Solar Assassins Page 7

  Somebody cried out: "Careful!"

  Then a needle sharp bright flare was seen and the sound that had first caught O'Bannon's attention burst through the room. Moments later, a further pall of smoke welled outward, obscuring the scene.

  O'Bannon had seen enough. Hollander's men were busy making an entrance hole in the airshaft. The tools they were using for the task were thermo-beamers. They had to focus the beams very sharply in order not to burn down the whole wall. It was these narrowed beams which were creating the curious sound, which was like the scream of matter being torn asunder.

  It was inexplicable why these men weren't using disintegrators, which worked almost soundlessly and without creating the slightest trace of fumes. O'Bannon guessed that Hollander hadn't gotten hold of enough disintegrators to be able to equip all of his fighting troops with them.

  Moreover, these men who were busy at the airshaft seemed to feel quite secure. In spite of the noise they were making they hadn't posted any guards.

  O'Bannon called his men to him and they established themselves in a small adjacent storeroom right next to the big hold that the airshaft passed through. The intervening hatchway was left open just a crack—enough to offer a clear view of the corridor. O'Bannon expected Hollander to send up a messenger when the attack was to be made. Prior to that O'Bannon was not going to make a move.

  • • •

  The first part of the way to the engine room was covered without the least disturbance. It was more than Mullon had expected.

  Milligan had suggested that they push an entrance into the engine room by way of the hydrogen-tank storage rooms. The main fuel that the ship used for its chemical engines during normal space flight was atomic hydrogen. Millions of cubic feet of this gas were stored in extremely low-temperature liquid form in giant pressure tanks. Thick-walled conduits and ducts ran from these tanks out to the chemical engines and running along the outside of the ducts were maintenance catwalks for inspection and repair work. Milligan presumed that the catwalk hatches high up on the walls of the engine room had not yet been discovered by Hollander's men or that at least they didn't attach much significance to them.

  Although it meant a detour, Mullon kept always to the periphery of the ship, which was either section I or K. In the Adventurous the True Democrats had been assigned to decks C to E for their living quarters, even though for the time being they were also occupying sectors 9, 10, 1 & 2. The Nature Philosophers lived on the same decks but in sectors 4, 5, 6 & 7.

  Mullon and his men felt better when they descended through one of the gravitors past the demarcation point between C & B decks further below. On the other hand, this was the beginning of the area where they would have to keep their eyes open. Hollander would be expecting an attack on the engine room.

  With Milligan in the lead they pressed through the centre deck zone here and gradually approached the section closest to the ship's central axis. In section E, Milligan took a turn to the left. Through a narrow side passage they arrived along a wall that was unusually devoid of hatch doors. Instead, in numerous places there were brightly lit signs saying: DANGER—FULL STORAGE!

  At first sight it was easily determined that no Nature Philosophers were present here. Milligan opened one of the few crawl hatchways in the wall and allowed his companions to enter.

  The aspect of the great chamber they entered was most impressive. The diameter of its circular cross-section was about 250 feet. It appeared to rise upward into dizzying heights and to plunge away below them into bottomless depths. Mullon estimated that the circular maintenance runway they were on must be approximately in the centre section of the huge cylinder.

  The form of the chamber was dictated by the shape of the tank that was stored there. From what could be seen, the colossal container was made of a gleaming grey metal plastic material and it occupied almost 100% of the space provided. Between the railings of the circular ramp and the tank wall there was just enough space so that a man with extra long arms could touch the tank itself.

  Milligan turned toward his right but he had hardly taken a step before he staggered and clutched at the railing for support. He looked around in bewilderment. "What was that? Did you feel it too?"

  Brennan had not noticed anything but Mullon had felt it.

  "It was like a small earthquake," he confirmed. "I know the feeling. Back home in Seattle the Earth wobbles once in awhile. But what's an earthquake doing here?"

  Milligan shook his head. "Search me—but let's hope it isn't bad news!"

  Mullon moved cautiously ahead but there was no repetition of the strange sensation.

  When they were halfway around the tank they saw on the other side a jumble of thick tubes six or seven feet in diameter, which were attached to the tank and passed from there on through the walls of the chamber. Each of these giant conduits was served by narrow, metal catwalks, which were all reachable either by ladders or antigrav shafts.

  Milligan took a lift shaft down to the lowest catwalk and Mullon and Brennan followed him. By the time they reached him he had already gone forward to the hatch door that brought the catwalk through the wall and had it open slightly.

  "Everything's okay," he whispered. "Nobody in sight!"

  He opened the hatch all the way and slipped through. A surge of incomprehensible sounds came through the opening—the noise of an engine room working at top capacity. Mullon could see Milligan pause behind the coverage of a pillar to reconnoiter. It was only a few moments before he motioned for Mullon and Brennan to join him.

  Mullon sent Brennan out. He waited until the sergeant had also reached the protection of the upright column and then he followed.

  He was surprised to find that the fueling ducts were located quite high above the floor of the engine room. It was about a 100-foot drop from the catwalk railing to the deck below and the total height of the room was about double that. However its length couldn't be discerned from here. The background disappeared back into a tall jumble of giant, weirdly shaped machines, some of which towered to the lofty ceiling.

