Spacehounds of IPC

by E. E. Smith

"Not quite." Stevens had in a measure recovered from his stunned surprise. "We are from Tellus, the third planet," and he revealed rapidly the events leading up to their present situation, concluding: "The people in the other sphere were, we believe, natives of Jupiter or of one of the satellites. We know nothing of them, since we could not look through their screens. You rescued us from them; do you not know them?"

"No. Our visirays also were stopped by their screens of force—screens entirely foreign to our science. This is the first time that any vessel from our Saturnian system has ever succeeded in reaching the neighborhood of Jupiter. We came in peace, but they attacked us at sight and we were obliged to destroy them. Now we must hurry back to Titan, for two reasons. First, because we are already at the extreme limit of our power range and Jupiter is getting further and further away from Saturn. Second because our mirrors, which we had thought perfect reflectors of all frequencies possible of generation, are not perfect. Enough of those forces came through the mirrors to volatilize half our crew, and in a few minutes more none of us would have been left alive. Why, in some places our very atmosphere became almost hot enough to melt water! If another of those vessels should attack us, in all probability we should all be lost. Therefore we are leaving as rapidly as is possible."

"You are taking the pieces of our ship along—we do not want to encumber you."

"It is no encumbrance, since we have ample supplies of power. In fact, we are now employing the highest acceleration we Titanians can endure for any length of time."

Stevens pondered long, forgetting that his thoughts were plain as print to the Titanian commander. Thank Heaven these strangers had sense enough to be friendly—all intelligent races should be friends, for mutual advancement. But it was a mighty long stretch to Saturn and this acceleration wasn't so much. How long would it take to get there? Could they get back? Wouldn't they save time by casting themselves adrift, making the repairs most urgently needed, and going back to Ganymede under their own power? But would they have enough power left in the wreck to get even that far? And how about the big tube? He was interrupted by an insistent thought from Barkovis.

"You will save time, Stevens, by coming with us to Titan. There we shall aid you in repairing your vessel and in completing your transmitting tube, in which we shall be deeply interested. Our power plants shall supply you with energy for your return journey until you are close enough to Jupiter to recover your own beam. You are tired. I would suggest that you rest—that you sleep long and peacefully."

"You seem to be handling the Forlorn Hope without any trouble—the pieces aren't grinding at all. We'd better live there, hadn't we?"

"Yes that would be best, for all of us. You could not live a minute here without your suits; and, efficiently insulated as those suits are, yet your incandescent body temperature makes our rooms unbearably hot—so hot that any of us must wear a space-suit while in the same room with you, to avoid being burned to death."

"The incandescently hot" Terrestrials were wafted into the open airlock of their lifeboat upon a wand of force, and soon had prepared a long overdue supper, over which Stevens cast his infectious, boyish grin at Nadia.

"Sweetheart, you are undoubtedly a 'warm number,' and you have often remarked that I 'burn you up.' Nevertheless I think that we were both considerably surprised to discover that we are both hot enough actually to consume persons unfortunate enough to be confined in the same room with us!"