Title: The Firing Line
Author: Smith, George O. (George Oliver)
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Firing Line" ***


                              Firing Line

                          By GEORGE O. SMITH

                         Illustrated by Orban

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1944.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Mark Kingman was surprised by the tapping on his windowpane. He thought
that the window was unreachable from the outside--and then he realized
that it was probably someone throwing bits of dirt or small stones. But
who would do that when the doorway was free for any bell-ringer?

He shrugged, and went to the window to look out--and become cross-eyed
as his eyes tried to cope with a single circle not more than ten inches
distant. He could see the circle--and the bands on the inside spiraling
into the depths of the barrel, and a cold shiver ran up his spine from
there to here. Behind the heavy automatic, a dark-complected man with
a hawklike face grinned mirthlessly.

Kingman stepped back and the stranger swung in and sat upon the
windowsill.

"Well?" asked the lawyer.

"Is it well?" asked the stranger. "You know me?"

"No. Never saw you before in my life? Is this a burglary?"

"Nope. If it were, I'd have drilled you first so you couldn't describe
me."

Kingman shuddered. The stranger looked as though he meant it.

"In case you require an introduction," said the hard-faced man, "I'm
Allison Murdoch."

"Hellion?"

"None other."

"You were in jail--"

"I know. I've been there before."

"But how did you escape?"

"I'm a doctor of some repute," said Hellion, "Or was, until my darker
reputation exceeded my reputation for neural surgery. It was simple.
I slit my arm and deposited therein the contents of a cigarette. It
swelled up like gangrene and they removed me to the hospital. I removed
a few guards and lit out in the ambulance. And I am here."

"Why?" Kingman then became thoughtful. "You're not telling me this for
mutual friendship, Murdoch. What's on your mind?"

"You were in the clink, too. How did you get out?"

"The court proceedings were under question for procedure. It was
further ruled that--"

"I see. You bought your way out."

"I did not--"

"Kingman, you're a lawyer. A smart one, too."

"Thank you--"

"But you're capable of buying your freedom, which you did.
Fundamentally, it makes no difference whether you bribe a guard to look
the other way or bribe a jury to vote the other way. It's bribery in
either case."

Kingman smiled in a superior way. "With the very important difference
that the latter means results in absolute freedom. Bribing a guard is
freedom only so long as the law may be avoided."

"So you did bribe the jury?"

"I did nothing of the sort. It was a ruling over a technicality that
did me the favor."

"You created the technicality."

"Look," said Kingman sharply. "You didn't come here to steal by your
own admission and your excellent logic. You never saw me before, and
I do not know of you save what I've heard. Revenge for something
real or fancied is obviously no reason for this visit. I was charged
with several kinds of larceny, which charges fell through and I
was acquitted of them--which means that I did not commit them. I,
therefore, am no criminal. On the other hand, you have a record.
You were in jail, convicted, and you escaped by some means that may
have included the act of first-degree murder. You came here for some
reason, Murdoch. But let me tell you this: I am in no way required to
explain the workings of my mind. If you expect me to reveal some legal
machination by which I gained my freedom, you are mistaken. As far as
the solar system is concerned, everything was legal and above board."

"I get it," smiled Murdoch. "You're untouchable."

"Precisely. And rightfully so."

"You're the man I want, then."

"It isn't mutual. I have no desire to be identified with a criminal of
your caliber."

"What's wrong with it?" asked Murdoch.

"It is fundamentally futile. You are not a brilliant criminal. You've
been caught."

"I didn't have the proper assistance. I shall not be caught again.
Look," he said suddenly, "how is your relationship with Venus
Equilateral?"

Kingman gritted his teeth and made an animal noise.

"I thought so. I have a score of my own to settle. But I need your
help. Do I get it?"

"I can't see how one of your caliber is capable--"

"Are you or aren't you? Your answer may decide the duration of your
life."

"You needn't threaten. I'm willing to go to any lengths to get even
with Channing and his crowd. But it must be good."

"I was beaten by a technical error," explained Murdoch. "The coating on
my ship did it."

"How?"

"They fired at me with a super electron-gun. A betatron. It hit me and
disrupted the ship's apparatus. The thing couldn't have happened if the
standard space-finish hadn't been applied to the _Hippocrates_."

"I'm not a technical man," said Kingman. "Explain, please."

       *       *       *       *       *

"The average ship is coated with a complex metallic oxide which among
other things inhibits secondary emission. Had we been running a ship
without this coating, the secondary emission would have left the
_Hippocrates_ in fair condition electronically, but the Relay Station
would have received several times the electronic charge. But the
coating accepted the terrific charge and prevented the normal urge of
electrons to leave by secondary emission--"

"What is secondary emission?"

"When an electron hits at any velocity, it drives from one to as high
as fifty electrons from the substance it hits. The quantity depends
upon the velocity of the original electron, the charges on cathode and
anode, the material from which the target is made, and so on. We soaked
'em in like a sponge and took it bad. But the next time, we'll coat the
ship with the opposite stuff. We'll take a bit of Venus Equilateral for
ourselves."

"I like the idea. But how?"

"We'll try no frontal attack. Storming a citadel like Venus Equilateral
is no child's play, Kingman. As you know, they're prepared for anything
either legal or technical. I have a great respect for the combined
abilities of Channing and Franks. I made my first mistake by giving
them three days to make up their minds. In that time, they devised,
tested, and approved an electron weapon of some power. Their use of it
was as dangerous to them as it was to me--or would have been if I'd
been prepared with a metallic-oxide coating of the proper type."

"Just what are you proposing?" asked Kingman. "I do not understand what
you're getting at."

"You are still one of the officials of Terran Electric?"

"Naturally."

"You will be surprised to know that I hold considerable stock in that
company."

"How, may I ask?"

"The last time you bucked them, you did it on the market. You lost,"
grinned Murdoch. "Proving that you haven't a one hundred percent record
either. Well, while Terran Electric was dragging its par value down
around the twos and threes, I took a few shares."

"How do you stand?"

"I rather imagine that I hold fifteen or twenty percent."

"That took money."

"I have money," said Murdoch modestly. "Plenty of it. I should have
grabbed more stock, but I figured that between us we have enough to do
as we please. What's your holdings?"

"I once held forty-one percent. They bilked me out of some of that. I
have less than thirty percent."

"So we'll run the market crazy again, and between us we'll take off
control. Then, Kingman, we'll use Terran Electric to ruin Venus
Equilateral."

"Terran Electric isn't too good a company now," admitted Kingman.
"The public stays away in huge droves since we bucked Interplanetary
Communications. That bunch of electronic screwballs has the public
acclaim. They're now in solid since they opened person-to-person phone
on the driver frequencies. You can talk to someone in the Palanortis
Country of Venus with the same quality and speak-ability that you get
in making a call from here to the house across the street."

"Terran Electric is about finished," said Murdoch flatly. "They shot
their wad and lost. You'll be bankrupt in a year, and you know it."

"That includes you, doesn't it?"

"Terran Electric is not the mainstay of my holdings," smiled Murdoch.
"Under assumed names, I have picked up quite a few bits. Look, Kingman,
I'm advocating piracy!"

"Piracy?" asked Kingman aghast.

"Illegal piracy. But I'm intelligent. I realize that a pirate hasn't
a chance against civilization unless he is as smart as they are. We
need a research and construction organization, and that's where Terran
Electric comes in. It's an old company, well established. It's now on
the rocks. We can build it up again. We'll use it for a base, and set
the research boys to figuring out the answers we need. Eventually we'll
control Venus Equilateral, and half of the enterprises throughout the
system."

"And your main plan?"

"You run Terran Electric, and I'll run the space piracy. Between us
we'll have the system over a barrel. Space craft are still run without
weapons, and no weapons are suited for space fighting. But the new
field opened up by the driver radiation energy may exhibit something
new in weapons. That's what I want Terran Electric to work on."

