Part 2

They told of a great horde of metal ships, shining, iridescent, ranging in size from tiny darting machines, ten feet long by one and three-quarters in diameter, mere torpedoes, to great transport ships. And there was a single spherical ship. A great sphere that floated in the center of a bodyguard of the thousands of its followers. There were literally hundreds of thousands of the little torpedo-ships, a few dozen of the cargo ships, and a few ships that seemed more like scouts of some sort. But it was apparent that the little torpedo-ships were the real fighters--tiny ships that spun and turned and darted like an electron in ionized gas. It seemed impossible that a man could stand those sudden turns at several miles a second, but they watched them, and went into nothingness as the Dis ray reached out from those tiny ships and caressed their ships.

They, too, had Dis rays--it would be a terrible battle, for man had that same force, a force so deadly they had feared to use it in industry. But man had the advantage of numbers.

The men on the fleet who saw those television plates glowing with the story of what was taking place out there in space decided that those torpedo-ships must be guided by radio. If they were it would be a simple matter to wreck that system by using a powerful interference that would drown out the directing wave and make its ships unmanageable.

The System Capital was temporarily moved to the Waterson Laboratories on Earth. There the forty men had gathered around great television plates and were watching the battle of the scouts. They were not to go to that battle front. The System needed them.

* * * * *

It was midnight on the part of Mars where the Sirians first struck. The fleet of the Solar System was massed there to meet them. They seemed headed for the mighty gleaming city of Metal, below. Dornalus, the second city of old Mars; was there, and they seemed bent on reaching it. As the Sirians drew near they threw forward a great shield of the torpedo-ships; then the great generators on the Solarian fleet forced tremendous etheric currents into space, and waited to see the motions of the tiny ships become erratic, but they darted about as steadily, as easily as ever. These Sirians must be small men! And they must be from a massive world, a world that had accustomed them to great accelerations.

Below them the city was deserted except for vision projector machines that hummed steadily, automatically, from a thousand points. They were broadcasting the message to the worlds and to the commanding officers on the other side of Mars. These men had direct control of the battle. They could not control it from Earth, for radio waves travel too slowly. Twenty minutes each way the waves took and in forty minutes the battle was more than over. It lasted only fifteen minutes--minutes of terrific carnage!

As the two great fleets came into contact, the Solarians drove into the mass of tiny ships, their Dis rays flashing in every direction. They had one advantage in that they sprayed nine streams of death from each of their craft; but the torpedo-ships were so unbelievably fast that it was nearly impossible to hit them. And they seemed to have no compunction about raying one of their own ships if a more than equal amount of damage was inflicted on their enemies. Logical, no doubt, but how inhuman.

The sky above the city became a blazing hell of Dis rays, heat rays, and exploding shells. The explosives were not safe, for they threw great flying fragments that could pierce the wall of a ship and send it down. They damaged friend and foe alike.

The Solarian fleet had a solid projectile of a single giant crystal of copper that was immune to the Dis ray. It could penetrate the walls of a ship and bring it down. But the explosive bombs were more often than not exploded or merely disintegrated before they reached their goal. A crystal of any sort was immune to the Dis ray, but it was not a protection against it. There was no known way of deflecting the Dis ray except by that special electrical field that directed it, and that could not be made to surround a ship. The copper crystals were used mainly to destroy the Dis ray projectors of the enemy. They were fired at the faint glow, and with luck they would hit the machine and instantly wreck the projector. More than one machine disappeared as its own Dis ray projector, wrecked by the fifteen-inch copper crystal, suddenly spread in all directions.

The sphere and its escort of transports hung back, surrounded by a great number of the torpedo-ships. They did not join in the fight.

And at last the Solarian fleet was recalled. It was not right that they should make such heavy sacrifices. The city must fall, and it would be easy to crush the Sirians with a larger fleet. At the rate of 5000 Solarian ships an hour, they might well do so in three days. So the Solarians left, and behind on the ground there were a few ships; a great number had been rayed into nothingness. The Sirians had won this first victory, but the Solarians could soon make up for this loss. They had twenty billions to back them up, and they had the resources of three planets. It seemed as though the invaders could not last long, but we had yet to learn the true meaning of mass production.

