A QUARTER OF A MILLION LIGHT YEARS
"Our civilization," continued Zezdon Afthen, "is built largely on the
knowledge of the mind. We cannot have criminals, for the man who plots
evil is surely found out by his thoughts. We cannot have lying
politicians and unjust rulers.
"It is a peaceful civilization. The Ancient Masters feared and hated War
with a mighty aversion. But they did not make our race cowards, merely
peaceful intelligence. Now we must fight for our homes, and my race will
fight mightily. But we need weapons.
"But my story has little to do with our race. I will tell the story of
our civilization and of the Ancient Ones later when the time is more
auspicious.
"Four months ago, our mental vibration instruments detected powerful
emanations from space. That could only mean that a new, highly
intelligent race had suddenly appeared within a billion miles of our
world. The directional devices quickly spotted it as emanating from the
third planet of our system. Zezdon Fentes, with my aid, set up some
special apparatus, which would pick up strong thoughts and make them
visible. We had used this before to see not only what an enemy
looked upon, but also what he saw in that curious thing, the eye
of the mind, the vision of the past and the future. But while the
thought-amplification device was powerful, the new emanations were hard
to separate from each other.
"It was done finally, when all but one man slept. That one we were
enable to tune sharply to. After that we could reach him at any time. He
was the commander. We saw him operate the ship, we saw the ship, saw it
glide over the barren, rocky surface of that world. We saw other men
come in and go out. They were strange men. Short, squat, bulky men.
Their arms were short and stocky. But their strength was enormous,
unbelievable. We saw them bend solid bars of steel as thick as my arm.
With perfect ease!
"Their brains were tremendously active, but they were evil, selfishly
evil. Nothing that did not benefit them counted. At one time our
instruments went dead, and we feared that the commander had detected us,
but we saw what happened a little later. The second in command had
killed him.
"We saw them examine the world, working their way across it, wearing
heavy suits, yet, for all the terrific gravity of that world, bouncing
about like rubber balls, leaping and jumping where they wanted. Their
legs would drive out like pistons, and they soared up and through the
air.
"They were tired while they made those examinations, and slept heavily
at night.
"Then one night there was a conference. We saw then what they intended.
Before we had tried desperately to signal them. Now we were glad that we
had failed.
"We saw their ship rise (in the thoughts of the second in command) and
sail out into space, and rush toward our world. The world grew larger,
but it was imperfectly sketched in, for they did not know our world
well. Their telescopes did not have great power as your electric
telescopes have.
"We saw them investigate the planet. We saw them plan to destroy any
people they found with a ray which was as follows: 'the ray which makes
all parts move as one.' We could not understand and could not interpret.
Thoughts beyond our knowledge have, of course, no meaning, even when our
mental amplifiers get them, and bring them to us."
"The Molecular ray!" gasped Morey in surprise. "They will be an enemy."
"You know it! It is familiar to you! You have it? You can fight it?"
asked Zezdon Afthen excitedly.
"We know it, and can fight it, if that is all they have."
"They have more--much more I fear," replied Zezdon Afthen. "At any rate,
we saw what they intended. If our world was inhabited, they would
destroy every one on it, and then other men of their race were to float
in on their great ships, and settle on that largest of our worlds.
"We had to stop them so we did what we could. We had powerful machines,
which would amplify and broadcast our thoughts. So we broadcast our
thought-waves, and implanted in the mind of their leader that it would
be wise to land, and learn the extent of the civilization, and the
weapons to be met. Also, as the ship drew nearer, we made him decide on
a certain spot we had prepared for him.
"He never guessed that the thoughts were not his own. Only the ideas
came to him, seeming to spring from his own mind.
"He landed--and we used our one weapon. It was a thing left to one group
of rulers when the Ancient Masters left us to care for ourselves. What
it was, we never knew; we had never used it in the fifteen thousand
years since the Great Masters had passed--never had to. But now it was
brought out, and concealed behind great piles of rock in a deep canyon
where the ship of the enemy would land. When it landed, we turned the
beam of the machine on it, and the apparatus rotated it swiftly, and a
cone of the beam's ray was formed as the beam was swung through a small
circle in the vertical plane. The machine leaped backward, and though it
was so massive that a tremendous amount of labor had been required to
bring it there, the push of the pencil of force we sent out hurled it
back against a rocky cliff behind it as though it were some child's toy.
It continued to operate for perhaps a second, perhaps two. In that time
two great holes had been cut in the enemy ship, holes fifteen feet
across, that ran completely through the hull as though a die had cut
through the metal of the ship, cutting out a disc of metal.
"There was a terrific concussion, and a roar as the air blasted out of
the ship. It did not take us long to discover that the enemy were dead.
