Leinster, Murray - Invaders of Space

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Murray Leinster

INVADERS OF SPACE

TANDEM SCI-FI

T.201

First published in Great Britain by

Universal-Tandem Publishing Company Ltd. 1968

Tandem, 33 Beauchamp Place, London SW3

CHAPTER ONE

OUTSIDE the control building, the spaceport lights seemed to rival the stars in number, and to

outshine them in brightness. There was a good two square miles of black tarmac to be seen

from the office window, reflecting the lights in wavery streaks of brightness. But there was no

activity anywhere. Horn, who had no business being in the control room of the spaceport,

listened to a faint buzzing, moaning sound that came out of a loudspeaker overhead. It came

from a space tramp, the Theban, coming down out of the night on emergency-landing status.

The landing-grid operator, whose proper empire this control room was, leaned back in a

tilting chair and negligently watched certain dials and a screen on which a single blurry bright

speck showed. The speck was the Theban, not yet sighted, but on the way to be brought to

ground in the Formalhaut spaceport. The buzzing, moaning sound was not a comfortable one to

hear.

"That's a nasty sort of noise," Horn commented. "The engines that are making it could conk

out any second. Lucky they got this far."

The operator nodded and said negligently, "I'll get 'em down." His manner was one of total

leisure and indifference, but he kept the dials on the wall before him under constant watch.

Once he reached over and adjusted some control. The buzzing moan grew louder. With the

increased volume, other noises could be heard behind it. The buzzing came from a pick-up

microphone in the ship's control room somewhere out in space. Sounds of movement could be

heard: a growling voice; another voice, answering truculently. The growling voice swore.

"Calling ground!" it rasped a moment later. "Calling ground! Where's your beam? Do you

want us banging around up here for ever? Where's your beam?"

The operator said without haste. "You're heading right into it. But you're low and in the

planet's shadow. If you weren't in such a hurry -"

The growling voice rasped, "But we are in a hurry! How about that repair job we need?"

"I told you," said the grid operator, "there's nothing doing in the repair shop until morning

local time. You might as well have gone in orbit to wait. I told you that, too!"

The voice from space swore virulently. The operator said, "You're just touching our force

beam now. Hold fast. I'm going to have to kill your lateral velocity and you're so low you may

feel it."

The growling voice from the loudspeaker bellowed an order, away from the microphone.

The unseen ship, still far out of atmosphere, floated into the invisible, intangible force beam of

the landing grid. Dials and indicators in the control office, aground, showed that the landing

grid's power was flowing swiftly out to make a field of almost solid density as the original

beam was pierced by the ship still high up and deep in the black shadow of the planet

Formalhaut III.

The ship became fixed in the fields of force. The grid operator sat leisurely erect. The

process of landing a ship from this point on was almost automatic. He adjusted a turn knob and

watched for the results. They were, of course, that the grid's force fields tightened gradually.

The Theban - still invisible in the night - became anchored in the immaterial beam. Then the

operator touched the braking button and the hovering ship checked. It had almost had velocity

enough for an orbit. To bring it down and land it in one piece, it had to be slowed to the speed

of the planet's rotation at the latitude of the spaceport.

The buzzing from the loudspeaker grew violently louder. There were crashes. Loose objects

in the ship's control room slid and banged to the floor, drawn there by the ship's artificial

gravity field.

The grid operator snapped, "Are you crazy? Cut your drive !"

More crashes. Then the buzzing ceased. When a ship is grasped by a landing grid's fields, it

cuts its own drive and is drawn down to the spaceport by the grid. Landing grids were

invented, at first, because they had to be made if space travel were to become practical. It

required more fuel for a ship to climb up into space against gravity than to journey halfway

across the galaxy. It required as much more to land safely. So landing grids were devised,

using ground-supplied power to lift and land starships. That simple fact tripled the cargo they

could carry.

Then the grids were developed past that simple usefulness. It appeared that they could draw

power from the ionized upper layers of a planet's atmosphere. They could provide for most - or

all - of a planet's energy requirements. And then it became obvious that they were very useful

because when they brought a ship down they placed it neatly in position opposite the passenger

ramp or the warehouse where passengers or cargo should be landed or taken aboard.

"I think," said Horn, "that up there in that ship they're a little bit panicky. Considering the

noises their engines were making, they've reason to be. They've been waiting for the engines to

blow any second. It took nerve to turn them off. They might not turn on again."

The grid operator said disgustedly, "There's something wrong with them, calling for an

emergency landing and yelling they've got to have emergency repairs! They ordered me to get a

repair crew ready to get them back aloft again in hours. Try to get union mechanics out of bed

for a special job, just on a tramp skipper's say-so!"

Horn shook his head. "They won't get off in hours, maybe days. That's an old-style

Riccardo drive, and the noise means it's about to lie down and die. I didn't know any of those

old ships were still in service. I'd hate to guess how old it is."

He could have looked up the descending ship in the Spacecraft Register and found out all

about her, even including her present very dubious reputation. But he wasn't interested enough

to do so.

He'd stopped by the spaceport to ask if there were news about the liner Danae, en route to

Formalhaut now. He knew there could be no news, of course. The Danae was somewhere in

the ship lanes leading from Canna II to Formalhaut III. There was a girl on board the Danae.

She was on the way to this planet. When she arrived, she and Horn were to be married. So

Horn was jumpy and unreasonably worried, and hungry for news that simply couldn't be had.

A voice barked abruptly from the speaker, originating in the space tramp now descending.

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摘要：

MurrayLeinsterINVADERSOFSPACETANDEMSCI-FIT.201FirstpublishedinGreatBritainbyUniversal-TandemPublishingCompanyLtd.1968Tandem,33BeauchampPlace,LondonSW3Copyright©MurrayLeinster,1964CHAPTERONEOUTSIDEthecontrolbuilding,thespaceportlightsseemedtorivalthestarsinnumber,andtooutshinetheminbrightness.Therewa...

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