The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCrashing sunsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Crashing sunsAuthor: Edmond HamiltonIllustrator: Hugh RankinRelease date: March 24, 2022 [eBook #67702]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1928Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRASHING SUNS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Crashing sunsAuthor: Edmond HamiltonIllustrator: Hugh RankinRelease date: March 24, 2022 [eBook #67702]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1928Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Crashing suns
Author: Edmond HamiltonIllustrator: Hugh Rankin
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Illustrator: Hugh Rankin
Release date: March 24, 2022 [eBook #67702]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1928
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRASHING SUNS ***
Crashing SunsBY EDMOND HAMILTON[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromWeird Tales August and September 1928.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromWeird Tales August and September 1928.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
As the control-levers flashed down under my hands our ship dived down through space with the swiftness of thought. The next instant there came a jarring shock, and our craft spun over like a whirling top. Everything in the conning-tower, windows and dials and controls, seemed to be revolving about me with lightning speed, while I clung dizzily to the levers in my hands. In a moment I managed to swing them back into position, and at once the ship righted herself and sped smoothly on through the ether. I drew a deep breath.
The trap-door in the little room's floor slid open, then, and the startled face of big Hal Kur appeared, his eyes wide.
"By the Power, Jan Tor!" he exclaimed; "that last meteor just grazed us! An inch nearer and it would have been the end of the ship!"
I turned to him for a moment, laughing. "A miss is as good as a mile," I quoted.
He grinned back at me. "Well, remember that we're not out on the Uranus patrol now," he reminded me. "What's our course?"
"Seventy-two degrees sunward, plane No. 8," I told him, glancing at the dials. "We're less than four hundred thousand miles from Earth, now," I added, nodding toward the broad window before me.
Climbing up into the little conning-tower, Hal Kur stepped over beside me, and together we gazed out ahead.
The sun was at the ship's left, for the moment, and the sky ahead was one of deep black, in which the stars, the flaming stars of interplanetary space, shone like brilliant jewels. Directly ahead of us there glowed a soft little orb of misty light, which was growing steadily larger as we raced on toward it. It was our destination, the cloud-veiled little world of Earth, mother-planet of all our race. To myself, who had passed much of my life on the four outer giants, on Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, the little planet ahead seemed insignificant, almost, with its single tiny moon. And yet from it, I knew, had come that unceasing stream of human life, that dauntless flood of pioneers, which had spread over all the solar system in the last hundred thousand years. They had gone out to planet after planet, had conquered the strange atmospheres and bacteria and gravitations, until now the races of man held sway over all the sun's eight wheeling worlds. And it was from this Earth, a thousand centuries before, that there had ventured out the first discoverers' crude little space-boats, whose faulty gravity-screens and uncertain controls contrasted strangely with the mighty leviathans that flashed between the planets now.
Abruptly I was aroused from my musings by the sharp ringing of a bell at my elbow. "The telestereo," I said to Hal Kur. "Take the controls." As he did so I stepped over to the telestereo's glass disk, inset in the room's floor, and touched a switch beside it. Instantly there appeared standing upon the disk, the image of a man in the blue and white robe of the Supreme Council, a life-size and moving and stereoscopically perfect image, flashed across the void of space to my apparatus by means of etheric vibrations. Through the medium of that projected image the man himself could see and hear me as well as I could see and hear him, and at once he spoke directly to me.
"Jan Tor, Captain of Interplanetary Patrol Cruiser 79388," he said, in the official form of address. "The command of the Supreme Council of the League of Planets, to Jan Tor. You are directed to proceed with all possible speed to Earth, and immediately upon your arrival there to report to the Council, at the Hall of Planets. Is the order heard?"
"The order is heard and will be obeyed," I answered, making the customary response, and the figure on the disk bowed, then abruptly vanished.
I turned at once to a speaking-tube which connected with the cruiser's screen rooms. "Make all speed possible to reach Earth," I ordered the engineer who answered my call. "Throw open all the left and lower screens and use the full attraction of the sun until we are within twenty thousand miles of Earth; then close them and use the attraction of Jupiter and Neptune to brake our progress. Is the order heard?"
When he had acknowledged the command I turned to Hal Kur. "That should bring us to Earth within the hour," I told him, "though the Power alone knows what the Supreme Council wants with a simple patrol-captain."
His laugh rumbled forth. "Why, here's unusual modesty, for you! Many a time I've heard you tell how the Eight Worlds would be run were Jan Tor of the Council, and now you're but 'a simple patrol-captain!'"
With that parting gibe he slid quickly down through the door in the floor, just in time to escape a well-aimed kick. I heard his deep laughter bellow out again as the door clanged shut behind him, and smiled to myself. No one on the cruiser would have permitted himself such familiarity with its captain but Hal Kur, but the big engineer well knew that his thirty-odd years of service in the Patrol made him a privileged character.
