Late that night--or, rather, very early the following morning--Senator Morgan and his Number One secretary were closeted in the former's doubly spy-ray-proofed office. Morgan's round, heavy, florid face had perhaps lost a little of its usual color; the fingers of his left hand drummed soundlessly upon the glass top of his desk. His shrewd gray eyes, however, were as keen and as calculating as ever.
"This thing smells, Herkimer ... it reeks ... but I can't figure any of the angles. That operation was planned. Sure fire, it couldn't miss. Right up to the last split second it worked perfectly. Then--blooie! A flat bust. The Patrol landed and everything was under control. There must have been a leak somewhere--but where in hell could it have been?"
"There couldn't have been a leak, Chief; it doesn't make sense." The secretary uncrossed his long legs, recrossed them in the other direction, threw away a half-smoked cigarette, lit another. "If there'd been any kind of a leak they would have done a lot more than just kill the low man on the ladder. You know as well as I do that Rocky Kinnison is the hardest-boiled character this side of hell. If he had known anything, he would have killed everybody in sight, including you and me. Besides, if there had been a leak, he would not have let Samms get within ten thousand miles of the place--that's one sure thing. Another is he wouldn't have waited until after it was all over to get his army there. No, Chief, there couldn't have been a leak. Whatever Samms or Kinnison found out--probably Samms, he's a hell of a lot smarter than Kinnison is, you know--he learned right there and then. He must have seen Brainerd start to pull his gun."
"I thought of that. I'd buy it, except for one fact. Apparently you didn't time the interval between the shots and the arrival of the tanks."
"Sorry, Chief." Herkimer's face was a study in chagrin. "I made a bad slip there."
"I'll say you did. One minute and fifty eight seconds."
"What!"
Morgan remained silent.
"The patrol is fast, of course ... and always ready ... and they would yank the stuff in on tractor beams, not under their own power ... but even so ... five minutes, is my guess, Chief. Four and a half, absolute minimum."
"Check. And where do you go from there?"
"I see your point. I don't. That blows everything wide open. One set of facts says there was a leak, which occurred between two and a half and three minutes before the signal was given. I ask you, Chief, does that make sense?"
"No. That's what is bothering me. As you say, the facts seem to be contradictory. Somebody must have learned something before anything happened; but if they did, why didn't they do more? And Murgatroyd. If they didn't know about him, why the ships--especially the big battlewagons? If they did think he might be out there somewhere, why didn't they go and find out?"
"Now I'll ask one. Why didn't our Mr. Murgatroyd do something? Or wasn't the pirate fleet supposed to be in on this? Probably not, though."
"My guess would be the same as yours. Can't see any reason for having a fleet cover a one-man operation, especially as well-planned a one as this was. But that's none of our business. These Lensmen are. I was watching them every second. Neither Samms nor Kinnison did anything whatever during that two minutes."
"Young Kinnison and Northrop each left the hall about that time."
"I know it. So they did. Either one of them could have called the Patrol--but what has that to do with the price of beef C. I. F. Valeria?"
Herkimer refrained tactfully from answering the savage question. Morgan drummed and thought for minutes, then went on slowly:
"There are two, and only two, possibilities; neither of which seem even remotely possible. It was--must have been--either the Lens or the girl."
"The girl? Act your age, Senator. I knew where she was, and what she was doing, every second."
"That was evident." Morgan stopped drumming and smiled cynically. "I'm getting a hell of a kick out of seeing you taking it, for a change, instead of dishing it out."
"Yes?" Herkimer's handsome face hardened. "That game isn't over, my friend."
"That's what you think," the Senator jibed. "Can't believe that any woman can be Herkimer-proof, eh? You've been working on her for six weeks now, instead of the usual six hours, and you haven't got anywhere yet."
"I will, Senator." Herkimer's nostrils flared viciously. "I'll get her, one way or another, if it's the last thing I ever do."
"I'll give you eight to five you don't; and a six-month time limit."
"I'll take five thousand of that. But what makes you think that she's anything to be afraid of? She's a trained psychologist, yes; but so am I; and I'm older and more experienced than she is. That leaves that yoga stuff--her learning how to sit cross-legged, how to contemplate her navel, and how to try to get in tune with the infinite. How do you figure that puts her in my class?"
"I told you, I don't. Nothing makes sense. But she is Virgil Samms' daughter."
