Chapter 9
Burke found her, rooted to the spot. He had a small metal box in hishand. He didn't notice her pallor nor that she trembled.
"I may have something," he said with careful calm. "The case had thisin it. There's a black cube in the box. The case seems to have beenmade to hold and call attention to this cube. I'll take it up to theinstrument-room and use a reader on it."
He led the way. Sandy followed, her throat dry. She knew, of course,that he was under almost intolerable emotional strain. He'd brought heralong to be with her for a few moments, but he was so tense that hecould think of nothing personal to say. Now it was not possible for himto talk of anything at all.
Yet Sandy realized that even under the stress that pressed upon him,he'd asked her to go look for tools in the gravity-machine room becauseshe'd spoken of possible danger in the opening of the case. He'd gottenher away while he opened it.
When they reached the ship-lock he said briefly, "I want to hurry,Sandy. Wait for me in the ship?"
She nodded, and went to the small spacecraft which had brought them allfrom Earth.
When she saw Pam, inside, she said shakily, "Is--anybody else here?"
"No," said Pam. "Why?"
Sandy sat down and shivered.
"I think," she said through chattering teeth, "I think I'm going tohave hysterics. L-listen, Pam! I--I saw something alive! It was like abird this high and big as a--There aren't any birds like that! Therecan't be anything alive here but us! But I saw it! And it saw me andran away!"
Pam stared and asked questions, at first soothing ones. But presentlyshe was saying indignantly, "I do believe it! That's near the placewhere I smelled fresh air!"
Of course, fresh air in the asteroid, two hundred and seventy millionmiles from Earth, was as impossible as what Sandy had seen.
Holmes came in presently, depressed and tired. He'd been filling hismind with the contents of black cubes. He knew how cooking was done inthe kitchens of the fortress, some eons since. He knew how to preparefor inspection of the asteroid by a high-ranking officer. He was fullyconversant with the bugle-calls once used in the fortress in the placeof a public-address loud-speaker system. But he'd found no hint of howthe fortress received its supplies, nor how the air was freshened,nor how reinforcements of men used to reach the asteroid. He wasdiscouraged and vexed and weary.
"Sandy," said Pam challengingly, "saw a live bird, bigger than a goose,in the gravity-machine room."
Holmes shrugged.
"Keller's fidgeting," he observed, "because he thinks he's seenmovements in the vision-plates that show different inside views of thisthing. But he isn't sure that he's seen anything move. Maybe we're allgoing out of our minds."
"Then Joe's closest," said Pam darkly. "He worries about Sandy!"
"And very reasonably," said Holmes tiredly. "Pam, this business offiguring that there's something deadly on the way and nothing to doabout it--it's got me down!"
He slumped in a chair. Pam frowned at him. Sandy sat perfectly still,her hands clenched.
Burke came back twenty minutes later. His expression was studiedly calm.
"I've found out where the garrison went," he said matter-of-factly."I'm afraid we can't get any help from them. Or anybody else."
Sandy looked at him mutely. He was completely self-controlled, and hedid not look like a man resolutely refusing to despair, but Sandy knewhim. To her it seemed that his eyes had sunk a little in his head.
"Apparently there's nobody left on the world the garrison came from,"said Burke in the tone of someone saying perfectly commonplace things,"so they didn't go back there and there's no use in our trying to makea contact with that world. This was an outpost fortress, you know. Itwas reached from somewhere far away, and carved out and armed to fightan enemy that didn't attack it for itself, but to get at the world orworlds that made it."
He continued with immoderate calm, "I believe the home world of thatcivilization has two moons in its sky and something off at the horizonthat looks like a hill, but isn't."
"But--"
"The garrison left," explained Burke, "because it was abandoned. It wasleft behind to stand off the Enemy, and the civilization it belonged tomoved away. It was left without supplies, without equipment, withouthope. It was left behind even without training to face abandonment,because its members had been trained by black cubes and only knew howto do their own highly special jobs by rote. They were just ordinarysoldiers, like the Roman detachments left behind when the legionsmarched south from Hadrian's Wall and sailed for Gaul. So when therewas nothing left for them to do but leave their post or starve--becausethey couldn't follow the civilization that had abandoned them--theyleft. The cube in the box was a message they set up for their formerrulers and fellow-citizens if they ever returned. It's not a prettymessage!"
Sandy swallowed.
"Where'd they go? What happened to them?"
"They went to Earth," said Burke tonelessly. "By twos and fives anddozens, in the service ships that came out with meat, and took backpassengers. The service ships had been assigned to bring out what meatthe hunting-parties could kill. They took back men who were fightersand ready to face mammoths or sabre tooth tigers or anything else.Just the same, they left a transmitter to call them back if the Enemyever came again. But it didn't come in their lifetimes, and theirdescendants forgot. But the transmitter remembered. It called to them.And--we were the ones to answer!"
Sandy hesitated a moment.
"But if the garrison went to Earth," she said dubiously, "what becameof them? There aren't any traces--"
"We're traces," said Burke. "They were our ancestors of ten or twentythousand years ago. They couldn't build a civilization. They werefighting men! Could the Romans left behind at Hadrian's Wall keep upthe culture of Rome? Of course not! The garrison went to Earth andturned savage, and their children's children's children built up a newcivilization. And for here and for now, we're it. We've got to face theEnemy and drive him back."
He stopped, and said in a tone that was almost completely steady andheld no hint of despair, "It's going to be quite a job. But it's anemergency. We've got to manage it somehow."
There was also an emergency on Earth, not simplified as in spaceby having somebody like Burke accept the burden of meeting it. Theemergency stemmed from the fact that despite the best efforts of theair arm of the United States, Burke and the others had gotten out tospace. They'd reached the asteroid M-387. Naturally. The United Statesthereupon took credit for this most creditable achievement. Inevitably.And it was instantly and frantically denounced for suspectedspace-imperialism, space-monopoly, and intended space-exploitation.
But when Keller's painstaking instructions for the building ofgravity-field detectors reached Earth, these suspicions seemed lessplausible. The United States passed on the instructions. The basicprinciple was so new that nobody could claim it, but it was so simplethat many men felt a wholesome shame that they had not thought of itbefore. Nobody could question a natural law which was so obvious onceit was stated. And the building of the device required next to no timeat all.
Within days then, where the asteroid had a single ten-foot instrument,the United States had a ten-foot, a thirty-foot and a sixty-footgravity-field detector available to qualified researchers. The newinstruments gave data such as no astronomer had ever hoped forbefore. The thirty-foot disk, tuned for short range, pictured everygravitational field in the solar system. A previously unguessed-atSaturnian moon, hidden in the outer ring, turned up. All the asteroidscould be located at one instant. The mystery of the inadequate mass ofPluto was solved within hours of turning on the thirty-foot device.
When the sixty-foot instrument went on, scaled to take in half ahundred light-years of space, the solar system was a dot on it. Butfour dark stars, one with planets, and twenty-odd planetary systemswere mapped within a day. On that same day, though, a query went backto Keller. What, said the query, was the meaning of certain crawling,bright-red specks in mathematically
exact relationship to each other,which were visibly in motion and much closer to Earth than AlphaCentaurus? Alpha Centaurus had always been considered the closest ofall stars to Earth. Under magnification the bright-red sparks wove andinterwove their paths as if about a common center of gravity. If such athing were not impossible, it would be guessed that they were suns soclose together as to revolve about one another within hours. Even morepreposterously, they moved through space at a rate which was a multipleof the speed of light. Thirty light-speeds, of course, could not be.And the direction of their motion seemed to be directly toward theglowings which represented the solar system containing Earth. All thiswas plainly absurd. But what was the cause of this erroneous reportfrom the new device?
