3
Actually there was less than a quart of fuel in theStarshine'stanks. Kim knew it ruefully well. It would run the little ship at interplanetary speed for perhaps six hours. On normal overdrive—two hundred light-speeds—it would send her just about one-seventh of a light-year, and star-systems averaged eight light-years apart in both the First and Second Galaxies.
Of course, on transmitter-drive—the practically infinite speed theStarshinealone in history had attained—the ship might circumnavigate the cosmos on a quart of fuel. But merely rising from Terranova would consume one-third of it, and landing on any other planet would take another third.
Actually the little ship was in the position of being able to go almost anywhere, but of having no hope at all of being able to come back.
It rose from Terranova though, just three days after the emergency was made clear. There were a few small gadgets on board—hastily made in the intervening seventy-two hours—but nothing deadly—nothing that could really be termed a weapon.
TheStarshineclimbed beyond the atmosphere of the Second Galaxy planet. It went on overdrive—at two hundred light-speeds—to a safe distance from Terranova's planetary system. Then it stopped in normal space, not stressed to allow for extra speed.
Kim jockeyed it with infinite care until it was aimed straight at the tiny wisp of nebulous light which was the First Galaxy, unthinkable thousands of light-years away. At long last he was satisfied. He pressed the transmitter-field button—and all space seemed to reel about the ship.
At the moment the transmitter-field went on, theStarshinehad a velocity of twenty miles per second and a mass of perhaps two hundred tons. The kinetic energy it possessed was fixed by those two facts.
But, when the transmitter-field enveloped it, its mass dropped—divided by a factor approaching infinity. And its speed necessarily increased in exact proportion because its kinetic energy was undiminished. It was enclosed in a stressed space in which an infinite speed was possible. It approached that infinite speed on its original course.
Instantly, it seemed, alarm-gongs rang and the cosmos reeled again. Suddenly there was a glaring light pouring in the forward vision-ports. There were uncountable millions of stars all about and, almost straight ahead, a monstrous, palpitating Cepheid sun swam angrily in emptiness.
TheStarshinehad leaped the gulf between galaxies in a time to be measured in heart-beats and the transmitter-field was thrown off when the total quantity of radiation impinging upon a sensitive plate before her had reached a certain total.
Dona watched absorbedly as Kim made his observations and approximately fixed his position. The Mayor of Steadheim looked on suspiciously.
"What's this?"
"Locating ourselves," Kim explained. "From the Second Galaxy the best we could hope for was to hit somewhere in the First. We did pretty well, at that. We're about sixty light-centuries from Ades."
"That's good, eh?" The mayor mopped his face. "Will we have fuel to get there?"
Kim jockeyed theStarshineto a new line. He adjusted the radiation-operated switch to a new value, to throw off the field more quickly than before. He pressed the field-button again. Space reeled once more and the gongs rang and they were deep within the Galaxy. A lurid purple sun blazed balefully far to the left.
Kim began another jockeying for line.
"Khiv Five was beamed about a week ago," he said reflectively. "We're headed for there now. I think there'll be a warship hanging around, if only to drop into the stratosphere at night and pick up the broadcasts or to drop off a spy or two. Dona, you've got your wristlet on?"
Dona, unsmiling, held up her hand. A curious bracelet clung tightly to the flesh. She looked at his forearm, too. He wore a duplicate. The Mayor of Steadheim rumbled puzzledly.
"These will keep the fighting-beams from killing us," Kim told him wryly. "And you too. But they'll hurt like the dickens. When they hit, though, these wristlets trip a relay that throws us into transmitter-drives and we get away from there in the thousandth of a second. The beams simply won't have time to kill us. But they'll hurt!"
He made other adjustments—to a newly-installed switch on the instrument-board.
"Now—we see if we get back to Terranova."
He pressed the transmitter-drive button a third time. Stars swirled insanely, with all their colors changing. Then they were still. And there was the ringed sun Khiv with its family of planets about it.
Khiv Five was readily recognizable by the broad, straight bands of irrigated vegetation across its otherwise desert middle, where the water of the melted ice-caps was pumped to its winter hemisphere. It was on the far side of its orbit from the stopping-place of theStarshine, though, and Kim went on overdrive to reach it. This used as much fuel as all the journey from the Second Galaxy.
The three speed-ranges of theStarshinewere—if Kim had but known it—quaintly like the three speeds of ancient internal-combustion land-cars. Interplanetary drive was a low speed, necessary for taking off and landing, but terribly wasteful of fuel.
Overdrive had been the triumph of space-navigation for thousands of years. It was like the second gear of the ancient land-cars. And the transmitter-drive of Kim's devising was high speed, almost infinite speed—but it could not be used within a solar system. It was too fast.
Kim drove to the farther orbit of Khiv Five and then went into a long, slow, free fall toward the banded planet below. In the old days it would have been changed to a landing-parabola at an appropriate moment.
"Now," said Kim grimly, "my guess is that we haven't enough fuel to make anything but a crash-landing. Which would mean that we should all get killed. So we will hope very earnestly that a warship is still hanging about Khiv Five, and that it comes and tries to wipe us out."
Dona pointed to a tiny dial. Its needle quivered ever so slightly from its point of rest.
"Mmmmm," said Kim. "Right at the limit of the detector's range. Something using power. We should know how a worm on a fish-hook feels, right now. We're bait."
He waited—and waited—and waited.
The small hundred-foot hull of the space-ship seemed motionless, seen from without. The stars were infinitely far away. The great ringed sun was a hundred and twenty million miles distant. Even the belted planet Khiv Five was a good half-million miles below.
Such motion as theStarshinepossessed was imperceptible. It floated with a vast leisureliness in what would be a parabolic semi-orbit. But it would take days to make sure. And meanwhile....
Meanwhile theStarshineseemed to spawn. A small object appeared astern. Suddenly it writhed convulsively. Light glinted upon it. It whirled dizzily, then more dizzily still, and abruptly it was a shape. It was, in fact, the shape of a space-ship practically the size of theStarshineitself, but somehow it was not quite substantial. For minutes it shimmered and quivered.
"You'll find it instructive," said Kim drily to the Mayor of Steadheim, "to look out of a stern-port."
The Mayor lumbered toward a stern-port. A moment later they heard him shout. Minutes later, he lumbered back.
"What's that?" he said angrily. "I thought it was another ship! When I first saw it, I thought it was ramming us!"
"It's a gadget," said Kim abstractedly. His eyes were on the indicator of one of the detectors. The needle was definitely away from its point of rest. "There's something moving toward us. My guess is that it's a warship with fighting-beams—and hafnium and fuel."