Campbell, John W Jr - The Ultimate Weapon

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The Ultimate Weapon -- John W. Campbell, Jr.

Originally published as a serial in Amazing Stories under the title of

Uncertainty.

PATROL CRUISER "I.P.-T 247" circling out toward Pluto on leisurely inspection

tour to visit the outpost miners there, was in no hurry at all as she loafed

along. Her six-man crew was taking it very easy, and easy meant two-man

watches, and low speed, to watch for the instrument panel and attend ship into

the bargain.

She was about thirty million miles off Pluto, just beginning to get in touch

with some of the larger mining stations out there, when Buck Kendall's turn at

the controls came along. Buck Kendall was one of life's little jokes. When

Nature made him, she was absentminded. Buck stood six feet two in his stocking

feet, with his usual slight stoop in operation. When he forgot, and stood up

straight, he loomed about two inches higher. He had the body and muscles of a

dock navvy, which Nature started out to make. Then she forgot and added

something of the same stuff she put in Sir Francis Drake. Maybe that made Old

Nature nervous, and she started adding different things. At any rate, Kendall,

as finally turned out, had a brain that put him in

the first rank of scientists -- when he felt like it -- the general

constitution of an ostrich and a flair for gambling.

The present position was due to such a gamble. An IP man, a friend of his, had

made the mistake of betting him a thousand dollars he wouldn't get beyond a

Captain's bars in the Patrol. Kendall had liked the idea anyway, alid adding a

bit of a bet to it made it irresistible. So, being a very particular kind of a

fool, the glorious kind which old Nature turns out now and then, he left a

five million dollar estate on Long Island, Terra, that same evening, and

joined up in the Patrol. The Sir Francis Drake strain had immediately come

forth--and Kendall was having the time of his life. In a six-man cruiser, his

real work in the Interplanetary Patrol had started. He was still in it -- but

it was his command now, and a blue circle on his left sleeve gave his

lieutenant's rank.

Buck Kendall had immediately proceeded to enlist in his command the IP man who

had made the mistaken bet, and Rad Cole was on duty with him now. Cole was the

technician of the T-247. His rank as Technical Engineer was practically

equivalent to Kendall's circle-rank, which made the two more comfortable

together.

Cole was listening carefully to the signals coming through from Pluto. "That,"

he decided, "sounds like Tad Nichols' fist. You can recognize that broken-down

truck-horse trot of his on the key as far away as you can hear it."

"Is that what it is?" sighed Buck. "I thought it was static mushing him at

first. What's he like?"

"Like all the other damn fools who come out two billion miles to scratch rock,

as if there weren't

enough already on the inner planets. He's got a rich platinum property. Sells

ninety percent of his output to buy his power, and the other eleven percent

for his clothes and food."

"He must be an efficient miner," suggested JCen-dall, "to maintain 101%

production like that."

"No, but his bank account is. He's figured out that's the most economic level

of production. If he produces less, he won't be able to pay for his heating

power, and if he produces more, his operation power will burn up his bank

account too fast."

"Hmmm -- sensible way to- figure. A man after my own heart. How does he plan

to restock his bank account?"

"By mining on Mercury. He does it regularly -- sort of a commuter. Out here

his power bills eat it up. On Mercury he goes in for potassium, and sells the

power he collects in cooling his dome, of course. He's a good miner, and the

old fool can make money down there." Like any really skilled operator, Cole

had been sending Morse messages while he talked. Now he sat quietly waiting

for the reply, glancing at the chronometer.

"I take it he's not after money -- just after fun," suggested Buck.

"Oh, no. He's after money," replied Cole gravely. "You ask him -- he's going

to make, his eternal fortune yet by striking a real bed of jovium, and then

he'll retire."

"Oh, .one of that kind."

"They all are," Cole laughed. "Eternal hope, and the rest of it." He listened

a moment and went on. "But old Nichols is a first-grade engineer. He wouldn't

be able to remake that bankroll every time

if he wasn't. You'll see his Dome out there on Pluto

-- it's always the best on the planet. Tip-top shape. And he's a bit of an

experimenter too.' Ah -- he's with us." '

Nichols' ragged signals were coming through -- or pounding through. They were

worse than usual, and at first Kendall and Cole couldn't make them out. Then

finally they got them in bursts. The man was excited, and his bad key-work

made it worse. " -- Randing stopped. They got him I think. He said

-- th -- ship as big -- a -- nsport. Said it wa -- eaded my -- ay. Neutrons --

on instruments -- he's coming over the horizon -- it's huge -- war ship I

think -- register -- instru -- neutrons -- ." Abruptly the signals were

blanked out completely.