Keller wrote out very neatly, "_The instrument here shows the samephenomenon. Its appearance much farther away triggered the transmitterhere to send the first signals to Earth. Data suggests red dotsrepresent artificial gravity-fields strong enough to warp space andproduce new spatial constants including higher speed for light, hencepossible higher speed for spacecraft carrying artificial gravitygenerators. Request evaluation this possibility._"
Pam coded it and sent it to Earth. And presently, on Earth, astronomerslooked at each other helplessly. Because Keller had stated the onlypossible explanation. Objects like real suns, if so close together,would tear each other to bits and fuse in flaming novas. Moreover,the pattern of motion of the red-spark-producing objects could nothave come into being of itself. It was artificial. There was a groupof Things in motion toward Earth's solar system. They would arrivewithin so many days. They were millions of miles apart, but theirgravity-fields were so strong that they orbited each other withinhours. If they had gravity-fields, they had mass, which could be asartificial as their gravity. And, whirling about each other in themaddest of dances, ten suns passing through the human solar systemcould leave nothing but debris behind them.
Oddly enough, the ships that made those gravity-fields might be sosmall as to be beyond the power of a telescope to detect at a fewthousand miles. The destruction of all the solar planets and the sunitself might be accomplished by motes. They would not need to use powerfor destruction. Gravitation is not expended any more than magnetism,when something is attracted by it. The artificial gravity-fields wouldonly need to be built up. They had been. Once created, they could existforever without need for added power, just as the sun and planets donot expend power for their mutual attraction, and as the Earth partswith no energy to keep its moon a captive.
The newspapers did not publish this news. But, very quietly, everycivilized government on Earth got instructions for the making of agravity-field detector. Most had them built. And then for the firsttime in human history there was an actual and desperately honestattempt to poll all human knowledge and all human resources for acommon human end. For once, no eminent figure assumed the undignifiedpose involved in standing on one's dignity. For once, the publicremained unworried and undisturbed while the heads of states agedvisibly.
Naturally some of the people in the secret frantically demanded thatthe five in the fortress solve the problem all the science of Earthcould not even attack. Incredible lists of required information itemswent out to Burke and Keller and Holmes. Keller read the lists calmlyand tried to answer the questions that seemed to make sense. Holmesdoggedly spent all his time experiencing cubes in the hope that bysheer accident he might come upon something useful. Pam, scowling,coded and decoded without pause. And Sandy looked anxiously at Burke.
"I'm going to ask you to do something for me," she said. "When we wentdown to the Lower Levels, I thought I saw something moving. Somethingalive."
"Nerves," said Burke. "There couldn't be anything alive in this place.Not after so many years without air."
"I know," acknowledged Sandy. "I know it's ridiculous. But Pam's feltcreepy, too, as if there were something deadly somewhere in the roomswe've never been in."
Burke moved his head impatiently. "Well?"
"Holmes found some hand-weapons," said Sandy. "They don't work, ofcourse. Will you fix one for Pam and one for me so that they do?" Shepaused and added, "Of course it doesn't matter whether we're frightenedor not, considering. It doesn't even matter whether there is somethingalive. It doesn't matter if we're killed. But it would be pleasant notto feel defenseless."
Burke shrugged. "I'll fix them."
She put three of the transparent-barreled weapons before him and said,"I'm going up to the instrument-room and help Pam with her coding."
She went out. Burke took the three hand-weapons and looked at themwithout interest. But in a technician of any sort there is always someresponse to a technical problem. A trivial thing like a hand-weaponout of order could hold Burke's attention simply because it did notrefer to the coming disaster.
He loosened the hand-grip plates and looked at the completely simpledevices inside the weapons. There was a tiny battery, of course. Inthousands of years its electrolyte had evaporated. Burke replacedit from the water stores of the ship. He did the same to the othertwo weapons. Then, curious, he stepped out of the ship's air-lockand aimed at the ship-lock wall. He pressed the trigger. There was asnapping sound and a fragment of rock fell. He tried the others. Theyfired something. It was not a bullet. The barrels of the weapons, oninspection, were not hollow. They were solid. The weapons fired athrust, a push, an immaterial blow which was concentrated on a tinyspot. They punched, with nothing solid to do the punching.
"Probably punch a hole right through a man," said Burke, reflectively.
He took the three weapons and went toward the instrument-room. On theway, his mind went automatically back to the coming destruction. It wascompletely arbitrary. The Enemy had no reason to destroy the human racein this solar system. Men, here, had lost all recollection of theirorigin and assuredly all memory of enmities known before memory began.If any tradition remained of the fortress, even, it would be hidden intales of a Golden Age before Pandora was, or of an Age of Innocencewhen all things came without effort. Those stories were changed out ofall semblance to their foundations, of course, as ever-more-ignorantand ever-more-unsophisticated generations retold them. Perhaps theGolden Age was a garbled memory of a time when machines performed tasksfor men--before the machines wore out and could not be replaced withoutother machines to make them. Perhaps the slow development of tools,with which men did things that machines formerly did for them, blurredthe accounts of times when men did not need to use tools. Even theeverywhere-present traditions of a long, long journey in a boat--theflood legends--might be the last trace of grand-sires' yarns about ajourney to Earth. It would have been modified by successive generationswho could not imagine a journey through emptiness, and thereforedevised a flood as a more scientific and reasonable explanation formyths plainly overlaid with fantasy and superstition.
Burke went into the instrument-room as Sandy was asking, "But how didthey? We haven't found any ship-lock except the one we came in by! Andif a ship can't travel faster than light without wrapping artificialmass about itself ..."
Holmes had taken off his helmet He said doggedly, "There's nothingabout ships in the cubes. Anyhow, the nearest other sun is fourlight-years away. Nobody'd try to carry all the food a whole colonywould need from as far away as that! If they'd used ships for supply,there'd have been hydroponic gardens all over the place to ease theload the ships had to carry! There was some other way to get stuffhere!"
"Whatever it was, it didn't bring meat from Earth. That was hauled out,fastened to the outside of service-boats."
"Another thing," Holmes said. "There were thousands of people in thegarrison, here. How did the air get renewed? Nobody's found any mentionof air-purifying apparatus in the cubes. There's been no sign of any!An emergency air-supply, yes. It was let loose when we came into theship-lock. But there's no regular provision for purifying the air andputting oxygen into it and breaking down the CO_{2}!"
"Won't anyone believe I smelled fresh air yesterday?" Pam askedplaintively.
No one commented. It could not be believed. Burke handed Sandy one ofthe weapons. He gave Pam a second.
"They work very much like the ship-drive, which was developed fromthem. A battery in the handle energizes them so they use the heat theycontain to make a lethal punch without a kick-back. They'll get prettycold after a dozen or so shots."
He sat down and Holmes went on almost angrily, "The garrison had to getfood here. It didn't come in ships. They had to purify the air. They'venothing to do it with! How did they manage?"
Keller smiled faintly. He pointed to a control on the wall.
"If that worked, we could ask. It is supposed to be communication withbase. It is turned on. Nothing happens."
"Do you know what I'm thinking?" demanded Holmes. "I'm thinking of amatter-transmitter! It's been pointed out before that we'll never reachthe stars in spaceships limited to one light-speed. What good would bevoyages that lasted ten, twenty, or fifty years each way? But if therecould be matter-transmitters--"
Keller said gently, "Transmitters, no. Transposers, yes."
