The light snapped out, and each member of the cabinet turned toward Waterson again.
"Gentlemen, we see that they are within the Solar System already and appear to be heading directly for the Inner Ring, and Mars in particular. I do not know whether they come in peace or as invaders, but I think I can reasonably say that they are probably invaders. We all agree that they have made a trip of some 1600 years' duration. We all recognize the difficulty of such a trip. There are over two thousand ships in their fleet. I would not send so large a fleet to investigate the Outer Ring, but to send that great number of ships on a mere exploration trip of 1600 years—I do not think it is consistent. Then, too, we must allow them a life span of over three thousand years if we are going to admit that this fleet is for exploration, for it would be three thousand two hundred years before they could bring back news of their trip. In the meantime they might well have been wiped out by some stellar catastrophe, or they might have developed means of seeing us directly in nine years, the time light takes for the trip. Much as we would prefer peace, I fear we must prepare for war. But we can always go out to meet them peacefully, in a great battle fleet. That might convince them that it is better to deal peaceably with us and it would at least be a protection. I suggest that we have a discussion on this, and take a vote."
But there was no discussion, and the vote was unanimous, for the President's suggestion was the logical thing. They had to be prepared for either peace or war.
Then came the discussion of weapons. There was pitifully little to discuss. The interplanetary patrol fleet was a mere police force, designed to destroy meteors, turn comets or asteroids. There was no real naval fleet. But mechanical devices had reached a great peak of perfection and the little space ships were so cheap, so easily operated, and so eminently safe, that nearly every family had several, and new ones were always in demand. There were mighty factories to meet this demand. Twenty billion people can absorb a tremendous number of machines. That was the greatest protection we had, and it was that quantity production, developed by the American, Ford, that made Waterson's campaign possible. But we were to learn much of quantity production methods before that war was over!
Orders were issued that evening to all the great plants over all three planets to begin work on a great quantity of ten-man-high speed ships. They were to be arranged with mountings for machine guns firing explosive bullets loaded with material explosive, each one equal to 100 tons of the old fashioned Dynamite, with special mountings for Dis ray machines. The disintegration ray machinery was to be built by the companies employed ordinarily in making private power plants, hand lights, and the jumping belts. These belts had small projectors that threw a directional beam of force that tended to deform the curvature of space, at that point, and the result was a force that pulled the projector forward, for the space before it acted like a spring. If a magnet be held near a steel watch spring, the spring will bend, but it will try to straighten out and pull the magnet forward. If the magnet could pass through the spring it would progress, as the space curver apparatus was pulled through space. This was the principle of every ship now built, from these tiny two-kilogram (nearly five pounds) machines capable of lifting a man into the air, to the titanic new passenger-freight liners carrying as high as three quarters of a million tons.
The principle of the disintegration ray was not greatly different, and so the machines designed for turning these out in quantities were used to make the Dis ray apparatus with no great changes.
The heat ray projectors were made in quantities for every purpose, they were used for cooking, for welding metals, for warming the home, for melting down cliffs to make way for a building or a tunnel for water, for heating the mighty space ships, for anything to which heat might be applied to advantage. These would make very effective weapons but for the fact that heat rays could be reflected. They would bounce off the car of the enemy without doing any damage if it were polished, as no doubt it would be.
Great liners of space were requisitioned and fitted with Dis rays, and with mighty attractor beam apparatus that would grip and hold anything short of another liner. Each of the ten-man-cruisers had a smaller attractor beam by which they could grip an adversary and hold to his tail with the tenacious grip of a bulldog and yet not weary the pilot with violent movement. These ships were exceedingly powerful, and their speed was limited only by the accelerations the passengers could stand.
But all the scientists of the System were working desperately to design some new weapon, some new machine that was a little faster, a little more powerful; although with resistance in space and with the tremendous energies of matter at their disposal, there was little lack of power as far as the speed of the ships were concerned. Ten thousand times more powerful than the titanic energies of atoms, this energy had defeated the Martians that memorable day in May, 1947, and it was a full ten billion times more powerful than the energies of coal, of oil, of the fuels man had known before that day. But they needed a machine that could project the Dis ray farther. Twenty-five miles was the limit, beyond that the tremendous electrical field that was used to direct it must be built up to so high a voltage that there was no practical way of insulating it. They must be satisfied with the twenty-five mile range—but the scientists were working at increasing the range.