"Murray Leinster - Propagandist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

shone in the lifeboat portholes. There was a glaring bright light. Unshielded sunshine from Masa
Gamma came in a forward port and made a patch of incandescence on the back wall. Junior Lieutenant
Maynard walked into the control cubicle and flipped the phone switch.

"Lifeboat in launching position, blister removed, ready to take off," he said briskly.

"All right," said Holden's voice from the speaker. It sounded gloomy. "Take off when the whango wave
hits. It may jam their scanner and get you out of the beam unobserved. Luck."

Buck knew loud-speakers. But also he knew his master's voice. He wagged his tail. It thumped. Maynard
jerked his head around and yelled: "Buck! Here's Buck! Behind me!"

An instant's silence. Then Holden's voice, more gloomy still.

"No time to get him back on board. He'll have to go along. Sorry, Maynard."

"No harm," said Maynard cheerfully. "Maybe he'll mascot us. How much time?"

"Twenty seconds," said Holden's voice. "You have all the luck! I was high man for this job until you
drew that ace!"

Maynard chuckled. The Kennessee rode into a very probably hostile solar system. If it was the home of
the race that had been sniping off Earth ships and had massacred the colonists of Capella Three, there
was not much chance that the cruiser would ever get away again. But its junior officers had played a
hand of stud

poker for the privilege of making a dare-landing on the system's largest planet.

The speaker suddenly emitted a sound so savage and so loud that the diaphragm jangled musically only
once, and then made strangled, rasping noises. That was the whango wave of the message torp. It was a
blast of untuned and untunable radiation which would jam every receiver in range while it lasted.

There was a crushing feeling of weight. Buck slid back against the back rest of the seat on which he now
lay. He was pressed hard against the upholstery. He wriggled and panted. His eyes grew plaintive. Buck
did not like acceleration. In fact, he did not like lifeboat travel. But he had his fill of it in the next
eighteen hours, anyhow.



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A message arrived at the hastily improvised Department of War on Masa Four. The Department of War
was being feverishly organized to coordinate every erg of energy in the entire solar system into
synchrophased power beams which at a given moment would stab out from four planets at once—all of
them on the same side of the local sun—and converge terribly upon the pseudo comet. There would be
no material weapon for the ship's detectors to note in time for any maneuver of escape. This weapon
would strike at the speed of light. An object in the focus of the combined beams would experience the
interior temperature of a sun. It was unthinkable that any possible relay could operate before it was
volatilized. The weapon was irresistible—as against a single ship. But the computation of phase