As the door slammed shut behind him, though, I forgot all else for the moment and concentrated all my attention on the ship's progress. It was my habit to act as pilot of my own cruiser, whenever possible, and for the time being I was quite alone in the round little pilot-house, or conning-tower, set on top of the cruiser's long, fishlike hull. Only pride, though, kept me from summoning an assistant to the controls, for the sun was pulling the cruiser downward with tremendous velocity, now, and as we sped down past Earth's shining little moon we ran into a belt of meteorites which gave me some ticklish moments. At last, though, we were through the danger zone, and were dropping down toward Earth with decreasing speed, as the screens were thrown open which allowed the pull of Neptune and Jupiter to check our progress.
A touch of a button then brought a pilot to replace me at the controls, and as we fell smoothly down toward the green planet below I leaned out the window, watching the dense masses of interplanetary shipping through which we were now threading our way. It seemed, indeed, that half the vessels in the solar system were assembled around and beneath us, so close-packed was the jam of traffic. There were mighty cargo-ships, their mile-long hulls filled with a thousand products of Earth, which were ponderously getting under way for the long voyages out to Uranus or Neptune. Sleek, long passenger-ships flashed past us, their transparent upper-hulls giving us brief glimpses of the gay groups on their sunlit decks. Private pleasure-boats were numerous, too, mostly affairs of gleaming white, and most of these were apparently bound for the annual Jupiter-Mars space-races. Here and there through the confusion dashed the local police-boats of Earth, and I caught sight of one or two of the long black cruisers of the Interplanetary Patrol, like our own, the swiftest ships in space. At last, though, after a slow, tortuous progress through the crowded upper levels, our craft had won through the jam of traffic and was swooping down upon the surface of Earth in a great curve.
In a panorama of meadow and forest, dotted here and there with gleaming white cities, the planet's parklike surface unrolled before me as we sped across it. We rocketed over one of its oceans, seeming hardly more than a pond to my eyes after the mighty seas of Jupiter and the vast ice-fringed oceans of Neptune; and then, as we flashed over land again, there loomed up far ahead the gigantic white dome of the great Hall of Planets, permanent seat of the Supreme Council and the center of government of the Eight Worlds. A single titanic structure of gleaming white, that reared its towering dome into the air for over two thousand feet, it grew swiftly larger as we raced on toward it. In a moment we were beside it, and the cruiser was slanting down toward the square landing-court behind the great dome.
As we came to rest there without a jar, I snapped open a small door in the conning-tower's side, and in a moment had descended to the ground by means of the ladder inset in the cruiser's side. At once there ran forward to meet me a thin, spectacled young man in the red-slashed robe of the Scientists, an owlish-looking figure at whom I stared for a moment in amazement. Then I had recovered from my astonishment and was grasping his hands.
"Sarto Sen!" I cried. "By the Power, I'm glad to see you! I thought you were working in the Venus Laboratories."
My friend's eyes were shining with welcome, but for the moment he wasted no time in speech, hurrying me across the court toward the inner door of the great building.
"The Council is assembling at this moment," he explained rapidly as we hastened along. "I got the chairman, Mur Dak, to hold up the meeting until you arrived."
"But what's it all about?" I asked, in bewilderment. "Why wait forme?"
"You will understand in a moment," he answered, his face grave. "But here is the Council Hall."
By that time we had hastened down a series of long white corridors and now passed through a high-arched doorway into the great Council Hall itself. I had visited the place before—who in the Eight Worlds has not?—and the tremendous, circular room and colossal, soaring dome above it were not new to me, but now I saw it as few ever did, with the eight hundred members of the Supreme Council gathered in solemn session. Grouped in a great half-circle around the dais of the chairman stretched the curving rows of seats, each occupied by a member, and each hundred members gathered around the symbol of the world they represented, whether that world was tiny Mercury or mighty Jupiter. On the dais at the center stood the solitary figure of Mur Dak, the chairman. It was evident that, as my friend had informed me, the Council had just assembled, since for the moment Mur Dak was not speaking, but just gazing calmly out over the silent rows of members.
In a moment we had passed down the aisle to his dais and stood beneath him. To my salute he returned a word of greeting only, then motioned us to two empty seats which had apparently been reserved for us. As I slipped into mine I wondered, fleetingly, what big Hal Kur would have thought to see his captain thus taking a seat with the Supreme Council itself. Then that thought slipped from my mind as Mur Dak began to speak.
