Hours later, Arcot regained consciousness. It was quiet in the ship. He
was still strapped in his seat in the control room. The relux screens
were in place, and all was perfectly peaceful. He didn't know whether
the ship was motionless or racing through space at a speed faster than
light, and his first semiconscious impulse was to see.
He reached out with an arm that seemed to be made of dry dust, ready to
crumble; an arm that would not behave. His nerves were jumping wildly.
He pulled the switch he was seeking, and the relux screens dropped down
as 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 was
clogged. He felt tired; he wanted to sleep. Scarcely able to think, he
dragged the others to their rooms and strapped them in their bunks. Then
he strapped himself in and fell asleep almost at once.
Still more hours passed, then Arcot was waking slowly to insistent
shaking by Morey.
"Hey! Arcot! Wake up! ARCOT! HEY!"
Arcot's ears sent the message to his brain, but his brain tried to
ignore 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 us
remembered going to bed. We decided you must have carried us there, but
you sure looked dead."
"Uhuh?" came Arcot's unenthusiastic rejoinder.
"Boy, is he sleepy!" said Wade as he drifted into the room. "Use a wet
cloth and some cold water, Morey."
A brisk application of cold water brought Arcot more nearly awake. He
immediately clamored for the wherewithal to fill an aching void that was
making itself painfully felt in his midsection.
"He's all right!" laughed Wade. "His appetite is just as healthy as
ever!"
They had already prepared a meal, and Arcot was promptly hustled to the
galley. He strapped himself into the chair so that he could eat
comfortably, and then looked around at the others. "Where the devil are
we?"
"That," replied Morey seriously, "was just what we wanted to ask you. We
haven't the beginnings of an idea. We slept for two days, all told, and
by now we're so far from all the Island Universes that we can't tell one
from another. We have no idea where we are.
"I've stopped the ship; we're just floating. I'm sure I don't know what
happened, but I hoped you might have an idea."
"I have an idea," said Arcot. "I'm hungry! You wait until after I've
eaten, and I'll talk." He fell to on the food.
After eating, he went to the control room and found that every gyroscope
in the place had been thrown out of place by the attractions they had
passed through. He looked around at the meters and coils.
It was obvious what had happened. Their attempt to escape had been
successful; they had shot out between the stars, into the space. The
energy had been drained from the power coil, as they had expected. Then
the power plant had automatically cut in, recharging the coils in two
hours. Then the drive had come on again, and the ship had flashed on
into space. But with the gyroscopes as erratic as they were, there was
no way of knowing which direction they had come; they were lost in
space!
"Well, there are lots of galaxies we can go to," said Arcot. "We ought
to be able to find a nice one and stay there if we can't get home
again."
"Sure," Wade replied, "but I like Earth! If only we hadn't all passed
out! What caused that, Arcot?"
Arcot shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know. My only theory is that the
double gravitational field, plus our own power field, produced a sort of
cross-product that effected our brains.
"At any rate, here we are."
"We certainly are," agreed Morey. "We can't possibly back track; what we
have to do is identify our own universe. What identifying features does
it have that will enable us to recognize it?
"Our Galaxy has two 'satellites', the Greater and Lesser Magellanic
Clouds. If we spent ten years photographing and studying and comparing
with the photographs we already have, we might find it. We know that
system will locate the Galaxy, but we haven't the time. Any other
suggestions?"
"We came out here to visit planets, didn't we?" asked Arcot. "Here's our
chance--and our only chance--of getting home, as far as I can see. We
can go to any galaxy in the neighborhood--within twenty or thirty
million light years--and look for a planet with a high degree of
civilization.
"Then we'll give them the photographs we have, and ask them if they've
any knowledge of a galaxy with two such satellites. We just keep trying
until we find a race which has learned through their research. I think
that's the easiest, quickest, and most satisfactory method. What do you
think?"
It was the obvious choice, and they all agreed. The next proposition was
to select a galaxy.
"We can go to any one we wish," said Morey, "but we're now moving at
thirty thousand miles per second; it would take us quite a while to slow
down, stop, and go in the other direction. There's a nice, big galactic
nebula right in front of us, about three days away--six million light
years. Any objections to heading for that?"
