Islands of Space

  XII

  Hours later, Arcot regained consciousness. It was quiet in the ship. Hewas still strapped in his seat in the control room. The relux screenswere in place, and all was perfectly peaceful. He didn't know whetherthe ship was motionless or racing through space at a speed faster thanlight, and his first semiconscious impulse was to see.

  He reached out with an arm that seemed to be made of dry dust, ready tocrumble; an arm that would not behave. His nerves were jumping wildly.He pulled the switch he was seeking, and the relux screens dropped downas the motors pulled them back.

  They were in hyperspace; beside them rode the twin ghost ships.

  Arcot looked around, trying to decide what to do, but his brain wasclogged. He felt tired; he wanted to sleep. Scarcely able to think, hedragged the others to their rooms and strapped them in their bunks. Thenhe strapped himself in and fell asleep almost at once.

  Still more hours passed, then Arcot was waking slowly to insistentshaking by Morey.

  "Hey! Arcot! Wake up! ARCOT! HEY!"

  Arcot's ears sent the message to his brain, but his brain tried toignore it. At last he slowly opened his eyes.

  "Huh?" he said in a low, tired voice.

  "Thank God! I didn't know whether you were alive or not. None of usremembered going to bed. We decided you must have carried us there, butyou sure looked dead."

  "Uhuh?" came Arcot's unenthusiastic rejoinder.

  "Boy, is he sleepy!" said Wade as he drifted into the room. "Use a wetcloth and some cold water, Morey."

  A brisk application of cold water brought Arcot more nearly awake. Heimmediately clamored for the wherewithal to fill an aching void that wasmaking itself painfully felt in his midsection.

  "He's all right!" laughed Wade. "His appetite is just as healthy asever!"

  They had already prepared a meal, and Arcot was promptly hustled to thegalley. He strapped himself into the chair so that he could eatcomfortably, and then looked around at the others. "Where the devil arewe?"

  "That," replied Morey seriously, "was just what we wanted to ask you. Wehaven't the beginnings of an idea. We slept for two days, all told, andby now we're so far from all the Island Universes that we can't tell onefrom another. We have no idea where we are.

  "I've stopped the ship; we're just floating. I'm sure I don't know whathappened, but I hoped you might have an idea."

  "I have an idea," said Arcot. "I'm hungry! You wait until after I'veeaten, and I'll talk." He fell to on the food.

  After eating, he went to the control room and found that every gyroscopein the place had been thrown out of place by the attractions they hadpassed through. He looked around at the meters and coils.

  It was obvious what had happened. Their attempt to escape had beensuccessful; they had shot out between the stars, into the space. Theenergy had been drained from the power coil, as they had expected. Thenthe power plant had automatically cut in, recharging the coils in twohours. Then the drive had come on again, and the ship had flashed oninto space. But with the gyroscopes as erratic as they were, there wasno way of knowing which direction they had come; they were lost inspace!

  "Well, there are lots of galaxies we can go to," said Arcot. "We oughtto be able to find a nice one and stay there if we can't get homeagain."

  "Sure," Wade replied, "but I like Earth! If only we hadn't all passedout! What caused that, Arcot?"

  Arcot shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know. My only theory is that thedouble gravitational field, plus our own power field, produced a sort ofcross-product that effected our brains.

  "At any rate, here we are."

  "We certainly are," agreed Morey. "We can't possibly back track; what wehave to do is identify our own universe. What identifying features doesit have that will enable us to recognize it?

  "Our Galaxy has two 'satellites', the Greater and Lesser MagellanicClouds. If we spent ten years photographing and studying and comparingwith the photographs we already have, we might find it. We know thatsystem will locate the Galaxy, but we haven't the time. Any othersuggestions?"

  "We came out here to visit planets, didn't we?" asked Arcot. "Here's ourchance--and our only chance--of getting home, as far as I can see. Wecan go to any galaxy in the neighborhood--within twenty or thirtymillion light years--and look for a planet with a high degree ofcivilization.

  "Then we'll give them the photographs we have, and ask them if they'veany knowledge of a galaxy with two such satellites. We just keep tryinguntil we find a race which has learned through their research. I thinkthat's the easiest, quickest, and most satisfactory method. What do youthink?"

  It was the obvious choice, and they all agreed. The next proposition wasto select a galaxy.

  "We can go to any one we wish," said Morey, "but we're now moving atthirty thousand miles per second; it would take us quite a while to slowdown, stop, and go in the other direction. There's a nice, big galacticnebula right in front of us, about three days away--six million lightyears. Any objections to heading for that?"

