Chapter III

The missile struck, and in the instant of its striking the coldly brilliant stars were blotted from sight in a vast globe of intolerable flame. The pirate's shield had failed, and under the cataclysmic force of that horrible detonation the entire nose section of the enemy vessel had flashed into incandescent vapor and had added itself to the rapidly expanding cloud of fire. As it expanded, the cloud cooled. Its fierce glare subsided to a rosy glow, through which the stars again began to shine. It faded, cooled, darkened, revealing the crippled hulk of the pirate ship. She was still fighting; but ineffectually, now that all her heavy forward batteries were gone.

"Needlers, fire at will!" barked Kinnison, and even that feeble resistance was ended. Keen-eyed needle-ray men, working at spy-ray visiplates, bored hole after hole into the captive, seeking out and destroying the control-panels of the remaining beams and screens.

"Pull 'er up!" came the next order. The two ships of space flashed together--the yawning, blasted-open fore end of the once cigar-shaped raider solidly against the _Brittania's_ armored side. A great port opened.

"Now, Bus, it's all yours. Classification to three places--A point A A. They're human or approximately so. Board and storm!"

Back of that port there had been massed a hundred fighting men--dressed in full panoply of space armor, armed with the deadliest weapons known to the science of the age, and powered by the gigantic accumulators of their ship. At their head was Sergeant VanBuskirk, six and a half feet of Dutch-Valerian dynamite, who had fallen out of Valeria's cadet corps only because of an innate inability to master the intricacies of higher mathematics. Now the attackers swept forward in a black-and-silver wave.

Four squatly massive semiportable projectors crashed down upon their magnetic clamps and in the fierce ardor of their beams the thick bulkhead before them ran the gamut of the spectrum and puffed outward. Some score of defenders were revealed, likewise clad in armor, and battle again was joined. Explosive and solid bullets detonated against and ricocheted from that highly efficient armor, the beams of DeLameter hand projectors splashed in torrents of man-made lightning off its protective fields of force.

But that skirmish was soon over. The semiportables, whose vast energies no ordinary personal armor could withstand, were brought up and clamped down; and in their holocaust of vibratory destruction all life vanished from the pirates' compartment.

"One more bulkhead and we're in their control room!" VanBuskirk cried. "Beam it down!"

But when the beams pressed their switches nothing happened. The pirates had managed to jury rig a screen generator, and with it had cut the power beams behind the invading forces. Also they had cut loopholes in this bulkhead, through which, in frantic haste, they were trying to bring heavy projectors of their own into alignment.

"Bring up the ferral paste," the sergeant commanded. "Get up as close to that wall as you can, so they can't blast us!"

The paste--an ultra-modern development of thermite--was brought up and the giant Dutchman himself troweled it on in furious swings, from floor up and around in a huge arc and back down to floor. He fired it, and simultaneously some of the enemy gunners managed to angle a projector sharply enough to reach the farther ranks of the enforcement men. Then mingled the flashing, scintillating, gassy glare of the thermite and the raving energy of the pirates' beam to make of that confined space a veritable inferno.

* * * * *

But the paste had done its work, and as the semicircle of wall fell out the soldiers of the Lens leaped through the hole in the still-glowing wall to struggle hand to hand against the pirates, now making a desperate last stand. The semiportables and other heavy ordnance powered from the _Brittania's_ accumulators were, of course, useless. Pistols were ineffective against the pirates' armor of hard alloy; hand rays were equally impotent against its defensive shields.

Now heavy hand grenades began to rain down among the combatants, blowing enforcement men and no few pirates to bits. For the outlaw chiefs cared nothing that they killed some of their own men, if in so doing they could take a proportionately greater toll of the law. And worse, a crew of gunners was swiveling a mighty projector around upon its hastily improvised mount, to cover that sector of the great compartment in which the policemen were most densely massed.

But the minions of the law had one remaining weapon, carried expressly for this eventuality, and no mean weapon it proved to be. The space ax--a combination and sublimation of battle ax, mace, and bludgeon--a massively needle-pointed implement of potentialities limited only by the physical strength and bodily agility of its wielder.