"Men of the Eight Worlds," he said slowly, "I have called this session of the Council for the gravest of reasons. I have called it because discovery has just been made of a peril which menaces the civilization, the very existence, of all our race—a deadly peril which is rushing upon us with unthinkable speed, and which threatens the annihilation of our entire universe!"
He paused for a moment, and a slow, deep hum of surprize ran over the assembled members. For the first time, now, I saw that Mur Dak's keen, intellectual face was white and drawn, and I bent forward, breathless, tensely listening. In a moment the chairman was speaking on.
"It is necessary for me to go back a little," he said, "in order that you may understand the situation which confronts us. As you know, our sun and its eight spinning planets are not motionless in space. Our sun, with its family of worlds, has for eons been moving through space at the approximate rate of twelve miles a second, across the Milky Way. You know, too, that all other suns, all other stars, are moving through space likewise, some at a lesser speed than ours and some at a speed inconceivably greater. Flaming new suns, dying red suns, cold dark suns, each is flashing through the infinities of space on its own course, each toward its appointed doom.
"And among that infinity of thronging stars is that one which we know as Alto, that great red star, that dying sun, which has been steadily drawing nearer to us as the centuries have passed, and which is now nearest to us of all the stars. It is but little larger than our own sun, and as you all know, it and our own sun are moving toward each other, rushing nearer each other by thousands of miles each second, since Alto is moving at an unthinkable speed. Our scientists have calculated that the two suns would pass each other over a year from now, and thereafter would be speeding away from each other. There has been no thought of danger to us from the passing of this dying sun, for it has been known that its path through space would cause it to pass us at a distance of billions of miles. And had the star Alto but continued in that path all would have been well. But now a thing unprecedented has happened.
"Some eight weeks ago the South Observatory on Mars reported that the approaching star Alto seemed to have changed its course a little, bearing inward toward the solar system. The shift was a small one, but any change of course on the part of a star is quite unprecedented, so for the last eight weeks the approaching star has been closely watched. And during those weeks the effect of its shift in course has become more and more apparent. More and more the star has veered from the path it formerly followed, until it is now many millions of miles out of its course, with its deflection growing greater every minute. And this morning came the climax. For this morning I received a telestereo message from the director of the Bureau of Astronomical Science, on Venus, in which he informed me that the star's change of course is disastrous, for us. For instead of passing us by billions of miles, as it would have done, the star is now heading straight toward our own sun. And our sun is racing to meet it!
"I need not explain to you what the result of this situation will be. It is calculated by our astronomers that in less than a year our sun and this dying star will meet head on, will crash together in one gigantic flaming collision. And the result of that collision will be the annihilation of our universe.For the planets of our system will perish like flowers in a furnace, in that titanic holocaust of crashing suns!"
Mur Dak's voice ceased, and over the great hall there reigned a deathlike silence. I think that in that moment all of us were striving to comprehend with our dazed minds the thing that Mur Dak had told us, to realize the existence of the deadly peril that was rushing to wipe out our universe. Then, before that silence could give way to the inevitable roar of surprize and fear, a single member rose from the Mercury section of the Council, a splendid figure who spoke directly to Mur Dak.
"For a hundred thousand years," he said, "we races of man have met danger after danger, and have conquered them, one after another. We have spread from world to world, have conquered and grasped and held until we are masters of a universe. And now that that universe faces destruction, are we to sit idly by? Is there nothing whatever to be done by us, no chance, however slight, to avert this doom?"
A storm of cheers burst out when he finished, a wild tempest of applause that raged over the hall with cyclonic fury for minutes. I was on my feet with the rest, by that time, shouting like a madman. It was the inevitable reaction from that moment of heart-deadening panic, was the uprush of the old will to conquer that has steeled the hearts of men in a thousand deadly perils. When it had died down a little, Mur Dak spoke again.
"It is not my purpose to allow death to rush upon us without an effort to turn it aside," he told us, "and fortune has placed in our hands, at this moment, the chance to strike out in our own defense. For the last three years Sarto Sen, one of our most brilliant young scientists, has been working on a great problem, the problem of using etheric vibrations as a propulsion force to speed matter through space. A chip floating in water can be propelled across the surface of the water by waves in it; then why should not matter likewise be propelled through space, through the ether, by means of waves or vibrations in that ether? Experimenting on this problem, Sarto Sen has been able to make small models which can be flashed through space, through the ether, by means of artificially created vibrations in that ether, vibrations which can be produced with as high a frequency as the light-vibrations, and which thus propel the models through space at a speed equal to the speed of light itself.
"Using this principle, Sarto Sen has constructed a small ten-man cruiser, which can attain the velocity of light and which he has intended to use in a voyage of exploration to the nearer stars. Until now, as you know, we have been unable to venture outside the solar system, since even the swiftest of our gravity-screen space-ships can not make much more than a few hundred thousand miles an hour, and at that rate it would take centuries to reach the nearest star. But in this new vibration-propelled cruiser, a voyage to the stars would be a matter of weeks, instead of centuries.
