Jupiterand the Jovian worlds leaped suddenly backward, turned swiftly green, then blue, and faded in an instant into violet. The Sun spun crazily through space, retreating, dimming to a tiny ruby-tinted star.
The giant generators in theInvinciblehummed louder now, continually louder, a steel-throated roar that trembled through every plate, through every girder, through every bit of metal in the ship.
The ship itself was plunging spaceward, streaking like a runaway star for the depths of space beyond the Solar System. And behind it, caught tight, gripped and held, Craven's ship trailed at the end of a tractor field that bound it to the space-rocketingInvincible.
The acceleration compensator, functioning perfectly, had taken up the slack as the ship had plunged from a standing start into a speed that neared the pace of light. But it had never been built to stand such sudden, intense acceleration, and for an instant Russ and Greg seemed tobe crushed by a mighty weight that struck at them. The sensation swiftly lifted as the compensator took up the load.
Gregshook his head, flinging the trickling perspiration from his eyes.
"I hope their compensator worked as well as ours," he said.
"If it didn't," declared Russ, "we're towing a shipload of dead men."
Russ glanced at the speed dial. They were almost touching the speed of light. "He hasn't cut down our speed yet."
"We threw him off his balance. His drive depends largely on the mass of some planet as a body to take up the reaction of his ship. Jupiter is the ideal body for that ... but he's leaving Jupiter behind. He has to do something soon or it'll be too late."
"He's getting less energy, too," said Russ. "We're retreating from his main sources of energy, the Sun and Jupiter. Almost the speed of light and that would cut down his energy intake terrifically. He has to use what he's got in his accumulators, and after that last blast at us, they must be nearly drained."
As Russ watched, the speed needle fell off slightly. Russ held his breath. It edged back slowly, creeping. The speed was being cut down.
"Craven is using whatever power he has," he said. "They're alive back there, all right. He's trying to catch hold of Jupiter and make its gravity work for him."
TheInvinciblefelt the strain of the other ship now. Felt it as Craven poured power into his drive, fighting to get free of the invisible hawser that had trapped him, fighting against being dragged into outer space at the tail-end of a mighty craft heading spaceward with frightening speed.
Girders groaned in theInvincible, the engines moaned and throbbed. The speed needle fell back, creeping down the dial, slowly, unwillingly, resisting any drop in speed. But Craven was cutting it down. And as he cut it, he was able to absorb more energy with his collector lens. But he was fighting two things ... momentum and the steadily decreasing gravitational pull of Jupiter and the Sun. The Sun's pull was dwindling slowly, Jupiter's rapidly.
The needle still crept downward.
"What's his point of equality to us?" demanded Greg. "Will we make it?"
Russ shook his head. "Won't know for hours. He'll be able to slow us up ... maybe he'll even stop us or be able to jerk free,although I doubt that. But every minute takes him farther away from his main source of power, the Solar System's radiation. He could collect power anywhere in space, you know, but the best place to collect it is near large radiant bodies."
Russ continued to crouch over the dial, begrudging every backward flicker of the needle.
This was the last play, the final hand. If they could drag Craven and his ship away from the Solar System, maroon him deep in space, far removed from any source of radiation, they would win, for they could go back and finish the work of smashing Interplanetary.
But if Craven won—if he could halt their mad dash for space, if he could shake free—they'd never have another chance. He would be studying that field they had wrapped around him, be ready for it next time, might even develop one like it and use it on theInvincible. If Craven could win his way back to the Sun, he would be stronger than they were, could top them in power, shatter all their plans, and once again the worlds would bow to Interplanetary and Spencer Chambers.
Russ watched the meter. The speed was little more than ten miles a second now and dropping rapidly. He sat motionless, hunched, sucking at his dead pipe, listening to the thrumming of the generators.
"Ifwe only had a margin," he groaned. "If we just had a few more horsepower. Just a few. But we're wide open. Every engine is developing everything it can!"
Greg tapped him on the shoulder, gently. Russ turned his head and looked into the face of his friend, a face as bleak as ever, but with a hint of smile in the corners of the eyes.
"Why not let Jupiter help us?" he asked. "He could be a lot of help."
Russ stared for a moment, uncomprehending. Then with a sob of gladness he reached out a hand, shoved over a lever. Mirrors of anti-entropy shifted, assumed different angles, and theInvinciblesheered off. They were no longer retreating directly from the Sun, but at an angle quartering off across the Solar System.
Greg grinned. "We're falling behind Jupiter now. Letting Jupiter run away from us as he circles his orbit, following the Sun. Adds miles per second to our velocity of retreat, even if it doesn't show on the dial."
The cosmic tug of war went on, grimly—two ships straining, fighting each other, one seeking to escape, the other straining to snake the second ship into themaw of open, hostile space.
The speed was down to five miles a second, then a fraction lower. The needle was flickering now, impossible to decide whether it was dropping or not. And in the engine rooms, ten great generators howled in their attempt to make that needle move up the dial again.
Russ lit his pipe, his eyes not leaving the dial. The needle was creeping lower again. Down to three miles a second now.
He puffed clouds of smoke and considered. Saturn fortunately was ninety degrees around in his orbit. On the present course, only Neptune remained between them and free space. Pluto was far away, but even if it had been, it really wouldn't count, for it was small and had little attraction.
In a short while Ganymede and Callisto would be moving around on the far side of Jupiter and that might help. Everything counted so much now.
The dial was down to two miles a second and there it hung. Hung and stayed. Russ watched it with narrowed eyes. By this time Craven certainly would have given up much hope of help from Jupiter. If the big planet couldn't have helped him before, it certainly couldn't now. In another hour or two Earth would transit the Sun and that would cut down the radiant energy to some degree. But in the meantime Craven was loading his photo-cells and accumulators, was laying up a power reserve. As a last desperate resort he would use that power, in a final attempt to break away from theInvincible.
Russ waited for that attempt. There was nothing that could be done about it. The engines were developing every watt of power that could be urged out of them. If Craven had the power to break away, he would break away ... that was all there would be to it.
An hour passed and the needle crept up a fraction of a point. Russ was still watching the dial, his mind foggy with concentration.
SuddenlytheInvincibleshuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to half a mile.