"We'll have to plan a bit more," said Kingman thoughtfully. "I'll
cover you up, and eventually we'll buy you out. Meanwhile we'll go to
work on the market and get control of Terran Electric. And plan, too.
It'll have to be foolproof."

"It will be," said Murdoch. "We'll plan it that way."

"We'll drink on it," said Kingman.

"_You'll_ drink on it," said Murdoch. "I never touch the stuff. I still
pride myself on my skill with a scalpel, and I do not care to lose it.
Frankly, I hope to keep it long enough to uncover the metatarsal bones
of one Donald Channing, Director of Communications."

Kingman shuddered. At times, murder had passed through his mind when
thinking of Channing. But this cruel idea of vivisecting an enemy
indicated a sadism that was far beyond Kingman's idea of revenge.
Of course, Kingman never considered that ruining a man financially,
reducing him to absolute dependency upon friends or government, when
the man had spent his life in freedom and plenty--the latter gained by
his ability under freedom--was cruel and inhuman.

And yet it would take a completely dispassionate observer to tell which
was worse; to ruin a man's body or to ruin a man's life.

       *       *       *       *       *

The man in question was oblivious to these plans on his future. He
was standing before a complicated maze of laboratory glassware and a
haywire tangle of electronic origin. He looked it over in puzzlement,
and his lack of enthusiasm bothered the other man. Wesley Farrell
thought that his boss would have been volubly glad to see the fruits of
his labor.

"No doubt it's wonderful," smiled Channing. "But what is it, Wes?"

"Why, I've been working on an alloy that will not sustain an arc."

"Go on. I'm interested even though I do not climb the chandelier and
scream, beating my manly chest."

"Oil switches are cumbersome. Any other means of breaking contact
is equally cumbersome if it is to handle much power. My alloy is
non-arcing. It will not sustain an arc, even though the highest current
and voltage are broken."

"Now I am really interested," admitted Channing. "Oil switches in a
spaceship are a definite drawback."

"I know. So--here we are."

"What's the rest of this stuff?" asked Channing, laying a hand on the
glassware.

"Be careful!" said Farrell in concern. "That's hot stuff."

"Oh?"

"In order to get some real voltages and currents to break without
running the main Station bus through here, I cooked this stuff up. The
plate-grilleworks in the large tubes exhibit a capacity between them of
about one microfarad. Empty, that is, or I should say precisely point
nine eight microfarads in vacuuo. The fluid is of my own devising,
concocted for the occasion, and has a dielectric constant of thirteen
times ten to the sixth power. It--"

"Great Howling Rockets!" exploded Channing. "That makes the overall
capacity equal to thirteen _farads_!"

"Just about. Well, I have the condenser charged to three kilovolts, and
then I discharge it through this switch made of the non-arcing alloy.
Watch! No, Don, from back here, please, behind this safety glass."

Channing made some discomforting calculations about thirteen farads
at three thousand volts charge and decided that there was something
definitely unlucky about the number thirteen.

"The switch, now," continued Farrell, as though thirteen farads was
just a mere drop in the bucket, "is opened four milliseconds after it
is closed. The time-constant of the discharging resistance is such that
the voltage is point eight three, of its peak three thousand volts,
giving a good check of the alloy."

"I should think so," groused Channing. "Eighty-three percent of three
thousand volts is just shy of twenty-five hundred volts. The current
of discharge passing through a circuit that will drop the charge in a
thirteen farad condenser eighty-three percent in four milliseconds will
be something fierce, believe me."

"That is why I use the heavy busbars from the condenser bank through
the switch."

"I get it. Go ahead, Wes. I want to see this non-arcing switch of yours
perform."

Farrell checked the meters, and then said "Now!" and punched the
switch at his side. Across the room a solenoid drove the special
alloy bar between two clamps of similar metal. Almost immediately,
four thousandths of a second later, to be exact, the solenoid reacted
automatically and the no-arc alloy was withdrawn. A minute spark
flashed briefly between the contacts.

"And that is that," said Channing, slightly dazed by the magnitude of
it all, and the utter simplicity of the effects. "But look, Wes, may I
ask you a favor? Please discharge that infernal machine and drain that
electrolyte out. Then make the thing up in a tool-steel case and seal
it. Also hang on busbars right at the plates themselves, and slap a
peak-voltage fuse across the terminals. One that will close at anything
above three thousand volts. Follow me?"

"I think so. But that is not the main point of interest--"

"I know," grinned Channing, mopping his forehead. "The non-arc is. But
that fragile glassware makes me as jittery as a Mexican jumping bean."

"But why?"

"Wes, if that glassware fractures somewhere, and that electrolyte
drools out, you'll have a condenser of one microfarad--charged to
thirteen million times three thousand volts. Or, in nice, hollow,
round numbers, forty billion volts! Four times ten to the tenth. Of
course, it won't get that far. It'll arc across the contacts before
it gets that high, but it might raise particular hell on the way out.
Take it easy, Wes. We're seventy millionodd miles from the nearest
large body of dirt, all collected in a little steel bottle about three
miles long and a mile in diameter. I'd hate to stop all interplanetary
communications while we scraped ourselves off of the various walls and
treated ourselves for electric shock. It would--the discharge itself,
I mean--raise hell with the equipment anyway. So play it easy, Wes. We
do not permit certain experiments out here because of the slow neutrons
that sort of wander through here at fair density. Likewise, we cannot
permit dangerous experiments. And anything that includes a dangerous
experiment must be out, too."

"Oh," said Wes. His voice and attitude were together crestfallen.

"Don't take it so hard, fella," grinned Channing. "Anytime we
have to indulge in dangerous experiments, we always do it with an
assistant--and in one of the blister-laboratories. But take that
fragile glassware out of the picture and I'll buy it," he finished.

       *       *       *       *       *

Walt Franks entered and asked what was going on.

"Wes was just demonstrating the latest equipment in concentrated
deviltry," smiled Channing.

"That's my department," said Walt.

"Oh, it's not as bad as your stuff," said Channing. "What he's got here
is an alloy that will break several million watts without an arc. Great
stuff, Walt."

"Sounds swell," said Walt. "Better scribble it up and we'll get a
patent. It sounds useful."

"I think it may bring us a bit of change," said Channing. "It's great
stuff, Wes."

"Thanks. It annoyed me to see those terrific oil-breakers we have here.
All I wanted to do was to replace 'em with something smaller and more
efficient."

"You did, Wes. And that isn't all. How did you dream up that
high-dielectric?"

"Applied several of the physical phenomena."

"That's a good bet, too. We can use several fluids of various
dielectric constants. Can you make solids as well?"

"Not as easily. But I can try--?"

"Go ahead and note anything you find above the present, listed
compounds and their values."

"I'll list everything, as I always do."

"Good. And the first thing to do is to can that stuff in a steel case."

"It'll have to be plastalloy."

"That's as strong as steel and nonconducting. Go ahead."

Channing led Franks from the laboratory, and once outside Channing gave
way to a session of the shakes. "Walt," he asked plaintively, "take me
by the hand and lead me to Joe's. I need some vitamins."

"Bad?"

"Did you see that glassblower's nightmare?"

"You mean that collection of cut glass?" grinned Walt. "Uh-huh. It
looked as though it were about to collapse of its own dead weight."

"That held an electrolyte of dielectric constant thirteen times ten
to the sixth. He had it charged to a mere three thousand volts. Ye
Gods, Walt. Thirteen farads at three KV. _Whew._ And when he discharged
it, the confounded leads that went through the glass sidewalls to the
condenser plates positively glowed in the cherry red. I swear it!"

"He's like that," said Walt. "You shouldn't worry about him. He'll
have built that condenser out of good stuff--the leads will be alloys
like those we use in the bigger tubes. They wouldn't fracture the
glass seals no matter what the temperature difference between them
and the glass was. Having that alloy around the place--up in the
tube-maintenance department they have a half ton of quarter-inch
rod--he'd use it naturally."

