that I was summoned before our captors, before a council of those
strange tentacle-creatures which was made up, I think, of their own
scientists. They examined me, my clothing, all about me, then sought to
communicate with me. They do not speak--communicating with each other
by telepathy--but they strove to enter into communication with me by a
projection of pictures on a smooth wall, pictures of their dark star
world, pictures of our own Galaxy, our own sun--picture after picture,
until at last I began to understand the drift of them, the history and
the purpose of these strange beings and their stranger world.
"For ages, I learned, for countless eons, their mighty sun had flashed
through the infinities of space, alone except for its numerous planets
upon which had risen these races of tentacle-creatures. Their sun
was flaming with life, then, and on their circling planets they had
attained to immense science, immense power, as their system rolled on,
a single wandering star, through the depths of uncharted space. But as
the slow eons passed, the mighty sun began to cool, and their planets
to grow colder and colder. At last it had cooled so far that to revive
its dying fires they dislodged one of their own planets from its orbit
and sent it crashing into their sun, feeding its waning flames. And
when more centuries had passed and it was again cooling they followed
the same course, sending another planet into it, and so on through the
ages, staving off the death of their sun by sacrificing their worlds,
until at last but one planet was left to them. And still their sun was
cooling, darkening, dying.
"For further ages, though, they managed to preserve a precarious
existence on their single planet by means of artificial
heat-production, until at last their great sun had cooled and
solidified to such a point that life was possible upon its dark, dead
surface. That surface, because of the solidified radio-active elements
in it, shone always with pale light, and to it the races of the
tentacle-creatures now moved. By means of great air-current projectors
they transferred the atmosphere of their planet to the dark star itself
and then cast loose their planet to wander off into space by itself,
for its orbit had become erratic and they feared that it would crash
into their own great dark star world, about which it had revolved. But
on the warm, shining surface of the great dark star they now spread
out and multiplied, raising their cities from its glowing rock and
clinging to its surface as it hurtled on and on and on through the dark
infinities of trackless space.
"But at last, after further ages of such existence, the tentacle-races
saw that again they were menaced with extinction, since in obedience
to the inexorable laws of nature their dark star was cooling still
further, the molten fires at its center which warmed its surface
gradually dying down, while that surface became colder and colder. In
a little while, they knew, the fires at its center would be completely
dead, and their great world would be a bitter, frozen waste, unless
they devised some plan by which to keep warm its surface.
"At this moment their astronomers came forward with the announcement
that their dark-star world, plunging on through empty space, would
soon pass a great star-cluster or Galaxy of suns at a distance of
some fifteen billion miles. They could not invade the worlds of this
Galaxy, they knew, for they had discovered that upon those worlds
lived countless trillions of intelligent inhabitants who would be able
to repel their own invasion, if they attempted it. There was but one
expedient left, therefore, and that was to attempt to jerk a sun out of
this Galaxy as they passed by it, to steal a star from it to take out
with them into space, which would revolve around their own mighty dark
world and supply it with the heat they needed.
"The sun which they fixed on to steal was one at the Galaxy's very
edge, our own sun. If they passed this at fifteen billion miles, as
their course then would cause them to do, they could do nothing. But
if they could change their dark star's course, could curve inward to
pass this sun at some three billion miles instead of fifteen, then the
powerful gravitational grip of their own gigantic world would grasp
this sun and carry it out with it into space. The sun's planets, too,
would be carried out, but these they planned to crash into the fires of
the sun itself, to increase its size and splendor. All that was needed,
therefore, was some method of curving their world's course inward, and
for this they had recourse to the great gravity-condensers which they
had already used to shift their own planets.
"You know that it is gravitational force alone which keeps the suns and
planets to their courses, and you know that the gravitational force of
any body, sun or planet, is radiated out from it in all directions,
tending to pull all things toward that body. In the same way there is
radiated outward perpetually from the Galaxy the combined attractive
gravitational force of all its swarming suns, and a tiny fraction of
this outward-radiating force, of course, struck the dark star, pulling
it weakly toward the Galaxy. If more of that outward-radiating force
could strike the dark star, it would be pulled toward the Galaxy with
more power, would be pulled nearer toward the Galaxy's edge, as it
passed.