It was a familiar enough distinction. To break down an object intoelectric charges and reconstitute it at some distant place would be aself-defeating operation. It could have no actual value. To transmita hundred and fifty pounds of electric energy--the weight of a manconverted into current--would require the mightiest of bus-bars for aconductor, and months of time if it was not to burn out from overload.The actual transmission of mass as electric energy would be absurd.But if an object could simply be transposed from one place to another;if it could be translated from place to place; if it could undergosubstitution of surroundings.... That would be a different matter!Transposition would be instantaneous. Translation would require notime. Substitution of position--a man who was here this instant wouldbe there the next--would have no temporal aspect. Such a developmentwould make anything possible. A ship might undertake a voyage tolast a century. If a matter-transposer were a part of it, it couldbe supplied with fuel and air and foodstuffs on its voyage. Its crewcould be relieved and exchanged whenever it was desired. And when itmade a planet-fall a hundred years and more from home, why, home wouldstill be just around the transposer. With matter-transposition aninterstellar civilization could arise and thrive, even though limitedto the speed of light for its ships. But a culture spread over hundredsof light-years would be unthinkable without something permittinginstant communication between its parts.
"All right!" said Holmes doggedly. "Call them transposers! Thisfortress had to be supplied. We've found no sign that ships were usedto supply it. It needed to have its air renewed and refreshed. We'vefound no sign of anything but emergency stores of air in case someunknown air-supply system failed. What's the matter with looking for amatter-transposer?"
Burke said, "In a way, a telephone system transposes sound-waves fromone place to another. Sound-waves aren't carried along wires. They'rehere, and then suddenly they're there. But there has to be a sendingand receiving station at each end. When the fortress here was 'cut off'from home it could be that its supply-system broke down."
"Its air-system didn't," said Holmes. "It hadn't used up its emergencyair-supply. We're breathing it!"
"Anyhow we could try to find even a broken-down transposer," said Sandy.
"You try," said Burke. "Keller's been looking for something for me inthe cubes. I'll stay here and help him look."
Sandy examined the weapon he'd given her.
"Pam says she's smelled fresh air, down below where there can't beany. Mr. Keller thought he saw movements in the inside vision-plates,where there can't be any. I still believe I saw something alive in thegravity-machine room, where such a thing is impossible. We're going tolook, Pam and I."
Holmes lumbered to his feet.
"I'll come, too. And I'll guarantee to defend you against anything thathas survived the ten thousand years or so that this place was withoutair. My head's tired, after all those cubes."
He led the way. Burke watched as the two girls followed him and closedthe door behind them.
"What have you found, Keller?"
"A cube about globes," said Keller. "Very interesting."
"Nothing on communication with base?"
Keller shook his head.
Burke said evenly, "I figured out three chances for us--all slim ones.The first was to find the garrison when the radio summons didn't andget it or its descendants to help. I found the garrison--on Earth. Nohelp there. The second chance was finding the civilization that hadbuilt this fortress. It looks like it's collapsed. There's been timefor a new civilization to get started, but it's run away. The thirdchance is the slimmest of all. It's hooking together something to fightwith."
Keller reached out over the array of cubes that had been experienced byHolmes and himself while using the helmets from the cube-library. Onecube had been set aside. Keller put it in place on the extra helmet andhanded it to Burke.
"Try it," said Keller.
Burke put the helmet on his head.
* * * * *
_He was in this same instrument-room, but he wore a uniform and he satat an instrument-board. He knew that there were drone service-boatsperhaps ten thousand miles out, perhaps a hundred. They'd been fittedout to make a mock attack on the fortress. Counter-tactics men devisedthem. There was reason for worry. Three times, now, drones pretendingto be Enemy ships had dodged past the screen of globes set out toprevent just such an evasion. Once, one of the drones had gloatinglytouched the stone of the fortress' outer surface. This was triumph forthe counter-tactics crew, but it was proof that an Enemy ship couldhave wiped out the fortress and all its garrison a hundred times over._
_Burke sweated. There was a speck with a yellow ring about it. It wasa globe, poised and ready to dart in any conceivable direction if anEnemy detection-device ranged it. The globes did not go seeking anEnemy. They placed themselves where they would be sought. They setthemselves up as targets. But when a radar-pulse touched them, theyflung themselves at its source, their reflex chooser-circuits pouringincredible power into a beam of the same characteristics as theradar-touch. That beam, of course, paralyzed or burned out the Enemydevice necessarily tuned to it. And the globes plunged at the thingwhich had found them. They accelerated at a hundred and sixty gravitiesand mere high explosive would be wasted if they carried it. Nothingcould stand their impact. Nothing!_
_But in drills three drones had dodged them. The counter-tactics menunderstood the drones, of course, as it was hoped the Enemy did not.But it should not be possible to get to the fortress! If the fortresswas vulnerable, so was the Empire. If the Empire was vulnerable,the Enemy would wreck its worlds, blast its cities, exterminate itspopulation and only foulness would remain in the Galaxy._
_On the monitor-board a light flashed. A line of green light dartedacross the screen. It was the path of a globe hurtling toward somethingthat had touched it with a radar-frequency signal. The acceleration ofthe globe was breathtaking. It seemed to explode toward its target._
_But this globe hit nothing. It went on and on.... A second globesprang. It also struck nothing. It went away to illimitable emptiness.Its path exactly crossed that of the first. A third and fourth andfifth.... Each one flung itself ferociously at the source of sometrickle of radiation. Their trails crossed at exactly the same spot.But there was nothing there...._
_Burke suddenly flung up a row of switches, inactivating the remainingglobes under his control. Five had flung themselves away, dartingat something which radiated but did not exist. Something which wasnot solid. Which was not a drone ship impersonating an Enemy. They'dattacked an illusion...._
_At the control-board. Burke clenched his fist and struck angrily atthe flat surface before him. An illusion! Of course!_
_Cunningly, he made adjustments. He had five globes left. He chose oneand changed the setting of its reflex chooser-circuit. It would ignoreradar frequencies now. It would pick up only stray radiation--inductionfrequencies from a drone ship with its d
rive on._
_The globe's light flashed. A train of green fire appeared. A burst offlame. A hit! The drone was destroyed. He swiftly changed the settingof the reflex circuits of the rest. Two! Three! Three drones blasted intwice as many seconds._
_He mopped his forehead. This was only a drill, but when the Enemy cameit would be the solution of such problems that would determine thesurvival of the fortress and the destruction of the Enemy._
_He reported his success crisply._
* * * * *
Burke took off the helmet.
Keller said mildly, "What did he do?"
Burke considered.
"The drone, faking to be an enemy, had dumped something out into space.Metal powder, perhaps. It made a cloud in emptiness. Then the dronedrew off and threw a radar-beam on the cloud of metal particles. Thebeam bounced in all directions. When a globe picked it up, it shotfor the phony metal-powder target. It went right through and off intospace. Other globes fell for the same trick. When they were all gone,the drones could have come right up to the fort."
He was almost interested. He'd felt, at least, the sweating earnestnessof an unknown member of this garrison, dead some thousands of years, ashe tried to make a good showing in a battle drill.
"So he changed the reflex circuits," Burke added. "He stopped hisglobes from homing on radar frequencies. He made them home onfrequencies that wouldn't bounce." Then he said in surprise, "But theydidn't hit, at that! The drones blew up before the globes got to them!They were exploding from the burning-out of all their equipment beforethe globes got there!"
Keller nodded. He said sorrowfully, "So clever, our ancestors. But notclever enough!"
"Of our chances," said Burke, "or what I think are chances, the leastpromising seems to be the idea of trying to hook something togetherto fight with." He considered, and then smiled very faintly. "You sawmovements you couldn't identify in the vision-plates? Sandy says shesaw something alive. I wonder if something besides us answered thespace-call and got into the fortress by a different way, and has beenhiding out, afraid of us."
Keller shook his head.
"I don't believe it either," admitted Burke. "It seems crazy. But itmight be true. It might. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel forsolutions to our problem."