"Could be, Walt. Maybe I'm a worry wart."

"You're not used to working with his kind."

"I quote: 'Requiring a high voltage source of considerable current
capacity, I hit upon the scheme of making a super-high capacity
condenser and discharging it through my no-arc alloy. To do this it
was necessary that I invent a dielectric material of C equals thirteen
times ten to the sixth.' Unquote."

"Wes is a pure scientist," reminded Walt. "If he were investigating
the electrical properties of zinc, and required solar power magnitudes
to complete his investigation, he'd invent it and then include it as
incidental to the investigation on zinc. He's never really understood
our recent divergence in purpose over the power tube. That we should
make it soak up power from Sol was incidental and useful only as a
lever or means to make Terran Electric give us our way. He'd have
forgotten it, I'll bet, since it was not the ultimate goal of the
investigation."

"He knows his stuff, though."

"Granted. Wes is brilliant. He is a physicist, though, and neither
engineer nor inventor. I doubt that he is really interested in the
practical aspects of anything that is not directly concerned with his
eating and sleeping."

"What are we going to do about him?"

"Absolutely nothing. You aren't like him--"

"I hope not."

"And conversely, why should we try to make him like you?"

"That I'm against!" chimed in a new voice. Arden Channing took each man
by the arm and looked up on either side of her, into one face and then
the other. "No matter how, why, when, who, or what, one like him is all
that the solar system can stand."

"Walt and I are pretty much alike."

"Uh-huh. You are. That's as it should be. You balance one another
nicely. You couldn't use another like you. You're speaking of Wes
Farrell?"

"Right."

"Leave him alone," said Arden sagely. "He's good as he is. To make him
similar to you would be to spoil a good man. He'd then be neither
fish, flesh, nor fowl. He doesn't think as you do, but instead proceeds
in a straight line from remote possibility to foregone conclusion.
Anything that gets needed en route is used, or gadgeteered and
forgotten. That's where you come in, fellows. Inspect his by-products.
They may be darned useful."

"O.K. Anybody care for a drink?"

"Yup. All of us," said Arden.

"Don, how did you rate such a good-looking wife?"

"I hired her," grinned Channing. "She used to make all my stenographic
mistakes, remember?"

"And gave up numerous small errors for one large one? Uh-huh. I recall.
Some luck."

"It was my charm."

"Baloney. Arden, tell the truth. Didn't he threaten you with something
terrible if you didn't marry him?"

"You tell him," grinned Channing. "I've got work to do."

       *       *       *       *       *

Channing left the establishment known as Joe's and advertised as the
"Best bar in twenty-seven million miles, minimum," and made his way
toward his office slowly. He didn't reach it. Not right away. He
was intercepted by Charley Thomas who invited him to view a small
experiment. Channing smiled and said that he'd prefer to see an
experiment of any kind to going to his office, and followed Charley.

"You recall the gadget we use to get perfect tuning with the
alloy-selectivity transmitter?"

"You mean that variable alloy disk all bottled up and rotated with a
selsyn?" asked Don, wondering what came next. "Naturally I remember it.
Why?"

"Well, we've found that certain submicroscopic effects occur with inert
objects. What I mean is this: Given a chunk of cold steel of goodly
mass and tune your alloy disk to pure steel, and you can get a few
micro-microamperes output if the tube is pointed at the object."

"Sounds interesting. How much amplification do you need to get this
reading and how do you make it tick?"

"We run the amplifier up to the limit and then sweep the tube across
the object sought, and the output meter leaps skyward by just enough to
make us certain of our results. Watch!"

Charley set the tube in operation and checked it briefly. Then he took
Don's hand and put it on the handle that swung the tube on its gimbals.
"Sort of paint the wall with it," he said. "You'll see the deflection
as you pass the slab of tool steel that's standing there."

Channing did, and watched the minute flicker of the ultra-sensitive
meter. "Wonderful," he grinned, as the door opened and Franks entered.

"Hi, Don. Is it true that you bombarded her with flowers?"

"Nope. She's just building up some other woman's chances. Have you seen
this effect?"

"Yeah--it's wonderful, isn't it?"

"That's what I like about this place," said Charley with a huge
smile. "That's approximately seven micro-microamperes output after
amplification on the order of two hundred million times. We're either
working on something so small we can't see it or something so big we
can't count it. It's either fifteen decimal places to the left or to
the right. Every night when I go home, I say a little prayer. I say:
'Dear God, please let me find something today that is based upon unity,
or at least no more than two decimal places' but it is no good. If He
hears me at all, He's too busy to bother with things that the human
race classifies as 'One.'"

"How do you classify resistance, current, and voltage?" asked Channing,
manipulating the tube on its gimbals and watching the effect.

"One million volts across ten megohms equals one hundred thousand
microamperes. That's according to Ohm's Law."

"He's got the zero-madness too," chuckled Walt. "It obtains from
thinking in astronomical distances, with interplanetary coverages in
watts, and celestial input, and stuff like that. Don, this thing may be
handy, some day. I'd like to develop it."

"I suggest that couple of stages of tube-amplification might help.
Amplify it before transduction into electronic propagation."

"We can get four or five stages of sub-electronic amplification, I
think. It'll take some working."

"O.K., Charley. Cook ahead. We do not know whither we are heading, but
it looks darned interesting."

"Yeah," added Walt, "it's a darned rare scientific fact that can't be
used for something, somewhere. Well, Don, now what?"

"I guess we now progress to the office and run through a few reams of
paper-work. Then we may relax."

"O.K. Sounds good to me. Let's go."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hellion Murdoch pointed to the luminous speck in the celestial globe.
His finger stabbed at the marker button, and a series of faint
concentric spheres marked the distance from the center of the globe to
the object, which Murdoch read and mentioned: "Twelve thousand miles."

"Asteroid?" asked Kingman.

"What else?" asked Murdoch. "We're lying next to the Asteroid Belt."

"What are you going to do?"

"Burn it," said Murdoch. His fingers danced upon the keyboard, and
high above him, in the dome of the _Black Widow_, a power intake
tube swiveled and pointed at Sol. Coupled to the output of the power
intake tube, a power-output tube turned to point at the asteroid. And
Murdoch's poised finger came down on the last switch, closing the final
circuit.

Meters leaped up across their scales as the intangible beam of solar
energy came silently in and went as silently out. It passed across
the intervening miles with the velocity of light squared, and hit the
asteroid. A second later the asteroid glowed and melted under the
terrific bombardment of solar energy directed in a tight beam.

"It's O.K.," said Hellion. "But have the gang build us three larger
tubes to be mounted turretwise. Then we can cope with society."

"What do you hope to gain by that? Surely piracy and grand larceny are
not profitable in the light of what we have and know."

"I intend to institute a reign of terror."

"You mean to go through with your plan?"

"I am a man of my word. I shall levy a tax against each and every ship
leaving any spaceport. We shall demand one dollar solarian for every
gross ton that lifts from any planet and reaches the planetary limit."

"How do you establish that limit?" asked Kingman interestedly.

"Ironically, we'll use the Channing Layer," said Murdoch with dark
humor. "Since the Channing Layer describes the boundary below which
our solar beam will not work. Our reign of terror will be identified
with Channing because of that; it will take some of the praise out
of people's minds when they think of Channing and Interplanetary
Communications."

"That's pretty deep psychology," said Kingman.

"You should recognize it," smiled Murdoch. "That's the kind of stuff
you legal lights pull. Mention the accused in the same sentence with
one of the honored people; mention the defendant in the same breath
with one of the hated people--it's the same stunt. Build them up or
tear them down by reference."

"You're pretty shrewd."

"I am," agreed Murdoch placidly.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Mind telling me how you found yourself in the fix you're in?"