  The rest looked at the glowing point of the nebula. Out in space, a staris a hard, brilliant, dimensionless point of light. But a nebula glowswith a faint mistiness; they are so far away that they never have anybright glow, such as stars have, but they are so vast, their dimensionsso great, that even across millions of light years of space they appearas tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men lookedout of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light onthe soft black curtain of space.

  It was as good a course as any, and the ship's own inertia recommendedit; they had only to redirect the ship with greater accuracy.

  Setting the damaged gyroscopes came first, however. There were a numberof things about the ship that needed readjustment and replacement afterthe strain of escaping from the giant star.

  After they had made a thorough inspection Arcot said:

  "I think we'd best make all our repairs out here. That flame that hit usburned off our outside microphone and speaker, and probably did a lot ofdamage to the ray projectors. I'd rather not land on a planet unarmed;the chances are about fifty-fifty that we'd be greeted with open cannonmuzzles instead of open arms."

  The work inside was left to Arcot and Fuller, while Morey and Wade puton spacesuits and went out onto the hull.

  They found surprisingly little damage--far less than they had expected.True, the loudspeaker, the microphone, and all other instruments made ofordinary matter had been burned off clean. They didn't even have toclean out the spaces where they had been recessed into the wall. At atemperature of ten thousand degrees, the metals had all boiledaway--even tungsten boils at seven thousand degrees, and all othernormal matter boils even more easily.

  The ray projectors, which had been adjusted for the high power necessaryto stop a sun in its orbit, were readjusted for normal power, and theheat beams were replaced.

  After nearly four hours work, everything had been checked, from relaysand switch points to the instruments and gyroscopes. Stock had beentaken, and they found they were running low on replacement parts. Ifanything more happened, they would have to stop using some of themachinery and break it up for spare parts. Of their original supply oftwenty tons of lead fuel, only ten tons of the metal were left, but leadwas a common metal which they could easily pick up on any planet theymight visit. They could also get a fresh supply of water and refilltheir air tanks there.

  The ship was in as perfect condition as it had ever been, for everybearing had been put in condition and the generators and gyroscopes wererunning smoothly.

  They threw the ship into full speed and headed for the galaxy ahead ofthem.

  "We are going to look for intelligent beings," Arcot reminded theothers, "so we'll have to communicate with them. I suggest we allpractice the telepathic processes I showed you--we'll need them."

  The time passed rapidly with something to do. They spent a considerablepart of it reading the books on telepathy that Arcot had brought, and onpracticing it with each other.

 
By the end of the second day of the trip, Morey and Fuller, who hadpeculiarly adaptable minds, were able to converse readily and rapidly,Fuller doing the projecting and Morey the receiving. Wade had dividedhis time about equally between projecting and reading, with the resultthat he could do neither well.

  Early on the fourth day, they entered the universe toward which theywere heading. They had stopped at about half a million light years anddecided that a large local cluster of very brilliant suns promised thebest results, since the stars were closer together there, and there weremany of the yellow G-0 type for which they were seeking.

  They had penetrated into the galaxy as far as was safe, using halfspeed; then, at lower speeds, they worked toward the local cluster.

  Arcot cut the drive several light years from the nearest sun. "Well,we're where we wanted to be; now what do we do? Morey, pick us out a G-0star. We await your royal command to move."

  After a few minutes at the telectroscope, Morey pointed to one of thepinpoints of light that gleamed brightly in the sky. "That one lookslike our best bet. It's a G-0 a little brighter than Sol."

  Morey swung the ship about, pointing the axis of the ship in the samedirection as its line of flight. The observatory had been leading, butnow the ship was turned to its normal position.

  They shot forward, using the space-strain drive, for a full hour atone-sixteenth power. Then Arcot cut the drive, and the disc of the sunwas large before them.

  "We're going to have a job cutting down our velocity; we're travelingpretty fast, relative to that sun," Arcot told the others. Theirvelocity was so great that the sun didn't seem to swerve them greatly asthey rushed nearer. Arcot began to use the molecular drive to brake theship.

  Morey was busy with the telectroscope, although greatly hampered by thefact that it was a feat of strength to hold his arm out at right anglesto his body for ten seconds under the heavy acceleration Arcot wasapplying.

  "This method works!" called Morey suddenly. "The Fuller System ForFinding Planets has picked another winner! Circle the sun so that I canget a better look!"

  Arcot was already trying vainly to decrease their velocity to a figurethat would permit the attraction of the sun to hold them in its grip andallow them to land on a planet.

  "As I figure it," Arcot said, "we'll need plenty of time to come torest. What do you think, Morey?"

  Morey punched figures into the calculator. "Wow! Somewhere in theneighborhood of a hundred days, using all the acceleration that will besafe! At five gravities, reducing our present velocity of twenty-fivethousand miles per second to zero will take approximately twenty-fourhundred hours--one hundred days! We'll have to use the gravitationalattraction of that sun to help us."

