whichnourish our life-stream just as pigs, potatoes, and bread are food toyou.
* * * * *
"Trillions of years ago in your time-calculation, but only a few dozencenturies ago in ours, life arose on the giant world Kygpton in ouruniverse. It was life, our life, the life of my people and myself,intelligence animating bodies of pliant metal, existing almost endlesslyon an almost inexhaustible source of energy.
"But all matter wears down. On Kygpton there was a variety of usefulmetals, others that were valueless. There was comparatively little ofthe first, much of the second. Kygpton itself was a world as large asyour entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles.Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our mostprecious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors hadmastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyondyour understanding, had explored the limits of our universe inspace-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by theattracting-repelling influences of stars.
"The metal inhabitants of Kygpton employed every invention they knew toaccomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and mines seembut the puny efforts of a gnat. They blasted all the remaining ores ofSthalreh from the surface and interior of Kygpton and refined them. Thenthey created a gigantic vacuum, a dead-field in space a hundred millionmiles away from their world. The dead-field was controlled from Kygptonby atomic-projectors, energy-absorbers, gravitation-nullifiers andcosmotels, range-regulators, and a host of other inventions.
"As fast as it was mined and extracted, the Sthalreh metal wasvaporized, shot into the dead-field by interstellar rays, and solidifiedthere along an invisible framework which we projected. In a decade ofour time, we had pillaged Kygpton of every particle of Sthalreh. Andthen in our skies hung an artificial world, a manufactured sphere, agiant new planet, the world you yourself are now on--Xlarbti!
* * * * *
"We did not create a solid globe. We left chambers, tunnels,passageways, storerooms throughout it or piercing it from surface tosurface. Thus, even as Xlarbti was being created, we provided foreverything that we needed or could need--experimental laboratories,sub-surface vaults, chambers for the innumerable huge ray dynamos,energy storage batteries, and other apparatus which we required.
"And when all was ready, we transferred by space-cars and by atomicindividuation all our necessities from Kygpton to the artificial worldXlarbti. And when everything was prepared, we destroyed the dead-fieldby duplicate control from Xlarbti, turned our repulsion-power on fullagainst the now useless and dying giant world Kygpton, and swung uponour path.
"But our whole universe is incredibly old. It was mature before everyour young suns flamed out of the gaseous nebulae, it was decaying whenyour molten planets were flung from the central sun, it was dying beforethe boiling seas had given birth to land upon your sphere. And while wehad enough of our own particular electrical food to last us for amillion of your years, and enough power to guide Xlarbti to otheruniverses, we had exhausted all the remaining energy of our entireuniverse. And when we finally left it to dwindle behind us in the blackabysses of space, we left it, a dead cinder, devoid of life, vitiated ofactivity, and utterly lacking in cosmic forces, a universe finally rundown.
"The universes, as you may know, are set off from each other by totallyblack and empty abysms, expanses so vast that light-rays have not yetcrossed many of them. How did we accomplish the feat of traversing sucha gulf? By the simplest of means: acceleration. Why? Because to remainin our universe meant inevitable death. We gambled on the greatestadventure in all the cosmos.
* * * * *
"To begin with, we circled our universe to the remotest point oppositewhere we wanted to leave it. We then turned our attraction powers onpart way so that the millions of stars before us drew us ahead, then wegradually stepped up the power to its full strength, thus everincreasing our speed. At the same time, as stars passed to our rear inour flight, we turned our repulsion-rays against them, stepping thatpower up also.
"Our initial speed was twenty-four miles per second. Midway in ouruniverse we had reached the speed of your light--186,000 miles persecond. By the time we left our universe, we were hurtling at a speedwhich we estimated to be 1,600,000,000 miles per second. Yet even atthat tremendous speed, it took us years to cross from our universe toyours. If we had encountered even a planetoid at that enormous rate, wewould probably have been annihilated in white-hot death. But we hadplanned well, and there are no superiors to our stellar mechanics, ourastronomers, our scientists.
"When we finally hurtled from the black void into your universe, wefound what we had only dared hope for: a young universe, with manyplanets and cooling worlds rich in radium ores, the only element in yourscale that can help to replenish our vanishing energy. Half youruniverse we have already deprived of its ores. Your Earth has more thatwe want. Then we shall continue on our way, to loot the rest of theworlds, before passing on to another universe. We are a planet without auniverse. We will wander and pillage until we find a universe like theone we come from, or until Xlarbti itself disintegrates and we perish.
* * * * *
"We could easily wipe out all the dwellers on Earth and mine the oresourselves. But that would be a needless waste of our powers, for sinceyou can not defy us, and since the desire for life burns as high in youas in us and as it does in all sensate things in all universes, yourpeople will save themselves from death and save us from wasting energyby mining the ores for us. What happens afterwards, we do not care.
"The seven new suns that you saw were dead worlds that we used asbuffers to slow down Xlarbti. The full strength of our repulsion-forcedirected against any single world necessarily turns it into a liquid orgaseous state depending on various factors. Your planet Neptune waspulled out of the solar system by the attraction of Xlarbti's mass. Theflame-paths, as you call them, are directed streams of energy fordifferent purposes: the one to the sun supplies us, for instance, withheat, light, and electricity, which in turn are stored up for eventualuse.
"The orange-ray that you felt is one of our achievements. It is similarto the double-action pumps used in some of your sulphur mines, whereby apipe is inclosed in a larger pipe, and hot water forced down throughthe larger tubing returns sulphur-laden through the central pipe. Theorange-ray instantaneously dissolves any portable object up to a certainsize, propels it back to Xlarbti through its center which is the reverseray, and here reforms the object, just as you were recreated on the diskthat you stood on when you regained consciousness.
"But I have not enough time to explain everything on Xlarbti to you; norwould you comprehend it all if I did. Your stay is almost up.
"In that one control-panel lies all the power that we have mastered,"boasted Garboreggg with supreme egotism. "It connects with theindividual controls throughout Xlarbti."
"What is the purpose of some of the levers?" asked Phobar, with adesperate hope in his thoughts.
* * * * *
A filament of metal whipped to the panel from the lord of Xlarbti. "Thisfirst section duplicates the control-panel that you saw in thelaboratory where you opened your eyes. Do not think that you can makeuse of this information--in ten minutes you will be back on your Earthto deliver our command. Between now and that moment you will be soclosely watched that you can do nothing and will have no opportunity totry.
"This first lever controls the attraction rays, the second the repulsionforce. The third dial regulates the orange-ray by which you will bereturned to Earth. The fourth switch directs the electrical bolt thatdestroyed New York City. Next it is a device that we have never hadoccasion to use. It releases the Krangor-wave throughout Xlarbti. Itseffect is to make each atom of Xlarbti, the Sthalreh metal andeverything on it, become compact, to do away with the empty spaces thatexist in every atom. Theoretically, it would reduce Xlarbti to afractio
n of its present size, diminish its mass while its weight andgravity remained as before.
"The next lever controls matter to be transported between here and thefirst laboratory. Somewhat like the orange-ray, it disintegrates theobject and reassembles it here."
* * * * *
So that was what Phobar's captor had been trying to do with him backthere in the laboratory! "Why was I not brought here by that means?"burst out Phobar.
"Because you belong to a different universe," answered Garboreggg."Without experimentation, we cannot tell what natural laws of ours youwould not be subject to, but this is one of them." A gesture ofirritation seemed to come from him. "Some laws hold good in all theuniverses we have thus far investigated. The orange-ray, for instance,picked you up as it would have plucked one of us from the surface ofKygpton. But on Xlarbti, which is composed entirely of