THE FIRST MOVE
The Ortolians were standing on a low, green-clad hill. Below them
stretched the green flank of the little rise, and beyond lay ridge after
ridge of the broad, smooth carpet of the beautiful Vermont hills.
"Man of Earth," said Zezdon Afthen, turning at last to Wade, who stood
behind him. "It took us three months of constant flight at a speed
unthinkable, through space dotted with the titanic gems of the Outer
Dark, stars gleaming in red, and blue and orange, some titanic
lighthouses of our course, others dim pinpoints of glowing color. It was
a scene of unspeakable grandeur, but it was so awesomely mighty in its
scope, one was afraid, and his soul shriveled within him as he looked at
those inconceivable masses floating forever alone in the silence of the
inconceivable nothingness of eternal cold and eternal darkness. One was
awed, suppressed by their sheer magnitude. A magnificent spectacle
truly, but one no man could love.
"Now we are at rest on a tiny pinpoint of dust in a tiny bit of a tiny
corner of an isolated universe, and the magnitude and stillness is gone.
Only the chirpings of those strange birds as they seek rest in darkness,
the soft gurgling of the little stream below, and the rustle of
countless leaves, break the silence with a satisfying existence, while
the loneliness of that great star, your sun, is lost in its tintings of
soft color, the fleeciness of the clouds, and the seeming companionship
of green hills.
"The beauty of boundless space is awe-inspiring in its magnitude. The
beauty of Earth is something man can love.
"Man of Earth, you have a home that you may well fight for with all the
strength of your arms, all the forces of your brain, and all the
energies of Space that you can call forth to aid you. It is a wondrous
world." Silently he stood in the gathering dusk, as first Venus winked
into being, then one by one the stars came into existence in the
deepening color of the sky.
"Space is awesomely wonderful; this is--lovable." He gazed long at the
heavens of this world so strange, so beautiful to him, looking at the
unfamiliar heavens, as star after star flashed into the constellations
so familiar to terrestrians and to those Venerians who had been above
the clouds of Venus' eternal shroud.
"But somewhere off there in space are other races, and far beyond the
power of our eyes to see is the star that is the sun of my world, and
around it circles that little globe that is home to me. What is
happening there now? Does it still exist? Are there people still living
on it? Oh, Man of Earth, let us reach that world quickly, you cannot
guess the pangs that attack me, for if it be destroyed, think--forever I
am without home--without friends I knew. However kind your people may be
to me, I would be forever lonely.
"I will not think of that--only it is time your ship was ready, is it
not?"
"I think we had better return," replied Wade softly, his English words
rousing thoughts in his mind intelligible to the Ortolians.
The three rose in the air on the molecular suits and drove quickly down
toward the blue gem of the lake to the east, nestled among still other
green hills. Lights were showing in the great shop, where the _Ancient
Mariner_ was being fitted with the ray-shields, and all possible
weapons. Men streaming through her were hastily stocking her with vast
quantities of foods, stocks of fuel, all the spare parts they could cram
into her stock rooms.
When the men arrived from the hilltop, the work was practically done,
and Wade stepped up to Morey, busily checking off a list of required
items.
"Everything you ordered came through?" he asked.
"Yes--thanks to the pull of a two-billion dollar private fortune. Who
says credit-units don't have their value? This expedition never would
have gotten through, if it hadn't been for that.
"But we have the main space distortion power bank, and the new auxiliary
coils full. Ten tons of lead aboard for fuel. There's one thing we are
afraid of. If the enemy have a system of tubes that is able to handle
more power than our last tube--we're sunk. These brilliant people that
suggest using more tubes to a ray-power bank forget the last tube has to
handle the entire output of all the others, and modulate it correctly.
If the enemy has a better tube--it will be too bad for us." Morey was
frankly worried.
"My end is all set, Morey. How soon will you be ready?" Arcot asked.
"'Bout ten-fifteen minutes." Morey lit a cigarette and watched as the
last of the stuff was carried aboard.
