Within The Red Veil

: Triplanetary

Nevia, the home planet of the marauding space-ship, would have appeared

peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses. High in the deep red heavens a

fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon

a world of water. Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky, and

through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon--a

horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are

accustomed--wi
h a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra's

dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky

would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and

steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as

they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and,

through that huge world's wonderfully transparent, gaseous envelope, the

full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we

know it--for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were

many light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood--but a

strange and glorious firmament containing not one constellation familiar

to earthly eyes.






Many bridges and more tubes extended through the air

from building to building, and the watery "streets" teemed

with surface craft, and with submarines.]



Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void--the vessel

that was shortly to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of

Triplanetary and Roger's planetoid--plunged into the rarefied outer

atmosphere, and crimson beams of force tore shriekingly the thin air as

it braked its terrific speed. A third of the circumference of Nevia's

mighty globe was traversed before the velocity of the craft could be

reduced sufficiently to make a landing possible. Then, approaching the

twilight zone, the vessel dived vertically downward, and it became

evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of

intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing

toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings

were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color,

and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb

would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively

narrow channel of water, and all were built of the same white metal.

Many bridges and more tubes extended through the air from building to

building, and the watery "streets" teemed with surface craft, and with

submarines.



The pilot, stationed immediately below the conical prow of the

space-ship, peered intently through the thick windows of crystal-clear

metal which afforded unobstructed vision in every direction except

vertically upward and behind him. His four huge and contractile eyes

were active, each operating independently in sending its own message to

his peculiar but capable brain. One was watching the instruments, the

others scanned narrowly the immense, swelling curve of the ship's belly,

the water upon which his vessel was to land, and the floating dock to

which it was to be moored. Four hands--if hands they could be

called--manipulated levers and wheels with infinite delicacy of touch,

and with scarcely a splash the immense mass of the Nevian sky-wanderer

struck the water and glided to a stop within a foot of its exact berth.



Four mooring bars dropped neatly into their sockets and the

captain-pilot, after locking his controls in neutral, released his

safety straps and leaped lightly from his padded bench to the floor.

Scuttling across the floor and down a runway upon his four short,

powerful, heavily scaled legs, he slipped smoothly into the water and

flashed away, far below the surface. For Nevians are true amphibians.

Their blood is cold; they use with equal comfort and efficiency gills

and lungs for breathing; their scaly bodies are equally at home in the

water or in the air; their broad, flat feet serve equally well for

running about upon a solid surface or for driving their stream-lined

bodies through the water at a pace few of our fishes can equal.



Through the water the Nevian commander darted along, steering his course

accurately by means of his short, vaned tail. Through an opening in a

wall he sped and along a submarine hallway, emerging upon a broad ramp.

He scurried up the incline and into an elevator which lifted him to the

top floor of the hexagon, directly into the office of the Secretary of

Commerce of all Nevia.



"Welcome, Captain Nerado!" The Secretary waved a tentacular arm and the

visitor sprang lightly upon a softly cushioned bench, where he lay at

ease, facing the official across his low, flat "desk." "We congratulate

you upon the success of your final trial flight. We received all your

reports, even while you were traveling with many times the velocity of

light. With the last difficulties overcome, you are now ready to start?"



"We are ready," the captain-scientist replied, soberly. "Mechanically,

the ship is as nearly perfect as our finest minds can make her. She is

stocked for two years. All the iron-bearing suns within reach have been

plotted. Everything is ready except the iron. Of course the Council

refused to allow us any of the national supply--how much were you able

to purchase for us in the market?"



"Nearly ten pounds...."



"Ten pounds! Why, the securities we left with you could not have bought

two pounds, even at the price then prevailing!"



"No, but you have friends. Many of us believe in you, and have dipped

into our own resources. You and your fellow scientists of the expedition

have each contributed his entire personal fortune; why should not some

of the rest of us also contribute, as private citizens?"



"Wonderful--we thank you. Ten pounds!" The captain's great triangular

eyes glowed with an intense violet light. "A full year of cruising. But

... what if, after all, we should be wrong?"



