EVANS OF THE EARTH-GUARD

By EDMOND HAMILTON

By the Author of "The Space Visitors," "Cities in the Air," etc.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Air Wonder Stories April 1930. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The present likelihood is that the first interplanetary flight will probably be by means of a rocket-propelled ship. As far as our knowledge goes the rocket seems to be the most feasible means of propulsion because it will reach its greatest efficiency in the vacuum of inter-stellar space.

If the conditions on other planets, including our moon, are not too prohibitive, it is doubtless true that these planets will be explored for whatever mineral wealth or possibilities of life they may contain. The resulting interplanetary commerce will call into being a host of problems, such as the protection of cargo and passenger shipments against natural and human agents that might wish to destroy them.

In that case, the Earth-Guard that Mr. Hamilton describes so vividly will play a most important part in the protection of such commerce.

Mr. Hamilton, as is usual with him, has, in this story, developed it so that we were unable to predict from page to page what would happen next. And the editors were just as fooled by the surprising denouement as we believe our readers will be.

"All Earth-Guard rockets attention! One-man rocket Pallas speaking. Am pursued by pirate rocket believed to be that of the Hawk! I am running toward earth on space-lane 18, now in zone 44-6, but am being rapidly overtaken!"

As the clear voice came from the radiophone before him, Captain Wright Evans slammed over the reply-switch and shouted back into it.

"Earth-Guard Rocket 283 answering. Standing toward you at top speed instantly!"

Then he was up and bursting into the great rocket ship's squat little pilot-house, where a man seated at the controls turned inquiringly to him.

"Full speed ahead, Calden!" he cried. "The Hawk's out again and after a one-man rocket not a thousand miles ahead—it's our chance to get him at last!"

"Full speed it is," rejoined Calden calmly, his hands flashing forth to flick down a half-score of the banked shining levers before him.

Instantly the great ship lurched and trembled as, from its rear, came thunderous explosion on explosion. In a moment every one of its rear-tubes was firing, and the speed-dial's arrow was creeping steadily forward until in a few minutes more it registered the ship's top speed of ten thousand miles an hour. The long gleaming craft, stubby of nose and stern and fully five hundred feet in length, was like a giant projectile, as it tore through the void, belching fire behind it.

From the squat pilot-house set atop it, Evans and Calden gazed ahead. The great gray disk of earth filled a quarter of the heavens before them, the outline of its continents and seas visible here and there through its shifting screen of clouds. Behind them the moon's silvery sphere was dwindling rapidly, as they had seen it dwindle now for hours. It was hours that the great Earth-Guard rocket with its half-hundred men had been hurtling toward earth after its weary week's vigil in space, before this call had come.

And weary enough indeed was the vigil that the rocket ships of the Earth-Guard kept around the earth and its moon, and had kept up for more than fifty years. More than fifty years it had been since, back in 1954, the first crude rocket had thundered out from earth into the great void toward its shining satellite. Neither that first rocket nor the twenty-first had reached their goal, but the next one had.

Thus had begun the commerce that now filled all the space-lanes between the earth and moon. In their first flame of exploration, men had headed out toward the nearer planets, too, but they had found them unapproachable because of the fierce guard maintained by their strange peoples. Every ship that had sought to explore another planet had been annihilated on reaching it and we had finally realized that our planetary neighbors were guarding fiercely their isolation.

There had remained to earth only its own moon. But that had become swiftly a lure to all adventurous earthlings. Upon the moon's other side were great mines in which men, dwelling in air-tight cities and toiling in hermetically-tight metal suits, worked the rare metals and minerals in which earth's satellite abounded. And upon the moon's earthward side were other great air-tight cities, glass-roofed and luxurious, to which went each year hundreds of thousands of the earth's wealthy—there to spend their vacations—enjoying the wondrous celestial views, the astounding strength and youth given them by the moon's lesser gravity, and the chance to view the earth from the outside.

So that there had grown gradually the commerce that kept endless streams of ships moving between earth and moon—great and luxurious passenger-craft laden with the wealthy and powerful of earth; and sleek private ships bound like the others for the luxurious lunar cities. Bulky and battered cargo-rockets had their own space-lanes, carrying metals and minerals to the earth, and returning with loads of supplies and tanks of the liquid rocket-fuel to the moon.

It was inevitable that all this traffic should need regulating, and so there had been formed the Earth-Guard, an organization corresponding to the old Coast-Guards of the nations, but controlled by an international commission of earth's powers. The Earth-Guard boasted five hundred gleaming rockets that patrolled ceaselessly the space between and around the earth and moon, enforcing peace with their electric-guns and guarding the lunar commerce.

For there were those against whom it must be guarded—space-pirates who dashed forth from time to time from hidden bases on earth or moon to harry and hold up in the void the rich lunar commerce. The boldest and most dreaded of them all was that swift and flashing corsair of the void known to all on earth and moon alike as the Hawk, and who for years had been the despair of all the Earth-Guard.

"Lord, if we can get him!" Evans was praying as he gazed out of a port hole from the hurtling ship's pilot-house. "I get so tired of jabs about him that I'd lose an arm to get him."

"Well, everyone's turn comes sooner or later in that game," philosophized Calden. "It may be the Hawk's now."

Evans pulled a speaking-tube toward him and shouted down into it over the roar of the rocket's explosions. "Hartley? Put full crews on all the electric-guns and have them stand ready for action. Yes. And tell them it's the Hawk we're after this time—it'll put them on their toes."

Calden grinned as a moment later a muffled cheer came up from the gun-rooms beneath. "They're on their toes, evidently," he commented. "They're as crazy to get their hands on the Hawk as you are."

Evans made no answer but started ahead with teeth clenched upon his lower lip, glancing over now and then at the dials that recorded the rocket's position between earth and moon. This recording was automatic, being dependent on the change in the gravitational power of the two bodies. Evans saw by them now that the rocket was hurtling into the very zone in which the Pallas had reported itself.

Missed!

He reached to turn a knob and there clicked up into position against the lenses set in the pilot-house window two long metal tubes with eye-pieces that formed powerful binoculars. Gazing ahead through these he kept watch, while with fingers on the firing-levers of the rocket's tubes Calden kept them steady on their course. Minutes passed before Evans uttered a cry.

"They're just ahead!" he exclaimed. Then, into the tube—"All batteries ready, Hartley, and use the port guns when we bank."