"No," he admitted, "but there's nothing that says I can't go along and help if I want to. I'm unattached when I'm off of my inspection job. A little action will make me feel useful; I'm tired of arguing with techs about crystallized joints, frayed insulation, and unstandardized measuring equipment."
Lois nodded cheerfully and headed for Morehouse's office; Steve headed for his quarters to prepare for the possible recall alarm.
It came, that recall alarm, a half hour after the first. The men at Base One tumbled into the ships and ripped into the sky, Steve following the flight closely in his inspection ship. The whole crew went anxiously, cheerfully, for the recall alarm meant that the threatened ship might possibly be saved.
The flight from Base One arrived on the scene forty minutes after taking off. The ship was in subspace, ripping along without drive at three or four hundred times the speed of light, still encased in the warp.
But it was spacewarp held up and maintained by the conjunction of warp-planes forced edge to edge by surrounding Guardian ships. The rescue crew had gone to pick up the people who had flown the ship in life-craft; the swampers and barriers were sticking close to go to work if the hard-held warp failed. A mishap on the part of one pilot holding the warp would fracture the englobement; this was as fatal to the life of the spacewarp as puncture is in the flank of a toy balloon.
Base One's flight came swirling in and caught the orders from the Guardian director in charge. Base Seven was used up; every available ship for the job was holding the warp, it was Base One's job to enter the warp and close down on the generator room, to fasten tractors to the free-running ship and slow it down below the speed of light before the warp broke.
As many as could latched onto the ship and applied their drives. The ship slowed and the warp-holding ships slowed with it, keeping their distance.
It was tricky business, for there was just enough lack of spacial homogeneity to make the course a bit rough; it was somewhat like the job of running a fleet of vessels close together in a heavy sea.
Then the rest of Base One's power ships came in to stand between Seven's warp-holding craft, and Base One's warp-planes went forth, entered the hull of the ship, and established a second englobed warp around the ruined generator. A third warp was thrown about the ship just outside of the second, and the whole crew took a deep breath.
Now if one broke, the other would be there.
They were safe; the ship was saved, could be repaired and put in service again.
The tractors slowed the ship and eventually the whole fleet dropped below the velocity of light and their spacewarp generators thrummed down to a growling halt. The galaxy changed in color as the ships entered prime space and the light of the stars was the real light that mankind had always seen instead of the unreal glow caused by the central energies of the suns of the universe. For space itself is warped naturally in the core of a sun, and the energy glows through a subspace populated only by the phantom cores of prime space stars—and the few puny bits of sentient brain that warped space artificially.
Technicians breached the ship with their kits of tools to make repair as the Guardians broke up their pattern and began the trip back to their bases.
Steve felt gratified; it was the first generator saved by the Guardian tactics. And it was worth anything, any cost, any sacrifice to realize that mankind had some control even over mankind's failures.
He followed the flight back to Base, found a magazine, and relaxed.
Steve was awakened from a light sleep by the ringing of the telephone. Blinking and wondering, he answered it; Lois Morehouse said: "Steve, you're wanted here."
"Okay, what's up?"
"The usual."
Steve hung up and pulled himself together. Why they'd want his opinion again he could not understand. It was obvious this time that the Guardians had done a fine job; nothing was lost. All he could think of was the fact that he had gone as an observer and had seen the incident without taking active part in it. That might possibly give the committee a less distorted picture than the recount of a man whose attention was filled with the mechanics of operating against the possible eruption.
He was preparing his account as he entered Morehouse's office, but once inside, he saw instantly that there was no committee investigation.
Morehouse and Charlemagne were there. Lois was there. And an air of trouble was there also.
Morehouse held up a hand. "Hagen, look at that."
Steve turned and looked. In the corner, near the galactic model, stood a rack and panel, obviously disconnected from the generator room of a spacecraft.
"Go take a good look at it."
Steve went. He looked.
"Test it!"
Steve turned. "I'll have to get my equip—"
Morehouse snorted. "Just turn it on and check it!"
