[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

at the front-most sphere of the enemy.
"Ferrati, fire!" cried Haines; and then slowly counted to five and pressed the stud of his own launcher.
There was a momentary flicker as Ferrati's rocket shell raced forth below. Then, after a definite time
lapse, the exhaust of Haines' heavy shell appeared.
"The shrapnel shell is segmented and doesn't have a proximity guide," Haines explained. "As soon as it's
on its way, the nose comes apart into a dozen small shells, each with a standard explosive charge. The
shell we used has an atomic bomb warhead and is on proximity guide. It'll chase that ship to the ends of
the system if they don't blast it first."
He paused. There was another bolt of raw energy from the dumbbell-shaped craft, and this time a series
of flares in the space between the shrapnel charges had been touched off. Burl held his breath.
"I figure it takes them a while to recharge their gun," said Haines. "Our own blockbuster should get there
before they fire again."
Then suddenly there came a sharper flare of brilliant light. For an instant Burl was blinded by the glare.
When he recovered, he peered avidly through the telescopic sighter. He saw the ship, but where there
had been a golden sphere there was now only a shattered fragment of twisted metal.
The enemy ship changed before his eyes. The remaining silvery sphere glowed brighter, and took on a
golden hue. Then it seemed as if the ship were growing smaller. He realized finally that it was retreating.
Burl gave an involuntary shout, and in his earphones he heard the same shouts of triumph from every
voice on the ship.
Although it might have been possible to pursue the battered enemy ship, the Magellan did not try. They
were still on course for Saturn and were not going to deviate.
They reached Saturn after several more days. Matching their great speed with that of the ringed world in
its orbit took time, and then they began their survey.
As they had suspected, the Sun-tap station was on one of the moons. The moon was called Iapetus, the
third largest of Saturn's family. It was about eight hundred miles in diameter and the next to the farthest
satellite from Saturn. Russ was disappointed that they hadn't picked Titan, the biggest moon of all. Titan
was over two thousand miles wide and appeared to have an atmosphere of methane.
The view of Saturn was awesome, even from Iapetus' orbit two million miles away. Burl knew it would
be a sight unparalleled in the system. The great broad rings, composed of innumerable tiny particles of
metal, stone, and possibly ice, encircled it as if held there by an invisible hand. They were, he knew, the
particles of a moon that has either come too close to Saturn's great gravitational pull to hold its shape, or
else had never escaped far enough to congeal as one solid mass.
Iapetus was a solid world, though. A rocky body, it had a dull gleam, and was streaked here and there
with layers of white and yellow, where veins of frozen gases lay forever upon the frigid surface. No
atmosphere veiled the surface nor softened the harsh, jagged mountains and clefts of this forbidding little
subplanet.
The Sun-tap station stood in plain sight on a high plateau near a polar region. The Magellan hovered
over it while Lockhart held a council of war.
"I don't see what's to be gained by attempting a landing party," he said. "We've taken all the readings and
pictures of the other stations and we've had a couple of narrow escapes. They've probably mined this
one, and they have had plenty of time to prepare a trap. I'm in favor of simply dropping an H-bomb on it
and leaving."
After a brief discussion, with only perfunctory objections from Clyde and Oberfield who, as astronomers,
wanted to land to take other readings, the decision was carried.
The Magellan swung up a couple of hundred miles above the Sun-tappers' plateau. Haines and his crew
loaded the bulky H-bomb into the main launcher in the tail of the ship. Then the Magellan aimed itself at
the target, and the rocket-driven bomb roared out.
Down it sped, zeroing in on the wall of the station. There was a blinding flash, a glare as brilliant as that of
the Sun itself, as it hit square on the mark. This time Burl watched through carefully shielded viewscreens.
The scene was obscured by a wide-flung cloud of white tens of thousands of cubic feet of satellite
rock turned instantaneously into dust particles. After the dust cleared away, they say only a gaping crater
where the plateau had been a volcanic hole, miles wide and glowing red, from which spread vast, deep
cracks throughout the entire visible hemisphere of the moon.
The men on the Magellan were awed and silent. The thought occurred to each of them, beyond his
capacity to deny it: what if this had happened on Earth?
"Of course," said Ferrati slowly, "the low gravity of Iapetus accounts for the greater extent of the disaster.
If this had been Bikini or..." But under the glares of the rest of the crew, his sentence trailed off weakly.
Lockhart turned away from the viewer. "Mr. Oberfield," he said, unexpectedly formal and official, "you
may chart our course for Uranus."
"Aye, aye, sir," said that usually dour personage, with alacrity.
With forced smiles, the rest of the crew drifted away to their duties. The Magellan pulled away from
Saturn, heading out again toward the limits of the solar system, but it was several days before everyone
had quite managed to dismiss the vision of the H-bomb from his mind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ice Cold on Oberon
NEVERTHELESS, FROM that point on, a different spirit seemed to animate everyone aboard the
Magellan. There was the feeling that they had closed with the enemy and found themselves not wanting.
There was the feeling that they possessed powers not inferior to those of their unknown enemies. The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]