"What of it? You didn't gag on George Olmstead--you picked him yourself for one of the toughest jobs we've got. By blood he's just about as close to Virgil Samms as Virgilia is. They might as well have been hatched out of the same egg."
"Physically, yes. Mentally and psychologically, no. Olmstead is a realist, a materialist. He wants his reward in this world, not the next, and is out to get it. Furthermore, the job will probably kill him, and even if it doesn't, he will never be in a position of trust or where he can learn much of anything. On the other hand, Virgil Samms is--but I don't need to tell you what he is like. But you don't seem to realize that she's just like him--she isn't playing around with you because of your overpowering charm...."
"Listen, Chief. She didn't know anything and she didn't do anything. I was dancing with her all the time, as close as that," he clasped his hands tightly together, "so I know what I'm talking about. And if you think she could ever learn anything from me, skip it. You know that nobody on Earth, or anywhere else, can read my face; and besides, she was playing coy right then--wasn't even looking at me. So count her out."
"We'll have to, I guess." Morgan resumed his quiet drumming. "If there were any possibility that she pumped you I'd send you to the mines, but there's no sign ... that leaves the Lens. It has seemed, right along, more logical than the girl--but a lot more fantastic. Been able to find out anything more about it?"
"No. Just what they've been advertising. Combination radio-phone, automatic language-converter, telepath, and so on. Badge of the top skimmings of the top-bracket cops. But I began to think, out there on the floor, that they aren't advertising everything they know."
"So did I. You tell me."
"Take the time zero minus three minutes. Besides the five Lensmen--and Jill Samms--the place was full of top brass; scrambled eggs all over the floor. Commodores and lieutenant-Commodores from all continental governments of the Earth, the other planets, and the colonies, all wearing full-dress side-arms. Nobody knew anything then; we agree on that. But within the next few seconds, somebody found out something and called for help. One of the Lensmen could possibly have done that without showing signs. BUT--at zero time all four Lensmen had their guns out--and not Lewistons, please note--and were shooting; whereas none of the other armed officers knew that anything was going on until after it was all over. That puts the finger on the Lens."
"That's the way I figured it. But the difficulties remain unchanged. How? Mind-reading?"
"Space-drift!" Herkimer snorted. "My mind can't be read."
"Nor mine."
"And besides, if they could read minds, they wouldn't have waited until the last possible split second to do it, unless ... say, wait a minute!... Did Brainerd act or look nervous, toward the last? I wasn't to look at him, you know."
"Not nervous, exactly; but he did get a little tense."
"There you are, then. Hired murderers aren't smart. A Lensman saw him tighten up and got suspicious. Turned in the alarm on general principles. Warned the others to keep on their toes. But even so, it doesn't look like mind-reading--they'd have killed him sooner. They were watchful, and mighty quick on the draw."
"That could be it. That's about as thin and as specious an explanation as I ever saw cooked up, but it does cover the facts ... and the two of us will be able to make it stick ... but take notice, pretty boy, that certain parties are not going to like this at all. In fact, they are going to be very highly put out."
"That's a nice hunk of understatement, boss. But notice one beautiful thing about this story?" Herkimer grinned maliciously. "It lets us pass the buck to Big Jim Towne. We can be--and will be--sore as hell because he picks such weak-sister characters to do his killings!"
In the heavily armored improvised ambulance, Virgil Samms sat up and directed a thought at his friend Kinnison, finding his mind a turmoil of confusion.
"What's the matter, Rod?"
"Plenty!" the big Lensman snapped back. "They were--maybe still are--too damn far ahead of us. Something has been going on that we haven't even suspected. I stood by, as innocent as a three-year-old girl baby, and let you walk right into that one--and I emphatically do not enjoy getting caught with my pants down that way. It makes me jumpy. This may be all, but it may not be--not by eleven thousand light-years--and I'm trying to dope out what is going to happen next."
"And what have you deduced?"
"Nothing. I'm stuck. So I'm tossing it into your lap. Besides, that's what you are getting paid for, thinking. So go ahead and think. What would you be doing, if you were on the other side?"
"I see. You think, then, that it might not be good technique to take the time to go back to the spaceport?"
"You get the idea. But--can you stand transfer?"
"Certainly. They got my shoulder dressed and taped, and my arm in a sling. Shock practically all gone. Some pain, but not much. I can walk without falling down."
