The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith
and stabbed; defensive screens glowed redly or flashed suddenly into intensely brilliant, coruscating incandescence. Crimson opacity struggled sullenly against violet curtain of annihilation. Material projectiles and torpedoes were launched under full beam control; only to be exploded harmlessly in mid-space, to be blasted into nothingness, or to disappear innocuously against impenetrable polycyclic screens. Even Cleveland's drill was ineffective. Both vessels were equipped completely with iron-driven mechanisms; both were manned by scientists capable of wringing the highest possible measure of power from their installations. Neither could harm the other.
The Boise flashed away; reached Nevia in minutes. Down into the crimson atmosphere she dropped, down toward the city which Costigan knew was Nerado's home port.
"Hold up a bit!" Costigan cautioned, sharply. "There's something down there that I don't like!"
As he spoke there shot upward from the city a multitude of flashing balls. The Nevians had mastered the secret of the explosive of the fishes of the greater deeps, and were launching it in a veritable storm against the Tellurian visitor.
"Those?" asked Rodebush, calmly. The detonating balls of destruction were literally annihilating even the atmosphere beyond the polycyclic screen, but that barrier was scarcely affected.
"No. That." Costigan pointed out a hemispherical dome which, redly translucent, surrounded a group of buildings towering high above their neighbors. "Neither those high towers nor those screens were there the last time I was in this town. Nerado was stalling for time, and that's what they're doing down there—that's all those fire-balls are for. Good sign, too—they aren't ready for us yet. We'd better take 'em while the taking's good. If they were ready for us, our play would be to get out of here while we're all in one piece."
Nerado had been in touch with the scientists of his city; he had been instructing them in the construction of converters and generators of such weight and power that they could crush even the defenses of the super-ship. The mechanisms were not, however, ready; the entirely unsuspected possibilities of speed inherent in absolute inertialessness had not entered into Nerado's calculations.
"Better drop a few cans down onto that dome, fellows," Rodebush suggested to his gunners.
"We can't," came Adlington's instant reply. "No use trying it—that's a polycyclic screen. Can you drill it? If you can, I've got a real bomb here—that special we built—that will do the trick if you can protect it from them until it gets down into the water."
"I'll try it," Cleveland answered, at a nod from the physicist. "I couldn't drill Nerado's polycyclics, but I couldn't use any momentum on him. Couldn't ram him—he fell back with my thrust. But that screen down there can't back away from us, so maybe I can work on it. Get your special ready. Hang on, everybody!"
The Boise looped upward, and from an altitude of miles dove straight down through a storm of force-balls, beams, and shells; a dive checked abruptly as the hollow tube of energy which was Cleveland's drill snarled savagely down ahead of her and struck the shielding hemisphere with a grinding, lightning-spitting shock. As it struck, backed by all the enormous momentum of the plunging space-ship and driven by the full power of her prodigious generators it bored in, clawing and gouging viciously through the tissues of that rigid and unyielding barrier of pure energy. Then, mighty drill and plunging mass against iron-driven wall, eye-tearing and furiously spectacular warfare was waged.
Well it was for Triplanetary that day that its super-ship carried ample supplies of allotropic iron; well it was that her originally Gargantuan converters and generators had been doubled and quadrupled in power on the long Nevian way! For that ocean-girdled fortress was powered to withstand any conceivable assault—but the Boise's power and momentum were now inconceivable; and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly ravening cylinder of energy incredible!
Through the Nevian shield that cylinder gnawed its frightful way, and down its protecting length there drove Adlington's "Special" bomb. "Special" it was indeed; so great of girth that it could barely pass through the central orifice of Ten's mighty projector, so heavily charged with sensitized atomic iron that its detonation upon any planet would not have been considered for an instant if that planet's integrity meant anything to its attackers. Down the shielding pipe of force the "Special" screamed under full propulsion, and beneath the surface of Nevia's ocean it plunged.
"Cut!" yelled Adlington, and as the scintillating drill expired the bomber pressed his detonating switch.
For moments the effect of the explosion seemed unimportant. A dull, low rumble was all that was to be heard of a concussion that jarred red Nevia to her very center; and all that could be seen was a slow heaving of the water. But that heaving did not cease. Slowly, so slowly it seemed to the observers now high in the heavens, the waters rose up and parted; revealing a vast chasm blown deep into the ocean's rocky bed. Higher and higher the lazy mountains of water reared; effortlessly to pick up, to smash, to grind into fragments, and finally to toss aside every building, every structure, every scrap of material substance pertaining to the whole Nevian city.
Flattened out, driven backward for miles, the buffeted waters were pressed, leaving exposed bare ground and broken rock where once had been the ocean's busy floor. Tremendous blasts of incandescent gas raved upward, jarring even the enormous mass of the super-ship poised so high above the site of the explosion. Then the displaced millions of tons of water rushed to make even more complete the already total destruction of the city. The raging torrents poured into that yawning cavern, filled it, and piled mountainously above it; receding and piling up, again and again; causing tidal waves which swept a full half of Nevia's mighty, watery globe. That city was silenced—forever.
"MY ... GOD!" Cleveland was the first to break the awed, the stunned, silence. He licked his lips. "But we had it to do ... and at that, it's not as bad as what they did to Pittsburgh—they would have evacuated all except military personnel."
"Of course ... what next?" asked Rodebush. "Look around, I suppose, to see if they have any more...."
"Oh, no, Conway—no! Don't let them!" Clio was sobbing openly. "I'm going to my room and crawl under the bed—I'll see that sight all the rest of my life!"
"Steady, Clio." Costigan's arm tightened around her. "We'll have to look, but we won't find any more. One—if they could have finished it—would have been enough."
Again and again the Boise circled the world. No more super-powered installations were being built. And, surprisingly enough, the Nevians made no demonstration of hostility.
"I wonder why?" Rodebush mused. "Of course, we aren't attacking them, either, but you'd think ... do you suppose that they are waiting for Nerado?"
"Probably." Costigan paused in thought. "We'd better wait for him, too. We can't leave things this way."
"But if we can't force engagement ... a stalemate...." Cleveland's voice was troubled.
"We'll do something!" Costigan declared. "This thing has got to be settled, some way or other, before we leave here. First, try talking. I've got an idea that ... anyway, it can't do any harm, and I know that he can hear and understand you."
Nerado arrived. Instead of attacking, his ship hung quietly poised, a mile or two away from the equally undemonstrative Boise. Rodebush directed a beam.
"Captain Nerado, I am Rodebush of Triplanetary. What do you wish to do about this situation?"
"I wish to talk to you." The Nevian's voice came clearly from the speaker. "You are, I now perceive, a much higher form of life than any of us had thought possible; a form perhaps as high in evolution as our own. It is a pity that we did not take the time for a full meeting of minds when we first neared your planet, so that much life, both Tellurian and Nevian, might have been spared. But what is past cannot be recalled. As reasoning beings, however, you will see the futility of continuing a combat in which neither is capable of winning victory over the other. You may, of course, destroy more of our Nevian cities, in which case I should be compelled to go and destroy similarly upon your Earth; but, to reasoning minds, such a course would be sheerest