"Not at all. I've been interested for years in neuro-surgery. My
researches passed beyond the realm of rabbits and monkeys, and I found
it necessary to investigate the more delicate, more organized, the
higher-strung. That means human beings--though some of them are less
sensitive than a rabbit and less delicate than a monkey." Murdoch's
eyes took on a cynical expression at this. Then it passed and he
continued: "I became famous, as you know. Or do you?"

Kingman shook his head.

"I suppose not. I became famous in my own circle. Lesser neuro-surgeons
sent their complex cases to me; unless you were complex, you would
never hear of Allison Murdoch. Well anyway, some of them offered
exciting opportunities. I--frankly, experimented. Some of them died. It
was quite a bit of cut and try because not too much has been written
on the finer points of the nervous system. But there were too few
people who were complex enough to require my services, and I turned to
clinical work, and experimented freely."

"And there you made your mistake?"

"Do you know how?"

"No. I imagine that with many patients you exceeded your rights once
too often."

"Wrong. It is a funny factor in human relationship. Something that
makes no sense. When people were paying me three thousand dollars an
hour for operations, I could experiment without fear. Some died, some
regained their health under my ministrations. But when I experimented
on charity patients, I could not experiment because of the 'Protection'
given the poor. The masses were not to be guinea pigs. Ha!" laughed
Murdoch, "only the rich are permitted to be subjects of an experiment.
Touch not the poor, who offer nothing. Experiment upon those of
intellect, wealth, fame, or anything that sets them above the mob.
Yes, even genius came under my knife. But I couldn't give a poor man
a fifty-fifty chance at his life, when the chances of his life were
less than one in ten. From a brilliant man, operating under fifty-fifty
chances for life, I became an inhuman monster that cut without fear. I
was imprisoned, and later escaped with some friends."

"And that's when you stole the _Hippocrates_ and decided that the solar
system should pay you revenge-money?"

"I would have done better if I had not made that one mistake. I
forgot that in the years of imprisonment, I fell behind in scientific
knowledge. I know now that no one can establish anything at all
without technical minds behind him."

Kingman's lips curled. "I wouldn't agree to that."

"You should. Your last defeat at the hands of the technicians you scorn
should have taught you a lesson. If you had been sharp, you would have
outguessed them; outengineered them. They, Kingman, were not afraid to
rip into their detector to see what made it tick."

"But I had only the one--"

"They knew one simple thing about the universe. That rule is that if
anything works once, it may be made to work again." He held up his
hand as Kingman started to speak. "You'll bring all sorts of cases
to hand and try to disprove me. You can't. Oh, you couldn't cause a
quick return of the diplodocus, or re-enact the founding of the solar
government, or even reburn a ton of coal. But there is other carbon,
there will be other governmental introductions and reforms, and there
may some day be the rebirth of the dinosaur--on some planet there may
be carboniferous ages now. Any phenomena that is a true phenomena--and
your detector was definite, not a misinterpretation of effect--can be
repeated. But, Kingman, we'll not be outengineered again."

"That I do believe."

       *       *       *       *       *

"And so we will have our revenge on Interplanetary Communications and
upon the system itself."

"We're heading home now?"

"Right. We want this ship fitted with the triple turret I mentioned
before. Also I want the interconnecting links between the solar intake
and the power-projectors beefed up. When you're passing several hundred
megawatts through any system, losses of the nature of .000,000,1% cause
heating to a dangerous degree. We've got to cut the I^2R losses. I gave
orders that the turret be started, by the way. It'll be almost ready
when we return."

"_You_ gave orders?" said Kingman.

"Oh yes," said Hellion Murdoch with a laugh. "Remember our last bout
with the stock market? I seem to have accumulated about forty-seven
percent. That's sufficient to give me control of our company."

"But ... but--" spluttered Kingman. "That took money--"

"I still have enough left," said Murdoch quietly. "After all, I
spent years in the Melanortis Country of Venus. I was working on the
_Hippocrates_ when I wasn't doing a bit of mining. There's a large vein
of platiniridium there. You may answer the rest."

"I still do not get this piracy."

Murdoch's eyes blazed. "That's my interest. That's my revenge! I intend
to ruin Don Channing and Venus Equilateral. With the super turret
they'll never be able to catch us, and we'll run the entire system."

Kingman considered. As a lawyer, he was finished. His last try at the
ruination of the Venus Equilateral crowd by means of pirating the
interplanetary communications beam, well that was strictly a violation
of the Communications Code. The latter absolutely prevented any man
or group of men from diverting communications not intended for them
and using these communications for their own purpose. His defense
that Venus Equilateral had also violated the law went unheard. It was
pointed out to him that Venus Equilateral tapped his own line, and the
tapping of an illegal line was the act of a communications agent in the
interest of the government. He was no longer a lawyer, and in fact he
had escaped a long jail term by sheer bribery.

He was barred from legal practice, and he was barred from any business
transactions. The stock market could be manipulated, but only through a
blind, which was neither profitable nor safe.

His holdings in Terran Electric was all that stood between him and
ruin. He was no better off than Murdoch, save that he was not wanted.

But--

"I'm going to remain on Terra and run Terran Electric like a model
company," he said. "That'll be our base."

"Right. Except for a bit of research along specified lines, you will
do nothing. Your job will be to act apologetic for your misdeeds. You
will grovel on the floor before any authority, and beseech the legal
profession to accept you once more. I will need your help, there. You
are to establish yourself in the good graces of the Interplanetary
Patent Office and report to me any applications that may be of
interest. The research that Terran Electric will conduct will be along
innocuous lines. The real research will be conducted in a secret
laboratory. The one in the Melanortis Country. Selected men will work
there, and the Terran Electric fleet of cargo-carriers will carry the
material needed. My main failure was not to have provided a means of
knowing what the worlds were doing. I'll have that now, and I shall not
be defeated again."

"We'll say that one together!" said Kingman. He flipped open a large
book and set the autopilot from a set of figures. The _Black Widow_
turned gently and started to run for Terra at 2-G.

       *       *       *       *       *

Walt Franks frowned at the memorandum in his hand. "Look, Don, are we
ever going to get to work on that deal with Keg Johnson?"

"Uh-huh," answered Don, without looking up.

"He's serious. Transplanet is getting the edge, and he doesn't like it."

"Frankly, I don't like dabbling in stuff like that either. But Keg's
an old friend, and I suppose that's how a guy gets all glommed up on
projects, big business deals, and so forth. We'll be going in directly.
Why the rush?"

"A bit of personal business on Mars which can best be done at the same
time, thus saving an additional trip."

"O.K.," said Don idly. "Might as well get it over with. Can you pack
in an hour?"

"Sure. I'll be there."

Actually, it was less than an hour before the _Relay Girl_ went out of
the South End Landing Stage, turned, and headed for Mars. Packing to
the Channings was a matter of persuading Arden not to take everything
but the drapes in the apartment along with her, while for Walt Franks
it was a matter of grabbing a trunkful of instruments and spare parts.
Space travel is a matter of waiting for days in the confines of a small
bubble of steel. Just waiting. For the scenery is unchanging all the
way from Sol to Pluto--and is the same scenery that can be seen from
the viewports of Venus Equilateral. Walt enjoyed his waiting time by
tinkering; having nothing to do would have bored him, and so he took
with him enough to keep him busy during the trip.

At two Terran gravities, the velocity of the _Relay Girl_ built up bit
by bit and mile by mile until they were going just shy of one thousand
miles per second. This occurred an hour before turnover, which would
take place at the twenty-third hour of flight.

And at that time there occurred a rarity. Not an impossibility like the
chances of collision with a meteor, those things happen only once in a
lifetime, and Channing had had his collision. Nor was it as remote as
getting a royal flush on the deal. It happened, not often, but it did
happen to some ships occasionally.

Another ship passed within detector range.

The celestial globe glimmered faintly and showed a minute point at
extreme range. Automatic marker-spheres appeared concentrically within
the celestial globe and colures and diameters marked the globe off into
octants. A dim red line appeared before the object, giving the probable
course of the object.

