Seaton strode over to the control board and applied maximum
acceleration. "Might as well start traveling, Mart," he remarked to
Crane, who had for almost an hour been devoting the highest telescopic
power of number six visiplate to spectroscopic, interferometric, and
spectrophotometric studies of half a dozen selected nebulae. "No matter
which one you pick out we'll have to have quite a lot of positive
acceleration yet before we reverse to negative."
"As a preliminary measure, might it not be a good idea to gain some
idea as to our present line of flight?" Crane asked dryly, bending a
quizzical glance upon his friend. "You know a great deal more than
I do about the hypothesis of linear departure of incompatible and
incommensurable spaces, however, and so perhaps you already know our
true course."
"Ouch! Pals, they got me!" Seaton clapped a hand over his heart; then,
seizing his own ear, he led himself up to the switchboard and shut off
the space drive, except for the practically negligible superimposed
thirty-two feet per second which gave to the _Skylark's_ occupants a
normal gravitational force.
"Why, Dick, how perfectly silly!" Dorothy chuckled. "What's the matter?
All you've got to do is to--"
"Silly, says you?" Seaton, still blushing, interrupted her. "Woman, you
don't know the half of it! I'm just plain dumb, and Mart was tactfully
calling my attention to the fact. Them's soft words that the slatlike
string bean just spoke, but believe me, Red-Top, he packs a wicked
wallop in that silken glove!"
"Keep still a minute, Dick, and look at the bar!" Dorothy protested.
"Everything's on zero, so we must be still going straight up, and all
you have to do to get back somewhere near our own Galaxy is to turn it
around. Why didn't one of you brilliant thinkers--or have I overlooked
a bet?"
"Not exactly. You don't know about those famous linear departures, but
I do. I haven't that excuse--I simply went off half cocked again. You
see, it's like this: Even if those gyroscopes could have retained their
orientation unchanged through the fourth-dimensional translation, which
is highly improbable, that line wouldn't mean a thing as far as getting
back is concerned.
"We took one gosh-awful jump in going through hyperspace, you know,
and we have no means at all of determining whether we jumped up,
down, or sidewise. Nope, he's right, as usual--we can't do anything
intelligently until he finds out, from the shifting of spectral lines
and so on, in what direction we actually are traveling. How're you
coming with it, Mart?"
"For really precise work we shall require photographs of some twenty
hours' exposure. However, I have made six preliminary observations,
as nearly on rectangular coördinates as possible, from which you can
calculate a first-approximation course which will serve until we can
obtain more precise data."
"All right! Calcium H and calcium K--Were they all type G?"
"Four of them were of type G, two were of type K. I selected the H and
K lines of calcium because they were the most prominent individuals
appearing in all six spectra."
"Fine! While you're taking your pictures I'll run them off on the
calculator. From the looks of those shifts I'd say I could hit our
course within five degrees, which is close enough for a few days, at
least."
Seaton soon finished his calculations. He then read off from the great
graduated hour-space and declination-circles of the gyroscope cage the
course upon which the power bar was then set, and turned with a grin to
Crane, who had just opened the shutter for his first time exposure.
"We were off plenty, Mart," he admitted. "The whole gyroscope system
was rotated about ninety degrees minus declination and something like
plus seven hours' right ascension, so we'll have to forget all our old
data and start out from scratch with the reference planes as they are
now. That won't hurt us much, though, since we haven't any idea where
we are, anyway.
"We're heading about ten degrees or so to the right of that nebula over
there, which is certainly a mighty long ways off from where I thought
we were going. I'll put on full positive and point ten degrees to the
left of it. Probably you'd better read it now, and by taking a set of
observations, say a hundred hours apart, we can figure when we'll have
to reverse acceleration.
"While you're doing that I thought I'd start seeing what I could do
about a fourth-order projector. It'll take a long time to build, and
we'll need one bad when we get inside that Galaxy. What do you think?"
"I think that both of those ideas are sound," Crane assented, and each
man bent to his task.
* * * * *
Crane took his photographs and studied each of the six key nebulae
with every resource of his ultrarefined instruments. Having determined
the _Skylark's_ course and speed, and knowing her acceleration, he was
able at last to set upon the power bar an automatically varying control
of such a nature that her resultant velocity was directly toward the
lenticular nebula nearest her former line of flight.
That done, he continued his observations at regular
intervals--constantly making smaller his limit of observational error,
constantly so altering the power and course of the vessel that the
selected Galaxy would be reached in the shortest possible space of time
consistent with a permissible final velocity.