Cole and Kendall sat frozen and stiff. Each looked at the other abruptly, then

Kendall moved. From' the receiver, he ripped out the recording coil, and

instantly jammed it into the analyzer. He started it through once, then again,

then again, at different tone settings, till he found a very shrill whine that

seemed to clear up most of Nichols' bad key work. "T-247 -- T-247 - Emergency.

Emergency. Randing reports the -- over his horizon. Huge -- ip -- reign

manufacture. . Almost spherical. Randing's stopped. They got him I think. He

said the ship was as big-as a transport. Said it was headed my way. Neutrons -

- ont -- gister -- instruments. I think -- is h -- he's coming over the

horizon. It's huge, and a war ship I think -- register -- instruments --

neutrons."

Kendall's finger stabbed out at a button. Instantly the noise of the other

men, wakened abruptly by

the mild shocks, came from behind. Kendall swung to the controls, and Cole

raced back to the engine room. The hundred foot ship shot suddenly forward

under the thrust of her tail ion-rockets. A blue-red cloud formed slowly

behind her and expanded. Talbot appeared, and silently took her over from

Kendall. "Stations, men," snapped Kendall. "Emergency call from a miner of

Pluto reporting a large armed vessel which attacked them." Kendall swung back,

and eased himself against the thrusting acceleration of the overpowered little

ship, toward the engine room. Cole was bending over his apparatus, making

careful check-ups, closing weapon - circuits. No window gave view of space

here; on the left was the tiny tender's pocket, on the right, above and below,

the great water tanks that fed the ion rockets, behind the rockets themselves.

The tungsten metal walls were cold and gray under the ship lights; the hunched

bulks of the apparatus crowded the tiny room. Gigantic racked accumulators

huddled in the corners. Martin and Garnet swung into position in the fighting-

tanks just ahead of the power rooms; Canning slid rapidly through the engine

room, oozed through a tiny door, and took up his position in the stern-

chamber, seated half-over the great ion-rocket sheath. .

"Ready in positions, Captain Kendall," called the war-pilot as the little

green lights appeared on his board.

"Test discharges on maximum," ordered Kendall. He turned to Cole. "You start

the automatic key?"

"Right, Captain."

"All shipshape?"

"Right as can be. Accumulators at thirty-seven per cent, thanks to the loaf

out here. They ought to pick up our signal back on Jupiter, he's nearest now.

The station on Europa will get it."

"Talbot -- we are only to investigate, if the ship is as reported. Have you

seen any signs of her?"

"No sir, and the signals are blank."

"I'll work from here." Kendall took his position at the commanding control.

Cole made way for him, and moved to the power board. One by one he tested the

automatic doors, the pressure bulkheads. Kendall watched the instruments as

one after another of the weapons were tested on momentary full discharge --

titantic flames of five million volt protons. Then the ship thudded to the

chatter of the Garnell rifles.

Tensely the men watched the planet ahead, white, yet barely visible in the

weak sunlight so far out. It was swimming slowly nearer as the tiny ship

gathered speed.

Kendall cast a glance over his detector-instruments. The radio network was

undisturbed, the magnetic and electric fields recognized only the slight

disturbances occasioned by the planet itself. There was nothing, noth --

Five hundred miles away,-a gigantic ship came into instantaneous being.

Simultaneously, and instantaneously, the various detector systems howled their

warnings. Kendall gasped as the thing appeared on his view screen, with the

scale-lines below. The scale must be cock-eyed. They said the ship was fifteen

hundred feet in diameter, and two thousand long!

"Retreat," ordered Kendall, "at maximum, acceleration."

Talbot was already acting. The gyroscopes hummed in their castings, and the

motors creaked. The T-247 spun on her axis, and abruptly the acceleration

built up as the ion-rockets began to shudder. A faint smell of "heat" began to

creep out of the converter. Immense "weight" built up, and pressed the men

into their specially designed seats --

The gigantic ship across, the way turned slowly, and seemed to stare at the T-

247. Then it darted toward them at incredible speed till the poor little T-247

seemed to be standing still, as sailors say. The stranger was so gigantic now,

the screens could not show all of him.

"God, Buck -- he's going to take us!"