No man could hang around the encampment of that alien race. But above them television broadcasts were suspended, and some were installed in the buildings of the city. But these were of no avail, for the Sirians seemed obsessed with the idea of making Mars a true sphere. They proceeded to level the great city with Dis rays. No news projector could remain there, of course, and several news projector men lost their lives. It was foolhardy to stay in that city; they had been forbidden, but nothing will keep a newsman out of a chance for a scoop. The projectors which hung above continued to show a weird scene.

The great sphere and its attendant transports sank gently to the ground and formed a great wheel, with the sphere as the hub and the transports as radiating spokes and the rim. High above them the darting torpedo-ships were wheeling in constant circles. It seems a miracle that not all of those news projectors were destroyed, but some did last till the early rays of the sun set them off as shining targets for the flashing Dis rays. It was a weird scene they showed!

[Illustration: _The great sphere and its attendant transports sank gently to the ground and formed a vast wheel, with the sphere as the hub and the transports as radiating spokes and the rim._]

Now from the sides of the great transports came, not men, but great machines, machines that lumbered along on caterpillar treads to set themselves down beside their parent ship, one from each ship, and proceeded to dig themselves in, about three feet deep. Then all seemed quiet, except for a steady hum from the great machines, fifty-eight in all there were, great machines--fully two-hundred feet on a side. They worked there quietly now, and the men within them must have been totally covered, for they could not be seen. Apparently the Sirians dared not come out into the Martian atmosphere. And now something was happening that startled all the billions of watchers on the three planets. In the top of the great machines was a small trapdoor. Through this, there came a torpedo-ship that floated up a few feet, then darted off to join the wheeling machines above. Then eleven seconds later another came forth--another--each machine there was sending them out now. One by one those machines released a torpedo-boat--one every eleven seconds, with the regularity of a clock.

At first men could not grasp the significance of this--but soon it became obvious. These wonderful machines were complete factories in themselves, portable, mass production factories for producing those torpedo-ships, and one each eleven seconds came from the end of the production line, complete. The noises there were no longer a gentle hum. There was a whir and rattle of machines. It was not loud, though considering the mighty works that must have been going on inside. But steadily now, that darting fleet of torpedo-ships was increasing the power for all this work was obvious to these men who used similar processes in their work.

From the soil below them the machines dug masses of matter, and carrying it up into the machine transmuted its elements, into the elements necessary to their machines, then molded them, and automatically assembled them. It would require very little supervision, but that production-rate was staggering! One each eleven seconds meant 325 completed machines an hour.

There were no signs of any men entering these ships, or the machines, so it seemed there must be some means of distant control that man knew nothing of, for it was improbable that all those men could have been in the parent machine from the beginning. No wonder the Sirians could lose these machines so freely. The ability to make them automatically from anything meant they cost practically nothing and could be produced in limitless quantity. The notion that Man was to be an easy victor was fast disappearing. These machines were coming to form an ever-growing cloud of wheeling ships. Still, man had destroyed fully half their fleet in that desperate struggle; they must spend some time in making up those losses. But Man had lost nearly a third of his great fleet. Four hundred thousand brave men had been lost. It was not even a victory, and it had cost Man far more than it had cost the Sirians. They had learned something from them, though. Perhaps radio control would enable man to do an equal amount of damage. Orders were put through to make an experimental fleet of thirty thousand radio-controlled machines.

* * * * *

In the meantime a new thing was attracting the attention of the people on the planets. A new set of machines was issuing from the transports. These were smaller than that first set--low and squat--but they seemed far more flexible in their movement. They went off in orderly line to a point a few miles distant from the main encampment and there formed themselves into two groups. One group remained still, but began to glow faintly, and a hum came to the televisors above. Then there began to flow from a spout on the side of each a steady stream of molten metal. This was poured into a somewhat similar arrangement on the other group, then these moved quickly away, and with their strange handlike appendages began to work quickly at a great rounded hull that was rapidly forming. The men watching understood. It was to be another cargo ship. Rapidly this hull grew under their swift manipulation, till it was completed in three and a half hours. An entire ship, except for the machinery, was completed. And now they began to work on another, and as they fell to work there started from the original cargo shops a long line of small, quick moving machines, machines that could run along the ground or drive through the air, and they were covered with arm-like appendages. Soon these reached the newly built hull, and quickly they were at work, getting material from the strange squat machines, entering the hull, and working at it. The second hull was nearly completed when one of the smaller machines flew back to the original encampment and went up to the sphere. From it it drew a strange metal case, oblong, from which led a great heavy cable. This it carried back to the now completed ship and installed it somewhere inside. Then the ship rose easily from the ground and floated around a bit, landed again, and immediately there came out of it one of the torpedo-ship machines! None of these had gone in, it had been made by those slim, quick worker machines! And now there lumbered out a second machine--one of the strange hull maker machines--then two of the worker machines came out, where only one had gone in. The ship was complete, even to its strange crew! And now that strange crew was already at work, making others!

