Commander John Hanson recounts his harrowing adventure with
the Electites of space.
Sometimes, I know, I must seem a crotchety old man. "Old John Hanson,"
they call me, and roll their eyes as though to say, "Of course, you have
to forgive him on account of his age."
But the joke isn't always on me. Not infrequently I gain much amusement
observing these cocky youngsters who strut in the blue-and-silver
uniforms of the Service in which, until more or less recently, I bore
the rank of Commander.
There is young Clippen, for instance, a nice, clean youngster; third
officer, I believe, on the _Caliobre_, one of the newest ships of the
Special Patrol Service. He drops in to see me as often as he has leave
here at Base, to give me the latest news, and to coax a yarn, if he can,
of the old days. He is courteous, respectful ... and yet just a shade
condescending. The condescension of youth.
"Something new under the sun after all, sir," he commented the other
day. That, incidentally, is a saying of Earth, whence the larger part of
the Service's officer personnel has always been drawn. Something new
under the sun! The saying probably dates back to an age long before man
mastered space.
"Yes?" I leaned back more comfortably, happy, as always, to hear my
native Earth tongue, and to speak it. The Universal language has its
obvious advantages, but the speech of one's fathers wings thought
straightest to the mind. "What now?"
"Creatures of space!" announced Clippen importantly, in the fashion of
one who brings surprising news. "'Electites,' they call them. Beings who
live in space--things, anyway; I don't know that you could call them
beings."
* * * * *
"Hm-m." I looked past him, down a mighty corridor of dimming years.
Creatures that lived in space.... I smiled in my beard. "Creatures
perhaps twice the height of a man in their greatest dimension? In shape
like a crescent, with blunted horns somewhat straightened near the tips,
and drawn close together?" I spoke slowly, drawing from my store of
memories. "A pale red in color, intangible and yet--"
"You've heard, sir!" said Clippen disappointedly to me. "My news is
stale."
"Yes, I've heard," I nodded. "'Electites,' they call them, eh? That's
the work of our great scientific minds, I presume?"
"Er--yes. Undoubtedly." Clippen started to wander restlessly around the
room. He had a great respect for the laboratory men, with their white
coats and their wise, solemn airs, and he disliked exceedingly to have
me present my views regarding these much overrated gentlemen. I have
always been a man of action, and pottering over coils and glass vials
and pages of figures has always struck me as something not to be
included in a man's proper sphere of activity. "Well, I believe I'll be
shoving off, sir; just dropped in for a moment," Clippen continued.
"Thought perhaps you hadn't heard of the news; it seems to be causing a
great deal of discussion among the officers at Base."
"Something new under the sun, eh?" I chuckled.
"Why, yes. You'll agree to that, sir, surely?" I believe the lad was
slightly nettled by my chuckle. No one likes to bear stale news.
"I'll agree to that," I said, smiling broadly now. "'Tis easier than
debating the matter, and an old man can't hope to hold his own in
argument with you quick-witted youngsters."
"I've never noticed," replied young Clippen rather acidly, "that you
were particularly averse to argument, sir. Rather the reverse. But I
must be moving on; we're shoving off soon, I hear, and you know the
routine here at Base."
* * * * *
He saluted me, rather carelessly, I should say, and I returned the
salute with the crispness with which the gesture was rendered in my day.
When he was gone, I turned to my desk and began searching in that huge
and capacious drawer in which were kept, helter-skelter, the dusty,
faded, nondescript mementoes of a thousand adventures.
I found, at last, what I was seeking. No impressive thing, this: a bit
of metal, irregular in shape, no larger than my palm, and three times
the thickness. One side was smooth; the other was stained as by great
heat, and deeply pitted as though it had been steeped in acid.
Silently, I turned the bit of metal over and over in my hands. I had
begged hard for this souvenir; had obtained it only by passing my word
its secret would never reach the Universe through me. But now ... now
that seal of secrecy has been removed.
As I write this, slowly and thoughtfully, as an old man writes,
relishing his words for the sake of the memories they bring before his
eyes, a bit of metal holds against the vagrant breeze the filled pages
of my script. A bit of metal, no larger than my palm, and perhaps three
times the thickness. It is irregular in shape, and smooth on one side.
The other side is eroded as though by acid.
Not an imposing thing, this ancient bit of metal, but to me one of my
most precious possessions. It is, beyond doubt, the only fragment of my
old ship, the _Ertak_, now in existence and identifiable.
And this story is the story of that pitted metal and the ship from which
it came; one of the strangest stories in all my storehouse of memories
of days when only the highways of the Universe had been charted, and
breathless adventure awaited him who dared the unknown trails of the
Special Patrol Service.