The rest looked at the glowing point of the nebula. Out in space, a star
is a hard, brilliant, dimensionless point of light. But a nebula glows
with a faint mistiness; they are so far away that they never have any
bright glow, such as stars have, but they are so vast, their dimensions
so great, that even across millions of light years of space they appear
as tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men looked
out of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light on
the soft black curtain of space.
It was as good a course as any, and the ship's own inertia recommended
it; they had only to redirect the ship with greater accuracy.
Setting the damaged gyroscopes came first, however. There were a number
of things about the ship that needed readjustment and replacement after
the 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 us
burned off our outside microphone and speaker, and probably did a lot of
damage 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 cannon
muzzles instead of open arms."
The work inside was left to Arcot and Fuller, while Morey and Wade put
on 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 of
ordinary matter had been burned off clean. They didn't even have to
clean out the spaces where they had been recessed into the wall. At a
temperature of ten thousand degrees, the metals had all boiled
away--even tungsten boils at seven thousand degrees, and all other
normal matter boils even more easily.
The ray projectors, which had been adjusted for the high power necessary
to stop a sun in its orbit, were readjusted for normal power, and the
heat beams were replaced.
After nearly four hours work, everything had been checked, from relays
and switch points to the instruments and gyroscopes. Stock had been
taken, and they found they were running low on replacement parts. If
anything more happened, they would have to stop using some of the
machinery and break it up for spare parts. Of their original supply of
twenty tons of lead fuel, only ten tons of the metal were left, but lead
was a common metal which they could easily pick up on any planet they
might visit. They could also get a fresh supply of water and refill
their air tanks there.
The ship was in as perfect condition as it had ever been, for every
bearing had been put in condition and the generators and gyroscopes were
running smoothly.
They threw the ship into full speed and headed for the galaxy ahead of
them.
"We are going to look for intelligent beings," Arcot reminded the
others, "so we'll have to communicate with them. I suggest we all
practice the telepathic processes I showed you--we'll need them."
The time passed rapidly with something to do. They spent a considerable
part of it reading the books on telepathy that Arcot had brought, and on
practicing it with each other.
By the end of the second day of the trip, Morey and Fuller, who had
peculiarly adaptable minds, were able to converse readily and rapidly,
Fuller doing the projecting and Morey the receiving. Wade had divided
his time about equally between projecting and reading, with the result
that he could do neither well.
Early on the fourth day, they entered the universe toward which they
were heading. They had stopped at about half a million light years and
decided that a large local cluster of very brilliant suns promised the
best results, since the stars were closer together there, and there were
many of the yellow G-0 type for which they were seeking.
They had penetrated into the galaxy as far as was safe, using half
speed; 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-0
star. We await your royal command to move."
After a few minutes at the telectroscope, Morey pointed to one of the
pinpoints of light that gleamed brightly in the sky. "That one looks
like 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 same
direction as its line of flight. The observatory had been leading, but
now the ship was turned to its normal position.
They shot forward, using the space-strain drive, for a full hour at
one-sixteenth power. Then Arcot cut the drive, and the disc of the sun
was large before them.
"We're going to have a job cutting down our velocity; we're traveling
pretty fast, relative to that sun," Arcot told the others. Their
velocity was so great that the sun didn't seem to swerve them greatly as
they rushed nearer. Arcot began to use the molecular drive to brake the
ship.
Morey was busy with the telectroscope, although greatly hampered by the
fact that it was a feat of strength to hold his arm out at right angles
to his body for ten seconds under the heavy acceleration Arcot was
applying.
"This method works!" called Morey suddenly. "The Fuller System For
Finding Planets has picked another winner! Circle the sun so that I can
get a better look!"
Arcot was already trying vainly to decrease their velocity to a figure
that would permit the attraction of the sun to hold them in its grip and
allow them to land on a planet.
"As I figure it," Arcot said, "we'll need plenty of time to come to
rest. What do you think, Morey?"
Morey punched figures into the calculator. "Wow! Somewhere in the
neighborhood of a hundred days, using all the acceleration that will be
safe! At five gravities, reducing our present velocity of twenty-five
thousand miles per second to zero will take approximately twenty-four
hundred hours--one hundred days! We'll have to use the gravitational
attraction of that sun to help us."