Keller shook his head again. Burke shrugged and went out of theinstrument-room. He went down the stairs and the first long corridor,and past the long rows of emplacements in which were set the hunkeringmetal monsters he'd cube-dreamed of using, but which would be of noconceivable use against speeding, whirling, artificial-gravity fieldswith the pull and the mass of suns.
He reached the last long gallery on which the ship-lock opened. Hesaw the broad white ribbon of many strands of light, reaching awayseemingly without limit. And he saw a tiny figure running toward him.It was Sandy. She staggered as she ran. She had already run pastendurance, but she kept desperately on. Burke broke into a run himself.
When he met her, she gasped, "Pam! She--vanished--down below! Wewere--looking, and Pam cried out. We ran to her. Gone! And we--heardnoises! Noises! Holmes is searching now. She--screamed, Joe!"
Burke swung her behind him.
"Tell Keller," he commanded harshly. "You've got that hand-weapon? Holdon to it! Bring Keller! We'll all search! Hurry!"
He broke into a dead run.
It might have seemed ironic that he should rush to help Sandy's sisterin whatever disaster had befallen her when they were facing the end ofthe whole solar system. In cold blood, it couldn't be considered tomatter. But Burke ran.
He panted when he plunged down the ramp to the lower portions ofthe asteroid. He reached the huge cavern in which the motionlesspower-generator towered storeys high toward a light-laced ceiling.
"Holmes!" he shouted, and ran on. "Holmes!"
He'd been no farther than this, before, but he went on into tunnelswith only double lines of light-tubes overhead, and he shouted andheard his own voice reverberating in a manner which seemed puremockery. But as he ran he continued to shout.
And presently Holmes shouted in return. There was a process ofuntangling innumerable echoes, and ultimately they met. Holmes wasdeathly white. He carried something unbelievable in his hands.
"Here!" he growled. "I found this. I cornered it. I killed it! What isit? Did things like this catch Pam?"
Only a man beside himself could have asked such a question. Holmescarried the corpse of a bird with mottled curly feathers. He'd wrungits neck. He suddenly flung it aside.
"Where's Pam?" he demanded fiercely. "What the hell's happened to her?I'll kill anything in creation that's tried to hurt her!"
Burke snapped questions. Inane ones. Where had Pam been last? Wherewere Holmes and Sandy when they missed her? When she cried out?
Holmes tried to show him. But this part of the asteroid was a mazeof corridors with uncountable doorways opening into innumerablecompartments. Some of these compartments were not wholly empty, butneither Burke nor Holmes bothered to examine machine-parts or stacks ofcases that would crumble to dust at a touch. They searched like crazymen, calling to Pam.
Keller and Sandy arrived. They'd passed the corpse of the bird Holmeshad killed, and Keller was strangely white-faced. Sandy panted, "Didyou find her? Have you found any sign?"
But she knew the answer. They hadn't found Pam. Holmes was haggard,desperate, filled with a murderous fury against whatever unnameablething had taken Pam away.
"Here!" snapped Burke. "Let's get some system into this! Here's thecase with the message-cube. It's our marker. We start from here! I'llfollow this cross corridor and the next one. You three take the nextthree corridors going parallel. One each! Look in every doorway. Whenwe reach the next cross-corridor we'll compare notes and make anothermarker."
He went along the way he'd chosen, looking in every door. Crypticmasses of metal in one compartment. A heap of dust in another. Empty.Empty. A pile of metal furniture. Another empty. Still another.
Holmes appeared, his hands clenching and unclenching. Sandy turned up,struggling for self-control.
"Where's Keller?"
"I heard him call out," said Sandy breathlessly. "I thought he'd foundsomething and I hurried--"
He did not come. They shouted. They searched. Keller had disappeared.They found the mark they'd started from and retraced their steps. Burkeheard Holmes swear startledly, but there were so many echoes he couldnot catch words.
Sandy met Burke. Holmes did not. He did not answer shouts. He was gone.
"We stay together," said Burke in an icy voice. "We've both gothand-weapons. Keep yours ready to fire. I've got mine. Whatever outof hell is loose in this place, we'll kill it or it will kill us, andthen--"
He did not finish. They stayed close together, with Burke in the lead.
"We'll look in each doorway," he insisted. "Keep that pistol ready.Don't shoot the others if you see them, but shoot anything else!"
"Y-yes," said Sandy. She swallowed.
It was nerve-racking. Burke regarded each doorway as a possible ambush.He investigated each one first, making sure that the compartmentinside it was wholly empty. There was one extra-large archway to anextra-large compartment, halfway between their starting point and thenext cross-corridor. It was obviously empty, though there was a largemetal plate on the floor. But it was lighted. Nothing could lurk inthere.
Burke inspected the compartment beyond, and the one beyond that.
He thought he heard Sandy gasp. He whirled, gun ready.
Sandy was gone.
Chapter 10
The star Sol was as bright as Sirius, but no brighter because it wasnearly half a light-year away and of course could not compare inintrinsic brightness with that farther giant sun. The Milky Way glowedcoldly. All the stars shone without any wavering in their light, fromthe brightest to the faintest tinted dot. The universe was round. Therewere stars above and below and before and behind and to the right andleft. There was nothing which was solid, and nothing which
was opaque.There were only infinitely remote, unwinking motes of light, but therewere thousands of millions of them. Everywhere there were infinitesimalshinings of red and blue and yellow and green; of all the colors thatcould be imagined. Yet all the starlight from all the cosmos addedup to no more than darkness. The whitest of objects would not shineexcept faintly, dimly, feebly. There was no warmth. This was deepspace, frigid beyond imagining; desolate beyond thinking; empty. It wasnothingness spread out in the light of many stars.
In such cold and darkness it would seem that nothing could be, andthere was nothing to be seen. But now and again a pattern of starsquivered a little. It contracted a trace and then returned to itsoriginal appearance. The disturbance of the star-patterns moved, as adisturbance, in vast curved courses. They were like isolated ripplingsin space.
There seemed no cause for these ripplings. But there were powerfulgravitational fields in the void, so powerful as to warp space and bendthe starlight passing through them. These gravity-fields moved with anincredible speed. There were ten of them, circling in a complex patternwhich was spread out as an invisible unit which moved faster than thelight their space-twisting violence distorted.
They seemed absolutely undetectable, because even such minutelight-ripplings as they made were left behind them. The ten ships whichcreated these monstrous force-fields were unbelievably small. They wereno larger than cargo ships on the oceans of one planet in the solarsystem toward which they sped. They were less than dust particles ininfinity. They would travel for only a few more days, now, and thenwould flash through the solar system which was their target. Theyshould reach its outermost planet--four light-hours away--and withineight minutes more swing mockingly past and through the inner worldsand the sun. They would cross the plane of the ecliptic at nearly aright angle, and they should leave the planets and the yellow star Solin flaming self-destruction behind them. Then they would flee onward,faster than the chaos they created could follow.
The living creatures on the world to be destroyed would have nowarning. One instant everything would be as it had always been. Thenext, the ground would rise and froth out flames, and more than twothousand million human beings would hardly know that anything hadoccurred before they were destroyed.
There was no purpose to be served by notifying the world that it wasto die. The rulers of the nations had decided that it was kinder tolet men and women look at each other and rejoice, thinking they hadall their lives before them. It was kinder that children should be letplay valorously, and babies wail and instantly be tended. It was betterfor humanity to move unknowing under blue and sunshine-filled skiesthan that they should gaze despairingly up at white clouds, or in stilldeeper horror at the shining night stars from which devastation wouldpresently come.
