Chapter I: Part 1

The Metal Horde

By John W. Campbell, Jr.

_Author of "When the Atoms Failed."_

Illustrated by DE PAUW

_What with calculating machines and robots and now perhaps
even mechanical airplane pilots, there seems no limit to the
possibilities in the realm of working machinery. We have
seismographs that can locate the place of distant earthquakes,
and machines that can solve, in a comparatively short period,
problems in the higher calculus that would otherwise take brilliant
mathematicians an endless time to do. It seems to us quite logical
that machines might some day, perhaps in the distant future, be
developed to solve for our scientists now apparently insoluble
problems. Or they might even be made to state their own problems
and work them out--in other words, it might some day be possible
to have a machine with almost a working brain. According to our
author, this will be possible and his final explanation of his idea
is exceedingly clever and novel. There is no question Mr. Campbell
knows his science and he has by this time proved his ability to
weave a great deal of sound science into an absorbing scientific
fiction story of exceeding plausibility._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories April 1930.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It would seem lack of generalship that permitted them to be discovered so soon, for had we not picked up those signals from the ether we should not have received that warning that meant so much to us, and it might well have been that this system would have acquired a new population. For it would have needed but little to shift the balance the other way! Once I watched Steven Waterson save the civilization of the Earth, but now I saw him in a greater rôle, for it was he who made possible the defeat of the Sirians. But even had his brilliant mind succeeded in working out the problem of the de-activating field without the precious hours gained by that warning, many millions more would have died before they could have escaped from Mars.

I was in his laboratory at the time he received the messages from the System government telling the import of those strange tone-signals out there in space. I seem fated to be with that man every time some great event breaks on the System. I was with him when Dr. Downey announced his discovery of the secret of old age--or, better, its prevention. Waterson was forty-two now, in years, but in body he was still twenty-eight for it was late in 1947 that he had taken Dr. Downey's treatment.

Those strange tone-signals had been heard faintly for days, but it was not until July 8th, 1961, that they were located in space, and then man began to realize something of the message they might bear.

Waterson asked me to accompany him to the System Capital on Venus, and I was present at that first Cabinet meeting, and at each succeeding meeting. Again I was close to the facts--and again Waterson has asked me to write a chronicle of that terrible War.

It was not till the signals had definitely been located as originating far out in space that man began to take more than a mildly curious interest in them. They were coming from the Metal Horde that was even then sweeping across space at a thousand miles a second to the planets ahead.

Their goal of ages was in sight. Sixteen hundred years of ceaseless rushing flight had at last brought them near.

When our ancestors were beginning to grumble under their Roman lords, in the time of Horlak San, when his mighty armies were sweeping their way across Mars under the newly developed heat rays, spreading death and civilization at one time, that menace started on its expedition.

When the Normans invaded England, when the mighty empire that the San dynasty had maintained over all Mars was crumbling, that journey was half done.

When Columbus first set foot on the shores of America, when Koral Nas formed the great union of the federated nations of Mars, that trip was three-quarters done.

But it was seven-eighths completed when Mars developed the first crude atomic engines, and when Priestly of England discovered oxygen. And during the two centuries of flight that remained before they reached their goal, there developed on those tiny planets the instruments that were to throw that mighty force down to defeat.

But I am to tell you of that war as I saw it; we have all seen it--all too closely! It was really but a little more than a month that that Menace of Metal hung over us there on Mars, but to us it seemed years, except to the frantically working scientists, striving desperately to discover some weapon to defeat them. David Gale.

* * * * *

A tiny glistening mote in space it was, as it sped toward the shining planet before it--the rapid flight of the car aided by the gravity of Venus. The call had been urgent, and the Earth had been in superior conjunction, that meant a full twenty-hour trip, even at 1000 miles a second, but now they were approaching the planet and the pilot was losing speed as rapidly as possible. There was a limit to what he could stand, though, and it took him many thousands of miles to bring the machine down to a speed compatible with atmospheric conditions of the planet.

The air of the planet seemed thick with traffic, mighty half-million ton lift freighters and passenger ships setting out toward Earth, smaller private machines, but none were slower nor faster than the others, for all were limited only by the acceleration they could stand. There was only one speed limit, that of economical, safe operation, for with all space to move in, there was no need of speed laws. Yet it seemed impossible to make any more than two thousand miles an hour through this slow moving air traffic--then there shone a little emblem on the bow of the little iridescent metal ship, and a huge freighter swerved respectfully aside. As by magic a lane opened through the thick traffic as the sign of the System President shone out.

