Twenty-odd years before, when the then _Dauntless_ and her crew
were thrown out of a hyperspatial tube and into that highly enigmatic
nth space, LaVerne Thorndyke had been a Chief Technician. Mentor of
Arisia found them, and put into the mind of Sir Austin Cardynge,
mathematician extraordinary, the knowledge of how to find the way back
to normal space. Thorndyke, working under nervebreaking difficulties,
had been in charge of building the machines which were to enable the
vessel to return to her home space. He built them. She returned.
He was now again in charge, and every man of his present crew had been
a member of his former one. He did not command the spaceship or her
regular crew, of course, but they did not count. Not one of these kids
would be allowed to set foot on the fantastically dangerous planet to
which the inertialess _Space Laboratory XII_ was anchored with
tractors and pressors.
Older, leaner, grayer, he was now, even more than then, Civilization's
Past Master of Mechanism. If anything could be built, "Thorny"
Thorndyke could build it. If it couldn't be built, he could build
something that would do the work.
As soon as the Gray Lensman and his son left the vessel, Chief
Technician Thorndyke--not the vice admiral of the same name--lined his
crew up for inspection; men who, although many of them had as much
rank and had had as many years of as much authority as their present
boss, had been working for days to forget as completely as possible
their executive positions and responsibilities. Each man wore not one,
but three personal neutralizers, one inside and two outside of his
spacesuit. Thorndyke, walking down the line, applied his test-kit to
each individual neutralizer. He then tested his own. QX--all were at
max.
"Fellows," he said then, "you all remember what it was like last time.
This is going to be the same, except more so and for a longer time.
How we did it before without any casualties I'll never know. If we can
do it again, it'll be a major miracle--no less. Before, all we had to
do was to build a couple of small generators and some controls out
of stuff native to the planet, and we didn't find that any too easy
a job. This time, for a starter, we've got to build a Bergenholm big
enough to free the whole planet; after which we install the Bergs, tube
generators, atomic blasts, and other stuff we brought along.
"But that native Berg is going to be a Class A Prime headache, and
until we get it running it's going to be hell on wheels. The only way
we can get away with it is to check and re-check every thing and every
step. Check, check, double-check; then go back and double-check again.
"Remember that the fundamental characteristics of this nth space are
such that inert matter can travel faster than light; and remember,
every second of the time, that our intrinsic velocity is something
like fifteen lights relative to anything solid in this space. I want
every one of you to picture himself going inert accidentally. You
_might_ take a tangent course or higher--but you might not, too.
And it wouldn't only kill the one who did it. It wouldn't only spoil
our record. It could very easily kill us all and make a crater full
of boiling metal out of our whole installation. So BE CAREFUL! Also
bear in mind that one piece, however small, of this planet's material,
accidentally brought aboard might wreck the _Dauntless_. Any
questions?"
"If the fundamental characteristics--constants--of this space are so
different, how do you know that the stuff will work here?"
"Well, the stuff we built here before worked. The Arisians told Kit
Kinnison that two of the fundamentals, mass and length, are about
normal. Time is a lot different, so that we can't compute power-to-mass
ratios and so on, but we'll have enough power, anyway, to get any speed
that we can use."
"I see. We miss the really fancy stuff?"
"Yes. Well, the quicker we get started the quicker we'll get done.
Let's go."
* * * * *
The planet was airless, waterless, desolate; a chaotic jumble of huge
and jagged fragments of various metals in a nonmetallic continuous
phase. It was as though some playful child-giant of space had poured
dipperfuls of silver, of iron, of copper, and of other granulated pure
metals into a tank of something else--and then, tired of play, had
thrown the whole mess away!
Neither the metals nor the nonmetallic substances were either hot or
cold. They had no apparent temperature, to thermometers or to the
"feelers" of the suits. The machines which these men had built so
long before had not changed in any particular. They still functioned
perfectly; no spot of rust or corrosion or erosion marred any part.
This, at least, was good news.
Inertialess machines, extravagantly equipped with devices to keep
them inertialess, were taken "ashore"; nor were any of these ever to
be returned to the ship. Kinnison had ordered and reiterated that
no unnecessary chances were to be taken of getting any particle of
nth-space stuff aboard _Space Laboratory XII_, and none were taken.
Since men cannot work indefinitely in spacesuits, each man had
periodically to be relieved; but each such relief amounted almost to
an operation. Before he left the planet his suit was scrubbed, rinsed,
and dried. In the vessel's air lock it was air-blasted again before
the outer port was closed. He unshelled in the lock and left his suit
there--everything which had come into contact with nth-space matter
either would be left on the planet's surface or would be jettisoned
before the vessel was again inerted. Unnecessary precautions?
Perhaps--but Thorndyke and his crew returned unharmed to normal space
in undamaged ships.
Finally the Bergenholm was done--by dint of what improvisation,
substitution, and artifice only "Thorny" Thorndyke ever knew; at
what strain and cost was evidenced by the gaunt bodies and haggard
faces of his overworked and under-slept crew. To those experts, and
particularly to Thorndyke, the thing was not a good job. It was not
quiet, nor smooth. It was not in balance, statically, dynamically, or
electrically. The chief technician, to whom a meter jump of one and
a half thousandths had always been a matter of grave concern, swore
feelingly in all the planetary languages he knew when he saw what those
meters were doing.
