"Turning about and trying to go back," he said, "would be like starting
from an individual grain of sand on a desert, and flying a thousand
miles, and then trying to fly back to that grain of sand again. That's
how the First Galaxy stacks up."
Dona took a deep breath.
"You'll find a way, Kim! And--anyhow--"
She smiled at him shakily. Whether or not they ever saw another human
being she was prepared to take what came, with him. The possibility
of being lost amid the uncountable island universes of the cosmos
had been known to them both from the beginning of the use of the
_Starshine_.
"We'll take some pictures," Kim told her, "and then sit down on a
planet and figure things out."
He set to work making a map of all the island universes in view
of the _Starshine's_ current position, with due regard to the
_Starshine's_ course. On the relatively short jumps within a
galaxy, and especially those of a few light-years only, he could simply
turn the ship about and come very close to his original position--the
line of it, anyhow.
But he did not know within many many billions of light-years how far
he had come and he did know that an error of a hundredth of a second
of arc would amount to millions of light-years at the distance of the
First Galaxy.
The positions of galaxies about the First were plotted only within a
radius of something like two million light-years. There had never been
a point in even that! At fifteen hundred thousand times that distance
he was not likely to strike the tiny mapped area by accident.
He set to work. Presently he was examining the photographs by enlarger
for a sign of structure in one of the galaxies in view. One showed
evidences of super-giant stars--which proved it the nearest. He aimed
the _Starshine_ for it. He threw the ship into transmitter-drive.
The galaxy was startlingly familiar when they reached it. The stellar
types were normal ones and there were star-clusters and doubtless
star-drifts too and Kim was wholly accustomed to astro-navigation now.
He simply chose a sol-type sun, set the radiation-switch to stop
the little space-ship close by, aimed for it and pressed a button.
Instantly they were there. They visited six solar systems.
They found a habitable planet in the last--a bit on the small side, but
with good gravity, adequate atmosphere and polar ice-caps to assure its
climate.
They landed and its atmosphere was good. The Mayor of Steadheim stepped
out and blinked about him.
"Hah!" he said gruffly. "If we've come as far as you say it was hardly
worth the trip!"
Kim grinned.
"It looks normal enough," he acknowledged. "But chemistry's the same
everywhere and plants will use chlorophyll in sunlight from a sol-type
sun. Stalks and leaves will grow anywhere, and the most efficient
animals will be warm-blooded. Given similar conditions you'll have
parallel evolution everywhere."
"Hm--" said the Mayor of Steadheim. "A planet like this for each of my
four sons to settle on, now--when we've settled with those rats from
Sinab--"
The planet was a desirable one. The _Starshine_ had come to rest
where a mountain-range rose out of lush, strange, forest-covered hills,
which reached away and away to a greenish sea. There was nothing in
view which was altogether familiar and nothing which was altogether
strange. The Mayor of Steadheim stamped away to a rocky out-crop where
he would have an even better view.
"Poor man!" said Dona softly. "When he finds out that we can never go
back, and there'll be only the three of us here while horrible things
happen back--back home."
But Kim's expression had suddenly become strained.
"I think," he said softly, "I see a way to get back. I was thinking
that a place as far away as this would be ideal for the Empire of
Sinab to be moved to. True, they've murdered all the men on nineteen
or twenty planets, but we couldn't repair anything by murdering all of
them in return.
"If we moved them out here, though, there'd be no other people for them
to prey on. They'd regret their lost opportunities for scoundrelism but
their real penalty would be that they'd have to learn to be decent in
order to survive. It's a very neat answer to the biggest problem of the
war with Sinab--a post-war settlement."
"But we haven't any chance of getting back, have we?"
"If we wanted to send them here, how'd we do it?" asked Kim. "By
matter-transmitter, of course. A receiver set up here--as there used to
be one on Ades--to which a sender would be tuned.
"When a transmitter's tuned to a receiver you can't miss. But our
transmitter-drive is just that--a transmitter which sends the ship and
itself, with a part which is tuned to receive itself, too.
"I'll set up the receiving element here, for later use. And I'll tune
the sender-element to Ades. We'll arrive at the station there and
everyone will be surprised."