Their terrible, bloated corpses lay everywhere in the ship. Most of the
men we were able to recognize, having seen them in the mentovisor. But
the colors were distorted, and their forms were peculiar. Indeed, the
whole ship seemed strange. The only time that things ever did seem
normal about that strange thing, when the angles of it seemed what they
were, when the machines did not seem out of proportion, out of shape,
twisted, was when on a trial trip we ventured very close to our sun."
Arcot whistled softly and looked at Morey. Morey nodded. "Probably
right. Don't interrupt."
"That you thought something, I understood, but the thoughts themselves
were hopelessly unintelligible to me. You know the explanation?" asked
Zezdon Afthen eagerly.
"We think so. The ship was evidently made on a world of huge size. Those
men, their stocky, block legs and arms, their entire build and their
desire for the largest of your planets, would indicate that. Their own
world was probably even larger--they were forced to wear pressure suits
even on that large world, and could jump all over, you said. On so huge
a sphere as their native world seems to be, the gravity would be so
intense as to distort space. Geometry, such as yours seems to be, and
such as ours was, could never be developed, for you assume the existence
of a straight line, and of an absolute plane surface. These things
cannot exist in space, but on small worlds, far from the central sun's
mass, the conditions approach that without sufficient discrepency to
make the error obvious. On so huge a globe as their world the space is
so curved that it is at once obvious that no straight line exists, and
that no plane exists. Their geometry would never be like ours. When you
went close to your sun, the attraction was sufficient to curve space
into a semblance of the natural conditions on their home planet, then
your senses and the ship met a compromise condition which made it seem
more or less normal, not so obviously strange to you.
"But continue." Arcot looked at Afthen interestedly.
"There were none left in their ship now, and we had been careful in
locating the first hole, that it should not damage the propulsive
machinery. The second hole was accidental, due to the shift of the
machine. The machine itself was wrecked now, crushed by its own
reaction. We forgot that any pencil of force powerful enough to do what
we wanted, would tear the machine from its moorings unless fastened with
great steel bolts into the solid rock.
"The second hole had been far to the rear, and had, by ill-luck, cut out
a portion of the driving apparatus. We could not repair that, though we
did succeed at last in lifting the great discs into place. We attempted
to cut them, and put them back in sections. Our finest saws and machines
did not nick them. Their weight was unbelievable, and yet we finally
succeeded in lifting the things into the wall of the ship. The actual
missing material did not represent more than a tiny cut, perhaps as wide
as one of your credit-discs. You could slip the thin piece of metal in
between them, but not so much as your finger.
"Those slots we welded tight with our best steel, letting a flap hang
over on each side of the cut, and as the hot metal cooled, it was drawn
against the shining walls with terrific force. The joints were perfectly
airtight.
"The machines proper were repaired to the greatest possible extent. It
was a heartbreaking task, for we must only guess at what machines should
be connected together. Much damage had been done by the rushing air as
it left, for it filled the machines, too, and they were not designed to
resist the terrific air pressure that was on them when the pressure in
the ship escaped. Many of the machines had been burst open, and these we
could repair when we had the necessary elements and knew their
construction from the remnants, or could find unbroken duplicates in the
stock rooms.
"Once we connected the wrong things. This will show you what we dealt
with. They were the wrong poles--two generators, connected together in
the wrong way. There was a terrific crash when the switch was thrown,
and huge sheets of electric flame leaped from one of them. Two men were
killed, incinerated in an instant, even the odors one might expect were
killed in that flash of heat. Everything save the shining metal and
clear glass within ten feet of it was instantly wiped out. And there was
a fuse link that gave. The generator was ruined. One was left, and
several small auxiliary generators.
"Eventually, we did the job. We made the machine work. And we are here.
"We have come to warn you, and to ask aid. Your system also has a large
planet, slightly smaller than the largest of our system, but yet
attractive. There are approximately 50,000 planetary systems in this
universe, according to the records of the Invaders. Their world is not
of this system. It is the World Thett, sun Antseck, Universe Venone.
Where that is, or even what it means, we do not know. Perhaps you
understand.
"But they investigated your world, and its address, according to their
records, was World 3769-8482730-3. This, I believe, means, Universe
3769, sun 8482730, world 3. They have been investigating this system now
for nearly three centuries. It was close to 200 years ago that they
visited your world--two hundred years of your time."
"This is 2129--which makes it about the year 1929-30 that they floated
around here investigating. Why haven't they done anything?" Arcot asked
him.