"It was just that which their gravity-condenser accomplished. In a
low pit at the heart of one of their cities--this city, in fact--they
placed the condenser, a mass of brilliant hemispherical ray-attracters
which caused more of the Galaxy's outward-shooting attractive force
to fall upon the dark star, which condensed and concentrated that
radiating force upon the dark star, thereby pulling the dark star
inward toward the Galaxy's edge in a great curve. When they reached a
distance of three billion miles from the Galaxy's edge they planned
to turn off the great condenser, and their dark star would then shoot
past the Galaxy's edge, jerking out our sun with it, from that edge,
by its own terrific gravitational grip. If the condenser were turned
off before they came that close, however, they would pass the sun at
a distance too far to pull it out with them, and would then speed on
out into space alone, toward the freezing of their world and their own
extinction. For that reason the condenser, and the great cage-switch of
the condenser, were guarded always by hovering cones, to prevent its
being turned off before the right moment.
"Since then they have kept the great gravity-condenser in unceasing
operation, and their dark star has swept in toward the Galaxy's edge
in a great curve. Back in our own solar system I saw and understood
what would be the result of that inward curve, and so we came here--and
were captured. And in those weeks since we were captured, while you
have lain here unconscious and raving, this dark star has been plunging
nearer and nearer toward our Galaxy and toward our sun. Ten more days
and it passes that sun, carrying it out with it into the darkness of
boundless space, unless the great condenser is turned off before then.
Ten more days, and we lie here, powerless to warn any of what forces
work toward the doom of our sun!"
* * * * *
There was a long silence when Hurus Hol's voice had ceased--a
whispering, brain-crushing silence which I broke at last with a single
question.
"But Nal Jak----?" I asked, and the faces of my two companions became
suddenly strange, while Dal Nara turned away. At last Hurus Hol spoke.
"It was after the tentacle-scientists had examined me," he said gently,
"that they brought Nal Jak down to examine. I think that they spared me
for the time being because of my apparently greater knowledge, but Nal
Jak they--vivisected."
There was a longer hush than before, one in which the brave, quiet
figure of the wheelman, a companion in all my service with the fleet,
seemed to rise before my suddenly blurring eyes. Then abruptly I swung
down from the narrow bunk on which I lay, clutched dizzily at my
companions for support, and walked unsteadily to the square, barred
little window. Outside and beneath me lay the city of the dark-star
people, a mighty mass of pyramidal, glowing buildings, streets thronged
with their dark, gliding figures, above them the swarms of the racing
cones. From our little window the glowing wall of the great pyramid
which held us slanted steeply down for fully five hundred feet, and
upward above us for twice that distance. And as I raised my eyes upward
I saw, clear and bright above, a great, far-flung field of stars--the
stars of our own Galaxy toward which this world was plunging. And
burning out clearest among these the star that was nearest of all, the
shining yellow star that was our own sun.
I think now that it was the sight of that yellow star, largening
steadily as our dark star swept on toward it, which filled us with such
utter despair in the hours, the days, that followed. Out beyond the
city our cruiser lay hidden in the black forest, we knew, and could we
escape we might yet carry word back to the Federation of what was at
hand, but escape was impossible. And so, through the long days, days
measurable only by our own time-dials, we waxed deeper into an apathy
of dull despair.
Rapidly my strength came back to me, though the strange food supplied
us once a day by our captors was almost uneatable. But as the days fled
by, my spirits sank lower and lower, and less and less we spoke to each
other as the doom of our sun approached, the only change in any thing
around us being the moment each twenty-four hours when the signal-horns
called across the city, summoning the hordes in its streets to
their four-hour sleep-period. At last, though, we woke suddenly to
realization of the fact that nine days had passed since my awakening,
and that upon the next day the dark star would be plunging past the
burning yellow star above us and jerking it into its grip. Then, at
last, all our apathy dropped from us, and we raged against the walls
of our cells with insensate fury. And then, with startling abruptness,
came the means of our deliverance.