He paused and spoke reflectively.
"A curious war, this. We've no weapons and we arrive at a post-war
settlement before we start fighting. We've decided how to keep from
killing our enemies before we're sure how we'll defeat them and I
suspect that the men had better stay at home and let the women go out
to battle. I'm not sure I like it."
He set to work. In twelve hours one-half of the transmitter-drive of
the _Starshine_ had been removed and set up on the unnamed planet
of a galaxy not even imagined by human beings before.
In fifteen hours the _Starshine_, rather limpingly, went aloft.
An hour later Kim carefully tuned the transmitting part of the little
ship's drive to the matter-receiving station on Ades. In that way, and
only in that way, the ship would inevitably arrive at the home galaxy
of humanity.
And he pushed a button.
It arrived at the matter station on Ades instead of descending from the
skies. And the people on Ades were surprised.
6
_Man-Made Meteor_
No obvious warlike move had been made on either side, of course. Ades
swam through space, a solitary planet circling its own small sun. About
it glittered the thousands of millions of stars which were the suns of
the First Galaxy.
Nearby, bright and unwinking, Sinab and Khiv and Phanis were the
largest suns of the star-cluster which was becoming the Empire of
Sinab. Twenty planets--twenty-one, with Khiv Five--were already cut
off from the rest of the Galaxy, apparently by the failure of their
matter-transmitters.
Actually those twenty planets were the cradles of a new and horrible
type of civilization. On the other inhabited worlds every conceivable
type of tyranny had come into being, sustained by the Disciplinary
Circuit which put every citizen at the mercy of his government
throughout every moment of his life.
On most worlds kings and oligarchs reveled in the primitive
satisfaction of arbitrary power. There is an instinct still surviving
among men which allows power, as such, to become an end in itself,
and when it is attained to be exercised without purpose save for its
own display. Some men use power to force abject submission or fawning
servility or stark terror.
In the Empire of Greater Sinab there was merely the novelty that the
rulers craved adulation--and got it. The rulers of Sinab were without
doubt served by the most enthusiastic, most loyal, most ardently
cooperative subjects ever known among men.
Every member of the male population of Sinab--where women were
considered practically a lower species of animal--could look forward
confidently to a life of utter ease on one planet or another, served
and caressed by solicitous females, with no particular obligation save
to admire and revere his rulers and to breed more subjects for them.
It made for loyalty, but not for undue energy. There was no great worry
about the progress of the splendid plan for a Greater Sinab. All went
well. The planet Khiv Five had been beamed from space some nine days
since.
Every man upon the planet had died in one instant of unholy anguish,
during which tetanic convulsions of the muscles of his heart burst it
while the ligaments and anchorages of other muscles were torn free of
his skeleton by the terrific contraction of muscle fibres.
Every woman on Khiv Five was still in a state of frantic grief which
would become despair only with the passage of time. It was strange that
two guard-ships circling Khiv Five no longer reported to headquarters,
but it was unthinkable that any harm could have come to them. Records
showed that no other planet had practiced space-travel for centuries or
millennia.
Only the Empire of Sinab had revived the ancient art for purposes of
conquest. There was no reason to be solicitous, so the Empire of Sinab
waited somnolently for time to pass, when colonists would be called
upon to take over the manless Khiv Five and all its cities and its
women.
There was another small planet called Ades, next in order for
absorption into the Empire. A squadron had been dispatched to beam it
to manlessness--though volunteers for its chilly clime would not be
numerous.
The failure of two guard-ships to report, of course, could have
no meaning to that other squadron. Of course not! There were no
space-ships save the fleet of Greater Sinab. There were no weapons
mounted for use against space-craft anywhere.
There was nothing to hinder the expansion of Greater Sinab to include
every one of the Galaxy's three hundred million inhabited planets. So
nobody worried on Sinab.
On Ades it was different. That small planet hummed with activity. It
was not the ordered, regimented-from-above sort of activity any other
planet in the Galaxy would have shown. It was individual activity,
often erratic and doubtless inefficient. But it made for progress.