"Fair enough. Clayton!" He Lensed a vigorous thought. "Have any of the observers spotted anything, high up or far off?"
"No, sir."
"Good. Kinnison to Commodore Clayton, orders. Have a 'copter come down and pick up Samms and myself on tractors. Instruct the Boise and the cruisers to maintain utmost vigilance. Instruct the Chicago to pick us up. Detach the Chicago and the Boise from your task force. Assign them to me. Off."
"Clayton to Commissioner Kinnison. Orders received and are being carried out. Off."
The transfers were made without incident. The two super-dreadnaughts leaped into the high stratosphere and tore westward. Half-way to the Hill, Kinnison called Dr. Frederick Rodebush.
"Fred? Kinnison. Have Cleve and Bergenholm link up with us. Now--how are the Geigers on the outside of the Hill behaving?"
"Normal, all of them," the physicist-Lensman reported after a moment. "Why?"
Kinnison detailed the happenings of the recent past. "So tell the boys to unlimber all the stuff the Hill has got."
"My God!" Cleveland exclaimed. "Why, that's putting us back to the days of the Interplanetary Wars!"
"With one notable exception," Kinnison pointed out. "The attack, if any, will be strictly modern. I hope we'll be able to handle it. One good thing, the old mountain's got a lot of sheer mass. How much radioactivity will it stand?"
"Allotropic iron, U-235, or plutonium?" Rodebush seized his slide-rule.
"What difference does it make?"
"From a practical standpoint ... perhaps none. But with a task force defending, not many bombs could get through, so I'd say ..."
"I wasn't thinking so much of bombs."
"What, then?"
"Isotopes. A good, thick blanket of dust. Slow-speed, fine stuff that neither our ships nor the Hill's screens could handle. We've got to decide, first, whether Virgil will be safer there in the Hill or out in space in the Chicago; and second, for how long."
"I see ... I'd say here, under the Hill. Months, perhaps years, before anything could work down this far. And we can always get out. No matter how hot the surface gets, we've got enough screen, heavy water, cadmium, lead, mercury, and everything else necessary to get him out through the locks."
"That's what I was hoping you'd say. And now, about the defense ... I wonder ... I don't want everybody to think I've gone completely hysterical, but I'll be damned if I want to get caught again with...." His thought faded out.
"May I offer a suggestion, sir?" Bergenholm's thought broke the prolonged silence.
"I'd be very glad to have it--your suggestions so far haven't been idle vaporings. Another hunch?"
"No, sir, a logical procedure. It has been some months since the last emergency call-out drill was held. If you issue such another call now, and nothing happens, it can be simply another surprise drill; with credit, promotion, and monetary awards for the best performances; further practice and instruction for the less proficient units."
"Splendid, Dr. Bergenholm!" Samms' brilliant and agile mind snatched up the thought and carried it along. "And what a chance, Rod, for something vastly larger and more important than a Continental, or even a Tellurian, drill--make it the first maneuver of the Galactic Patrol!"
"I'd like to, Virge, but we can't. My boys are ready, but you aren't. No top appointments and no authority."
"That can be arranged in a very few minutes. We have been waiting for the psychological moment. This, especially if trouble should develop, is the time. You yourself expect an attack, do you not?"
"Yes. I would not start anything unless and until I was ready to finish it, and I see no reason for assuming that whoever it was that tried to kill you is not at least as good a planner as I am."
"And the rest of you...? Dr. Bergenholm?"
"My reasoning, while it does not exactly parallel that of Commissioner Kinnison, leads to the same conclusion; that an attack in great force is to be expected."
"Not exactly parallel?" Kinnison demanded. "In what respects?"
"You do not seem to have considered the possibility, Commissioner, that the proposed assassination of First Lensman Samms could very well have been only the first step in a comprehensive operation."
"I didn't ... and it could have been. So go ahead, Virge, with...."
The thought was never finished, for Samms had already gone ahead. Simultaneously, it seemed, the minds of eight other Lensmen joined the group of Tellurians. Samms, intensely serious, spoke aloud to his friend:
"The Galactic Council is now assembled. Do you, Roderick K. Kinnison, promise to uphold, in as much as you conscientiously can and with all that in you lies, the authority of this Council throughout all space?"
"I promise."
"By virtue of the authority vested in me its president by the Galactic Council, I appoint you Port Admiral of the Galactic Patrol. My fellow councillors are now inducting the armed forces of their various solar systems into the Galactic Patrol ... It will not take long ... There, you may make your appointments and issue orders for the mobilization."
