Stevens had poised the "Forlorn Hope" edgewise in mid-air, so that
the gleaming, heavily armored parabolic reflectors of his projectors,
mounted upon the leading edge of the fortress, covered the scene below.
As the charred corpse of the savage chieftain dropped to the ground,
it seemed to the six-limbed creatures that the demons of the falls had
indeed been annoyed beyond endurance by their intrusion; for, as if in
response to the flash of fire from the power plug, that structure so
peculiarly and so stolidly hanging in the air came plunging down toward
them. From it there reached down twin fans of death and destruction: one
flaming and almost invisibly incandescent violet which tore at the eyes
and excruciatingly disintegrated brain and nervous tissues; the other
dully glowing an equally invisible red, at the touch of which body
temperature soared to lethal heights and foliage burst cracklingly into
spontaneous flame.
In their massed hundreds, the savages dropped where they stood, life
rived away by the torturing ultra-violet, burned away by the blast
of pure heat, or consumed by the conflagrations that raged instantly
wherever that wide-sweeping fan encountered combustible material.
In the face of power supernatural they lost all thought of attack or of
conquest, and sought only and madly to escape. Weapons were thrown away,
the catapults were abandoned, and, every man for himself, the mob fled
in wildest disorder, each striving to put as much distance as possible
between himself and that place of dread mystery, the waterfall.
"Well, I guess that'll hold 'em for a while," Stevens dropped their
craft back into its original quarters in the canyon. "Whether they ever
believed before that this falls was inhabited by devils or not, they
think so now. I'll bet that it will be six hundred Jovian years before
any of them ever come within a hundred kilometers of it again. I'm glad
of it, too, because they'll let our power plant alone now. Well, let's
get going--we've got to make things hum for a while!"
"Why all the rush? You just said that we have scared them away for
good."
"The savages, yes, but not those others. We've just turned loose enough
radiation to affect detectors all over the system, and it's up to us to
get this beam projector set up, get away from here, and get our power
shut off before they can trace us. Snap it up, ace!"
The transmitter unit was installed at the converters, the cable was torn
out, and, having broken the last material link between it and Ganymede,
Stevens hurled the "Forlorn Hope" out into space, using the highest
acceleration Nadia could endure. Hour after hour the massive wedge of
steel bored outward, away from Jupiter; hour after hour Stevens' anxious
eyes scanned his instruments; hour after hour hope mounted and relief
took the place of anxiety as the screens remained blank throughout every
inquiring thrust into the empty ether. But they knew they would have to
keep sharp vigilance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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