* * * * *
For hours there had been a busy clanging of tools and machines
somewhere in the great building above us, and numbers of the
tentacle-creatures had been passing our barred door carrying tools and
instruments toward some work being carried out overhead. We had come to
pay but little attention to them, in time, but as one passed there came
a sudden rattle and clang from outside, and turning to the door we saw
that one of the passing creatures had dropped a thick coil of slender
metal chain upon the floor and had passed on without noticing his loss.
In an instant we were at the door and reaching through its bars toward
the coil, but though we each strained our arms in turn toward it the
thing lay a few tantalizing inches beyond our grasp. A moment we
surveyed it, baffled, fearing the return at any moment of the creature
who had dropped it, and then Dal Nara, with a sudden inspiration, lay
flat upon the floor, thrusting her leg out through the grating. In a
moment she had caught the coil with her foot, and in another moment we
had it inside, examining it.
We found that though it was as slender as my smallest finger the
chain was of incredible strength, and when we roughly estimated the
extent of its thick-coiled length we discovered that it would be more
than long enough to reach from our window to the street below. At
once, therefore, we secreted the thing in a corner of the room and
impatiently awaited the sleep-period, when we could work without fear
of interruption.
At last, after what seemed measureless hours of waiting, the great
horns blared forth across the city outside, and swiftly its streets
emptied, the sounds in our building quieting until all was silence,
except for the humming of a few watchful cones above the great
condenser, and the deep droning of the condenser itself in the
distance. At once we set to work at the bars of our window.
Frantically we chipped at the rock at the base of one of the metal
bars, using the few odd bits of metal at our command, but at the end of
two hours had done no more than scratch away a bare inch of the glowing
stone. Another hour and we had laid bare from the rock the lower end
of the bar, but now we knew that within minutes the sleep-period
of the city outside would be ending, and into its streets would be
swarming its gliding throngs, making impossible all attempts at escape.
Furiously we worked, dripping now with sweat, until at last when our
time-dials showed that less than half an hour remained to us I gave
over the chipping at the rock and wrapped our chain firmly around the
lower end of the bar we had loosened. Then stepping back into the cell
and bracing ourselves against the wall below the window, we pulled
backward with all our strength.
A tense moment we strained thus, the thick bar holding fast, and then
abruptly it gave and fell from its socket in the wall to the floor,
with a loud, ringing clang. We lay in a heap on the floor, panting and
listening for any sound of alarm, then rose and swiftly fastened the
chain's end to one of the remaining bars. The chain itself we dropped
out of the window, watching it uncoil its length down the mighty
building's glowing side until its end trailed on the empty glowing
street far below. At once I motioned Hurus Hol to the window, and in a
moment he had squeezed through its bars and was sliding slowly down
the chain, hand under hand. Before he was ten feet down Dal Nara was
out and creeping downward likewise, and then I too squeezed through the
window and followed them, downward, the three of us crawling down the
chain along the huge building's steeply sloping side like three flies.
I was ten feet down from the window, now, twenty feet, and glanced down
toward the glowing, empty street, five hundred feet below, and seeming
five thousand. Then, at a sudden sound from above me, I looked sharply
up, and as I did so the most sickening sensation of fear I had ever
experienced swept over me. For at the window we had just left, twenty
feet above me, one of the tentacle-creatures was leaning out, brought
to our cell, I doubted not, by the metal bar's ringing fall, his white,
red-rimmed eye turned full upon me.
I heard sighs of horror from my two companions beneath me, and for a
single moment we hung motionless along the chain's length, swinging
along the huge pyramid's glowing side at a height of hundreds of feet
above the shining streets below. Then the creature raised one of its
tentacles, a metal tool in its grasp, which he brought down in a sharp
blow on the chain at the window's edge. Again he repeated the blow, and
again.