First, of course, a steady stream of human beings filed into the
matter-transmitter which communicated with Terranova in the Second
Galaxy. Gangling boys, mostly, and mothers with small boy-children
made the journey, taking them to Terranova where the beams of Sinabian
murder-craft could not cause their death.
The adults of Terranova were not anxious to flee from Ades. The men
with wives--though there were only one-tenth as many women as men on
Ades--savagely refused to abandon them. Those without wives labored
furiously to complete the space-ships that waited for their finishing
touches on the outskirts of every community on the planet.
The small drum of fuel taken by Dona from the warship off Khiv Five
was depleted by Kim's use of it, but the rest was enormously useful.
The catalyzer from the same warship was taken apart and its precious
hafnium parts recovered. And then the values of individualism appeared.
A physicist who had been exiled from Muharram Two for the crime
of criticizing a magistrate, presented himself as an expert on
autocatalysis. With a sample of the catalyzed fuel to start the process
he shortly had a small plant turning out space-fuel without hafnium at
all. The catalyzed fuel itself acted as a catalyst to cause other fuel
to take the desired molecular form.
A power-plant engineer from Hlond Three seized upon the principle and
redesigned the catalyzers to be made for the ships. For safety's sake a
particle of hafnium was included, but the new-type catalyzers required
only a microscopic speck of the precious material.
Hafnium from the one bit of machinery from the one beam-generator of an
enemy war-craft, was extended to supply the engine-rooms of a thousand
space-craft of the _Starshine's_ design.
In a myriad other ways individuals worked at their chosen problems.
Hundreds undoubtedly toiled to contrive a shield for the fighting
beams--tuned to kill men only--which were the means by which Ades was
to be devastated. The scientists of half a galaxy had tried that five
thousand years before without success.
But one man did come up with a plausible device. He proposed a
shielding paint containing crystals of the hormone to which the
fighting-beams were tuned. The crystalline material should absorb the
deadly frequencies, so they could not pass on to murder men.
It would have been simple enough to synthesize any desired organic
substance, but Kim pointed out grimly that the shield would be made
useless by changing the tuning of the beams. Other men devised
horrific and generally impractical weapons.
But again, one man came up with a robot ship idea, a ship which could
be fought without humans on board and controlled even at interstellar
distances. Radio signals at the speed of light would be fantastically
too slow.
He proposed miniature matter-transmitters automatically shuttling a
magnetic element between ship and planet-station and back to the ship
again, the solid object conveying all the information to be had from
the ship's instruments to the planet-station, and relaying commands to
the ship's controls. The trick could have been made to work, and it
would be vastly faster than any radiation-beam. But there was no time
to manufacture them.
Actually, only four days after the return of the partly dismantled
_Starshine_ from the farther side of nowhere, Kim took off again
from Ades with fifty other ships following him. There were twenty other
similar squadrons ready to take space in days more.
But for a first operation he insisted on a small force to gain
experience without too much risk. At transmitter-speeds there could be
no such thing as cruising in fleet formation, nor of arriving at any
destination in a unit. Guerilla warfare was inevitable.
The navy of the criminals of Ades, though, went swirling up through the
atmosphere of that cold planet like a column of voyaging wild geese. It
broke through the upper atmosphere and there were all the suns of the
Galaxy shining coldly on every hand.
The ships headed first for Khiv Five, lining up for it with such
precision as the separate astrogators--hurriedly trained by Kim--could
manage. It was a brave small company of tiny ships, forging through
space away from the sunlit little world behind them. The light of the
local sun was bright upon their hulls.
Glinting reflections of many-colored stars shimmered on their shadowed
sides. They drove on and on, on planetary drive, seemingly motionless
in space. Then the _Starshine_ winked out of existence. By ones
and twos and half-dozens, the others vanished from space.
It was the transmitter-drive, of course. The repaired _Starshine_
vanished from space near Ades because it went away from Ades at such
speed that no light could possibly be reflected from it. It reappeared
in space within the solar system of Khiv because it slowed enough to be
visible.
But it seemed utterly alone. Yet presently an alarm-gong rang, and
there was one of its sister-ships a bare ten thousand miles away. The
rest were scattered over parsecs.
