"Hmmmm," said Holmes. "Yes. That could be done. But hitting something that's traveling faster than light—"
"They're traveling in a straight line," said Burke, "except for orbiting around each other every few hours. There's no faster–than–light angular velocity; just straight–line velocity. And with the artificial mass they've got, they couldn't conceivably dodge. If we got some globes tricked up to throw a beam of gravity–field back at the Enemy ships, there might be resonance, and there's a chance that one might hit, too."
Holmes considered.
"It might take half an hour to change the circuit," he observed. "Maybe less. There'd be no way in the world to test them. But they might work. We'd want a lot of them on the job, though, to give the idea a fair chance."
Burke stood up, creaking a little from long immobility.
"Let's hunt for the way back to the fortress," he said. "There is a way. At least two crazy birds were marching around in the fortress' corridors."
Holmes nodded again. They began a search. Matter transposed from the fortress—specifically, the five of them—came out in a nearly three–walled alcove in the side of what had once been a magnificent building. Now it was filled with the trunks and stalks of trees and vines which grew out of every window–opening. There were other, similar alcoves, as if other matter–transposers to other outposts or other worlds had been centered here. They were looking for one that a plump, ridiculous bird might blunder into among the broken stones.
They found a metal plate partly arched–over by fallen stones in the very next alcove. They hauled at the tumbled rock. Presently the way was clear.
"Come along!" called Burke. "We've got a job to do! You girls want to fix breakfast and we want to get to work. We've a few hundred light–years to cross before we can have our coffee."
Somehow he felt no doubt whatever. The five of them walked onto the corroded metal plate together, and the sky faded and ghosts of tube–lights appeared and became brilliant, and they stepped off the plate into a corridor one section removed from the sending–transposer which had translated them all, successively, to wherever they had been.
And everything proceeded matter–of–factly. The three men went to the room where metal globes by hundreds waited for the defenders of the fortress to make use of them. They were completely practical, those globes. There were even small footholds sunk into their curving sides so a man could climb to their tops and inspect or change the apparatus within.
On the way, Burke explained to Keller. The globes were designed to be targets, and targets they would remain. They'd be set out in the path of the coming Enemy ships, which could not vary their courses. Their circuits would be changed to treat the suddenly increasing gravitational fields as radiation, so that they would first project back a monstrous field of the same energy, and then dive down it to presumed collision with the ships. There was a distinct possibility that if enough globes could be gotten out in space, that at the least they might hit one enemy ship and so wreck the closely orbited grouping. From that reasonable first possibility, the chances grew slimmer, but the results to be hoped for increased.
Keller nodded, brightly. He'd used the reading helmets more than anybody else. He understood. Moreover, his mind was trained to work in just this field.
When they reached the room of the many spheres he gestured for Burke and Holmes to wait. He climbed the footholds of one globe, deftly removed its top, and looked inside. The conductors were three–inch bars of pure silver. He reached in and did this and that. He climbed down and motioned for Burke and Holmes to look.
It took them long seconds to realize what he'd done. But with his knowledge of what could be done, once he was told what was needed, he'd made exactly three new contacts and the globe was transformed to Burke's new specifications.
Instead of days required to modify the circuits, the three of them had a hundred of the huge round weapons changed over within an hour. Then Keller went up to the instrument–room and painstakingly studied the launching system. He began the launchings while Holmes and Burke completed the change–over task. They joined him in the instrument–room when the last of the metal spheres rose a foot from the stony floor of the magazine and went lurching unsteadily over to the breech of the launching–tube they hadn't noticed before.
"Three hundred," said Keller in a pleased tone, later. "All going out at full acceleration to meet the Enemy. And there are six observer–globes in the lot."
"Observers," said Burke grimly. "That's right. We can't observe anything because the information would come back at the speed of light. But if we lose, the Enemy will arrive before we can know we've lost."
Keller shook his head reproachfully.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! I just understood. There are transposers of electric energy, too. Very tiny. In the observers."
Burke stared. But it was only logical. If matter could be transposed instead of transmitted between distant places, assuredly miniature energy–transposers were not impossible. The energy would no more travel than transposed matter would move. It would be transposed. The fortress would see what the observer–globes saw, at the instant they saw it, no matter what the distance!
Keller glanced at the ten–foot disk with its many small lights and the writhing bright–red sparks which were the Enemy gravity–ships. There was something like a scale of distances understood, now. The red sparks had been not far from the disk's edge when the first space call went out to Earth. They were nearer the center when the spaceship arrived here. They were very, very near the center now.
"Five days," said Burke in a hard voice. "Where will the globes meet them?"
"They're using full acceleration," Keller reminded him gently. "One hundred sixty gravities."
"A mile a second acceleration," said Burke. Somehow he was not astonished. "In an hour, thirty–six hundred miles per second. In ten hours, thirty–six thousand miles per second. If they hit at that speed, they'd smash a moon! They'll cover half a billion miles in ten hours—but that's not enough! It's only a fifth of the way to Pluto! They won't be halfway to Uranus!"
"They'll have fifty–six hours," said Keller. The need to communicate clearly made him almost articulate. "Not on the plane of the ecliptic. Their course is along the line of the sun's axis. Meeting, seven times Pluto's distance. Twenty billion miles. Two days and a half. If they miss we'll know."
Holmes growled, "If they miss, what then?"
"I stay here," said Keller, mildly. "I won't outlive everybody. I'd be lonely." Then he gave a quick, embarrassed smile. "Breakfast must be ready. We can do nothing but wait."
But waiting was not easy.
On the first day there came a flood of messages from Earth. Why had they cut off communication? Answer! Answer! Answer! What could be done about the Enemy ships? What could be done to save lives? If a few spaceships could be completed and take off before the solar system shattered, would the asteroid be shattered too? Could a few dozen survivors of Earth hope to make their way to the asteroid and survive there? Should the coming doom be revealed to the world?
The last question showed that the authorities of Earth were rattled. It was not a matter for Burke or Keller or Holmes to decide. They transmitted, in careful code, an exact description of the sending of the globes to try to intercept the Enemy gravity–ships. But it was not possible for people with no experiential knowledge of artificial gravity to believe that anything so massive as a sun could be destroyed by hurling a mere ten–foot missile at it!
Then there came a sudden revulsion of feeling on Earth. The truth was too horrible to believe, so it was resolved not to believe it. And therefore prominent persons broke into public print, denouncing Burke for having predicted the end of the world from his safe refuge in Asteroid M–387. They explained elaborately how he must be not only wrong but maliciously wrong.