With the coming of dawn the televisors were rayed out of existence. But that evening more were installed, and every night during all that invasion there floated above them those noiseless televisors. They destroyed many, but many remained.

That night showed us a fleet of nearly a half million of the tiny torpedo-ships, and a rapidly growing cargo ship camp. There were more than a hundred now, for as each was completed, the machines made could aid in the more rapid construction of the next.

And that night they began their work of leveling Mars. That great fleet spread itself out over all the surface of Mars, and with flaming heat rays and the terrible Dis rays they cut down every remnant of the Martian hills. Twenty-four hours later the entire planet was one vast featureless plain. And on that plain there had been established eight camps. During this time the cargo ships had been moving, and during that twenty-four hours they did nothing. But Man was prepared. The radio-controlled fleet was ready to be given its first try.

The entire fleet was assembled above the surface of Mars, above that original camp, where still rested the one sphere. Then from far out in space the great control ships directed the dive of the radio-control-ships, making the distance one-twentieth part of a light second. The men directing the ships were no faster than that, could not respond sooner, and the greater distance gave them greater safety.

But now the radio-controlled ships were released, and permitted to drop, uncontrolled. They wished to give the Sirians no warning. Then when the ships were scarcely ten miles from the Sirian fleet, they were brought under control, headed nose down in a power dive, straight through the surprised upper layers of the fleet, and with Dis rays glowing they drove straight for the ships below. Suddenly, there were great gashes in the ground beneath, and twenty of the cargo ships were gone in that first rush, and three more followed quickly. But while literally thousands of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been rayed, nearly half of the thirty thousand radio-controlled ships of Man were gone. And now they had to apply full power to prevent striking the ground. But twenty-two of them continued on in straight fall toward the great sphere. They were rayed by a hundred ships before they could get really separated from their companions. And now the fast radio ships were destroying hundreds of the Sirians, they were formed in a vertical column reaching up ten miles, one above the other, with the nine Dis ray projectors going full blast and spinning as rapidly as was safe lest the machines fly apart due to centrifugal force, for the Dis ray will work practically instantaneously. The top ship was preventing the torpedo-ships' attack from above. Suddenly each of the ships stopped spinning; its Dis ray went out and they dropped like rocks. The radio control had been drowned out by powerful interference; they were no longer under the influence of the men, and they had ceased to function. The radio-controlled-ships would no longer be useful against the Sirians.

* * * * *

Nearly the entire fleet of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been wiped out by that spinning column. Now thousands of the manually-controlled ships dove down at the weakened fleet. Every one of the remaining ships shot up to meet the advancing fleet; there were still several thousand of the torpedo-ships. And now the sphere rose with them, and among them. Suddenly the entire mass came together in the shape of a greater sphere with walls of torpedo-ships, and as it formed the torpedo-ships snapped on their Dis rays, and started the entire surface of the sphere spinning! They seemed invulnerable in this formation, but they quickly moved away across the surface of the planet, the larger part of the Solarian fleet following, wondering what to do about it. It seemed impossible to attack the sphere of destruction.

But the cargo ships were left unprotected, and in a moment they had been beamed out of existence. The Sirians had lost many hours' work on this battle! And they lost more before the mighty fleet of torpedo-ships from the other camps rescued them. For now and then an explosive shell would penetrate the screen of disintegration rays. But within the outer shield was a second, virtually a shield of metal, for the metal sphere was surrounded by a solid mass of the torpedo-ships. But many of these were destroyed. More, too, were put out of commission by the copper crystals.

On the arrival of the great fleet from the other camps the tables were turned. The control ships had too low an acceleration, and there were too many ships for the ten-man machines to get, though they tried to make a screen of Dis rays that stopped the ships till they were rayed out of existence. Many of the control ships were lost and many of the ten-man ships.

