The 39th Golden Age of Science Fiction by John W. Campbell Jr

Author:John W. Campbell Jr [Campbell, John W. Jr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction;adventure;pulp;sci-fi;space opera
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Two hours passed, and at last Aarn had what he wanted. In half an hour he had designed a mechanism to do the work. In an hour more Canning had turned it into three different types of patterns.

Scout ships came in from the fleet some three hours later to pick up newly made apparatus. The things were crude—simple.

The messages that had come to Magya had been equaled in number by the messages going out. And some of those had gone from the great headquarters on Magya. The result had been a steady retreat, the sacrifice of two old-type destroyers, with radio control operated over mile-long cables. Tefflan seemed to be winning. Six great battleships had fallen back and were evidently undergoing repair, the supply ships clustering near them.

Tefflan ships advanced. But presently, about the time the scout ships began racing out to the fleet with the new apparatus, they became worried and started retreating rapidly themselves.

Magya followed just as rapidly, at a distance. Tefflan ships retreated more rapidly, and some of the cruisers which had retired came up and battled bravely. But uselessly, for they were drowned in great transpon beams, as one huge battleship after another leaped close and retired before seriously weakened.

The battleships of Tefflan were in frank retreat, but the Magyans held on like leeches, attacking vigorously, and the Tefflans realized in dismay that their opponents would not leave them. In haste, the Teffians raced for the protection of the great defenses on the planet, the one moon of Teff-el, and the ten orbital forts they had set up.

And one by one the great Magyan battleships started their new apparatus as it was installed. Crude—not very effective—but the momentum-wave field was distorted and twisted, till it gripped the Tefflan ships. Like a gigantic hand, it clutched them and slowed them. The six battleships that had fallen behind came up now, nearer than before, then held back also.

Frantically the Tefflan commanders turned their waning power into the drive, while cruisers attacked desperately to free the greater ships. Grimly the Magyan battle fleet held on and rained terrific magnetic field bombs on the cruisers, that warped and twisted and fused their frames and their armor, and the Shal torpedoes ate their way in.

There were no more thermite bombs, but the gravity bombs and magnetic bombs were being supplied now largely from the six ships which had retired to the supply ships and had all their power coils recharged. The gravitational balls were wasting their energy in a compartment they had blasted to gas and molten waste.

The accumulators which had been centered here were gone, along with the engines. The Tefflan captains saw their power declining—the last dregs of energy slipping away.

Huge fatigue rays drove at the now-close Magyan ships, and the armor and frames began to crumble slowly—slowly. The ships fell back abruptly. Those ships were deserted, too weak now, and radio-controlled. Their momentum drives pulled back, and the Tefflan ships pulled on. Their beams were wasted once more in disintegrating the huge masses of those four old hulks.

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