And in the meantime Seaton labored upon the projector. It had been
out of the question, of course, to transfer to tiny _Two_ the immense
mechanism which had made of _Three_ a sentient, almost a living,
thing; but, equally of course, he had brought along the force-band
transformers and selectors, and as much as possible of the other
essential apparatus. He had been obliged to leave behind, however,
the very heart of the fifth-order installation--the precious lens of
neutronium--and its lack was now giving him deep concern.
"What's the matter, Dickie? You look as though you had lost your last
friend." Dorothy intercepted him one day as he paced about the narrow
confines of the control room, face set and eyes unseeing.
"Not quite that, but ever since I finished that fourth-order outfit
I've been trying to figure out something to take the place of that
lens we had in _Three_, so that I can go ahead on the fifth, but that
seems to be one thing for which there is absolutely no substitute. It's
like trying to unscrew the inscrutable--it can't be done."
"If you can't get along without it, why didn't you bring it along, too?"
"Couldn't."
"Why?" she persisted.
"Nothing strong enough to hold it. In some ways it's worse than atomic
energy. It's so hot and under such pressure that if that lens were
to blow up in Omaha it would burn up the whole United States, from
San Francisco to New York City. It takes either thirty feet of solid
inoson or else a complete force-bracing to stand the pressure. We had
neither, no time to build anything, and couldn't have taken it through
hyperspace even if we could have held it safely."
"Does that mean--"
"No. It simply means that we'll have to start at the fourth again
and work up. I did bring along a couple of good big faidons, so that
all we've got to do is find a planet heavy enough and solid enough
to anchor a full-sized fourth-order projector on, within twenty
light-years of a white dwarf star."
"Oh, is that all? You two'll do that, all right."
"Isn't it wonderful the confidence some women have in their husbands?"
Seaton asked Crane, who was studying through number six visiplate and
the fourth-order projector the enormous expanse of the strange Galaxy
at whose edge they now were. "I think maybe we'll be able to pull it
off, though, at that. Of course we aren't close enough yet to find such
minutiae as planets, but how are things shaping up in general?"
"Quite encouraging! This Galaxy is certainly of the same order of
magnitude as our own, and--"
"Encouraging, huh?" Seaton broke in. "If such a dyed-in-the-wool
pessimist as you are can permit himself to use such a word as that,
we're practically landed on a planet right now!"
"And shows the same types and varieties of stellar spectra," Crane went
on, unperturbed. "I have identified with certainty no less than six
white dwarf stars, and some forty yellow dwarfs of type G."
"Fine! What did I tell you?" exulted Seaton.
"Now go over that again, in English, so that Peggy and I can feel
relieved about it, too," Dorothy directed. "What's a type-G dwarf?"
"A sun like our own old Sol, back home," Seaton explained. "Since we
are looking for a planet as much as possible like our own Earth, it
is a distinctly cheerful fact to find so many suns so similar to our
own. And as for the white dwarfs, I've got to have one fairly close to
the planet we land on, because to get in touch with Rovol I've got to
have a sixth-order projector; to build which I've first got to have one
of the fifth order; for the reconstruction of which I've got to have
neutronium; to get which I'll have to be close to a white dwarf star.
See?"
"Uh-huh! Clear and lucid to the point of limpidity--not." Dorothy
grimaced, then went on: "As for me, I'm certainly glad to see those
stars. It seems that we've been out there in absolutely empty space for
ages, and I've been scared a pale lavender all the time. Having all
these nice stars around us again is the next-best thing to being on
solid ground."
* * * * *
At the edge of the strange Galaxy though they were, many days were
required to reduce the intergalactic pace of the vessel to a value at
which maneuvering was possible, and many more days passed into time
before Crane announced the discovery of a sun which not only possessed
a family of planets, but was also within the specified distance of a
white dwarf star.
To any Earthly astronomer, whose most powerful optical instruments fail
to reveal even the closest star as anything save a dimensionless point
of light, such a discovery would have been impossible, but Crane was
not working with Earthly instruments. For the fourth-order projector,
although utterly useless at the intergalactic distances with which
Seaton was principally concerned, was vastly more powerful than any
conceivable telescope.
Driven by the full power of a disintegrating uranium bar, it could hold
a projection so steadily at a distance of twenty light-years that a man
could manipulate a welding arc as surely as though it was upon a bench
before him--which, in effect, it was--and in cases in which delicacy
of control was not an object, such as the present quest for such vast
masses as planets, the projector was effective over distances of many
hundreds of light-years.
Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white
dwarf star was not unduly prolonged, and _Skylark Two_ tore through the
empty ether toward it.
