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and maintaining the
paths for those thermal losses.
'We've had it,' Pete said.
'I'm glad you realize that,' a Voice broke in. One of the spaceships had found
the spy-ray relay
and had tapped it to find the Combat Control Center. 'I gather that you would
like to surrender?'
'I saw what you did out there to your own people.' Harv said.
'Surely...'
Pete slapped the switch of the spy-ray relay off with an angry gesture. 'Have
we got a chance?' he
asked Harv.
'I don't know.'
The spaceship captain in Mayer A had apparently had enough. They now knew
where the Combat Control
Center was, and he had decided to destroy it. The spaceship trained a blaster
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beam on the side of
the crater wall and started cutting down through the material between it and
the room where Pete
and Harv waited. A plume of superheated rock vapor shot backward out of the
hole and engulfed the
outside of the spaceship's screens. Clouds of evaporated rock came out of the
hole as the
spaceship's ravening beam cut inward. Lava was streaming out of the sides of
the hole like water.
Pete watched for a few moments, and then commented. 'If he's going to try to
dig us out by
evaporizing all the rock down to us, we've got about half an hour.'
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the spaceship put down three
pressor beams to
anchor itself, while with a tractor beam it bailed out the hole the blaster
beams had dug.
'Five minutes, maybe,' Pete said, revising his estimate.
A minute later Harv reported that all eight of his projectors were charged. 'I
can elevate four
beams high enough to hit the southern-most spaceship. Now that he's moved, I
can't bring any to
bear on the one who's cutting in.' The lights had brightened noticeably.
'I'll need another two minutes to finish charging my units,' Pete reported.
'Do we have it?'
'Yes, but not much more,' Harv answered. He picked up the portable spy-ray
unit to watch the
progress of the hole being cut.
'It's three thousand feet away!'
'Two thousand!'
'A thousand !'
'Full up!' Pete shouted with relief. 'Ready! Set! FIRE!!'
* * *
As the Black Fleet dashed past Luna communications at Copernicus Control
started to become
sporadic. A guided missile with an atomic warhead had gotten past the north
rim blaster batteries
and destroyed the lead-ins of the antenna system of Earthside Communications.
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A controller announced that Maintenance had just successfully broached one of
the auxiliary
control vaults of a south rim blaster battery and it was now manned. Too
late.
An instant later, before they could put up its screens, six black
light-cruisers flashed past in
an attack. Their beams shot down, striking the sites of both the north and
south rim implacements.
The southern batteries, unprotected by screens, were instantly volatilized
into incandescent
displays of hot vapor.
The northern batteries, prepared for battle, roared back, their violent
daggers of force as strong
as the full output of a superdreadnaught. The attacking cruisers' screens
flashed into the far
violet and they retreated behind the high point of the rim that marked the
point directly over
Copernicus' Dome.
In retaliation all six fired directly at the Rodebush-Bergenholm field
covering Copernicus. The
full output of six cruisers was directed, point blank, at a single spot.
Nothing happened. The
field quietly drank the energy poured into it.
Copernicus Control switched to small whip-antennas which telescoped out of
large concrete blocks
spotted at random around the perimeter of the slots.
'Our satellite relay system has been destroyed,' an operator reported. The
presentation in the
tank was updated using coded data from GFHQ and visual information.
The Hill on Tellus was taking a pounding such as had never before been
inflicted on a fortress
anywhere in the material universe. The flash of atomic and radiative weapons
on its surface and
the vicinity was bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye on Luna as a
flickering light. Yet
it endured!
The blaster batteries of Copernicus, not being able to target in on the black
cruisers, continued
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to pick off missiles and ships of the enemy as they passed on their way toward
Tellus. Ron Love's
boast that they commanded the region half a million miles into space was not
lightly made. More
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than one scout, and even a few light cruisers, ended in the ferocious energies
of those blaster
battery beams.
'Attention, Copernicus Control,' a voice came over one channel. 'Either you
cease your efforts or
we will start destroying the vessels in your crater.'
One of the controllers answered him. 'You would kill unarmed men, women and
children in the
commercial ships to enforce your demands?'
'When it comes to a choice between my people or yours, yes!' the answer came
back.
The ships huddled in the crater had their screens up and fully powered, but
they would have been
no match for the destructive power of six battlecruisers, and they didn't have
a beam among them
hot enough to light a firecracker. They were helpless prey to the black
fleet.
'All right, we'll stop ... for awhile,' Copernicus Control answered. Even as
the words were being
spoken, GFHQ had been notified of the enemy's presence and had in turn
detailed 12 lightcruisers
and a heavy cruiser to help defend the crater. Within a minute they arrived,
sweeping in from the
south to pin the blacks between themselves, and the north rim blaster
batteries.
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Outnumbered, the Black commander ordered his group to retreat at maximum
speed. They disappeared
at inter-stellar velocity eastward across the crater, without bothering to
fire at the commercial
ships on the ground below. The Patrol ships followed them in hot pursuit.
The battle in general now was beginning to thin out. The Patrol had destroyed
two of the Black's
three capital ships and was chasing the third. The odds were generally
lengthening from a small
superiority to a very large one. The battle continued in general until about
80 per cent of the
attacking robot-guided missiles had been destroyed, either by Patrol action or
by impacting their
target, The Hill. Nor was this the only thing The Hill had thrown at it.
Several black ships,
including an inert heavy cruiser, traveling at a significant fraction of the
speed of light, had
struck it without effect other than to spread another extremely thin layer -
itself - across a
considerable portion of the protected surface.
The rout became general as the odds increased to two-to-one and then
three-to-one. The Patrol gave
chase but was unable to catch up to any but the disabled ships, which promptly
destroyed
themselves. None of the men of the Black Fleet were taken alive. Nothing of
any use in determining
any information about the fleet, its personnel or its origin was recovered. It
would only be after
another engagement many months later that any information would be gained.
* * *
On the surface above the Moon Base twelve concealed weapon ports slid back
revealing the working
ends of laser weapons fully ten feet in diameter. Below, the television
screens went blank as high
density filters covered the camera lenses. For a moment Harv and Pete thought
something had gone
wrong, or burned out. And then the lights flickered as the weapons came on. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]