Wandl the Invader Part 30

I tried to break loose, but four huge Martians were holding me.

"Oh, Gregg!"

There was horror in Anita's voice. Snap had broken away. At the open deck-port he stood, as though undecided what to do. The deck was almost black around him; he was silhouetted against the outside starlight. From almost at his side, in the darkness, a tiny bolt spat upward at his head. His arms went wildly out; he tumbled backward. At the top of the boarding incline his body seemed spasmodically to kick, and the thrust whirled it down into the darkness.

The end of Snap! A pang went through me. Snap, my best friend!

Molo cursed the unknown man of his crew who had fired the shot. But none would admit who did it.

"Get to your posts," Molo roared in Martian. "Enough of you are here.

Lash up the prisoners; we're launching away now." He thumped his brawny sister as she pa.s.sed him. "Well played, Meka!"

These wily Martians! Molo had planned that Meka was to gather the crew and wait here at the s.h.i.+p for him and Wyk. If they returned with us as captives, it would be here that they would come. But if by chance things went adversely, Molo reasoned we would act just as we did; and Meka and her men were lurking here in ambush, waiting for us.

All the many various ports swung shut. Anita, Venza, and I, with arms and legs bound, were taken by Molo to the forward observation and control room.

The s.h.i.+p was resounding with signals. The interior controls in the hull-base raised the gravity-pull within the vessel to a strength comparable to that of Earth. Within a few minutes the _Star-Streak_ lifted from the stage. Strange, weird Wandl fell away from us. We slid upward through the atmosphere, following one of the globular Wandl vessels, and headed into s.p.a.ce toward the point where, a few million miles distant, the s.h.i.+ps of allied Earth, Venus, and Mars were gathering.

17

"They are visible." Molo turned from the eyepiece of his electro-telescope. "Do you want to see them, Gregg Haljan?"

We were in the forward control and observation turret of the _Star-Streak_, Molo and his sister Meka, Venza, Anita and myself.

Un.o.btrusively squatting on the floor was a small, gray, rat-faced fellow, put there, weapon in hand, to watch us. He was a ruffian from the underworld of Grebhar, a member of the _Star-Streak's_ pirate crew.

We were some ten hours out from Wandl. A group of four of the globular Wandl s.h.i.+ps were with us, strung in a line some ten thousand miles to our left. We had been heading diagonally toward Mars. Some fifteen other Wandl vessels were ahead and others following.

We were no more than fifteen million miles from Mars when Molo sighted the allied s.h.i.+ps. "Will you observe them, Gregg Haljan?"

I moved to take his place at the 'scope-grid, with the gaze of Anita and Venza upon me. They sat huddled together on a low bench against the back curve of the circular turret.

It was dim here, with little spots of instrument lights, and the radiance coming in the gla.s.site plates of the encircling dome. The loss of Snap had put a grim look upon the girls. They were dispirited, docile with Meka. They had hardly had a word with me. I think that all of us had about given up hope during those hours. Molo had consulted me several times with his policies of navigation.

But I saw no chance to trick him. He was indeed, far more experienced than I, and more skillful, in celestial mechanics. I worked with him.

I learned the operation and the handling of the _Star-Streak_, which was not greatly different from the _Cometara_ or the _Planetara_.

Poor Snap! He and I had planned to capture and navigate this _Star-Streak_. We could have handled her. There were, I gathered, some fifteen men aboard her now, but no more than two or three were engaged at the navigating mechanisms. Even they could be dispensed with at times, for the s.h.i.+p's controls were all automatic, handled directly from the forward turret.

I learned too, something, though not much, of the _Star-Streak's_ weapons. They were similar to those of the allied s.h.i.+ps, since Molo in equipping his pirate craft had seized upon all the best he could find of the three worlds.

The _Star-Streak_, during this flight toward Mars, was in close communication with the Wandl craft. There was a giant vessel, the Wor, off to our left now. It carried the brain master in command of the Wandl forces. Molo took his orders from the Wor, but since his equipment and his weapons were so wholly different, the _Star-Streak_ was set apart.

"I can do what I like," Molo told me. "With my own judgement I can act; you shall see."

"You've had plenty of experience, Molo."

"Have I not! The terror of the starways, your world called me." He chuckled vaingloriously. "I must justify it now."

"Act, do not talk," Meka commented sourly. "Children with toys make speeches like that, and then the toys get broken."

"Fear not, sister. Never again will the _Star-Streak_ come to grief."

And now I gazed through the 'scope at the waiting allied s.h.i.+ps. They were lying some eight million miles off Mars. I gazed and saw the poised little group. There were perhaps fifty of them. The majority were Martian, long, low and very sharp-ended, and dull red in color.

The wider Earth and Venus s.h.i.+ps were silvery and drab. I could distinguish the several different types of craft in this hastily a.s.sembled fleet: many converted commercials like my ill-starred _Cometara_; a few rakish police s.h.i.+ps; and about a dozen of the long, narrow supermodern wars.h.i.+ps. It was their first voyage into battle.

They had only been built these past few years, by peaceful governments that protested there never again would be another war!

The little fleet was lying waiting for us. It was being augmented by occasional other s.h.i.+ps from Mars. They saw us coming now. The radiance of a Benson curve-light enveloped them, with a shaft toward us. The image of them s.h.i.+fted over a million miles to one side.