Kim drove for the banded planet on which dead men still lay unburied.
His fleet was to rendezvous above its summer pole, as shown by the size
of the ice-cap. There had been two guard-ships circling Khiv Five to
keep account of the development of grief into despair. Dona had robbed
one of them while its crew was held helpless by projectors of the
Disciplinary Circuit field.
A second had been on the way to its aid when the _Starshine_
reeled away with the last morsel of energy in its equalizing-batteries.
With fifty small ships, swift as gadflies though without a single
weapon. Kim hoped to try out the tactics planned for his fleet, and
perhaps to capture one or both of the giants.
He picked up a third member of his force on the way to the planet
and the three drove on in company. Detectors indicated two others at
extreme range. But as the three hovered over the polar cap of Khiv
Five, others came from every direction.
Then a wheezing voice bellowed out of the newly-installed space-radio
in the _Starshine's_ control-room. It was the voice of the Mayor of
Steadheim, grandly captaining a tiny ship with his four tall sons for
crew.
"_Kim Rendell!_" he bellowed. "_Kim Rendell! Enemy ships in
sight! We're closing with them and be da_--"
His voice stopped--utterly.
Kim snapped orders and his squadron came swarming after him. The
direction of the message was clear. It had come from a point a bare
two thousand miles above the surface of Khiv Five and with coördinates
which made its location easy.
It was too close for the use of transmitter-drive, of course. Even
overdrive at two hundred light-speeds was out of the question. On
normal drive the little ships--bare specks in space--spread out and
out. Their battle tactics had been agreed upon. They wove and darted
erratically.
They had projectors of the Disciplinary Circuit field, which would
paralyze any man they struck with sufficient intensity. But that was
all--for the good and sufficient reason that such fields could be
tested upon grimly resolute volunteers and adjusted to the utmost of
efficiency.
On the prison world of Ades, to which criminals were sent from all over
the Galaxy, there was no legal murder. Killing fighting-beams could not
be calibrated. There were no available victims.
The detectors picked up a single considerable mass. Electron
telescopes focussed upon it. Kim's lips tensed. He saw a giant
war-craft, squat and ungainly--with no air-resistance in space there is
no point in streamlining a space-ship--and with the look of a mass of
crammed generators of deadly beams.
It turned slowly in its flight. It was not one space-ship, but two--two
giant ships grappled together. It turned further and there was a
shimmering, unsubstantial tiny shape clutched to one....
"The dickens!" said Kim bitterly. He called into the space-phones; "Kim
Rendell speaking! Don't attack! Those ships aren't driving, they're
falling! They'll smash on Khiv Five and we can't do anything about it.
Keep at least fifty miles away!"
A wheezing voice said furiously from the communicator.
"They tricked me! I went for 'em, and the transmitter-drive went on.
I'll get 'em this time!"
Kim barked at the Mayor of Steadheim, even as in the field of the
electron telescope he saw a tiny mote of a space-ship charge valorously
at the monsters. It plunged toward them--and vanished.
Dona spoke breathlessly.
"But what happened, Kim?"
"This," said Kim bitterly, "is the end of the battle we fought with one
of those ships a week ago. We put out a decoy and that ship grappled
it. A Disciplinary Circuit generator went on and paralyzed its crew.
"You remember that we went up to it and you went on board. I turned off
its generator from a distance and held the crew paralyzed with beams
from the _Starshine_. There was another ship coming when you got
off and we got away to the other side of beyond."
"Yes, but--"
"We vanished," said Kim. "The other enemy ship came up. Its skipper
must have decided to go on board the first for a conference, or perhaps
to inspect the decoy. It grappled to the first--and the magnetic surge
turned on the disciplinary field again in the gadget in the decoy!
"Every man in both ships were paralyzed all over again! Both ships were
drifting with power off! They've been falling toward Khiv Five! Every
man of both crews must be dead by now, but the field's still on and it
will stay on! They'll crash!"
"But can't we do anything?" demanded Dona anxiously. "I know you want a
ship."
"It would be handy to have those beams modified so we could paralyze a
planet from a distance," said Kim grimly, "but these ships are gone."
