"They're apparently slicing us pretty evenly, and by the looks of things, one cut is coming right about here," he explained rapidly, as he found a flashlight and drew his companion through the door and along a narrow pa.s.sage. Soon he opened another door and led her into a tiny compartment so low that they could not stand upright--a mere cubicle of steel. Carefully closing the door, he fingered dials upon each of the walls of the cell, then folded himself up into a comfortable position, instructed Nadia to do the same, and snapped off the light.

"Please leave it on," the shaken girl asked. "It's so ghastly!"

"We'd better save it, Nadia," he advised, pressing her arm rea.s.suringly, "it's the only light we've got, and we may need it worse later on--its life is limited, you know."

"Later on? Do you think we'll need anything--later on?"

"Sure! Of course they may get us, Nadia, but this little tertiary air-break is a mighty small target for them to hit. And if they miss us, as I think they will, there's a larger room opening off each wall of this one--at least one of which will certainly be left intact. From any one of those rooms we can reach a life-boat. Of course, it's a little too much to expect that any one of the life-boats will be left whole, but they're bulkheaded, too, you know, so that we can be sure of finding something able to navigate--providing we can make our get-away. Believe me, ace, I'm sure glad we're aboard the old _Arcturus_ right now, with all her safety-devices, instead of on one of the modern liners. We'd be sunk right."

"I felt sunk enough for a minute--I'm feeling better now, though, since you are taking it so calmly."

"Sure--why not? A man's not dead until his heart stops beating, you know--our turn'll come next, when they let up a little."

"But suppose they change the width of their slices, and hit this cubby, small as it is?"

"It'd be just too bad," he shrugged. "In that case, we'd never know what hit us, so it's no good worrying about it. But say, we might do something at that, if they didn't hit us square. I can move fairly fast, and might be able to get a door open before the loss of pressure seals it. We'll light the flash ... here, you hold it, so that I can have both hands free. Put both arms around me, just under the arms, and stick to me like a porous plaster, because if I have to move at all, I'll have to jump like chain lightning. Shine the beam right over there, so it'll reflect and light up all the dials at once. There ... hold on tight!

Here they come!"

As he spoke, a jarring shudder shook one side of their hiding-place, then, a moment later, the phenomenon was repeated, but with much less force, upon the other side. Stevens sighed with relief, took the light, and extinguished it.

"Missed us clean!" he exulted. "Now, if they don't find us, we're all set."

"How can they possibly find us? I seem to be always worried about the wrong things, but I should think that their finding us would be the least of our troubles."

"Don't judge their vision system by ours--they've got everything, apparently. However, their apparatus may not be delicate enough to spot us in a s.p.a.ce this small when their projectors flash through it, as they probably will. Then, too, there's a couple of other big items in our favor--n.o.body else is in the entire lower half, since all this machinery down here is either automatic or else controlled from up above, so they won't be expecting to see anybody when they get down this far; and we aren't at all conspicuous. We're both dressed in gray--your clothes in particular are almost exactly the color of this armor-plate--so altogether we stand a good chance of being missed."

"What shall we do now?"

"Nothing whatever--wish we could sleep for a couple of hours, but of course there's no hope of that. Stretch out here, like that--you can't rest folded up like an accordion--and I'll lie down diagonally across the room. There's just room for me that way. That's one advantage of weightlessness--you can lie down standing on your head, and go to sleep and like it. But I forgot--you've never been weightless before, have you? Does it make you sick?"

"Not so much, now, except that I feel awfully weird inside. I was horribly dizzy and nauseated at first, but it's going away."

"That's good--it makes lots of people pretty sick. In fact, some folks get awfully sick and can't seem to get used to it at all. It's the ca.n.a.ls in the inner ear that do most of it, you know. However, if you're as well as that already, you'll be a regular s.p.a.cehound in half an hour.

I've been weightless for weeks at a stretch, out in the _Sirius_, and now I've got so I really like it. Here, we'd better keep in touch."

He found her hand and tucked it under his arm. "Stabilize our positions more, besides keeping us from getting too lonesome, here in the dark,"

he concluded, in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Thanks for saying 'us'--but you would, wouldn't you?" and a wave of admiration went through her for the real and chivalrous manhood of the man with whom she had been forced by circ.u.mstances to cast her lot.

"How long must we stay here?"

"As long as the air lasts, and I'd like to stay here longer than that.

We don't want to move around any more than we absolutely have to until their rays are off of us, and we have no way of knowing how long that will be. Also, we'd better keep still. I don't know what kind of an audio system they've got, but there's no use taking unnecessary chances."

"All x--I'm an oyster's little sister," and for many minutes the two remained motionless and silent. Now and then Nadia twitched and started at some vague real or imaginary sound--now and then her fingers tightened upon his biceps--and he pressed her hand with his great arm in rea.s.surance and understanding. Once a wall of their cell resounded under the impact of a fierce blow and Stevens instantly threw his arm around the girl, twisting himself between her and the threatened wall, ready for any emergency. But nothing more happened; the door remained closed, the cell stayed bottle-tight, and time wore slowly on. All too soon the unmistakable symptoms of breathing an unfit atmosphere made themselves apparent and Stevens, after testing each of the doors, drew the girl into a larger room, where they breathed deeply of the fresh, cool air.

"How did you know that this room was whole?" asked Nadia. "We might have stepped out into s.p.a.ce, mightn't we?"

"No; if this room had lost its tightness, the door wouldn't have opened.

They won't open if there's a difference of one kilogram pressure on the two sides. That's how I knew that the room we were in at first was cut in two--the door into that air-break wouldn't move."

"What comes next?"

