He had controls for this ship, now. He swung it past the Stellaris as it wallowed in the impenetrable mist.
He sent the drone out of atmosphere into space.
Warm hands clasped him urgently. Twitterings.
They had meaning.
"It seems that they come faster than light. They are very triumphant. Their emotions suggest that they will slow to visibility only after they enter this system and that they will flash through it, destroying everything in an instant without any possibility of reply."
"That," said Rod with some confidence, "is what they think!"
An hour later he no longer had confidence. An hour later the Stellaris was beaten, its drone crippled. It fled madly through other-space while the pyramid-ship systematically wrought destruction upon all the planets of the yellow sun. If any life had remained it no longer did so.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Defeat
AT FIRST, it did seem that the battle would go Rod's way. The drone-ship went up into sunlit space from the cloudy covering of the second planet Hidden in the mist Rod had to interpret the look of things from the television-screen in the control-room.
In a very real sense the vision-screens were superior to eyesight. There was an adjustment of which the humans had not known by which the images could be enlarged. Any part of the transmitted scene could be chosen and examined under high magnification.
Small round men watched those screens, ready to rip off for later study the lasting image should an informative event occur. The images were in full color and of astoundingly fine definition. It was hard to believe that they were transmitted from space by tiny focused tractor and pressor-beams.
The first scenes were wholly peaceful. There was the yellow sun and there were the four planets in plain view. Beyond there were the cold lights of a million million suns of every color and degree of brightness.
As the pseudo-ship rose higher and higher from the cloud-banked globe Rod saw for the first time the actual picturesqueness of interplanetary space. Always, before, when he saw the stars beyond atmosphere, he had had immediate pressing problems of navigation or of survival.
But as a color-picture on a vision-screen its startling beauty and variety struck home. Which proved that Rod was wholly human in failing to notice beauty until a frame was put around it.
Of the enemy ships there was as yet no sign. The drone ship was two thousand miles out. Three. Five. Then warm hands touched Rod and musical notes in his ears formed themselves into words.
The enemy fleet was very close. The crews of its many ships were triumphant by anticipation.
Rod shot the Stellaris up to emptiness. For seconds, there seemed to be two Earth-ships in the void. They were identical to all outward appearance and to all seeming they were alone in space.
Suddenly, though, the real Stellaris winked out of being It had gone into the other-space and its only link with the cosmos of the yellow sun was the tenuous complex grid of focused tractor and pressor-beams which linked the drone-ship to the Stellaris, the Stellaris in turn to two planets of this solar system and to an unthinkably remote unknown object deep in the heart of the dark universe.
These three anchorages gave the Earthship leverage she needed to maneuver the drone. The television eyes in the drone gave what information was needed to maneuver the drone. The television eyes in the drone gave what information was needed for maneuvers and, of course, the hidden inner weapon began its ceaseless search for targets the instant the Stellaris vanished.
The tranquility of airless space remained. The drone-ship—a mere shell—moved like a pawn from another universe, seemed to come to a decision. It swung about in emptiness and headed steadily for the planet of the dead cities.
Its movement was smooth and even, which was in itself a proof that it was not a ship moving on normal drive. A ship under power would either be accelerating or slowing, certainly not coasting at the beginning of an interplanetary voyage.
The dummy space-craft moved on and on. And then something appeared magically, something else appeared magically, suddenly all of space seemed aglitter with shining metal shapes appearing eerily from nowhere.
The yellow sunlight gleamed on their sides, and the vision-screens showed them by myriads in all directions, from a colossal pyramid almost within arm's reach of the drone—it filled all of one television screen—to others and others dwindling through all sizes to the uncertainties of sixth-magnitude brightness.
Within a space of seconds the whole system of the yellow sun was filled with ships. There was no counting them. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them. The pyramid-race had massed such a fleet as Rod had not conceived of to crush the one small vessel which challenged its might and its privilege of assassination.
But the Stellaris did represent in fact as great a danger to the murder-race as the pyramid-ships to it. If left undestroyed the Stellaris could multiply.
In the dark universe Rod stared in amazement at the spectacle. He touched a single stud, and the drone-ship's weapon lashed out invisibly. But he was almost dazed by the instantaneous appearance of this monstrous fleet.
"They slowed from faster-than-light drive," he said blankly. "That must be it! They traveled in formation, faster than light! And they all slowed together and—here they are! They took my trick of jumping into their laps and twisted it to make their lap jump into me!"
The statement was exact. In the previous fleet-encounter, the Stellaris had leaped from extreme range instantly into the midst of the pyramid-ships. There it had done vast damage. Now the enemy fleet had appeared as if leaping from incredible distances, in a formation which could not but surround any space-ship near this sun, with every pyramid-vessel spouting deadly radiation from each of its five flat sides.
Against such a maneuver there could be no defense. It was perfectly designed to wipe out all life in a volume of space exceeding the gravitational field of a sun. Every world and every comet, every asteroid and even - every stray grain of meteoric matter—all would be sterilized instantly before a warning-device could operate or a single relay kick over. It was deadliness itself.
And it worked perfectly. The drone-ship was almost crashed by a monster pyramid as it slowed to visibility and ravening beams of push-pull killer-stuff raged through it That pyramid flung away, keeping formation at many miles a second. Other pyramid-ships flashed past each one pouring its deadly beams upon the robot vessel. The pseudo-Stellaris seemed to falter. Nothing living could survive what it had taken. Nothing could live within it. Nothing!
But the drone-ship fought on. It spun crazily and its beam licked out and licked out and licked out. It bit savagely into the enemy armada as it poured by, every ship flooding the defiant drone with ever-fresh murderousness. Pyramid-ships by dozens and by hundreds hurtled by and each one blasted it afresh.
And each one died. Because whether dead or not a complicated and inordinately powerful apparatus functioned in the robot too. Three separate generators—plus a power-supply unit of the enemy's own make—thrust energy eagerly into a push-pull generator which threw a tight aimed beam at every target its detectors disclosed.
That beam far outranged the enemy weapons, because they were practising saturation-beaming and that precluded concentration of their deadliness. So the little robot killed and killed and killed.