In the one place where there was foreknowledge, no attention at allwas paid to the coming doom. Burke went raging about brightly lightedcorridors, shouting horrible things. He cried out to Sandy to answerhim, and defied whatever might have seized her to dare to face him. Hechallenged the cold stone walls. He raged up and down the gallery inwhich she had vanished, and feverishly explored beyond it, and returnedto the place where she had disappeared, and pounded on solid rock tosee if there could be some secret doorway through which she had beenabducted. It seemed that his heart must stop for pure anguish. He knewsuch an agony of frustration as he had never known before.
Presently method developed in his searching. Whatever had happened, itmust have been close to the tall archway with the large metal plate inits floor and the brilliant lights overhead. Sandy could not have beenmore than twenty feet from him when she was seized. When he heard hergasp, he was at this spot. Exactly this spot. He'd whirled, and she wasgone. She could not have been farther than the door beyond the archway,or else the one facing it. He went into the most probable one. It was aperfectly commonplace storage-room. He'd seen hundreds of them. It wasempty. He examined it with a desperate intentness. His hands shook. Hiswhole body was taut. He moved jerkily.
Nothing. He crossed the corridor and examined the room opposite. Therewas a bit of dust in one corner. He bent stiffly and fingered it.Nothing. He came out, and there was the tall archway, brightly lighted.The other compartments had no light-tubes. Being for storage only,they would not need to be lighted except to be filled and emptied ofwhatever they should contain. But the archway was very brilliantlylighted.
He went into it, his hand-weapon shaking with the tension in him. Therewas the metal plate on the floor. It was large--yards in extent. Hebegan a circuit of the walls. Halfway around, he realized that thewalls were masonry. Not native rock, like every other place in thefortress. This wall had been made! He stared about. On the oppositewall there was a small thing with a handle on it, to be moved up ordown. It was a round metal disk with a handle, set in the masonry.
He flung himself across the room to examine it. He was filled withterror for Sandy, which would turn into more-than-murderous fury ifhe found her harmed. The metal floor-plate lay between. He steppedobliviously on the plate....
The universe dissolved around him. The brightly lit masonry wallbecame vague and misty. Simultaneously quite other things appearedmistily, then solidified.
He was abruptly in the open air, with a collapsed and ruined structureabout and behind him. This was not emptiness, but the surface of aworld. Over his head there was a sunset sky. Before him there wasgrass, and beyond that a horizon, and to his left there was collapsedstonework and far off ahead there was a hill which he knew was not anatural hill at all. There was a moon in the sky, a half-moon withmarkings that he remembered. There were trees, too, and they were treeswith long, ribbony leaves such as never grew on Earth.
He stood frozen for long instants, and a second, smaller moon came uprapidly over the horizon and traveled swiftly across the sky. It wasjagged and irregular in shape.
Then flutings came from somewhere to his rear. They were utterlyfamiliar sounds. They had distinctive pitch, which varied from oneto another, and they were of different durations like half-notes andquarter-notes in music. And they had a plaintive quality which couldhave been termed elfin.
All this was so completely known to him that it should have beenshocking, but he was in such an agony of fear for Sandy that he couldnot react to it. His terror for her was breath-stopping. He held hisweapon ready in his hand. He tried to call her name, but he could notspeak.
The long, ribbony leaves of the trees waved to and fro in a gentlebreeze. And then Burke saw a figure running behind the swaying foliage.He knew who it was. The relief was almost greater pain than his terrorhad been. It was such an emotion as Burke had experienced only feebly,even in his recurrent dream. He gave a great shout and bounded forwardto meet Sandy, crying out again as he ran.
Then he had his arms about her, and she clung to him with thatremarkable ability women have to adapt themselves to circumstancesthey've been hoping for, even when they come unexpectedly. He kissedher feverishly, panting incoherent things about the fear he'd felt,holding her fast.
Presently somebody tugged at his elbow. It was Holmes. He said drily,"I know how you feel, Burke. I acted the same way just now. But thereare things to be looked into. It'll be dark soon and we don't know howlong night lasts here. Have you a match?"
Pam regarded the two of them with a peculiar glint of humor in hereyes. Keller was there too, still shaken by an experience which forhim had no emotional catharsis attached.
Burke partly released Sandy and fumbled for his cigarette lighter. Hefelt singularly foolish, but Sandy showed no trace of embarrassment.
"There was a matter-transposer," she said, "and we found it, and we allcame through it."
Keller said awkwardly, "I turned on the communicator to base. It musthave been a matter-transposer. I thought, in the instrument-room, thatit was only a communicator."
Holmes moved away. He came back bearing broken sticks, which were limbsfallen from untended trees. He piled them and went back for more. Inminutes he had a tiny fire and a big pile
of branches to keep it up,but he went back for still more.
"It works both ways," observed Sandy. "Or something does! There must beanother metal plate here to go to the fortress. That huge, crazy bird Isaw in the gravity-generator room must have come from here. He probablystepped on the plate because it was brightly lighted and--"
"You've got your pistol?" demanded Burke.
The sunset sky was darkening. The larger, seemingly stationary moonfloated ever-so-slightly nearer to the zenith. The small and jaggedmoon had gone on out of sight.
"I have," said Sandy. "Pam gave hers to Holmes. But that's all right.There won't be savages. Over there, beyond the trees, there's a metalrailing, impossibly old and corroded. But no savage would leave metalalone. I don't think there's anybody here but us."
Burke stared at something far away that looked like a hill.
"There's a building, or the ruins of one. No lights. No smoke. Savageswould occupy it. We're alone, all right! I wonder where? We could beanywhere within a hundred or five hundred light-years from Earth."
"Then," said Sandy comfortably, "we should be safe from the Enemy."
"No," said Burke. "If the Enemy has an unbeatable weapon, destroyingone solar system won't be enough. They'll smash every one that humanityever used. Which includes this one. They'll be here eventually. Not atonce, but later. They'll come!"
He looked at the small fire. There were curious, familiar fragrances inthe air. Over to the west the sun sank in a completely orthodox gloryof red and gold. The larger moon swam serenely in the sky.
"I'm afraid," said Pam, "that we won't eat tonight unless we canget back to the fortress and the ship. I guess we're farther fromour dinners than most people ever get. Did you say five hundredlight-years?"
"Ask Keller," grunted Burke. "I've got to think."
Far off in the new night there was something like a birdsong, thoughit might come from anything at all. Much nearer there were peculiarlymaternal clucking noises. They sounded as if they might come from abird with a caricature of a bill and stumpy, useless wings. There wasa baying noise, very far away indeed, and Burke remembered that theancestry of dogs on Earth was as much a mystery as the first appearanceof mankind. There were no wild ancestors of either race. Perhaps therehad been dogs with the garrison of the fortress, which might be fivehundred light-years away, in one sense, but could not be more than afew yards, in another.
Holmes squatted by the fire and built it up to brightness. Keller cameback to the circle of flickering light. His forehead was creased.
"The constellations," he said unhappily. "They're gone!"
"Which would mean," Burke told him absently, "that we're more thanforty light-years from home. They'd all be changed at that distance."
Holmes seated himself beside Pam. They had reached an obviousunderstanding. Burke's eyes wandered in their direction. Holmes beganto speak in a low tone, and Pam smiled at him. Burke jerked his head tostare at Sandy.
"I think I forgot something. Should I ask you again to marry me? Ordo I take it for granted that you will?--if we live through this?"He didn't wait for her answer. "Things have changed, Sandy," he saidgruffly. "Mostly me. I've gotten rid of an obsession and acquired afixation--on you."
"There," said Sandy warmly, "there speaks my Joseph! Yes, I'll marryyou. And we will live through this! You'll figure something out, Joe. Idon't know how, but you will!"
