"I can't say--now," replied my friend, and the astonishment in our
expressions deepened.
Then Mur Dak's face became suddenly bleak, and his eyes scornful. "Is
it possible that you are afraid?" he asked.
A deep flush rose over Sarto Sen's face but he did not answer, meeting
our gaze for a moment and then turning toward the door. The spell of
surprize that had held me broke then and I ran toward him, held his arm.
"Sarto Sen!" I cried, and could voice no other word.
He half turned toward me, his face softening a little, and then
abruptly wheeled and passed out of the door, leaving me standing there
motionless.
The others were regarding me with a certain compassion, but seeing the
misery on my face they made no comments on what had just occurred, and
without further remark Hal Kur was named as my lieutenant. Later that
day I learned that Sarto Sen, with Nar Lon and a few others of his
assistants, had left in our original cruiser for his Venus laboratories.
If time had been mine I would have sought him out there, but now the
cruisers of our fleet were almost complete, and all my time was taken
up by the business of training the pilots who were to operate them.
Luckily their controls were simple, differing but little in practise
from those of our ordinary interplanetary space-ships, so that short
as was the time at our disposal it proved enough for the training of
the selected men. And so at last there came the twentieth day after
our return, and on that night the great fleet made the start of its
momentous voyage.
We had planned for the cruisers from each planet to proceed in separate
groups out past Neptune, where all would rendezvous and take up their
flight for Alto. And so that night the Earth contingent of ships made
its start, from a great plain beyond the Hall of Planets. Crowds from
over all Earth had assembled there to watch our departure--vast, silent
crowds who watched our ships with the knowledge written plain on their
faces that we held in our hands their only hope of life. And high above
them gleamed the little spot of blood-red light that was Alto, the sun
that was our goal.
Standing with Hal Kur and my pilot in the conning-tower of my flagship,
I watched the ground sinking away beneath us as we rose smoothly up
from Earth, with ever-increasing speed. As the gray old planet drew
away beneath us my heart twisted with the thought that Sarto Sen was
left behind, this time. And then our accompanying ships had slanted up
beneath us and we were arrowing out through the solar system to the
rendezvous beyond Neptune. When we had reached the appointed spot we
paused, our cruisers hovering just beyond the icy world. A few minutes
we waited and then a cloud of dark spots appeared behind us, sweeping
smoothly up and resolving into a formation of cruisers which fell into
place behind us. It was the fleet from Mars, and it was followed in
quick succession by the contingents from Uranus and Venus. Out from
arctic Neptune, behind us, there came now that world's ships, taking
their place with us just ahead of the group from ringed Saturn. Then,
last and at the same time, came the final two contingents, one a small
one of few cruisers from Mercury, the other the mighty fleet from
Jupiter. More than a thousand cruisers in all we hovered there, the
massed forces of the Eight Worlds.
I gave a telestereo order which flashed through all the fleet, and the
huge armada at once arranged itself in the form of a great triangle, a
thousand miles wide at its base, with my own cruiser at the triangle's
apex. Another order, and the whole vast fleet moved smoothly forward at
uniform speed, a speed that mounted quickly as we flashed on through
the ether toward the red star ahead with more and more power. The
forces of man had gathered themselves and were moving out toward their
supreme struggle, sailing out into the interstellar void to grapple
with their doom, risking on one great throw of dice the life or death
of their universe.
* * * * *
Standing beside our pilot in my flagship's conning-tower, Hal Kur and
I peered through the broad fore-window, watching Alto broaden again
across the heavens as we raced on toward it. Already it burned in the
sky ahead like a great fire, since for four long weeks our fleet had
hummed on toward it at highest speed. And now, on the thirtieth day of
our flight, its end was at last in sight and we were preparing for our
descent on the city of the globe-men.
The plan which we had formed was simple enough. We were to swoop
suddenly upon the city, and while it was being attacked by the greater
part of our fleet a picked few ships would land upon the great
tower-platform, taking possession of the projector there. This our
own scientists would train upon Alto in an effort to swerve the sun
again from its course. It must be done soon, I knew, for this was the
fiftieth day, which was our time-limit; and unless we made our stroke
at the great sun before the tenth hour, it had been calculated, Alto
would still come close enough to the solar system to cause collisions
between its own far-swinging planets and our own sun and worlds,
wrecking our solar system. Less than twelve hours remained to us.