Steve shrugged. He snapped the master switch and turned the function switch totest. He checked the meters, wondering whether they were standardized and reading correctly. But he had no need to concern himself about such a refinement; the servo bridge that balanced the stress of warp against the pressure of normal space and integrated it so that the total volume of warped space remained essentially constant was obviously haywire. Instead of operating with a steady thrust of power—operating on test by balancing the power from a standard electric cell against a standard resistance load—the servo bridge was oscillating.
On, off, on, off, on, off, on—
Rapidly like the swinging of the pendulum of a very tiny wall clock, on, off, on, off, on, off, on—
No meters were necessary to check this failure; it was as obviously bad as a flat tire.
Steve turned the gear off and faced Morehouse. He waited, for it was so obvious that he needed to make no explanation. Morehouse wanted something—
"Hagen, that was in the ship we just saved."
"That way?" asked Steve incredulously.
"That way."
"That should have been planeted."
"We agree."
"It's criminal."
"We also agree. So," said Morehouse pointedly, "why didn't you clap a restraint on 'em?"
"Why didn't I what—?"
"You inspected that ship about three hours before it took off."
Steve shook his head. "I'd never have passed it."
"You did. Here's your seal."
Morehouse showed Steve the sheet of paper giving theAstartea clean bill of health from the Guardian Patrol.
"Hagen, what kind of a game are you playing?"
"Game?"
"Hagen—or Wrightwood?"
Steve looked at Lois. Morehouse said: "She hasn't told us anything that we did not know, Wrightwood."
"Look," said Steve angrily, "my name's Hagen."
"How long have you had it?" asked Morehouse.
"All my life. I answer to it."
"We know that. Lois called at you half way across the campus and you turned; a man taking an assumed name doesn't always react to an unexpected use of it."
"Look," said Steve, as angrily as before, "I've never tried to conceal the fact; all I've tried to do is ignore it. So I'm William Wrightwood Junior, according to a few dozen people who do not believe their eyes or cannot read. To my friends and to the rest of the world, I am Steve Hagen, which is the name my father and mother gave me long before I was born." Steve's eyes grew soft for a moment and he smiled in a reminiscent fashion. "I've been told that my name would have been Catherine if I'd been constructed differently."
"All right, what's your game?"
"Game—schmame. What do you mean?"
"Hagen, why are you here and what do you hope to accomplish?"
"I'm here because I want to be a Guardian."
"And how is William Wrightwood fitted into this picture?"
Steve sat down suddenly. "Look, Commissioner Morehouse, if you think for one moment that I am among the Guardians so that I can cast some discredit upon them so that William Wrightwood can take over, you're much mistaken. Wrightwood can roast in hell for all of me."
Steve turned and looked at Lois. "Do you believe me? Are you on my side—or have you been playing Mata Hari with my feelings?"
Lois flushed. "I believe him, dad."
"Thanks," said Steve drily. "Now about the Mata Hari side of it?"
"Steve, forgive me; I had to know."
"So now you know," he said bitterly. "And so do I."
Charlemagne shrugged. "Steve does a fine enough job," he said. It came ungrudgingly.
"No doubt," said Morehouse. "And somehow I doubt that Wrightwood could plan all these years to plant his son in such a manner. To make—"
"Wrightwood has made pawns of everybody he could control," snapped Steve, "but I'll run my own life."
"We're not running the Guardians as a method of personal revenge, either," Morehouse said.
"What do you mean?"
"None of us can quite justify the idea that you are planted here for sabotage. We did bring you to Base One so that we could keep an eye on you, Hagen."
"Then what—?"
"But granting there is no intention of sabotaging the Guardians, there is still a fine opportunity of seeing to it that William Wrightwood gets clipped."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the possible overlooking of a generator so bad that the ship would explode, losing for Wrightwood a good bit. Kill off a ship a month by not working too hard, by looking the other way when the generator is about to cave in, by slowing down operations—"
"Look, I—"
Morehouse stood up. "Maybe it isn't even conscious," he said slowly. "Just a subconscious act, blinding the eyes so that a ship is sent forth to explode."
"What am I? An accident prone?"
"Maybe where Wrightwood is concerned," suggested Morehouse.