Russ sat bolt upright, holding his breath, his teeth clenched with death grip upon the pipe-stem.
Craven had blasted with everything he had! He had used every last trickle of power in the accumulators ... all the power he had been storing up.
Russ leaped from the chair and raced to the periscopic mirror.Stooping, he stared into it. Far back in space, like a silver bauble, swung Craven's ship. It swung back and forth in space, like a mighty, cosmic pendulum. Breathlessly he watched. The ship was still in the grip of the space field!
"Greg," he shouted, "we've got him!"
He raced back to the control panel, snapped a glance at the speed dial. The needle was rising rapidly now, a full mile a second. Within another fifteen minutes, it had climbed to a mile and a half. TheInvinciblewas starting to go places!
The engines still howled, straining, shrieking, roaring their defiance.
In an hour the needle indicated the speed of four miles a second. Two hours later it was ten and rising visibly as Jupiter fell far behind and the Sun became little more than a glowing cinder.
Russ swung the controls to provide side acceleration and the two ships swung far to the rear of Neptune. They would pass that massive planet at the safe distance of a full hundred million miles.
"He won't even make a pass at it," said Greg. "He knows he's licked."
"Probably trying to store some more power," suggested Russ.
"Sweet chance he has to do that," declared Greg. "Look at that needle walk, will you? We'll hit the speed of light in a few more hours and after that he may just as well shut off his lens. There just won't be any radiation for him to catch."
Craven didn't make a try at Neptune. The planet was far away when they intersected its orbit ... furthermore, a wall of darkness had closed in about the ships. They were going three times as fast as light and the speed was still accelerating!
Hour after hour, day after day, theInvincibleand its trailing captive sped doggedly outward into space. Out into the absolute wastes of interstellar space, where the stars were flecks of light, like tiny eyes watching from very far away.
Russlounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn't been anything to see or do for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines still hammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched an empty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by any intelligence, certainly not by man.
Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn't seemmysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous. Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled.
There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn't go faster than light. Also, men had claimed that it would be impossible to force nature to give up the secret of material energy. But here they were, speeding along faster than light, their engines roaring with the power of material energy.
They were plowing a new space road, staking out a new path across the deserts of space, pioneering far beyond the 'last frontier.'
Greg's steps sounded across the room. "We've gone a long way, Russ. Maybe we better begin to slow down a bit."
"Yes," agreed Russ. He leaned forward and grasped the controls. "We'll slow down now," he said.
Sudden silence smote the ship. Their ears, accustomed for days to the throaty roarings of the engines, rang with the torture of no sound.
Long minutes and then new sounds began to be heard ... the soft humming of the single engine that provided power for the interior apparatus and the maintenance of the outer screens.
"Soon as we slow down below the speed of light," said Greg, "we'll throw the televisor on Craven's ship and learn what we can about his apparatus. No use trying it now, for we couldn't use it, because we're in the same space condition it uses in normal operation."
"In fact," laughed Russ, "we can't do much of anything except move. Energies simply can't pass through this space we're in. We're marooned."
Greg sat down in a chair, gazed solemnly at Russ.
"Just what was our top speed?" he demanded.
Russ grinned. "Ten thousand times the speed of light," he said.
Greg whistled soundlessly. "A long way from home."
Faraway, the stars were tiny pinpoints, like little crystals shining by the reflection of a light. Pinpoints of light and shimmering masses of lacy silver ... star dust that seemed ghostly and strange, but was in reality the massing of many million mighty stars. And great empty black spaces where there was not a single light, where the dark went on and on and did not stop.
Greg exhaled his breath softly. "Well, we're here."
"Wherever that might be," amended Russ.
There were no familiar constellations, not a single familiar star. Every sign post of the space they had known was wiped out.
"There really aren't any brilliant stars," said Russ. "None at all. We must be in a sort of hole in space, a place that's relatively empty of any stars."
Greg nodded soberly. "Good thing we have those mechanical shadows. Without them we'd never find our way back home. But we have several that will lead us back."
Outside the vision panel, they could see Craven's ship. Freed now of the space field, it was floating slowly, still under the grip of the momentum they had built up in their dash across space. It was so close that they could see the lettering across its bow.
"So they call it theInterplanetarian," said Russ.
Greg nodded. "Guess it's about time we talk to them. I'm afraid they're getting pretty nervous."
"Doyou have any idea where we are?" demanded Ludwig Stutsman.
Craven shook his head. "No more idea than you have. Manning snaked us across billions of miles, clear out of the Solar System into interstellar space. Take a look at those stars and you get some idea."
Spencer Chambers stroked his gray mustache, asked calmly: "What do you figure our chances are of getting back?"
"That's something we'll know more about later," said Craven. "Doesn't look too bright right now. I'm not worrying about that. What I'm wondering about is what Manning and Page are going to do now that they have us out here."
"I thought you'd be," said a voice that came out of clear air.
They stared at the place from which the voice had seemed to come. There was a slight refraction in the air; then, swiftly, a man took shape. It was Manning. He stood before them, smiling.
"Hello, Manning," said Craven. "I figured you'd pay us a call when you got around to it."
"Look here," snarled Stutsman, but he stopped when Chambers' hand fell upon his shoulder, gripped it hard.
"Got plenty of air?" asked Greg.
"Air? Sure. Atmosphere machines working perfectly," Craven replied.
"Fine," said Greg. "How about food and water? Plenty of both?"
"Plenty," said Craven.
"Look here, Manning," broke in Chambers, "where's all this questioning leading? What have you got up your sleeve?"
"Just wanted to be sure," Greg told him. "Would hate to have you fellows starve on me, or go thirsty. Wouldn't want to come back and find you all dead."
"Come back?" asked Chambers wonderingly. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Is this a joke of some sort?"
"No joke," said Greg grimly. "I thought you might have guessed. I'm going to leave you here."
"Leave us here?" roared Stutsman.
"Keep your shirt on," snapped Greg. "Just for a while, until we can go back to the Solar System and finish a little job we're doing. Then we'll come back and get you."
Craven grimaced. "I thought it would be something like that." He squinted at Manning through the thick lenses. "You never miss a bet, do you?"
Greg laughed. "I try not to."