* * * * *
The _Ertak_, as I recall the details now, had just touched at Base upon
the completion of a routine patrol--one of those monotonous, fruitless
affairs which used to prey so upon Correy's peace of mind. Correy was my
first officer on the _Ertak_, and the keenest seeker after trouble I
have ever known.
"The Chief presents his compliments and requests an immediate audience
with Commander Hanson," announced one of the brisk, little attaches of
Base, before I'd had time to draw a second breath of fresh air.
I glanced at Correy, who was beside me, and winked. That is, I quickly
drew down the lid of one eye--a peculiar little gesture common to Earth,
which may mean any one of many things.
"Sounds like something's in the wind," I commented in a swift aside.
"Better give 'no leaves' until I come back."
"Right, sir!" chuckled Correy. "It's about time."
I made my way swiftly to the Chief's private office, and was promptly
admitted. He returned my salute crisply, and wasted no time in getting
to the point.
"How's your ship, Commander? Good condition?"
"Prime, sir."
"Supplies?"
"What's needed could be taken on in two hours." In the Service, Earth
time was an almost universal standard except in official documents.
"Good!" The Chief picked up a sheaf of papers, mostly standard charts
and position reports, I judged, and frowned at them thoughtfully. "I've
some work cut out for you, Commander.
"Two passenger ships have recently been reported lost in space. That
wouldn't be so alarming if both had not, when last reported, been in
about the same position. Perhaps it is no more than a coincidence, but,
with space travel still viewed with a certain doubt by so many, the
Council feels something should be done to determine the cause of these
two losses.
"Accordingly, all ships have been rerouted to avoid the area in which
it is presumed these losses took place. The locations of the two ships,
together with their routes and last reported positions, are given here.
There will be no formal orders; you are to cruise until you have
determined, and if possible, eliminated the danger, or until you are
certain that no further danger exists."
* * * * *
He slid the papers across his desk, and I picked them up.
"Yes, sir!" I said. "That will be all?"
"You understand your orders?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Very well. Good luck, Commander!"
I saluted and hurried out of the room, back to my impatient first
officer.
"What's up, sir?" he asked eagerly.
"Can't say that I know, to be truthful about it. Perhaps nothing;
perhaps a great deal. Give orders to take on all necessary supplies--in
double-quick time. I've promised the Chief we'll be ready to shove off
in two hours. I'll meet you in the navigating room, and give you all the
information I have."
Correy saluted and rushed away to give the necessary orders.
Thoughtfully, I made my way through the narrow, ethon-lighted
passageways to the navigating room, where Correy very shortly joined me.
Briefly, I repeated the Chief's conversation, and we both bent over the
charts and position reports.
"Hm-m!" Correy was lost in thought for a moment as he fixed the location
in his mind. "Rather on the fringe of things. Almost anything could
happen out there, sir. That would be on the old Belgrade route, would it
not?"
"Yes. It's still used, however, as you know, by some of the smaller,
slower ships making many stops. Or was, until the recent order. Any
guesses as to what we'll find?"
"None, sir, except the obvious one."
"Meteorites?"
Correy nodded.
"There's some bad swarms, now and then," he said seriously. I knew he
was thinking of one disastrous experience the _Ertak_ had had ... and of
scores of narrow escapes. "That would be the one likely explanation."
"True. But those ships were old and slow, they could turn about and
dodge more easily than a ship of the _Ertak's_ speed. At full space
speed we're practically helpless; can neither stop nor change our course
in time to avoid an emergency."
"Well, sir," shrugged Correy, "our job's to find the facts. I took the
liberty of telling the men we were to be ready in an hour and a half. If
we are, do we shove off immediately?"
"Just as soon as everything's checked. I leave it to you to give the
necessary orders. I know I can depend upon you to waste no time."
"Right, sir," said Correy, grinning like a schoolboy. "We'll waste no
time."
In just a shade less than two hours after we had set down at Base, we
were rising swiftly at maximum atmospheric speed, on our way to a
little-traveled portion of the universe, where two ships, in rapid
succession, had met an unknown fate.
* * * * *
"I wonder, sir, if you could come to the navigating room at once?" It
was Kincaide's voice, coming from the instrument in my stateroom.
"Immediately, Mr. Kincaide." I asked no questions, for I knew my second
officer's cool-headed disposition. If something required my attention
in the navigating room, in his opinion, it was something important. I
threw on my uniform hurriedly and hastened to Kincaide's side, wondering
if at last our days of unrewarded searching were to bear fruit.