He scowled morosely. There might have been poorer machines built
sometime, somewhere, he supposed--but if so he had never seen any!
But the improvised Berg ran, and kept on running. The planet became
inertialess and remained that way. For hours, then, Thorndyke climbed
over and around and through the Brobdingnagian fabrication, testing
and checking the operation of every part. Finally he climbed down and
reported to his waiting crew.
"QX, fellows, a nice job. A good job, in fact, considering--even though
we all know that it isn't what any of us would call a good machine.
Part of that meter jump, of course, is due to the fact that nothing
about the heap is true or balanced, but most of it must be due to this
cockeyed ether. Anyway, none of it is due to the usual causes--loose
bars and faulty insulation. So my best guess is that she'll keep on
doing her stuff while we do ours. One sure thing, she isn't going to
fall apart, even under that ungodly knocking; and I don't _think_
that she's going to shake herself off of the planet."
* * * * *
After Thorndyke's somewhat less than enthusiastic approval of his
brain-child, the adventurers into that fantastic region attacked the
second phase of their project. Two Patrol Bergenholms were landed
and were installed. Their meters jumped, too, but the engineers
were no longer worried about that. _Those_ machines would run
indefinitely; and a concerted sigh of relief arose when the improvised
generator was shut down. Pits were dug. Atomic blasts and other engines
were installed, as were many exceedingly complex instruments and
mechanisms. A few tons of foreign matter on the planet's surface would
now make no difference, but there was no relaxation of the extreme
precautions against the transfer of any matter whatever from the planet
to the spaceship.
When the job was done, but before the clean-up, Thorndyke called his
crew into conference.
"Fellows, I know just what a beating you've been taking. We all feel as
though we had been on a Delgonian clambake. Nevertheless, I've got to
tell you something. Kinnison said that if we could get this one fixed
up without too much trouble, it'd be a mighty good idea to have two of
them. What do you say? Did we have too much trouble?"
He got exactly the reaction he had expected.
"Lead us to it!"
"Pick out the one you want!"
"Trouble? It's all over--we can tow this scrap heap on a space line,
match intrinsics with clamp-on drivers, and plant it anywhere!"
Another metal-studded, barren, lifeless world was therefore found
and prepared, and no real argument arose until Thorndyke broached
the matter of selecting the two men who were to stay with him and
Henderson in the two lifeboats which were to remain for a time near the
two loose planets after _Space Laboratory XII_ had returned to
normal space. Everybody wanted to stay. Each one _was_ going to
stay, too, by all the gods of space, if he had to pull rank to do it!
"Hold it!" Thorndyke commanded. "We'll do the same as we did before,
then, by drawing lots. Quartermaster Allerdyce--"
"No!" Uhlenhuth, formerly Atomic Technician 1/c, objected vigorously,
and was supported by several others. "He's too clever with his
fingers--look what he did to the original draw! We're not squawking
about that one, you understand--a little fixing was QX back there--but
we want this one to be honest."
"Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing that things were not
left entirely to chance." Thorndyke grinned broadly. "So you hold the
pot yourself, Uhly, and Hank and I will each pull out one name."
So it was. Henderson drew Uhlenhuth, to that burly admiral's loud
delight, and Thorndyke drew Nelson, the erstwhile chief communications
officer. The two lifeboats disembarked, each near one of the newly
"loosened" planets. Two men would stay on or near each of those
planets, to be sure that all the machinery functioned perfectly.
They would stay there until the atomic blasts functioned perfectly.
They would stay there until the atomic blasts went into action and
it became clear that the Arisians would need no help in navigating
those tremendous globes through nth space to the points at which two
hyperspatial tubes were soon to appear.
* * * * *
Long before the advance scouts of the Grand Fleet were within surveying
distance of Ploor, Kit and his sisters had spread a completely detailed
chart of its defenses in the tactical tank. A white star represented
Ploor's sun; a white sphere the planet itself; white Ryerson string
lights marked a portion of the planetary orbit. Points of white
light, practically all of which were connected to the white sphere
by red string lights, marked the directions of neighboring stars and
the existence of sunbeams, installed and ready. Pink globes were
loose planets; purple ones negaspheres; red points of light were, as
before, Boskonian task-force fleets. Blues were mobile fortresses;
bands of canary yellow and amber luminescence showed the locations and
emplacements of sunbeam grids and deflectors.
Layer after layer of pinks, purples, and blues almost hid the brilliant
white sphere from sight. More layers of the same colors, not quite as
dense, surrounded the entire solar system. Yellow and amber bands were
everywhere.
Kinnison studied the thing briefly, whistling unmelodiously through
his teeth. The picture was familiar enough, since it duplicated in
practically every respect the chart of the neighborhood of the Patrol's
own Ultra Prime, around Klovia. It did not require much study to make
it clear that that defense could not be cracked by any concentration
possible of any mobile devices theretofore employed in war.
"Just about what we expected," Kinnison thought to the group at large.
