neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone of

force; but even that all-devouring zone could not touch Roger's

peculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed.

Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams of

high-tension high-frequency current in whose paths the most stubborn

metals would be volatilized instantly; all iron-driven, every deadly and

torturing vibration known was hurled against that screen; but it, too,

was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam was

dissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscating

torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and

Dutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes--and still it held.

But Roger's fiercest blasts and heaviest projectiles were equally

impotent against the force-shields of the super-ship. The adept, having

no liking for a battle upon anything like equal terms, sought safety in

flight, only to be brought to a crashing, stunning halt by a massive

tractor beam.



"That must be that sixth-phase polycyclic screen that Conway reported

on," Cleveland frowned in thought. "I've been doing a lot of work on

that, and I think I've calculated an opener for it, Fred, but I'll have

to have number ten projector and the whole output of number ten power

room. Can you let me play with that much juice for a while? All right,

Blake, tune her up to fifty-five thousand--there, hold it! Now, you

other fellows, listen! I'm going to try to drill a hole through that

screen with a hollow, quasi-solid beam: like a diamond drill cutting out

a core. You won't be able to shove anything into the hole from outside

the beam, so you'll have to steer your cans out through the central

orifice of number ten projector--that'll be cold, since I'm going to use

only the edge. I don't know how long I'll be able to hold the hole open,

though so shoot them along as fast as you can. Ready? Here goes!"



He pressed a series of contacts. Far below, in number ten converter

room, massive switches drove home and the enormous mass of the vessel

quivered under the terrific reaction of the newly-calculated,

semi-material beam of energy that was hurled out, backed by the

mightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of Triplanetary's

super-dreadnaught. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerable

energy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struck

Roger's hitherto impenetrable wall. Struck and clung, grinding, boring

in, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of

cylinder and shield the pirates' screen radiated scintillating torrents

of cracking, streaming sparks, lightning-like in length and in

intensity.



Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through! Pierced

Roger's polycyclic screen; exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls! And

now, concentrated upon one point, flamed out in seemingly redoubled fury

Triplanetary's raging rays--in vain. For even as they could not

penetrate the screen, neither could they penetrate the wall of

Cleveland's drill, but rebounded from it in the cascaded brilliance of

thwarted lightning.



"Oh, what a dumb-bell I am!" groaned Cleveland. "Why, oh why didn't I

have somebody rig up a secondary SX7 beam on Ten's inner rings? Hop to

it, will you, Blake, so that we'll have it in case they are able to stop

the cans?"



But the pirates could not stop all of Triplanetary's projectiles, now

hurrying along inside the pipe as fast as they could be driven. In fact,

for a few minutes desperate Roger, knowing that he faced his long life's

gravest crisis, paid no attention to them at all, nor to any of his own

useless offensive weapons: he struggled only and madly to break away

from the savage grip of the Boise's tractor rod. Futile. He could

neither cut nor stretch that inexorably anchoring beam. Then he devoted

his every resource to the closing of that unbelievable breach in his

shield; the barrier which through all previous emergencies had kept

death at bay. Equally futile. His most desperate efforts resulted only

in more frenzied displays of incandescence along the curved surface of

contact of that penetrant cylinder. And through that terrific conduit

came speeding package after package of destruction. Bombs, and

armor-piercing shells, gas shells, and shells of poisonous and corrosive

fluids followed each other in close succession. The surviving scientists

of the planetoid, expert gunners and ray-men all, destroyed many of the

projectiles, but it was not humanly possible to frustrate them all. And

the breach could not be forced shut against the all but irresistible

force of Cleveland's "opener". And with all his power Roger could not

shift his vessel's position in the grip of Triplanetary's tractors

sufficiently to bring a projector to bear upon the super-ship along the

now unprotected axis of that narrow, but deadly tube.



Thus it was that the end came soon. A war-head touched steel plating and

there ensued a world-wracking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide,

helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the stricken

hulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled.

Explosive bombs literally tore the pirate vessel to fragments, while

vials of pure corrosion dissolved her substance into dripping corruption

and reeking gases filled every cranny of the wreckage as its torn and

dismembered fragments began their long plunge to the ground. The

space-ship followed the pieces down, and Rodebush sent out an exploring

ray.



" ... resistance was such that it was necessary to use corrosive, and

ship and contents were completely disintegrated," he dictated into his

vessel's log, some time later. "While there were of course no remains

recognizable as human, it is practically certain that Roger and his last

eleven men died.



"Look here, Fred," Cleveland called his attention to the plate, upon

which was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of the ghastly

planet, wreaking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything within

the circle bared by Roger. "I was just going to suggest that we clean up

that planetoid Roger started, but I see that the local boys are

attending to it."



"Just as well, perhaps. I would like to stay and study these people a

little while, but we must get back on the trail of the Nevians," and the

Boise leaped away into space, toward the line of flight of the

amphibians.



They reached that line and along it they traveled at full normal blast.

As they traveled their detecting receivers and amplifiers were reaching

out with their utmost power; ultra-instruments capable of rendering

audible any signal originating within many light-years of them, upon any

known frequency. And constantly at least two men were listening to those

instruments with every sense concentrated in their ears.

Listening--straining to distinguish in the deafening roar of background

noise from the over-driven tubes any sign of voice or signal.

Listening--while, millions upon untold millions of miles beyond even the

prodigious reach of those ultra-instruments, three human beings, pitted

against overwhelming odds, were even then sending out into empty space

an almost hopeless appeal for the aid so desperately needed!