The two super-dreadnaughts were now approaching the Hill. The Boise stayed "up on top"; the Chicago went down. Kinnison, however, paid very little attention to the landing or to Samms' disembarkation, and none whatever to the Chicago's reascent into the high heavens. He knew that everything was under control; and, now alone in his cabin, he was busy.
"All personnel of all armed forces just inducted into the Galactic Patrol, attention!" He spoke into an ultra-wave microphone, the familiar parade-ground rasp very evident in his deep and resonant voice. "Kinnison of Tellus, Port Admiral, speaking. Each of you has taken oath to the Galactic Patrol?"
They had.
"At ease. The organization chart already in your hands is made effective as of now. Enter in your logs the date and time. Promotions: Commodore Clayton of North America, Tellus...."
In his office at New York Spaceport Clayton came to attention and saluted crisply; his eyes shining, his deeply-scarred face alight.
"... to be Admiral of the First Galactic Region. Commodore Schweikert of Europe, Tellus ..."
In Berlin a narrow-waisted, almost foppish-seeming man, with roached blond hair and blue eyes, bowed stiffly from the waist and saluted punctiliously.
"... to be Lieutenant-Admiral of the First Galactic Region."
And so on, down the list. A marshal and a lieutenant-marshal of the Solarian System; a general and a lieutenant-general of the planet Sol Three. Promotions, agreed upon long since, to fill the high offices thus vacated. Then the list of commodores upon other planets--Guindlos of Redland, Mars; Sesseffsen of Talleron, Venus; Raymond of the Jovian Sub-System; Newman of Alphacent; Walters of Sirius; van-Meeter of Valeria; Adams of Procyon; Roberts of Altair; Barrtell of Fomalhout; Armand of Vega; and Coigne of Aldebaran--each of whom was actually the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of a world. Each of these was made general of his planet.
"Except for lieutenant-commodores and up, who will tune their minds to me--dismissed!" Kinnison stopped talking and went onto his Lens.
"That was for the record. I don't need to tell you, fellows, how glad I am to be able to do this. You're tops, all of you--I don't know of anybody I'd rather have at my back when the ether gets rough ..."
"Right back at you, chief!" "Same to you Rod!" "Rocky Rod, Port Admiral!" "Now we're blasting!" came a melange of thoughts. Those splendid men, with whom he had shared so much of danger and of stress, were all as jubilant as schoolboys.
"But the thing that makes this possible may also make it necessary for us to go to work; to earn your extra stars and my wheel." Kinnison smothered the welter of thoughts and outlined the situation, concluding: "So you see it may turn out to be only a drill--but on the other hand, since the outfit is big enough to have built a war-fleet alone, if it wanted one, and since it may have had a lot of first-class help that none of us knows anything about, we may be in for the damndest battle that any of us ever saw. So come prepared for anything. I am now going back onto voice, for the record.
"Kinnison to the commanding officers of all fleets, sub-fleets, and task-forces of the Galactic Patrol. Information. Subject, tactical problem; defense of the Hill against a postulated Black Fleet of unknown size, strength, and composition; of unknown nationality or origin; coming from an unknown direction in space at an unknown time.
"Kinnison to Admiral Clayton. Orders. Take over. I am relinquishing command of the Boise and the Chicago."
"Clayton to Port Admiral Kinnison. Orders received. Taking over. I am at the Chicago's main starboard lock. I have instructed Ensign Masterson, the commanding officer of this gig, to wait; that he is to take you down to the Hill."
"WHAT? Of all the damned...." This was a thought, and unrecorded.
"Sorry, Rod--I'm sorry as hell, and I'd like no end to have you along." This, too, was a thought. "But that's the way it is. Ordinary Admirals ride the ether with their fleets. Port Admirals stay aground. I report to you, and you run things--in broad--by remote control."
"I see." Kinnison then Lensed a fuming thought at Samms. "Alex couldn't do this to me--and wouldn't--and knows damn well that I'd burn him to a crisp if he had the guts to try it. So it's your doing--what in hell's the big idea?"
"Who's being heroic now, Rod?" Samms asked, quietly. "Use your brain. And then come down here, where you belong."