At last they were ready. The _Ancient Mariner_, originally built for
intergalactic exploration, was kept in working condition. New apparatus
had been incorporated in it, as their research had led to improvements,
and it was constantly in condition, ready for a trip. Many exploration
trips to the nearer stars had already been made.
The ship was backed out from the hangar now, and rested on the great
smooth landing field, its tremendous quarter million ton mass of lux and
relux sinking a great, smooth depression in the turf of the field. They
were waiting now for the arrival of the Ortolian ship. Zezdon Afthen
assured them it would be there in a few minutes.
High in the sky, came the whining whistle of an approaching ship, coming
at terrific velocity. It came nearer the field, darting toward the
ground at an unheard of speed, flashing down at a speed of well over
three thousand miles an hour, and, only in the last fifty feet slowed
with a sickening deceleration. Even so it landed with a crash of fully
two hundred miles of speed. Arcot gasped at the terrible landing the
pilot had made, fully expecting to see the great hull dent somewhat,
even though made of solid relux. And certainly the jar would kill every
man on board. Yet the hull did not seem harmed by the crash, and even
the ground under the ship was but slightly disturbed, though, at a
distance of some thirty feet, the entire block of soil was crushed, and
cracked by the terrific impact of hundreds of thousands of tons striking
with terrific energy.
"Lord, it's a wonder they didn't kill themselves. I never saw such a
rotten landing," exclaimed Morey with disgust.
"Don't be too sure. I think they landed gently, and at very low speed.
Notice how little the soil directly under them was dented?" replied
Arcot, walking forward. "They have time control, as I suspected. Ask
them. They drifted in gently. Their time rate was speeded up
tremendously, so that what was hundreds of miles per hour to us was feet
per minute to them. But come on, get the handlers to bring that junk up
to the door--they are coming out."
One of the tall, kindly-faced canine people was standing in the doorway
now, the white light streaming out around him into the night, casting a
grotesque shadow on the landing field, for all the flood lights bathing
in it.
Zezdon Afthen came up and spoke quickly to the man evidently in command
of the ship. The entire party went into the ship, and the cream of their
laboratory instruments was brought in.
For hours Arcot, Morey and Wade worked at the apparatus in the ship,
measuring, calculating, following electrical and magnetic and sheer
force hook-ups of staggering complexity. They were not trying to find
the exact method of construction, only the principles involved, so that
they could perform calculations of their own, and duplicate the results
of the enemy. Thus they would be far more thoroughly familiar with the
machinery when done.
Little attention was paid to the actual driving plant, for it was a
molecular drive with the same type of lead-fuel burner they used in
their own ship. The tubes of the power bank were, however, a puzzle to
them. They were made of relux, so that it was impossible to see the
interior of the tube. To open one was to destroy it, but calculations
made from readings of their instruments showed that they were more
efficient, and could readily carry nearly half again the load that the
best terrestrian tubes could sustain. This meant the enemy could send
heavier rays and heavier ray screens.
But finally they returned to the _Ancient Mariner_, and as the Ortolian
ship whined its way out to space, the _Ancient Mariner_ started, rising
faster and faster through the atmosphere till it was in the night of
space. Then the molecular power was shut off. The ship suddenly seemed
to writhe, space was black and starless about them, then sparkling
weirdly distorted stars, all before them. They were moving already.
Almost before the Ortolians fully realized what was happening, a dozen
stars had swung past the ship, driving on now at better than five light
years in every second. At this speed, approximately fourteen hours would
be needed to reach Ortol.
"Now, Arcot, perhaps you will explain to me the secret of this ship,"
said Zezdon Afthen at last, turning from the great lux pilot's window,
to Arcot seated in the pilot's chair. "I know that only the broadest
principles will be intelligible to me, for I could not understand that
ship we captured, after almost four months of study. Yet it crept
through space compared with this ship. Certainly no ship could
outdistance this in a race!"