"Lord knows I have no love for William Wrightwood," said Steve soberly, "and I want to strike back at him. But no man knows better than I do that the way to clip Wrightwood is to wrest some of his power from him or to go ahead and do that which he deemed impossible."
"He is right," said Lois.
Morehouse swivelled around and looked at her. "Lois, are you in love with him?"
"I might be. Eventually I may be. Now, I don't know him well enough. But—"
"You're talking in a circle."
"—but I will say this: I will be a very happy woman if Steve Hagen turns out to be a right guy."
Morehouse looked at her silently; Steve took a deep breath; Charlemagne stared at the ceiling. In the silence the computer behind the alarm screen clicked code; none of them had to turn to look at the galactic sector. They knew it was a distant base responding to a distant alarm, two or three hundred light years across the galaxy.
Morehouse eyed Steve, then. "Hagen, we can't take chances on you."
"I'm being tossed out on a premise?"
"Why don't you resign?"
"Why split hairs?" asked Steve.
"A matter of prestige. You have always had an excellent record. Had you shown any blots, you'd have been cashiered during training school. You graduated high in the class and therefore—according to the laws—we had to accept you. Mostly," said Morehouse sharply and hitting his fist in the palm of his other hand, "because we knew that any reason we give for releasing you must be air tight. Wrightwood owns too many news agencies, congressmen, and top-drawer statesmen. He'll eye anything we do and if he can, he'll yell favoritism, revenge, or rank incompetence."
"And if I resign?"
"That will be your prerogative."
"Also an admission to Wrightwood that he was right?"
"That's your problem."
"I decline."
"We can force your hand, Hagen."
"How?"
"You forget that," said Morehouse, turning and pointing at the faulty warp generator.
"But—"
"It is hard to believe that a Guardian, even a raw recruit, could miss such an obvious fault; it is even more difficult to think that such an oversight was made in malice and revenge."
"I—"
"Then how did it happen?" demanded Morehouse.
"I don't know."
"And you won't resign?"
"No."
"Then until you find out how this warp generator got past your inspection, you'll be released from duty," said Morehouse. "You have no status, Hagen. You will wear the uniform in courtesy only, since you are a member of the organization, and you are subject to our rules. Your pay will continue, since we have no recourse, and your stated duty will be one of investigation on one subject only: Ascertaining the base for this near-explosion!"
"But—"
"That's the edict," said Morehouse.
"Lois—?"
"What can I say?"
"You—?"
"Steve, I think a lot of you. More than I have thought of or considered any other man. And until hatred came out, you were it. Hatred is a nasty thing, Steve; it is not a good thing to found a love or a life upon. So until you rise above your hatred, it's no go. Lose it or burn it or beat it—and then come back."
Hagen turned and left the office. He felt beaten. Where was he to start?
Hours later in his quarters, Steve was still pondering the same question. There were so many angles to follow. Steve did not like to think that maybe Morehouse was right, that, subconsciously, he had overlooked the faulty generator hoping that Wrightwood would lose by the accident. He certainly had not overlooked the generator with malice. On the other hand there were other factors that could be plausible. Wrightwood wanted to control Steve; might not Wrightwood's own men have fouled the generator, knowing that Steve had checked it only hours before? The fact that the Guardians got there in time to save the whole ship indicated that someone was on his toes. Any shadow of suspicion cast upon Steve would work toward Wrightwood's ends.
Nor were the Guardians beyond suspicion. Wanting to bring this thing into the open, what better way than to louse the generator themselves and let the natural course of events take care of Hagen.
It was not a pretty tangle. Every angle remained closed to him; Steve could not open the first door, for he had not the authority to question anybody.
But until he got the answer, Steve was not going to do what he wanted to do.
The days wore on into a week, and then the week grew into a month. Steve, unattached, roved the galactic sector, nosing in generator rooms of spacecraft hoping to pick up some clue.
He had to give up the idea of substitution. The generator delivered to Morehouse's office was the generator that had been taken from the threatened ship; it was the same generator he had checked a few hours before the ship took off.
After two months Steve was ready to admit defeat. Only determination remained, and that was wearing very thin. No longer did he have the regard of his fellows; his unattached state was practically a condition of disgrace and everybody knew it. He saw little of Lois; alone he saw her not at all.