Now, as we swept on toward the lurid, immense sun ahead, it was
concerning my own courage that I felt most in doubt. The strange
defection of Sarto Sen had already unsettled my mind, and as I glanced
back through the rear window and glimpsed the far points of light which
were all that was to be seen of the great fleet following, I felt with
deepening anxiety the immensity of my responsibilities as commander.
How long I brooded there at the window I can not guess, but I was
finally aroused by a sudden sharp exclamation from Hal Kur. The big
engineer was gazing out through the front telescopic window toward
the fiery disk of the sun ahead, amazement on his face. In a moment
he beckoned me to his side, and I gazed out with him through the
telescopic glass.
Even through the light-repelling shields which had been swung over all
our windows the glare of the mighty sun ahead was almost blinding, but
my eyes quickly became accustomed to it, and then I gave a catch of
in-drawn breath. For I had glimpsed against the crimson disk of Alto
a little cloud of dark specks, a tiny swarm that seemed to be growing
steadily larger. Breathlessly we watched them, and now we could not
doubt that they were drawing nearer, increasing swiftly in size as
we raced to meet them. And now they were taking definite shape, seen
through our magnifying window, taking shape as smooth, long, fishlike
hulls--
Hal Kur whirled around to me, a flame leaping into his eyes. "They're
ships!" he cried. "Star-cruisers like our own! Those globe-men--they
had our own cruiser!"
Something seemed to check the beating of my own heart at that cry.
The cruisers ahead could only come from Alto, could only be manned
by the globe-men of Alto's planets. While we lay imprisoned they had
studied the design of our own cruiser, had understood and copied it,
and during our homeward flight they had built their own great fleet of
star-cruisers, guessing that our escape meant an attack on themselves
later on. And now they had come out to meet that attack, there in the
interstellar void, and the two great fleets were rushing headlong
toward a battle that would be fought between the stars!
A moment I stood there, stunned, then turned to the telestereo which
transmitted my orders to the fleet. "All ships prepare for battle,"
I announced, as calmly as possible. "Reduce speed gradually to one
hundred miles an hour, holding the same formation until further order."
From our own cruiser, below me, there came now a running of feet and a
shouting of hoarse voices, while there was a jarring and clanging of
metal as the ray-tubes in the cruiser's sides were quickly made ready
for action. Our speed was swiftly decreasing, now, and as I glanced
ahead I saw that the globe-men's ships were apparently slackening speed
also, advancing toward us more slowly and moving now in two short
columns. They knew, as well as we, that if both fleets used their
maximum speed they would be unable to make contact with each other, and
they sought a decision no less than we.
* * * * *
Slowly, now, ever more slowly, the two fleets were moving toward each
other. I could now plainly observe the approaching enemy cruisers, very
similar in design to our own but with shorter, thicker hulls, their
globe-men pilots plainly visible in their bright-lit conning-towers.
Headlong they came toward us, and headlong we advanced to meet them.
Then, when the two fleets were almost at the point of colliding, there
leaped out toward us from the oncoming cruisers a multitude of balls of
destroying pink fire.
I had been expecting this, and at the moment they fired I spoke a
single word into the telestereo. Instantly our own cruiser and the
whole vast fleet behind it slanted sharply upward, while the globe-men
craft and their balls of fire passed harmlessly beneath us. And as
we swept over them there burned down from our own cruisers the blue
de-atomizing ray, striking more than a score of ships in the fleet
below and annihilating them instantly. In a moment we had passed them
and at once we circled, massed, and then sped back to strike another
blow at the enemy fleet, which had also circled and was coming to meet
us.
Again the two fleets were racing toward each other, and as they neared
each other, rosy fire and blue ray crossed and clashed from fleet to
fleet. I saw the flame-balls strike cruisers around and behind us,
cruisers that vanished in whirling storms of fire, though fire it could
not have been that raged so fiercely there in the airless void. In the
other fleet, ship after ship was flashing into blinding blue light and
disappearing, as our rays struck them. Then the two fleets had met,
had mixed and mingled, so that the battle changed suddenly to myriad
individual combats between cruisers, whirling and striking and falling
there in the great gulf between the coldly smiling stars, flaring into
pink flame or blue light and vanishing from sight.
[Illustration: "They whirled and struck and fell there in the great
gulf between the coldly smiling stars."]