The little ship darted along the ground a short way, then rose vertically, only to settle lightly on the roof of the great System Capitol. Two men came out and walked quickly to the elevator entrance, where three guards, armed with disintegration ray projectors, greeted them with a stiffly military salute. The larger of the men responded with a smile, and a brief salutation in the common language of the System, for these great men were Martians, each well over eight feet tall. They entered the lift, and quickly sank down one hundred and fifty stories to the Governmental Offices. They proceeded directly to the great Cabinet chamber, down through the long halls, lined on each side by huge murals depicting scenes in the history of the three planets. Then they came to the cabinet room and entered.

Thirty-nine men were seated there now, but as the two entered, they rose, and waited for the President to be seated. The forty greatest living men were in that room that day and all worked together, for they were scientists who had learned the value of cooperation. There was no rivalry, for each was the greatest in his own field and had no aspirations toward any other branch of science. And none but conceded the power of the Presidency gladly to the greatest of them, Steven Waterson of Earth.

"Gentlemen of the Cabinet, I am beginning to believe it is time we had something added to the Constitution forbidding Members of the Cabinet to rise on the entry of the President." Waterson deeply appreciated that compliment, as they all knew, but he could not feel at home in an atmosphere of diffidence. He was a scientist, a planner, not a diplomat. "I am sorry I was forced to make you gentlemen wait for me, but as you see," he continued, pointing to the great map of the System on the ceiling of the Cabinet chamber, where the slow motion of the planets in their orbits was being accurately traced, "Earth is in superior conjunction at present, and I could not make better time.

"I see from this memorandum that has been prepared for me that Mansol Korac, Martian Astro-physicist, is to be our first speaker. I take it you have had no official discussion as yet?"

He was correct in this assumption for the men had convened shortly before at his radio announcement that he would land within an hour.

Some years before there had been some agitation to have the Cabinet meetings carried on by Radio-vision plates, but the low speed of light had made the speeches a terrible failure, as they would frequently have to wait ten or even fifteen minutes while the radio messages were reaching them. Over short distances that method was practicable, but between planets light is too slow, it cannot be used.

"Some time ago our radio engineers developed a new instrument for detecting exceptionally short waves. They really came under the category of the longer heat radiations, but were detected electrically. While experimenting with this device they have been consistently picking up signals apparently originating in free space. At first these signals were exceedingly weak, but their intensity has grown uniformly and rapidly, and from the results some amazing conclusions have been drawn.

"They are originating at some source or sources out in space in the direction of the sun Sirius. I was asked to help the radiation engineers under Horus Mal in the calculation of the Astro-physical aspect of the problem. I believe that there are some man-made vehicles out there in space sending those signals. No man of the System has ever had reason to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune for any great distance; there would be no reason for it, as none of the outer planets are habitable. The rate of increase of the signal strength, coupled with observations made from Earth, Mars and Venus, have made it evident that they are at present about one and a quarter billion miles away, but approaching us at the rate of 1000 miles a second. This means that in approximately two weeks they will reach our planets.

* * * * *

"As to their point of origin we can only make guesses really. They are coming toward us with Sirius--and thousands of other stars--at their back. Of all, Sirius is the nearest, being approximately nine light years away. This means that they must have spent at least 1600 years on that trip across space. Dr. James Downey of Earth has recently shown us how to lengthen life almost indefinitely, so the problem of old age need not be considered. A supply of air and water would, of course, be no great problem with the Waterson apparatus for electrolyzing CO back to carbon and oxygen, using atomic energy fuel. Water, of course, is merely transmuted and recombined and thus automatically purified for use. A sufficient reserve of very dense materials could easily be carried that would make up for any losses by transmutation to the necessary gases. As yet we have not been able to make foods from energy, carbon, and oxygen and hydrogen, but I believe you, Dr. Lange, have made very considerable progress along that line, have you not?"

"I intended announcing at this meeting," said Dr. Lange, "the development of a commercial method of manufacturing any one of the sugars and several proteins directly from rock or water, by a transmutation and building-up process. The method has been developed."