_He was cutting the chain!_
5
For a space of seconds I hung motionless there, and then as the tool in
the grasp of the creature above came down on the chain in another sharp
blow the sound galvanized me into sudden action.
"Slide on down!" I cried. They didn't, however, but followed me up the
chain, though Dal Nara and I alone came to grips with the horrible
dead-star creature. I gripped the links with frantic hands, pulling
myself upward toward the window and the creature at the window, twenty
feet above me.
Three times the tool in his hand came down upon the chain while I
struggled up toward him, and each time I expected the strand to sever
and send us down to death, but the hard metal withstood the blows for
the moment, and before he could strike at it again I was up to the
level of the window and reaching up toward him.
As I did so, swift black tentacles thrust out and gripped Dal Nara and
me, while another of the snaky arms swept up with the tool in its grasp
for a blow on my head. Before it could fall, though, I had reached out
with my right hand, holding to the chain with my left, and had grasped
the body of the thing inside the window, pulling him outside before he
had time to resist. As I did so my own hold slipped a little, so that
we hung a few feet below the window, both clinging to the slender chain
and both striking futilely at each other, he with the metal tool and I
with my clenched fist.
A moment we hung there, swaying hundreds of feet above the luminous
stone street, and then the creature's tentacles coiled swiftly around
my neck, tightening, choking me. Hanging precariously to our slender
strand with one hand I struck out blindly with the other, but felt
consciousness leaving me as that remorseless grip tightened. Then with
a last effort I gripped the chain firmly with both hands, doubled my
feet under me, and kicked out with all my strength. The kick caught
the cone-body of my opponent squarely, tearing him loose from his own
hold on the chain, and then there was a sudden wrench at my neck and I
was free of him, while beneath Dal Nara and I glimpsed his dark body
whirling down toward the street below, twisting and turning in its
fall along the building's slanting side and then crashing finally down
upon the smooth, shining street below, where it lay a black little
huddled mass.
Hanging there I looked down, panting, and saw that Hurus Hol had
reached the chain's bottom and was standing in the empty street,
awaiting us. Glancing up I saw that the blows of the creature I had
fought had half severed one of the links above me, but there was no
time to readjust it; so with a prayer that it might hold a few moments
longer Dal Nara and I began our slipping, sliding progress downward.
The sharp links tore our hands cruelly as we slid downward, and once
it seemed to me that the chain gave a little beneath our weight.
Apprehensively I looked upward, then down to where Hurus Hol was waving
encouragement. Down, down we slid, not daring to look beneath again,
not knowing how near we might be to the bottom. Then there was another
slight give in the chain, a sudden grating catch, and abruptly the
weakened link above snapped and we dropped headlong downward--ten feet
into the arms of Hurus Hol.
A moment we sprawled in a little heap there on the glowing street and
then staggered to our feet. "Out of the city!" cried Hurus Hol. "We
could never get to the condenser-switch on foot--but in the cruiser
there's a chance. And we have but a few minutes now before the
sleep-period ends!"
Down the broad street we ran, now, through squares and avenues of
glowing, mighty pyramids, crouching down once as the ever-hovering
cones swept by above, and then racing on. At any moment, I knew,
the great horns might blare across the city, bringing its swarming
thousands into its streets, and our only chance was to win free of
it before that happened. At last we were speeding down the street
by which we had entered the city, and before us lay that street's
end, with beyond it the vista of black forest and glowing plain over
which we had come. And now we were racing over that glowing plain, a
quarter-mile, a half, a mile....
Abruptly from far behind came the calling, crescendo notes of the
mighty horns, marking the sleep-period's end, bringing back into the
streets the city's tentacle-people. It could be but moments now, we
knew, before our escape was discovered, and as we panted on at our
highest speed we listened for the sounding of the alarm behind us.
It came! When we had drawn to within a half-mile of the black forest
where our cruiser lay hidden, another great tumult of horn-notes
burst out over the glowing city behind, high and shrill and raging.