"Some new stuff, but not much. What I want to know, Kit and the rest of
you, is there anything there that looks as though it was supposed to
handle our new baby? Don't see anything, myself."
"There is not," Kit stated definitely. "We looked. There couldn't
be, anyway. It can't be handled. Looking backwards at it, they will
probably be able to reconstruct how it was done, but in advance? No.
Even Mentor couldn't--he had to call in a fellow who has studied
ultra-high mathematics for Klono-only-knows-how-many-millions of years
to compute the resultant vectors."
Kit's use of the word "they," which, of course, meant Ploorans to
everyone except his sisters, concealed his knowledge of the fact that
the Eddorians had taken over the defense of Ploor. Eddorians were
handling those screens. Eddorians were directing and correlating those
far-flung task forces, with a precision which Kinnison soon noticed.
"Much smoother work than I ever saw them do before," he commented.
"Suppose they have developed a _Z9M9Z_?"
"Could be. They copied everything else you invented, why not that?"
Again the highly ambiguous "they." "No sign of it around Arisia,
though--but maybe they didn't think they'd need it there."
"Or, more likely, they didn't want to risk it so far from home. We can
tell better after the mopping-up starts--if the widget performs as per
specs. But if your dope is right, this is about close enough. You might
tip the boys off, and I'll call Mentor." Kinnison could not reach nth
space, but it was no secret that Kit could.
The terminus of one of the Patrol's hyperspatial tubes erupted into
space close to Ploor. That such phenomena were expected was evident--a
Boskonian fleet moved promptly and smoothly to englobe it. But this was
an Arisian tube; computed, installed, and handled by Arisians. It would
be in existence only three seconds; the nearest defending task force
could not possibly get there in time.
To the observers in the _Z9M9Z_ those three seconds stretched
endlessly. What would happen when that utterly foreign planet, with its
absolutely impossible intrinsic velocity of over fifteen times that of
light, erupted into normal space and went inert? Nobody, not even the
Arisians, knew.
Everybody there had seen pictures of what happened when the
insignificant mass of a spaceship, traveling at only a hundredth of
the velocity of light, collided with a planetoid. That was bad enough.
This projectile, however, had a mass of about eight times ten to the
twenty-first power--an eight followed by twenty-one zeros--metric tons;
would tend to travel fifteen hundred times as fast; and kinetic energy
equals mass times velocity squared.
There seemed to be a theoretical possibility, since the mass would
instantaneously become some higher order of infinity, that all the
matter in normal space would coalesce with it in zero time; but Mentor
had assured Kit that operators would come into effect to prevent such
an occurrence, and that untoward events would be limited to a radius of
ten or fifteen parsecs. Mentor could solve the problem in detail, but
since the solution would require some two hundred Klovian years and the
event was due to occur in two weeks--
"How about the big computer at Ultra Prime?" Kinnison had asked,
innocently. "You know how fast that works."
"Roughly two thousand years--if it could take that kind of math, which
it can't," Kit had replied, and the subject had been dropped.
* * * * *
Finally it happened. What happened? Even after the fact none of the
observers knew; nor did any except the L3's ever find out. The fuses
of all the recorder and analyzer circuits blew at once. Needles jumped
instantly to maximum and wrapped themselves around their stops. Charts
and ultraphotographic films showed only straight or curved lines
running from the origin to and through the limits in zero time. Ploor
and everything around it disappeared in an utterly indescribable and
completely incomprehensible blast of pure, wild, raw, uncontrolled and
uncontrollable energy. The infinitesimal fraction of that energy which
was visible, heterodyned upon the ultra as it was and screened as it
was, blazed so savagely upon the plates that it seared the eyes.
And if the events caused by the planet aimed at Ploor were
indescribable, what can be said of those initiated by the one directed
against Ploor's sun?
When the heat generated in the interior of a sun becomes greater than
its effective surface is able to radiate, that surface expands. If
the expansion is not fast enough, a more or less insignificant amount
of the sun's material explodes, thus enlarging by force the radiant
surface to whatever extent is necessary to restore equilibrium. Thus
come into being the ordinary novae; suns which may for a few days or
for a few weeks radiate energy at a rate a few hundreds of thousands of
times greater than normal. Since ordinary novae can be produced at will
by the collision of a planet with a sun, the scientists of the Patrol
had long since completed their studies of all the phenomena involved.
The mechanisms of supernovae, however, remained obscure. No adequate
instrumentation had been developed to study conclusively the occasional
supernova which occurred naturally. No supernova had ever been
produced artificially--with all its resources of mass, atomic energy,
cosmic energy, and sunbeams. Civilization could neither assemble nor
concentrate enough power.
At the impact of the second loose planet, accompanied by the excess
energy of its impossible and unattainable intrinsic velocity, Ploor's
sun became a supernova. How deeply the intruding thing penetrated,
how much of the sun's mass exploded, never was and perhaps never will
be determined. The violence of the explosion was such, however, that
Klovian astronomers reported--a few years later--that it was radiating
energy at the rate of some five hundred and fifty million suns.
Thus no attempt will be made to describe what happened when the planet
from nth space struck the Boskonians' sun.
It was indescribably cubed.