"Yes-s-s," said Burke slowly. "Somehow I feel that I've got somethingtucked away in my head that should apply. I need to get it out and lookit over. I don't know what it is or where it came from, but I've gotsomething...."
He stared into the fire, Sandy nestled confidently against him. Sheput her hand in his. The wind blew warm and softly through the trees.Presently Holmes replenished the fire.
Burke looked up with a start as Sandy said, "I've thought of something,Joe! Do you remember that dream of yours? I know what it was!"
"What?"
"It came from a black cube," said Sandy, "which was a cube thatsomebody from the garrison took to Earth. And what kind of cube wouldthey take? They wouldn't take drill-instruction cubes! They wouldn'ttake cubes telling them how to service the weapons or operate theglobes or whatever else the fortress has! Do you know what they'd take?"
He shook his head.
"Novels," said Sandy. "Fiction stories. Adventure tales. To--experienceon long winter evenings or even asleep by a campfire. They werefighting men, Joe, those ancestors of ours. They wouldn't care aboutscience, but they'd like a good, lusty love story or a mystery orwhatever was the equivalent of a Western twenty thousand years ago. Yougot hold of a page in a love story, Joe!"
"Probably," he growled. "But if I ever dream it again I'll know who'sbehind those waving branches. You." Then, surprised, he said, "Therewere flutings when I came through the matter-transposer. They'vestopped."
"They sounded when I came through, too. And when Pam and Holmes andKeller came. Do you know what I think they are?" Sandy smiled up athim. "'_You have arrived on the planet Sanda. Surface-travel facilitiesto the left, banking service and baggage to the right, touristaccommodations and information straight ahead._' We may never know,Joe, but it could be that!"
He made an inarticulate sound and stared at the fire again. She fellsilent. Soon Keller was dozing. Holmes strode away and came backdragging leafy branches. He made a crude lean-to for Pam, to reflectback the warmth of the fire upon her. She curled up, smiled at him,and went confidently to sleep. A long time later Sandy found herselfyawning. She slipped her fingers from Burke's hand and settled downbeside Pam.
Burke seemed not to notice. He was busy. He thought very carefully,running through the information he'd received from the black cubes.He carefully refrained from thinking of the desperate necessity for asolution to the problem of the Enemy. If it was to be solved, it wouldbe by a mind working without strain, just as a word that eludes thememory is best recalled when one no longer struggles to remember it.
Twice during the darkness Holmes regarded the blackness about them withsuspicion, his hand on the small weapon Pam had passed to him. Butnothing happened. There were sounds like bird calls, and songs likethose of insects, and wind in the trees. But there was nothing else.
When gray first showed in the east, Burke shook himself. The jaggedsmall moon rose hurriedly and floated across the sky.
"Holmes," said Burke reflectively. "I think I've got what we want. Youknow how artificial gravity's made, what the circuit is like."
To anybody but Holmes and Keller, the comment would have seemedidiotic. It would have seemed insane even to them, not too long before.But Holmes nodded.
"Yes. Of course. Why?"
"There's a chooser-circuit in the globes," said Burke carefully, "thatpicks up radiation from an Enemy ship, and multiplies it enormously andbeams it back. The circuit that made the radiation to begin with has tobe resonant to it, as the globe burns it out while dashing down its ownbeam."
"Naturally," said Holmes. "What about it?"
"The point is," said Burke, "that one _could_ treat a suddenlyincreasing gravity-field as radiation. Not a stationary one, of course.But one that increased, fast. Like the gravity-fields of the Enemyships, moving faster than light toward our sun."
"Hmmmm," said Holmes. "Yes. That could be done. But hitting somethingthat's traveling faster than light--"
"They're traveling in a straight line," said Burke, "exceptfor orbiting around each other every few hours. There's nofaster-than-light angular velocity; just straight-line velocity. Andwith the artificial mass they've got, they couldn't conceivably dodge.If we got some globes tricked up to throw a beam of gravity-field backat the Enemy ships, there might be resonance, and there's a chance thatone might hit, too."
Holmes considered.
"It might take half an hour to change the circuit," he observed. "Maybeless. There'd be no way in the world to test them. But they might work.We'd want a lot of them on the job, though, to give the idea a fairchance."
Burke stood up
, creaking a little from long immobility.
"Let's hunt for the way back to the fortress," he said. "There is away. At least two crazy birds were marching around in the fortress'corridors."
Holmes nodded again. They began a search. Matter transposed fromthe fortress--specifically, the five of them--came out in a nearlythree-walled alcove in the side of what had once been a magnificentbuilding. Now it was filled with the trunks and stalks of trees andvines which grew out of every window-opening. There were other, similaralcoves, as if other matter-transposers to other outposts or otherworlds had been centered here. They were looking for one that a plump,ridiculous bird might blunder into among the broken stones.
They found a metal plate partly arched-over by fallen stones in thevery next alcove. They hauled at the tumbled rock. Presently the waywas clear.
"Come along!" called Burke. "We've got a job to do! You girls wantto fix breakfast and we want to get to work. We've a few hundredlight-years to cross before we can have our coffee."
Somehow he felt no doubt whatever. The five of them walked ontothe corroded metal plate together, and the sky faded and ghosts oftube-lights appeared and became brilliant, and they stepped off theplate into a corridor one section removed from the sending-transposerwhich had translated them all, successively, to wherever they had been.
And everything proceeded matter-of-factly. The three men went to theroom where metal globes by hundreds waited for the defenders of thefortress to make use of them. They were completely practical, thoseglobes. There were even small footholds sunk into their curving sidesso a man could climb to their tops and inspect or change the apparatuswithin.
On the way, Burke explained to Keller. The globes were designed tobe targets, and targets they would remain. They'd be set out in thepath of the coming Enemy ships, which could not vary their courses.Their circuits would be changed to treat the suddenly increasinggravitational fields as radiation, so that they would first projectback a monstrous field of the same energy, and then dive down it topresumed collision with the ships. There was a distinct possibilitythat if enough globes could be gotten out in space, that at theleast they might hit one enemy ship and so wreck the closely orbitedgrouping. From that reasonable first possibility, the chances grewslimmer, but the results to be hoped for increased.
Keller nodded, brightly. He'd used the reading helmets more thananybody else. He understood. Moreover, his mind was trained to work injust this field.
When they reached the room of the many spheres he gestured for Burkeand Holmes to wait. He climbed the footholds of one globe, deftlyremoved its top, and looked inside. The conductors were three-inch barsof pure silver. He reached in and did this and that. He climbed downand motioned for Burke and Holmes to look.
It took them long seconds to realize what he'd done. But with hisknowledge of what could be done, once he was told what was needed,he'd made exactly three new contacts and the globe was transformed toBurke's new specifications.
Instead of days required to modify the circuits, the three of themhad a hundred of the huge round weapons changed over within an hour.Then Keller went up to the instrument-room and painstakingly studiedthe launching system. He began the launchings while Holmes and Burkecompleted the change-over task. They joined him in the instrument-roomwhen the last of the metal spheres rose a foot from the stony floor ofthe magazine and went lurching unsteadily over to the breech of thelaunching-tube they hadn't noticed before.
"Three hundred," said Keller in a pleased tone, later. "All goingout at full acceleration to meet the Enemy. And there are sixobserver-globes in the lot."
"Observers," said Burke grimly. "That's right. We can't observeanything because the information would come back at the speed of light.But if we lose, the Enemy will arrive before we can know we've lost."
Keller shook his head reproachfully.
"Oh, no! Oh, no! I just understood. There are transposers of electricenergy, too. Very tiny. In the observers."