It was then that Waterson announced two things that gave the Solarians new hope.

It was the fifth of August when the announcement was made. And it was the same day on which nearly the entire fleet from all the camps on Mars started off for Venus, but the movement was detected almost at once, and from great underground bases on Mars the Solarian fleet sent out fifty thousand ten-man ships. These ships skimmed along close to the ground, and their polished metal had been sprayed with a drab paint so that they seemed but shadows that became practically invisible as they sped along, widely separated, but rapidly converging on the site of the Sphere's camp. This had remained on Mars, guarded by so small a number of ships that it was evident they expected the Solarian fleet to go to Venus, as no doubt would have been necessary but for this swift counter raid.

So perfectly camouflaged were the Solarian ships, that they got within ten miles of the camp without being discovered. Then, as their Dis rays flashed out, the entire group of the torpedo-ships dove on them. There were nearly one hundred thousand of the ten-man ships, diving down at them in a zigzag course that made them impossible targets, but the fleet had been approaching from all sides, and now the entire Sirian defense was concentrating on the machines attacking from the north. Those from the south crept in behind them, and suddenly the sphere started into the air, then went flying out into space at terrific speed. It barely escaped the Dis rays of the attackers. Only its tremendous acceleration saved it. Now several thousand of the torpedo ships shot after it, the rest falling into the form of a great disc to block the path of the pursuers. Man had long been accustomed to two dimensional maneuvering, but the ease with which these Sirians fell into complex three dimensional formations showed long practice in the art of warfare in space.

That raid was successful in that it forced the immediate return of the Sirian fleet, and very nearly destroyed the sphere. Over seventy-two thousand of the torpedo-ships were destroyed, but we lost two thousand ships and twenty thousand men. But Waterson announced that the Sirians would no longer be able to escape because of their greater acceleration. He had discovered a method for using an attractor beam of a short range but considerable power to be used with an electro-magnetic device that would automatically turn on the instruments in such a way that no matter what the accelerations might be, no matter how great, as long as they were within the limits of the ship's strength, the accelerations and centrifugal forces would be instantly neutralized, thus making possible violent maneuvers that the sudden forces had hitherto made impossible. A demonstration of his new ship had confirmed it. He took up a number of the Cabinet in his special machine, and turned hairpin turns at ten miles a second! The acceleration would have been instantaneously deadly had those neutralizers failed. They might as well have been under a half million ton freighter as it landed, as undergo those accelerations! But in that perfectly balanced room, it was not detectable. The ship's hull was made triple strength, as were the power projectors, and the generators. It was powered like a freighter, and could reach its full speed of 1,000 miles per second at an acceleration 5,000 times that of Earth's gravity. Waterson, who weighed two hundred and ten pounds on Earth would have weighed over five tons! It meant that the Solarian fleet would no longer be handicapped by the greater flexibility of the enemy ships. The plants that had been manufacturing the machines had already closed down temporarily, while the dies for these new machines were being made. But within thirty-six hours the first of the machines was being turned out.

And now a great crew of young men were being gathered to man them. They were all volunteers. There were to be one million ships, and that meant ten million men would be needed. Only modern methods could have made that possible, but with three populations, totaling over twenty billions, a sufficient number of volunteers came forward to make the work easy. As fast as these men came to the conscription stations, they were put into the new machines. And here also modern methods had helped. The Waterson system of material energy release had been so successful, that the price of a completed car had dropped to well under one hundred dollars for the small two-man machines. And even for the interplanetary models not more than two thousand dollars needed to be paid, for the raw materials were absolutely free, the labor was mechanically reduced to almost nothing, and as the energy that drove these machines was as cheap as the raw materials, they merely charged enough to make the venture pay a decent return on investment and to pay the wages of the few machine supervisors and the office staff. Men worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant an unvaried, monotonous city. But everywhere wages were high, for wages depend, not on the amount of work men do, but on the amount of finished product they can turn out. The men accomplished more, and were paid more, but they worked less. It had taken many years to finally convince the Earth of that, but the example of American labor, with its shorter hours and higher wages was proof enough. And then the influence of the mighty energies Waterson had released made it even more apparent. Mars had already developed the system under the force of the released atomic energies.