Bells rang briefly, and the automatic meteor-circuits interpreted
the orbit of the oncoming object and decided that the object was not
dangerous. Then they relaxed. Their work was done until another object
came within range for them to inspect. They were no longer interested,
and they forgot about the object with the same powers of complete
oblivion that they would have exerted on a meteor of nickel and iron.

They were mechanically incapable of original thought. So the object, to
them, was harmless.

Channing looked up at the luminescent spot, sought the calibration
spheres, made a casual observation, and forgot about it. To him it was
a harmless meteor.

Even the fact that his own velocity was a thousand miles per second,
and the object's velocity was the same, coming to them on a one hundred
and seventy degree course and due to pass within five thousand miles
did not register. Their total velocity of two thousand miles did not
register just because of that rarity with which ships pass within
detector range, while meteors are encountered often.

Had Channing been thinking about the subject in earnest, he would have
known--for it is only man, with all too little time, who uses such
velocities. The universe, with eternity in which to work her miracle,
seldom moves in velocities greater than forty or fifty miles per second.

Channing forgot it, and as the marker-spheres switched to accommodate
the approaching object, he turned to more important things.

In the other ship, Hellion Murdoch frowned. He brightened, then, and
depressed the plunger that energized his solar beam and projector.
He did not recognize the oncoming object for anything but a meteor,
either, and his desire was to find out how his invention worked at top
speeds.

Kingman asked: "Another one?"

"Uh-huh," said Murdoch idly. "I want to check my finders."

"But they can't miss."

"No? Look, lawyer, you're not running a job that may be given a stay or
a reprieve. The finders run on light velocities. The solar beam runs
on the speed of light squared. We'll pass that thing at five thousand
miles and at two thousand accumulative miles per second. A microsecond
of misalignment, and we're missing, see? I think we're going to be
forced to put correction circuits in so that the vector sums and
velocities and distances will all come out with a true hit. It will not
be like sighting down a searchlight beam at high velocity."

"I see. You'll need compensation?"

"Plenty, at this velocity and distance. This is the first time I've had
a chance to try it out."

The latter fact saved the _Relay Girl_. By a mere matter of feet, and
inches; by the difference between the speed of light and the speed
of light squared at a distance of five thousand miles, plus a slight
miscompensation. The intolerably hot umbra of Murdoch's beam followed
below the pilot's greenhouse of the _Relay Girl_ all the way past, a
matter of several seconds. The spill-over was tangible enough to warm
the _Relay Girl_ to uncomfortable temperatures.

Then with no real damage done, the contact with ships in space was
over, but not without a certain minimum of recognition.

"Hell!" said Kingman. "That was a space craft."

"Who?"

"I don't know. You missed."

"I'd rather have hit," said Murdoch coldly. "I hope I missed by plenty."

"Why?"

"If we scorched their tails any, there'll be embarrassing questions
asked."

"So--?"

"So nothing until we're asked. Even then you know nothing."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the _Relay Girl_, Channing mopped his forehead. "That was hell
itself," he said.

Arden laughed uncertainly. "I thought that it would wait until we got
there; I didn't expect hell to come after us."

"What--exactly--happened?" asked Walt, coming into the scanning room.

"That--was a spaceship."

"One of this system's?"

"I wonder," said Don honestly. "It makes a guy wonder. It was gone too
fast to make certain. It probably was Solarian, but they tried to burn
us with something."

"That makes it sound like something alien," admitted Walt. "But that
doesn't make good sense."

"It makes good reading," laughed Channing. "Walt, you're the Boy
Edison. Have you been tinkering with anything of lethal leanings?"

"You think there may be something powerful afloat?"

"Could be. We don't know everything."

"I've toyed with the idea of coupling a solar intake beam with one of
those tubes that Baler and Carroll found. Recall, they smashed up quite
a bit of Lincoln Head before they uncovered the secret of how to handle
it. Now that we have unlimited power--or are limited only by the losses
in our own system--we could, or should be able to, make something
rather tough."

"You've toyed with the idea, hey?"

"Uh-huh."

"Of course you haven't really tried it?"

"Of course not."

"How did it work?"

"Fair," grinned Walt. "I did it with miniatures only, of course, since
I couldn't get my hooks on a full-grown tube."

"Say," asked Arden, "how did you birds arrive at this idea so suddenly?
I got lost at the first premise."

"We passed a strange ship. We heated up to uncomfortable temperatures
in a matter of nine seconds flat. They didn't warm us with thought
waves, or vector-invectives. Sheer dislike wouldn't do it alone. I
guess that someone is trying to do the trick started by our esteemed
Mr. Franks here a year or so ago. Only with something practical instead
of an electron beam. Honest-to-goodness energy, right from Sol himself,
funneled through some tricky inventions. Walt, that experiment of
yours. Did you bring it along?"

Walt looked downcast. "No," he said. "It was another one."

"Let's see."

"It's not too good--"

"Same idea?"

Walt went to get his experiment. He returned with a tray full of
laboratory glassware, all wired into a maze of electronic equipment.

Channing went white. "You, too?" he yelled.

"Take it easy, sport. This charges only to a hundred volts. We get
thirteen hundred microfarads at one hundred volts. Then we drain off
the dielectric fluid, and get one billion three hundred million volts
charge in a condenser of only one hundred micro-microfarads. It's an
idea for the nuclear physics boys. I think it may tend to solidify
some of the uncontrollables in the present system of developing high
electron velocities."

"That thirteen million dielectric constant stuff is strictly
electro-dynamite, I think," said Channing. "Farrell may have developed
it as a by-product, but I have a hunch that it will replace some
heretofore valuable equipment. The Franks-Farrell generator will outdo
Van-Der Graf's little job, I think."

"Franks-Farrell?"

"Sure. He thunk up the dielectric. You thunk up the application. He
won't care, and you couldn't have done it without. Follow?"

"Oh sure. I was just trying to figure out a more generic term for it."

"Don't. Let it go as is for now. It's slick, Walt, but there's no
weapon in it."

"You're looking for a weapon?"

"Uh-huh. Ever since Murdoch took a swing at Venus Equilateral, I've
been sort of wishing that we could concoct something big enough and
dangerous enough to keep us free from any other wiseacres. Remember,
we stand out there like a sore thumb. We are as vulnerable as a
half pound of butter at a banquet for starving Armenians. The next
screwball that wants to control the system will have to control Venus
Equilateral first. And the best things we can concoct to date include
projectile-tossing guns at velocities of less than the speed of our
ships, and an electron-shooter that can be overcome by coating the ship
with any of the metal-salts that enhance secondary emission."

"Remind me to requisition a set of full-sized tubes when we return.
Might as well have some fun."

"O.K., you can have 'em. Which brings us back to the present.
Question: Was that an abortive attempt upon our ship, or was that a
mistaken try at melting a meteor?"

"I know how to find out. Let's call Charley Thomas and have him get
on the rails. We can have him request Terran Electric to give us any
information they may have on energy beams to date."

"They'd tell you?" scorned Arden.

"If they write _no!_, and we find out that they did, we'll sue 'em
dead. They're too shaky to try anything deep right now."

"Going to make it an official request, hey?"

"Right. From the Station, it'll go out in print, and their answer will
be on the 'type, too, since business etiquette requires it. They'll
get the implication if they're on the losing end. That'll make 'em try
something slick. If they're honest, they'll tell all."

"That'll do it all right," said Walt. "They're too shaky to buck us any
more. And if they are trying anything, it'll show."

       *       *       *       *       *

The rest of the trip was without incident. They put in at Canalopsis
and found Keg Johnson with an official 'gram waiting for them. Don
Channing ripped it open and read:

    Interplanetary Communications
    Attention Dr. Channing:

    No project for energy-beam capable of removing meteors under way
    at Terran Electric, or at any of the subsidiary companies. Ideas
    suggested along these lines have been disproven by your abortive
    attempt of a year ago, and will not be considered unless theory is
    substantiated in every way by practical evidence.