Toward us flashed an enemy cruiser, but as its rosy flame leapt toward
us we veered sharply to one side, while at the same moment there came
from the hull beneath me the hiss of released rays. They struck the
tail of the other, which had swerved a moment too late, and the next
moment it flared a blue-lit wreck, then vanished. But now two enemy
cruisers were swooping down on us from above, ramming headlong toward
us. There was no time for us to twist aside from that fierce plunge,
but before they could loose their flame upon us the blue ray of a ship
beyond us stabbed across and struck one of the two, and in the moment
that it hovered there, luminous with its own destruction, the other
smashed squarely into it and then both had flared and vanished.
As they did so a racing cruiser struck us a glancing blow from beneath
and our ship reeled and spun, throwing those of us in the conning-tower
violently to one side. When Hal Kur and I scrambled to our feet the
pilot lay motionless on the floor, stunned, and at once I leapt to the
controls. That moment in which our ship had been pilotless had driven
us up above the battle, which lay stretched below us as a mighty field
of circling, striking ships, burned across by pink flame and livid
blue light. And now I was slanting our own ship down again, swooping
headlong down through space while the hissing rays from our own hull
seared down toward the enemy ships below. A wild exultation thrilled
through me, now, that sheer joy of battle which will ever last in the
heart of man, no matter what centuries of peace are his, and I laughed
crazily as we rose and circled and swooped again upon the whirling
ships below. Of all the battles in the long history of man's battles,
surely this was the most glorious of all. What ancient struggles on
earth, or on the seas, or between the planets themselves, could equal
this mighty grappling of two fleets in the void between the stars, with
a mighty sun at their backs and the fate of a universe at stake?
But now, as our cruiser soared again above the fighting ships, I saw
that the craft of the globe-men were perishing in increasing numbers,
assailed by the blue rays from our own. They seemed to halt, waver for
a moment, and then each of the globe-men's cruisers had ceased fighting
and had suddenly dropped down a full hundred miles, massing together
there and racing away toward Alto. They were in flight!
* * * * *
I had no need to command a pursuit, for at sight of the fleeing craft
our own ships turned and leapt eagerly after them, my own cruiser
in the van. Swiftly our speed mounted, until the two fleets were
flashing toward Alto at full speed, the enemy ships managing to
keep just out of striking distance ahead of us, while we strained
our generators to the utmost to close the gap between us. On and on
they fled, at the speed of light, with our own fleet close at their
heels, on toward the crimson sun ahead, which filled half the sky as
we raced toward it. Suddenly a black blot appeared against that sun,
largening with terrific speed, and in a moment the fleeing cruisers
ahead had disappeared inside it, vanished inside the great ether-cavity
which loomed now before ourselves. But our own ships never faltered,
speeding straight on, and in a second we, too, were plunging into
darkness unutterable as we raced straight into the vast ether-cavity
after the fleeing ships. The droning of our generators ceased and we
drifted for a torturing moment through the blackness, then burst out
again into the red glare of the great sun ahead. And ahead still fled
the globe-men's cruisers, heading directly toward their own sun.
Straight after them we raced, speeding over the great sun in turn.
Then, just when the greater part of our fleet was flashing directly
above the sun, the humming of our generators faltered and died. And
instantly our ship was falling, plunging headlong down into the fiery
ocean of Alto, ten million miles beneath!
The ships of our fleet were falling with us, like wind-tossed leaves,
and now I cried out and pointed upward, even as we whirled down to
the fiery death below. Far, far above there hung a little group of
cruisers from which broad rays of purple light were stabbing down
toward us, bathing our ships in a weird glow. "They've trapped us!" I
cried despairingly. "Those ships--that purple ray--it's neutralizing
the vibrations of our generators--they led us over this sun and we're
falling--"
Below yawned the fiery ocean of red flame that was Alto, stretching
from horizon to horizon, its tongues and prominences licking hungrily
up toward us. Even through the super-insulation of the cruiser's walls
we felt the growing, stifling heat of the sun below. And then I cried
out and pointed upward once more. A score of cruisers at the tail of
our fleet had escaped the fate of the rest of us by swerving aside in
time, and instantly they had turned and slanted upward, then circled
once and plunged down toward the hovering ray-ships. They never even
used the blue ray but made sure of their enemies by their own deaths,
plunging into the enemy cruisers in a score of swift, shattering
collisions, and then the purple rays around us had vanished, while
the shattered wrecks above whirled down into the crimson sun beneath
us. With the vanishing of the rays our generators took up again their
familiar humming drone, and the ships of our fleet slanted sharply up,
to escape the fiery doom below.