Burke stared. But it was only logical. If matter could be transposedinstead of transmitted between distant places, assuredly miniatureenergy-transposers were not impossible. The energy would no more travelthan transposed matter would move. It would be transposed. The fortresswould see what the observer-globes saw, at the instant they saw it, nomatter what the distance!
Keller glanced at the ten-foot disk with its many small lights and thewrithing bright-red sparks which were the Enemy gravity-ships. Therewas something like a scale of distances understood, now. The red sparkshad been not far from the disk's edge when the first space call wentout to Earth. They were nearer the center when the spaceship arrivedhere. They were very, very near the center now.
"Five days," said Burke in a hard voice. "Where will the globes meetthem?"
"They're using full acceleration," Keller reminded him gently. "Onehundred sixty gravities."
"A mile a second acceleration," said Burke. Somehow he was notastonished. "In an hour, thirty-six hundred miles per second. In tenhours, thirty-six thousand miles per second. If they hit at thatspeed, they'd smash a moon! They'll cover half a billion miles in tenhours--but that's not enough! It's only a fifth of the way to Pluto!They won't be halfway to Uranus!"
"They'll have fifty-six hours," said Keller. The need to communicateclearly made him almost articulate. "Not on the plane of the ecliptic.Their course is along the line of the sun's axis. Meeting, seven timesPluto's distance. Twenty billion miles. Two days and a half. If theymiss we'll know."
Holmes growled, "If they miss, what then?"
"I stay here," said Keller, mildly. "I won't outlive everybody. I'd belonely." Then he gave a quick, embarrassed smile. "Breakfast must beready. We can do nothing but wait."
But waiting was not easy.
On the first day there came a flood of messages from Earth. Why hadthey cut off communication? Answer! Answer! Answer! What could be doneabout the Enemy ships? What could be done to save lives? If a fewspaceships could be completed and take off before the solar systemshattered, would the asteroid be shattered too? Could a few dozensurvivors of Earth hope to make their way to the asteroid and survivethere? Should the coming doom be revealed to the world?
The last question showed that the authorities of Earth were rattled.It was not a matter for Burke or Keller or Holmes to decide. Theytransmitted, in careful code, an exact description of the sending ofthe globes to try to intercept the Enemy gravity-ships. But it wasnot possible for people with no experiential knowledge of artificialgravity to believe that anything so massive as a sun could be destroyedby hurling a mere ten-foot missile at it!
Then there came a sudden revulsion of feeling on Earth. The truth wastoo horrible to believe, so it was resolved not to believe it. Andtherefore prominent persons broke into public print, denouncing Burkefor having predicted the end of the world from his safe refuge inAsteroid M-387. They explained elaborately how he must be not onlywrong but maliciously wrong.
But these denunciations were the first knowledge the public hadpossessed of the thing denounced. Some people instantly panickedbecause some people infallibly believe the worst, at all times. Someshared the indignation of the eminent characters who denounced Burke.Some were bewildered and many unstable persons vehemently urgedeverybody to do this or that in order to be saved. Get-rich-artistssold tickets in non-existent spacecraft they claimed had secretly beenbuilt in anticipation of the disaster. They would accept only papercurrency in small bills. What value paper money would have after thedestruction of Earth was not explained, but people paid it. Astronomersswore quite truthfully that no telescope gave any sign of the allegedsun-sized masses en route to destroy Earth. Government officialsheroically lied in their throats to reassure the populace because,after all, one didn't want the half-civilized part of educated nationsto run mad during Earth's probable last few days.
And Burke and the others looked at the images sent back by theobserver-globes traveling with the rest. The cosmos looked to theobserver-globes just about the way it did from the fortres
s. There wereinnumerable specks of light of innumerable tints and colors. There wasdarkness. There was cold. And there was emptiness. The globe-fleetdrove on away from the sun and from that flat plane near which all theplanets revolve. Every second the spheres' pace increased by one mileper second. Ten hours after Keller released them, they had coveredfive hundred eighty-eight thousand thousand miles and the sun stillshowed as a perceptible disk. Twenty hours out, the globes had traveledtwo billion six hundred million miles and the sun was the brighteststar the observers could note. Thirty hours out, and the squadron often-foot globes had traveled five billion eight hundred thirty-oddmillion miles and the sun was no longer an outstanding figure in theuniverse.
Houses looked fine-drawn, now, and Pam was fidgety. Keller appeared tobe wholly normal. And Sandy was conspicuously calm.
"I'll be glad when this is over," she said at dinner in the ship in thelock-tunnel. "I don't think any of you realize what this fortress andthe matter-transposer and the planet it took us to--I don't believe anyof you realize what such things can mean to people."
Burke waited. She smiled at him and said briskly, "There's a vacantplanet for people to move to. People occupied it once. They can do itagain. Once it had a terrific civilization. This fortress was just oneof its outposts. There were plenty of other forts and other planets,and the people had sciences away ahead of ours. And all those worlds,tamed and ready, are waiting right now for us to come and use them."
Holmes said, "Yes? What happened to the people who lived on them?"
"If you ask me," said Sandy confidentially, "I think they went the wayof Greece and Rome. I think they got so civilized that they got soft.They built forts instead of fighting fleets. They stopped thinking ofconquests and begrudged even thinking of defenses, though they had to,after a fashion. But they thought of things like the Rhine forts ofthe Romans, and Hadrian's Wall. Like the Great Wall of China, and theMaginot Line in France. When men build forts and don't build fightingfleets, they're on the way down."
Burke said nothing. Holmes waited for more.
"It's my belief," said Sandy, "that many, many centuries ago thepeople who built this fort sent a spaceship off somewhere with amatter-transposer on board. They replaced its crew while it traveledon and on, and they gave it supplies, and refreshed its air, andfinally it arrived somewhere at the other side of the Galaxy. And thenthe people here set up a matter-transposer and they all moved throughit to the new, peaceful, lovely world they'd found. All except thegarrison that was left behind. The Enemy would never find them there!And I think they smashed the matter-transposer that might have let theEnemy follow them--or the garrison of this fort, for that matter! And Ithink that away beyond the Milky Way there are the descendents of thosepeople. They're soft, and pretty, and useless, and they've likely lettheir knowledge die, and there probably aren't very many of them left.And I think it's good riddance!"
Pam said, "If we beat the Enemy there'll be no excuse for wars onEarth. There'll be worlds enough to take all the surplus populationanybody can imagine. There'll be riches for everybody. Joe, what do youthink the human race will do for you if, on top of finding new worldsfor everybody, you cap it by defeating the Enemy with the globes?"
"I think," said Burke, "that most people will dislike me very much.I'll be in the history books, but I'll be in small print. People whocan realize they're obligated will resent it, and those who can't willthink I got famous in a disreputable fashion. In fact, if we go backto Earth, I'll probably have to fight to keep from going bankrupt. IfI manage to get enough money for a living, it'll be by having somebodyghost-write a book for me about our journey here."
Keller interrupted mildly, "It's nearly time. We should watch."
Holmes stood up jerkily. Pam and Sandy rose almost reluctantly.
They went out of the ship and through the metal door with roundedcorners. They went along the long corridor with the seeming river oflight-tubes in its ceiling. They passed the doorway of the great roomwhich had held the globes. It looked singularly empty, now.
On the next level they passed the mess-halls and bunk-rooms, and on thethird the batteries of grisly weapons which could hurl enormous chargesof electricity at a chosen target, if the target could be ranged. Theywent on up into the instrument-room by the final flight of stairs.
They settled down there. That is, they did not leave. But far too muchdepended on the next hour or less for anybody to be truly still ineither mind or body. Holmes paced jerkily back and forth, his eyes onthe vision-screens that now relayed what the observer-globes with theglobe-fleet saw.