Now, all the men of the _Brittania's_ storming party were Valerians, and therefore were big, hard, fast, and agile; and of them all, their sergeant leader was the biggest, hardest, fastest, and most agile. When the space-tempered apex of that thirty-pound monstrosity, driven by the four-hundred-odd pounds of rawhide and whalebone that was his body, struck pirate armor, that armor gave way. Nor did it matter whether or not that hellish beak of steel struck a vital part after crashing through the armor. Head or body, leg or arm, the net result was the same; a man does not fight effectively when he is breathing space in lieu of atmosphere.

VanBuskirk perceived the danger to his men in the slowly turning ray projector, and for the first time called his chief.

"Kim," he spoke in level tones into his microphone. "Blast that delta ray, will you?... Or have they cut this beam, so you can't hear me?... Guess they have."

"They've cut our communication," he informed his troopers then. "Keep them off me as much as you can and I'll attend to that delta-ray outfit myself."

Aided by the massed interference of his men, he plunged toward the threatening mechanism, hewing to right and to left as he strode. Beside the temporary projector mount at last, he aimed a tremendous blow at the man at the delta-ray controls; only to feel the ax flash instantaneously to its mark and strike it with a gentle push, and to see his intended victim float effortlessly away from the blow. The pirate commander had played his last card: VanBuskirk floundered, not only weightless, but inertialess as well!

But the huge Dutchman's mind, while not mathematical, was even faster than his lightninglike muscles, and not for nothing had he spent arduous weeks in inertialess tests of strength and skill. Hooking feet and legs around a convenient wheel, he seized the enemy operator and jammed his helmeted head down between the base of the mount and the long, heavy steel lever by means of which it was turned. Then, throwing every ounce of his wonderful body into the effort, he braced both feet against the projector's grim barrel and heaved. The helmet flew apart like an eggshell; blood and brains gushed out in nauseous blobs. But the delta-ray projector was so jammed that it would not soon again become a threat.

Then VanBuskirk drew himself across the room toward the main control panel of the warship. Officer after officer he pushed aside, then reversed two double-throw switches, restoring gravity and inertia to the riddled cruiser.

* * * * *

In the meantime the tide of battle had continued in favor of enforcement. Few survivors though there were of the black-and-silver force, of the pirates there were still fewer, fighting now a desperate and hopeless defensive. But in this combat quarter was not, _could_ not be thought of, and Sergeant VanBuskirk again waded into the fray. Four times more his horribly effective hybrid weapon descended like the irresistible hammer of Thor, cleaving and crushing its way through steel and flesh and bone. Then, striding to the control board, he manipulated switches and dials, then again spoke evenly to Kinnison.

"You can hear me now, can't you?... All mopped up. Come and get the dope!"

The specialists, headed by Chief Technician LaVerne Thorndyke, had been waiting strainingly for that word for minutes. Now they literally flew at their tasks, in furious haste, but following rigidly and in perfect coördination a prearranged schedule. Every control and lead, every bus bar and immaterial beam of force was traced and checked. Instruments and machines were dismantled; sealed mechanisms were ruthlessly torn apart by jacks or sliced open with cutting beams. And everywhere, everything and every movement was being photographed, charted, and diagramed.

"Getting the idea now, Kim," the chief technician said finally, during a brief lull in his work. "A sweet system----"

"Look at this!" a mechanic interrupted. "Here's a machine that's all shot to pieces!"

The shielding cover had been torn from a monstrous fabrication of metal, apparently a motor or generator of an exceedingly complex type. The insulation of its coils and windings had fallen away in charred fragments; its copper had melted down in sluggish, viscous streams.

"That's what we've been looking for," Thorndyke declared. "Check those leads! Alpha!"

"Seven-three-nine-four!" And the minutely careful study went on until: "That's enough; we've got everything we need now. Have you draftsmen and photographers got everything down solid?"

"On the boards!" and "In the cans!" rapped out the two reports as one.

