Triplanetary
city whose name she bore, where her space-weary crew, worn by their long
"trick" in the awesomely oppressive depths of the limitless void, would
enjoy to the full their fortnight of refreshing planetary leave.
She was performing certain routine tasks--charting meteorites, watching
for derelicts and other obstructions to navigation, checking in
constantly with all scheduled space-ships in case of need, and so
on--but primarily she was a warship. She was a mighty engine of
destruction, hunting for the unauthorized vessels of whatever power or
planet it was, that had not only defied the Triplanetary League, but
were evidently attempting to overthrow it; attempting to plunge the
Three Planets back into the ghastly sink of bloodshed and destruction
from which they had so recently emerged. Every space-ship within range
of her powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowly
moving points of light; one upon a great micrometer screen, the other in
the "tank"--the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of the
entire Solar System.
A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged
brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously a
speaker roared forth its message of a ship in dire peril.
"Sector alarm! N. A. T. _Hyperion_ gassed with Vee-Two. Nothing
detectable in space, but...."
The half-uttered message was drowned out in a crackling roar of
meaningless noise, the orderly signals of the bell became a hideous
clamor, and the two points of light which had marked the location of the
liner disappeared in widely spreading flashes of the same high-powered
interference. Observers, navigators, and control officers were alike
dumfounded. Even the captain, in the shell-proof, shock-proof, and
doubly ray-proof retreat of his conning compartment, was equally at a
loss. No ship or thing could _possibly_ be close enough to be sending
out interfering waves of such tremendous power--yet there they were!
"Maximum acceleration, straight for the point where the _Hyperion_ was
when her tracers went out," the captain ordered, and through the fringe
of that widespread interference he drove a solid beam, reporting
concisely to G. H. Q. Almost instantly the emergency call-out came
roaring in--every vessel of the Sector, of whatever class or tonnage,
was to concentrate upon the point in space where the ill-fated liner had
last been known to be.
Hour after hour the great globe drove on at maximum acceleration,
captain and every control officer alert and at high tension. But in the
Quartermaster's Department, deep down below the generator rooms, no
thought was given to such minor matters as the disappearance of a
_Hyperion_. The inventory did not balance, and two Q. M. privates were
trying, profanely, and without much success, to find the discrepancy.
"Charged cells for model DF Lewistons, none requisitioned, on hand
eighteen thous...." The droning voice broke off short in the middle of a
word and the private stood rigid, in the act of reaching for another
slip, every faculty concentrated upon something, imperceptible to his
companion.
"Come on, Cleve--snap it up!" the second commanded, but was silenced by
a vicious wave of the listener's hand.
"What!" the rigid one exclaimed. "Reveal ourselves! Why, it's ... Oh,
all right.... Oh, that's it.... Uh-huh.... I see.... Yes, I've got it
solid. Maybe I'll see you again some time. If not, so long!"
The inventory sheets fell unheeded from his hand, and his fellow private
stared after him in amazement as he strode over to the desk of the
officer in charge. That officer also stared as the hitherto easy-going
and gold-bricking Cleve saluted briskly, showed him something flat in
the palm of his left hand, and spoke.
"I've just got some of the funniest orders ever put out,
Lieutenant"--his voice was low and intense--"but they came from 'way,
'way up. I'm to join the brass hats in the Center. You'll know about it
directly, I imagine. Cover me up as much as you can, will you?" And he
was gone.
Unchallenged he made his way to the control room, and his curt "urgent
report for the Captain" admitted him there without question. But when he
approached the sacred precincts of the Captain's own and inviolate room,
he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by no less a personage than the
Officer of the Day.
" ... and report yourself under arrest immediately!" the O. D. concluded
his brief but pointed speech.
"You were right in stopping me, of course," the intruder conceded,
unmoved. "I wanted to get in there without giving everything away, if
possible, but it seems that I can't. Well, I've been ordered by Virgil
Samms to report to the Captain, at once. See this? Touch it!" He held
out a flat, insulated disk, cover thrown back to reveal a tiny golden
meteor, at the sight of which the officer's truculent manner altered
markedly.
"I've heard of them, of course, but I never saw one before," and the
officer touched the shining symbol lightly with his finger, jerking
backward involuntarily as there shot through his whole body a thrilling
surge of power, shouting into his very bones an unpronounceable
syllable--the password of the Secret Service. "Genuine or not, it gets
you to the Captain. He'll know, and if it's a fake you'll be breathing
space in five minutes."
Projector at the ready, the Officer of the Day followed Cleve into the
Holy of Holies. There the grizzled four-striper touched the golden
meteor lightly, then drove his piercing gaze deep into the unflinching
eyes of the younger man. But that captain had won his high rank neither
by accident nor by "pull"--he understood at once.
"It _must_ be an emergency," he growled, half-audibly, still staring at
his lowly Q. M. clerk, "to make Samms uncover his whole organization."
He turned and curtly dismissed the wondering O. D. Then: "All right! Out
with it!"