For a long time they gazed at the emptiness of deepest space. Thepicture was of an all-encompassing wall of tiny flecks of light.They did not move. They did not change. They did not waver. Theobserver-globes reported from nothingness, and they reported nothing.
Except one item. There were fewer red specks of light and more blueones. There were some which were distinctly violet. The globes hadattained a velocity so close to the speed of light that no availableadded power could have pushed them the last fraction of one per centfaster. But they had no monstrous mass-fields to change the constantsof space and let them travel more swiftly. The Enemy ships did. Butthere was no sign of them. There could be none except on such adetector as the instrument-room had in its ten-foot transparent disk.
Time passed, and passed. And passed. Finally, Burke broke the silence.
"Of course the globes don't have to make direct hits. We hope! Ifthey multiply the gravity-field that hits them and shoot it back hardenough, it ought to burn out the gravity-generators in the ships."
There was no answer. Pam watched the screens and bit nervously at hernails.
Seconds went by. Minutes. Tens of minutes....
"I fear," said Keller with some difficulty, "that something is wrong.Perhaps I erred in adjusting the globes--"
If he had made a mistake, of course, the globe-fleet would be useless.It wouldn't stop the Enemy. It wouldn't do anything, and in a veryshort time the sun and all its planets would erupt with insensateviolence, and all the solar system would shatter itself to burningbits--and the Enemy fleet would be speeding away faster than explodingmatter could possibly follow it.
Then, without warning, a tiny bluish line streaked across one of thescreens. A second. A third-fourth-fifth-twentieth-fiftieth--The screenscame alive with flashing streaks of blue-green light.
Then something blew. A sphere of violet light appeared on one of thescreens. Instantly, it was followed by others with such rapidity thatit was impossible to tell which followed which. But there were ten ofthem.
The silence in the instrument-room was absolute. Burke tried vainly toimagine what had actually happened. The Enemy fleet had been travelingat thirty times the speed of light, which was only possible because ofits artificial mass which changed the properties of space to permit it.And then the generators and maintainers of that artificial mass blewout. The ships stopped--so suddenly, so instantly, so absolutely that amillionth part of a second would have been a thousand times longer thanthe needed interval.
The energy of that enormous speed had to be dissipated. The shipsexploded as nothing had ever exploded before. Even a super-nova wouldnot detonate with such violence. The substance of the Enemy shipsdestroyed itself not merely by degenerating to raw atoms, but by theatoms destroying themselves. And not merely did the atoms fly apart,but the neutrons and protons and electrons of which they were composedceased to exist. Nothing was left but pure energy--violet light. And itvanished.
Then there was nothing at all. What was left of the globe-fleet wenthurtling uselessly onward through space. It would go on and on andon. It would reach the edge of the galaxy and go on, and perhaps inthousands of millions of years some one or two or a dozen of thesurviving spheres might penetrate some star-cloud millions of millionsof light-years away.
In a pleased voice, Keller said, "I think everything is all right now."
And Sandy went all to pieces. She clung to Burke, weepinguncontro
llably, holding herself close to him while she sobbed.
On Earth, of course, there was no such eccentric jubilation. It wasobserved that crawling red sparks in the gravity-field detectors winkedout. As hours and days went by, it was noticed that the solar systemcontinued to exist, and that people stayed alive. It became evidentthat some part of the terror some people had felt was baseless. Andnaturally there was much resentment against Burke because he had causedso many people so much agitation.
Within two weeks a fleet of small plastic ships hurtled upward fromthe vicinity of Earth's north magnetic pole and presently steadied oncourse toward the fortress asteroid. Burke was informed severely thathe should prepare to receive the scientists they carried. He would beexpected to co?perate fully in their investigations.
He grinned when Pam handed him the written sheet.
"It's outrageous!" snapped Sandy. "It's ridiculous! They ought to getdown on their knees to you, Joe, to thank you for what you've done!"
Burke shook his head.
"I don't think I'd like that. Neither would you. We'll make out, Sandy.There'll be a colony started on that world the matter-transposer linksus to. It might be fun living there. What say?"
Sandy grumbled. But she looked at him with soft eyes.
"I'd rather be mixed up with--what you might call pioneers," saidBurke, "than people with reputations to defend and announced theoriesthat are going to turn out to be all wrong. The research in thisfortress and on that planet will make some red faces, on Earth. Andthere's another thing."
"What?" asked Sandy.
"This war we've inherited without doing anything to deserve it," saidBurke. "In fact, the Enemy. We haven't the least idea what they'relike or anything at all about them except that they go off somewhereand spend a few thousand years cooking up something lethal to throw atus. They tired out our ancestors. If they'd only known it, they wonthe war by default. Our ancestors moved away to let the Enemy have itsown way about this part of the galaxy, anyhow. And judging by pastperformances, the Enemy will just stew somewhere until they think ofsomething more dangerous than artificial sun-masses riding through oursolar systems."
"Well?" she demanded. "What's to be done about that?"
"With the right sort of people around," said Burke meditatively, "wecould do a little contriving of our own. And we could get a ship readyand think about looking them up and pinning their ears back in theirown bailiwick, instead of waiting for them to take pot-shots at us."
Sandy nodded gravely. She was a woman. She hadn't the faintest ideaof ever letting Burke take off into space again if she could helpit--unless, perhaps, for one occasion when she would show herself offin a veil and a train, gloating.
But it had taken the Enemy a very long time to concoct this last methodof attack. When the time came to take the offensive against them, atleast a few centuries would have passed. Five or six, anyhow. So Sandydid not protest against an idea that wouldn't result in action for somehundreds of years. Argument about Burke's share in such an enterprisecould wait.
So Sandy kissed him.
* * * * *
...if you enjoyed THE WAILING ASTEROID be sure not to miss
TWISTS IN TIME
_by Murray Leinster T389 35?_
Here are six strange and startling stories, calculated to entrancescience-fiction lovers. In these fantastic and brilliantly imaginativeplots Murray Leinster has bent, turned inside-out and upside-down,accelerated, decelerated, and obliterated time in a weird, uncannymanner. From the hilarious chaos of a man's telephone feud with himselfto the tender pathos of lovers reaching across the chasm of death ...from the hair-raising discovery of a buried city to the chill horrorof the end of time ... these tales will thrill and delight imaginativepeople.
* * * * *
BEYOND
_by Theodore Sturgeon T439 35?_
Pass through the strange, shining curtain of the mind that concealsthe eeriest of all telepathies. With this series of stories, masterscience-fiction writer Sturgeon takes the reader into dark worldswhere man is merely another molecule, where centuries whirl by andcivilizations shudder to a stop, where intelligent worms rule.Thrilling, extraordinary, and totally engrossing, these stories aretops in science-fiction.
* * * * *
Both of these fine Avon science-fiction books are available at yourlocal newsdealer. If he cannot supply you, order direct from Avon BookDivision--The Hearst Corporation, 250 West 55th Street, New York 19,N. Y. Enclose price listed, plus 10? extra per copy to cover cost ofwrapping and mailing.
* * * * *
The first sounds came at midnight a plaintive keening from an unknownvoice in the vastness of uncharted space. Within hours the whole worldhad heard the strange, unearthly music--and the panic had begun.
Were the sounds a plea for help? From whom? From where? Or were they acommand too terrible to think about? No one knew. And in billions ofearth-bound minds the horror grew....
For how could man, who had not yet claimed the moon, defy a challengefrom the stars?
And hours later, to the ears of a helpless world, the second messagecame....
And Earth's days were numbered!
A terrifying tale of tomorrow--or maybe tonight--by the undisputedmaster, Mr. Science-Fiction himself!
* * * * *
Other Avon books by:
MURRAY LEINSTER:
The Planet Explorer Monsters and Such Twists in Time
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