But as the months passed, the trail became colder and colder, and the incident dropped into the files—was covered up by the regular list of calls that sent the Guardians out from time to time to take care of trouble, occasionally to fight a blowup, often to go out and calm down some stormy condition that possibly would not have blown anyway. The muttering of the alarm came constantly from one or the other sector of the galaxy and the Guardians would be out, from one base or another.
But not for Steve; he was licked.
He sat in his quarters quietly unhappy for hours before he pulled the typewriter from its case and placed it deliberately on the top of his desk. With a shake of his head, Steve put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and began to tap out his resignation.
He was licked. Morehouse had given orders that he intended to keep. Hagen was to locate the reason why theAstartehad a faulty generator. Period. Or else.
This was time for the "or else" part of it. The thought passed Hagen's mind that not even an official investigation could uncover the truth at this late date. He had no chance where every man's hand was against him. And so—
The telephone interrupted his train of thought, and he got up to answer it. "Hagen?"
Steve said it was and then tried to identify the voice. It was a hoarse voice, half a coarse whisper and half an undertone which sounded like someone trying to disguise his voice—successfully.
"Hagen, d'ye want some dope on theAstarte?"
"Who are you?"
"I'm a friend. Look Hagen, if you want some dope on theAstartecome to Sanaron."
"What's on Sanaron?"
"The dope you want."
"But—"
"Take off in half an hour and we'll be watching for you," said the voice. Then it hung up.
Hagen wondered. But even a fool's lead was better than nothing and Steve had followed less likely leads than this in the past three months. He left the typewriter as it was and went to the spacefield, where he climbed into the inspection craft and took off for Sanaron.
Sanaron was no long run for the fleet Guardian ship. Steve made it in jig time and as he dropped his ship on Sanaron's one spaceport, he saw a planet craft awaiting him. He was whisked across the face of Sanaron to a large city, deposited on the landing stage of a tall hotel building, and dropped a few stories to a luxurious suite.
And once again Hagen was face to face with William Wrightwood.
"What goes on?" demanded Steve.
"You want some information on theAstarte?"
"I do."
"You've been ordered to locate this information."
Hagen grunted. "Yes."
"Steve, did the fact that you are William Wrightwood Junior have anything to do with this order?"
"What difference does that make?"
Wrightwood sat back in his chair. "Steve, I hate to do this to you, but your answers have confirmed my suspicions. This order and its impossible fulfillment is more like an attempt to have you resign. This smacks of unfair tactic, and upon that fact I am making my final bid."
"What final bid?"
"Since the Guardians have proven themselves unable to operate as a completely impersonalized agency, they fail in the one thing they claim—which is to operate for good or bad, for rich or poor alike. As such, I can prove the ability to operate the Guardians as a more efficient agency, and I shall do it!"
"Not if I can help it."
"Tell me, Steve, what can you do?"
"I can—"
"There was a faulty generator on theAstarte. How did it get there? Would you maliciously try to wreck my ship?"
"What do you think?"
"Of course you wouldn't, knowing that the lives of a hundred people were in the balance. Would I try to wreck my own ship to get you discredited?"
"Hardly, since you'd lose too much."
"Might the Guardians try?"
"No."
"But there are your three possibilities, Steve. One of them is it!"
"So—"
"So it must be your little friends, who knew they could set a fire, then put it out without harm to anybody but the man they want to be rid of."
"That's not my fault," snapped Steve.
"No," smiled Wrightwood, "it's all mine. Remember—I told you that no matter what you did it would ultimately work toward my success? Why don't you try aiding me instead of bucking me?"
Steve found himself answering slowly, instead of snapping out a reply. "Just what do you hope to gain from this?"
"I've gained it," smiled Wrightwood. "I've recordings of this entire meeting, and the tone of your voice during what you have to say is sufficient evidence to prove my point: that the Guardians have been wasting the taxpayers' money by ordering an impossible investigation by a valued man for the spite they hold against his father."
"I might have expected something like this. You've got no news of theAstarte."