"Several hours ago I ordered Sarto Sen to bring his new cruiser here to the Hall of Planets, fully equipped, and at this moment it is resting in one of the landing-courts here, manned by a crew of six men experienced in its operation and ready for a trip of any length. And it is my proposal that we send this new cruiser, in this emergency, out to the approaching star Alto, to discover what forces or circumstances have caused the nearing sun to veer from its former path. We know that those forces or those circumstances must be extraordinary in character, thus to change the course of a star; and if we can discover what phenomena are the causes of the star's deflection, there is a chance that we might be able to repeat or reverse those phenomena, to swerve the star again from the path it now follows, and so save our solar system, our universe."
Mur Dak paused for a moment, and there was an instant of sheer, stunned silence in the great hall. For the audacity of his proposal was overwhelming, even to us who roamed the limits of the solar system at will. It was well enough to rove the ways of our own universe, as men had done for ages, but to venture out into the vast gulf beyond, to flash out toward the stars themselves and calmly investigate the erratic behavior of a titanic, thundering sun, that was a proposal that left us breathless for the moment. But only for the moment, for when our brains had caught the magnitude of the idea another wild burst of applause thundered from the massed members, applause that rose still higher when the chairman called Sarto Sen himself to the dais and presented him to the assembly. Then, when the tumult had quieted a little, Mur Dak went on.
"The cruiser will start at once, then," he said, "and there remains but to choose a captain for it. Sarto Sen and his men will have charge of the craft's operation, of course, but there must be a leader for the whole expedition, some quick-thinking man of action. And I have already chosen such a man, subject to your approval, one whose name most of you have heard. A man young in years who has served most of his life in the Interplanetary Patrol, and who distinguished himself highly two years ago in the great space-fight with the interplanetary pirates off Japetus: Jan Tor!"
I swear that up to the last second I had no shadow of an idea that Mur Dak was speaking of me, and when he turned to gaze straight at me, and spoke my name, I could only stare in bewilderment. Those around me, though, pushed me to my feet, and the next moment another roar of applause from the hundreds of members around me struck me in the face like a physical blow. I walked clumsily to the dais, under that storm of approval, and stood there beside Mur Dak, still half-dazed by the unexpectedness of the thing. The chairman smiled out at the shouting members.
"No need to ask if you approve my choice," he said, and then turned to me, his face grave. "Jan Tor," he addressed me, his solemn voice sounding clearly over the suddenly hushed hall, "to you is given the command of this expedition, the most momentous in our history. For on this expedition and on you, its leader, depends the fate of our solar system. It is the order of the Supreme Council, then, that you take command of the new cruiser and proceed with all speed to the approaching star, Alto, to discover the reason for that star's change of course and to ascertain whether any means exist of again swerving it from its path. Is the order heard?"
Five minutes later I strode with Sarto Sen and Hal Kur into the landing-court where lay the new cruiser, its long, fishlike hull glittering brilliantly in the sunlight. A door in its side snapped open as we drew near, and through it there stepped out to meet us one of the six blue-clad engineers who formed the craft's crew. "All is ready for the start," he said to Sarto Sen in reply to the latter's question, standing aside for us to enter.
We passed through the door into the cruiser's hull. To the left an open door gave me a glimpse of the ship's narrow living-quarters, while to the right extended a long room in which other blue-clad figures were standing ready beside the ship's shining, conelike vibration-generators. Directly before us rose a small winding stairway, up which Sarto Sen led the way. In a moment, following, we had reached the cruiser's conning-tower, and immediately Sarto Sen stepped over to take his place at the controls.
He touched a stud, and a warning bell gave sharp alarm throughout the cruiser's interior. There were hurrying feet, somewhere beneath us, and then a loud clang as the heavy triple-doors slammed shut. At once began the familiar throb-throb-throb of the oxygen pumps, already at work replenishing and purifying the air in our hermetically sealed vessel.
Sarto Sen paused for a moment, glancing through the broad window before him, then reached forth and pressed a series of three buttons. A low, deep humming filled the cruiser's whole interior, and there was an instant of breathless hesitation. Then came a sharp click as Sarto Sen pressed another switch; there was a quick sigh of wind, and instantly the sunlit landing-court outside vanished, replaced in a fraction of a second by the deep, star-shot night of interplanetary space. I glanced quickly down through a side window and had a momentary glimpse of a spinning gray ball beneath us, a ball that dwindled to a point and vanished even in the moment that I glimpsed it. It was Earth, vanishing behind us as we fled with frightful velocity out into the gulf of space.
