The Ultimate Weapon Read online

  II

  The IP-M-122 picked them up. The M-122 got out there two days later, inresponse to the calls the T-247 had sent out. As soon as she got withinten million miles of the little tender, she began getting Cole'ssignals, and within twelve hours had reached the tiny thing, located it,and picked it up.

  Captain Jim Warren was in command, one of the old school commanders ofthe IP. He listened to Kendall's report, listened to Cole's tale--andradioed back a report of his own. Space pirates in a large ship hadattacked the T-247, he said, and carried it away. He advised a closewatch. On Pluto, his investigations disclosed nothing more than the factthat three mines had been raided, all platinum supplies taken, and therecords and machinery removed.

  * * * * *

  The M-122 was a fifty-man patrol cruiser, and Warren felt sure he couldhandle the menace alone, and hung around for over two weeks looking forit. He saw nothing, and no further reports came of attack. Again andagain, Kendall tried to convince him this ship he was hunting was nomere space pirate, and again and again Warren grunted, and went on hisway. He would not send in any report Kendall made out, because to do sowould add his endorsement to that report. He would not take Kendallback, though that was well within his authority.

  In fact, it was a full month before Kendall again set foot on any of theMinor Planets, and then it was Mars, the base of the M-122. Kendall andCole took passage immediately on an IP supply ship, and landed in NewYork six days later. At once, Kendall headed for Commander McLaurin'soffice. Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP, found he would have to makeregular application to see McLaurin through a dozen intermediateofficers.

  By this time, Kendall was savagely determined to see McLaurin himself,and see him in the least possible time. Cole, too, was beginning tobelieve in Kendall's assertion of the stranger ship's extra-systemicorigin. As yet neither could understand the strange actions of themachine, its attack on the Pluto mines, and the capture and theft of apatrol ship.

  "There is," said Kendall angrily, "just one way to see McLaurin and seehim quick. And, by God, I'm going to. Will you resign with me, Cole?I'll see him within a week then, I'll bet."

  For a minute, Cole hesitated. Then he shook hands with his friends."Today!" And that day it was. They resigned, together. Immediately, BuckKendall got the machinery in motion for an interview, working now fromthe outside, pulling the strings with the weight of a hundred milliondollar fortune. Even the IP officers had to pay a bit of attention whenBernard Kendall, multi-millionaire began talking and demanding things.Within a week, Kendall _did_ see McLaurin.

  At that time, McLaurin was fifty-three years old, his crisp hair stillblack as space, with scarcely a touch of the gray that appears in hismore recent photographs. He stood six feet tall, a broad-shouldered,powerful man, his face grave with lines of intelligence and character.There was also a permanent narrowing of the eyes, from years under theblazing sun of space. But most of all, while those years in space hadnarrowed and set his eyes, they had not narrowed and set his mind. Aninfinitely finer character than old Jim Warren, his experience in spacehad taught him always to expect the unexpected, to understand theincomprehensible as being part of the unknown and incalculableproperties of space and the worlds that swam in it. Besides the finetechnical education he had started with, he had acquired a liberaleducation in mankind. When Buck Kendall, straight and powerful, cameinto his office with Cole, he recognized in him a character that woulddrive steadily and straight for its goal. Also, he recognized behind themillionaire that had succeeded in pulling wires enough to see him, thescientist who had had more than one paper published "in an amateur way."

  "Dr. Bernard Kendall?" he asked, rising.

  "Yes, sir. Late Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP. I quit and got Colehere to quit with me, so we could see you."

  "Unusual tactics. I've had several men join up to get an interview withme." McLaurin smiled.

  "Yes, I can imagine that, but we had to see you in a hurry. A hideboundold rapscallion by the name of Jim Warren picked us up out by Pluto,floating around in a six-man tender. We made some reports to him, but hewouldn't believe, and he wouldn't send them through--so we had to sendourselves through. Sir, this system is about to be attacked by someextra-systemic race. The IP-T-247 was so attacked, her crew killed off,and the ship itself carried away."

  "I got the report Captain Jim Warren sent through, stating it was a gangof space pirates. Now what makes you believe otherwise?"

  "That ship that attacked us, attacked with a neutron gun, a gun thatshot neutrons through the hull of our ship as easily as protons passthrough open space. Those neutrons killed off four of the crew, andspared us only because we happened to be behind the water tanks. Massesof hydrogen will stop neutrons, so we lived, and escaped in the tender.The little tender, lightless, escaped their observation, and we werepicked up. Now, when the 247 had been picked up, and locked into theirship, that ship started accelerating. It accelerated so fast along myline of sight that it just dwindled, and--vanished. It didn't vanish indistance, it vanished _because it exceeded the speed of light_."

  "Isn't that impossible?"

  "Not at all. It can be done--if you can find some way of escaping fromthis space to do it. Now if you could cut across through a higherdimension, your _projection_ in this dimension might easily exceed thespeed of light. For instance, if I could cut directly through the Earth,at a speed of one thousand miles an hour, my projection on the surfacewould go twelve thousand miles while I was going eight. Similar, if youcould cut _through_ the four dimensional space instead of following itssurface, you'd attain a speed greater than light."

  "Might it not still be a space pirate? That's a lot easier to believe,even allowing your statement that he exceeded the speed of light."