    If you are interested, we will delve into the subject from all
    angles. Please advise.

    Terran Electric Co.
    Board of Legal Operations
    Mark Kingman, LLD.

Channing smiled wryly at Keg Johnson and told him of their trouble.

"Oh?" said Keg, with a frown. "Then you haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Hellion Murdoch has been on the loose for weeks."

"Weeks!" yelled Channing.

"Uh-huh. He feigned gangrene, was taken to the base hospital where he
raised hob in his own, inimitable way. He blasted the communications
set-up completely, ruined three spaceships, and made off with the
fourth. The contact ship just touched there recently and found hell
brewing. If they hadn't had a load of supplies and prisoners for the
place, they wouldn't have known about it for months, perhaps."

"So! Brother Murdoch is loose again. Well! The story dovetails in
nicely."

"You think that was Hellion himself?"

"I'd bet money on it. The official report on Hellion Murdoch said that
he was suffering from a very slight persecution complex, and that he
was capable of making something of it if he got the chance. He's
slightly whacky, and dangerously so."

"He's a brilliant man, isn't he?"

"Quite. His name is well known in the circles of neuro-surgery. He is
also known to be an excellent research worker in applied physics."

"Nuts, hey?" asked Walt.

"Yeah, he's nuts. But only in one way, Walt. He's nuts to think that he
is smarter than the entire solar system all put together. Well, what do
we do now?"

"Butter ourselves well and start scratching for the answer. That
betatron trick will not work twice. There must be something."

"O.K., Walt. We'll all help you think. I'm wondering how much
research he had to do to develop that beam. After all, we were five
thousand miles away, and he heated us up. He must've thought we were
a meteor--and another thing, too--he must've thought that his beam
was capable of doing something at five thousand miles distance or he
wouldn't have tried. Ergo he must have beaten that two hundred mile
bugaboo."

"We don't know that the two hundred mile bugaboo is still
bugging in space," said Walt, slowly. "That's set up so that the
ionization-by-products are not dangerous. Also, he's not transmitting
power from station to station, et cetera. He's ramming power into some
sort of beam and to the devil with losses external to his equipment.
The trouble is, darn it, that we'll have to spend a month just building
a large copy of my miniature set-up."

"A month is not too much time," agreed Channing. "And Murdoch will
take a swing at us as soon as he gets ready to reach. We can have
Charley start building the big tubes immediately, can't we?"

"Just one will be needed. We'll use one of the standard solar intake
tubes that we're running the Station from. There's spare equipment
aplenty. But the transmitter-terminal tube will take some building."

"Can we buy one from Terran Electric?"

"Why not? Get the highest rating we can. That should be plenty. Terran
probably has them in stock, and it'll save us building one."

"What is their highest rating?"

"Two hundred megawatts."

"O.K. I'll send 'em a coded requisition with my answer to their
letter."

"What are you going to tell 'em?"

"Tell 'em not to investigate the energy-gun idea unless they want to
for their own reasons," Channing grinned. "They'll probably assume--and
correctly--that we're going to tinker ourselves."

"And?"

"Will do nothing since it is an extra-planetary proposition. Unless it
becomes suitable for digging tunnels, or melting the Martian ice cap,"
laughed Channing.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mark Kingman took the letter to Murdoch, who was hidden in the depths
of the _Black Widow_. Hellion read it twice, and then growled.

"They smell something, sure," he snarled. "Why didn't we make that a
perfect hit!"

"What are we going to do now?"

"Step up our plans. They'll have this thing in a few weeks. Hm-m-m.
They order a transmitter-terminal tube. Have you got any in stock?"

"Naturally. Not in stock, but available for the Northern Landing
power-line order."

"You have none, then. You will have some available within a few days.
That half-promise will stall them from making their own, and every day
that they wait for your shipment is a day in our favor. To keep your
own nose clean, I'll tell you when to ship the tube. It'll be a few
days before I strike."

"Why bother?" asked Kingman. "They won't be around to call names."

"No, but their friends will, and we want to keep them guessing."

"I see. Those tubes are huge enough to excite comment, and there
will be squibs in all the papers telling of the giant going to Venus
Equilateral, and the Sunday Supplements will all break out in wild
guesses as to the reason why Venus Equilateral wants a two hundred
megawatt tube. Too bad you couldn't keep your escape a longer secret."

"I suppose so. But it was bound to be out sooner or later anyway. A
good general, Kingman, is one whose plans may be changed on a moment's
notice without sacrificing. We'll win through."

The days wore on, and the big turret on the top of the _Black Widow_
took shape. The supertubes were installed, and Murdoch worked
in the bowels of the ship to increase the effectiveness of the
course-integrators to accommodate high velocities and to correct for
the minute discrepancies that would crop up due to the difference in
velocities between light and sub-electronic radiation.

And on Venus Equilateral, the losing end of a war of nerves was taking
place. The correspondence by 'type was growing into a reasonable
pile, while the telephone conversations between Terran Electric and
Venus Equilateral became a daily proposition. The big tubes were
not finished. The big tubes were finished, but rejects because of
electrode-misalignments. The big tubes were in the rework department.
The big tubes were on Luna for their testing. And again they were
rejects because the maximum power requirements were not met. They were
returned to Evanston and were once more in the rework department. You
have no idea how difficult the manufacture of two hundred megawatt
tubes really is.

So the days passed, and no tubes were available. The date passed which
marked the mythical date of 'if'--_If_ Venus Equilateral had started
their own manufacturing division on the day they were first ordered
from Terran Electric, they would have been finished and available.

Then, one day, word was passed along that the big tubes were shipped.
They were on their way, tested and approved, and would be at Venus
Equilateral within two days. In the due course of time, they arrived,
and the gang at the Relay Station went to work on them.

But Walt Franks shook his head. "Don, we'll be caught like a sitting
rabbit."

"I know. But--?" answered Channing.

There was no answer to that question, and so they went to work again.

The news of Murdoch's first blow came that same day. It was a news
report from the Interplanetary Network that the Titan Penal Colony
had been attacked by a huge black ship of space that carried a huge
dome-shaped turret on the top. Beams of invisible energy burned furrows
in the frozen ground, and the official buildings melted and exploded
from the air pressure within them. The Titan station went off the
ether with a roar, and the theorists believed that Murdoch's gang had
been augmented by four hundred and nineteen of the Solar System's most
vicious criminals.

"That rips it wide open," said Channing. "Better get the folks to
prepare to withstand a siege. I don't think they can take us."

"That devil might turn his beams on the Station itself, though," said
Walt.

"He wants to control communications."

"With the sub-electron beams we now have, he could do it on far less
Station for some time. Not perfectly, but he'd get along."

"Fine future," gritted Channing. "This is a good time to let this
project coast, Walt. We've got to start in from the beginning and walk
down another track."

"It's easy to say, chum."

"I know it. So far, all we've been able to do is to take energy from
the solar intake beams and spray it out into space. It goes like the
arrow that went--we know not where."

"So?"

"Forget these gadgets. Have Charley hook up the solar intake tubes
to the spotter and replace the cathodes with pure thorium. I've got
another idea."

"O.K., but it sounds foolish to me."

Channing laughed. "We'll stalemate him," he said bitterly, and
explained to Walt. "I wonder when Murdoch will come this way?"

"It's but a matter of time," said Walt. "My bet is as soon as he can
get here with that batch of fresh rats he's collected."

       *       *       *       *       *

Walt's bet would have collected. Two days later, Hellion Murdoch
flashed a signal into Venus Equilateral and asked for Channing.

"Hello, Hellion," answered Channing. "Haven't you learned to keep out
of our way?"

"Not at all," answered Murdoch. "You won't try that betatron on me
again. This ship is coated with four tenths of an inch of lithium
metal, which according to the books will produce the maximum quantity
of electrons under secondary emission. If not the absolute maximum, it
is high enough to prevent your action."