"We'll have to use the space control," said Arcot. "If we move close to
the sun by the space control, all the energy of the fall will be used in
overcoming the space-strain coil's field, and thus prevent our falling.
When we start to move away again, we will be climbing against that
gravity, which will aid us in stopping. But even so, it will take us
about three days to stop. We wouldn't get anywhere using molecular
power; that giant sun was just too damned generous with his energy of
fall!"
They started the cycles, and, as Arcot had predicted, they took a full
three days of constant slowing to accomplish their purpose, burning up
nearly three tons of matter in doing so. They were constantly oppressed
by a load of five gravities except for the short intervals when they
stopped 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 time
did they go more than a few dozen million miles from the primary, for
the more intense the gravity, the better effect they got.
Morey divided his time between piloting the ship while Arcot rested, and
observing the system. By the end of the third day, he had made very
creditable 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 and
calculated their approximate orbital velocities from their distance from
the sun. He had determined the mass of the sun from direct weighings
aboard their ship. He soon had a fair diagram of the system constructed
mathematically, and experimental observation showed it to be a very
close approximation.
The planets were rather more massive than those of Sol. The innermost
planet had a third again the diameter of Mercury and was four million
miles farther from the primary. He named it Hermes. The next one, which
he named Aphrodite, the Greek goddess corresponding to the Roman Venus,
was only a little larger than Venus and was some eight million miles
farther from its primary--seventy-five million miles from the central
sun.
The next, which Morey called Terra, was very much like Earth. At a
distance of a hundred and twenty-four million miles from the sun, it
must have received almost the same amount of heat that Earth does, for
this sun was considerably brighter than Sol.
Terra was eight thousand two hundred miles in diameter, with a fairly
clear atmosphere and a varying albedo which indicated clouds in the
atmosphere. Morey had every reason to believe that it might be
inhabited, but he had no proof because his photographs were consistently
poor due to the glare of the sun.
The rest of the planets proved to be of little interest. In the place
where, according to Bode's Law, another planet, corresponding to Mars,
should have been, there was only a belt of asteroids. Beyond this was
still another belt. And on the other side of the double asteroid belt
was the fourth planet, a fifty-thousand-mile-in-diameter methane-ammonia
giant which Morey named Zeus in honor of Jupiter.
He had picked up a couple of others on his plates, but he had not been
able to tell anything about them as yet. In any case, the planets
Aphrodite and Terra were by far the most interesting.
"I think we picked the right angle to come into this system," said
Arcot, looking at Morey's photographs of the wide bands of asteroids.
They had come into the planetary group at right angles to the plane of
the ecliptic, which had allowed them to miss both asteroid belts.
They started moving toward the planet Terra, reaching their objective in
less than three hours.
The globe beneath them was lit brightly, for they had approached it from
the daylight side. Below them, they could see wide, green plains and
gently rolling mountains, and in a great cleft in one of the mountain
ranges was a shimmering lake of clearest blue.
The air of the planet screamed about them as they dropped down, and the
roar in the loudspeaker grew to a mighty cataract of sound. Morey turned
down 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 first
entered the atmosphere, they had the impression of looking down on a
vast, inverted bowl whose edge rested on a vast, smooth table of deep
violet velvet. But as they dropped and the violet became bluer and
bluer, they experienced the strange optical illusion of "flopping" of
the scene. The bowl seemed to turn itself inside out, and they were
looking down at its inner surface.
They shot over a mountain range, and a vast plain spread out before
them. Here and there, in the far distance, they could see darker spots
caused by buckled geological strata.
Arcot swung the ship around, and they saw the vast horizon swing about
them as their sensation of "down" changed with the acceleration of the
turn. They felt nearly weightless, for they were lifting again in a high
arc.
Arcot was heading back toward the mountains they had passed over. He
dropped the ship again, and the foothills seemed to rise to meet them.
"I'm heading for that lake," Arcot explained. "It seems absolutely
deserted, and there are some things we want to do. I haven't had any
decent exercise for the past two weeks, except for straining under high
gravity. I want to do some swimming, and we need to distill some water
for drink; we need to refill the tanks in case of emergencies. If the
atmosphere contains oxygen, fine; if it doesn't, we can get it out of
the water by electrolysis.
"But I hope that air is good to breathe, because I've been wanting a
swim and a sun bath for a long time!"