Simultaneously, the T-247 rolled, and from her broke every possible stream of

destruction. The ion-rocket flames swirled abruptly toward her, the proton-

guns whined their song of death in their housings,, and the heavy pounding

shudder of the Garnell guns racked the ship.

Strangely, Kendall suddenly noticed, there was a stillness in the ship. The

guns and the rays were still going -- but the little human sounds seemed

abruptly gone. '

"Talbot -- Garnet -- " Only silence answered him. Cole looked across at him in

sudden white-faced amazement.

"They're gone -- "'gasped Cole.

Kendall stood paralyzed for thirty seconds. Then suddenly he seemed to come to

life. "Neutrons! Neutrons -- and water tanks! Old Nichols was right --"

He turned to his friend. "Cole -- the tender -- quick." He darted a glance at

the screen. The giant ship still lay alongside. A wash of ions was curling

around her, splitting, and passing on. The pinprick explosions of the Garnell

shells dotted space around her -- but never on her.

Cole was already racing for the tender lock. In an instant Kendall piled in

after him. The tiny ship, scarcely ten feet long, was powered for flights of

only two hours acceleration, and had oxygen tor but twenty-four hours for six

men, seventy-two hours for two men -- maybe. The heavy door was slammed shut

behind them, as Cole seated himself at the panel. He depressed a lever, and a

sudden smooth push shot them away from the T-247.

"DON'T!" called Kendall sharply as Cole reached for the ion-rocket control.

"Douse those lights!" The ship was dark in dark space. The lighted hull of the

T-247 drifted away from the little tender -- further and further till the

giant ship on the far side became visible.

"Not a light -- not a sign of fields in operation." Kendall said,

unconsciously speaking softly. "This thing is so tiny, that it may escape

their observation in the fields of the T-247 and Pluto down there. It's our

only hope."

"What happened? How in the name of the planets did they kill those men without

a sound, without a flash, and without even warning us, or injuring us?"

"Neutrons -- don't you see?"

"Frankly, I don't. I'm no scientist -- merely ,a technician. Neutrons aren't

used in any process I've run across."

"Well, remember they're uncharged, tiny things.

Small as protons, but without electric field. The result is they pass right

through an ordinary atom without being stopped unless they make a direct hit.

Tungsten, while it has a beautifully high melting point, is mostly open space,

and a neutron just sails right through it, or any heavy atom. Light atoms stop

neutrons better -- there's less open space in 'em. Hydrogen is best. Well -- a

man is made up mostly of light elements, and a man stops those neutrons -- it

isn't surprising it killed those other fellows invisibly, and without a

sound."

"You mean they bathed that ship in neutrons?"

"Shot it full of 'em. Just like our proton guns, only sending neutrons."

"Well, why weren't we killed too?"

"Water stops neutrons," Kendall said. "Figure it out."

"The rocket-water tanks -- all around us! Great masses' of water -- " gasped

Cole. "That saved us?"

"Right. I wonder if they've spotted us."

The stranger ship was moving slowly in relation to the T-247. Suddenly the

motion changed, the stranger spun -- and a giant lock appeared in her side,

opened. The T-247 began to move, floated more and more rapidly straight for

the lock. Her various weapons had stopped operating now, the hoppers of the

Garnell guns exhausted, the charge of the accumulators aboard the ship down so

low the proton guns had died out.

"Lord -- they're taking the whole ship!"

"Say -- Cole, is that any ship you ever heard of before? / don't think that's

just a pirate!"

"Not a pirate -- what then?"

"How'd he get inside our detector screens so fast? Watch -- he'll either

leave, or come after us -- " The T-247 had settled inside the lock now, and

the great metal door closed after it. The whole patrol ship had been swallowed

by a giant. Kendall was sketching swiftly on a notebook, watching the vast

ship closely, putting down a record of its lines, and formation. He glanced up

at it, and then down for a few more lines, and up at it --

The stranger ship abruptly dwindled. It dwindled with incredible speed,

rushing off along the line of sight at an impossible velocity, and abruptly

clicking out of sight, like an image on a movie-film that has been cut, and

repaired after the scene that showed the final disappearance.

"Cole -- Cole -- did you get that? Did you see -- do you understand what

happened?" Kendall was excitedly shouting now.

"He missed us," Cole sighed. "It's a wonder -- hanging out here in space, with

the protector of the T-247's fields gone."

"No, no, you asteroid -- that's not it. He went off faster than light

itself!^'

"Eh-what? Faster than light? That can't be done-"

"He did it, I know he did. That's how he got inside our screens. He came

inside faster than the warning message could relay back the information.