And Kinnison, after a long moment of rebellious thought and with as much grace as he could muster, came down. Down not only to the Patrol's familiar offices, but down into the deepest crypts beneath them. He was glum enough, and bitter, at first: but he found much to do. Grand Fleet Headquarters--his headquarters--was being organized, and the best efforts of the best minds and of the best technologists of three worlds were being devoted to the task of strengthening the already extremely strong defenses of THE HILL. And in a very short time the plates of GFHQ showed that Admiral Clayton and Lieutenant-Admiral Schweikert were doing a very nice job.
All of the really heavy stuff was of Earth, the Mother Planet, and was already in place; as were the less numerous and much lighter contingents of Mars, of Venus, and of Jove. And the fleets of the outlying solar systems--cutters, scouts, and a few light cruisers--were neither maintaining fleet formation nor laying course for Sol. Instead, each individual vessel was blasting at maximum for the position in space in which it would form one unit of a formation englobing at a distance of light-years the entire Solarian System, and each of those hurtling hundreds of ships was literally combing all circumambient space with its furiously-driven detector beams.
"Nice." Kinnison turned to Samms, now beside him at the master plate. "Couldn't have done any better myself."
"After you get it made, what are you going to do with it in case nothing happens?" Samms was still somewhat skeptical. "How long can you make a drill last?"
"Until all the ensigns have long gray whiskers if I have to, but don't worry--if we have time to get the preliminary globe made I'll be the surprisedest man in the system."
And Kinnison was not surprised; before full englobement was accomplished, a loud-speaker gave tongue.
"Flagship Chicago to Grand Fleet Headquarters!" it blatted, sharply. "The Black Fleet has been detected. RA twelve hours, declination plus twenty degrees, distance about thirty light-years...."
Kinnison started to say something; then, by main force, shut himself up. He wanted intensely to take over, to tell the boys out there exactly what to do, but he couldn't. He was now a Big Shot--damn the luck! He could be and must be responsible for broad policy and for general strategy, but, once those vitally important decisions had been made, the actual work would have to be done by others. He didn't like it--but there it was. Those flashing thoughts took only an instant of time.
"... which is such extreme range that no estimate of strength or composition can be made at present. We will keep you informed."
"Acknowledge," he ordered Randolph; who, wearing now the five silver bars of major, was his Chief Communications Officer. "No instructions."
He turned to his plate. Clayton hadn't had to be told to pull in his light stuff; it was all pelting hell-for-leather for Sol and Tellus. Three general plans of battle had been mapped out by Staff. Each had its advantages--and its disadvantages. Operation Acorn--long distance--would be fought at, say, twelve light-years. It would keep everything, particularly the big stuff, away from the Hill, and would make automatics useless ... unless some got past, or unless the automatics were coming in on a sneak course, or unless several other things--in any one of which cases what a God-awful shellacking the Hill would take!
He grinned wryly at Samms, who had been following his thought, and quoted: "A vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame, through which neither material substance nor destructive ray can pass."
"Well, that dedicatory statement, while perhaps a bit florid, was strictly true at the time--before the days of allotropic iron and of polycyclic drills. Now I'll quote one: 'Nothing is permanent except change'."
"Uh-huh," and Kinnison returned to his thinking. Operation Adack. Middle distance. Uh-uh. He didn't like it any better now than he had before, even though some of the Big Brains of Staff thought it the ideal solution. A compromise. All of the disadvantages of both of the others, and none of the advantages of either. It still stunk, and unless the Black fleet had an utterly fantastic composition Operation Adack was out.
And Virgil Samms, quietly smoking a cigarette, smiled inwardly. Rod the Rock could scarcely be expected to be in favor of any sort of compromise.
That left Operation Affick. Close up. It had three tremendous advantages. First, the Hill's own offensive weapons--as long as they lasted. Second, the new Rodebush-Bergenholm fields. Third, no sneak attack could be made without detection and interception. It had one tremendous disadvantage; some stuff, and probably a lot of it, would get through. Automatics, robots, guided missiles equipped with super-speed drives, with polycyclic drills, and with atomic war-heads strong enough to shake the whole world.
But with those new fields, shaking the world wouldn't be enough; in order to get deep enough to reach Virgil Samms they would damn near have to destroy the world. Could anybody build a bomb that powerful? He didn't think so. Earth technology was supreme throughout all known space; of Earth technologists the North Americans were, and always had been, tops. Grant that the Black Fleet was, basically, North American. Grant further that they had a man as good as Adlington--or that they could spy-ray Adlington's brain and laboratories and shops--a tall order. Adlington himself was several months away from a world-wrecker, unless he could put one a hundred miles down before detonation, which simply was not feasible. He turned to Samms.