"In that case you shall have consumed ten pounds of irreplaceable

metal." The Secretary was unmoved. "That is the viewpoint of the Council

and of almost everyone else. It is not the waste of treasure they object

to; it is the fact that ten pounds of iron will be forever lost."



"A high price truly," the Columbus of Nevia assented, "And after all, I

may be wrong."



"You probably are--of course you are wrong," his host made a startling

answer. "It is practically certain--it is almost a demonstrable

mathematical fact--that no other sun within hundreds of thousands of

light-years of our own has a planet. In all probability Nevia is the

only planet in the entire Universe. We are the only intelligent life in

the Universe. But there is one chance in numberless millions that,

somewhere with the cruising range of your newly perfected space-ship,

there may be an iron-bearing planet upon which you can effect a landing,

and it is upon that infinitesimal chance that some of us are staking a

portion of our wealth. We expect no return whatever, but if you should

by some miracle happen to find stores of iron somewhere in space, what

then? Deep seas being made shallow, civilization extending itself over

the globe, science advancing by leaps and bounds, Nevia becoming

populated as she should be peopled--that, my friend, is a chance well

worth taking!"



The Secretary called in a group of guards, who escorted the small

package of priceless metal to the space-ship, and before the massive

door was sealed the friends bade each other farewell.



" ... I will keep in touch with you on the ultra-wave," the Captain

concluded. "After all, I do not blame the Council for refusing to allow

the other ship to go with us. Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss

to the world. If we should find iron, however, see to it that the

other vessel loses no time in following us."



"No fear of that! If you find iron all space will be full of vessels, as

soon as they can possibly be built--good-bye!"



The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the

air. Up and up, out beyond the last tenuous trace of atmosphere, on and

on through space it flew with ever-increasing velocity until Nevia's

gigantic blue sun had been left so far behind that it became a splendid

blue-white star. Then, projectors cut off to save the precious iron

whose disintegration furnished them power, for week after week Captain

Nerado and his venturesome crew of scientists drifted idly through the

illimitable void. Sun after sun, as visible in their ultra-instruments

as though the flying vessel were moving slower than light, they studied

without finding a single planet.



Three months passed. Nerado had already applied the slight power which

was to swing the vessel around in an immense circle, back toward his

native world. In that course he was rapidly approaching a sun, an

ordinary G-type dwarf, whose spectrum revealed a blaze of lines of the

precious element for which he was searching. Now at close observing

range--he had long since abandoned his former eager habit of studying a

sun as soon as it showed the tiniest perceptible disk in his most

powerful telescope--he turned on his powerful visiray beam without

enthusiasm, swung it upon that very commonplace sun, and shrieked aloud

in exultation. Not only one planet had that yellowish luminary--it had

six, seven, eight; yes, possibly nine or ten; and several of those

planets were themselves apparently centers of attraction around which

were circling other tiny worlds! Nerado thrilled with joy as he applied

a full retarding force, and every creature aboard that great vessel had

to peer into a plate or through a telescope, before he could believe

that planets other than Nevia did in reality exist!



Velocity checked to the merest crawl, as space-speed goes, and with

electro-magnetic detector screens full out, the Nevian vessel crept

toward our sun. Finally the detectors encountered an obstacle, a

conductive substance which the patterns showed conclusively to be

practically pure iron. Iron--an enormous mass of it--floating alone out

in space! Without waiting to investigate the nature, appearance, or

structure of the precious mass, Nerado ordered power into the converters

and drove an enormous softening field of force upon the object--a force

of such a nature that it would condense the metallic iron into an

allotropic modification of much smaller bulk; a red, viscous, extremely

dense and heavy liquid which could be stored conveniently in his tanks.



No sooner had the precious fluid been stored away than the detectors

again broke into an uproar. In one direction was an enormous mass of

iron, scarcely detectable; in another a great number of smaller masses;

in a third an isolated mass, comparatively small in size. Space seemed

to be full of iron, and Nerado drove his most powerful beam toward

distant Nevia and sent an exultant message.