  "We'll have to use the space control," said Arcot. "If we move close tothe sun by the space control, all the energy of the fall will be used inovercoming the space-strain coil's field, and thus prevent our falling.When we start to move away again, we will be climbing against thatgravity, which will aid us in stopping. But even so, it will take usabout three days to stop. We wouldn't get anywhere using molecularpower; that giant sun was just too damned generous with his energy offall!"

  They started the cycles, and, as Arcot had predicted, they took a fullthree days of constant slowing to accomplish their purpose, burning upnearly three tons of matter in doing so. They were constantly oppressedby a load of five gravities except for the short intervals when theystopped to eat and when they were moving in the space control field.Even in sleeping, they were forced to stand the load.

  The massive sun was their principal and most effective brake. At no timedid they go more than a few dozen million miles from the primary, forthe more intense the gravity, the better effect they got.

  Morey divided his time between piloting the ship while Arcot rested, andobserving the system. By the end of the third day, he had made verycreditable progress with his map.

  He had located only six planets, but he was certain there were others.For the sake of simplicity, he had assumed circular orbits andcalculated their approximate orbital velocities from their distance fromthe sun. He had determined the mass of the sun from direct weighingsaboard their ship. He soon had a fair diagram of the system constructedmathematically, and experimental observation showed it to be a veryclose approximation.

  The planets were rather more massive than those of Sol. The innermostplanet had a third again the diameter of Mercury and was four millionmiles farther from the primary. He named it Hermes. The next one, whichhe named Aphrodite, the Greek goddess corresponding to the Roman Venus,was only a little larger than Venus and was some eight million milesfarther from its primary--seventy-five million miles from the centralsun.

  The next, which Morey called Terra, was very much like Earth. At adistance of a hundred and twenty-four million miles from the sun, itmust have received almost the same amount of heat that Earth does, forthis sun was considerably brighter than Sol.

  Terra was eight thousand two hundred miles in diameter, with a fairlyclear atmosphere and a varying albedo which indicated clouds in theatmosphere. Morey had every reason to believe that it might beinhabited, but he had no proof because his photographs were consistentlypoor due to the glare of the sun.

  The rest of the planets proved to be of little interest. In the placewhere, according to Bode's Law, another planet, corresponding to Mars,should have been, there was only a belt of asteroids. Beyond this wasstill another belt. And on the other side of the double asteroid beltwas the fourth planet, a fifty-thousand-mile-in-diameter methane-ammoniagiant which Morey named Zeus in honor of Jupiter.

  He had picked up a couple of others on his plates, but he had not beenable to tell anything about them as yet. In any case, the planetsAphrodite and Terra were by far the most interesting.

  "I think we picked the right angle to come into this system," saidArcot, looking at Morey's photographs of the wide bands of asteroids.They had come into the planetary group at right angles to the plane ofthe ecliptic, which had allowed them to miss both asteroid belts.

  They started moving toward the planet Terra, reaching their objective inless than three hours.

  The globe beneath them was lit brightly, for they had approached it fromthe daylight side. Below them, they could see wide, green plains andgently rolling mountains, and in a great cleft in one of the mountainranges was a shimmering lake of clearest blue.

  The air of the planet screamed about them as they dropped down, and theroar in the loudspeaker grew to a mighty cataract of sound. Morey turneddown the volume.

  The sparkling little lake passed beneath them as they shot on,seventy-five miles above the surface of the planet. When they had firstentered the atmosphere, they had the impression of looking down on avast, inverted bowl whose edge rested on a vast, smooth table of deepviolet velvet. But as they dropped and the violet became bluer andbluer, they experienced the strange optical illusion of "flopping" ofthe scene. The bowl seemed to turn itself inside out, and they werelooking down at its inner surface.

  They shot over a mountain range, and a vast plain spread out beforethem. Here and there, in the far distance, they could see darker spotscaused by buckled geological strata.

  Arcot swung the ship around, and they saw the vast horizon swing aboutthem as their sensation of "down" changed with the acceleration of theturn. They felt nearly weightless, for they were lifting again in a higharc.

  Arcot was heading back toward the mountains they had passed over. Hedropped the ship again, and the foothills seemed to rise to meet them.

  "I'm heading for that lake," Arcot explained. "It seems absolutelydeserted, and there are some things we want to do. I haven't had anydecent exercise for the past two weeks, except for straining under highgravity. I want to do some swimming, and we need to distill some waterfor drink; we need to refill the tanks in case of emergencies. If theatmosphere contains oxygen, fine; if it doesn't, we can get it out ofthe water by electrolysis.

  "But I hope that air is good to breathe, because I've been wan
ting aswim and a sun bath for a long time!"