"Yes—I have. Play along with me until I control the Guardians and I'll see to it that your position is granted back to you. There's no need of investigating theAstarteanyway; and your Commissioner Morehouse is going to eat crow before he's finished."
"Bah!" growled Steve. Once more he turned and left his father's presence abruptly.
He was whisked back to his waiting ship and he took off as fast as he could. It was no more than a fifty minute run across the star trails to Base One, and Steve was going to make it as fast as he could.
But ten minutes out of Sanaron, the alarm whispered and then broke into full clamor.
No danger alarm, this. This was the real thing!
Steve swapped his ship around in space and headed for the spacial co-ordinates given in the alarm. In his mind's eye he could see the men tumbling out of their quarters and into the waiting Guardian ships and hurtling into the black.
Steve found the stricken ship as the squadron came into detector range and deployed. It was a superliner, one of Interstellar's finest. And as Steve came up to theLunalightthe life-craft broke the spacelocks and streaked out and away.
Once more the englobement of warping planes started; plate to plate they formed, jockeying to make their forward-flung planes of warp lie against one another, edge to edge so that the volume enclosed was contained without leak. Tractor ships hurtled up and latched onto the ship and started to bring it down in speed.
But this was not the time; one of the plane ships faltered and the edge of its warp plane broke contact with its neighbor. The spacewarp fractured, and then with the enigmatic peculiarity of a collapsing warp, the volume began to drop back toward prime space from the center out. The warp generator itself, in the bowels of the ship, broke into prime space first.
Matter, at a thousand times the velocity of light, dropping into a space where matter cannot exceed the velocity of light!
Where the tiniest speck of matter will have infinite mass when the speck reaches the velocity of light.
Where the time-field of the mass becomes zero as the velocity of light is reached.
It was like a stellar nova.
A searing intensity of energy trailed out behind the ship and left a streak a million miles long in a matter of microseconds. The ship itself collapsed over the trail of energy, and the whole exploded finally in a hundred-billion mile long course leaving the trailer of raw, unbound energy spread out for the span of a solar system.
Then the trailer itself exploded, blowing streamers of torrential energy deep into space. Bits and shags of the blazing stuff flew away, great gouts, shapeless and viciously scintillating, roared along the ship's course.
The tractors fled; the plane ships had been hurled back, away, and now were lost in the sky—far behind. They hurried to catch up, for they could hurl their planes of spacial warp against a flaming mass of raw energy and bat it aside like a ping-pong paddle slaps the ball aside. The swampers circled in and the cone projectors fenced with the darting spears of flaming power.
It was Steve that remembered Sanaron. "Charlemagne!" he roared into his mike.
"Who's calling?"
"Hagen. Remember Sanaron."
"Sanaron?"
"Ten minutes back at full drive lies Sanaron!"
"God!"
And then, for the first time in the history of space, in the history of the Guardians, came the dreaded Black Alarm.
Sanaron was a complete stellar system, eight habitable planets well inhabited by every possible form of sentient life. The star, Sanaron, was a nondescript G-zero that would not have had even a number in the Terran catalogs before the conquest of space, but Sanaron was a full-grown star in the flush of its energic cycle. Once the raving centroid of raw energy erupted from theLunalightfell into the gravitational field of Sanaron it would drop into the star. And then mankind would see, a supernova in operation—for a brief instant before this system cremated itself.
The Black Alarm!
Across the galaxy it went. Guardians from every base in Sector One alerted and took off within a matter of minutes. Guardians from joining sectors moved into Sector One, spreading out through the sector to keep the sector protected; Guardians from outlying sectors moved in, again spreading out. Thinned but active, the Guardians released useful personnel to go out and fight the Black Alarm.
"Charlemagne!"
"Now what?"
"Can I help?"
"Yes," came the cryptic reply; "stay out of our way."
Steve snarled, but he got no reply.
A gout of energy flashed past his viewport, blinding him. Then he realized that he was unprotected, and only a nuisance here.
But—
"Go along with him," said William Wrightwood. "Aid him, and—"
Steve laughed bitterly; swapped ends, and flashed along the line toward Sanaron.