"We have found iron--easily obtained and in unthinkable quantity--not in

fractions of milligrams, but in millions upon unmeasured millions of

tons! Send our sister ship here as once!"



"Nerado!" The captain was called to one of the observation plates as

soon as he had opened his key. "I have been investigating the mass of

iron now nearest us, the small one. It is an artificial structure, a

small space-boat, and there are three creatures in it--monstrosities

certainly, but they must possess some intelligence or they could not be

navigating space."



"What? Impossible!" exclaimed the chief explorer. "Probably, then, the

other was--but no matter, we had to have the iron. Bring the boat in

without converting it, so that we may study at our leisure both the

beings and their mechanisms," and Nerado swung his own visiray beam into

the emergency boat, seeing there the armored figures of Clio Marsden and

the two Triplanetary officers.



"They are indeed intelligent," Nerado commented, as he detected and

silenced Costigan's ultra-beam communicator. "Not, however, as

intelligent as I had supposed," he went on, after studying the peculiar

creatures and their tiny space-ship more in detail. "They have immense

stores of iron, yet use it for nothing other than building material.

They apparently have a rudimentary knowledge of ultra-waves, but do not

use them intelligently--they cannot neutralize even these ordinary

forces we are now employing. They are of course more intelligent than

the lower ganoids, or even than some of the higher fishes, but by no

stretch of the imagination can they be compared to us. I am quite

relieved--I was afraid that in my haste I might slay members of a highly

developed race."



The helpless boat, all her forces neutralized, was brought up close to

the immense flying fish. There flaming knives of force sliced her neatly

into sections and the three rigid armored figures, after being bereft of

their external weapons, were brought through the air-locks and into the

control room, while the pieces of their boat were stored away for future

study. The Nevian scientists first analyzed the air inside the

space-suits of the Terrestrials, then removed without ado the protective

covering of the captives.



Costigan--fully conscious through it all and now able to move a little,

since the peculiar temporary paralysis was wearing off--braced himself

for he knew not what shock, but it was needless; their grotesque captors

were not torturers. The air, while somewhat less dense than earth's and

of a peculiar odor, was eminently breathable, and even though the vessel

was motionless in space, an almost-normal gravitation gave them a large

fraction of their usual weight. The space suits were removed with care,

and after the three had been relieved of their pistols and other

articles which the Nevians thought might prove to be weapons, the

strange paralysis was lifted entirely. The earthly clothing puzzled the

captors immensely, but so strenuous were the objections raised to its

removal, but they did not press the point, but fell back to study their

find in detail.



Then faced each other the representatives of the civilizations of two

widely separated solar systems. The Nevians studied the human beings

with interest and curiosity blended largely with loathing and repulsion;

the three Terrestrials regarded the unmoving, expressionless "faces"--if

those coned heads could be said to possess such things--with horror and

disgust, as well as with other emotions, each according to his type and

training. For to human eyes the Nevian is a fearful thing. Even to-day

there are few Terrestrials--or Solarians for that matter--who can look

at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and

experiencing a "gone" sensation in the pit of the stomach. The horny,

wrinkled, drought-resisting Martian, whom we all know and rather like,

is a hideous being indeed. The bat-eyed, colorless, hairless,

practically skinless Venerian is worse. But they both are, after all,

remote cousins of Terra's humanity, and we get along with them quite

well whenever we are compelled to visit Mars or Venus. But the Nevians--



The horizontal, flat, fish body is not so bad, even supported as it is

by four, short, powerful, scaly, flat-footed legs; and terminating as it

does in the weird, four-vaned tail. The neck, even, is endurable,

although it is long and flexible, heavily scaled, and is carried in

whatever eye-wringing loops, knots, or angles the owner considers most

convenient or ornamental at the time. Even the smell of a Nevian--a

malodorous reek of over-ripe fish--does in time become tolerable,

especially if sufficiently disguised with creosote, which purely



Terrestrial chemical is the most highly prized perfume of Nevia. But the

head! It is that member that makes the Nevian so appalling to earthly

eyes, for it is a thing utterly foreign to all Solarian history or

experience. As most Tellurians already know, it is fundamentally a

massive cone, covered with scales, based spearhead-like upon the neck.