A little silence fell upon the three men and Manning's image.
Greg broke it. "How about your energy collector?" he asked Craven. "Will it maintain the ship out here? You get cosmic rays. Not too much else, I'm afraid."
Craven grinned wryly. "You're right, but we can get along. The accumulators are practically drained, though, and we won't be able to store anything. Would you mind shooting us over just a little power? Enough to charge the accumulators a little for emergency use."
He looked over his shoulder, almost apprehensively.
"There might be an emergency out here, you know. Nobody knows anything about this place."
"I'll give you a little power," Greg agreed.
"Thank you very much," said Craven, half in mockery. "No doubt you think yourself quite smart, Manning, getting us out here. You know you have us stranded, that we can't collect more than enough power to live on."
"That's why I did it," Greg said, and vanished.
Cravenwatched theInvinciblegather speed and tear swiftly through the black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, either swallowed by the distance or snapping into the strange super-space that existed beyond the speed of light.
He turned from the window, chuckling.
Stutsman snarled at him: "What's so funny?"
The scientist glared at the wolfish face and without speaking, walked to the desk and sat down. He reached for pencil and paper.
Chambers walked over to watch him.
"You've found something, Doctor," he said quietly.
Craven laughed, throatily. "Yes, I have. I've found a lot. Manning thinks he can keep us out here, but he's wrong. We'll be in the Solar System less than a week after he gets there."
Chambers stifled a gasp, tried to speak calmly. "You mean this?"
"Of course I mean it. I don't waste my time with foolish jokes."
"You have the secret of material energy?"
"Not that," the scientist growled, "but I have something else as valuable. I have the secret of Manning's drive: I know what it is that enables him to exceed the speed of light ... to go ten thousand times as fast as light ... the Lord knows how much faster if he wanted to."
"No ordinary drive would do that," said Chambers. "It would take more than power to make a ship go that fast."
"You bet your life it would, and Manning is the boy who's got it. He uses a space field. I think I can duplicate it."
"And how long will it take you to do this work?"
"About a week," Craven told him. "Perhaps a little longer, perhaps a little less. But once we go, we'll go as fast as Manning does. We'll be short on power, but I think I can do something about that, too."
Chambers took a chair beside the desk. "But do we know the way home?"
"We can find it," said Craven.
"But there are no familiar constellations," objected Chambers. "He dragged us out so far that there isn't a single star that any one of us can identify."
"I said I'd find the Solar System," Craven declared impatiently, "and I will. Manning started out for it, didn't he? I saw the way he went. The Sun is a type G star and all I'll do is look for a type G star."
"But there may be more than one type G star," objected the financier.
"Probably are," Craven agreed, "but there are other ways of finding the Sun and identifying it."
He volunteered no further information, went back to work with the pad and pencil. Chambers rose wearily from his chair.
"Tell me when you know what we can do," he said.
"Sure," Craven grunted.
"That'sthe Sun," said Craven. "That faint star between those two brighter ones."
"Are you sure of it?" demanded Stutsman.
"Of course. I don't make blunders."
"It's the only type G star in that direction," suggested Chambers, helpfully.
"Not that, either," declared Craven. "In fact, there are several type G stars. I examined them all and I know I'm right."
"How do you know?" challenged Stutsman.
"Spectroscopic examination. That collector field of ours gathers energy just like a burning glass. You've seen a burning glass, haven't you?"
He stared at Stutsman, directing the question at him.
Stutsman shuffled awkwardly, unhappily.
"Well," Craven went on, "I used that for a telescope. Gathered the light from the suns and analyzed it. Of course it didn't act like a real telescope, produce an image or anything like that, but it was ideal for spectroscopic work."
They waited for him to explain. Finally, he continued:
"All of the stars I examined were just type G stars, nothing else, but there was a difference in one of them. First, the spectroscope showed lines of reflected light passing through oxygen and hydrogen, water vapor and carbon dioxide. Pure planetary phenomena, never found on a star itself. Also it showed that a certain per cent of the light was polarized. Now remember that I examined it for a long time and I found out something else from the length of observation which convinces me. The light varied with a periodic irregularity. The chronometers aren't working exactly right out here, so I can't give you any explanation in terms of hours. But I find a number of regularly recurring changes in light intensity and character ... and that proves the presence of a number of planetary bodies circling the star. That's the only way one could explain the fluctuations for the G-type star is a steady type. It doesn't vary greatly and has no light fluctuations to speak of. Not like the Cepheid and Mira types."
"And that proves it's our Sun?" asked Chambers.
Craven nodded. "Fairly definitely, I'd say."
"How far away is it?" Stutsman wanted to know.
Cravensnorted. "You would ask something like that."
"But," declared Stutsman, "there are ways of measuring how far a star is away from any point, measuring both the distance and the size of the star."
"Okay," agreed Craven, "you find me something solid and within reach that's measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or so across. Then I'll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is not in an orbit. It's not fixed in space. I have no accurate way of measuring distances and angles simultaneously and accurately. Especially angles as small as these would be."
Craven and Stutsman glared at one another.
"It's a long way however you look at it," the financier said. "If we're going to get there, we'll have to start as soon as possible. How soon can we start, Doctor?"
"Very soon. I have the gravity concentration field developed andManning left me just enough power to get a good start." He chuckled, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses and put them back on again. "Imagine him giving me that power!"
"But after we use up that power, what are we going to do?" demanded Chambers. "This collector lens of yours won't furnish us enough to keep going."
"You're right," Craven conceded, "but we'll be able to get more. We'll build up what speed we can and then we'll shut off the drive and let momentum carry us along. In the meantime our collector will gather power for us. We're advancing toward the source of radiation now, instead of away from it. Out here, where there's little gravity stress, fewer conflicting lines of gravitation, we'll be able to spread out the field, widen it, make it thousands of miles across. And the new photo-cells will be a help as well."
"How are the photo-cells coming?" asked Chambers.
Craven grinned. "We'll have a bank of them in within a few hours, and replace the others as fast as we can. I have practically the whole crew at work on them. Manning doesn't know it, but he found the limit of those photo-cells when he was heaving energy at us back in the Solar System. He blistered them. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it was. You have to hand it to Manning and Page. They are a couple of smart men."
