Spacehounds of IPC

by E. E. Smith

Around and around the mass of wreckage they crept, and in each of the larger sections Stevens connected up the enormous fixed or dirigible projectors to whatever accumulator cells were available through sensitive relays, all of which he could close by means of one radio impulse. The long and dangerous task done, he stood at the lookout plate, studying the huge disk which had been the upper portion of the lower half of the Arcturus and frowning in thought. Nadia reached over his shoulder and switched off the plate.

"Nix on that second job, big fellow!" she declared. "They aren't really necessary, and you're altogether too apt to be killed trying to get them. It's too ghastly—I won't stand for your trying it, so that ends it."

"We ought to have them, really," he protested. "With those special tools, cutting torches, and all the stuff, we'd be sitting pretty. We'll lose weeks of time by not having them."

"We'll just have to lose it, then. You can't get 'em, any more than a baby can get the moon, so stop crying about it," she went over the familiar argument for the twentieth time. "That stuff up there is all grinding together like cakes of ice in a floe; the particular section you want is in plain sight of whoever is on watch; and those tools and things are altogether too heavy to handle. You're a husky brute, I know, but even you couldn't begin to handle them, even if you had good going. I couldn't help you very much, even if you'd let me try; and the fact that you so positively refuse to let me come along shows how dangerous you know the attempt is bound to be. You'd probably never even get up there alive, to say nothing of getting back here. No, Steve, that's out like a light."

"I sure wish they'd left us weightless for a while, sometime, if only for an hour or two," he mourned.

"But they didn't!" she retorted, practically. "So we're just out of luck to that extent. Our time is about up, too. It's time you worked us back to the tail end of this procession—or rather, the head end, since we're traveling 'down' now."

Stevens took the controls and slowly worked along the outer edge of the mass, down toward its extremity. Nadia put one hand upon his shoulder and he glanced around.

"Thanks, Steve. We have a perfectly wonderful chance as it is, and we've gone so far with our scheme together that it would be a crying shame not to be able to go through with it. I'd hate like sin to have to surrender to them now, and that's all I could do if anything should become of you. Besides..." her voice died away into silence.

"Sure, you're right," he hastily replied, dodging the implication of that unfinished sentence. "I couldn't figure out anything that looked particularly feasible anyway—that's why I didn't try it. We'll pass it up."

Soon they arrived at their objective and maintained a position well in the van, but not sufficiently far ahead of the rest to call forth a restraining ray from their captors. Already strongly affected by the gravitational pull of the mass of the satellite, many of the smaller portions of the wreck, not directly held by the tractors, began to separate from the main mass. As each bit left its place another beam leaped out, until it became apparent that no more were available, and Stevens strapped the girl and himself down before two lookout plates.