Spacehounds Of IPC by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Author:E.E. "Doc" Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780515033007
Publisher: Pyramid Books
Published: 2007-06-22T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8 Callisto to the Rescue

All humanity of Callisto, the fourth major satellite of Jupiter, had for many years been waging a desperate and apparently hopeless defense against invading hordes of six- limbed beings. Every city and town had long since been reduced to level fields of lava by the rays of the invaders. Every building and every trace of human civilization had long since disappeared from the surface of the satellite. Far below the surface lay the city of Zbardk, the largest of the few remaining strongholds of the human race. At one portal of the city a torpedo-shaped, stubby-winged rocket plane rested in the carriage of a catapult. Near it the captain addressed briefly the six men normally composing his crew.

“Men, you already know that our cruise today is not an ordinary patrol. We are to go to One, there to destroy a base of the hexans. We have perhaps one chance in ten thousand of returning. Therefore I am taking only one man—barely enough to operate the plane. Volunteers step one pace forward.”

The six stepped forward as one man, and a smile came over the worn face of their leader as he watched them draw lots for the privilege of accompanying him to probable death. The two men entered the body of the torpedo, sealed the openings, and waited.

“Free exits?” snapped the Captain of the Portal, and twelve keen-eyed observers minutely studied screens and instrument panels connected to the powerful automatic lookout stations beneath the rims of the widely separated volcanic craters from which their craft could issue into Callisto’s somber night.

“No hexan radiation can be detected from Exit Eight,” came the report. The Captain of the Portal raised an arm in warning, threw in the guides, and the two passengers were hurled violently backward, deep into their cushioned seats, as the catapult shot their plane down the runway. As the catapult’s force was spent automatic trips upon the undercarriage actuated the propelling rockets and mile after mile, with rapidly mounting velocity, the plane sped through the tube. As the exit was approached the tunnel described a long vertical curve, so that when the opening into the shaft of the crater was reached and the undercarriage was automatically detached the vessel was projected almost vertically upward. Such was its velocity and so powerful was the liquid propellant of its rocket motors that the eye could not follow the flight of the warship as it tore through the thin layer of the atmosphere and hurled itself out into the depths of space.

“Did we get away?” asked the captain, hands upon his controls and eyes upon his moving chart of space.

“I believe so, sir,” answered the other officer, at the screens of the six periscopic devices which covered the full sphere of vision. “No reports from the rim, and all screens blank.”

“Good!” Once more a vessel had issued from the jealously secret city of Zbardk without betraying its existence to the hated and feared hexans.

For a time the terrific

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