To the eye there was only one slight difference between the old cells and the new ones. The new type cell, when on no load, appeared milky white, whereas the old cells on no load were silvery. The granular surface of the new units was responsible for the difference in appearance, for each minute section of the surface was covered with even more minute metallic hexagonal pyramids and prisms.
"Just a little matter of variation in the alloy," Craven explained. "Crystalization of the alloy, forming those little prisms and pyramids. As a result, you get a surface thousands of times greater than in the old type. Helps you absorb every bit of the energy."
TheInterplanetarianarrowed swiftly starward, driving ahead with terrific momentum while the collector lens, sweeping up the oncoming radiations, charged the great banks of accumulators. The G-type star toward which they were heading was still pale, but the two brighter stars to either side blazed like fiery jewels against the black of space.
"You say we'll be only a weekor so behind Manning?" asked Chambers.
Craven looked at the financier, his eyes narrowed behind the heavy lenses. He sucked in his loose lips and turned once again to the control board.
"Perhaps a little longer," he admitted finally. "We're losing time, having to go along on momentum in order to collect power. But the nearer we get to those stars, the more power we'll have and we'll be able to move faster."
Chambers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, thinking.
"Perhaps there's time yet," he said, half to himself. "With the power we'll have within the Solar System, we can stop Manning and the revolution. We can gain control again."
Cravenwas silent, watching the dials.
"Manning might even pass us on the way back to look for us," Chambers went on. "He thinks we're still out there. He wouldn't expect to find us where we are, light years from where we started."
Craven shot him a curious look. "I wouldn't be too sure of that. Manning has a string of some sort tied to us. He's got us tagged ... good and proper. He's always been able to find us again, no matter where we were. I have a hunch he'll find us again, even way out here."
Chambers shrugged his shoulders. "It really doesn't matter. Just so we get close enough to the Sun so we can load those accumulators and jam the photo-cells full. With a load like that we can beat him hands down."
The financier fell into a silence. He stared out of the vision plate, watching the stars. Still far away, but so much nearer than they had been.
His brain hummed with dreams. Old dreams, revived again, old dreams of conquest and of empire, dreams of a power that held a solar system in its grip.
Craven broke his chain of thoughts. "Where's our friend Stutsman? I haven't seen him around lately."
Chambers chuckled good-naturedly. "He's sulking. He seems to have gotten the idea neither one of us likes him. He's been spending most of his time back in the engine room with the crew."
"Were you talking about me?" asked a silky voice.
They spun around to see Stutsman standing in the doorway of the control room. His face was twisted into a wolfish grin and in his right hand he held a heat gun.
Chambers' voice was sharp,like the note of a clanging bell. "What's this?"
Stutsman's face twisted into an even more exaggerated grin. "This," he said, "is mutiny. I'm taking over!" He laughed at them.
"No use calling the crew. They're with me."
"Damn you!" shouted Chambers, taking a step forward. He halted as Stutsman jerked the pistol up.
"Forget it, Chambers. You're just second man from now on. Maybe not even second man. You tried out this dictator business and you bungled it. You went soft. You're taking orders from me from now on. No questions, no back talk. You do as I say and maybe you won't get hurt."
"You're mad, Stutsman!" cried Chambers. "You can't get away with this."
Stutsman barked out a brittle laugh. "Who is going to stop me?"
"The people," Chambers shouted at him. "The people will. They won't allow this. When you get back to the Solar System ..."
Stutsman growled, stepping toward Chambers, pistol leveled. "The people won't have anything to say about this. I'll rule the Solar System the way I want to. There won't be anyone else who'll have a thing to say about it. So you dreamed of empire, did you? You dreamed of a solar dictatorship. Well, watch me! I'll build a real empire. But I'll be the head of it ... not you."
Craven sat down in his chair, crossed his knees. "Just what do you plan to do, Dictator Stutsman?"
Stutsmanfairly foamed at the mouth over the insolence of Craven's voice. "I'll smash Manning first. I'll wipe him out. This ship will do it. You said yourself it would. You have ten times the power he has. And then ..."
Craven raised a hand and waved him into silence. "So you plan to reach the Solar System, do you? You plan to meet Manning, and destroy his ship. Nice plan."
"What's wrong with it?" challenged Stutsman.
"Nothing," said Craven calmly. "Absolutely nothing at all ...except that we may never reach the Solar System!"
Stutsman seemed to sag. The wolfish snarl on his lips drooped. His eyes stared. Then with an effort he braced himself.
"What do you mean? Why can't we?" He gestured toward the vision plate, toward the tiny yellow star between the two brighter stars.
"That," said Craven, "isn't our Sun. It has planets, but it isn't our Sun."
Chambers stepped quickly toCraven, reached out a hand and hoisted him from the chair, shook him.
"You must be joking! That has to be the Sun!"
Craven shrugged free of Chambers' clutch, spoke in an even voice. "I never joke. We made a mistake, that's all. I hadn't meant to tell you yet. I had intended to get in close to the star and take on a full load of power and then try to locate our Sun. But I'm afraid it's a hopeless task."
"A hopeless task?" shrieked Stutsman. "You are trying to trick me. This is put up between the two of you. That's the Sun over there. I know it is!"
"It isn't," said Craven. "Manning tricked us. He started off in the wrong direction. He made us think he was going straight back to the Solar System, but he didn't. He circled and went in some other direction."
The scientist eyed Stutsman calmly. Stutsman's knuckles were white with the grip he had upon the gun.
"We're lost," Craven told him, looking squarely at him. "We may never find the Solar System!"
Therevolution was over. Interplanetary officials and army heads had fled to the sanctuary of Earth. Interplanetary was ended ... ended forever, for on every world, including Earth, material energy engines were humming. The people had power to burn, to throw away, power so cheap that it was practically worthless as a commodity, but invaluable as a way to a new life, a greater life, a fuller life ... a broader destiny for the human race.
Interplanetary stocks were worthless. The mighty power plants on Venus and Mercury were idle. The only remaining tangible asset were the fleets of spaceships used less than a month before to ship the accumulators to the outer worlds, to bring them Sunward for recharging.
