Murray Leinster by The Last Spaceship

Author:The Last Spaceship [Spaceship, The Last]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-09-04T20:36:33+00:00

Ready for Action

Indignantly the mayor of steadheim bellowed from the space-phone speaker and Kim answered him patiently.

"The decoy still had a Disciplinary-Circuit field on," he explained for the tenth time. "You know about it! When you tried to go galumphing in, the field grabbed you and paralyzed you. When your muscles went iron hard, the relay on your wrist—you wear it to protect you from the fighter-beams—threw your ship into transmitter-speed travel.

"So you were somewhere else. When you came back you charged in again and the same thing happened. The relay protected you against our field as well as the enemy fighter-beams. That's all."

The mayor wheezed and sputtered furiously. It was plain that he had meant to distinguish himself and his four sons by magnificent bravery.

"There's something that needs to be done," said Kim. "Those two ships are smashed but they hadn't time to melt. There'll be hafnium in the wreckage, anyhow—and metal is scarce on Ades. See what you can salvage and get it to Ades. It's important war work. Ask for other ships to volunteer to help you."

The Mayor of Steadheim roared indignantly—and then consented like a lamb. In the space-navy of Ades there would not yet be anything like iron discipline. Kim led his forces as a feudal baron might have led a motley assemblage of knights and men-at-arms in ancient days. He led by virtue of prestige and experience. He could not command.

The fleet grew minute by minute as lost ships came in. And Kim worked out a new plan of battle to me.et the fact that he could not hope to appear over Sinab with gigantic generators able to pour out Disciplinary-Circuit beams over the whole planet.

He explained the plan painstakingly to his followers and presently set a course for, Sinab. A surprising number of ships volunteered to go to ground on Khiv Five with the Mayor of Steadheim to save what could be retrieved of the shattered two warships.

No more than thirty little craft of Ades pointed their noses toward Sinab. They went speeding toward it in a close-knit group, matching courses to almost microscopic accuracy and keeping their speed identical to a hair in hopes of arriving nearly in one group.

"So we'll try it again," said Kim into the space-phone. "Here we go!"

He pressed the transmitter-drive button and all the universe danced a momentary saraband—and far off to the left the giant sun Sinab glowed fiercely.

Five of the little ships from Ades were within detector-range. But there were four monstrous moving masses which by their motion and velocity were space-ships rising from the planet and setting out upon some errand of the murder-empire. The same thought must have come instantly to those upon each of the little ships. They charged.

There had been no war in space for five thousand years. The last space-battle was that of Canis Major, when forty thousand warships plunged toward each other with their fighting-beams stabbing out savagely, aimed and controlled by every device that human ingenuity could contrive.

That

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