Four great sea-green, triangular eyes are spaced equidistant from each

other about half way up the cone. The pupils are contractile at will,

like the eyes of the cat, permitting the Nevian to see equally well in

any ordinary extreme of light or darkness. Immediately below each eye

springs out a long, jointless, boneless, tentacular arm; an arm which at

its extremity divides into eight delicate and sensitive, but very

strong, fingers. Below each arm is a mouth: a beaked, needle-tusked

orifice of dire potentialities. Finally, under the overhanging edge of

the cone-shaped head are the delicately frilled organs which serve

either as gills or as nostrils and lungs, as may be desired. To other

Nevians the eyes and other features are highly expressive, but to us

they appear utterly cold and unmoving. Terrestrial senses can detect no

changes of expression in a Nevian's "face." Such were the frightful

beings at whom the three prisoners stared with sinking hearts.



But if we human beings have always considered Nevians grotesque and

repulsive, the feeling has always been mutual. For those "monstrous"

beings are a highly intelligent and extremely sensitive race, and

our--to us--trim and graceful human forms seems to them the very

quintessence of malformation and hideousness.



"Good Heavens, Conway!" Clio exclaimed, shrinking against Costigan as

his left arm flashed around her. "What monstrosities! And they can't

talk--not one of them has made a sound--suppose they can be deaf and

dumb?"



But at the same time Nerado was addressing his fellows.



"What hideous, deformed creatures they are! Truly a low form of life,

even though they do possess some intelligence. They cannot talk, and

have made no signs of having heard our words to them--do you suppose

that they communicate by sight? That those weird contortions of their

peculiarly placed organs serve as speech?"



Thus both sides, neither realizing that the other had spoken. For the

Nevian voice is pitched so high that the lowest note audible to them is

far above our limit of hearing. The shrillest note of a Terrestrial

piccolo is to them so profoundly low that it cannot be heard.



"We have much to do." Nerado turned away from the captives. "We must

postpone further study of the specimens until we have taken aboard a

full cargo of the iron which is so plentiful here."



"What shall we do with them, sir?" asked one of the Nevian officers.

"Lock them in one of the storage rooms?"



"Oh, no! They might die there, and we must by all means keep them in

good condition, to be studied most carefully by the fellows of the

College of Science. What a commotion there will be when we bring in this

group of strange creatures, living proof that there are other suns

possessing planets; planets which are supporting organic and intelligent

life! You may put them in three communicating rooms, say in the fourth

section--they will undoubtedly require light and exercise. Lock all

exits, of course, but it would be best to leave the doors between the

rooms unlocked, so that they can be together or apart, as they choose.

Since the smallest one, the female, stays so close to the larger male,

it may be that they are mates. But since we know nothing of their habits

or customs, it will be best to give them all possible freedom compatible

with safety."



Nerado turned back to his instruments and three of the frightful crew

came up to the human beings. One walked away, waving a couple of arms in

an unmistakable signal that the prisoners were to follow him. The three

obediently set out after him, the other two guards falling behind.



"Now's our best chance!" Costigan muttered, as they passed through a low

doorway and entered a narrow corridor. "Watch that one ahead of you,

Clio--hold him for a second if you can. Bradley, you and I'll take the

two behind us--now!"



Costigan stopped and whirled. Seizing a cable-like arm, he pulled the

outlandish head down, the while the full power of his mighty right leg

drove a heavy service boot into the place where scaly neck and head

joined. The Nevian fell, and instantly Costigan leaped at the leader,

ahead of the girl. Leaped; but dropped to the floor, again paralyzed.

For the Nevian leader had been alert, his four eyes covering the entire

circle of vision, and he had acted rapidly. Not in time to stop

Costigan's first Berserk attack--the First Officer's reactions were

practically instantaneous, and he moved like chain lightning--but in

time to retain command of the situation. Another Nevian appeared and,

while the stricken guard was recovering, all four arms wrapped tightly

around his convulsively looping, knotting neck, the three helpless

Terrestrials were lifted into the air and carried bodily into the

quarters to which Nerado had assigned them. Not until they had been

placed upon cushions in the middle room and the heavy metal doors had

been locked upon them did they again find themselves able to use arms or

legs.