We were hurtling through the belt of asteroids beyond Mars, now, and then ahead, and to the left, there loomed the mighty world of Jupiter, expanding quickly into a large white-belted globe as we rocketed on toward it, then dropping behind and diminishing in its turn as we sped past it. The sun behind us had dwindled by that time to a tiny disk of fire. An hour later and another giant world flashed past on our right, the icy planet Neptune, outermost of the Eight Worlds. We had passed outside the last frontier of the solar system and were now racing out into the mighty deeps of space with the speed of light on our mad journey to save a universe.
2
An hour after we had left the solar system Hal Kur and I still stood with Sarto Sen in the cruiser's conning-tower, staring out with him at the stupendous panorama of gathered stars that lay before us. The sun of our own system had dwindled to a far point of light behind us, by that time, one star among the millions that spangled the deep black heavens around us. For here, even more than between the planets, the stars lay before us in their true glory, undimmed by proximity to any one of them. A host of glittering points of fire, blue and green and white and red and yellow, they dotted the rayless skies thickly in all directions, and thronged like a great drift of swarming bees toward our upper left, where stretched the stupendous belt of the Milky Way. And dead ahead, now, shone a single orb that blazed in smoky, crimson glory, a single great point of red fire. It was Alto, I knew, the sullen-burning star that was our goal.
It was with something of unbelief that I gazed at the red star, for though the dials before me assured me that we were speeding on toward it at close to two hundred thousand miles a second, yet except for the deep humming of the craft's vibratory apparatus one would have thought that the ship was standing still. There was no sound of wind from outside, no friendly, near-by planets, nothing by which the eye could measure the tremendous velocity at which we moved. We were racing through a void whose very immensity and vacancy staggered the mind, an emptiness of space in which the stars themselves floated like dust-particles in air, a gulf traversed only by hurtling meteors or flaring comets, and now by our own frail little craft.
Though I was peculiarly affected by the strangeness of our position, big Hal Kur was even more so. He had traveled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life, and now all of his time-honored rules of interplanetary navigation had been upset by this new cruiser, a craft entirely without gravity-screens, which was flashing from sun to sun propelled by invisible vibrations only. I saw his head wagging in doubt as he stared out into that splendid vista of thronging stars, and in a moment more he left us, descending into the cruiser's hull for an inspection of its strange propulsion apparatus.
When he had gone I plunged at once into the task of learning the control and operation of our craft. The next two hours I spent under the tutelage of Sarto Sen, and at the end of that time I had already learned the essential features of the ship's control. There was a throttle which regulated the frequency of the vibrations generated in the engine-room below, thus increasing or decreasing our speed at will, and a lever and dial which were used to project the propelling vibrations out at any angle behind us, thus controlling the direction in which we moved. The main requisite in handling the craft, I found, was a precise and steady hand on the two controls, since a mere touch on one would change our speed with lightning swiftness, while a slight movement of the other would send us millions of miles out of our course almost instantly.
At the end of two hours, however, I had attained sufficient skill to be able to hold the cruiser to her course without any large deviations or changes of speed, and Sarto Sen had confidence enough in my ability to leave me alone at the controls. He departed down the little stair behind me, to give a few minutes' inspection to the generators below, and I was left alone in the conning-tower.
Standing there in the dark little room, its only sound the deep humming of the generators below and its only lights the hooded glows which illuminated the dials and switches before me, I gazed intently through the broad fore-window, into that crowding confusion of swarming suns that lay around us, that medley of jeweled fires in which the great star Alto burned like a living flame. For a long time I gazed toward the star that was our goal, and then my thoughts were broken into by the sound of Sarto Sen reascending the stair behind me. I half turned to greet him, then turned swiftly back to the window, stiffening into sudden attention.
My eyes had caught sight of a small patch of deep blackness far ahead, an area of utter darkness which was swiftly expanding, growing, until in less than a second, it seemed, it had blotted out half the thronging stars ahead. For a moment the sudden appearance of it dumfounded me so that I stood motionless, and then my hands leaped out to the controls. I heard Sarto Sen cry out, behind me, and had a glimpse of the darkness ahead, obscuring almost all the heavens. The next moment, before my hands had more than closed upon the levers, all light in the conning-tower vanished in an instant, and we were plunged into the most utter darkness which I have ever experienced. At the same moment the familiar hum of the vibration-generators broke off suddenly.
I think that the moment that followed was the one in which I came first to know the meaning of terror. Every spark of light had vanished, and the silencing of the vibration-generators could only mean that our ship was drifting blindly through this smothering blackness. From the cruiser's hull, below, came shouts of fear and horror, and I heard Sarto Sen feeling his way to my side and fumbling with the controls. Then, with startling abruptness, the lights flashed on again in the conning-tower and through the windows there burst again the brilliance of the starry heavens. At the same moment the vibration-generators began again to give off their deep humming drone.
