Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Young Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Secret Service Winning his way in the Secret Service by Theiss Lewis E Lewis Edwin Merrill Frank T Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 200 lines and 12262 words, and 4 pages
Taine's voice snarled:
Then the second half-dozen rockets broke ranks, as insanely and irremediably as the first.
Taine's voice screamed out of a speaker, hysterical with fury:
The heavens seemed streaked and laced with lines of expanding smoke. But now one plunging line erupted at its tip. A swelling globe of smoke marked its end. Another blew up. And another--
Baird sat tense in the frustrated and desperate composure of the man who can only be of use while he is sitting still and keeping his head. The vision screen was now a blur of writhing mist, lighted by the sun and torn at by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships had encountered each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was like the insanely enlarging head of a newborn comet, whose tail would be formed presently by light-pressure. The Plumie ship was almost invisible behind the unsubstantial stuff.
But Baird regarded his radar screens. Microwaves penetrated the mist of rapidly ionizing gases.
"Radar to navigation!" he said sharply. "The Plumie ship is still approaching, dancing as before!"
The skipper said with enormous calm:
Diane interposed.
"No sign anywhere. I've been watching. This seems to be the only ship within radar range."
But he overheard himself saying bitterly:
"I wish I'd known this was coming, Diane. I ... wouldn't have resolved to be strictly official, only, until we got back to base."
Her eyes widened. She looked startled. Then she softened.
"If ... you mean that ... I wish so too."
"It looks like they've got us," he admitted unhappily. "If they can take our rockets away from us--" Then his voice stopped. He said, "Hold everything!" and pressed the navigation-room button. He snapped: "Radar to navigation. It appears to take the Plumies several seconds to take over a rocket. They have to aim something--a pressor or tractor beam, most likely--and pick off each rocket separately. Nearly forty seconds was consumed in taking over all twelve of our rockets. At shorter range, with less time available, a rocket might get through!"
The skipper swore briefly. Then:
Baird heard Taine's shrill-voiced acknowledgment--in the form of practically chattered orders to his rocket-tube crews. Baird listened, checking the orders against what the situation was as the radars saw it. Taine's voice was almost unhuman; so filled with frantic rage that it cracked as he spoke. But the problem at hand was the fulfillment of all his psychopathic urges. He commanded the starboard-side rocket-battery to await special orders. Meanwhile the port-side battery would fire two rockets on widely divergent courses, curving to join at the Plumie ship. They'd be seized. They were to be detonated and another port-side rocket fired instantly, followed by a second hidden in the rocket-trail the first would leave behind. Then the starboard side--
"I'm afraid Taine's our only chance," said Baird reluctantly. "If he wins, we'll have time to ... talk as people do who like each other. If it doesn't work--"
Diane said quietly:
"Anyhow ... I'm glad you ... wanted me to know. I ... wanted you to know, too."
She smiled at him, yearningly.
"They see the trick," said Diane, dry-throated. "If they can get in close enough, they can turn it against us!"
"Diane!"
"Diane!" cried Baird fiercely. "Diane!"
"I'm ... here," she panted. "I'm dizzy, but I ... think I'm all right--"
The battery-powered emergency light came on. It was faint, but he saw her clinging to a bank of instruments where she'd been thrown by the collision. He moved to go to her, and found himself floating in midair. But he drifted to a side wall and worked his way to her.
She clung to him, shivering.
"I ... think," she said unsteadily, "that we're going to die. Aren't we?"
"We'll see," he told her. "Hold on to me."
Guided by the emergency light, he scrambled to the bank of communicator-buttons. What had been the floor was now a side wall. He climbed it and thumbed the navigation-room switch.
"Radar room reporting," he said curtly. "Power out, gravity off, no reports from outside from power failure. No great physical damage."
"We'll try battery power to the vision plates," Baird told Diane. "No full resolution, but better than nothing--"
They worked together, feverishly. They were dizzy. Something close to nausea came upon them from pure giddiness. What had been the floor was now a wall, and they had to climb to reach the instruments that had been on a wall and now were on the ceiling. But their weight was ounces only. Baird said abruptly:
"I know what's the matter! We're spinning! The whole ship's spinning! That's why we're giddy and why we have even a trace of weight. Centrifugal force! Ready for the current?"
There was a tiny click, and the battery light dimmed. But a vision screen lighted faintly. The stars it showed were moving specks of light. The sun passed deliberately across the screen. Baird switched to other outside scanners. There was power for only one screen at a time. But he saw the starkly impossible. He pressed the navigation-room button.
"Radar room reporting," he said urgently. "The Plumie ship is fast to us, in contact with our hull! Both ships are spinning together!" He was trying yet other scanners as he spoke, and now he said: "Got it! There are no lines connecting us to the Plumie, but it looks ... yes! That flash when the ships came together was a flash-over of high potential. We're welded to them along twenty feet of our hull!"
The skipper:
"Not yet, sir--"
Taine burst in, his voice high-pitched and thick with hatred:
His voice ceased. And Baird had again the frustrating duty of remaining still and keeping his head while other men engaged in physical activity. He helped Diane to a chair--which was fastened to the floor-which-was-now-a-wall--and she wedged herself fast and began a review of what each of the outside scanners reported. Baird called for more batteries. Power for the radar and visions was more important than anything else, just then. If there were more Plumie ships ...
Electricians half-floated, half-dragged extra batteries to the radar room. Baird hooked them in. The universe outside the ship again appeared filled with brilliantly colored dots of light which were stars. More satisfying, the globe-scanners again reported no new objects anywhere. Nothing new within a quarter million miles. A half-million. Later Baird reported:
Diane beckoned for Baird's attention to a screen, which Baird had examined before. Now he stiffened and motioned for her to report.
"We've a scanner, sir," said Diane, "which faces what looks like a port in the Plumie ship. There's a figure at the port. I can't make out details, but it is making motions, facing us."
Baird got other images of the Plumie ship into sharp focus. So near, the scanners required adjustment for precision.
"Take a look at this!" he said wryly.
For a good twenty feet the two ships were united by the most perfect of vacuum-welds. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed a space-catamaran, with a sort of valley between their bulks. Spinning deliberately, as the united ships did, sometimes the sun shone brightly into that valley, and sometimes it was filled with the blackness of the pit.
The skipper said curtly:
Baird laid his hand on Diane's shoulder. She smiled at him.
"I'll watch!" she promised.
He reached the air lock just as the skipper arrived. There were others there--armed and in pressure suits. The skipper glared about him.
"I am in command here," he said very grimly indeed. "Mr. Taine has a special function, but I am in command! We and the creatures on the Plumie ship are in a very serious fix. One of them apparently means to come on board. There will be no hostility, no sneering, no threatening gestures! This is a parley! You will be careful. But you will not be trigger-happy!"
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page