Didn't you see him accelerate to an impossible speed in an impossible time?

Didn't you see how he just vanished as he exceeded the speed of lightj and

stopped reflecting it? That ship was no ship of this solar system!"

"Where did he come from then?"

"God only knows, but it's a long, long way off."

THE IP-M-122 picked them up. The M-122 got out there two days later, in

response to the calls the T-247 had sent out. As soon as she got within ten

million miles of the little tender, she began getting Cole's signals, and

within twelve hours had reached the tiny thing, located it, and picked it up.

Captain Jim Warren was in command, one of the old school commanders of the IP.

He listened to Kendall's report, listened to Cole's tale -- and radioed back a

report of his own. Space pirates in a large ship had attacked the T-247, he

said, and carried it away. He advised a close watch. On Pluto, his

investigations disclosed nothing more than the fact that three mines had been

raided, all platinum supplies taken, and the records and machinery removed.

The M-122 was a fifty man patrol cruiser, and Warren felt sure he could handle

the menace alone, and hung around for over two weeks looking for it. He saw

nothing, and no further reports came of attack. Again and again, Kendall tried

to convince him

this ship he was hunting was no mere space pirate, and again and again Warren

grunted, and went on his way. He would not send in any report Kendall made

out, because to do so would add his endorsement to that report. He would not

take Kendall back, though that was well within, his authority.

In fact, it was a full month before Kendall again set foot on any of the Minor

Planets, and then it was Mars, the base of the M-122. Kendall, and Cole took

passage immediately on an IP supply ship, and landed in New York six days

later. At once, Kendall headed for Commander McLaurin's office. Buck Kendall;

lieutenant of the IP, found he would have to make regular application to see

McLaurin through a dozen intermediate officers.

By this time, Kendall was savagely determined to see McLaurin himself, and see

him in the least possible time. Cole, too, was beginning to believe in

Kendall's assertion of the stranger ship's extra-systemic origin. As yet

neither could understand the strange actions of the machine, its attack on the

Pluto mines, and the capture and theft of a patrol ship.

"There is," said Kendall angrily, "just one way to see McLaurin and see him

quick. And, by God, I'm going to. Will you resign with me, Cole? I'll see him

within a week then, I'll bet."

For a minute, Cole hesitated. Then he shook hands with his friends. "Today!"

And that day it was. They resigned, together. Immediately, Buck Kendall got

the machinery in motion for an interview, working now from the outside,

pulling the strings with the weight of a hundred million dollar fortune. Even

the IP officers had to pay a bit of

attention when Bernard Kendall, multi-millionaire began talking and demanding

things. Within a week, Kendall did see McLaurin.

At that time, McLaurin was fifty-three years old, his crisp hair still black

as space, with scarcely a touch of the gray that appears in his more recent

photographs. He stood six feet tall, a broad-shouldered, powerful man, his

face grave with lines of intelligence and character. There was also a

permanent narrowing of the eyes, from years under the blazing sun of space.

But most of all, while those years in space had narrowed and set his eyes,

they had not narrowed and set his mind. An infinitely finer character than old

Jim Warren, his experience in space had taught him always to expect the

unexpected, to understand the incomprehensible as being part of the unknown

and incalculable properties of space and the worlds that swam in it. Besides

the fine technical education he had started with, he had acquired a liberal

education in mankind. When Buck Kendall, straight and powerful, came into his

office with Cole, he recognized in him a character that would drive steadily

and straight for its goal. Also, he recognized behind the millionaire that had

succeeded in pulling wires enough to see him, the scientist who had had more

than one paper published "in an amateur way."

"Dr. Bernard Kendall?" he asked, "rising.

"Yes, sir. Late Buck Kendall, lieutenant of the IP. I quit and got Cole here

to quit with me, so we could see you."

"Unusual tactics. I've had several men join up to get an interview with me."

McLaurin smiled.

"Yes, I can imagine that, but we had to see you in a hurry. A hidebound old

rapscallion by the name of Jim Warren picked us up out by Pluto, floating

around in a six-man tender. We made some reports to him, but he wouldn't

believe, and he wouldn't " send them through -- so we had to send ourselves

through. Sir, this system is about to be attacked by some extra-systemic race.

The IP-T-247 was so attacked, her crew killed off, and the ship itself carried

away."

"I got the report Captain Jim Warren sent through, stating it was a gang of

space pirates. Now what makes you believe otherwise?"