"Then," continued the Martian, "there would be no need of carrying any great amount of food. That problem is settled.

"As there would be no resistance encountered in space, once the machine had been accelerated to its definite speed of 1000 miles per second, on leaving Sirius it would be able to make the trip across space with no expenditure of energy, until it reached its goal and slowed down to the speed of a planet. Hence no great amount of matter-fuel would be needed to drive the machine.

"But the problem of heating seems to me to be insoluble. Interplanetary space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would be sufficient. Polished walls would reduce the radiation, but still it would be too high. I can not understand it--unless these men can endure a temperature of but twenty or thirty degrees above absolute zero--then they could make it quite readily--but two hundred and forty degrees below zero Centigrade means that air--nearly everything would be solid, except a few rare gases. No it seems impossible--yet we have the evidence! I can not understand how they have made this terrible migration, but I know that there are many different units. I believe two thousand or more was the number you mentioned Horus Mal?"

"There seem to be a very considerable number of separate signals that we can distinguish. I consider the two thousand a very conservative estimate," replied Horus Mal, the Martian radiation engineer.

"Then," continued Mansol Korac, "we must decide on some plan of meeting them."

The Martian sat down and for some time there was silence in the great hall. At last President Waterson rose slowly to his feet. His face showed his concern. In times of emergency he always felt that these men here were responsible for the welfare of the twenty billions of human beings they controlled. And he was their leader, and therefore the responsibility was his.

"Mansol Korac, could you point out to us the approximate location of the approaching ships?" asked Waterson and handed him a small hand light and pointed to the great map of the system above them.

"I cannot be very exact, Mr. President; I do not know their location very definitely, but I should say about here, proceeding thus." The dazzling beam of white light stabbed up to the ceiling high above, and a sharp circle of light a foot across appeared, just within the orbit of Uranus, but well beyond Saturn. Then it slowly moved inward toward tiny glowing Mars. They were within the Solar System, but had not yet reached the Inner Ring of planets. Doubtless they who could make a trip across the great Void had the energy of matter at their disposal, and probably the disintegration ray. They would have no difficulty with the planetoids, they could merely beam them out of existence if they came too near.

The light snapped out, and each member of the cabinet turned toward Waterson again.

"Gentlemen, we see that they are within the Solar System already and appear to be heading directly for the Inner Ring, and Mars in particular. I do not know whether they come in peace or as invaders, but I think I can reasonably say that they are probably invaders. We all agree that they have made a trip of some 1600 years' duration. We all recognize the difficulty of such a trip. There are over two thousand ships in their fleet. I would not send so large a fleet to investigate the Outer Ring, but to send that great number of ships on a mere exploration trip of 1600 years--I do not think it is consistent. Then, too, we must allow them a life span of over three thousand years if we are going to admit that this fleet is for exploration, for it would be three thousand two hundred years before they could bring back news of their trip. In the meantime they might well have been wiped out by some stellar catastrophe, or they might have developed means of seeing us directly in nine years, the time light takes for the trip. Much as we would prefer peace, I fear we must prepare for war. But we can always go out to meet them peacefully, in a great battle fleet. That might convince them that it is better to deal peaceably with us and it would at least be a protection. I suggest that we have a discussion on this, and take a vote."

But there was no discussion, and the vote was unanimous, for the President's suggestion was the logical thing. They had to be prepared for either peace or war.

Then came the discussion of weapons. There was pitifully little to discuss. The interplanetary patrol fleet was a mere police force, designed to destroy meteors, turn comets or asteroids. There was no real naval fleet. But mechanical devices had reached a great peak of perfection and the little space ships were so cheap, so easily operated, and so eminently safe, that nearly every family had several, and new ones were always in demand. There were mighty factories to meet this demand. Twenty billion people can absorb a tremendous number of machines. That was the greatest protection we had, and it was that quantity production, developed by the American, Ford, that made Waterson's campaign possible. But we were to learn much of quantity production methods before that war was over!