  Mullon didn't have time to analyze his impressions. Primarily it was vital to check on Hollander's men—and they were there.

  He paid no attention to Milligan's worried expression because he was looking down below where he saw at least 50 men running about in feverish haste at their occupations. They ran here and there; there were shouted orders and somewhere in front of a small equipment cabinet was a man in a tattered uniform who had been tied up and was being guarded by two armed men.

  Mullon tried to figure Gut what Hollander's men were doing but he couldn't so he asked Milligan.

  "The main converter is shot!" growled Milligan through his teeth. "It looks like they damaged it during the attack on our people here. Now they have to get it into operation again and the man down there who can tell them what to do is Stokes, one of the technical officers."

  Mullon realized immediately what an advantage it would be if the technical officer could be set free. Presumably he was the only one still left alive who was cognizant of repairs needed for the vital machinery and who could give instructions as to how to make them.

  The catwalk along the fuel-feed channel led beyond the upright column which by now had been determined to be an exhaust shaft. It was wide open without any cover for a distance of about 30 feet until it reached a vertical, cylindrical tube that served as an antigrav shaft. This shaft led directly downwards past a plasma generator and ended not far from the spot where the manacled officer was standing on the main deck of the room.

  Mullon considered the rest to be comparatively easy. Only a few of the men who were running around below were armed. The main thing was to choose the right moment for a surprise. And besides, the technical officer was too important to the Nature Philosophers. They'd hesitate to shoot him once Mullon and his men had set him free.

  Milligan did not seem to be troubled about the 30 feet of open catwalk. "Brennan, give me that disintegrator," he said.

  Br
ennan handed him the compact weapon and Milligan aimed it at a point that lay in the background of the boardroom. Then he pressed the trigger. A pale, highly concentrated beam of energy leapt from the barrel and sped toward its goal. In a matter of seconds, a cover plate fell from one of the larger pieces of machinery. The heavy piece crashed to the deck with a resounding roar that caused a panic.

  None of Hollander's men had noticed the sure, swift shot above them. But they all turned toward the clattering sound. Somebody shouted a couple of short commands; 10 of the men who had been busy following the repair instructions of the technical officer turned from their work and ran back behind the equipment to investigate why the cover plate had fallen. The other men watched them go.

  "Run for it!" shouted Milligan.

  None of the men below observed the three men hurrying across the catwalk. They went carefully in order not to make any sound but they were quick enough to be inside the gravlift shaft before Hollander's men figured out why the cover plate had fallen.

  Mullon was the first to be carried by the grav suction to the lower opening of the shaft. He saw that the exit was fairly large and that anyone outside would easily see him if they were to look in that direction. There were two possibilities: either to drift up above the exit and grip the shaft wall against the field pull until there was a favorable moment or to charge forth at once.

  Mullon decided on the latter course. "Charge!" he shouted to his companions.

  He dropped lightly to the deck, stormed out of the shaft exit and knocked out one of the two guards with a running shot, leaving only one to watch over the technical officer. Milligan's shot hissed fairly close by over his shoulder and took care of the other guard.

  The other men stood there paralyzed. Before they could turn from the men who had gone to investigate the cover plate and before they became fully aware of what was going on here, Mullon had grabbed hold of the prisoner and pulled him back to the antigrav shaft.

  Milligan and Brennan provided cover for him. None of Hollander's men had thought it necessary to go around with weapon in hand. Their beamers and disintegrators were either in their pockets or stuck into their belts. "You men—come over here!" Milligan ordered imperiously. They complied reluctantly. Milligan perceived that the greatest danger was in having the men scattered all over the room, so he herded them into a group. "Throw your weapons on the deck!" he ordered.

  A few of, them obeyed. From in back of them came a shout: "Stop it, you fools! We outnumber them by far! Shoot them, you cowards!" But Milligan was on his guard. The man had hardly gotten the last words out of his mouth then Milligan's deliberately close shot grazed his head. He dodged to one side, stumbled, and fell to the deck.

  His command was not obeyed. The other men followed Milligan's orders; one weapon after the other clattered to the deck. The man in the background got to his feet again. When he saw that his companions were giving in, he too threw his weapon onto the pile. Then he pushed through the others and only came to a stop when Milligan raised his gun threateningly.

  "Okay, why don't you shoot, you fool?" he shouted angrily. "Then who will fix the converter?"

  Milligan shrugged his shoulders. That detail didn't interest him.

  "So you couldn't care less, eh?" jibed the speaker. "And when Hollander goes into a hytrans within half an hour, we'll all be done for. How does that suit you?"

  Milligan turned to look at Mullon. "How can Hollander make a hyperjump with a damaged converter?"

  "That's just the point! The converter is only partly damaged. The phase alternator still works at about 60% capacity." Mullon addressed the technical officer whom he had rescued. "What do you make of it?" he asked.

  The officer snorted in annoyance. "The first fact we're facing is that Hollander is a fool! He thinks I'm exaggerating the converter damage merely to hinder him. So by holding to a fixed time for the transition, he's trying to drive me to work harder with these men. As for Suttney here, he's right. The converter is only partly damaged. Under certain conditions it might be able to take a transition... and under other conditions maybe not. But somebody'd better make that clear to Hollander!"