"I could go on board again," said Dona.
"No! They'll hit atmosphere in minutes now. And even if we could cut
off the paralyzing field and get to the control-room nobody could pull
an unfamiliar ship out of that fall. I wouldn't let you try it anyhow.
They're falling fast. Miles a second. They'll hit with the speed of a
meteor!"
"But try, Kim!"
For answer he pulled her away from the electron telescope and pointed
through the forward vision-port. The falling ships had seemed almost
within reach on the electron-telescope screen. But through the
vision-port one could see the whole vast bulk of Khiv Five.
Two thirds of it glowed brightly in sunlight, but night had fallen
directly below. The falling ships were the barest specks the eye
could possibly detect--too far for hope of overhauling on planetary
drive, too close to risk any other. Any speed that would overtake the
derelicts would mean a crash against the planet's disk.
"I think," said Kim, "they'll cross the sunset line and fall in the
night area."
They did. They vanished, as specks against the sunlit disk. Then,
minutes later, a little red spark appeared where the bulk of the banded
planet faded into absolute black. The spark held and grew in brightness.
"They've hit atmosphere," Kim told her. "They're compressing the air
before them until it's incandescent. They're a meteoric fall."
The spark flared terribly, minute though it was from this distance.
It curved downward as the air slowed its forward speed. It was an
infinitesimal comet, trailing a long tail of fire behind it. It swooped
downward in a gracefully downward-curving arc. It crashed.
"Which," said Kim coldly in the _Starshine's_ control-room, "means
that two Sinabian warships are destroyed without cost to us. It's a
victory. But it's very, very bad luck for us. With those two ships and
transmitter-drive we could end the war in one day."
7
_Ready for Action_
Indignantly the Mayor of Steadheim bellowed from the space-phone
speaker and Kim answered him patiently.
"The decoy still had a Disciplinary-Circuit field on," he explained for
the tenth time. "You know about it! When you tried to go galumphing
in, the field grabbed you and paralyzed you. When your muscles went
iron hard, the relay on your wrist--you wear it to protect you from the
fighter-beams--threw your ship into transmitter-speed travel.
"So you were somewhere else. When you came back you charged in again
and the same thing happened. The relay protected you against our field
as well as the enemy fighter-beams. That's all."
The mayor wheezed and sputtered furiously. It was plain that he had
meant to distinguish himself and his four sons by magnificent bravery.
"There's something that needs to be done," said Kim. "Those two ships
are smashed but they hadn't time to melt. There'll be hafnium in the
wreckage, anyhow--and metal is scarce on Ades. See what you can salvage
and get it to Ades. It's important war work. Ask for other ships to
volunteer to help you."
The Mayor of Steadheim roared indignantly--and then consented like a
lamb. In the space-navy of Ades there would not yet be anything like
iron discipline. Kim led his forces as a feudal baron might have led a
motley assemblage of knights and men-at-arms in ancient days. He led by
virtue of prestige and experience. He could not command.
The fleet grew minute by minute as lost ships came in. And Kim
worked out a new plan of battle to meet the fact that he could not
hope to appear over Sinab with gigantic generators able to pour out
Disciplinary-Circuit beams over the whole planet.
He explained the plan painstakingly to his followers and presently set
a course for Sinab. A surprising number of ships volunteered to go to
ground on Khiv Five with the Mayor of Steadheim to save what could be
retrieved of the shattered two warships.
No more than thirty little craft of Ades pointed their noses toward
Sinab. They went speeding toward it in a close-knit group, matching
courses to almost microscopic accuracy and keeping their speed
identical to a hair in hopes of arriving nearly in one group.
"So we'll try it again," said Kim into the space-phone. "Here we go!"
He pressed the transmitter-drive button and all the universe danced a
momentary saraband--and far off to the left the giant sun Sinab glowed
fiercely.
Five of the little ships from Ades were within detector-range. But
there were four monstrous moving masses which by their motion and
velocity were space-ships rising from the planet and setting out upon
some errand of the murder-empire. The same thought must have come
instantly to those upon each of the little ships. They charged.