Takeoff! by Randall Garrett Read Free Book Online Page A

accustomed to temperatures scarcely above zero absolute, but of far greater courage and bravery than any of my race possess.”
    “BANLON!” Ginnison’s Lensed thought fairly shrieked. “Klono, yes, I know of him!” Then, more calmly: “He’s been out after my hide since we destroyed Downlo.”
    “That, I fear, is true,” Shadrack commented. “Even now, he has, according to the information which my poor powers have allowed me to glean, englobed the Dentless with a fleet of twelve ships which are prepared to blast you out of the ether.”
    “Klono’s curving carballoy claws arid gilded gadolinium giz zard!” Ginnison roared mentally. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
    “I am devastated,” Shadrack replied. “It is, again, a racial characteristic which I cannot avoid. It took me too long to apologize.” A pause, then: “I fear, even now, that I may have been too late,” Shadrack apologized. “Clear ether, Ginnison.”
    “Clear ether, little chum,”
    The Lensed connection cut off, and Ginnison flashed a thought to the control room, only to discover that, indeed, the Dentless was surrounded.
    In a black, indetectable, refrigerated speedster, many parsecs from the soon-to-be scene of battle, that entity known as Banlon of Downlo gloated over his instruments as he watched the englobement of the Dentless take form.
    Like the Meich, and like Shadrack, he was of a race whose normal temperature was near that of boiling helium, and thus required extra-dimensional extensions in order to gather enough energy to survive. Superficially, that sounds glib enough, but, unfortunately, your historian knows less about dimensional analysis than you do, so let’s drop it right there.
    To return to our narrative, Banlon, a safe distance away from the impending conflict, observed minutely the behavior of the Boskonian squadron which had englobed the Dentless . Each captain of the twelve Boskonian warships had done his job to perfection.
    “Very well,” Banlon radiated harshly to his minions, “englobement is now complete. Tractors and pressors on! Cut your Bergenholms and go inert! Blast that ship out of the ether!

    Inertialess as she was, the mighty Dentless , caught in a web of tractor and pressor beams, could not continue at speed against the resistance of an inert combined mass twelve times that of her own. Relative to the Boskonian squadron, she came to a dead halt in space, easy prey for the Boskonians.
    At Banlon’s order, all twelve Boskonian ships fired at once toward the center of their englobement, where the apparently helpless Patrol ship floated.
    Beams, rods, cones, stilettos, icepicks, corkscrews, knives, forks, and spoons of energy raved against the screens of the Dentless . Quasi-solid bolts of horrendous power chewed, gnawed, flared, snarled, and growled against he energy screens of the Patrol ship, seeking eagerly to blast through them to the hull metal. All of circumambient space was filled with the frightful discharge of those tremendous bolts of power.
    The screens of the Dentless flared red, orange, yellow, green blue, and into the violet. From there, they went into the ultraviolet and x-ray spectrum. But still they held.
    Gimble Ginnison, teeth clenched and jaw muscles knotted, stared with unblinking gaze of grey eyes at the plate before him, listening to the reports from the officers commanding the various functions of the ship. But only one of those reports was really important.
    “Screens holding, Lensman!”
    “Fire secondaries”‘ the Lensman ordered crisply.
    The prodigious might of the Patrol ship’s secondaries flared out toward the twelve Boskonian ships. Those screens, too, blazed up the spectrum toward the ultraviolet, then toward blackness.
    “Primaries one through twelve! Ready?”
    “Ready, sir!”
    “At my order, then.” Ginnison watched his plate closely.
    “Five seconds! Four...Three...Two...One...FIRE”‘
    Twelve primary batteries flamed forth as one,