Rod waited, frowning.
"An' it looks to me," said Joe, "like if I thought somebody was goin' to do that I'd have beams goin' out in all directions as soon as I thought he was thinkin' about it. If there was any way to keep 'em from bumping off my own gang—"
Rod jumped. "Right. I keep thinking in terms of our outfitting. But they've got measuring instruments! They can calibrate their beams! They could mount push-pull generators that would kill up to ten thousand miles but not beyond.
"Then they could space their ships fifteen thousand miles apart and have a fifty-percent overlap and a formation that'd fill up the whole solar system! All such a fleet would need to do would be simply to sweep through a solar system and everything in it would be dead! If we charged a formation like that or tried to turn up in its middle ..."
Joe nodded. "Uh-huh. We'd get a dose of push-pull beam that'd knock us off in a hurry."
"And what's more—" Rod's forehead cleared. "Since they haven't got other-space force-fields they probably think we can jump from a standing start to light-speed or better. That would seem to explain our jumping through their beam into their laps!"
Joe swung his foot, unperturbed. "Uh-huh." Then he said,
"Those little guys are pretty good with tools. How much time you think we got?"
"Not much! The ships that escaped have got to get back to base, wherever that may be. They've got to work out a new trick—which will probably be that one—and mount new projectors and calibrate them and then come back. But it won't take long!"
Joe said amiably, "A focused tractor works from the other-space to this. You think it'd work from this to the other space? An' a pressor, too?"
"Why not?" Then Red stared. "Are you thinking of a drone? That would be the trick, of course."
"Yeah," said Joe, grinning. "I'd scare the pants off 'em if they saw the ol' Stellaris amblin' right up to 'em through all the beams they could pour into her, wipin' 'em out copious an' not havin' a whisker curled by the worst they could do. They'd figure they were goners sure!" Then he added, "If we got time to fix it"
"That," said Rod sourly, "is the question!"
It was a very urgent question. And there were others. But answers of a sort were forthcoming for most. As for the time before a refurbished pyramid-fleet could be expected back, the small people could promise some telepathic warning.
As they'd known of their race's death by the absence of any emotions to perceive, and of the coming of looters on the planet by their scorn, and of the landing of the Stellaris by the much more sympathetic emotions of its occupants at sight of the murdered cities—so they could know of the space-fleet's return.
But they could not get the slightest inkling of any technical improvements in the enemy ships by their psychic gift. They simply couldn't read thoughts—only feelings.
Feverish activity commenced. The small people began to make a double of the Stellaris—a double in appearance only.
It was a mere shell of thin metal put over a frame that would hold it in shape. Some of their technicians began a feverish duplication of the fighting-device on the Stellaris' bow.
The arc-welders from the ship welded that in place and so released tractors that had anchored it. Joe ran cables into the control-room and set up something like adequate indicators—getting the needed instruments from the colony's small store.
Work went on frantically in the Stellaris' flotation-bulges too. There was no time to build new sections to the ship but the flotation-bulges now served no purpose.
Heavily insulated inside, with heating-elements provided, they could accommodate a great addition to the hydroponic gardens which kept the ship's air fresh. The small folk, too, had plants which would serve to excellent purpose. They would provide food in vast quantities.
The matter of food for the first time was solved. The colonists had plenty and the colony had necessarily been staffed with technologists needed for its survival. The dieticians discussed matters in great detail with the several humans. They made tests. They painstakingly experimented.
In two days from the Stellaris' landing, the diet of its human crew was wholly bearable. There was a close approximation of bread, and a very near similitude of three or four different vegetables—but the ones from the ship's air-rooms still tasted better.
There was even a pretty good imitation of steak, which the dietitians assured Kit contained all the needed amino-acid chains the human being required, plus the fats they had begun hungrily to crave. It was not exactly right—not exactly—but it was a great deal better than they'd had.
The real triumph, however, was in the technical department The little round men used the same plastic "vacuum-tube" that Rod had salvaged from the planet They had two others, which were smaller. They used the condenser-device from the pyramid-ship also for power.
The imitation Stellaris was an empty shell but for a complex, heavily-built device in its very center. That device did not include a drive, because there were reinforced plates on which the real Stellaris could focus tractor and pressor-beams, so that its pseudo-twin could be maneuvered and moved from a distance.
But in place of the drive there were tiny beams focused on devices in the Stellaris which performed the functions of cables. The power in those beams would vary to communicate information to the Stellaris even in other-space. And the little men dismantled the four televisors and set their scanners in the giant robot they were constructing. The receiving-screens went in the Earth-ship's control-room.
Altogether an incredible lot was done. The Earth-ship was no longer alone. She had a fighting-ship for companion, unmanned, to be sure, but which had at least five times the power-supply of the parent vessel and her fighting-beam was deadly.
With many hands to work on it, all inspired alike by hatred and equipped with skill, that fighting-beam was a monstrous engine for destruction.
The push-pull beams were ingeniously designed to scan all space with fifty times the rapidity of the first device and to linger briefly on any found target.
They had the power of a generator designed to supply a metropolis, plus two smaller generators intended to furnish a colony not only with ordinary power but the means of combating a strange environment plus a power-unit from an enemy space-ship itself. The beam of this single ship should have nearly the range of a fleet-broadcast of the enemy.
But it was, of course, a robot.
Two days passed—three—four. Then there were twitterings in all the compartments of the Stellaris as the round little colonists crowded into it. They carried small possessions.
They had already moved stores and highly useful supplies into the ship's unfinished storage-rooms. They were, to all intents and purposes, abandoning their colony, because their entire solar system would be blasted when the pyramid-fleet returned. And the Stellaris seemed crowded.
It was necessary. Twenty of the little folk had been on watch since the beginning. They sat in a circle, holding hands in a quaint absorption.
They were aware, of course, of the emotions of their fellows and of the humans around them. But they carefully ignored those sensations.
They must have felt a curious loneliness as they listened or watched—however the process could be described by which they waited for the sensations of alien presences which would tell of the return of the enemy fleet.
It was coming. It was coming fast. The air-lock was sealed. The Stellaris thrust up-ward on those invisible stilts which were pressor-beams and Rod drew the pseudo-ship after him as cloud-banks swirled around the Earth-ship.