Spacehounds of IPC

by E. E. Smith

"Great Cat!" Far off in space, Brandon turned from his visiray screen and wiped his brow. "Czuv certainly chirped it, Perce, when he called those things flying fortresses. But who, what, why, and how? We didn't see any apparatus that looked capable of generating or handling those beams—and of course, when they got started, their screens cut us off at the pockets. Wish we could have made some sense out of their language—like to know a few of their ideas—find out whether we can't get on terms with them some way or other. Funny-looking wampuses, but they've got real brains—their think-tanks are very evidently full of bubbles. If they have it in mind to take us on next, old son, it'll be just ... too ... bad!"

"And then some," agreed Stevens. "They've got something—no fooling. It looks like the hexans are going to get theirs, good and plenty, pretty soon—and then what? I'd give my left lung and four front teeth for one long look at their controls in action."

"You and me both—it's funny, the way those green ray-screens stick to the walls, instead of being spherical, as you'd expect ... should think they'd have to radiate from a center, and so be spherical," Brandon cogitated. "However, we've got nothing corkscrewy enough to go through them, so we'll have to stand by. We'll stay inside whenever possible, look on from outside when we must, but all the time picking up whatever information we can. In the meantime, now that we've got our passengers, old Doctor Westfall prescribes something that he says is good for what ails us. Distance—lots of distance, straight out from the sun—and I wouldn't wonder if we'd better take his prescription."

The two Terrestrial observers relapsed into silence, staring into their visiray plates, searching throughout the enormous volume of one of those great fortresses in another attempt to solve the mystery of the generation and propagation of the incredible manifestations of energy which they had just witnessed. Scarcely had the search begun, however, when the visirays were again cut off sharply—the rapidly advancing main fleet of the hexans had arrived and the scintillant Vorkulian screens were again in place.

True to hexan nature, training and tradition, the fleet, hundreds strong, rushed savagely to the attack. Above, below, and around the far-flung cone the furious globes dashed, attacking every Vorkulian craft viciously with every resource at their command; with every weapon known to their diabolically destructive race. Planes of force stabbed and slashed, concentrated beams of annihilation flared fiercely through the reeking atmosphere, gigantic aerial bombs and torpedoes were hurled with full radio control against the unwelcome visitor—with no effect. Bound together in groups of seven by the mighty, pale-green bands of force, the Vorkulian units sailed calmly northward, spiraling along with not the slightest change in formation or velocity. The frightful planes and beams of immeasurable power simply spent themselves harmlessly against those sparklingly radiant green walls—seemingly as absorbent to energy as a sponge is to water, since the eye could not detect any change in the appearance of the screens, under even the fiercest blasts of the hexan projectors. Bombs, torpedoes, and all material projectiles were equally futile—they exploded harmlessly in the air far from their objectives, or disappeared at the touch of one of those dark, dull-red pressor rays. And swiftly, but calmly and methodically as at a Vorkulian practice drill, the heptagons were destroying the hexan fleet. Seven mighty green tractors would lash out, seize an attacking sphere, and snap it into the center of mass of the unit of seven. There would be a brief flash of dull red, a still briefer flare of incandescence, and the impalpable magnets would leap out to seize another of the doomed globes. It was only a matter of moments until not a hexan vessel remained; and the Vorkulian juggernaut spiraled onward, now at full acceleration, toward the hexan stronghold dimly visible far ahead of them—a vast city built around Jupiter's northern pole.

At the controls of his projector, Kromodeor spun a dial with a many-fingered, flexible hand and spoke.

"Wixill, I am being watched again—I can feel very plainly that strange intelligence watching everything I do. Have the tracers located him?"

"No, they haven't been able to synchronize with his wave yet. Either he is using a most minute pencil or, what is more probable, he is on a frequency which we do not ordinarily use. However, I agree with you that it is not a malignant intelligence. All of us have felt it, and none of us senses enmity. Therefore, it is not a hexan—it may be one of those strange creatures of the satellites, who are, of course, perfectly harmless."

"Harmless, but unpleasant," returned Kromodeor. "When we get back I'm going to find his beam myself and send a discharge along it that will end his spying upon me. I do not...."

A wailing signal interrupted the conversation and every Vorkul in the vast fleet coiled even more tightly about his bars, for the real battle was about to begin. The city of the hexans lay before them, all her gigantic forces mustered to repel the first real invasion of her long and warlike history. Mile after mile it extended, an orderly labyrinth of spherical buildings arranged in vast interlocking series of concentric circles—a city of such size that only a small part of it was visible, even to the infra-red vision of the Vorkulians. Apparently the city was unprotected, having not even a wall. Outward from the low, rounded houses of the city's edge there reached a wide and verdant plain, which was separated from the jungle by a narrow moat of shimmering liquid—a liquid of such dire potency that across it, even those frightful growths could neither leap nor creep.