* * * * *

Orders were issued that evening to all the great plants over all three planets to begin work on a great quantity of ten-man-high speed ships. They were to be arranged with mountings for machine guns firing explosive bullets loaded with material explosive, each one equal to 100 tons of the old fashioned Dynamite, with special mountings for Dis ray machines. The disintegration ray machinery was to be built by the companies employed ordinarily in making private power plants, hand lights, and the jumping belts. These belts had small projectors that threw a directional beam of force that tended to deform the curvature of space, at that point, and the result was a force that pulled the projector forward, for the space before it acted like a spring. If a magnet be held near a steel watch spring, the spring will bend, but it will try to straighten out and pull the magnet forward. If the magnet could pass through the spring it would progress, as the space curver apparatus was pulled through space. This was the principle of every ship now built, from these tiny two-kilogram (nearly five pounds) machines capable of lifting a man into the air, to the titanic new passenger-freight liners carrying as high as three quarters of a million tons.

The principle of the disintegration ray was not greatly different, and so the machines designed for turning these out in quantities were used to make the Dis ray apparatus with no great changes.

The heat ray projectors were made in quantities for every purpose, they were used for cooking, for welding metals, for warming the home, for melting down cliffs to make way for a building or a tunnel for water, for heating the mighty space ships, for anything to which heat might be applied to advantage. These would make very effective weapons but for the fact that heat rays could be reflected. They would bounce off the car of the enemy without doing any damage if it were polished, as no doubt it would be.

Great liners of space were requisitioned and fitted with Dis rays, and with mighty attractor beam apparatus that would grip and hold anything short of another liner. Each of the ten-man-cruisers had a smaller attractor beam by which they could grip an adversary and hold to his tail with the tenacious grip of a bulldog and yet not weary the pilot with violent movement. These ships were exceedingly powerful, and their speed was limited only by the accelerations the passengers could stand.

But all the scientists of the System were working desperately to design some new weapon, some new machine that was a little faster, a little more powerful; although with resistance in space and with the tremendous energies of matter at their disposal, there was little lack of power as far as the speed of the ships were concerned. Ten thousand times more powerful than the titanic energies of atoms, this energy had defeated the Martians that memorable day in May, 1947, and it was a full ten billion times more powerful than the energies of coal, of oil, of the fuels man had known before that day. But they needed a machine that could project the Dis ray farther. Twenty-five miles was the limit, beyond that the tremendous electrical field that was used to direct it must be built up to so high a voltage that there was no practical way of insulating it. They must be satisfied with the twenty-five mile range--but the scientists were working at increasing the range.

They had two weeks before the Sirians would reach Mars, and in those two weeks much was done. There was a very carefully laid out system in all notices; the absolute truth was laid before the public, but there was also laid before them the evidences of Man's power. There were no panics. This was no weird thing to them, the landing of a fleet from another world; it was as commonplace to them as the landing of a fleet from the other side of the ocean had been a generation ago. The element of the unfamiliar was gone, and with it had gone the element that produces panic, that reduces the efficiency of a nation or of a System.

New production machines had to be built, new designs worked out, new dies cut, but it was done with the quickness that a generation of mass production had made possible, it was not new to them, this change of design overnight.

It required most of those two precious weeks to get the great machines working once more at their tasks, but at last a steady stream of ten-man cruisers was being poured out, 5000 an hour, night and day, from the factories of three planets. But there was only one day to work before the Invaders would reach Mars, and the fleet was gathered, 120,000 ten-man ships, manned by the volunteers of three worlds.

But in the meantime Waterson had had built for himself a ten-man ship with triple strength of walls, and triple power plant installation, and an extra energy generator. He was experimenting with it, no one knew on what.

At last the invaders were seen. Far out in their course the scouts had met them. Those scouts were destroyed, without provocation; they did not even have time to finish their reports, but we learned enough.

Mars was a deserted planet now. All its population had moved to the other worlds. Most of them moved to Earth, on the other side of the sun. Only the workers in the great factories remained. They were not compelled to. They were told of the danger of their position, but those factories could contribute 1500 ships an hour, and they were manned. The fleet had gathered on Mars, awaiting the news of the Sirians, when the report of the scouts was flashed across the ether.

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!

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.

High wages and cheap machines had meant that everyone owned one. And so absolutely safe were they that they commanded perfect confidence. This had been a big factor in the making of this mighty fleet. Everyone knew how to operate the machines, so it was easy to fill the places on the machines with pilots.