And glancing back we saw swarms of the black cones rising from the
pyramidal buildings' summits, circling, searching, speeding out over
the glowing plains around the city, a compact mass of them racing
straight toward us.
"On!" cried Hurus Hol. "It's our last chance--to get to the cruiser!"
* * * * *
Staggering, stumbling, with the last of our strength we sped on, over
the glowing soil and rocks, toward the rim of the black forest which
lay now a scant quarter-mile ahead. Then suddenly Hurus Hol stumbled,
tripped and fell. I halted, turned toward him, then turned again as Dal
Nara shouted thickly and pointed upward. We had been sighted by the
speeding cones above and two of them were driving straight down toward
us.
A moment we stood there, rigid, while the great cones dipped toward us,
waiting for the death that would crash down upon us from them. Then
suddenly a great dark shape loomed in the air above and behind us, from
which sprang out swift shafts of brilliant green light, the dazzling
de-cohesion ray, striking the two swooping cones and sending them down
in twin torrents of shattered wreckage. And now the mighty bulk behind
us swept swiftly down upon us, and we saw that it was our cruiser.
Smoothly it shot down to the ground, and we stumbled to its side,
through the waiting open door. As I staggered up to the bridgeroom the
third officer was shouting in my ear. "We sighted you from the forest,"
he was crying. "Came out in the cruiser to get you----"
But now I was in the bridgeroom, brushing the wheelman from the
controls, sending our ship slanting sharply up toward the zenith.
Hurus Hol was at my side, now, pointing toward the great telechart and
shouting something in my ear. I glanced over, and my heart stood still.
For the great dark disk on the chart had swept down to within an inch
of the shining line around our sun-circle, the danger-line.
"The condenser!" I shouted. "We must get to that switch--turn it off!
It's our only chance!"
We were racing through the air toward the luminous city, now, and ahead
a mighty swarm of the cones was gathering and forming to meet us, while
from behind and from each side came other swarms, driving on toward us.
Then the door clicked open and Dal Nara burst into the bridgeroom.
"The ship's ray-tubes are useless!" she cried. "They've used the last
charge in the ray-tanks!"
At that cry the controls quivered under my hands, the ship slowed,
stopped. Silence filled the bridgeroom, filled all the cruiser, the
last silence of despair. We had failed. Weaponless our ship hung there,
motionless, while toward it from all directions leaped the swift and
swarming cones, in dozens, in scores, in hundreds, leaping toward us,
long black messengers of death, while on the great telechart the mighty
dark star leapt closer toward the shining circle that was our sun,
toward the fateful line around it. We had failed, and death was upon us.
And now the black swarms of the cones were very near us, and were
slowing a little, as though fearing some ruse on our part, were slowing
but moving closer, closer, while we awaited them in a last utter stupor
of despair. Closer they came, closer, closer....
A ringing, exultant cry suddenly sounded from somewhere in the cruiser
beneath me, taken up by a sudden babel of voices, and then Dal Nara
cried out hoarsely, beside me, and pointed up through our upper
observation-windows toward a long, shining, slender shape that was
driving down toward us out of the upper air, while behind it drove a
vast swarm of other and larger shapes, long and black and mighty.
"It's our own ship!" Dal Nara was shouting, insanely. "It's Ship 16!
They escaped, got back to the Galaxy--and look there--behind them--it's
the fleet, the Federation fleet!"
There was a wild singing of blood in my ears as I looked up, saw the
mighty swarm of black shapes that were speeding down upon us behind
the shining cruiser, the five thousand mighty battle-cruisers of the
Federation fleet.
The fleet! The massed fighting-ships of the Galaxy, cruisers from
Antares and Sirius and Regulus and Spica, the keepers of the Milky
Way patrol, the picked fighters of a universe! Ships with which I had
cruised from Arcturus to Deneb, beside which I had battled in many
an interstellar fight. The fleet! They were straightening, wheeling,
hovering, high above us, and then they were driving down upon the
massed swarms of cones around us in one titanic, simultaneous swoop.