"It'll be Affick, Virge, unless they've got a composition that is radically different from anything I ever saw put into space."
"So? I can't say that I am very much surprised."
The calm statement and the equally calm reply were beautifully characteristic of the two men. Kinnison had not asked, nor had Samms offered, advice. Kinnison, after weighing the facts, made his decision. Samms, calmly certain that the decision was the best that could be made upon the data available, accepted it without question or criticism.
"We've still got a minute or two," Kinnison remarked. "Don't quite know what to make of their line of approach. Coma Berenices. I don't know of anything at all out that way, do you? They could have detoured, though."
"No, I don't." Samms frowned in thought. "Probably a detour."
"Check." Kinnison turned to Randolph. "Tell them to report whatever they know; we can't wait any ..."
As he was speaking the report came in.
The Black Fleet was of more or less normal make-up; considerably larger than the North American contingent, but decidedly inferior to the Patrol's present Grand Fleet. Either three or four capital ships ...
"And we've got six!" Kinnison said, exultantly. "Our own two, Asia's Himalaya, Africa's Johannesburg, South America's Bolivar, and Europe's Europa."
... Battle cruisers and heavy cruisers, about in the usual proportions; but an unusually high ratio of scouts and light cruisers. There were either two or three large ships which could not be classified definitely at that distance; long-range observers were going out to study them.
"Tell Clayton," Kinnison instructed Randolph, "that it is to be Operation Affick, and for him to fly at it."
"Report continued," the speaker came to life again. "There are three capital ships, apparently of approximately the Chicago class, but tear-drop-shaped instead of spherical ..."
"Ouch!" Kinnison flashed a thought at Samms. "I don't like that. They can both fight and run."
"... The battle cruisers are also tear-drops. The small vessels are torpedo-shaped. There are three of the large ships, which we are still not able to classify definitely. They are spherical in shape, and very large, but do not seem to be either armed or screened, and are apparently carriers--possibly of automatics. We are now making contact--off!"
Instead of looking at the plates before them, the two Lensmen went en rapport with Clayton, so that they could see everything he saw. The stupendous Cone of Battle had long since been formed; the word to fire was given in a measured two-second call. Every firing officer in every Patrol ship touched his stud in the same split second. And from the gargantuan mouth of the Cone there spewed a miles-thick column of energy so raw, so stark, so incomprehensibly violent that it must have been seen to be even dimly appreciated. It simply cannot be described.
Its prototype, Triplanetary's Cylinder of Annihilation, had been a highly effective weapon indeed. The offensive beams of the fish-shaped Nevian cruisers of the void were even more powerful. The Cleveland-Rodebush projectors, developed aboard the original Boise on the long Nevian way, were stronger still. The composite beam projected by this fleet of the Galactic Patrol, however, was the sublimation and quintessence of each of these, redesigned and redesigned by scientists and engineers of ever-increasing knowledge, rebuilt and rebuilt by technologists of ever-increasing skill.
Capital ships and a few of the heaviest cruisers could mount screen generators able to carry that frightful load; but every smaller ship caught in that semi-solid rod of indescribably incandescent fury simply flared into nothingness.
But in the instant before the firing order was given--as though precisely timed, which in all probability was the case--the ever-watchful observers picked up two items of fact which made the new Admiral of the First Galactic Region cut his almost irresistible weapon and break up his Cone of Battle after only a few seconds of action. One: those three enigmatic cargo scows had fallen apart before the beam reached them, and hundreds--yes, thousands--of small objects had hurtled radially outward, out well beyond the field of action of the Patrol's beam, at a speed many times that of light. Two: Kinnison's forebodings had been prophetic. A swarm of Blacks, all small--must have been hidden right on Earth somewhere!--were already darting at the Hill from the south.
"Cease firing!" Clayton rapped into his microphone. The dreadful beam expired. "Break cone formation! Independent action--light cruisers and scouts, get those bombs! Heavy cruisers and battle cruisers, engage similar units of the Blacks, two to one if possible. Chicago and Boise, attack Black Number One. Bolivar and Himalaya, Number Two. Europa and Johannesburg, Number Three!"