Patents protecting the rights to the material energy engines had been obtained from every government throughout the Solar System. New governments were being formed on the wreckage of the old. John Moore Mallory already had been inaugurated as president of the Jovian confederacy.The elections on Mars and Venus would be held within a week.
Mercury, its usefulness gone with the smashing of the accumulator trade, had been abandoned. No human foot now trod its surface. Its mighty domes were empty. It went its way, as it had gone for billions of years, a little burned out, worthless planet, ignored and shunned. For a brief moment it had known the conquering tread of mankind, had played its part in the commerce of the worlds, but now it had reverted to its former state ... a lonely wanderer of the regions near the Sun, a pariah among the other planets.
Russell Pagelooked across the desk at Gregory Manning. He heaved a sigh and dug the pipe out of his jacket pocket.
"It's finished, Greg," he said.
Greg nodded solemnly, watching Russ fill the bowl and apply the match.
Except for the small crew, they were alone in theInvincible. John Moore Mallory and the others were on their own worlds, forming their own governments, carrying out the dictates of the people, men who would go down in solar history.
TheInvinciblehung just off Callisto. Russ looked out at the mighty moon, saw the lonely stretches of its ice-bound surface, saw the silvery spot that was the dome of Ranthoor.
"All done," said Greg, "except for one thing."
"Go out and get Chambers and the others," said Russ, puffing at the pipe.
Greg nodded. "We may as well get started."
Russ rose slowly, went to the wall cabinet and lifted out a box, the mechanical shadow with its tiny space field surrounding the fleck of steel that would lead them to theInterplanetarian. Carefully he lifted the machine from its resting place and set it on the desk. Bending over it, he watched the dials.
Suddenly he whistled. "Greg, they've moved! They aren't where we left them!"
Greg sprang to his side and stared at the readings. "They're moving farther away from us ... out into space. Where can they be going?"
Russ straightened, scowling, pulling at the pipe. "They probably found another G-type star, and are heading for that. They must think it is old Sol."
"That sounds like it," said Greg. "We spun all over the map to throw Craven off and looped several times so he'd lose all sense of direction. Naturally he would be lost."
"But he's evidently got something,"Russ pointed out. "We left him marooned ... dead center, out where he didn't have too much radiation and couldn't get leverage on any single body. Yet he's moving—and getting farther away all the time."
"He solved our gravitation concentration screen," said Greg. "He tricked us into giving him power to build it."
The two men looked at one another for a long minute.
"Well," said Russ, "that's that. Craven and Chambers and Stutsman. The three villains. All lost in space. Heading for the wrong star. Hopelessly lost. Maybe they'll never find their way back."
He stopped and relit his pipe. An aching silence fell in the room.
"Poetic justice," said Russ. "Hail and farewell."
Greg rubbed his fist indecisively along the desk. "I can't do it, Russ. We took them out there. We marooned them. We have to get them back or I couldn't sleep nights."
Russ laughed quietly, watching the bleak face that stared at him. "I knew that's what you'd say."
He knocked out the pipe, crushed a fleck of burning tobacco with his boot. Pocketing the pipe, he walked to the control panel, sat down and reached for the lever. The engines hummed louder and louder. TheInvincibledarted spaceward.
"It'stoo late now," said Chambers. "By the time we reach that planetary system and charge our accumulators, Manning and Page will have everything under control back in the Solar System. Even if we could locate the star that was our Sun, we wouldn't have a chance to get there in time."
"Too bad," Craven said, and wagged his head, looking like a solemn owl. "Too bad. Dictator Stutsman won't have a chance to strut his stuff."
Stutsman started to say something and thought better of it. He leaned back in his chair. From his belt hung a heat pistol.
Chambers eyed the pistol with ill-concealed disgust. "There's no point in playing soldier. We aren't going to try to upset your mutiny. So far your taking over the ship hasn't made any difference to us ... so why should we fight you?"
"It isn't going to make any difference either," said Craven. "Because there are just two things that will happen to us. We're either lost forever, will never find our way back, will spend the rest of our days wandering from star to star, or Manning will come out and take us by the ear and lead us home again."
Chambers started, leaned forward and fastened his steely eyes on Craven. "Do you really think he could find us?"
"I have no doubt of it," Craven replied. "I don't know how he does it, but I'm convinced he can. Probably, however, he'll find that we are lost and get rid of us that way."
"No," said Chambers, "you're wrong there. Manning wouldn't do that. He'll come to get us."
"I don't know why he should," snapped Craven.
"Because he's that sort of man," declared Chambers.
"What you going to do when he does get out here?" demanded Stutsman. "Fall on his neck and kiss him?"
Chambers smiled, stroked his mustache. "Why, no," he said. "I imagine we'll fight. We'll give him everything we've got and he'll do the same. It wouldn't seem natural if we didn't."
"You're damned right we will," growled Stutsman. "Because I'm running this show. You seem to keep forgetting that. We have power enough, when we get those accumulators filled, to wipe him out. And that is exactly what I'm going to do."
"Fine," said Craven, mockingly, "just fine. There's just one thing you forget. Manning is the only man who can lead us back to the Solar System."
"Hell," stormed Stutsman, "that doesn't make any difference. I'll find my way back there some way."
"You're afraid of Manning," Chambers challenged.
Stutsman's hand went down to the heat pistol's grip. His eyes glazed and his face twisted itself into utter hatred. "I don't know why I keep on letting you live. Craven is valuable to me. I can't kill him. But you aren't. You aren't worth a damn to anyone."
Chambersmatched his stare. Stutsman's hand dropped from the pistol and he slouched to his feet, walked from the room.
Afraid of Manning! He laughed, a hollow, gurgling laugh. Afraid of Manning!
But he was.
Within his brain hammered a single sentence. Words he had heard Manning speak as he watched over the television set at Manning's mocking invitation. Words that beat into his brain and seared his reason and made his soul shrivel and grow small.
Manning talking to Scorio. Talking to him matter-of-factly, but grimly: "I promise you that we'll take care of Stutsman!"