Sarto Sen turned to me, his face white as my own. Instinctively we turned toward the conning-tower's rear-window, and there, behind us, lay that stupendous area of blackness from which we had just emerged. A vast, irregular area of utter darkness, it was decreasing rapidly in size as we sped on away from it. In a moment it had shrunk to the spot it had been when first I glimpsed it, and then it had vanished entirely. And again we were racing on through the familiar, star-shot skies.
I found my voice at last. "In the name of the Power," I exclaimed, "what wasthat?"
Sarto Sen shook his head, musingly. "An area without light," he said, half to himself; "and our generators—they, too, could not function there. It must have been a hole, an empty space, in the ether itself."
I could only stare at him in amazement. "A hole in the ether?" I repeated.
He nodded quickly. "You saw what happened? Light is a vibration of the ether, and light was non-existent in that area. Even our generators ceased to give off etheric vibrations, there being no ether for them to function in. It's always been thought that the ether pervaded all space, but apparently even it has its holes, its cavities, which accounts for those dark, lightless areas in the heavens which have always puzzled astronomers. If our tremendous speed and momentum hadn't brought us through this one, the pull of the different stars would have slowed us down and stopped us, prisoning us in that dark area until the end of time."
I shook my head, only half-listening, for the strangeness of the thing had unnerved me. "Take the controls," I told Sarto Sen. "Meteors are all in the day's work, but holes in the ether are too much for me."
Leaving him to his watch over the ship's flight, I descended to the cruiser's interior, where the engineers were still discussing with Hal Kur the experience through which we had just passed. In a few words I explained to them Sarto Sen's theory, and they went back to their posts with awed faces. Passing into the ship's living-quarters myself, I threw myself on a bunk there and strove to sleep. Sleep came quickly enough, induced by the generators' soothing drone, but with it came torturing nightmares in which I seemed to move blindly onward through endless realms of darkness, searching in vain for an outlet into the light of day.
When I awoke some six hours later, the position of the ship seemed quite unchanged. The steady humming of its generators, the smooth, onward flight, the legions of dazzling stars around us, all seemed as before. But when I ascended again to the conning-tower, to relieve Sarto Sen at the controls, I saw that already the star Alto had increased a little its brilliance, dimming the stars around and behind it. And through the succeeding hours of my watch in the conning-tower, it seemed to me almost that the red orb was expanding before my sight, as we hurtled on toward it. That, though, I knew to be only an illusion of my straining eyes.
But as day followed day—sunless, dawnless days which we could measure only by our time-dials—the crimson star ahead waxed steadily to greater glory. By the time we marked off the twentieth day of our flight Alto had expanded into a moon of crimson flame, whose sullen splendor outrivaled the brilliance of all the starry hosts around us; for by that time we had covered half the distance between our own sun and the dying one ahead, and were now flashing on over the last half of our journey.
Days they were without change, almost without incident. Twice we had sighted vast areas of blackness, great ether-cavities like the one we had first plunged through, but these we were fortunate enough to avoid, swerving far out of our course to pass them by. Once, too, I had glimpsed for a single moment a colossal black globe which flashed beside our path for an instant and then was left behind by our tremendous speed. Only a glimpse did I get of this dark wanderer, which might have been either a runaway planet or burned-out star. And once our ship blundered directly into a vast maelstrom of meteoric material, a mighty whirlpool of interstellar wreckage spinning there between the stars, and from which we won clear only by grace of Sarto Sen's skilful hands at the controls.
Except for these few incidents, though, our days were monotonous and changeless, days in which the care of the generators and the alternate watches in the conning-tower were our only occupations. And a strange stillness had seized us as we fled onward, a brooding silence that fastened itself upon my friends even as upon myself. Something from the vast, eternal silence through which we moved, some quality out of those trackless infinities of space, seemed to have entered into our inmost souls. We went about our duties like men in a dream. And dreamlike our life had become to us, I think, and still more remote and unreal and dreamlike had become the life of the eight worlds that lay so far behind us.
I had forgotten, almost, the mission upon which we sped, and through the long watches in the conning-tower my eyes followed the steady largening of the red sun ahead with curiosity only. Day by day its fiery disk was creeping farther across the heavens, until at last everything in the cruiser was drenched by the crimson, blood-like light that streamed in through our sunward windows. Then, at last, my mind came back to consideration of the work that lay before us, for over thirty days of our journey had passed and there remained less than a hundred billion miles between Alto and ourselves.
