This World Must Die! | Page 9

immediately located the
intercom screen and called the control room. Donna's worried face
appeared. "Where are you?" was her relieved inquiry.
Phillips explained what had happened. "The only thing," he concluded,
"is to try it from here."
"I think they must have spotted the flash," Donna told him. "The
instruments show a shift in their course."
"Blast right at them!" said Phillips. "We might get away with it if we're
quick."
He turned away, leaving the intercom on. A few quick steps took him
to the control panels in the bulkhead. Guided by his lessons in the other
turret, and by faded memories of space school on Earth, he brought up
two of the torpedoes. He checked the radio controls and ran the missiles
into their launching tubes. As he worked, with nervous sweat running
down into his eyes, he was aware of the intermittent jar of rocket blasts.
"Run 'em down!" he muttered, trying to steady his hand on the controls.
He had a hand at each panel, with the torpedoes poised viciously in the
tubes, when he heard Donna's shout, shrill with excitement, over the
intercom.
Instantly, he launched the missiles. He started the rockets by remote
control, and scanned the screens for a sight of the other vessel.
For a moment, his view was confused by the expanding puff of air;
then that froze, and drifted back to the hull, and he could see the stars.

* * * * *
Donna's voice, strained but coldly controlled, came over the intercom
with readings from her instruments. He corrected his courses
accordingly.
Then he saw the image of their target centered on one screen, so he
concentrated on steering the other missile. He made the nose yaw, but
was unable to locate anything on its screen.
"You're sending one of them too far above, I think," Donna reported.
"I have something wrong," he shouted. "I can't spot them at all for that
one. The jets must be out of line and shooting it in a curve."
Nevertheless, he fired a corrective blast on the weight of the guess,
before returning his attention to the first torpedo.
This one was right on the curve. He could see the massive hull of the
cruiser plainly now. It was almost featureless until, as he watched,
several sections seemed to slide aside.
The screen showed him a momentary glimpse of a swarm of small,
flame-tailed objects spewing forth from one of the openings. Then the
view went dark. "Interceptor rockets with proximity fuses," he muttered.
"They'll be after us next, crazy-mean and frantic!"
Over the intercom, he heard Donna exclaim in dismay. He caught a
fleeting sight of her face and realized that the situation must be torture
for the girl, as for himself or any normal person of their civilization.
Cursing himself for an optimist, he raised two more of the missiles
from the magazine. Hopping about like a jet-checker five minutes
before take-off time, he made them ready. It seemed like hours before
he got them into the launching tubes and blew them out into the void.
Again, he watched the other vessel appear ahead of his torpedoes, this
time on both screens. Before the gap narrowed, he had a better

opportunity to see the defenses of the cruiser in action.
A whitish cloud of gas was expelled from his target's hull, bearing a
myriad of small objects which promptly acquired a life of their own.
Both screens were filled with flashing, diverging trails of flame.
Then--nothing.
"They're heading at us!" called Donna. "Hang on!"
Phillips had already pulled the switches to bring up a new pair of
torpedoes. Hearing the urgency in Donna's tone, he leaped toward a
rack of spacesuits and grabbed.
* * * * *
The next instant, he was pinned forcibly against the rack by
acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he
heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed
halfway out of the storage compartment.
It gave him a weird feeling of unreality; as he hung there helplessly, to
see one of the screens on the bulkhead pick up something moving,
gleaming, metallic.
"Donna!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let up!"
"I don't dare," she gasped over the intercom. "I lost them, but they were
starting after us!"
"Let up!" repeated Phillips. "They're dead ahead of that wild shot of
ours. Let me get to the controls!"
He dropped abruptly to the deck as the acceleration vanished. One leap
carried him to the radio controls.
The metallic gleam had swelled into a huge spaceship. The cruiser was
angling slightly away from the point from which he seemed to be
viewing it. How soon, he wondered, would they detect the presence of
his torpedo? Or would they neglect this direction,