The remaining ships of the globe-men's fleet had disappeared, now, and
glancing at our time-dials I gave an order through the telestereo.
Our fleet, still over five hundred cruisers strong, sped away from
the great sun toward the buff-colored little ball that was its inmost
planet. Swiftly its color deepened again to crimson as we arrowed down
toward it, and I glanced anxiously again at the time-dials, for less
than a quarter-hour remained now in which to get the ray-tube in action
on the whirling sun behind us. Meteorlike our ships split the air of
the red planet as we shot across its surface, and in a moment we were
slanting down toward the city of the globe-men, toward the massed black
roofs and streets above which loomed the mighty tower.
As we dropped down toward it there rose to meet us fully fifty
star-cruisers like our own, the last remnants of the globe-men's fleet
which we had pursued in past their sun. With suicidal determination
they flashed straight up toward us, and the next minute was one of
swift, terrific battle, the air around us a hell of blue light and pink
flame, leaping and burning from ship to ship, while scores of wrecks
whirled down into the black city below. Five minutes after that fierce
attack we had lost a full hundred of our ships, but we had accounted
for the last cruiser of the globe-men, or so we thought.
And now my own flagship and the designated few agreed on were dipping
swiftly toward the great tower-platform, where stood the ray-projector
which we had fought our way from universe to universe to reach. We
were dropping lower, gradually decreasing our speed as we neared the
platform, lower, lower....
* * * * *
A cry of fierce rage rang through the hull beneath me, and at the same
moment I was aware of a long, dark shape that suddenly flashed down
past us from above, a last cruiser of the globe-men which must have
hovered high above us until that moment. It dropped below us with
lightning speed, then hovered ominously beside the tower-platform for
a single moment. In that moment a hundred shafts of blue light from
our own ships leapt down toward it, but even as they did so there
spurted from its side globe after globe of the annihilating pink flame,
striking the broad platform and the four mighty supporting columns
of the tower in a score of places. The enemy cruiser itself flashed
into nothingness beneath the rays of our ships, but a great cry went
up from us as we saw that its work was done, for the fire-balls that
struck the tower blazed fiercely up for a moment and then vanished; and
then the mighty tower was swaying, falling, crumbling, crashing down
to the ground in a mighty avalanche of broken wreckage, raining its
mighty fragments upon the city far beneath. The tower was gone! The
ray-projector was annihilated!
And now our ships hung motionless, stunned, even as I was stunned,
gazing through the window stupidly at the wreckage far below. We had
lost! For when I finally raised my eyes I saw that the pointer on the
time-dial before me had passed the tenth hour. Even had we had another
ray-projector of our own, it would have been too late. Nothing now
could save the Eight Worlds, nothing could swerve the mighty sun aside
in time to save our universe. We races of men had risked our lives, our
universe, in one great cast of the dice, and--we had lost.
Suddenly Hal Kur seemed to go insane, there beside me in the
conning-tower. He choked, uttered incoherent exclamations, pointed a
trembling hand up through our telescopic window toward the thundering
red sun above. I did not raise my eyes, and he clutched my arm, pulling
me to the window, his upward-pointing hand trembling violently, his
eyes staring.
I looked up. There, beside the very rim of the mighty sun, was a tiny
black spot, a long, dark speck that hung steady, playing a beam of
brilliant light upon Alto. For a moment I did not understand, but gazed
dazedly, trying to comprehend what I saw. That little black spot, that
long, black shape--
"_Look!_" Hal Kur was screaming, like one gone mad. "_It's_"--he
choked, staggered--"_It's our old cruiser! It's Sarto Sen!_"
Sarto Sen! The name seared across my brain like living fire. That
ray--he was playing it upon the edge of Alto even as the globe-men had
done--was spinning the great sun faster, faster--
"But it's too late!" I cried, throwing an anguished hand out toward the
time-dial.
Too late! Nothing could swerve the sun aside in time to save the Eight
Worlds, now. Too--
I stopped, a thick silence settling over us. And in that silence Hal
Kur and I gazed up together, awe falling upon our faces, such awe as
had never been felt by man before.