"They waited for an auspicious time. They are afraid now, for recently
they visited your world, and were utterly amazed to find the
unbelievable progress your people have made. They intend to make an
immediate attack on all worlds known to be intelligently populated. They
had made the mistake of letting one race learn too much; they cannot
afford to let it happen again.
"There are only twenty-one inhabited worlds known, and their thousands
of scouts have already investigated nearly all the central mass of this
universe, and much of the outer rings. They have established a base in
this universe. Where I do not know. That, alone, was never mentioned in
the records. But of all peoples, they feared only your world.
"There is one race in the universe far older than yours, but they are a
sleeping people. Long ago their culture decayed. Still, now they are not
far from you, and perhaps it will be worth the few days needed to learn
more about them. We have their location and can take you there. Their
world circles a dead star--"
"Not any more," laughed Morey grimly. "That's another surprise for the
enemy. They had a little jog, and they certainly are wide awake now.
They are headed for big things, and they are going to do a lot."
"But how do you know these things? You have ships that can go from
planet to planet, I know, but the records of the enemy said you could
not leave the system of your sun. They alone knew that secret."
"Another surprise for them," said Morey. "We can--and we can move faster
than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star
have moved to a very live star--Sirius, the brightest in our heavens.
And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster
than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when
their star passed close to ours. They came off second best, and we
haven't spoken to them since. But I think we can make valuable allies
there."
For all Morey's jocular manner, he realized the terrible import of this
announcement. A race which had been able to cross the vast gulf of
intergalactic space in the days when Terrestrians were still developing
the airplane--and already they had mapped Jupiter, and planned their
colonies! What developments had come? They had molecular rays, cosmic
rays, the energy of matter, then--what else had they now? Lux and Relux,
the two artificial metals, made of solidified light, far stronger than
anything of molecular structure in nature, absolutely infusible, totally
inert chemically, one a perfect conductor of light and of all radiation
in space, the other a perfect reflector of all radiations--save
molecular rays. Made into the condition of reflection by the action of
special frequencies in its formation from light, molecular frequencies
were, unfortunately, able to convert it into perfectly transparent lux
metal, when the protective value was gone.
They had that. All Earth had, perhaps.
"There was one other race of some importance, the others were
semi-civilized. They rated us in a position between these races and the
high races--yours, those of the dead star, and those of world
3769-37:478:326:894-6. Our science had been investigated two hundred or
so years ago.
"This other race was at a great distance from us, greater than yours,
and apparently not feared as greatly as yours. They cannot cross to
other worlds, save in small ships driven solely by fire, which the
Thessians have called a 'hopelessly inefficient and laughably awkward
thing to ride in.'"
"Rockets," grinned Morey. "Our first ship was part rocket."
Zezdon Fentes smiled. "But that is all. We have brought you warning, and
our plea. Can you help us?"
"We cannot answer that. The Interplanetary Council must act. But I am
afraid that it will be all we can do to protect our own world if this
enemy attacks soon, and I fear they will. Since they have a base in this
universe, it is impossible to believe that all ships did not report back
to the home world at stated intervals. That one is missing will soon be
discovered, and it will be sought. War will start at once. Three months
it took you to reach us--they should come soon.
"Those men who left will be on their way back from the home world from
which they came. What do you call your planet, friend?"
"Ortol is our home," replied Zezdon Inthel.
"At any rate, I can only assure you that your world will be given
weapons that will permit your people to defend themselves and I will get
you to your home within twenty-four hours. Your ship--is it in the
system?"
"It waits on the second satellite of the fourth planet," replied Zezdon
Afthen.
"Signal them, and tell them to land where a beacon of intense light,
alternating red and blue, reaches up from--this point on the map." Arcot
pointed out the spot in Vermont where their private lake and laboratory
were.
He turned to the others, and in rapid-fire English, explained his plans.
"We need the help of these people as much as they need ours. I think
Zezdon Fentes will stay here and help you. The others will go with us to
their world. There we shall have plenty of work to do, but on the way we
are going to stop at Mars and pick up that valuable ship of theirs and
make a careful examination for possible new weapons, their system of
speed-drive, and their regular space-drive. I'm willing to make a bet
right now, that I can guess both. Their regular drive is a molecular
drive with lead disintegration apparatus for the energy, cosmic ray
absorbers for the heating, and a drive much like ours. Their speed drive
is a time distortion apparatus, I'll wager. Time distinction offers an
easy solution of speed. All speed is relative--relative to other bodies,
but also to time-speed. But we'll see.
"I'm going to hustle some workmen to installing the biggest spare power
board I can get into the storerooms of the _Ancient Mariner_, and pack
in a ray-screen. It will be useful. Let's move."
"Our ship," said Zezdon Afthen, "will land in three of your hours."