Molo laughed when he saw it. "Protecting themselves already! But we are not going to attack them there."

The first tactics of the Wandl commanders surprised me. We swung away from the course to Mars and headed diagonally toward Earth and Venus.

Earth was the nearer to us, with Venus some forty million miles beyond her. For hours we turned in that sweeping curve. Then with our Wandl convoy following, we headed for Earth. I could not help admiring the way the _Star-Streak_ was handled. She turned more sharply than the Wandl craft; and before our next meal, we were leading them all.

Would the allied s.h.i.+ps follow us? It was immediately apparent they were coming; but from their poised position, hours of attaining velocity would be needed. The other allied vessels approaching from Venus and Earth checked their flight and turned after us. We pa.s.sed within five or six hundred thousand miles of several of them.

I found now that some twenty other Wandl s.h.i.+ps, leaving Wandl after us, had headed directly for Earth. We were all together presently, the _Star-Streak_ and nearly fifty Wandl s.h.i.+ps, gathered close to one side of the Moon. The allies, about a hundred of them, were strung through s.p.a.ce, scattered, with varying velocities and flight direction, but most of them endeavoring to get between the Moon and Earth.

This was the day! I call it that: a routine of meals which Meka grimly served us in the turret, and a little sleep when she took the girls below and I lay on the turret floor. I wondered who was in command of this allied force, and did not learn until afterward that it was Grantline. The _Cometara_ had fallen upon the Moon Apennines, not very far from where my old _Planetara_ still lay, near the base of Archimedes. But Grantline and a few of his companions, with their powered suits, had struggled free from the gravity pull of the wreckage; and a few hours later, a s.h.i.+p out from Earth picked them up.

Grantline, on one of the Earth police s.h.i.+ps, commanded the fleet now, and he afterward told me in detail how he endeavored to conduct his forces in the battle, thus enabling me to describe it from both viewpoints. He had been cruising toward Mars when he saw us make the turn. He thought a landing upon Earth might be planned and hastened all his s.h.i.+ps into the area between the Moon and Earth to cut us off.

But that was what Wandl wanted. The Wandl s.h.i.+ps, with the _Star-Streak_ among them, made a complete slow circuit of the Moon. It took another day. Molo said very little to me in explanation of the Wandl tactics, but I could see that the object was to lure Grantline into following. A few of the allied s.h.i.+ps did follow us around, but not many. The rest stayed carefully guarding the line between the Moon and Earth.

There had been no encounter yet between the hostile s.h.i.+ps. The huge distances involved in the engagement must be kept in mind. The gravity rays from the Wandl s.h.i.+ps were only a slight disturbing element at such a long distance; Grantline's Zed-rays and Benson curve-lights were defensive only. For offence, Grantline's electronic guns and other weapons were of varying range, but none for such distances as these.

Wandl seemed unwilling to begin the battle, and Grantline was cautious as well. He did not know what weapons these strange globular vessels would use; his only experience had been our encounter with the whirling discs.

Then, at the end of the second day, came the first clash. The _Star-Streak_, and all the Wandl s.h.i.+ps, were again cl.u.s.tered on the Earth side of the Moon; they were hovering perhaps twenty thousand miles above its surface. Grantline's force was a hundred thousand miles off, toward Earth. One of the Wandl s.h.i.+ps came tentatively forward, and Grantline sent one of the new-style wars.h.i.+ps to meet it.

They encircled each other. Both were cautious, but there was a pa.s.sing within fifty miles. The Earth s.h.i.+p fired her bolts. The insulated barrage of the Wandl s.h.i.+p withstood them. There was a shower of ether sparks close to the s.h.i.+p, and a reddening of the hull, but nothing more. It seemed that the electro-barrages of the Wandl and allied s.h.i.+ps were very similar in nature, an aura of electro-magnetism, enclosing the s.h.i.+p like a curtain fifty feet away, absorbed the electronic stream of the enemy bolt. The Wandl s.h.i.+p flung no bolts; she loosed a score of the whirling discs during the pa.s.sing. They were of varying sizes, but similar to those which cut and wrecked the _Cometara_; in this instance, the Grantline s.h.i.+p was able to destroy each of them as it came close.

This was the first encounter. The Earth wars.h.i.+p went back to its squadron and the Wandl vessel rejoined its fellows. It had fired no bolts. Grantline suspected now what afterward proved to be the fact: these Wandl vessels were not equipped with long-range electronic guns.

The Wandl defensive tactics were necessary; they feared a widespread encounter. They were hovering in a compact group, covering a five hundred mile area, over the Moon surface. Their purpose was not yet apparent, but Grantline saw now that one of the Wandl s.h.i.+ps was dropping down and landing on the Moon. It skimmed the Apennines and landed not far from Archimedes.

What was that for? Grantline noticed that the lowering, closely-gathered Wandl fleet tried to mask the landing. And their gravity-rays, with repulsive force, darted out to impede the Grantline vessels should they try to advance.

This Earthward hemisphere of the Moon was now largely in shadow, but Grantline's Zed-ray magnifiers showed the vessel on the Moon.

Apparatus was being unloaded. It seemed, down there on the rocky Moon plain in the foothills of the Apennines, that some extensive, elaborate base was being prepared.

It was for this the hovering Wandl fleet was waiting, holding off from conflict until this Moon base was ready. When Grantline reached that conclusion, he ordered all his vessels forward to a general attack.

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