Manning had taken Scorio and his gangsters one by one and sent them to far corners of the Solar System. One out to the dreaded Vulcan Fleet, one to the Outpost,one to the Titan prison, and one to the hell-hole on Vesta, while Scorio had gone to a little mountain set in a Venus swamp. They hadn't a chance. They had been locked within a force shell and shunted through millions of miles of space. No trial, no hearing ... nothing. Just terrible, unrelenting judgment.
"I promise you that we'll take care of Stutsman!"
"Craven'sonly a few billion miles ahead now," said Gregory Manning. "With our margin of speed, we should overhaul him in a few more hours. He is still short on power, but he's remedying that rapidly. He's getting nearer to that sun every minute. Running in toward it as he is, he tends to sweep up outpouring radiations. That helps him collect a whole lot more than he would under ordinary circumstances."
Russ, sitting before the controls, pipe clenched in his teeth, watching the dials, nodded soberly.
"All I'm afraid of," he said, "is that he'll get too close to that sun before we catch up with him. If he gets close enough so he can fill those accumulators, he'll pack a bigger wallop than we do. It'll all be in one bolt, of course, for his power isn't continuous like ours. He has to collect it slowly. But when he's really loaded, he can give us aces and still win. I'd hate to take everything he could pack into those accumulators."
Greg shuddered. "So would I."
TheInvinciblewas exceeding the speed of light, was enveloped in the mysterious darkness that characterized the speed. They could see nothing outside the ship, for there was nothing to see. But the tiny mechanical shadow, occupying a place of honor on the navigation board, kept them informed of the position and the distance of theInterplanetarian.
Greg lolled in his chair, watching Russ.
"I don't think we need to worry about him throwing the entire load of the accumulators at us," he said. "He wouldn't dare load those accumulators to peak capacity. He's got to leave enough carrying capacity in the cells to handle any jolts we send him and he knows we can send him plenty. He has to keep that handling margin at all times, over and above what he takes in for power, because his absorption screen is also a defensive screen. And he has to use some power to keep our television apparatus out."
Russ chuckled. "I suppose, at that, we have him plenty worried."
The thunder of the engines filled the control room. For days now that thunder had been intheir ears. They had grown accustomed to it, now hardly noticed it. Ten mighty engines, driving theInvincibleat a pace no other ship had ever obtained, except, possibly, theInterplanetarian, although lack of power should have held Craven's ship down to a lower speed. Craven wouldn't have dared to build up the acceleration they had now attained, for he would have drained his banks and been unable to charge them again.
"Maybe he won't fight," said Russ. "Maybe he's figured out by this time that he's heading for the wrong star. He may be glad to see us and follow us back to the Solar System."
"No chance of that. Craven and Chambers won't pass up a chance for a fight. They'll give us a few wallops if only for the appearance of things."
"We're crawling up all the time," said Russ. "If we can catch him within four or five billion miles of the star, he won't be too tough to handle. Be getting plenty of radiations even then, but not quite as much as he would like to have."
"He'll have to start decelerating pretty soon," Greg declared. "He can't run the chance of smashing into the planetary system at the speed he's going. He won't want to waste too much power using his field as a brake, because he must know by this time that we're after him and he'll want what power he has to throw at us."
Hours passed. TheInvinciblecrept nearer and nearer, suddenly seemed to leap ahead as theInterplanetarianbegan deceleration.
"Keep giving her all you got," Greg urged Russ. "We've got plenty of power for braking. We can overhaul him and stop in a fraction of the time he does."
Russ nodded grimly. The distance indicator needle on the mechanical shadow slipped off rapidly. Greg, leaping from his chair, hung over it, breathlessly.
"I think," he said, "we better slow down now. If we don't, we'll be inside the planetary system."
"How far out is Craven?" asked Russ.
"Not far enough," Greg replied unhappily. "He can't be more than three billion miles from the star and that star's hot. A class G, all right, but a good deal younger than old Sol."
"We'lllet them know we've arrived," grinned Greg. He sent a stabbing beam of half a billion horsepower slashing at theInterplanetarian.
The other ship staggered but steadied itself.
"They know," said Russ cryptically from his position in frontof the vision plate. "We shook them up a bit."
They waited. Nothing happened.
Greg scratched his head. "Maybe you were right. Maybe they don't want to fight."
Together they watched theInterplanetarian. It was still moving in toward the distant sun, as if nothing had happened.
"We'll see," said Greg.
Back at the controls he threw out a gigantic tractor beam, catching the other ship in a net of forces that visibly cut its speed.
Space suddenly vomited lashing flame that slapped back and licked and crawled in living streamers over the surface of theInvincible. The engines moaned in their valiant battle to keep up the outer screen. The pungent odor of ozone filtered into the control room. The whole ship was bucking and vibrating, creaking, as if it were being pulled apart.
"So they don't want to fight, eh?" hooted Russ.
Greg gritted his teeth. "They snapped the tractor beam."
"They have power there," Russ declared.
"Too much," said Greg. "More power than they have any right to have."
His hand went out to the lever on the board and pulled it back. A beam smashed out, with the engines' screaming drive behind it, billions of horsepower driving with unleashed ferocity at the other ship.
Greg's hand spun a dial, while the generators roared thunderous defiance.
"I'm giving them the radiation scale," said Greg.
TheInterplanetarianwas staggering under the terrific bombardment, but its screen was handling every ounce of the power that Greg was pouring into it.
"Their photo-cells can't handle that," cried Russ. "No photo-cell would handle all that stuff you're shooting at them. Unless ..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless Craven has improved on them."
"We'll have to find out. Get the televisor."
Russleaped for the television machine.
A moment later he lifted a haggard face.
"I can't get through," he said. "Craven's got our beams stopped and now he has our television blocked out."
Greg nodded. "We might have expected that. When he could scramble our televisors back in the Jovian worlds, he certainly ought to be able to screen his ship against them."
He shoved the lever clear over,slamming the extreme limit of power into the beam. The engines screamed like demented things, howling and shrieking. Instantly a tremendous sheet of solid flame spun a fiery web around theInterplanetarian, turning it into a blazing inferno of lapping, leaping fire.
A dozen terrific beams, billions of horsepower in each, stabbed back at theInvincibleas theInterplanetarianshunted the terrific energy influx from the overcharged accumulators to the various automatic energy discharges.
