first men to set foot on it. But the point is that its heavy elements
have been bombarded, and most of its uranium has gone on over to
plutonium and americium and curium. In ancient days, when it went out
on the long sweep away from its sun, it cooled off enough for men to
land on it at its farthest-out point. With shielded space-suits they
were able to mine its substance for four to five months before heat and
rising induced radio-activity drove them off again. Then they'd wait
for it to cool off once more on its next trip around.
"They went to it with space-ships, and the last space-line in the First
Galaxy ran plutonium and americium and the other radio-actives to a
matter-transmitter from which they could be distributed all over the
Galaxy. But it wasn't very efficient. They could only mine for four
or five months every four years. All their equipment was melted and
ruined when they were able to land again. A few hundred years ago,
however, they solved the problem."
Dona stared out the vision-ports. There were two planets which might be
the one in question. But there were only three in sight.
"How did they solve it?" Dona asked.
"Somebody invented a shield," said Kim, as drily as before. "It
was a force-field. It has the property of a magnetic field on a
conductor with a current in it, except that it acts on mass as such. A
current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field tends to move at right
angles both to the current and the field. This force-field acts as if
mass were an electric charge.
"Anything having mass, entering the field, tries to move sidewise.
The faster it moves, the stronger the sidewise impulse. Neutrons,
gamma particles, met rays and even electrons have mass. So has light.
Everything moving that hits the shielding field moves sidewise to its
original course. Radiation from the sun isn't reflected, at right
angles.
"So, with the shield up, men can stay on the planet when it is less
than three diameters from its sun. No heat reaches it. No neutrons. No
radiations at all. It doesn't heat up. And that's the answer. For three
months in every four-year revolution, they have to keep the shield up
all the time. For three months more, they keep it up intermittently,
flashing it on for fractions of a second at a time, just enough to
temper the amount of heat they get.
"They live on great platforms of uranium glass, domed in. When they
go out mining they wear shielded space-suits and work in shielded
machines. The whole trick was worked out about five hundred years ago,
they say, and the last space-line went out of existence, because they
could use a matter-transmitter for all but six of our months of that
planet's year."
"And did you find out how it's done?" asked Dona.
"Hardly," said Kim. "The planet belongs to the king of Pharos Three.
Even five hundred years ago the governments of all the planets were
quite tight corporations. Naturally Pharos wouldn't let the secret get
out. There are other planets so close to their primaries that they're
radioactive. If the secret were to be disclosed there'd be competition.
There'd be other plutonium mines in operation. So he's managed to keep
it to himself. But we've got to find out the trick."
There was silence. Kim began to check over the pictures the cameras had
taken and developed. He shook his head. Then he stared at a photograph
which showed the blue-white dwarf itself. His face looked suddenly very
drawn and tired.
"Kim," said Dona presently. "It's stupid of me, but I don't see how
you're going to learn the secret."
Kim put the picture on the enlarger, for examination in a greater size.
"They made the shield to keep things out," he said wearily. "Radiation,
charged particles, neutrons--everything. The planet simply can't be
reached, not even by matter-transmitters, when the shield is up. But by
the same token nothing can leave the planet either. It can't even be
spotted from space, because the light of the sun isn't reflected. It's
deflected to a right-angled course. You might pick it up if it formed
a right-angled triangle with you and the sun, or you might spot it in
transit across the sun's disk. But that's all."
"Yes."
"The shield was a special job," said Kim. "For a special purpose.
It was not a weapon. But there were all those planets that could be
grabbed if only Ades were knocked out. So why shouldn't King Pharos
sneak a force-field generator on to Ades? When the field went on, Ades
would be invisible and unreachable from outside. And the outside would
be unreachable from it. Space-ships couldn't get through the field.
Matter-transmitters couldn't operate through it. If a few technicians
were sneaked to Ades as supposed exiles and promised adequate reward,
don't you think they'd hide out somewhere and turn on that field, and
leave it on until the folk on Ades had starved or gone mad?"
Horrified, Dona stared at him. She went pale.
"Oh--horrible! The sky would be black--always! Never a glimmer of
light. No stars. No moons. No sun. The plants would die and rot, and
the people would grow bleached and pale, and finally they'd starve."
