Wandl the Invader by Ray Cummings (ereader ebook txt) 📕

it was not fifty miles away, hardly ten. Grantline flung his remaining bolts. The enemy was a streaked blur going by; and all in that second it was past, reddening in the distance. Untouched by our bolts? It seemed so. The bow radiance darted ahead of it. The globular shape, unharmed, dwindled in the distance behind us.

And it had done nothing to us!

The control levers were in my hands. I would shift the gravity-plates, and make the quickest turn we could. We would go around the Moon, probably, and come back within an hour or two. Perhaps our adversary would also turn to encounter us again.

At that second I had not seen the little discs, but I saw them now! They came sailing in a line, ten foot, flat, circular discs of a dark metal; they gleamed reddish where the sunlight painted them. They had been fastened outside the enemy vessel and in our passing they had been discharged. They sailed now like whirling plates. There seemed perhaps twenty of them, heading in a curve toward us.[55]

Grantline's voice came again from the deck audiphone. "Missed them, Gregg. That's what I thought but at least two of our bolts must have struck. But it didn't hurt them."

"No," I replied. "It seemed not. They must have a defensive barrage."

Drac was pulling at me. "Those things out there, those discs...."

Grantline demanded, "Yes, what in hell are they?"

We could not tell. It seemed that their curve would take them behind our stern. Grantline added: "Will you try going back after that ship?"

"Yes."

But I did not. To the naked eye the enemy ship had already disappeared; but with the 'scopes we saw that it seemed to be turning.

I did not attempt to turn us, for we were afraid of those oncoming discs which took all our attention. They passed within five miles astern of us, but in a great curve they swung and now seemed heading across our bow. With what tremendous velocity they had been endowed by their firing mechanisms! Their elliptical curve swung them a mile or so ahead of us.

They were circling us like tiny satellites in a narrowing spiral ellipse. Our attraction, the normal gravity of our close bulk, was drawing them to us.

The men on the Cometara's deck stood gazing, surprised but not yet alarmed. The lookout calls sounded with routine notification each time the discs passed across our bow and stern. In the helio cubby, Waters was still trying to raise an Earth station.

Grantline came running to the control turret. "If those cursed things, should strike us, Gregg!"

I had set the gravity-plates into new combinations, turning our course downward, trying to swing us under the plane of the discs' orbit. But they swung downward with us; they were no more than two thousand feet away now.

Grantline said, "At the next broadside passing I'll fire at them."

Drac looked up from his calculating instruments. "Look! A circular rotation: Horribly swift. But I've caught a picture. Look!"[56]

He had a still image of one of the discs. It had saw-teeth at its thin knife-like outer circumference. Whirling at tremendous speed, these saw-toothed metal discs might cut into our dome, or some other part of our ship.

At the next round, Grantline fired. The discs reddened a little, but came on unharmed. From the other side, he fired again. Three of the discs seemed to have been caught full. His bolts, sustained for their fullest ten seconds of duration at this close, thousand-foot range, took effect. The three discs seemed to crumble with a puff of queerly-radiant vacuum spark-glows, then were gone.

But the others came closing in.

The Cometara rang now with the excitement and alarm of the men. Grantline could not set his gauges fast enough to fire at every round.

I had a sudden thought. With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did not. Their course was unaltered.

Again Grantline was shouting at me, "Roll us back! I must fire!"

It had been an error, that rolling; Grantline lost several shots because of it. I swung us level. The discs passed within a hundred feet; half a dozen of them were still closer. Gleaming, whirling circles, thin as knife-blades; they passed close under our stern, came broadside.

These were tense, horrible seconds. The discs skimmed our bow; one seemed to miss our dome by inches. Grantline's volley annihilated four more, but there were still eight of them. They swung in at our stern.

I was aware of confusion throughout the Cometara. The crew and stewards were running up to the bow quarter-deck. My second officer stood there, stricken. The stern lookout screamed his futile warning.

Useless! I saw one of the discs strike our stern dome, then another. Still others. They were silent blows, but it seemed that I could feel them cutting into the dome-plates.

The dome was cracking! Then, after that horrible instant, came the sound: crunch, a rumble; the grind of crushed and[57] breaking metal; then the puff and surge of the outward explosion.

I saw the whole tip of the stern dome cracking, bursting outward, forced by our interior air pressure. And over all the Cometara the outgoing air was sucking and whining with a growing rush of wind.

I shouted, "Drac! Close the stern bulkhead!"

I set the word-buttons for the distress siren, and pulled the lever. Its voice screamed over the uproar. "Keep forward! Take the space-suits! Prepare to abandon ship!"

7

In the midst of the chaos I was aware that all the remaining discs struck us upon the port stern quarter. The broken dome of the stern showed a jagged hole, but the up-sliding cross-bulkhead partially shut it off. Two or three of the crew and the stern lookout were gone behind that closing bulkhead. Their bodies in a moment would be blown into space.

"It may hold, Drac. Order Waters out of his cubby. Forward!"

I was calling the engine-room. "Order your men up by the bow, not the stern." But I got no answer from the engine-chief.

I raised Grantline. "Order your men forward: Clear amidships! I want to close the central bulkheads. If the stern one breaks with the pressure...."

"Right, Gregg. Are we lost?"