Close enough so that the projector could reveal details, Seaton drove
projections of all four voyagers down into the atmosphere of the
first planet at hand. That atmosphere was heavy and of a pronounced
greenish-yellow cast, and through it that fervent sun poured down a
flood of livid light upon a peculiarly dead and barren ground--but
yet a ground upon which grew isolated clumps of a livid and monstrous
vegetation.
"Of course detailed analysis at this distance is impossible, but what
do you make of it, Dick?" asked Crane. "In all our travels, this is
only the second time we have encountered such an atmosphere."
"Yes; and that's exactly twice too many." Seaton, at the spectroscope,
was scowling in thought. "Chlorin, all right, with some fluorin and
strong traces of oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl chloride, and so on--just
about like that one we saw in our own Galaxy that time. I thought then
and have thought ever since that there was something decidedly fishy
about that planet, and I think there's something equally fishy about
this one."
"Well, let's not investigate it any further, then," put in Dorothy.
"Let's go somewhere else, quick."
"Yes, let's," Margaret agreed, "particularly if, as you said about
that other one, it has a form of life on it that would make our
grandfather's whiskers curl up into a ball."
"We'll do that little thing; we haven't got _Three's_ equipment now,
and without it I'm no keener on smelling around this planet than you
are," and he flipped the projection across a few hundred million miles
of space to the neighboring planet. Its air, while somewhat murky and
smoky, was colorless and apparently normal, its oceans were composed of
water, and its vegetation was green. "See, Mart? I told you something
was fishy. It's all wrong--a thing like that can't happen even once,
let alone twice."
"According to the accepted principles of cosmogony it is of course to
be expected that all the planets of the same sun would have atmospheres
of somewhat similar composition," Crane conceded, unmoved. "However,
since we have observed two cases of this kind, it is quite evident
that there are not only many more suns having planets than has been
supposed, but also that suns capture planets from each other, at least
occasionally."
"Maybe--that would explain it, of course. But let's see what this world
looks like--see if we can find a place to sit down on. It'll be nice
to live on solid ground while I do my stuff."
He swung the viewpoint slowly across the daylight side of the strange
planet, whose surface, like that of Earth, was partially obscured by
occasional masses of cloud. Much of that surface was covered by mighty
oceans, and what little land there was seemed strangely flat and
entirely devoid of topographical features.
The immaterial conveyance dropped straight down upon the largest
visible mass of land, down through a towering jungle of fernlike and
bamboolike plants, halting only a few feet above the ground. Solid
ground it certainly was not, nor did it resemble the watery muck of
our Earthly swamps. The huge stems of the vegetation rose starkly
from a black and seething field of viscous mud--mud unrelieved by
any accumulation of humus or of débris--and in that mud there swam,
crawled, and slithered teeming hordes of animals.
"What perfectly darn funny-looking mud puppies!" Dorothy exclaimed.
"And isn't that the thickest, dirtiest, gooiest mud you ever saw?"
"Just about," Seaton agreed, intensely interested. "But those things
seem perfectly adapted to it. Flat, beaver tails; short, strong legs
with webbed feet; long, narrow heads with rooting noses, like pigs;
and heavy, sharp incisor teeth. But they live on those ferns and
stuff--that's why there's no underbrush or dead stuff. Look at that
bunch working on the roots of that big bamboo over there. They'll have
it down in a minute--there she goes!"
* * * * *
The great trunk fell with a crash as he spoke, and was almost instantly
forced beneath the repellant surface by the weight of the massed "mud
puppies" who flung themselves upon it.
"Ah, I thought so!" Crane remarked. "Their molar teeth do not match
their incisors, being quite Titanotheric in type. Probably they can
assimilate lignin and cellulose instead of requiring our usual nutrient
carbohydrates. However, this terrain does not seem to be at all
suitable for our purpose."
"I'll say it doesn't. I'll scout around and see if we can't find some
high land somewhere, but I've got a hunch that we won't care for that,
either. This murky air and the strong absorption lines of SO2 seem to
whisper in my ear that we'll find some plenty hot and plenty sulphurous
volcanoes when we find the mountains."
A few large islands or small continents of high and solid land were
found at last, but they were without exception volcanic. And those
volcanoes were not quiescent. Each was in constant and furious eruption.
"Well, I don't see any place around here either fit to live in or solid
enough to anchor an observatory onto," Seaton concluded, after he had
surveyed the entire surface of the globe. "I think we'd better flit
across to the next one, don't you, folks?"
Suiting action to word, he shot the beam to the next nearest planet,
which chanced to be the one whose orbit was nearest the blazing sun,
and a mere glance showed that it would not serve the purposes of the
Terrestrials. Small it was, and barren: waterless, practically airless,
lifeless; a cratered, jagged, burned-out ember of what might once have
been a fertile little world.
