Triplanetary by E. E. Smith (good novels to read TXT) 📕

Every available guard had been thrown into that room, regardless of customary occupation or of equipment. Most of them had been ordinary watchmen, not even wearing masks, and all such were already down. Many, however, were masked, and a few were dressed in full armor. But no portable armor could mount defenses of sufficient power to withstand the awful force of the speedster’s weapons, and one flashing swing of a projector swept the hall almost clear of life.

“Can’t shoot very close to Bradley with this big beam, but I’ll mop up on the rest of them by hand. Stay here and cover me, Clio!” Costigan ordered, and went to open the port.

“I can’t⁠—I won’t!” Clio replied instantly. “I don’t know the controls well enough. I’d kill you or Captain Bradley, sure; but I can shoot, and I’m going to!” and she leaped out, close upon his heels.

Thus, flaming Lewiston in one hand and barking automatic in the other, the two mailed figures advanced toward Bradley, now doubly helpless; paralyzed by his enemies and gassed by his friends. For a time the Nevians melted away before them, but as they approached more nearly the couch upon which the captain was they encountered six figures encased in armor fully as capable as their own. The beams of the Lewistons rebounded from that armor in futile pyrotechnics, the bullets of the automatics spattered and exploded impotently against it. And behind that single line of armored guards were massed perhaps twenty unarmored, but masked, soldiers; and scuttling up the ramps leading into the hall were coming the platoons of heavily armored figures which Costigan had previously seen.

Decision instantly made, Costigan ran back toward the speedster, but he was not deserting his companions.

“Keep the good work up!” he instructed the girl as he ran. “I’ll pick those jaspers off with a pencil and then stand off the bunch that’s coming while you rub out the rest of that crew there and drag Bradley back here.”

Back at the control panel, he trained a narrow, but intensely dense beam⁠—quasi-solid lightning⁠—and one by one the six armored figures fell. Then, knowing that Clio could handle the remaining opposition, he devoted his attention to the reinforcements so rapidly approaching from the sides. Again and again the heavy beam lashed out, now upon this side, now upon that, and in its flaming path Nevians disappeared. And not only Nevians⁠—in the incredible energy of that beam’s blast floor, walls, ramps, and every material thing vanished in clouds of thick and brilliant vapor. The room temporarily clear of foes, he sprang again to Clio’s assistance, but her task was nearly done. She had “rubbed out” all opposition and, tugging lustily at Bradley’s feet, had already dragged him almost to the side of the speedster.

“At-a-girl, Clio!” cheered Costigan, as he picked up the burly captain and tossed him through the doorway. “Highly useful, girl of my dreams, as well as ornamental. In with you, and we’ll go places!”

But getting the speedster out of the now completely ruined hall proved to be much more of a task than driving it in had been, for scarcely had Costigan closed his locks than a section of the building collapsed behind them, cutting off their retreat. Nevian submarines and airships were beginning to arrive upon the scene, and were beaming the building viciously in an attempt to entrap or to crush the foreigners in its ruins. Costigan managed finally to blast his way out, but the Nevians had had time to assemble in force and he was met by a concentrated storm of beams and of metal from every inimical weapon within range.

But not for nothing had Conway Costigan selected for his dash for liberty the craft which, save only for the two immense interstellar cruisers, was the most powerful vessel ever built upon red Nevia. And not for nothing had he studied minutely and to the last, least detail every item of its controls and of its armament during wearily long days and nights of solitary imprisonment. He had studied it under test, in action, and at rest; studied it until he knew thoroughly its every possibility⁠—and what a ship it was! The atomic-powered generators of his shielding screens handled with ease the terrific load of the Nevians’ assault, his polycyclic screens were proof against any material projectile, and the machines supplying his offensive weapons with power were more than equal to their tasks. Driven now at full rating those frightful beams lashed out against the Nevians blocking the way, and under their impacts her screens flared brilliantly through the spectrum and went down. And in the instant of their failure the enemy vessel was literally blown into nothingness⁠—no unprotected metal, however resistant, could exist for a moment in the pathway of those iron-driven tornadoes of pure energy.

Ship after ship of the Nevians plunged toward the speedster in desperately suicidal attempts to ram her down, but each met the same flaming fate before it could reach its target. Then from the grouped submarines far below there reached up red rods of force, which seized the spaceship and began relentlessly to draw her down.

“What are they doing that for, Conway? They can’t fight us!”

“They don’t want to fight us. They want to hold us, but I know what to do about that, too,” and the powerful tractor rods snapped as a plane of pure force knifed through them. Upward now at the highest permissible velocity the speedster leaped, and past the few ships remaining above her she dodged; nothing now between her and the freedom of boundless space.

“You did it, Conway; you did it!” Clio exulted. “Oh, Conway, you’re just simply wonderful!”

“I haven’t done it yet,” Costigan cautioned her. “The worst is yet to come. Nerado. He’s why they wanted to hold us back, and why I was in such a hurry to get away. That boat of his is bad medicine, girl, and we want to put plenty of kilometers behind us before he gets started.”

“But