"Then let's go!"

"And go _fast_!" Kinnison ordered, brusquely. "I'm afraid that we're going to run out of time as it is!"

All hands hurried back into the _Brittania_, paying no attention to the bodies littering the decks. So desperate was the emergency, each man knew, that nothing could be done about the dead, whether friend or foe. Every resource of mechanism, of brain and of brawn, must needs be strained to the utmost if they themselves were not soon to be in similar case.

"Can you talk, Nels?" demanded Kinnison of his communications officer, even before the air lock had closed.

"No, sir. They're blanketing us plenty," that worthy replied instantly. "Space's so full of static that you couldn't drive a power beam through it, let alone a communicator. Couldn't talk direct, anyway. Look where we are." He pointed out in the tank their present location.

"Hm-m-m. We couldn't have got much farther away from Earth without jumping the galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back there or from the disturbance. They are undoubtedly concentrating on us now. One of them will spear us with a tractor, just as sure as hell's a man-trap----"

* * * * *

The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought in black intensity. He _must_ get this data back to base. But how? _HOW?_ Henderson was already driving the vessel back toward the solar system with every iota of her inconceivable top speed, but it was out of the question even to hope that she would ever get there. The life of the _Brittania_ was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours--and all too scant measure, even of them. For there were hundreds of pirate vessels tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net to cut off her return to base. Fast though she was, one of that barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp a tracer ray upon her--and when that happened her flight was done.

Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first-class war vessel of the public enemy, it was true; but at what awful cost her captain knew only too well. The prodigious drain of power had almost emptied her accumulators. Also, and worse, the refractories of her main projectors were burned away practically to the shells. Without vastly heavier bracing fields than the _Brittania_ carried, no substance, however stable, could stand up long under such hellish loads as they had had to handle.

The Q-gun was as useless as a fountain pen without full-driven offensive beams. One fresh vessel, similar to the one they had just left, could very easily blast his crippled mount out of space. Nor would there be only one. Within a space of minutes after the attachment of a tracer ray, the enforcement vessel would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone's fighters. There was apparently only one way out offering any chance at all of success; and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly, young Vice Commander Kinnison--now and briefly Captain Kinnison--decided to take it.

"Everybody open your communicators and listen!" he ordered. "We must get this information back to base, and we can't do it in the _Brittania_. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in another fight is exactly zero. We'll have to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the hope that at least one of us will be able to get through their lines.

"The technicians and specialists will take all the data they got--information, descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything--boil it down, and put it on a spool of tape. They will make thirty-nine copies of it, since there are just forty of us left, and one spool will be given to each man.

"There will be twenty boats, two men to a boat. We will start launching them after we have gone as far toward base as it is safe to go in this ship. Once away, use very little detectable power, or, better yet, no power at all, until you are sure that the pirates have chased the _Brittania_ a good many parsecs away from where you are. From then on you'll be strictly on your own. Do it any way you can; but some way, _any_ way, get your spool back to base. There's no use in me trying to impress you with the importance of this stuff; you know what it means as well as I do.

"Boat mates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at a time. The only exception to this is that if two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the helmet. Get to work!"

* * * * *

Twice the name of Kinnison came out together with that of another skilled in astronautics and was replaced. The third time, however, it came out paired with VanBuskirk, to the manifest joy of the giant policeman and to the approval of the crowd as well.

"That was a break for me, chief!" the sergeant called over the cheers of his fellows. "I'm dead sure of getting back now!"

"Pretty strong talk, I'm afraid, but I don't know of any one I'd rather have at my back than you," Kinnison replied, with a boyish grin.

The pairings were made; DeLameters, spare batteries, and other equipment were checked and tested; the spools of tape were sealed in their corrosionproof containers and distributed; and Kinnison sat talking with the chief technician.

"So they've solved the problem of the really efficient reception and conversion of cosmic radiation!" Kinnison whistled softly through his teeth. "And a sun--even a small one--radiates the energy given off by the annihilation of one-to-several million tons of matter per second! _Some_ power!"