"No," agreed Channing. "We won't try the betatron again. But, Murdoch,
there are other things."

"Can they withstand these?" asked Murdoch. The turret swiveled and the
triple-mount of tubes looked at Venus Equilateral.

"Might try," said Channing.

"Any particular place?" countered Murdoch.

"Hit the south end. We can best afford to lose that," answered Channing.

"You're either guessing, or hoping I won't fire, or perhaps praying
that whatever you have for protection will work," said Murdoch flatly.
"Otherwise you wouldn't talk so smooth."

"You black-hearted baby-killing rotter," snarled Don Channing. "I'm not
chinning with you for the fun of it. You'll shoot anyway, and I want to
see how good you are. Get it over with, Murdoch."

"What I have here is plenty good," said Murdoch. "Good enough. Do you
know about it?"

"I can guess, but you tell me."

"Naturally," said Hellion. He explained in detail. "Can you best that?"

"We may not be able to outfire you," gritted Channing, "but we may be
able to nullify your beam."

"Nonsense!" roared Murdoch, "Look, Channing, you'd best surrender."

"Never!"

"You'd rather die?"

"We'd rather fight it out. Come in and get us."

"Oh no. We'll just shoot your little Station full of holes. Like the
average spaceship, your Station will be quite capable of handling
communications even though the air is all gone. Filling us full of
holes wouldn't do a thing; you see, we're wearing spacesuits."

"I guessed that. No, Murdoch, we have nothing to shoot at you this
time. All we can do is to hold you off until you get hungry. You'll get
hungry first, since we're self-sufficient."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime we're going to try a few things out on your hull.
I rather guess that you'll try out a few things on the Station, but
at the present, you can't harm us and we can't harm you. Stalemate,
Murdoch!'

"You're bluffing!" stormed Murdoch.

"Are you afraid to squirt that beam this way?" asked Channing
tauntingly. "Or do you know it will not work?"

"Why are you so anxious to get killed?"

"We're very practical, out here on Venus Equilateral," said Don.
"There's no use in working further if you have something that is really
good. We'd like to know our chances before we expend more effort along
another line."

"That's not all--?"

"No. Frankly, I'm almost certain that your beam won't do a thing to
Venus Equilateral."

"We'll see. Listen! Turretman! Are you ready?"

Faintly, the reply came, and Channing could hear it. "Ready!"

"Then fire all three. Pick your targets at will. One blast!"

The lights in Venus Equilateral brightened. The thousands of
line-voltage meters went from one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and forty volts, and the line-frequency struggled with the
crystal-control and succeeded in making a ragged increase from sixty
to sixty point one five cycles per second. The power-output meters on
the transmitting equipment went up briefly, and in the few remaining
battery-supply rooms, the overload and overcharge alarms clanged until
the automatic adjusters justified the input against the constant load.
One of the ten-kilowatt modulator tubes flashed over in the audio-room
and was immediately cut from the operating circuit; the recording
meters indicated that the tube had gone west forty-seven hours prior to
its expiration date due to filament overload. A series of fluorescent
lighting fixtures in a corridor of the Station that should have been
dark because of the working hours of that section, flickered into
life and woke several of the workers, and down in the laboratory, Wes
Farrell swore because the fluctuating line had disrupted one of his
experiments, giving him reason to doubt the result. He tore the thing
down and began once more; seventy days work had been ruined.

"Well," said Channing cockily, "is that the best you can do?"

"You--!"

"You forgot," reminded Channing, "that we have been working with solar
power, too. In fact, we discovered the means to get it. Go ahead and
shoot at us, Murdoch. You're just giving us more power."

"Cease firing!" exploded Murdoch.

"Oh don't!" cheered Don. "You forgot that those tubes, if aligned
properly, will actually cause bending of the energy-beam. We've got
load-terminal tubes pointing at you, and your power-beam is bending to
enter them. You did well, though. You were running the whole Station
with plenty to spare. We had to squirt some excess into space. Your
beams aren't worth the glass that's in them!"

"Stalemate, then," snarled Murdoch. "Now _you_ come and get _us_. We'll
leave. But we'll be back. Meanwhile, we can have our way with the
shipping. Pilot! Course for Mars! Start when ready!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Black Widow_ turned and streaked from Venus Equilateral as Don
Channing mopped his forehead. "Walt," he said, "that's once I was
scared to death."

"Me, too. Well, we got a respite. Now what?"

"We start thinking."

"Right. But of what?"

"Ways and--Hello, Wes. What's the matter?"

Farrell entered and said: "They broke up my job. I had to set it up
again, and I'm temporarily free. Anything I can do to help?"

"Can you dream up a space-gun?"

Farrell laughed. "That's problematical. Energy guns are something
strange. Their output can be trapped and used to good advantage. What
you need is some sort of projectile, I think."

"But what kind of projectile would do damage to a spaceship?"

"Obviously the normal kinds are useless. Fragmentation shells would
pelt the exterior of the ship with metallic rain--if and providing you
could get them that close. Armor-piercing would work, possibly, but
their damage would be negligible since hitting a spacecraft with a
shell is impossible if the ship is moving at anything like the usual
velocities. Detonation shells are a waste of energy, since there is no
atmosphere to expand and contract. They'd blossom like roses and do as
much damage as a tossed rose."

"No projectiles, then."

"If you could build a super-heavy fragmentation and detonation shell
and combine it with armor-piercing qualities, and could hit the
ship, you might be able to stop 'em. You'd have to pierce the ship,
and have the thing explode with a terrific blast. It would crack
the ship because of the atmosphere trapped in the hull--and should
be fast enough to exceed the compressibility of air. Also it should
happen so fast that the air leaving the hole made would not have a
chance to decrease the pressure. The detonation would crack the
ship, and the fragmentation would mess up the insides to boot, giving
two possibilities. But if both failed and the ship became airless,
they would fear no more detonation shells. Fragments would always be
dangerous, however."

"So now we must devise some sort of shell--?"

"More than that. The meteor-circuits would intercept the incoming
shell and it would never get there. What you'd need is a series of
shells--say a hundred, all emitting the meteor-alarm primary signals,
which would cause paralysis of the meteor-circuits. Then the big one,
coming in at terrific velocity."

"And speaking of velocity," said Walt Franks. "The projectile and the
rifle are out. We can get better velocity with a constant-acceleration
drive. I say torpedoes!"

"Naturally. But the aiming? Remember, even though we crank up the drive
to 50-G, it takes time to get to several thousand miles per second. The
integration of a course would be hard enough, but add to it the desire
of men to evade torpedoes--and the aiming job is impossible."

"We may be able to aim them with a device similar to the one Charley
Thomas is working with. Murdoch said his hull was made of lithium?"

"Coated with," said Channing.

"Well. Set the alloy-selectivity disk to pure lithium, and use the
output to steer the torpedo right down to the bitter end."

"Fine. Now the armor-piercing qualities."

"Can we drill?"

"Nope. At those velocities, impact would cause detonation, the combined
velocities would look like a detonation wave to the explosive. After
all, darned few explosives can stand shock waves that propagate through
them at a few thousand miles per second."

"O.K. How do we drill?"

"We might drill electrically," suggested Farrell. "Put a beam in front?"

"Not a chance," grinned Channing. "The next time we meet up with
Hellion Murdoch, he'll have absorbers ready for use. We taught him that
one, and Murdoch is not slow to learn."

"So how do we drill?"

"Wes, is that non-arcing alloy of yours very conductive?"

"Slightly better than aluminum."

"Then I've got it! We mount two electrodes of the non-arcing alloy
in front. Make 'em heavy and of monstrous current-carrying capacity.
Then we connect them to a condenser made of Farrell's super-dooper
dielectric."

"You bet," said Walt, grinning. "We put a ten microfarad condenser in
front, only it'll be one hundred and thirty farads when we soak it in
Farrell's super-dielectric. We charge it to ten thousand volts, and let
it go."