He dropped down upon Wrightwood's hotel and dashed along the corridor. He shouldered his way into the suite with a yell that brought servants and hotel detectives running. It also brought William Wrightwood from his bed, clad in a pair of pale blue silk pajamas.
Somehow it seemed appropriate to flee a holocaust in a pair of passionate pajamas, and for the first time in years Steve saw a bit of humor in his father's mien.
"Black Alarm," he said breathlessly. He shoved Wrightwood back into the bedroom and shut the door on the incoming help.
"Can't save 'em all," said Steve, working his false-fear act for all it was worth. "Slip out with me and we'll es—"
"Good boy, I knew you had what it took."
Wrightwood started to look for clothing.
"No time," snapped Steve. "Lunalightblew up ten minutes spacedrive out of Sanaron. The Guardians have the Black Alarm running, but the magma will get here first. That's raving death from an exploding sun for a billion people living on eight planets. Come on."
Wrightwood looked out of a window frantically. Everything seemed so solid, so safe. Yet—
He turned and nodded at Steve.
With a sly grin Wrightwood could not see, Steve led the older man out into the chill of night and relished the shiver as the cold bit in through the silk pajamas and struck at the man. Then they were into the Guardian craft and into space.
"Where—?"
Steve shrugged. "Want to see it?" he asked.
Horrified, Wrightwood nodded.
Eight minutes later they were approaching the scene. Spread out on a shapeless form ten million miles across, tongues and streamers of raw energy flared forward, flaying space before it as it came. At a hundred and seventy thousand miles per second it came toward Sanaron, so near to the velocity of light that the roaring particles of energy had enormous mass.
No need for the great searchlights here, for the coverage of the explosion was so great that there was no need to filter the blackness away.
Instead, Guardians played before the oncoming death and fought it.
With a quiet disregard for death, Steve ran his little ship to within a mile of the raving storm front and matched its velocity.
White-faced and awed, William Wrightwood watched the horror without really knowing how close he was to death. It was too big to be personal, that flaming front. He saw the circling ships fighting first this tongue and then that, saw the planers fencing the streamers in, holding them while coners sucked away the raving energies and spread them too far apart to be tangible. He saw the swampers soar in to chill a raving island of exploding space, and watched with heaving stomach one of the Guardians get touched by a lance of flame—saw it go searing into death to recreate an island of raw fire of itself.
Then the mad attack against the roaring furnace cleared; Wrightwood began to see that there was a pattern to this.
Methodically the Guardians were isolating the forward-reaching tongues of energy from the main mass; cutting them off, and swamping them. From behind, as Steve circled the scene, planers and swampers were closing in on the trailing flame, chopping it off bit by bit and chilling it out of existence.
Sanaron was no longer a star lost in the stellar field. It was a flaming disc that could be seen, but to look at it hurt the eyes. Steve knew; Sanaron was not too far away.
He hurled his ship to the front again.
And then, as though it were a wave hitting a breakwater, the coruscating front dashed against the massed warp-planes of a whole squadron of Guardians, braced, planted, ready and waiting. The planes buckled and the squadron was forced back but the raving front flattened against the planes and was washed aside; turned back, spread to curl around the edges like tongues of doom reaching for the prey that lurked behind the wall. The squadron retreated, forming its shape as it went, until firm pressor rays behind the out-flung planes felt for and caught the core of Sanaron's outermost planet. With planetary mass behind, the squadron held a parabolic shield in space, ploughing a hole in the racing field of exploding energy.
Fire and flame enveloped the planet, passed around it, held from it by the warp-planes of the Guardians. A ship crumpled and died; its place was refilled by a spare. Another ship ran out of power abruptly and it was replaced until it could drop into the planet and recharge.
Then, as abruptly as the passing of an ocean wave, the roaring furnace in space was passed. The swampers and coners that fought the rear guard of the flaming death appeared in the tortured sky, scurrying around to wipe out the isolated trailers that the passage of the holocaust had left behind.
Another squadron came out of the blackness, a group from a distant sector that plunged past the planet and hit the flame from the rear. Steve circled the field of horror again and Wrightwood, his face pressed against the viewplate, watched the arrival of three more squadrons that hit Sanaron, formed a plate-to-plate shield while fighting for position, and established their protection for the next planet with a matter of seconds to spare.