I gave orders to slow our progress, then, and at a somewhat slackened speed our cruiser began to slant up above the plane of the great sun, for it was my plan to gain a position millions of miles directly above the star and then hover there, accompanying it on its race through space and using the powerful little telescopic windows in the conning-tower for our first observations. So through the next two days the giant sun, a single great sea of crimson fire to our eyes, crept steadily downward across the skies as we slanted over it. Our outside instruments showed us that its heat was many times less than that of our own sun, for this was a dying star. Even so it was necessary to slide special light-repelling shields over all our windows, so blinding was the star's glare.
On the fortieth day of our journey we had reached our goal. Gathered in the conning-tower, Sarto Sen, Hal Kur and I gazed down through its circular, periscopic under-window at the mighty star beneath. We had reached a spot approximately twenty million miles above the sun and had turned our course, so that we now raced above it at a speed that matched its own, like a fly hovering over a world. Below us there lay only a single vast ocean of crimson flame, that reached almost from horizon to horizon, all but filling the heavens beneath us. It was in an awed silence that we gazed down into this tremendous sea of fire, knowing as we did that only the power of the ship's generators kept it from plunging downward.
"And we are expected to investigate—that!" said Hal Kur, gazing down into the hell of flame below. "They talk of turningthataside!"
I looked at him, hopelessly. Then, before I could speak, there came a sudden exclamation from Sarto Sen, and he beckoned me to his side. He had been staring out through one of the powerful little telescopic windows set in the conning-tower's wall, and as I reached him he pointed eagerly through it, out beyond the rim of the fiery sun beneath. I gazed in that direction, straining my eyes against the glare, and then glimpsed the thing that had attracted his attention. It was a little spot of dun-colored light lying beyond the crimson sun, a buff-colored little ball that hung steady behind the great sun at a distance of perhaps a hundred million miles and that accompanied it on its flight through space.
"A planet!" I whispered, and he nodded. Then Hal Kur, who had joined us, extended his hand too, with a muttered exclamation, and there, thrice the distance of the first from Alto, there hung another and smaller ball. In a few minutes, using the powerful inset glasses, we had discovered no less than thirteen worlds that spun about the sun beneath us and that accompanied it on its tremendous journey through space. Most seemed to revolve in orbits that were billions of miles from their parent sun, and none of the others was as large as that inmost planet which we had first discovered. It was toward this largest world that we finally decided to head first; so with Sarto Sen at the controls we slanted down again from our position over the great sun, arrowing down at reduced speed toward the inmost world.
Its color was changing from buff to pale red as we neared it, and its apparent size was increasing with tremendous speed as our craft shot down toward it. Gradually, though, Sarto Sen decreased our velocity until by the time we reached an altitude of a few hundred miles above this world our ship was moving very slowly. And now, from outside, came a thin shrieking of wind, a mounting roar that told us plainly that we were speeding through air again, and that this world had at least an atmosphere. None of us remarked on that, though, all our attention being held by the scene below.
Drenched in the crimson light of the sun behind us, it was a crimson world that lay beneath us, a lurid world whose mountains, plains and valleys were all of the same blood-like hue as the light that fell upon them, whose very lakes and rivers gave back to the sky the scarlet tinge that pervaded all things here. And as our cruiser swept lower we saw, too, that the redness of the planet beneath was no mere illusion of the crimson sunlight but inherent in itself, since all of the vegetation below, grassy plains and tangled shrubs and stunted, unfamiliar trees, were of that same red tinge that was the color-keynote of this world.
Strange and weird as it appeared, though, there seemed no sign of life on the broad plains and barren hills beneath us, and abruptly Sarto Sen headed the ship across the planet's face, speeding low over its surface while we scanned intently the panorama that unrolled beneath us. For minutes our straining scrutiny was unrewarded; and then, far ahead, a colossal shape loomed vaguely through the dusky crimson light, taking form, as we sped on toward it, as a tremendous, soaring tower. And involuntarily we gasped as our eyes took in the hugeness of its dimensions. It consisted of four slender black columns, each less than fifty feet in thickness, which rose from the ground at points a half-mile separated, four mighty pillars which slanted up into the crimson sunlight for fully ten thousand feet, meeting and merging at that distance above the ground and combining to support a circular platform two hundred feet in diameter. Our ship was hovering a few thousand feet above this platform, and on it we could see the shapes of what appeared to be machines, and other shapes that moved about them, though whether these last were human or not could not be distinguished from our height. And then, as my gaze fell toward the mighty tower's base, my cry brought the eyes of the others to follow my pointing finger. For gathered beneath and around the tower and extending away into the surrounding country were the massed buildings of a city. Low and flat-roofed and utterly strange in appearance were those buildings, and the narrow streets that pierced their huddled masses were all of the same smooth blackness as the tower itself—black, deep black, the roofs and streets and walls, laced with crimson parks and gardens that lay against their blackness like splashes of blood. And looming over all, its four tremendous columns rearing themselves above the streets and roofs and gardens like the limbs of a bestriding giant, the mighty tower soared into the crimson sunlight.