"That ship that attacked us, attacked with a neutron gun, a gun that shot

neutrons through the hull of our ship as easily as protons pass through open

space. Those neutrons killed off four of the crew, and spared us only because

we happened to be behind the water tanks. Masses of hydrogen will ^top

neutrons, so we lived, and escaped in the tender. The little tender,

lightless, escaped their observation, and we were picked up. Now, when the 247

had been picked up, and locked into their ship, that ship started

accelerating. It accelerated so fast along my line of sight that it just

dwindled, and -- vanished. It didn't vanish in distance, it vanished because

it exceeded the speed of light."

"Isn't that impossible?"

"Not at all. It can be done -- if you can find some way of escaping from this

space to do it. Now if you could cut across through_a higher dimension, your

projection in this dimension might easily exceed the speed of light. For

instance, if I could cut directly through the earth, at a speed of one

thousand miles

an hour, my projection on the surface would go twelve thousand miles while I

was going eight. Similar, if you could cut through the four dimensional space

instead of following its surface, you'd attain a speed greater than light."

"Might it not still be a space pirate? That's a lot easier to believe, even

allowing your statement that he exceeded the speed of light."

"If you invented a neutron gun which could kill through tungsten walls without

injuring anything within, a system of accelerating a ship that didn't affect

the inhabitants of that ship, and a means of exceeding the speed of light, all

within a few months of each other, would you become a pirate? I wouldn't, and

I don't think any one else would. A pirate is a man who seeks adventure and

relief from work. Given a means of exceeding the speed of light, I'd get all

the adventure I -wanted investigating other "placets. If I didn't have a cent

before, I'd have relief from work by selling it for a few hundred millions --

and I'd sell it mighty easily too, for an invention like that is Worth an

incalculable sum. Tie to that the value of compensated acceleration, and no

man's going to turn pirate. He can make more millions selling his inventions

than he can make thousands turning pirate with them. So who'd turn pirate?"

"Right." McLaurin nodded. "I see your point. Now before I'd accept your

statements in re the 'speed of light' thing, I'd Want opinions from some IP

physicists."

"Then let's have a conference, because something's got to be done soon. I

don't know why we haven't heard further from that fellow."

"Privately -- we have," McLaurin said in a slightly worried tone. "He was

detected by the instruments of every IP observatory I suspect. We got the

reports but didn't know what to make of them. They indicated so many funny

things, they were sent in as accidental misreadings of the instruments. But

since all the observatories reported them, similar misreadings, at about the

same times, that is with variations of only a few hours, we thought something

must have been up. The only thing was the phenomena were reported

progressively from Pluto to Neptune, clear across the solar system; in a

definite progression, but at a velocity of crossing that didn't tie in with

any conceivable force. They crossed- faster than the velocity of light. That

ship must have spent about half an hour off each planet before passing on to

the next. And, accepting your faster-than-light explanation, we can understand

it."

"Then I think you have proof." "If we have what would you do about it?" "Get

to work on those 'misreadings' of the instruments for one thing, and for a

second, and more important, line every IP ship with paraffin blocks six inches

thick." "Paraffin - why?"

"The easiest form of hydrogen to get. You can't use solid hydrogen, because

that melts too easily. Water can be turned into steam too easily, and requires

more work.' Paraffin is a solid that's largely hydrogen. That's what they've

always used on neutrons since they discovered them. Confine your paraffin

between tungsten walls, and you'll stop the secondary protons as well as the

neutrons."

"Hmmm -- I suppose so. How about seeing t^iose physicists?"

"I'd like to see them today, sir. The sooner you get started on this work, the

better it will be for the IP."

"Having seen me, will you join up in the IP again?" asked McLaurin.

"No, sir, I don't think I will. I have another field you know, in which I may

be more useful. Cole here's a better technician than fighter -- and a darned

good fighter, too -- and I think that an inexperienced space-captain is a lot

less useful than a second-rate physicist at work in a laboratory. If we hope

to get anywhere, or for that matter, I suspect, stay anywhere, we'll have to

do a lot of research pretty promptly."

"What's your explanation of that ship?"