For there, across the face of the mighty crimson sun, had appeared a
thin black line, a line that thickened, widened, with every second.
And now it was a gap, a narrow gap between the two cleft halves of the
great red star, a gap that swiftly was widening. Alto was _splitting_!
Splitting into two great halves, into two masses of crimson flame which
swept ever wider from each other. Splitting like a great flywheel,
when the ray of Sarto Sen increased its spinning to such a rate that
it could no longer hold together. Beside it, its brilliant ray playing
upon the dividing sun until the last moment, hung the little cruiser,
and then it had vanished from sight as the right half of the sun, an
ocean of raging fires, swept over it.
But Sarto Sen had won! Farther and farther apart swept the two halves
of the divided sun, diverging each to follow its separate course,
moving away on either side, slowly, majestically. Between them, now,
there shone forth the yellow star that was our own sun, the doom that
had threatened it vanishing now as the two halves of Alto moved away
from each other, each receding farther and farther from each other
and from our own sun. And below us, now, the red planet that had been
Alto's was moving away also, hurtling toward the right half of the
cleft sun and disappearing inside it with a great burst of flame.
Planet after planet was vanishing in right sun or left, until at last
our cruisers hovered alone in the void between the two receding suns.
In our own cruisers, now, and in all the ships around me, I knew, was
rising a babel of hoarse shouts of joy, of insane, frenzied gladness,
and Hal Kur beside me was shouting like a madman. The races of man had
won, had conquered the greatest menace that had ever threatened them,
had split a sun and wrecked a universe to save their own.
But for myself, in that moment, I knew only that my friend was dead.
* * * * *
It was night when the last of our fleet came to Earth once more. We
had sped in from the long days of our homeward flight, pausing at each
planet to allow the cruisers from that planet to leave us. And few
enough were the ships that returned to each world, of the hundreds that
had gone out, yet they were welcomed by such mighty, shouting crowds
as no man had seen before. For the Eight Worlds had gone mad with joy.
So, at last, the dozen battered cruisers which were all that survived
of Earth's contingent were dropping down again toward the Hall of
Planets. Brilliant lights flared around it, and beneath them, it
seemed, was collected half the population of Earth, a mighty, shouting
throng. Slowly our ships slanted down over them, sinking down into the
inner landing-court of the great building, and there it was that we
were met by Mur Dak and the members of the Council.
The chairman was the first to wring my hand, and it was from him that
I learned first how Sarto Sen had planned to save us, duplicating in
his own laboratories the force-ray of the globe-men and speeding out
with it in our old cruiser to Alto, accompanied only by Nar Lon and his
devoted assistants. He carried out his plan under the imputation of
cowardice, as Mur Dak told me with working face, because he knew that
that plan meant death for himself and knew that I would have insisted
on sharing that death.
But now the shouting of the great throng outside the Hall of Planets
was becoming insistent, and they were calling for Jan Tor. Already the
Council members were passing out of the landing-court with the crews
of the surviving cruisers, passing through the building to the crowd
outside, which greeted them with a mighty roar of applause. Mur Dak
alone remained, with Hal Kur and me, and in a moment he left us also,
with our promise to follow in a few minutes. I could not, just then,
face those rejoicing, welcoming masses. Beside me, I knew, there would
have stood, invisible to them, the shade of another, the shadow of a
thin, spectacled youth to whom all this was due. So I stood in the
quiet landing-court, gazing up into the jeweled skies once more--gazing
up toward two tiny spots of red light, far-separated already, which
gleamed above us.
A mist seemed to come across my eyes, blurring and obscuring the two
far points of light at which I gazed. From beside me, then, came the
deep voice of Hal Kur.
"I know, Jan Tor," he was saying. "He was my friend, too." He gestured
toward the battered cruisers beside us, then up into the light-jeweled
heavens.
"It was from this Earth that the first man went out, Jan Tor. Out to
planet after planet, until a universe was theirs. And now that Sarto
Sen has saved that universe, and has given us these cruisers, how far
will man go, I wonder? Out--out--universe after universe, star after
star, constellations, nebulæ--out--out--out...."
He paused, a dark, erect figure beside me there, his arm flung up in
superb, defiant promise toward the brilliant, thronging stars.