CAN WE MATCH HER SPEED?” Griffith snapped out to Hoeck. The navigator jerked the sheet out of the typewriter and began studying the numbers that had been sent to indicate position and speed. His fingers jumped to a little calculator, and began work at interpreting them. Bob heard his father sounding a general alarm for the men to get back to duty on the double.
In front of the control room, a small hatch suddenly snapped open, and a six-inch rifle slid out rapidly, turret-mounted and fully compensated for recoil. He knew that all over the ship the various weapons would be made ready—cannon, guided-missile launchers, self-steering torpedoes, and a maze of others.
“Make it,” Hoeck decided, and threw another sheet to Griffith, who studied it, frowning heavily.
Anderson whistled as he saw the results, but went back to his seat at once, and began pulling out a suit of elastic cords and metal reinforcement. The others were doing the same, and the radio buzzed in Bob’s ear as general orders came over it for all men to get into high-acceleration harness.
His own harness was under his seat. He began slipping it on and binding it up as quickly as he could. It helped to ease the strain of high pressure by binding the body in a tight elastic sheath that prevented distortion and helped to maintain even blood circulation.
When it was on, he found a button on the seat, which
snapped it back to form a horizontal couch. Men could stand more strain when they lay completely horizontal to it.
“Ten seconds,” the radio said. Bob counted under his breath, but he was too fast. He’d reached thirteen before the pressure suddenly seemed to hit him with a leaden hand. His father had raised the acceleration to better than eight times the normal pressure of gravity, and cut on the side steering rockets, all together. Now they’d be turning and doubling in space in an attempt to reach the Ionian with the same speed and course she was following.
Bob had been given high-acceleration drills before, but never for as long a time. His brain seemed to go numb, except for a dull ache. His senses reeled and threatened to black out on him. His eyes would not focus, and he couldn’t see the others beside him. Nor could he hear them because of the roaring in his ears.
The little radio cut through his daze, carrying his father’s strained words. “Sparks, order the other ships to continue on course; they’re too slow for this. All men attention. We’re going into an encounter with pirates. The Lance has to take care of it alone. Ready all weapons, be prepared for unknown number of pirates.”
It seemed to take hours, though the high-acceleration flight probably lasted no more than half an hour. Even that was too long, though. They’d arrive worn and tired from the strain, even if the pirates hadn’t already done their job and gone sailing off without a trace.
Once piracy had nearly been stamped out, but now it seemed to be bolder than ever. There were rumors that the entire crew and passenger list of a couple of ships had been carried away.
Numbness of the acceleration pressure kept Bob from feeling the excitement that he should have experienced. He was almost completely unconscious by the time the high drive was cut, and they snapped back to light acceleration. He revived almost at once, though, to stare through the observation window, as his father and Hoeck were doing.
There was no sign of either the Ionian or pirates; they must have arrived too late! Then Anderson let out a sharp grunt, and cut on the big electronic telescope screen. In it, a bright silvery spindle showed up, with the standard lines of a freighter-passenger combination from one of Jupiter’s moons.
“Fool!” Hoeck said harshly.
“You can’t expect a merchant captain to take a fix in space without error,” Griffith told him.
“We’re lucky he wasn’t more off. But it doesn’t look as if he’s lucky. How far?”
“Three minutes. We’ll overtake them about as fast this way as we would by stopping to calculate a new high-drive jump,” Anderson guessed. But it was Hoeck’s nod that decided Griffith; the navigator could work such short courses out in his head with reasonable accuracy. Now he was setting up an automatic sequence on the board which would slow them down when they reached the Ionian.
Bob stared at the screen, where the ship was growing in size as they drew nearer.
Obviously the ship had been surprisingly close to their course and speed before the attack, or they couldn’t have done more than slip by too fast to help the other. At interplanetary speeds, a normal meeting in space lasted only fractions of a second. There wouldn’t be even time to fire a shot. It was that which made piracy possible, since a Navy ship could be still matching course while the pirates were already bound for their hide-out.
At first it looked as if that had happened this time. Then Anderson pointed to the radar screen. There were two shapes there, one obviously the Ionian, and the other larger. It must have been painted jet black, which would explain why it didn’t show in the telescope screen.
Then, as Bob looked closer, he could just make it out. It was invisible unless he knew where to look.
Suddenly space seemed to flare up around it. The Ionian had obviously fired a torpedo, and it had caught the pirate dead center. In the glare the ship seemed to be about six hundred feet long, as big as a full-sized battlewagon. But its lines were different. It was large and rounded at both ends, with a narrower middle that made it look something like a streamlined dumbbell. There were no vanes or projections of any kind.
Beside Bob, his father sucked in sharply on his breath, just as another torpedo went off. One should have finished the black ship, but nothing seemed to happen, except that space around the ship turned faintly blue, and then gradually sank to red and disappeared.
“Screens!” Anderson barked.
Commander Griffith nodded slowly. “It can’t be; science proved that screens capable of soaking up a blast like that are impossible. But he’s got them, anyhow. No wonder the pirates are getting bolder. Hey!”
Two torpedoes had caught the black ship dead center. But again it rode them out easily, with only a somewhat stronger glow around it. Bob had read up on the Navy’s attempts to get screens, long ago. But nobody had been able to come up with anything which could turn the energy of a violent explosion aside or slow up a projectile enough to do any good. They had talked about twisting space a bit—whatever that meant—but they hadn’t been able to do it.
Now the Lance was closer to the scene. The black ship seemed not to notice them. It turned about quickly, with no jetting of rockets, and pointed squarely toward the Ionian. Something must have been done, but there was no sign aboard the black ship. Yet the nose of the Ionian suddenly turned white hot and melted into a metal vapor that spread out rapidly through space.
This time even Hoeck cried out. “Heat ray!”
It was another thing the Navy scientists had worked on, and given up. As they had explained it, anything hot enough to project through space and burn would be too hot to be contained in any instruments needed to handle it.
Now the black ship darted in against the Ionian, completely covering the merchant ship from view. It must have been a boarding and looting operation, though no details could be seen.
Griffith leaped to the control panel, and a second later the guns of the Lance began pounding explosive projectiles at the black ship. They hit, but there was only a fault glow.
A warning gong sounded, and Bob braced himself as Hoeck began twisting the Lance to come up against the pirate. Commander Griffith was calling men on the intercom. Now he looked up at Anderson.
“This is emergency enough,” he stated. “We’re breaking out our own secret weapon. And let’s hope it works… Hey!”
Hoeck had cut the deceleration and was accelerating again. In the screen, Bob saw the reason. The black ship had pulled away as calmly as if it had been alone in space and was now heading outward toward Neptune. Again, there was no sign of rocket blast. It simply moved, with no sign of how.