  "If you invented a neutron gun which could kill through tungsten wallswithout injuring anything within, a system of accelerating a ship thatdidn't affect the inhabitants of that ship, and a means of exceeding thespeed of light, all within a few months of each other, would you becomea pirate? I wouldn't, and I don't think any one else would. A pirate isa man who seeks adventure and relief from work. Given a means ofexceeding the speed of light, I'd get all the adventure I wantedinvestigating other planets. If I didn't have a cent before, I'd haverelief from work by selling it for a few hundred millions--and I'd sellit mighty easily too, for an invention like that is worth anincalculable sum. Tie to that the value of compensated acceleration, andno man's going to turn pirate. He can make more millions selling hisinventions than he can make thousands turning pirate with them. So who'dturn pirate?"

  "Right." McLaurin nodded. "I see your point. Now before I'd accept yourstatements _in re_ the 'speed of light' thing, I'd want opinions fromsome IP physicists."

  "Then let's have a conference, because something's got to be done soon.I don't know why we haven't heard further from that fellow."

  "Privately--we have," McLaurin said in a slightly worried tone. "He wasdetected by the instruments of every IP observatory I suspect. We gotthe reports but didn't know what to make of them. They indicated so manyfunny things, they were sent in as accidental misreadings of theinstruments. But since _all_ the observatories reported them, similarmisreadings, at about the same times, that is with variations of only afew hours, we thought something must have been up. The only thing wasthe phenomena were reported progressively from Pluto to Neptune, clearacross the solar system, in a definite progression, but at a velocity ofcrossing that didn't tie in with any conceivable force. They crossedfaster than the velocity of light. That ship must have spent about halfan hour off each planet before passing on to the next. And, acceptingyour faster-than-light explanation, we can understand it."

  "Then I think you have proof."

  "If we have, what would you do about it?"

  "Get to work on those 'misreadings' of the instruments for one thing,and for a second, and more important, line every IP ship with paraffinblocks six inches thick."

  "Paraffin--why
?"

  "The easiest form of hydrogen to get. You can't use solid hydrogen,because that melts too easily. Water can be turned into steam tooeasily, and requires more work. Paraffin is a solid that's largelyhydrogen. That's what they've always used on neutrons since theydiscovered them. Confine your paraffin between tungsten walls, andyou'll stop the secondary protons as well as the neutrons."

  "Hmmm--I suppose so. How about seeing those physicists?"

  "I'd like to see them today, sir. The sooner you get started on thiswork, the better it will be for the IP."

  "Having seen me, will you join up in the IP again?" asked McLaurin.

  "No, sir, I don't think I will. I have another field you know, in whichI may be more useful. Cole here's a better technician than fighter--anda darned good fighter, too--and I think that an inexperiencedspace-captain is a lot less useful than a second-rate physicist at workin a laboratory. If we hope to get anywhere, or for that matter, Isuspect, stay anywhere, we'll have to do a lot of research prettypromptly."

  "What's your explanation of that ship?"

  "One of two things: an inventor of some other system trying out hislatest toy, or an expedition sent out by a planetary government forexploration. I favor the latter for two reasons: that ship was _big_. Noinventor would build a thing that size, requiring a crew of severalhundred men to try out his invention. A government would build justabout that if they wanted to send out an expedition. If it were aninventor, he'd be interested in meeting other people, to see what theyhad in the way of science, and probably he'd want to do it in apeaceable way. That fellow wasn't interested in peace, by any means. SoI think it's a government ship, and an unfriendly government. They sentthat ship out either for scientific research, for trade research andexploration, or for acquisitive exploration. If they were out forscientific research, they'd proceed as would the inventor, to establishfriendly communication. If they were out for trade, the same wouldapply. If they were out for acquisitive exploration, they'd investigatethe planets, the sun, the people, only to the extent of learning howbest to overcome them. They'd want to get a sample of our people, and asample of our weapons. They'd want samples of our machinery, ourliterature and our technology. That's exactly what that ship got.

  "Somebody, somewhere out there in space, either doesn't like their home,or wants more home. They've been out looking for one. I'll bet they sentout hundreds of expeditions to thousands of nearby stars, graduallygoing further and further, seeking a planetary system. This is probablythe one and only one they found. It's a good one too. It has planets atall temperatures, of all sizes. It is a fairly compact one, it has astable sun that will last far longer than any race can hope to."

  "Hmm--how can there be good and bad planetary systems?" asked McLaurin."I'd never thought of that."

  Kendall laughed. "Mighty easy. How'd you like to live on a planet of aCepheid Variable? Pleasant situation, with the radiation flaring up anddown. How'd you like to live on a planet of Antares? That blasted sunis so big, to have a comfortable planet you'd have to be at least tenbillion miles out. Then if you had an interplanetary commerce, you'dhave to struggle with orbits tens of billions of miles across instead ofmere millions. Further, you'd have a sun so blasted big, it would takean impossible amount of energy to lift the ship up from one planet toanother. If your trip was, say, twenty billions of miles to the nextplanet, you'd be fighting a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at Earthhere all the way--no decline with a little distance like that."

  "H-m-m-m--quite true. Then I should say that Mira would take the prize.It's a red giant, and it's an irregular variable. The sunlight therewould be as unstable as the weather in New England. It's almost as bigas Antares, and it won't hold still. Now that _would_ make a badplanetary system."

  "It would!" Kendall laughed. But as we know--he laughed too soon, and heshouldn't have used the conditional. He should have said, "It does!"