TheInvincible'sscreen flared in defense and the ten great engines wailed in utter agony. More stabbing flame shot from theInterplanetarianin slow explosions.
The temperature in theInvincible'scontrol room was rising. The ozone was sharp enough to make their eyes water and nostrils burn. The vision glass was blanked out by the lapping flames that crawled and writhed over the screen outside the glass.
Russ tore his collar open, wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. "Try a pure magnetic!"
Greg, his face set and bleak as a wall of stone, grunted agreement. His fingers danced over the control manual.
Suddenly the stars outside twisted and danced, like stars gone mad, as if they were dancing a riotous jig in space, some uproariously hopping up and down while others were applauding the show that was being provided for their unblinking eyes.
The magnetic field was tightening now, twisting the light from those distant stars and bending it straight again. TheInterplanetarianreeled like a drunken thing and the great arcs of electric flame looped madly and plunged straight for the field's very heart.
Thestars danced weirdly in far-off space again as theInterplanetarian'saccumulators lashed out with tremendous force to oppose the energy of the field.
The field glowed softly and disappeared.
"They have us stopped at every turn," groaned Russ. "There must be some way, something we can do." He looked at Greg. Greg grinned without humor, wiping his face. "There is something we can do," said Russ grimly. "We should have thought of it long ago."
He strode to the desk, reached out one hand and drew a calculator near.
"You keep them busy," he snapped. "I'll have this thing figured out in just a while."
From the engine rooms came the roar and hum of the laboring units and theInvincibleshudderedonce again as Greg grimly hurled one beam after another, at theInterplanetarian.
TheInterplanetarianstruck back, using radio frequency that flamed fiercely against theInvincible'souter screen. Simultaneously theInterplanetarianleaped forward with a sudden surge of accumulated energy, driving at the star that lay not more than three billion miles away.
Greg worked desperately, cursing under his breath. He pulled down the outer screen that was fighting directly against the radio frequency, energy for energy, and allowed the beam to strike squarely on the second screen, the inversion field that shunted the major portion of the energy impacting against it through 90 degrees into another space.
The engines moaned softly and settled into a quieter rumble as the necessity of supplying the first screen was eliminated. But they screamed once again as Greg sent out a tractor beam that seized and held, dragged theInterplanetarianto a standstill. Craven's ship had gained millions of miles, though, and established a tremendous advantage by fighting nearer to its source of energy.
"Russ," gasped Greg, "if you don't get that scheme of yours figured out pretty soon, we're done for. They've stopped everything we've got. They're nearer the sun. We won't stand a chance if they make another break like that."
Russ glanced up to answer, but his mouth fell open in amazement and he did not speak. A streak of terrible light was striking at them from theInterplanetarian, blinding white light, and along that highway of light swarmed a horde of little green figures, like squirming green amebas. Swarming toward theInvincible, stretching out hungry, pale-green pseudopods toward the inversion barrier ...and eating through it!
Wherever they touched, holes appeared. They drifted through the inversion screen easily and began drilling into the inner screen of anti-entropy. Eating their way into the anti-entropy ...into a state of matter which Russ and Greg had thought would resist all change!
Forseconds both men stood transfixed, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes. But the ameba things came on in ever-increasing throngs, creatures that gnawed and slobbered at the anti-entropy, eating into it, flaking it away, drilling their way through it.
When they pierced the anti-entropy, they would cut through the steel plates of theInvinciblelike so much paper!
And more were coming. More and more!
With a grunt of amazement, Greg slammed a beam straight into the heart of the amebas. They ate the beam and vanished as mistily as before, little glowing things that ate and died. But there were always more to take their place. They overwhelmed the beam and ate back along its length, attacked the screen again.
They ate through walls of force and walls of metal, and a rush of hissing air began to flame into ions in the terrific battle of energies outside theInvincible.
Russ was crouching over the manual of the televisor board. His breath moaned in his throat as his fingers flew.
"I have to have power, Greg," he said. "Lots of power."
"Take it." Greg replied. "I haven't been able to do anything with it. It isn't any use to me."
Russ's thumb reached out and tripped the activating lever. The giant engines shrieked and yowled.
Something was happening on the television screen ... something terrifying. Craven's ship seemed to retreat suddenly for millions of miles ... and as suddenly theInvincibleappeared on the screen. For a single flashing instant, the view held; then it was gone in blank grayness. For seconds nothing happened on the screen, unnerving seconds while the two men held their breath.
The screen's grayness fled and they looked into the control room of theInterplanetarian. Craven was hunched in a chair, intent upon a series of controls. Behind him and to one side stood Stutsman, a heat pistol dangled from his hand, his face twisted into a sneer of triumph. There was no sign of Chambers.
"You damn fool," Craven was snapping at Stutsman. "You're cheating us out of the only chance we ever had of getting home."
"Shutup," snarled Stutsman, the pistol jerking in his hand. "Have you got that apparatus on full power?"
"It's been on full power for minutes now," said Craven. "It must be eating holes straight through Manning's ship."
"See you keep it that way. I really don't need you any more, anyhow. I've watched and I know all the tricks. I could carry on this battle single-handed."
Craven did not reply, merely hunched closer over the controls, eyes watching flickering dials.
Greg jogged Russ's elbow. "That must be the apparatus over there, in the corner of the room. That triangular affair. A condenser of some sort. That stuff they're throwing at us mustbe super-saturated force fields and they'd need a space-field condenser for that."
Russ nodded. "We'll take care of that."
His fingers moved swiftly and a transport beam whipped out, riding the television beam. Bands of force wrapped around the triangular machine and wrenched viciously. In the screen the apparatus disappeared ... simply was gone. It now lay within theInvincible'scontrol room, jerked there by the tele-transport.
The flood of dazzling light reaching out from theInterplanetariansnapped off and the little green ameba things were gone. The shrill whistle of escaping air stopped as the eaten screens clamped down again, sealing in the atmosphere despite the holes bored through the metal plates.
In the television screen, Craven leaped from his chair, was staring with Stutsman at the place where the concentrator had stood. The machine had been ripped from a welded base and jagged, bright, torn metal gleamed in the control room lights. Snapped cables and broken busbars lay piled about the room.