"Well, that's another round we lose," Costigan commented, cheerfully. "A

guy can't mix it very well when he can neither kick, strike, nor bite. I

expected those lizards to rough me up, but they didn't."



"They don't want to hurt us. They want to take us home with them,

wherever that is, as curiosities, like wild animals or something,"

decided the girl, shrewdly. "They're pretty bad, of course, but I like

them a lot better than I do Roger and his robots, anyway."



"I think you have the right idea, Miss Marsden," Bradley rumbled.

"That's it, exactly. I feel like a bear in a cage. I should think you'd

feel worse than ever. What chance has an animal of escaping from a

menagerie?"



"These animals, lots. I'm feeling better and better all the time," Clio

answered, and her serene bearing bore out her words. "You two got us out

of that horrible place of Roger's, and I'm pretty sure that you will get

us away from here, somehow or other. They may think we're stupid

animals, but before you two and the Secret Service get done with them

they'll have another think coming."



"That's the old fight, Clio!" cheered Costigan. "I haven't got it

figured out as close as you have, but I see you, eye to eye. These

four-legged fish carry considerably heavier stuff than Roger did, I'm

thinking; but they'll be up against something themselves pretty quick,

that is NO light-weight, believe me!"



"Do you know something, or are you just whistling in the dark?"

Bradley demanded.



"I know a little; not much. The Science Service has been working on a

new ship for a long time; a ship to travel so much faster than light

that it can go anywhere in the Galaxy and back in a month or so. New

sub-ether drive, new power, new armament, new everything. Only bad thing

about it is that it doesn't work so good yet--it's fuller of "bugs" than

a Venerian's kitchen. It has blown up five times that I know of, and has

killed twenty-nine men. But when they get it licked they'll have

something!"



"When, or if?" asked Bradley, pessimistically.



"I said when!" snapped Costigan, his voice cutting like a knife. "When

that gang goes after anything they get it, and when they get it it

stays...." He broke off abruptly and his voice lost its edge. "Sorry.

Didn't mean to get high, but I think we'll have help, if we can keep our

heads up a while. And it looks good--these are first-class cages they've

given us. All the comforts of home, even to lookout plates. Let's see

what's going on, shall we?"



After some experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned

how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone

of Battle hurling itself toward Roger's planetoid. They saw the pirate

fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary's massed forces, and with

bated breath they watched every maneuver of that epic battle to its

savagely sacrificial end. And that same battle was being watched, also

with intense interest, by the Nevians.



"It is indeed a blood-thirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation

plate. "And it is peculiar--or rather, probably only to be expected from

a race of such a low stage of development--that they employ only

ether-borne forces. Warfare seems universal among primitive

types--indeed, it is not so long ago that our own cities, few in number

though they are, ceased fighting each other and combined against the

semi-civilized fishes of the greater deeps."



He fell silent, and for many minutes watched the furious battle between

the two navies of the void. That conflict ended, he watched the

Triplanetary fleet reform its battle cone and rush upon the planetoid.



"Destruction, always destruction," he sighed, adjusting his power

switches. "Since they are bent upon mutual destruction I can see no

purpose in refraining from destroying all of them. We need the iron, and

they are a useless race."



He launched his softening, converting field of dull red energy. Vast as

that field was, it could not encompass the whole of the fleet, but half

of the lip of the gigantic cone soon disappeared, its component vessels

subsiding into a sluggishly flowing stream of allotropic iron. Instantly

the fleet abandoned the attack upon the planetoid and swung its cone

around, to bring the flame-erupting axis to bear upon the inchoate

something dimly perceptible to the ultra-vision of the Secret Service

observers. Furiously the gigantic composite beam of the massed fleet was

hurled, nor was it alone.