"Perhaps I called you needlessly, sir," Kincaide greeted me
apologetically, "but, considering the nature of our mission, I thought
it best to have your opinion." He motioned toward the two great
navigating charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, set in the surface
of the table before him.
In the center of each was the familiar red spark which represented the
_Ertak_ herself, and all around were the glowing points of greenish
light which gave us, in terrestial terms, the locations of the various
bodies to the right and left, above and below.
"See here, sir--and here?" Kincaide's blunt, capable forefingers
indicated spots on each of the charts. "Ever see anything like that
before?"
I shook my head slowly. I had seen instantly the phenomena he had
pointed out. Using again the most understandable terminology, to our
right, and somewhat above us, nearer by far than any of the charted
bodies, was something which registered on our charts, as a dim and
formless haze of pinkish light.
"Now the television, sir," said Kincaide gravely.
* * * * *
I bent over the huge, hooded disk, so unlike the brilliantly illuminated
instruments of to-day, and studied the scene reflected there.
Centered in the field was a group of thousands of strange things, moving
swiftly toward the ship. In shape they were not unlike crescents, with
the horns blunted, and pushed inward, towards each other. They glowed
with a reddish radiance which seemed to have its center in the thickest
portion of the crescents--and, despite their appearance, they gave me,
somehow, an uncanny impression that they were in some strange way,
_alive_! While they remained in a more or less compact group, their
relative positions changed from time to time, not aimlessly as would
insensate bodies drifting thus through the black void of space, but with
a sort of intelligent direction.
"What do you make of them, sir?" asked Kincaide, his eyes on my face.
"Can you place them?"
"No," I admitted, still staring with a fixed fascination at the strange
scene in the television disk. "Perhaps this is what we've been searching
for. Please call Mr. Correy and Mr. Hendricks, and ask them to report
here immediately."
Kincaide hastened to obey the order, while I watched the strange things
in the field of the television disk, trying to ascertain their nature.
They were not solid bodies, for even as I viewed them, one was
superimposed upon another, and I could see the second quite distinctly
through the substance of the first. Nor were they rigid, for now and
again one of the crescent arms would move searchingly, almost like a
thick, clumsy tentacle. There was something restless, _hungry_, in the
movement of the sharp arms of the things, that sent a chill trickling
down my spine.
Correy and Hendricks arrived together; their curiosity evident.
"I believe, gentlemen," I said, "that we're about to find out the reason
why two ships already have disappeared in this vicinity. Look first at
the charts, and then here."
* * * * *
They bent, for a moment, over the charts, and then stared down into the
television disk. Correy was first to speak.
"What are they?" he gasped. "Are they ... alive?"
"That is what we don't know. I believe they are, after a fashion. And,
if you'll observe, they are headed directly towards us at a speed which
must be at least as great as our own. Is that correct, Mr. Kincaide?"
Kincaide nodded, and began some hasty figuring, taking his readings from
the finely ruled lines which divided the charts into little measured
squares, and checking speeds with the chronometers set into the wall of
the room.
"But I don't understand the way in which they register on our navigating
charts, sir," said Hendricks slowly. Hendricks, my youthful third
officer, had an inquiring, almost scientific mind. I have often said he
was the closest approach to a scientist I have ever seen in the person
of an action-loving man. "They're a blur of light on the charts--all out
of proportion to their actual size. They must be something more than
material bodies, or less."
"They're coming towards us," commented Correy grimly, still bent over
the disk, "as though they knew what they were doing, and meant
business."
"Yes," nodded Kincaide, picking up the paper upon which he had been
figuring. "This is just a rule-of-thumb estimate, but if they continue
on their present course at their present speed, and we do likewise,
they'll be upon us in about an hour and a quarter--less, if anything."
* * * * *
"But I can't understand their appearance in the charts," muttered
Hendricks doggedly, still turning that matter over in his mind. "Unless
... unless ... ah! I'll venture I have it, sir! The charts are operated
by super-radio reflexes; in others words, electrically. They would
naturally be extremely sensitive to an electrical disturbance. Those
things are electrical in nature. Highly so. That's the reason for the
flare of light on the charts."
"Sounds logical," said Correy immediately. "The point, as I see it, is
not what they are, but what we're to do about them. Do you believe, sir,
that they are dangerous?"
"Let me ask you some questions to answer that one," I suggested. "Two
ships are reported lost in space--in this immediate vicinity. We come
here to determine the cause of those losses. We find ourselves the
evident objective of a horde of strange things which we cannot identify;
which Mr. Hendricks, here, seems to have good reason to believe are
somehow electrical in nature. Putting all these facts together, what is
the most logical conclusion?"
"That these things caused the two lost ships to be reported missing in
space!" said Hendricks.
* * * * *