Sarto Sen flung an arm down toward the tower's platform, beneath us, and toward the shapes that moved on that platform. "Inhabited!" he cried. "You see? And that means that Alto's change in course was—"
He broke off; uttered a smothered cry. A spark of intense white light had suddenly broken into being on the platform beneath us, a beam of blinding light that stabbed straight up toward us, bathing the cruiser in its unearthly glow. And suddenly our ship was falling!
Sarto Sen sprang to the controls, wrenched around the power-lever. "That ray!" he cried. "It's attractive!—it's pulling us down!"
Our ship was vibrating now to the full force of its generators, but still we were falling, plunging headlong down toward the round platform beneath. I glimpsed Sarto Sen working frantically with the controls, and heard a hoarse cry from Hal Kur. There was a blinding glare of light all around us, now, and through the window I saw the platform below rushing up toward us with appalling speed. It was nearer, now ... nearer ... nearer ...crash!
3
I think that in the minute after the crash no one in the conning-tower made a movement. The blinding ray outside had vanished at the moment of our crash, and we were now lying sprawled on the little room's floor, where the shock of the collision had thrown us. In a moment, though, I reached for a support and scrambled to my feet. As I did so there came shouts from the hull beneath us, and then a loud clang as one of the cruiser's lower doors swung open. I sprang to the window, just in time to see our six engineers pour out of the hull beneath me, emerging onto the platform on which our ship rested, and gazing about them with startled eyes.
I ripped open the little door in the conning-tower's side, to shout to them to come back, and even as I did so saw one of the men run back into the cruiser as though in fear. The others were staring fixedly across the broad platform, and in that moment, before I could voice the warning on my lips, their doom struck. There was a quick sigh of wind, and from across the platform there sprang toward them a tiny ball of rose-colored fire, a ball that touched one of the men and instantly expanded into a whirlwind of raging flame. A single moment it blazed there, then vanished. And where the five men had stood was—nothing.
Stunned, stupefied, my eyes traveled slowly across the surface of the great platform. Strange, huge machines stood close-grouped upon it, great shining structures utterly unfamiliar in appearance. At the center of this group of mechanisms stood the largest of them, a great tube of metal fully a hundred feet in length, which was mounted on a strong pedestal and which pointed up into the sky like a great telescope. It was none of these things, though, that held my attention in that first horror-stricken moment of inspection. It was the dozen or more grotesque and terrible shapes which stood grouped at the platform's farther edge, returning my gaze.
They were globes, globes of pink, unhealthy-looking flesh more than a yard in diameter, each upheld by six slender, insectlike legs, not more than twelve inches long, and each possessing two similar short, thin limbs which served them as arms and which projected at opposite points from their pink, globular bodies. And between those arms, set directly in the side of the round body itself, were the only features—two round black eyes of large size, browless and pupil-less, and a circle of pale skin which beat quickly in and out with their breathing.
Motionless they stood, regarding me with their unhuman eyes, and now I saw that one, a little in advance of the others, was holding extended toward me a thin disk of metal, from which, I divined instantly, the destroying fire had sprung. Yet still I made no movement, staring across the platform with sick horror in my soul.
I heard a thick exclamation from Hal Kur, behind me, as he and Sarto Sen came to my side and gazed out with me. And now the grouped creatures opposite were giving utterance to sounds—speech-sounds with which they seemed to converse—low, deep, thrumming tones which came apparently from their breathing-membranes. They moved toward us, the fire-disk still trained upon us, and then one stopped and motioned from us to the platform on which he stood. He repeated the gesture, and its meaning was unmistakable. Slowly we stepped out of the conning-tower and descended by the ladder in the cruiser's side to the platform itself.
Our captors seemed to pause for a moment, now, and I had opportunity for a quick inspection of our ship. Sucked down as it had been by the attractive ray of those strange creatures, it had yet fallen on a clear space on the platform and seemed to have suffered no serious injury, for it was stoutly built and our fall had been short. The lower door in its side was still open, I saw, and now a half-dozen of the globe-creatures entered this, scurrying forward like quick insects on their six short legs. They disappeared from view inside the cruiser's hull, returning in a moment with their fire-disks trained upon the single engineer who had run back into the ship and escaped the doom of his fellows. This man, Nar Lon by name, had been the chief of the six engineers, and as his guards herded him to our side his face was white with terror. Finding us still alive, though, he seemed to take courage a little.