"God knows! We'll know in a minute or two. Get all your men into their space-suits. Keep in the bow. Prepare the exit-port there."

"Right, Gregg. You coming down?"

"Yes. When I finish." I cut him off. "Drac, get out of here! Did you order Waters forward?"

"He won't leave."

"Why the hell not?"[58]

"He thinks he may be able to get communication with Earth."

"He can't stay where he is; there's no protection up here! When that stern bulkhead goes...."

It was breaking. I could see it bending sternward under the pressure. And at best it was leaking air, so that the decks were a rush of wind. Already Drac and I were gasping with the lowered pressure.

"Drac, get out of here. Go get Waters; bring him forward. The hell with his transmitter: this is life or death!"

"But you?"

"I'm coming down. From the forward deck, call the hull control rooms. Order everybody forward and to the deck."

"What about the pressure pumps?"

"I can keep them going from here."

I set the circulating system to guide the fresh air forward, but it was futile against the sucking rush of wind toward the stern. As the pumps speeded up I saw, with the little added pressure, the great cross panel of the stern bulkhead straining harder. It would go in a moment.

Drac was clinging to me. "Tell me what to do!"

"I've told you what to do!" I shoved him to the catwalk. "Get out of here. Get Waters forward. Get the men out of the hull."

His anguished eyes stared at me; then he turned and ran forward on the catwalk. I saw him forcibly dragging the bald-headed Waters from the helio cubby. It was the last time I ever saw either of them.

A buzzer was ringing in the turret, and I plunged back for it. The exertion put a band of pain across my chest, a panting constriction from the lowering pressure.

Fanning, assistant engineer, was still at the pressure pumps. His voice came up: "Pumps and renewers working. Will you use the gravity shifters?"

"Hell, no! Get out of there, Fanning. We're smashed. Air going. It's a matter of minutes—abandoning ship. Get forward!"

Suddenly the stern bulkhead cracked with a great diagonal rift. I waited a moment to give them all time to get forward; then I slid all the cross 'midship bulkheads.

It was barely in time. The stern bulkhead went out with a[59] gale of wind, but the barrier amidships stemmed it. Half of the vessel sternward was devoid of air, but here in the bow we could last a little longer. Beneath me I could see Grantline's men—some of them, not all—and a few of the stewards, crew and officers, crowding the deck, donning space-suits. The two side chambers were ready; half a dozen men crowded into each of them. The deck doors slid closed. The outer ports opened; helmeted, goggled, bloated figures were blown by the outgoing air from the chamber into space. Then the outer slides went closed. The pumps filled up the chambers; the deck doors opened again. Another batch of men....

I saw Grantline, suited but with his helmet off, dashing from one side of the deck to the other, commanding the abandonment.

The central bulkheads seemed momentarily holding. Then little red lights in the panel board before me showed where in the hull corridors the doors were leaking, cracking, giving away, breaking under the strain. The whole ribbed framework of the vessel was strained and slued. The bulkhead sides no longer set true in the casements. Air was whining everywhere and pulling sternward.

It was the last stand; I was aware that the alarm siren had ceased. There was a sudden stillness, with only the shouts of the remaining men at the exit-ports mingling with the whine of the wind and the roaring in my head. I felt detached, far-away; my senses were reeling.

I staggered to the gauges of the Erentz system, the system whereby an oscillating current, circling within the double-shelled walls of hull and dome, absorbed into negative energy much of the interior pressure. The main walls of the vessel were straining outward. The Cometara could collapse at any moment. I started for the catwalk door. The electro-telescope stood near it and I yielded to a vague desire to gaze into the eyepiece. The instrument was still operative. I swept it sternward.

The enemy ship had not vanished. By what strange means, I cannot say, its velocity had been checked. A few thousand miles from us, it was making a narrow, close-angle turn. Coming back? I thought so.

I suddenly realized my intention of having all the gravity-plates in neutral before abandoning the ship. I seized the con[60]trols now. An agony of fear was upon me that the shifting valves would fail. But they did not. The plates slid haltingly, reluctantly.

I recall staggering to the catwalk. It seemed that the central bulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneath me. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself in the stays of the ladder rail and was hanging there.

I think I fell the last ten feet to the deck. The roaring in my ears, the bands tightening about my chest encompassed all the world.

Then I was on my feet again, and I stumbled over another body. It was garbed in a space-suit, with the helmet beside it. I stripped it of the suit. I was panting, with all the world whirling in a daze, bursting spots of light before my eyes.

Ten feet away down the deck was the opened door of the pressure chamber. A bloated figure came into my dreamlike vista, moving for the pressure door. It turned, saw me, came leaping and bent over me. I saw behind the vizor that it was Grantline. His bloated, gloved hands helped me don my suit.

He helped me with my helmet. The metal tip on Grantline's gloved hand touched the contact-plate on my shoulder. His voice sounded from the tiny audiphone grid within my helmet. "Gregg! Thank God I found you! All right?"

"Yes." My head was clearing.

"I've got the chamber ready. We're the last, Gregg."

I gripped his shoulder. "You're sure there's nobody else?"

"No. I've been everywhere I could reach. The central bulkheads are almost gone."

He pushed me into the pressure chamber. There was hardly need to close the door after us. I stood gripping him as he opened the small outer slides. The abyss was at our feet; the outgoing wind tore at