For Roger in his floating citadel had realized at once that something

untoward was happening; something altogether beyond even his knowledge

and experience. He could not see anything--space was apparently

empty--but he took his rays off the battleships and directed his every

force just beyond the point in space where that red stream of

transformed metal was disappearing. Then, for the first time in

Triplanetary history, the forces of law and order joined hands with

those of piracy and banditry against a common foe. Rods, beams, planes,

and stilettoes of unbearable energy the doomed fleet launched, in

addition to its main beam of annihilation, and Roger also hurled out

into space every weapon at his command. Bombs, high-explosive shells,

and deadly radio-dirigible torpedoes--all alike disappeared ineffective

in that redly murky veil of nothingness. And the fleet was being melted.

In quick succession the vessels flamed red, shrank together, gave out

their air, and merged their component iron into the intensely red,

sullenly viscous stream which was flowing through the impenetrable veil

upon which Triplanetarians and pirates alike were directing their every

possible weapon of offense.



The last vessel of the Triplanetary armada converted and the resulting

metal stored away in their capacious reservoirs, the Nevians turned

their attention upon the stronghold of the pirates. There ensued a

battle royal. For this vast planetoid was no feeble warship, depending

solely upon the limited power available in its accumulators. It was the

product of a really mighty brain, a brain re-enforced by the many

perverted but powerful intellects which Roger had won over to his cause.

It was powered by the incalculable force of cosmic radiation, powered to

drive its unimaginable mass through space, against any possible

attractions, for an indefinite number of years. It was armed and

equipped to meet any emergency which Roger's coldly analytical mind had

been able to foresee.



The fact that the scientists of the Secret Service had discovered

ultra-waves as yet unknown to him was unfortunate. That Service was

itself unfortunate--impenetrable as it was, and incorruptible. He could

learn nothing whatever about it. He had heard vague rumors of certain

experiments--but even if they should discover something it would be too

late to do them any good. Even without invisibility he would have no

trouble in annihilating the massed Grand Fleet of the Triplanetary

League. He would very shortly collect his tribute and disappear. And

this new enemy, himself invisible and armed with heretofore unknown

weapons of dire power, who was apparently unaffected by his beams--even

he would discover that Roger the Great was no puny opponent. He would

analyze those unknown forces, regenerate them, and hurl them back upon

their senders.



Thinking thus, the man of gray sat coldly motionless at his great

multi-shielded desk, whose top was now swung up to become a board of

massed and tiered instruments and controls. He shut off his offensive

beams and surrounded the entire planetoid with the peculiarly rigid and

substantial shield which had so easily warded off Costigan's fiercest

attacks. And that shield was more effective than even its designer had

supposed--gray Roger had builded even better than he knew. For the

voracious and all-powerful converting beam of the Nevians, below the

level of the ether though it was, struck that perfectly transparent wall

and rebounded, defeated and futile. Struck and rebounded, then struck

and clung hungrily, licking out over that impermeable surface in darting

tongues of red flame as the surprised Nerado doubled and then quadrupled

his power. Fiercer and fiercer drove in the Nevian flood of force until

the whole immense globe of the planetoid was one scintillant ball of

scarlet energy, but still the pirates' shield remained intact--at what

awful drain of resource, Roger alone knew.



"Here is the analysis of his screen, sir." A Nevian computer handed his

chief a sheet of metal, upon which were engraved rows of symbols.



"Ah, a sixth-phase polycyclic. A screen of that type was scarcely to

have been expected from such a low form of life," Nerado commented, and

rapidly adjusted the many dials and switches before him.