"That's the story, skip, and it explains completely why their ships have been so much superior to ours. They could have installed faster drives even than the _Brittania's_. They probably will, now that it has become necessary. Also, if the bus bars in that receptor-converter had been a few square centimeters larger in cross section, they could have held their wall shield, even against our duodec bomb. Then what? They had plenty of intake, but not quite enough distribution."

"They have atomic motors, the same as ours, just as big and just as efficient," Kinnison cogitated. "But those motors are all we _have_ got, while they use them, and at full power, too, simply as first-stage exciters for the cosmic-energy screens. Blinding blue blazes, what power! Some of us _have_ to get back, Verne. If we don't, Boskone's got the whole galaxy by the tail, and civilization is sunk without a trace."

"I'll say so; but also I'll say this for those of us who don't get back--it won't be for lack of trying. Well, I'd better go check up on my boat. If I don't see you again, Kim old man, clear ether!"

They shook hands briefly and Thorndyke strode away. En route, however, he paused beside the quartermaster and signaled to him to disconnect his communicator.

"Clever lad, Allerdyce!" Thorndyke whispered, with a grin. "Kinda loaded the dice a trifle once or twice, didn't you? I don't think anybody but me smelled a rat, though. Certainly neither the skipper nor Henderson did, or you'd 've had it to do over again."

"At least one team has got to get through," the quartermaster replied, quietly and obliquely, "and the strongest teams we can muster will find the going none too easy. Any team made up of strength and weakness is a weak team. Captain Kinnison, our only Lensman, is, of course, the best man aboard this buzz buggy. Who would you pick for No. 2?"

"VanBuskirk, of course, the same as you did. I wasn't criticizing you, man, I was complimenting you; and thanking you, in a roundabout way, for giving me Henderson. He's got plenty of what it takes, too."

"It wasn't 'VanBuskirk, of course,' by any means," the quartermaster rejoined. "It's mighty hard to figure either you or Henderson third, to say nothing of fourth, in any kind of company, however fast--mentally or physically. However, it seemed to me that you fitted in better with the pilot. I could hand pick only two teams without getting caught at it--you spotted me as it was--but I think that I picked the two strongest teams possible. At least one of you will get through, for all the tea there is in China. If none of you four can make it, nobody could."

"Well, here's hoping, anyway. Thanks again. See you again sometime, maybe. Clear ether!"

Chief Pilot Henderson had, a few minutes since, changed the course of the cruiser from right-line flight to fantastic, zigzag leaps through space, and now he turned frowningly to Kinnison.

"We'd better begin dumping them out pretty soon now, I think," he suggested. "We haven't detected anything yet, but according to the figures it won't be long now; and after they get their traps set we'll run out of time mighty quick."

"Right."

And then, one after another, but even so several light years apart in space, eighteen of the small boats were launched into the void. In the control room there were left only Henderson and Thorndyke with VanBuskirk and Kinnison, who were to be the last to leave.

"All right, Hen, now we'll try out your roulette-wheel director by chance," Kinnison said, then went on, in answer to Thorndyke's questioning glance. "A bouncing ball on an oscillating table. Every time the ball caroms off a pin it shifts the course through a fairly large, but entirely unpredictable angle. Pure chance--we thought it might cross them up a little."

Hair-line beams were connected from panels to pins, and soon four interested spectators looked on while, with no human guidance, the _Brittania_ lurched and leaped even more erratically than she had done under Henderson's direction. Now, however, the ever-changing vectors of her course were as unexpected and surprising to her passengers as to any possible external observer.

* * * * *

One more lifeboat left the enforcement vessel, and only the Lensman and his giant aide remained. While they were waiting the required few minutes before their own departure, Kinnison spoke.

"Bus, there's one more thing we ought to do, and I've just figured out how to do it. We don't want this ship to fall into the pirates' hands intact, as there's a lot of stuff in her that would probably be as new to them as it was to us. They know that we got the best of that ship of theirs, but they don't know what we did or how we did it. On the other hand, we want her to drive on as long as possible after we leave her. The farther away from us she gets, the better our chance of making our get-away.