"What happened?" Stutsman was screaming. They heard Craven laugh at the terror in the other's voice. "Manning just walked in and grabbed it away from us."
"But he couldn't! We had the screen up! He couldn't get through!"
Craven shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know how he did it, but he did. Probably he could clean out the whole place if he wanted to."
"That's a good idea," said Russ, judiciously.
He stripped bank after bank of the other ship's photo-cells from their moorings, wrecked the force field controls, ripped cables from the engines and left the ship without means of collecting power, without means of using power, without means of movement, of offense or defense.
Heleaned back in his chair and regarded the screen with deep satisfaction.
"That," he decided, "should hold them for a while."
He hauled the pipe out of his pocket and filled it from the battered leather pouch.
Greg regarded him with a quizzical stare. "You sent the televisor back in time. You got it inside theInterplanetarianbefore Craven had run up his screen and then you brought it forward."
"You guessed it," said Russ, tamping the tobacco into the bowl. "We should have thought of that long ago. We have a time factor there. In fact, the wholething revolves around time. We move the televisor, we use the tele-transport, by giving the objects we wish to move an acceleration in time."
Greg wrinkled his brow. "Maybe that means we can really investigate the past, or even the future. Can sit here before our screen and see everything that has happened, everything that is going to happen."
Russ shook his head. "I don't know, Greg. Notice, though, that we got no screen response until the televisor came up out of the past and actually reached the point which coincided with the present. That is, the screen and the televisor itself have to be on the same time level for them to operate. We might modify the screen, even modify the televisor so that we could travel in time, but it will take a lot of research, a lot of work. And especially it will take a whale of a lot of power."
"We have the power," said Greg.
Russ moved the lighter back and forth over the tobacco, igniting it carefully. Clouds of blue smoke swirled around his head. He spoke out of the smoke.
"Right now," he said, "we better see how Craven and our other friends are getting along. I didn't like the way Stutsman was talking or the way he was swinging that gun around. And Chambers wasn't anywhere in sight. There's something screwy about the entire thing."
"Whatare we going to do now?" demanded Stutsman.
Craven grinned at him. "That's up to you. Remember, you're the master mind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things." He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-out apparatus. "Well, there you are. Go ahead and run the joint."
"But you will have to help," pleaded Stutsman, his face twisted until it seemed that he was suffering intense physical agony. "You know what to do. I don't."
Craven shook his head. "There isn't any use starting. Manning will be along almost anytime now. We'll wait and see what he has in mind."
"Manning!" shrieked Stutsman, waving the pistol wildly. "Always Manning. One would think you were working for Manning."
"He's the big shot out in this little corner of space right now," Craven pointed out. "There isn't any way you can get around that."
Stutsman backed carefully away. His gun came up and he looked at Craven appraisingly, as if selecting his targets.
"Put down that gun," said a voice.
Gregory Manning stood between Stutsman and Craven. There had been no foggy forerunner of his appearance. He had just snapped out of empty air.
Stutsman stared at him, his eyes widening, but the gun remained steady in his hand.
"Look out, Craven," warned Greg. "He's going to fire and it will go right through me and hit you."
Therewas the thump of a falling body as Craven hurled himself out of his chair, hit the floor and rolled. Stutsman's gun vomited flame. The spouting flame passed through Greg's image, blasted against the chair in which Craven had sat, fused it until it fell in on itself.
"Russ," said Greg quietly, "disarm this fellow before he hurts somebody."
An unseen force reached out and twisted the gun from Stutsman's hand, flung it to one side. Swiftly Stutsman's hands were forced behind his back and held there by invisible bonds.
Stutsman cried out, tried to struggle, but he was unable to move. It was as if giant hands had gripped him, were holding him in a viselike clutch.
"Thanks, Manning," said Craven, getting up off the floor. "The fool would have shot this time. He's threatened it for days. He has been developing a homicidal mania."
"We don't need to worry about him now," declared Greg. He turned around to face Craven. "Where's Chambers?"
"Stutsman locked him up," said Craven. "I imagine he has the key in his pocket. Locked him up in the stateroom. Chambers jumped him and tried to take the gun away from him and Stutsman laid him out, hit him over the head. He kept Chambers locked up after that. Hasn't allowed anyone to go near the room. Hasn't even given him food and water. That was three days ago."
"Get the key out of his pocket," directed Greg. "Go and see how Chambers is."
Alone in the control room with Stutsman, Greg looked at him.
"I have a score to settle with you, Stutsman," he said. "I had intended to let it ride, but not now."
"You can't touch me," blustered Stutsman. "You wouldn't dare."
"What makes you think I wouldn't?"
"You're bluffing. You've got a lot of tricks, but you can't do the things you would like me to think you can. You've got Chambers and Craven fooled, but not me."
"It may be that I can offer you definite proof."
Chambers staggered over the threshold. His clothing was rumpled. A rude bandage was wound around his head. His face was haggard and his eyes red.
"Hello, Manning," he said. "I suppose you've won. The Solar System must be in your control by now."
He lifted his hand to his mustache, brushed it, a feeble attempt at playing the old role he'd acted so long.
"We've won," said Greg quietly, "but you're wrong about our being in control. The governments are in the hands of the people, where they should be."
Chambers nodded. "I see," he mumbled. "Different people, different ideas." His eyes rested on Stutsman and Greg saw sudden rage sweep across the gray, haggard face. "So you've got him, have you? What are you going to do with him? What are you going to do with all of us?"
"I haven't had time to think about it," said Greg. "I've principally been thinking about Stutsman here."
"He mutinied," rasped Chambers. "He seized the ship, turned the crew against me."
"And the penalty for that," said Greg, quietly, "is death. Death by walking in space."
Stutsman writhed within the bands of force that held him tight. His face contorted. "No, damn you! You can't do that! Not to me, you can't!"
"Shut up," roared Chambers and Stutsman quieted.
"I was thinking, too," said Greg, "that at his order thousands of people were mercilessly shot down back in the Solar System. Stood against a wall and mowed down. Others were killed like wild animals in the street. Thousands of them."
Hemoved slowly toward Stutsman and the man cringed.
"Stutsman," he said, "you're a butcher. You're a stench in the nostrils of humanity. You aren't fit to live."