"All but the little gang hidden away in a well-provisioned hide-out,"
said Kim grimly. "I think that's what's happened to Ades, or is
happening. And this is the solar system where the little trick was
worked out. I'd hoped simply to raid the generator and find out how it
worked, which would be dangerous enough. Look!"
He pointed to the projected image of the sun. There was a tiny dot
against its surface. It was almost, it seemed, bathed in the tentacular
arms of flaming gases flung up from the sun's surface.
"There's the planet," said Kim. "At its closest to the sun! With the
shield up, so that nothing can reach its surface. Nothing! And that
includes space-ships such as this. And at that distance, Dona, the hard
radiation from the sun would go right through the _Starshine_ and
kill us in seconds before we could get within millions of miles of the
planet. If there's any place in the Universe that's unapproachable,
there it is. It may be anything up to three months before the shield
goes down even for fractions of a second at a time. And my guess is
that the people on Ades won't last that long. They've had days in which
to grow hopeless already. Want to gamble?"
Dona looked at him. He regarded her steadily.
"Whatever you say, Kim."
"Sixteen million lives on Ades, besides other aspects of the
situation," said Kim. "The odds against us are probably about the same,
sixteen million to one. That makes it a fair bet. We'll try."
He got up and began to tinker with the radiation-operated relay which
turned off the transmitter-drive. Presently he looked up.
"I'm glad I married you, Dona," he said gruffly.
As the _Starshine_ moved closer in, the feeling in the
control-room grew tense. The little ship had advanced to within twenty
millions of miles of the blue-white sun, and even at that distance
there was a detectable X-ray intensity.
Kim had turned on a Geiger counter, and it was silent simply because
there was no measurable interval between its discharges. A neutron
detector showed an indication very close to the danger mark. But Kim
had the _Starshine's_ nose pointed to the intolerably glaring sun.
The electron telescope showed the sun's surface filling all its field,
and because the illumination had been turned so low, raging sun-storms
could be seen on the star's disk. Against it, the black silhouette of
the planet was clear. It was small. Kim estimated its diameter at no
more than six thousand miles. The _Starshine's_ gyros hummed softly
and the field of the telescope swayed until the planet was centered
exactly.
There was a little sweat on Kim's forehead.
"I--don't mind taking the chance myself, Dona," he said, dry-throated.
"But I hate to think of you.... If we miss, we'll flash into the sun."
"And never know it," said Dona, smiling. "It'll be all over in the
skillionth of a second--if we miss. But we won't."
"We're aiming for the disk of the planet," he reminded her. "We have
to go in on transmitter-speed to cut the time of our exposure to hard
radiation. That speed will make the time of exposure effectively zero.
But we have to move at a huge multiple of the speed of light, and we
have to stop short of that planet. It may not be possible!"
"Do you want me to press the button, Kim?" Dona said softly.
He took a deep breath.
"I'll do it. Thanks, Dona."
He put his finger on the stud that would throw the ship into
transmitter-drive, aimed straight at the disk of planet against the
inferno of sun beyond. There was nothing more certain than that to
miss the planet would fling them instantly into the sun. And there was
nothing more absurd than to expect to come out of transmitter-drive
within any given number of millions of miles, much less within a few
thousands. But--
Kim pressed the stud.
Instantly there was blackness before them. A monstrous, absolute
blackness filled half the firmament. It was the force-field-shielded
planet, blotting out its sun and half the stars of the Galaxy. Kim had
made a bull's-eye on a target relatively the size of a dinner-plate
at eleven hundred yards. More than that, he had stopped short of his
target, equivalent to stopping a bullet three inches short of that
place.
He said in a queer voice:
"The--relay worked--even backward, Dona."
8
_Dark Barrier_
For a time Kim sat still and sweat poured out on his skin. Because
their chances had seemed slight indeed. To stop a space-ship at
transmitter-speed was impossible with manual means, anyhow. It could
cross a galaxy in the tenth of a millisecond. So Kim had devised a
radiation-operated relay which threw off the drive when the total
radiation reaching a sensitive plate in the bow had reached an
adjustable total.