Space was full of darting, flashing, madly warring ships. The three Black super-dreadnaughts leaped forward as one. Their massed batteries of beams, precisely synchronized and aimed, lashed out as one at the nearest Patrol super heavy, the Boise. Under the vicious power of that beautifully-timed thrust that warship's first, second, and third screens, her very wall-shield, flared through the spectrum and into the black. Her Chief Pilot, however, was fast--very fast--and he had a fraction of a second in which to work. Thus, practically in the instant of her wall-shield's failure, she went free; and while she was holed badly and put out of action, she was not blown out of space. In fact, it was learned later that she lost only forty men.
The Blacks were not as fortunate. The Chicago, now without a partner, joined beams with the Bolivar and the Himalaya against Number Two; then, a short half-second later, with her other two sister-ships against Number Three. And in that very short space of time two Black super-dreadnaughts ceased utterly to be.
But also, in that scant second of time, Black Number One had all but disappeared! Her canny commander, with no stomach at all for odds of five to one against, had ordered flight at max; she was already one-sixtieth of a light-year--about one hundred thousand million miles--away from the Earth and was devoting her every energy to the accumulation of still more distance.
"Bolivar! Himalaya!" Clayton barked savagely. "Get him!" He wanted intensely to join the chase, but he couldn't. He had to stay here. And he didn't have time even to swear. Instead, without a break, the words tripping over each other against his teeth: "Chicago! Johannesburg! Europa! Act at will against heaviest craft left. Blast 'em down!"
He gritted his teeth. The scouts and light cruisers were doing their damndest, but they were out-numbered three to one--Christ, what a lot of stuff was getting through! The Blacks wouldn't last long, between the Hill and the heavies ... but maybe long enough, at that--the Patrol globe was leaking like a sieve! He voiced a couple of bursts of deep-space profanity and, although he was almost afraid to look, sneaked a quick peek to see how much was left of the Hill. He looked--and stopped swearing in the middle of a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word.
What he saw simply did not make sense. Those Black bombs should have peeled the armor off of that mountain like the skin off of a nectarine and scattered it from the Pacific to the Mississippi. By now there should be a hole a mile deep where the Hill had been. But there wasn't. The Hill was still there! It might have shrunk a little--Clayton couldn't see very well because of the worse-than-incandescent radiance of the practically continuous, sense-battering, world-shaking atomic detonations--but the Hill was still there!
And as he stared, chilled and shaken, at that indescribably terrific spectacle, a Black cruiser, holed and helpless, fell toward that armored mountain with an acceleration starkly impossible to credit. And when it struck it did not penetrate, and splash, and crater, as it should have done. Instead, it simply spread out, in a thin layer, over an acre or so of the fortress' steep and apparently still armored surface!
"You saw that, Alex? Good. Otherwise you could scarcely believe it," came Kinnison's silent voice. "Tell all our ships to stay away. There's a force of over a hundred thousand G's acting in a direction normal to every point of our surface. The boys are giving it all the decrement they can--somewhere between distance cube and fourth power--but even so it's pretty fierce stuff. How about the Bolivar and the Himalaya? Not having much luck catching Mr. Black, are they?"
"Why, I don't know. I'll check ... No, sir, they aren't. They report that they are losing ground and will soon lose trace."
"I was afraid so, from that shape. Rodebush was about the only one who saw it coming ... well, we'll have to redesign and rebuild ..."
Port Admiral Kinnison, shortly after directing the foregoing thought, leaned back in his chair and smiled. The battle was practically over. The Hill had come through. The Rodebush-Bergenholm fields had held her together through the most God-awful session of saturation atomic bombing that any world had ever seen or that the mind of man had ever conceived. And the counter-forces had kept the interior rock from flowing like water. So far, so good.
Her original armor was gone. Converted into ... what? For hundreds of feet inward from the surface she was hotter than the reacting slugs of the Hanfords. Delousing her would be a project, not an operation; millions of cubic yards of material would have to be hauled off into space with tractors and allowed to simmer for a few hundred years; but what of that?
Bergenholm had said that the fields would tend to prevent the radioactives from spreading, as they otherwise would--and Virgil Samms was still safe!
"Virge, my boy, come along." He took the First Lensman by his good arm and lifted him out of his chair. "Old Doctor Kinnison's peerless prescription for you and me is a big, thick, juicy, porterhouse steak."