Nevertheless, special training was necessary to overcome the caution against quick turns that long experience had instilled in them all. Each accepted applicant was taken up in one of the new machines, and given a breath-taking ride--a ride that consisted in diving toward the Earth with terrific sudden acceleration. Then, just when the student felt certain they would crash and become a mass of molten metal, the ship was brought up, not a mile from the ground, to settle gently; then, when they almost touched the ground, they leapt into the air again with an acceleration that shot them out of the atmosphere with the velocity of a meteor, while the outer wall of tungsto-iridium alloy glowed cherry red. Then came sharp turns at ten or twenty miles a second, till at last the students no longer gripped the arms of their seats in anticipation of a sudden acceleration. Then they were taken down and given a ship to experiment with.

But none of these men had ever handled a weapon of the sort they were to use, so mimic battle practice was held, with the glowing rays of a harmless ionizing beam instead of the deadly Dis rays.

* * * * *

Daily reports were coming from the Martian scouts as time went on. The Sirians, too, had decided to do some fleet building, for nearly three-quarters of their fleet had been destroyed. The production rate of man's factories, 120,000 a day, had gained a slight lead. It would require ten days before a fleet of a million could leave for Mars with a home guard of two-hundred thousand ships.

The destruction of the Martian plants had lowered the production rate to about 3,500 an hour, but shops put up rapidly on Earth and Venus had quickly brought the production-rate back, and it would be nearer 7,000 an hour by the time the last of the fleet had been finished.

The spinning sphere formation of the Sirians had been almost invulnerable, and an exceedingly destructive formation. The Solarians had chosen several thousand of their crack pilots to practice this maneuver, but despite almost constant practice during the entire ten days, it was a miserable failure as soon as they tried to progress. Standing motionless it was a very effective procedure, but the spinning column was decided on as more effective as long as they had no ship to protect. There were twenty groups that practiced that maneuver.

And then Waterson announced that an associate of his, working in his laboratory, had developed a method for using a triple electrical field to direct the Dis ray, making possible a ray with a range of over sixty miles. This would be absolutely fatal to the spinning sphere system of the Sirians. The Sirians very evidently did not know how to project the Dis ray any further than twenty-five miles. The ability to stand off and hit them would break down the sphere of Dis rays very quickly. There was only one objection. The rays were very powerful, so powerful that they required triple power generators, but the special field of electrical force was the worst problem. The field could not be made sufficiently strong if a single layer of the force was used, but the invention of a method to back up the first with two other layers of equal voltage, thus getting nearly three times the effect without exceeding the capacity of the insulation, had made the new machine possible. This special field was produced by circularly moving cathode rays, or exceedingly high velocity electrons, and therefore could be produced only by atomic methods. This meant ten thousand times the amount of fuel a similarly powered material engine would have required, but material energy of course yields only wave motions of the transient or unstatic type, a type that cannot stand still. Atomic energy can yield static-waves as well as unstatic; the electron can stand still, and is a perfect example of the stationary wave.

These limitations, in turn, meant that a tremendous weight of equipment was needed. And a corresponding great volume of space was required. In the end they had to use specially reinforced freighters to carry the great projectors, each of which could carry but two projectors. Due to their long range, however, the ships were at least self-protecting. There was not time to make and equip more than twenty-eight of these ships before the fleet was scheduled to start. They were completed ahead of time. Some of their trial trips more than fulfilled the best hopes of the inventor. Dr. William Carson, the physicist who developed it insisted that it was really Dr. Waterson's suggestions that made the thing possible.

We had learned something of spatial warfare formations from the Sirians. Now we were to learn a bit of the strategy of spatial warfare.

* * * * *

The Solarian fleet sailed for Mars on the fifteenth of August, 1961. They were a scant twenty million miles from their goal when a report came from a scout that something was happening down in the Sirian camp. Almost immediately after that the Sirians flooded our entire system with so terrific a barrage of radio frequency static that communication was impossible. They could not transmit from Earth to Venus, and the communication was very poor even from one side of Earth to the other, despite the fact that over a half billion kilowatts were used. So intense was this barrage, that if two of the torpedo-ships near the sending apparatus came within twenty or thirty feet of each other, great crashing sparks leapt across, and instantly they were fused. Scouts saw this happen twice.

The Solarian fleet continued on for Mars. They should cover the remaining distance--twenty million miles--in five hours by pressing the ships a little, although higher speeds made the rate of approach of asteroids so great that they frequently could not be detected before they collided with the ships.