"As a matter of fact--watch!" Arcot pushed a little metal button along a
slide to the extreme end. Again the ship seemed to writhe. Space was no
longer black, but faintly gray, and beside them, on either side, floated
two exact replicas of their ship! Zezdon Afthen stared. But in another
moment, both were gone, and space was black, yet in but a few moments a
grayness was showing, and light was appearing from all about, growing
gradually in intensity. For three seconds Arcot continued thus, then he
pulled the metal button down the slide, and flicked over another that he
had pulled to cause the second change. The stars were again before them,
their colors changed beyond all recognition at that speed. But the
orientation of the stars behind them had been familiar. Now an entirely
different set of constellation showed.
"I merely opened the ship out to her maximum speed for a moment. I was
able to see any large star 2000 light years in our path, and there were
none. Small stars do not bother us as I will explain. When I put on full
power of the main power coils, I drove the ship up to a speed of 30
light years a second. When I turned in the full power of the auxiliary
coils as well I doubled the power, and the speed was multiplied by
eight. The result was that in the four seconds of racing, we made
approximately 1000 light years!"
Zezdon Afthen gasped. "Two hundred and forty light years _per second_"!
He paused in bewilderment. "Suppose we had struck a small sun, a dark
star, even a meteor at that speed? What would have been the result?"
Arcot smiled. "The chances are excellent that we plowed through more
than one meteor, more than one dark star, and more than one small sun.
"But this is the secret: the ship attains the speed only by going out of
space. _Nothing in space can attain the speed of light, save radiation._
Nothing in normal space. But, we alter space, make space along patterns
we choose, and so distort it that the natural speed of radiation is
enormously greater. In fact, we so change space that nothing can go
_slower_ than a speed we fix.
"Morey--show Afthen the coils, and explain it all to him. I've got to
stay here."
Morey rose, and diving through the weightless ship, went down to the
power room, Zezdon Afthen following. Here, giant pots five feet high
were in close packed rows. The "pots" contained specially designed coils
storing tremendous energy, the energy of four tons of disintegrated
lead, in the only form that energy may be stored, as a strain, or
distortion in space. These charged coils distorted only the space within
themselves, making a closed field entirely within themselves. But in the
exact gravitational center of the quarter of a million ton ship was a
single high coil of different design that distorted space around it as
well as the space within it. This, as Morey explained, was the control
that altered the constants of space to suit. The coils were charged, and
the energy stored. Their energy could be pumped into the big coil, and
then, when the ship slowed to normal space, could be pumped back to
them. The pumping energy, as well as any further energy needed for
recharging the coils could be supplied by three huge power generators.
"These energy-producers," Morey explained, "work on a principle known
for hundreds of years on Earth. Lead, when reduced to a temperature
approaching absolute zero as closely as, for instance, liquid helium,
has _no_ electrical resistance. In other words, no matter how great a
current is sent through it, there is no resistance, and no heat is
produced to raise the temperature. What we do is to send a powerful
current through a lead wire. The wire has a current density so huge that
the atoms are destroyed, and the protons and electrons coalesce into
pure radiant energy. Relux, under the influence of a magnetic field,
converts this directly into electrical potential. Electricity we can
convert to the spatial strain in the power coils, and thus the ship is
driven." Morey pointed out the huge molecular power cylinder overhead,
where the main power drive was located in the inertial center of the
ship, or as near as the great space coil would permit.
The smaller power units for vertical lift, and for steering, were in the
side walls, hidden under heavy walls of relux.
"The projectors for throwing molecular and heat rays are on the outside
of course. Both of these projectors are protected. The walls of the ship
are made of an outer wall of heavy lux metal, a vacuum between, and an
inner wall of heavy relux. The lux is stronger than relux, and is
therefore used for an outer shell. The inner shell of relux will reflect
any dangerous rays and serve to hold the heat in the ship, since a
perfect reflector is a perfect non-radiator. The vacuum wall is to
protect the occupants of the ship against any undue heat. If we should
get within the atmosphere of a sun, it would be disastrous if the
physical conduction of heat were permitted, for though the relux will
turn out any radiated heat, it is a conductor of heat, and we would
roast almost instantly. These artificial metals are both absolutely
infusible and non-volatile. The ship has actually been in the limb of a
star tremendously hotter than your sun or mine.