"Serious enough so that every one of us afloat has just received orders
to reveal himself to his commanding officer and to anyone else, if
necessary to reach that officer at once--orders never before issued. The
enemy have been located. They have built a base, and have ships better
than our best. Base and ships cannot be seen nor detected by any ether
wave. However, the Service has been experimenting for years with a new
type of communicator beam; and, while pretty crude yet, it was given to
us when the _Dione_ went out without leaving a trace. One of our men was
in the _Hyperion_, managed to stay alive, and has been sending data. I
am instructed to attach my new phone set to one of the universal plates
in your conning room, and to see what I can find."
"Go to it!" The captain waved his hand and the operative bent to his
task.
"Commanders of all vessels of the Fleet!" The Headquarters speaker,
receiver sealed upon the wave-length of the Admiral of the Fleet, broke
the long silence. "All vessels, in sectors L to R, inclusive, will
interlock location signals. Some of you have received, or will receive
shortly, certain communications from sources which need not be
mentioned. Those commanders will at once send out red K4 screens.
Vessels so marked will act as temporary flagships. Unmarked vessels will
proceed at maximum to the nearest flagship, grouping about it in
regulation squadron cone in order of arrival. Squadrons most distant
from objective point designated by flagship observers will proceed
toward it at maximum; squadrons nearest it will decelerate or reverse
velocity--that point must not be approached until full Fleet formation
has been accomplished. Heavy and Light Cruisers of all other sectors
inside the orbit of Mars ..." the orders went on, directing the
mobilization of the stupendous forces of the League, so that they would
be in readiness in the highly improbable event of the failure of the
massed power of seven sectors to reduce the pirate base.
In those seven sectors perhaps a dozen vessels threw out enormous
spherical screens of intense red light, and as they did so their tracer
points upon all the interlocked lookout plates also became ringed about
with red. Toward those crimson markers the pilots of the unmarked
vessels directed their courses at their utmost power; and while the
white lights upon the lookout plates moved slowly toward and clustered
about the red ones--the ultra-instruments of the Secret Service
operatives were probing into space, sweeping the neighborhood of the
computed position of the pirate's stronghold.
But the object sought was so far away that the small spy-ray sets of the
Secret Service men, intended as they were for close-range work, were
unable to make contact with the invisible planetoid for which they were
seeking. In the captain's sanctum of the _Chicago_, the operative
studied his plate for only a minute or two, then shut off his power and
fell into a brown study, from which he was rudely aroused.
"Aren't you even going to _try_ to find them?" demanded the captain.
"No," Cleve returned shortly. "No use--not half enough power or control.
I'm trying to think ... maybe ... say, Captain, will you please have the
Chief Electrician and a couple of radio men come in here?"
They came, and for hours, while the other ultra-wave men searched the
apparently empty ether with their ineffective beams, the three technical
experts and the erstwhile Quartermaster's clerk labored upon a huge and
complex ultra-wave projector--the three blindly and with doubtful
questions; the one with sure knowledge at least of what he was trying to
do. Finally the thing was done, the crude but efficient graduated
circles were set, and the tubes glowed redly as their solidly massed
output was driving into a tight beam of ultra-vibration. "There it is,
sir," Cleve reported, after some ten minutes of delicate manipulation,
and the vast structure of the miniature world flashed into being upon
his plate. "You may notify the fleet--co-ordinates H 11.62, RA
124-31-16, and Dx about 173.2."
The report made and the assistants out of the room, the captain turned
to the observer and saluted gravely.
"We have always known, sir, that the Service had _men_; but I had no
idea that any one man could possibly do, on the spur of the moment, what
you have just done--unless that man happened to be Lyman Cleveland."
"Oh, it doesn't ..." the observer began, but broke off, muttering
unintelligibly at intervals; then swung the visiray beam toward the
earth. Soon a face appeared upon the plate, the keen but careworn face
of Virgil Samms!
"Hello, Lyman." His voice came clearly from the speaker, and the Captain
gasped--his ultra-wave observer and sometime clerk was Lyman Cleveland
himself, probably the greatest living expert in beam transmission! "I
knew that you'd do something, if it could be done. How about it--can the
others install similar sets on their ships? I'm betting that they
can't."
"Probably not," Cleveland frowned in thought. "This is a patchwork
affair, made of gunny-sacks and hay-wire. I'm holding it together by
main strength and awkwardness, and even at that it's apt to go to pieces
any minute."
"Can you rig it up for photography?"
"I think so. Just a minute--yes, I can. Why?"
"Because there's something going on out there that neither we nor the
so-called pirates know anything about. The Admiralty seems to think that
it's the Jovians again, but we don't see how it can be--if it is, they
have developed a lot of stuff that none of our agents has even
suspected," and he recounted briefly what Costigan had reported to him,
concluding: "Then there was a burst of interference--on the
_ultra-band_, mind you--and I've heard nothing from him since. Therefore
I want you to stay out of the battle entirely. Stay as far away from it