  Mullon looked about him. Milligan and Brennan were still on guard with raised weapons and were holding the Nature Philosophers in check. He knew they had that part of the situation under control.

  "Suttney!" he asked the man who stood before Milligan. "How much time do we still have?

  Suttney looked at his watch. "I'd say—28 minutes!" Mullon turned to the technical officer. "And how long for the repairs?"

  "Just about that long. It'll be a pretty tight go if Hollander doesn't give us a reprieve."

  Mullon hesitated only a second. "Listen carefully, Suttney," he said then. "We're all going to fix that converter together. Milligan will be able to lend a hand because he's also a tech man. We may be able to do it before Hollander makes his jump. When it's over with, we can look into other matters here. Agreed?"

  Suttney nodded sullenly. "Sure! But later there'll be hell to pay."

  Mullon motioned the duped Nature Philosophers over to one side. Once they were sufficiently removed from the heap of surrendered weapons, he took over Milligan's position himself and sent Milligan to the converter with the technical officer.

  "Get going, men!" he shouted. "We have to be through in 20 minutes!"

  Under the direction of Milligan and the technical officer, the Nature Philosophers fell to work again with remarkable zeal. Meanwhile, Mullon cudgeled his brains trying to figure out how to block Hollander from carrying out his hazardous plan.

  8/ 8000 LIVES AT STAKE

  O'Bannon and his men didn't have to wait long enough to strain their patience. Judging from the noise in the room next door, the Nature Philosophers had completed the work on the porous wall of the airshaft. And at that moment O'Bannon looked through the slightly opened hatch door beside him to see a man coming along the corridor outside. He ran past O'Bannon's hiding place and through the still open hatchway of the adjacent room.

  O'Bannon could hear his loud, excited voice. He opened the hatch and crept out. He pushed forward close to the entrance of the next room and was finally able to understand every word that was being spoken inside.

  "In a half hour it has to all be over with!" said someone emphatically.

  "To do that we'll have to catch Mullon and his people all in one spot," answered another voice. "How does Hollander figure on that?"

  "I don't know. In any case, within half an hour we're going into a hyper-transit jump and you know what the effects are. If we're not through with our job by then or if we beg off and hide, the Democrats will be on our necks as soon as the transition pains have passed."

  "Okay, okay—we'll give it a try. When does Hackney attack?"

  "In five minutes. He's going directly from the radial" passage at sector five right up to sector 1. If you men arrive in the mess hall at the same time, you'll have Mullon in a pincers grab."

  "If he's down there in the first place."

  "Then take whoever you find. Get going now! We don't have any time to lose!"

  O'Bannon heard the tap of approaching feet. Then other footsteps followed toward the hatch opening. Until now he'd been lying on the deck. He got up. There was no time left to hide. Hollander's messenger came unsuspectingly out of the hatchway and was halfway past him before he noticed him.

  O'Bannon gave him no time to shout a warning. He jumped on him and choked him until he was unconscious. Inside where the Nature Philosophers were preparing to get into the airshaft to climb down to E-deck, no one had noticed the incident. Unhindered, O'Bannon got back to his hiding place with his prisoner. Hollander's man was bound and gagged. Then O'Bannon and his men pressed in to the adjacent room which had just been vacated by the Nature Philosophers.

  The hole in the wall was just large enough for a man to crawl through. O'Bannon looked down into the shaft and discovered that a row of plastic-metal rungs had been installed there vertically about 15 inches a
part, serving as a ladder.

  O'Bannon had long since worked out his plan. He intended to go down into the shaft with two of his men and leave the remaining two at the hole in the wall so that they could apprehend any chance Nature Philosopher who might escape O'Bannon from the shaft.

  The descent proceeded without hindrance. The seven or eight men that Hollander had sent to surprise the True Democrats from behind were creating such a noise that O'Bannon and his companions had no fear of being discovered.

  He must have passed the borderline between F- and E-deck by the time that a blinding brightness flashed beneath him in the shaft. Seconds later a blast of hot air rose upward and almost took his breath away. The Nature Philosophers had begun to create an opening in the wall of the airshaft. They had reached the level of the main mess hall on E-deck.

  O'Bannon knew that they would need at least a quarter of an hour to make the opening because they were working with thermo-beamers. This meant they would have to maintain a distance from the wall and keep the beams needle-sharp. It also meant that they would have to wait a sufficient time for the material of the wall to cool down enough at the edges of the hole to permit them to go through without harm.

  Nevertheless O'Bannon didn't waste any time. In a few minutes he had progressed downward far enough so that he could see the highest positioned attacker standing in the light flashes of the thermo-pulses only a few rungs beneath him. The man was concentrating his entire attention on the men below him.

  There were no formalities in O'Bannon's next move. He lowered himself as far as he thought he dared to; he bent down and used the barrel of his weapon to prod the unsuspecting victim's shoulder.

  "Take your finger off the trigger!" he ordered, just loud enough to be clearly understood. "And hand over that weapon, buddy. Come on! Time's a-wasting!"