"Now you see why it is we need not fear a collision with a small sun,
meteor or such like. Since we are in our own, artificial space, we are
alone, and there is nothing in space to run into. But, if we enter a
huge sun, the terrific gravitational field of the mass of matter would
be enough to pull the energy of our coil away from us. That actually
happened the time we made our first intergalactic exploration. But it is
almost impossible to fall into a large star--they are too brilliant. We
won't be worrying about it," grinned Morey.
"But how did the ship we captured operate?" asked Zezdon Afthen.
"It was a very ingenious system, very closely related to ours, really.
"We distort space and change the velocity characteristics; in other
words, we distort the rate of motion through distance characteristics of
normal space. The Thessian ships work on the principle of distorting the
rate of progress through time instead of through space.
"_Velocity_ is really 'units of travel through space per unit of travel
through time.' Now if we make the time unit twice as great, and the
units traveled through space are not changed, the _velocity_ is twice as
great. That is, if we are moving five light years per second, make the
second twice as long and we are moving ten light years per
double-second. Make it ten thousand times as long, and we are traveling
fifty thousand light years per ten-thousand-seconds. This is the
principle--but there is a drawback. We might increase the velocity by
slowing time passage, that is, if it takes me a year for one heartbeat,
two years to raise my arm thus, and six months to turn, my head, if all
my body processes are slowed down in this way, I will be able to live a
tremendous length of time, and though it takes me two hundred years to
go from one star to another, so low is my time rate that the two hundred
years will seem but a few minutes. I can then make a trip to a distant
star--one five light years distant, let us say, in three minutes to me.
I then will say, looking at my chronometer (which has been similarly
slowed) 'I have gone five light years in three minutes, or five thirds
light years per minute. I have exceeded the speed of light.'
"But people back on Earth would say, he has taken two hundred years to
go five light years, therefore he has gone at a speed one fortieth of
that of light, which would be true--for their time rate.
"But suppose I can also speed up time. That is, I can live a year in a
minute or two. Then everyone else will be exceedingly slow. The ideal
thing would be to combine these two effects, arranging that space about
your ship will have a very rapid time rate, ten thousand times that of
normal space. Then the speed of radiation through that space will be
1,860,000,000 miles per second, and a speed of 1,000,000,000 miles per
second would be possible, but still you, too, will be affected, so that
though the people back home will say you are going far faster than
light, you will say 'No, I am going only 100,000 miles per second.'
"But now imagine that your ship and surrounding space for one mile is at
a time rate 10,000 times normal, and you, in a space of one hundred feet
within your ship, are affected by a time rate 1/10,000 that, or normal,
due to a second, reversing field. The two fields will not fight, or be
mutually antagonistic; they will merely compound their effects. Result:
you will agree that you are exceeding the speed of light!
"Do you understand? That is the principle on which your ship operated.
There were two time-fields, overlapping time-fields. Remember the
terrible speed with which your ship landed, and yet there was no
appreciable jar according to the men? The answer of course was, that
their time rate had been speeded enough, due to the fact that one field
had been completely shut off, the other had not.
"That is the principle. The system is so complex, naturally, that we
have not yet learned the actual method of working the process. We must
do a great deal of mathematical and physical research.
"Wish we had it done--we could use it now," mused the terrestrian.
"We have some other weapons, none as important, of course, as the
molecular ray and the heat ray. Or none that have been. But, if the
enemy have ray shields, then perhaps these others also will be
important. There are molecular motion guns, metal tubes, with molecular
director apparatus at one end. A metal shell is pulling the power turned
on, and the shell leaps out at a speed of about ten miles per
second--since it has been super-heated--and is very accurately aimed, as
there is no terrific shock of recoil to be taken up by the gun.
"But a more effective weapon, if these men are as I expect them to be,
will be a peculiarly effective magnetic field concentrator device, which
will project a magnetic field as a beam for a mile or more. How useful
it will be--I don't know. We don't know what the enemy will turn against
_us_!"