"We should have something that will touch off those duodec torpedoes we have left--all seven of them at once--at the first touch of a spy beam; both to keep them from studying her and to do a little damage if possible. They'll go inert and pull her up close as soon as they get a tracer on her. Of course, we can't do it by stopping the spy ray altogether, with a spy screen, but I think I can establish an R7TX7M field outside our regular screens that will interfere with a TX7 just enough--say one tenth of one per cent--to actuate a relay in the field-supporting beam."

"One tenth of one per cent of one milliwatt is one microwatt, isn't it? Not much power, I'd say, but that's a little out of my line. You can do it, and do it before we run out of time, or you wouldn't have suggested it. Go ahead. I'll observe while you're busy."

Thus it came about that, a few minutes later, the immense sky rover of the Galactic Patrol darted along entirely untenanted. And it was her nonhuman helmsman, operating solely by chance, that prolonged the chase far more than even the most optimistic member of her crew could have hoped. For the pilots of the pirate pursuers were intelligent, and assumed that their quarry also was directed by intelligence. Therefore, they aimed their vessels for points toward which the _Brittania_ should logically go; only and maddeningly to watch her go somewhere else.

Senselessly, she hurled herself directly toward enormous suns, once grazing one so nearly that the harrying pirates gasped at the foolhardiness of such exposure to lethal radiation. For no reason at all she shot straight backward, almost into a cluster of pirate craft, only to dash off on another unexpected tangent before the startled outlaws could lay a beam against her.

But finally she did it once too often. Flying between two vessels, she held her line the merest fraction of a second too long. Two tractors lashed out and the three vessels flashed together, zone to zone to zone. Then, instantly, the two pirate ships became inert, to anchor in space their wildly fleeing prey. Then spy beams licked out, to explore the _Brittania's_ interior.

* * * * *

At the touch of those beams, light and delicate as they were, the relay clicked and the torpedoes let go. Those frightful shells were so designed and so charged that one of them could demolish any inert structure known to man. What of seven? There was an explosion to stagger the imagination and which must be left to the imagination, since no words in any language of the galaxy can describe it adequately.

The _Brittania_, literally blown to bits, partially fused and even partially volatilized by the inconceivable fury of the outburst, was hurled in all directions in streamers, droplets, chunks, and masses, each component part urged away from the center of pressure by the ragingly compressed gases of detonation. Furthermore, each component was now, of course, inert and therefore capable of giving up its full measure of kinetic energy to any inert object with which it should come in contact.

One mass of wreckage, so fiercely sped that its victim had time neither to dodge nor become inertialess, crashed full against the side of the nearer attacker. Meteorite screens flared brilliantly violet and went down. The full-driven wall shield held; but so terrific was the concussion that what few of the crew were not killed outright would take no interest in current events for many hours to come.

The other, slightly more distant attacker was more fortunate. Her commander had had time to render her inertialess, and as she rode lightly away, ahead of the outermost, most tenuous fringe of vapor, he reported succinctly to his headquarters all that had transpired. There was a brief interlude of silence.

Then a speaker gave tongue. "Helmuth, speaking for Boskone," snapped from it. "Your report is neither complete nor conclusive. Find, study, photograph, and bring in to headquarters every fragment and particle pertaining to the wreckage, paying particular attention to all bodies or portions thereof.

"Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!" roared from the general-wave unscrambler. "Commanders of all vessels, of every class and tonnage, upon whatever mission bound, attention! The vessel referred to in our previous message has been destroyed, but it is feared that some or all of her personnel were allowed to escape. Every unit of that personnel must be killed before he has opportunity to communicate with any patrol base. Therefore cancel your present orders, whatever they may be, and proceed at maximum blast to the region previously designated. Scour that entire volume of space. Beam out of existence every vessel whose papers do not account unquestionably for every intelligent being aboard. Investigate every possible avenue of escape. More detailed orders will be given each of you upon your nearer approach to the neighborhood under search."