As he did so the character of the clinging mantle of force changed. From

red it flamed quickly through the spectrum, became unbearably violet,

then disappeared; and as it disappeared the shielding wall began to give

way. It did not cave in abruptly, but softened locally, sagging into a

peculiar grouping of valleys and ridges--contesting stubbornly every

inch of position lost. And gray Roger knew that the planetoid was

doomed. His supposedly impregnable screen was failing in spite of its

utmost measure of energy, and, that defense down, the citadel would not

last a minute. Therefore he summoned a chosen few of his motley crew of

renegade scientists and issued brief instructions. For minutes a host of

robots toiled mightily, then a portion of the shield bulged out,

extended into a tube beyond the attacking layers of force, and from it

there erupted a beam of violence incredible. A beam behind which was

every volt and ampere that the gigantic generators and accumulators of

the planetoid could yield. A beam that tore screamingly through the

ether; that by the very vehemence of its incalculable energy tore a hole

through the redly impenetrable Nevian field and hurled itself upon the

inner screen of the fish-shaped cruiser in frenzied incandescence. And

was there, or was there not, a lesser eruption upon the other side--an

almost imperceptible flash, as though something had shot from the doomed

planetoid out into space?



Nerado's looped neck straightened convulsively as his tortured drivers

whined and shrieked at the terrific overload; but Roger's effort was far

too intense to be long maintained. Even before his accumulators failed,

generator after generator burned out, the defensive screen collapsed,

and the red converter beam attacked voraciously the unresisting metal of

those prodigious walls. Soon there was a terrific explosion as the

pent-up air of the planetoid broke through its weakening container, and

the sluggish river of allotropic iron flowed in an ever larger stream,

ever faster.



"It is well that we had an unlimited supply of iron." Nerado tied a knot

in his neck and spoke in huge relief. "With but the seven pounds

remaining of our original supply, I fear that it would have been

difficult to parry that last thrust."



"Difficult?" asked the second in command. "We would now be swimming in

space. But what shall I do with this iron? Our reservoirs will not hold

it all."



"Seal up one or two of the lower storage compartments, to make room for

this lot. Immediately it is loaded, we return to Nevia. There we shall

install reservoirs in all the spare space, and come back here for more."



The last drop of the precious liquid secured, the vessel moved away,

sluggishly now because of its prodigious load. In their quarters in the

fourth section the three Terrestrials, who had watched with strained

attention the downfall and absorption of the planetoid, stared at each

other with drawn faces. Clio broke the silence.



"Oh, Conway, this is ghastly! It's ... it's just simply perfectly

horrible!" she gasped, then recovered a measure of her customary spirit

as she stared in surprise at Costigan's face. For it was thoughtful, his

eyes were bright and keen--no trace of fear or disorganization was

visible in any line of his hard young face.



"It's not so good," he admitted frankly. "I wish I wasn't such a dumb

cluck--if Lyman Cleveland or Ford Rodebush were here they could help a

lot, but I don't know enough about any of their stuff to flag a

hand-car. I can't even interpret that funny flash--if it really was a

flash--that we saw."



"Why bother about one little flash, after all that really did happen?"

asked Clio, curiously.



"You think Roger launched something? He couldn't have--I didn't see a

thing," Bradley argued.



"I don't know what to think. I've never seen anything material sent out

so fast that I couldn't trace it with an ultra-wave--but on the other

hand, Roger's got a lot of stuff that I never saw anywhere else.

However, I don't see that it has anything to do with the fix we're in

right now--but at that, we might be worse off. We're still breathing

air, you notice, and if they don't blanket my wave I can still talk."



He put both hands in his pockets and spoke.



"Samms? Costigan. Put me on a recorder, quick--I probably haven't got

much time," and for ten minutes he talked, concisely and as rapidly as

he could utter words, reporting clearly and exactly everything that had

transpired. Suddenly he broke off, writhing in agony. Frantically he

tore his shirt open and hurled a tiny object across the room.



"Wow!" he exclaimed. "They may be deaf, but they can certainly detect an

ultra-wave, and the interference they can set up on it is enough to

pulverize your bones. No, I'm not hurt," he reassured the anxious girl,

now at his side, "but it's a good thing I had you out of circuit--it

would have jolted you loose from six or seven of your back teeth."



"Have you any idea where they're taking us?" she asked, soberly.



"No," he answered flatly, looking deep into her steadfast eyes. "No use

lying to you--if I know you at all you'd rather take it standing up.

That talk of Jovians or Neptunians is the bunk--nothing like that ever

grew in our Solarian system. All the signs say that we're going for a

long, long ride!"



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