It came alive! A hundred-yard beam of white fire flared from its massive wall – and the solid top of the mountain dissolved before that frightful thrust. His mountain, where his ship, his life, was hidden, destroyed by controlled atomic energy.
Cross stood quite still there on the rug that covered the steel floor of that steel laboratory. Wisps of human in-coherency from every direction fumbled at his brain. He flung up his mind shield, and that distracting confusion of outside thought was cut off abruptly. Behind him, Granny moaned in gentle terror. In the distance above him, sledgehammer blows were lashing at his almost impregnable cottage, but the dim bedlam of noise failed to touch him. He was alone in a world of personal silence, a world of swift, quiet, uninterrupted thought.
If they were prepared to use atomic energy, why hadn't they pulverized him with bombs? A thousand coordinating thoughts leaped up to form the simple answer. They wanted his perfect type of atomic energy. Their method was not a development of the rather superb, so-called hydrogen bomb of old times, with its heavy water and uranium base, and chain reaction. They had gone back to an even earlier stage, a crude expansion of the cyclotron principle. That alone could explain so much size. Here was a ten-million-ton cyclotron, capable of a wild and deadly spray of energy – and they undoubtedly hoped to use its mobility to force him to give them his priceless secret.
He whirled toward the instrument board that spread across the entire end of the laboratory. A switch clicked. Pointers set rigid. And dancing needles told the story of a spaceship out there under that dissolving mountain, a ship shuddering with mechanical life, now automatically burrowing deeper into the ground, and at the same time heading unerringly toward this laboratory.
A dial spun, and a whole bank of needles in their transparent cases danced from zero to the first fractional point, and wavered there. They, also, told a story – the story of atomic projectors rearing up from the ground where they had been hidden so long – and as he grasped the precision instrument that was his aiming device, twenty invincible guns out there swung in perfect synchronization.
The hairline sights edged along the unmissable spread of the ship's bulk. And paused. What was his purpose against these ruthless enemies? He didn't want to bring that monster machine to earth. He didn't want to create a situation where slans and humans beings might launch into a furious struggle for the possession of the wreck. There was no doubt that the human beings would fight with a fearless ferocity. Their great mobile guns could still hurl shells capable of piercing any metal in the possession of the slans. And if any of those ships with their superior armaments ever fell into human hands, then it would be no time at all before they, also, had spaceships; and the devil's war would be on. No, he didn't want that.
And he didn't want to destroy the ship because he didn't want to kill the tendrilless slans who were in it. For, after all, tendrilless slans did represent a law and order which he respected. And because they were a great race, and definitely kin to him, they merited mercy.
Before that clarification, hesitation fled. Straight at the center of that immense cyclotron, Cross aimed his battery of synchronized weapons. His thumb pressed down the-fire button. Above him, the half mile of spiral-shaped ship recoiled like an elephant struck an intolerable blow. It rocked madly, like a ship in stormy seas. And briefly, as it swung sickeningly, he saw blue sky through a gaping hole – and realized his victory.
He had cut that vast spiral from end to end. In every turn of it now was a hopelessly diffusing leak. No stream of atoms, however accelerated, could run that gauntlet un-mutilated. The power of the cyclotron was smashed. But all the implications of that ship remained. Frowning, Cross watched the ship poise for a moment, shakily. Slowly it began to recede, its antigravity plates apparently full on. Up, up it mounted, growing smaller as it withdrew into the distance.
At fifty miles it was still bigger than the battleships that were nosing down toward that green, almost unharmed valley. And now the implications were clearer, colder, deadlier. The nature of their attack showed that they must have spotted his activities in this valley months ago.
Clearly, they had waited until they could approach in one titanic, organized battle, with the purpose of forcing him out where they could follow him night and day by means of their instruments and so, by sheer weight of numbers and guns, destroy him and capture his equipment.
Dispassionately, Cross turned to Granny. "I'm going to leave you here. Follow my instructions to the letter. Five minutes from now, you will go up the way we came down, closing all the metal doors behind you. You will then forget all about this laboratory. It is going to be destroyed, so you might as well forget. If men question you, you will act senile, but at other times you will be normal. I'm leaving you to face that danger because I'm no longer sure, in spite of my precautions, that I can come out of this alive."
He felt a chill, impersonal interest in the knowledge that the day of action had arrived. The tendrilless slans might intend this attack on him to be but part of a vaster design that included their long-delayed assault on Earth. Whatever happened, his plans were as complete as he could make them; and though it was years too soon, he must now force the issue to the limit of his power. He was on the run, and there could be no turning back – for behind him was swift death!
Cross' ship nosed out of the little river and launched toward space on a long, slanting climb. It was important that he should not become invisible until the slans actually saw that he was out of the valley, before they had razed it in futile search. But first, there was one thing he must do.
His hand plunged home a switch. His narrowed gaze fastened on the rear visiplate, which showed the valley falling away below. At a score of points on that green floor (he counted them in lightning calculation) white flame blazed up in a strange, splotchy-looking fire. Down there, every weapon, every atomic machine, was turning on itself. Fire chambers were burning out, metal running molten in that devouring violence of energy.
The white glow was still there as he turned away a few seconds later, grimly content Now let them search through that ravaged, twisted metal. Let their scientists labor to bring to life a secret they craved so desperately, and to obtain which they had come out where human beings could see some of their powers. In every burned-out cache in that valley, they would find exactly nothing!
The destruction of all that was so precious to the attackers required a fraction of a minute but in that time he was seen. Four dead-black battleships turned toward him simultaneously – and then hovered uncertainly as he actuated the mechanism that made his vessel invisible.
Abruptly, their possession of atom-energy detectors was shown. The ships fell in behind him unerringly. Alarm bells showed others ahead, closing toward him. It was only the unmatchable atomic drivers that saved him from that vast fleet. There were so many vessels that he could not even begin to count them, and all that could come near turned their deadly projectors where their instruments pointed. They missed because during the very instant they spotted him, his machine flashed out of range of their most massive guns.
Completely invisible, traveling at many miles per second, his ship headed for Mars! He must have hurtled through mine fields, but that didn't matter now. The devouring disintegration rays that poured out from the walls of his great machine ate up mines-before they could explode, and simultaneously destroyed every light-wave that would have revealed his craft to alert eyes out there in the blaze of Sun.