If in an ordinary flight the _Starshine_ headed into a
sun--unlikely as such an occurrence was--the increased light striking
the relay-plate would throw off the drive before harm came. But this
time they had needed to approach fatally close to a star. So Kim had
reversed the operation of the relay. It would throw off the drive when
the amount of light reaching it dropped below a certain minimum. That
could happen only if the ship came up behind the planet, so the sun was
blacked out by the world's shadowed night-side.
It had happened. The glare was cut off. The transmitter-drive followed.
The _Starshine_ floated within a bare few million miles--perhaps
less than one million--of a blue-white dwarf star, and the two humans
in the ship were alive because they had between them and the sun's
atomic furnaces, a planet some six thousand miles in diameter.
"We don't know how our velocity matches this thing," said Kim after an
instant. "We could be drifting toward the edge of the shadow. You watch
the stars all around. Make sure I head directly for that blackness.
When we touch, I'll see what I can find out."
He reversed the ship's direction. He let the _Starshine_ float
down backward. The mass of unsubstantial darkness seemed to swell. It
engulfed more and more of the cosmos....
A long, long time later, there was a strange sensation in the feel of
things. Dona gave a little cry.
"Kim! I feel queer! So queer!"
Kim moved heavily. His body resisted any attempt at motion, and yet
he felt a horrible tension within him, as if every molecule were
attempting to fly apart from every other molecule. The controls of the
ship moved sluggishly. Each part of each device seemed to have a vast
inertia. But the controls did yield. The drive did come on. A little
later the sensation ended. But both Kim and Dona felt utterly exhausted.
"It--was getting dark, too," said Dona. She trembled.
"When we tried to move," said Kim, "our arms had a tendency to move at
right angles to the way we wanted them to--at all the possible right
angles at once. That was the edge of the shield, Dona. Now we'll see
what we've got."
He uncovered the recording cabinet. There had been no need to set up
instruments especially for the analysis of the field. They had been a
part of the _Starshine's_ original design for exploration. Now Kim
read the records.
"Cosmic-ray intensity went down," he reported, studying the tapes.
"The dielectric constant of space changed. It just soared up. The
relationship of mass to inertia. That particular gadget never
recorded anything significant before, Dona. In theory it should have
detected space-warps. Actually, it never amounted to anything but a
quantitative measure of gravitation on a planet one landed on. But it
went wild in that field! And here! Look!"
He exultantly held out a paper recording.
"Glance at that, Dona! See? A magnetometer to record the strength of
the magnetic field on a new planet. It recorded the ship's own field in
the absence of any other. And the ship's field dropped to zero! Do you
see? Do you?"
"I'm afraid not," admitted Dona. But she smiled at the expression on
Kim's face.
"It's the answer!" said Kim zestfully. "Still I don't know how that
blasted field is made, but I know now how it works. Neutrons have no
magnetic field, but this thing turns them aside. Alpha and beta and
gamma radiation do have magnetic fields, but this thing turns them
aside, too. And the point is that it neutralizes their magnetic fields,
because otherwise it couldn't start to turn them aside. So if we make
a magnetic field too strong for the field to counter, it won't be able
to turn aside anything in that magnetic area. The maximum force-field
strength needed for the planet is simply equal to the top magnetic
field the sun may project so far. If we can bury the _Starshine_
in magnetic flux that the force-field can't handle--" He grinned. He
hugged her.
"And there's a loop around the _Starshine's_ hull for space-radio
use," he cried. "I'll run a really big current through that loop and
we'll try again. We should be able to put quite a lot of juice through
a six-turn loop and get a flux-density that will curl your hair!"
He set to work, beaming. It took him less than half an hour to set up a
series-wound generator in the airlock, couple in a thermo-cell to the
loop, so it would cool the generator as the current flowed and thereby
reduce its internal resistance.
"Now!" he said. "We'll try once more. The more juice that goes through
the outfit, the colder the generator will get and the less its
resistance will be, and the more current it will make and the stronger
the magnetic field will be."
He flipped a switch. There was a tiny humming noise. A meter-needle
swayed over, and stayed.
The _Starshine_ ventured into the black globe below.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened at all.
"The stars are blotted out, Kim," Dona at last said uneasily.
"But you feel all right, don't you?" He grinned like an ape in his
delight.
"Why, yes."
"I feel unusually good," said Kim happily.