"One of two things: an inventor of some other system trying out his latest

toy, or an expedition sent out by a planetary government for exploration. I

favor the latter for two reasons: .that ship was big. No inventor would build

a thing that size, requiring a crew of several hundred men to try out his

invention. A government would build just about that if they wanted to send out

an expedition. If it were an inventor, he'd be interested in meeting other

people, to see what they had in the way of science, and probably he'd want to

do it in a peaceable way. So I think it's a government ship, and an unfriendly

government. They sent that ship out either for scientific research, for trade

research and exploration, or for acquisitive exploration. If they were out for

scientific research, they'd proceed as would the inventor, to establish

friendly com-

munication. If they were out for trade, the same would apply. If they were out

for acquisitive exploration, they'd investigate the planets, the sun, the

people, only to the extent of learning how best to overcome them. They'd want

to get a sample of our people, and a sample of our weapons. They'd want

samples of our machinery, our literature and our technology. That's exactly

what that ship got.

"Somebody, somewhere out there in space, either doesn't like their home, or

wants more home. They've been out looking for one. I'll bet they sent out

hundreds of expeditions to thousands of nearby stars, gradually going further

and further, seeking a planetary system. This is probably the one and only one

they found. It's a good one too. It has planets at all temperatures, of all

sizes. It is a fairly compact one, it has a stable sun that will last far

longer than any race can hope to."

"Hmmm -- how can there be good and bad planetary systems?" asked McLaurin.

"I'd never thought of that."

Kendall laughed. "Mighty easy.* How'd you like to live on a planet of a Cephid

Variable? Pleasant situation, with the radiafion flaring up and down. How'd

you like to live on a planet of Antares? That blasted sun is so big, to have a

comfortable planet you'd have to be at least ten billion miles out. Then if

you had an interplanetary commerce, you'd have to struggle with orbits tens of

billions of miles across instead of mere millions. Further, you'd have a sun

so blasted big, it would taken an impossible amount of energy to lift the ship

up from one planet to another. If your trip was, say, twenty billions of miles

to the next planet, you'd be fighting

a gravity as bad as the solar gravity at earth here all the way -- no decline

with a little distance like that."

-'H-m-m-m -- quite true. Then I should say that Mira would take the prize.

It's a red giant, and it's an irregular variable. The sunlight there would be

as unstable as the weather in New England. It's almost as big as Antares, and

it won't hold still. Now that would make a bad planetary system."

"It would!" Kendall laughed. But as we know -- he laughed too soon, and he

shouldn't have used the conditional. He should have said, "It doesl"

Ill

GRESTH GKAE, Commander of Expeditionary Force 93, of the Planet Sthor, was

returning homeward with joyful mind. In the lock of his great ship, lay the T-

247. In her cargo holds lay various items of machinery, mining supplies,

foods, and records. And in " her log books lay the records of many readings on

the nine larger planets of a highly satisfactory planetary system.

Gresth Gkae had spent no less than three ultra-wearing years going from one

sun to another in a definitely mapped out section of space. He had

investigated only eleven stars in that time, eleven stars, progressively

further from the titanic red-flaming sun he knew as "the" sun. He knew it as

"the" sun, and had several other appellations for it. Mira was so-named by

Earthmen because it was indeed a "wonder" star, in Latin, mirare means "to

wonder." Irregularly, and for no apparent reason it would change its rate of

radiation. So far as those inhabitants of Sthor and her sister world Asthor

knew, there was no reason. It just did it. Perhaps with malicious intent to be

annoying. If so, it was 'exceptionally sue-

cessful. Sthor and Asthor experienced, periodically, a young ice age. When

Mira decided to take a rest, Sthor and Asthor froze up, from the poles most of

the way to the equators. Then Mira would stretch herself a little, move about

restlessly and Sthor and Asthor would become uninhabitably hot, anywhere

within twenty degrees of the equator.

Those Sthorian people had evolved in a way that made the conditions endurable

for savage or uncivilized people, but when a scientific civilization with a

well-ordered mode of existence tried to establish itself, Mira was all sorts

of a*nuisance.

Gresth Gkae was a peculiar individual to human ways of thinking. He stood some

seven feet tall, on his strange, double-kneed. legs and his four toed feet.

His body was covered with little, short feather-like things that moved^now

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摘要：

TheUltimateWeapon--JohnW.Campbell,Jr.OriginallypublishedasaserialinAmazingStoriesunderthetitleofUncertainty.IPATROLCRUISER"I.P.-T247"circlingouttowardPlutoonleisurelyinspectiontourtovisittheoutpostminersthere,wasinnohurryatallassheloafedalong.Hersix-mancrewwastakingitveryeasy,andeasymeanttwo-manwatc...

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Campbell, John W Jr - The Ultimate Weapon

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