"I don't know exactly what to do--we'd better hold a little council of war. They may have gone..." Stevens broke off as the structure began to move, and they settled down upon what had been one of the side-walls.

Greater and greater became the acceleration, until their apparent weight was almost as much as it would have been upon the Earth, at which point it became constant. "... but they haven't," he continued the interrupted sentence. "This seems to be a capture and seizure, as well as an attack, so we'll have to take the risk of looking at them. Besides, it's getting cold in here. One or two of the adjoining cells have apparently been ruptured and we're radiating our heat out into s.p.a.ce, so we'll have to get into a life-boat or freeze. I'll go pick out the best one. Wonder if I'd better take you with me, or hide you and come back after you?"

"Don't worry about that--I'm coming with you," Nadia declared, positively.

"Just as well, probably," he a.s.sented, and they set out. A thorough exploration of all the tight connecting cells revealed that not a lifeboat within their reach remained intact, but that habitable and navigable portions of three such craft were available. Selecting the most completely equipped of these, they took up their residence therein by entering it and closing the ma.s.sive insulating door. Stevens disconnected all the lights save one, and so shielded that one before turning it on that it merely lightened the utter darkness into a semi-permeable gloom. He then stepped up to the lookout plate, and with his hand upon the control, pondered long the possible consequences of what he wished to do.

"What harm would it do to take just a little peek?"

"I don't know--that's the d.i.c.kens of it. Maybe none, and then again, maybe a lot. You see, we don't know who or what we are up against. The only thing we know is that they've got us beat a hundred ways, and we've got to act accordingly. We've got to chance it sometime, though, if we can ever get away, so we might as well do it now. I'll put it on very short range first, and see what we can see. By the small number of cells we've got here I'm afraid they've split us up lengthwise, too--so that instead of having a whole slice of the old watermelon to live in, we've got only about a sixth of one--shaped about like a piece of restaurant pie. One thing I can do, though. I'll turn on the communicator receiver and put it on full coverage--maybe we can hear something useful."

Putting a little power upon the visiray plate, he moved the point of projection a short distance from their hiding-place, so that the plate showed a view of the wreckage. The upper half of the vessel was still intact, the lower half a jumble of sharply-cut fragments. From each of the larger pieces a brilliant ray of tangible force stretched outward.

Suddenly their receiver sounded behind them, as the high-powered transmitter in the telegraph room tried to notify headquarters of their plight.

"_Arcturus_ attacked and cut up being taken tow...."

Rapidly as the message was uttered the transmitter died with a rattle in the middle of a word, and Nadia looked at Stevens with foreboding in her eyes.

"They've got something, that's one thing sure, to be able to neutralize our communicator beams that way," he admitted. "Not so good--we'll have to play this close to our vests, girl!"

"Are you just trying to cheer me up, or do you really think we have a chance?" she demanded. "I want to know just where we stand."

"I'm coming clean with you, no kidding. If we can get away, we'll be all x, because I'll bet a farm that by this time Brandon's got everything those birds have, and maybe more. They beat us to it, that's all. I'm kind of afraid, though, that getting away isn't going to be quite as simple as shooting fish down a well."

Far ahead of them a port opened, a lifeboat shot out at its full power, and again their receiver tried to burst into sound, but it was a vain attempt. The sound died before one complete word could be uttered, and the lifeboat, its power completely neutralized by the rays of the tiny craft of the enemy, floated gently back toward the ma.s.s of its parent and accompanied it in its headlong flight. Several more lifeboats made the attempt, as the courageous officers of the _Arcturus_, some of whom had apparently succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the captors, launched the little sh.e.l.ls from various ports; but as each boat issued, its power was neutralized and it found itself dragged helplessly along in the grip of one of those mysterious, brilliant rays of force. At least one hidden officer must have been watching the fruitless efforts, for the next lifeboat to issue made no attempt, either to talk or to flee, but from it there flamed out into s.p.a.ce a concentrated beam of destruction--the terrible ray of annihilation, against which no known substance could endure for a moment; the ray which had definitely outlawed war. But even that frightful weapon was useless--it spent its force harmlessly upon an impalpable, invisible barrier, a hundred yards from its source, and the bold lifeboat disappeared in one blinding explosion of incandescence as the captor showed its real power in retaliation. Stevens, jaw hard-set, leaped from the screen, then brought himself up so quickly that he skated across the smooth steel floor.

Shutting off the lookout plate, he led the half-fainting girl across the room to a comfortable seat and sat down beside her--raging, but thoughtful. Nadia soon recovered.

"Why are you acting so contrary to your nature--is it because of _me_?"

she demanded. "A dozen times I've seen you start to do something and then change your mind. I _will not_ be a load on you nor hinder you in anything you want to do."

"I told your father I'd look after you, and I'm going to do it," he replied, indirectly. "I would do it anyway, of course--even if you are ten or twelve years older than I thought you were."

"Yes, Dad never has realized that I'm more than eight years old. I see--you were going out there and be slaughtered?" He flushed, but made no reply. "In that case I'm glad I'm here--that would have been silly.

I think we'd better hold that council of war you mentioned a while ago, don't you?"

"I need a smoke--do you indulge?"

"No thanks. I tried it a few times at school, but never liked it."

He searched his pockets, bringing to light an unopened package and a tattered remnant which proved to contain one dilapidated cigarette.

He studied it thoughtfully. "I'll smoke this wreck," he decided, "while it's still smokable. We'll save the rest of them--I'm afraid it'll be a long time between smokes. Well, let's confer!"

"This will have to be a one-sided conference. I don't imagine that any of my ideas will prove particularly helpful. You talk and I'll listen.