The vision-screens were utterly blank. The ports opened upon absolute
blackness--blackness so dead and absorbent that it seemed more than
merely lack of light. It seemed like something horrible pressing
against the ports and trying to thrust itself in.
And, suddenly, a screen glowed faintly, and then another....
Then there was a greenish glow in the ports, and Dona looked out and
down.
Above was that blackness, complete and absolute. But below, seen with
utter clarity, because of the absence of atmosphere, lay a world.
Nothing grew upon it. Nothing moved. It was raw, naked rock with
an unholy luminescence. Here and there the glow was brighter where
mineral deposits contained more highly active material. The surface was
tortured and twisted, in swirled stained writhings of formerly melted
rock.
They looked. They saw no sign of human life nor any sign that humans
had ever been there. But after all, even five thousand years of mining
on a globe six thousand miles through would not involve the disturbance
of more than a fraction of its surface.
"We did it," said Kim. "The shield can be broken through by anything
with a strong enough magnetic field. We won't disturb the local
inhabitants. They undoubtedly have orders to kill anybody who
incredibly manages to intrude. We can't afford to take a chance. We've
got to get back to Ades!"
He pointed the _Starshine_ straight up. He drove her,
slowly, at the ceiling of impenetrable black. He worked upon the
transmitter-drive relay. He adjusted it to throw the _Starshine_
into transmitter-speed the instant normal starlight appeared ahead.
The ship swam slowly upward. Suddenly there was a momentary impression
of reeling, dancing stars. Kim swung the bow about.
"Now for Ades!" he said gleefully. "Did you know, Dona, that once upon
a time the word Ades meant hell?"
The stars reeled again....
They found Ades. Knowing how, now, it was not too difficult. There were
two positions from which it could be detected. One was a position in
which it was on a line between the _Starshine_ and the sun. The
other was a position in which the invisible planet, the space-ship, and
the sun formed the three points of a right-angled triangle with Ades in
the ninety-degree corner.
Kim sent the little ship in a great circle beyond the planet's normal
orbit, watching for it to appear where such an imaginary triangle
would be formed. The deflected light of the sun would spread out
in a circular flat thin plane, and somewhere about the circuit the
_Starshine_ had to run through it. It would be a momentary sight
only, and it would not be bright; it would be utterly unlike the steady
radiance of a normal planet. Such flashes, if seen before, would have
been dismissed as illusions or as reflections from within the ship.
Even so, it was a long, long time before Dona called out quickly.
"There!" she said, and pointed.
Kim swung the _Starshine_ back. He saw the dim, diffused spectre
of sun's reflection. They drove for it, and presently a minute dark
space appeared. It grew against the background of a radiant galaxy, and
presently was a huge blackness, and the _Starshine's_ space-radio
loop was once more filled with a highly improbable electrical amperage
by the supercooled generator in the airlock.
The ship ventured cautiously into the black.
And later there were lonely, unspeakably desolate little lights of the
lost world down below.
Kim drove for them with a reckless exultation. He landed in the very
centre of a despairing small settlement which had believed itself dead
and damned--or at any rate doomed. He shouted out his coming, and Dona
cried out the news that the end of darkness was near, and men came
surging toward her to listen. But it was Dona who explained, her eyes
shining in the light of the torches men held up toward her.
Kim had gone back into the ship and was using the communicators to
rouse out the mayors of every municipality, and to say he had just
reached the planet from Terranova--there was no time to tell of
adventures in between--and he needed atmosphere fliers to gather around
him at once, with armed men in them, for urgent business connected with
the restoration of a normal state of affairs.
They came swiftly, flittering down out of the blackness overhead, to
land in the lights of huge bonfires built by Kim's orders. And Kim,
on the communicators, asked for other bonfires everywhere, to help in
navigation, and then he went out to be greeted by the bellowing Mayor
of Steadheim.
"What's this?" he roared. "No sunlight! No stars! No
matter-transmitter! No ships! Our ships took off and never came back!
What the devil happened to the Universe?"
Kim grinned at him.
"The Universe is all right. It's Ades. Somewhere on the planet there's
a generator throwing out a force-field. It will have plenty of power,
that generator. Maybe I can pick it up with the instruments of the
_Starshine_. But we'll be sure to find it with magnetic compasses.