The viewpoint then leaped past the flaming inferno of the luminary and
came to rest in the upper layers of an atmosphere.
"Aha!" Seaton exulted, after he had studied his instruments briefly.
"This looks like home, sweet home to me. Nitrogen, oxygen, some CO2, a
little water vapor, and traces of the old familiar rare gases. And see
the oceans, the clouds, and the hills? Hot dog!"
As the projection dropped toward the new world's surface, however,
making possible a detailed study, it became evident that there was
something abnormal about it. The mountains were cratered and torn;
many of the valleys were simply desolate expanses of weathered lava,
tuff, and breccia; and, while it seemed that climatic conditions were
eminently suitable, of animal life there was none.
And it was not only the world itself that had been outraged. Near a
great inland lake there spread the ruins of what had once been a great
city; ruins so crumbled and razed as to be almost unrecognizable. What
had been stone was dust, what had been metal was rust; and dust and
rust alike were now almost completely overgrown by vegetation.
"Hm-m-m!" Seaton mused, subdued. "There _was_ a near-collision of
planet-bearing suns, Mart; and that chlorin planet was captured. This
world was ruined by the strains set up--but surely they must have been
scientific enough to have seen it coming? Surely they must have made
plans so that _some_ of them could have lived through it?"
He fell silent, driving the viewpoint hither and thither, like a hound
in quest of a scent. "I thought so!" Another ruined city lay beneath
them; a city whose buildings, works, and streets had been fused
together into one vast agglomerate of glaringly glassy slag, through
which could be seen unmelted fragments of strangely designed structural
members. "Those ruins are fresh--that was done with a heat ray, Mart.
But who did it, and why? I've got a hunch--wonder if we're too late--if
they've killed them all off already?"
Hard-faced now and grim, Seaton combed the continent, finding at last
what he sought.
"Ah, I thought so!" he exclaimed, his voice low but deadly. "I'll
bet my shirt that the chlorins are wiping out the civilization of
that planet--probably people more or less like us. What d'you say,
folks--do we declare ourselves in on this, or not?"
"I'll tell the cockeyed world--I believe that we should--By all
means--" came simultaneously from Dorothy, Margaret, and Crane.
"I knew you'd back me up. Humanity _über alles_--_homo sapiens_ against
all the vermin of the universe! Let's go, _Two_--do your stuff!"
* * * * *
As _Two_ hurtled toward the unfortunate planet with her every iota of
driving power, Seaton settled down to observe the strife and to see
what he could do. That which lay beneath the viewpoint had not been a
city, in the strict sense of the word. It had been an immense system of
concentric fortifications, of which the outer circles had long since
gone down under the irresistible attack of the two huge structures of
metal which hung poised in the air above. Where those outer rings had
been there was now an annular lake of boiling, seething lava. Lava
from which arose gouts and slender pillars of smoke and fume; lava
being volatilized by the terrific heat of the offensive beams and being
hurled away in flaming cascades by the almost constant detonations
of high-explosive shells; lava into which from time to time another
portion of the immense fortress slagged down--put out of action,
riddled, and finally fused by the awful forces of the invaders.
Even as the four Terrestrials stared in speechless awe, an intolerable
blast of flame burst out above one of the flying forts and down it
plunged into the raging pool, throwing molten slag far and wide as it
disappeared beneath the raging surface.
"Hurray!" shrieked Dorothy, who had instinctively taken sides with the
defenders. "One down, anyway!"
But her jubilation was premature. The squat and monstrous fabrication
burst upward through that flaming surface and, white-hot lava
streaming from it in incandescent torrents, it was again in action,
apparently uninjured.
[Illustration: _But the squat and monstrous flying fort burst upward
through the seething surface and was again in full action._]
"All fourth-order stuff, Mart," Seaton, who had been frantically busy
at his keyboard and instruments, reported to Crane. "Can't find a trace
of anything on the fifth or sixth, and that gives us a break. I don't
know what we can do yet, but we'll do something, believe me!"
"Fourth order? Are you sure?" Crane doubted. "A fourth-order screen
would be a zone of force, opaque and impervious to gravitation, whereas
those screens are transparent and are not affecting gravity."
"Yeah, but they're doing something that we never tried, since we never
used fourth-order stuff in fighting. They've both left the gravity band
open--it's probably too narrow for them to work through, at least with
anything very heavy--and that gives us the edge."
"Why? Do you know more about it than they do?" queried Dorothy.
"Who and what are they, Dick?" asked Margaret.