"We've got a few experimental jobs," said Channing. "Those inerts.
The drones we were using for experimental purposes. They were radio
controlled, and can be easily converted to the aiming-circuits."

"Explosives?"

"We'll get the chemistry boys to brew a batch."

"Hm-m-m. Remind me to quit Saturday," said Walt. "I wonder how a ten
farad condenser would drive one of those miniatures."

"Pretty well, I should imagine. Why?"

"Why not mount one of the miniatures on a gunstock and put a ten farad
condenser in the handle? Make a nice side arm."

"Good for one shot, and not permanently charged. You'd have to cut your
leakage down plenty."

"Could be. Well, we'll work on that one afterwards. Let's get that
drone fixed."

"Let's fix up all the drones we have. And we'll have the boys wire up
as many as they can of the little message-canisters. The whole works
go at once at the same acceleration, with the little ones running
interference for the big boy."

"Murdoch invited us to 'come and get him,'" said Channing in a hard
voice. "That, I think we'll do!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Four smoldering derelicts lay in absolute wreckage on or near the four
great spaceports of the solar system. Shipping was at an unequaled
standstill, and the communications beams were loaded with argument
and recriminations and pleas as needed material did not arrive as per
agreement. Three ships paid out one dollar each gross ton in order to
take vital merchandise to needy parties, but the mine-run of shipping
was unable to justify the terrific cost.

And then Don Channing had a long talk with Keg Johnson of
Interplanetary Transport.

One day later, one of Interplanetary's larger ships took off
from Canalopsis without having paid tribute to Murdoch. It went
free--completely automatic--into the Martian sky and right into
Murdoch's hands. The pirate gunned it into a molten mass and hurled his
demands at the system once more, and left for Venus since another ship
would be taking off from there.

In the _Relay Girl_, Don Channing smiled. "That finds Murdoch," he told
Walt. "He's on the standard course for Venus from Mars."

"Bright thinking," commented Walt. "Bait him on Mars and then offer him
a bite at Venus. When'll we catch him?"

"He's running, or will be, at about 3-G, I guess. We're roaring
along at five and will pass Mars at better than four thousand miles
per second. I think we'll catch and pass the _Black Widow_ at the
quarter-point, and Murdoch will be going at about nine hundred miles
per. We'll zoom past, and set the finder on him, and then continue
until we're safely away. If he gets tough, we'll absorb his output,
though he's stepped it up to the point where a spacecraft can't take
too much concentrated input."

"That's how he's been able to blast those who went out with absorbers?"

"Right. The stuff on the Station was adequate to protect, but an
ordinary ship couldn't handle it unless the ship were designed to
absorb and dissipate that energy. The beam-tubes would occupy the
entire ship, leaving no place for cargo. Result: A toss-up between
paying off and not carrying enough to make up the difference."

"This is Freddy," spoke the communicator. "The celestial globe has just
come up with a target at eight hundred thousand miles."

"O.K., Freddy. That must be the _Black Widow_. How'll we pass her?"

"About thirty thousand miles."

"Then get the finders set on that lithium-coated hull as we pass."

"Hold it," said Walt. "Our velocity with respect to his is about three
thousand. We can be certain of the ship by checking the finder-response
on the lithium coating. If so, she's the _Black Widow_. Right from
here, we can be assured. Jim! Check the finders in the torpedoes on
that target!"

"Did," said Jim. "They're on and it is."

"Launch 'em all!" yelled Franks.

"Are you nuts?" asked Channing.

"Why give him a chance to guess what's happening? Launch 'em!"

"Freddy, drop two of the torpedoes and half of the interferers. Send
'em out at 10-G. We'll not put all our eggs in one basket," Channing
said to Walt. "There might be a slip-up."

"It'll sort of spoil the effect," said Don, "But we're not here for
effect."

"What effect?"

"That explosive will be as useless as a slab of soap," said Don.
"Explosive depends for its action upon velocity--brother, there ain't
no explosive built that will propagate at the velocity of our torpedo
against Murdoch."

"I know," said Franks, smiling.

"Shall I yell 'Bombs away' in a dramatic voice?" asked Freddy Thomas.

"Are they?"

"Yup."

"Then yell," grinned Walt. "Look, Don, this should be pretty.
Let's hike to the star-camera above and watch. We can use the
double-telescope finder and take pix, too."

"It won't be long," said Channing grimly. "And we'll be safe since the
interferers will keep Murdoch's gadget so busy he won't have time to
worry us. Let's go."

       *       *       *       *       *

The sky above became filled with a myriad of flashing spots as the
rapidly-working meteor spotters coupled to the big turret and began to
punch at the interferers.

The clangor of the alarm made Murdoch curse. He looked at the celestial
globe and his heart knew real fear for the first time. This was no
meteor shower, he knew from the random pattern. Something was after
him, and Murdoch knew who and what it was. He cursed Channing and Venus
Equilateral in a loud voice.

It did no good, that cursing. Above his head, the triply mounted
turret danced back and forth, freeing a triple-needle of Sol's energy.
At each pause another interferer went out in a blaze of fire and a
shock-excitation of radio energy that blocked, temporarily, the finder
circuits. And as the turret destroyed the little dancing motes, more
came speeding into range to replace them, ten to one.

And then it happened. The finder-circuit fell into mechanical
indecision as two interferers came at angles, each with the same
intensity. The integrators ground together, and the forces they loosed
struggled for control.

Beset by opposing impulses, the amplidyne in the turret stuttered,
smoked, and then went out in a pungent stream of yellowish smoke that
poured from its dust-cover in a high-velocity stream. The dancing of
the turret stopped, and the flashing motes in the sky stopped with the
turret's death.

One hundred and thirty farads, charged to ten thousand volts, touched
the lithium-coated, aluminum side of Murdoch's _Black Widow_. Thirteen
billion joules of electrical energy; thirty-six hundred kilowatt hours
went against two inches of aluminum. At the three thousand miles per
second relative velocity of the torpedo, contact was immediate and
perfect. The aluminum hull vaporized under the million upon million of
kilovolt-amperes of the discharge. The vaporized hull tried to explode,
but was hit by the unthinkable velocity of the torpedo's warhead.

The torpedo itself crushed in front. It mushroomed under the millions
of degrees Kelvin developed by the energy-release caused by the
cessation of velocity. For the atmosphere within the _Black Widow_ was
as immobile and as hard as tungsten steel at its best.

The very molecules themselves could not move fast enough. They crushed
together and in compressing brought incandescence.

The energy of the incoming torpedo raced through the _Black Widow_ in
a velocity wave that blasted the ship itself into incandescence. In a
steep wave-front, the vaporized ship exploded in space like a supernova.

It blinded the eyes of those who watched. It overexposed the camera
film and the expected pictures came out with one single frame a pure,
seared black. The piffling, comparatively ladylike detonation of the
System's best and most terrible explosive was completely covered in the
blast.

Seconds later, the _Relay Girl_ hurtled through the sky three thousand
miles to one side of the blast. The driven gases caught the _Girl_ and
stove in the upper observation dome like an eggshell. The _Relay Girl_
strained at her girders, and sprung leaks all through the rigid ship,
and after rescuing Don Channing and Walt Franks from the wreckage of
the observation dome, the men spent their time welding cracks until the
_Relay Girl_ landed.

It was Walt who put his finger on the trouble. "That was period for
Murdoch," he said. "But Don, the stooge still runs loose. We're going
to be forced to take over Mark Kingman before we're a foot taller.
He includes Terran Electric, you know. That's where Murdoch got his
machine work done."

"Without Murdoch, Kingman is fairly harmless," said Don, objecting.
"We'll have no more trouble from him."

"You're a sucker, Don. Kingman will still be after your scalp. You mark
my words."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing for the present. I've got some unfinished business to attend
to at Lincoln Head. Mind?"


                               THE END.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Firing Line" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.