One streamer leaked through a crevasse in the hastily-made shield, and the inside of the paraboloid was filled with swampers that fought the flame right to the atmosphere of the planet before it died.
And as the sun itself came under attack, the bulk of the racing squadrons came circling in from distant sectors. Men and sentient beings coming prepared to fight a supernova, to stand in there while a sun explodes, fighting space to hold a tenuous barrier in place to save the fragments of humanity that lived on the eight planets of Sanaron.
But Sanaron the Sun had mass, and the flaming particles of the erupting space had mass but were discrete.
There was a turning in the flame, a coalescence that centered, radially inward, upon the sun that waited for it and attracted it. With stellar mass behind, the flung planes of warped space held well, but the mass of energy, as its volume was, and the gouts and streamers of raw flaming space flattened against the plates and curled along them, creeping around and around. And around and around.
"Hold 'em," cried Steve.
Wrightwood turned anxiously. "What are they trying to do?"
Steve smiled wearily. "We're going to establish a complete globe around Sanaron and hold that raving horror out of the stellar mass."
"But—"
"The rest—on the outside—will fight it."
"And if they fail?"
Steve's expression told him.
"But Steve—there's ten thousand ships trapped inside of that sphere of raving energy."
"Yup."
"And they'll—they'll—?"
"They'll?You meanwe'll. Yes. We'll die. But we're not going to die; the Guardians never die...."
The sphere of roaring energy closed down on the last avenue of escape. Outside was sheer hell. Below them was the stellar furnace called Sanaron, giver of life and death. Above them was a completed sphere of raw hell trying to drop down and add its raw mass-energy to Sanaron.
Somewhere outside raced and circled the rest of the Guardians, swamping the fires of exploding space and trimming down the depth of the energy bit by bit.
But doggedly they held, and an hour passed before there came a shout over the radio, a shout barely heard through the overwhelming roar of cosmic static. The sphere had thinned!
From that moment on it was certain. Once mankind got the upper hand over his foe, aided and augmented by beings from far across the galaxy devoted to the same program, the horror-fires were due to die swiftly. The flaming skies opened, spread, became isolated bits of intolerable light, and then winked out as sheer mass of numbers hit them from all sides with swamping volumes and rayed cones. Planers swept bits together into a larger flame and called for swampers to come and chill it.
Then, once more plate to plate, the planers formed into a mighty single plane and swept space like a cosmic dragnet, forcing the danger out into deep space where there was no danger.
Then came the final signal; the Black Alarm was finished.
William Wrightwood, Senior, faced Commissioner Morehouse openly. "But so many—?" he faltered. Wrightwood was wearing his foster son's clothing and it looked a bit incongruous to see the jaunty uniform on the elderly Wrightwood.
Morehouse shrugged. "The reptilian culture from Sector Eight is as helpful as the cockeyed gang of cat-men from Nine."
"But—"
"Of course they're not reptiles nor cats. None of them have ever been within a hundred light years of Terra. But they're sentient, brilliantly so. They love their own music and their own literature and their own art, none of which means anything to any other culture, really. But we have a common ground to base the Galactic Civilization upon—someday. We all have the fear of destruction and the willingness to fight against it. To help our neighbor fight it, even though he sees colors we cannot, and can hear sounds we cannot hear."
"My mighty little empire looks a bit small—"
"Indeed."
"Morehouse, it strikes me that you're up a tree."
"I am?"
"You've got a fine man here trapped in a lousy job. I'll bet a hat I can get farther along than either you or he can about finding the truth about theAstarte." Wrightwood smiled. "Then you can take him off that job."
"Maybe," smiled Morehouse. "But remember that I'm giving the orders. I can also rescind them—providing they need rescinding."
"Well?"
"Do they need rescinding?" asked Morehouse. "Does Steve still hate you?"
"No man can really hate another man that he's just succeeded over," said Wrightwood. "Watch!" Wrightwood turned and called: "Hey! Steve!"
Steve Hagen turned away from Lois Morehouse. "Yes, dad?" he replied.
He came across the office holding her hand.