"Sure I know more about it than they do. I understand the fifth and
sixth orders, and you can't get the full benefit of any order until you
know all about the next one. Just like mathematics--nobody can really
handle trigonometry until after he has had calculus. And as to who
they are, the folks in that fort are of course natives of the planet,
and they may well be people more or less like us. It's dollars to
doughnuts, though, that those vessels are manned by the inhabitants of
that interloping planet--that form of life I was telling you about--and
it's up to us to pull their corks if we can. There, I'm ready to go, I
think. We'll visit the ship first."
The visible projection disappeared and, their images now invisible
patterns of force, they stood inside the control room of one of the
invaders. The air bore the faint, greenish-yellow tinge of chlorin;
the walls were banked and tiered with controlling dials, meters, and
tubes; and sprawling, lying, standing, or hanging before those controls
were denizens of the chlorin planet. No two of them were alike in form.
If one of them was using eyes he had eyes everywhere; if hands, hands
by the dozen, all differently fingered, sprouted from one, two, or a
dozen supple and snaky arms.
But the inspection was only momentary. Scarcely had the unseen visitors
glanced about the interior when the visibeam was cut off sharply. The
peculiar beings had snapped on a full-coverage screen and their vessel,
now surrounded by the opaque spherical mirror of a zone of force, was
darting upward and away--unaffected by gravity, unable to use any of
her weapons, but impervious to any form of matter or to any ether-borne
wave.
"Huh! 'We didn't come over here to get peeked at,' says they." Seaton
snorted. "Amœbic! Must be handy, though, at that, to sprout eyes, arms,
ears, and so on whenever and wherever you want to--and when you want
to rest, to pull in all such impedimenta and subside into a senseless
green blob. Well, we've seen the attackers, now let's see what the
natives look like. They can't cut us off without sending their whole
works sky-hooting off into space."
The visibeam sped down into the deepest sanctum of the fortress without
hindrance, revealing a long, narrow control table at which were
seated men--men not exactly like the humanity of Earth, of Norlamin,
of Osnome, or of any other planet, but undoubtedly men, of the genus
_homo_.
"You were right, Dick." Crane the anthropologist now spoke. "It seems
that on planets similar to Earth in mass, atmosphere, and temperature,
wherever situated, man develops. The ultimate genes must permeate
universal space itself."
"Maybe--sounds reasonable. But did you see that red light flash on when
we came in? They've got detectors set on the gravity band--look at the
expression on their faces."
* * * * *
Each of the seated men had ceased his activity and was slumped down
into his chair. Resignation, hopeless yet bitter, sat upon lofty, domed
brows and stared out of large and kindly eyes.
"Oh, I get it!" Seaton exclaimed. "They think the chlorins are watching
them--as they probably do most of the time--and they can't do anything
about it. Should think they could do the same--or could broadcast an
interference--I could help them on that if I could talk to them--wish
they had an educator, but I haven't seen any--" He paused, brow knitted
in concentration. "I'm going to make myself visible to try a stunt.
Don't talk to me; I'll need all the brain power I've got to pull this
off."
As Seaton's image thickened into substance its effect upon
the strangers was startling indeed. First they shrank back in
consternation, supposing that their enemies had at last succeeded in
working a full materialization through the narrow gravity band. Then,
as they perceived that Seaton's figure was human, and of a humanity
different from their own, they sprang to surround him, shouting words
meaningless to the Terrestrials.
For some time Seaton tried to make his meaning clear by signs, but the
thoughts he was attempting to convey were far too complex for that
simple medium. Communication was impossible and the time was altogether
too short to permit of a laborious learning of language. Therefore
streamers of visible force shot from Seaton's imaged eyes, sinking
deeply into the eyes of the figure at the head of the table.
"Look at me!" he commanded, and his fists clenched and drops of sweat
stood out on his forehead as he threw all the power of his brain into
that probing, hypnotic beam.
The native resisted with all his strength, but not for nothing had
Seaton had superimposed upon his already-powerful mind a large
portion of the phenomenal brain of Drasnik, the First of Psychology
of Norlamin. Resistance was useless. The victim soon sat relaxed and
passive, his mind completely subservient to Seaton's, and as though in
a trance he spoke to his fellows.
"This apparition is the force-image of one of a group of men from
a distant Solar System," he intoned in his own language. "They are
friendly and intend to help us. Their space ship is approaching
us under full power, but it cannot get here for many days. They
can, however, help us materially before they arrive in person. To
that end, he directs that we cause to be brought into this room a
full assortment of all our fields of force, transmitting tubes,
controllers, force-converters--in short, the equipment of a laboratory
of radiation--No, that would take too long. He suggests that one of us
escort him to such a laboratory."