What we want is for everyone to flick their compasses and note the
time of swing. We want to find the place where the swings get slower
and slower. When we find a place where the compasses point steadily,
without a flicker--not even up and down--we'll be at the generator. And
everybody put on navigation-lights or there'll be crashes!"
He lifted the _Starshine_ and by communicator kept track of the
search. Toward the polar regions was the logical hiding-place for the
generator, because there the chilly climate of Ades became frigid and
there were no inhabitants. But it was a long search. Hours went by
before a signal came from a quarter-way around the globe.
Then the _Starshine_ drove through darkness--but cautiously--with
atmosphere fliers all about. And there was an area where the planet's
magnetic field grew weaker and weaker, and then a space in which there
was no magnetic field. But in the darkness they could find no sign of a
depot!
9
_Gadget of Hope_
Grimly Kim set the "_Starshine_" on the ground, in the very
centre of the dark area, and started the generator in the airlock.
When it worked at its utmost, and nothing happened, Kim threw in the
leads of the ship's full engine-power. There was a surging of all the
terrific energy the ship's engines could give. Then the radio-loop went
white-hot and melted, with a sputtering arc as the circuit broke.
Abruptly the stars appeared overhead, and simultaneously came the
leaping flame of a rumbling explosion. Then followed the flare of fuel
burning savagely in the night. The _Starshine's_ full power had
burned out the force-field generator, an instant before the loop melted
to uselessness.
Kim was with the men who ran toward the scene of the explosion, and he
would have tried to stop the killing of the other men who ran out of
underground burrows, but the victims would not have it. They expected
to be killed, and they fought wildly. All died.
Later Kim inspected the shattered apparatus which now lay in pieces,
but he thought it could be reconstructed and perhaps in time understood.
"Night's nearly over," he announced to those who prowled through the
wreckage. "It shouldn't be much more than an hour until dawn. If I
hadn't seen sunlight for a week or more, I think, I'd go for a look at
the sunrise."
In seconds the first atmosphere-flier took off. In minutes the last of
them were gone. They flew like great black birds beneath the starlight,
headed for the east to greet a sun they had not expected to see again.
But the Mayor of Steadheim stayed behind.
"Hah!" he said, growling. "It's over my head. I don't know what
happened and I never expect to understand. How are my sons in the new
Galaxy?"
"Fine when last we heard," said Dona, smiling. "Come into the ship."
He tramped into the living space of the _Starshine_. He eased
himself into a seat.
"Now tell me what's gone on, and what's happened, and why!" he
commanded dictatorially.
Kim told him, as well as he could. The Mayor of Steadheim fumed.
"Took over the twenty-one planets, eh?" he sputtered. "We'll attend to
that. We'll take a few ships, go over there, and punish 'em."
"I suspect they've pulled out," said Kim. "If they haven't, they will.
And soon! The Gracious Majesties and Magnificents, and the other
planetary rulers who essayed some easy conquests, have other need for
their soldiers now. Plenty of need!"
"Eh, what?" cried the mayor. "What's the matter? Those rulers have got
to have a lesson! We didn't try to free the whole Galaxy because it was
too big a job. But it looks like we'll have to try!"
"I doubt the need," said Kim, amused. "After all, it's the Disciplinary
Circuit which has enslaved the human race. When the psychogram of
every citizen is on file, and a disciplinarian has only to put his
card in the machinery and press a button to have that man searched out
by Disciplinary-Circuit waves and tortured, wherever he may be--when
that's possible--any government is absolute. Men can't revolt when
the whole population or any part of it can be tortured at the ruler's
whim."
Dona's expression changed.
"Kim!" she said accusingly. "Those things you got on Spicus Five and
dropped on the planets the soldiers came from--what were they?"
"I'll tell you," said Kim. "The Disciplinary Circuit is all right to
keep criminals in hand--not rebels like us, but thieves and such--and
it does keep down the number of officials who have to be supported by
the state. Police and guards aren't really needed on a free planet
with the Disciplinary Circuit in action. It's a useful machine for the
protection of law and order. The trouble is that, like all machines,
its use has been abused. Now it serves tyranny. So I made a device to
defend freedom."
The Mayor of Steadheim cocked a suspicious eye upon him.