THE BLACK STAR PASSES, by John W. Campbell, Jr. [Part 2]

VI

Arcot lifted the Solarite at once high into the air, and started toward the point on the border, where the plane had been seen crossing. In a short time Wade relieved him at the controls while he dressed.

They had been flying on in silence for about an hour, when suddenly Wade made out in the distance the great bulk of the plane, against the dull gray of the clouds, a mile or so above them. It seemed some monstrous black bat flying there against the sky, but down to the sensitive microphone on the side of the Solarite came the drone of the hundred mighty propellers as the great plane forged swiftly along.

Just how rapidly these giants moved, Arcot had not appreciated until he attempted to overtake this one. It was going over a mile a second now—a speed that demanded only that it move its own length in about five-eights of a second! It made this tremendous speed by streamlining and through sheer power.

The Solarite hovered high above the dark ship at length, the roar of the terrific air blast from its propellers below coming up to them as a mighty wave of sound that made their own craft tremble! The hundred gigantic propellers roaring below, however, would distribute their gas perfectly.

“We’re going invisible,” Arcot exclaimed. “Look out!” There was a click as the switch shut, and the Solarite was as transparent as the air above it. Arcot drove his ship swiftly, above and ahead of the mighty colossus, then released the gas. There was a low hiss from the power room, barely detectable despite the vacuum that shut them off from the roar of the Kaxorian plane. The microphone had long since been disconnected. Out of the gas vent streamed a cloud of purplish gas, becoming faintly visible as it left the influence of the invisibility apparatus, but only to those who knew where to look for it. The men in that mighty plane could not see it as their machine bore down into the little cloud of gas.

Tensely the Terrestrians waited. Moments—and the gigantic plane wobbled! There was a sudden swerve that ended in a nose dive, straight toward Venus seven miles below.

That the ship should crash into the ground below was not at all Arcot’s plan, and he was greatly relieved when it flattened its dive and started to climb, its incalculable mass rapidly absorbing its kinetic energy. Down from its seven mile height it glided, controlling itself perfectly as Arcot released the last of the first four containers of the liquid gas makers, putting to sleep the last man on the ship below.

In a long glide that carried it over many miles, the great ship descended. It had sunk far, and gone smoothly, but now there loomed ahead of it a range of low hills! It would certainly crash into the rocky cliffs ahead! Nearer and nearer drew the barrier while Arcot and the others watched with rigid attention. It might skim above those low hills at that—just barely escaping.… The watchers cringed as head on, at nearly two thousand miles an hour, the machine crashed into the rocks. Arcot had snapped the loud speaker into the circuit once more, and now as they looked at the sudden crash below, there thundered up to them mighty waves of sound!

The giant plane had struck about twenty feet from the top of a nearly perpendicular cliff. The terrific crash was felt by seismographs in Sonor nearly two thousand miles away! The mighty armored hull plowed into the rocks like some gigantic meteor, the hundreds of thousands of tons crushing the rocky precipice, grinding it to powder, and shaking the entire hill. The cliff seemed to buckle and crack. In moments the plane had been brought to rest, but it had plowed through twenty feet of rock for nearly an eighth of a mile. For an instant it hung motionless, perched perilously in the air, its tail jutting out over the little valley, then slowly, majestically it sank, to strike with a reverberating crash that shattered the heavy armor plate!

For another instant the great motors continued turning, the roar of the propellers like some throbbing background to the rending crashes as the titanic wreck came to rest. Suddenly, with a series of roaring explosions, the bank of motors in the left wing blew up with awful force. There was a flash of indescribable brilliance that momentarily blinded the watching Terrestrians; then there came to the microphone such waves of sound as it could not reproduce. From the rock on which rested the fused mass of metal that they knew had been the wing, rose a great cloud of dust. Still the motors on the other side of the ship continued roaring and the giant propellers turned. As the blast of air blew the dust away, the Terrestrians stared in unbounded amazement. Up from the gaping, broken wing lanced a mighty beam of light of such dazzling intensity that Arcot swiftly restored them to visibility that they might shut it out. There was a terrific hissing, crackling roar. The plane seemed to wobble as it lay there, seemingly recoiling from that flaming column. Where it touched the cliff there was intense incandescence that made the rock glow white hot, then flow down in a sluggish rivulet of molten lava! For five minutes longer this terrific spectacle lasted, while Arcot withdrew the Solarite to a safer distance.

The fifty motors of the remaining wing seemed slowing down now—then suddenly there was such a crash and towering flash of light as no human being had ever seen before! Up—up into the very clouds it shot its mighty flame, a blazing column of light that seemed to reach out into space. The Solarite was hurled back end over end, tumbling, falling. Even the heavy gyroscopes could not hold it for an instant, but quickly the straining motors brought them to rest in air that whirled and whined about them. They were more than twenty miles from the scene of the explosion, but even at that distance they could see the glow of the incandescent rock. Slowly, cautiously they maneuvered the Solarite back to the spot, and looked down on a sea of seething lava!

Morey broke the awed silence. “Lord—what power that thing carries! No wonder they could support it in the air! But—how can they control such power? What titanic forces!”

Slowly Arcot sent the Solarite away into the night—into the kindly darkness once more. His voice when he spoke at last was oddly restrained.

“I wonder what those forces were—they are greater than any man has ever before seen! An entire hill fused to molten, incandescent rock, not to mention the tons and tons of metal that made up that ship.

“And such awful forces as these are to be released on our Earth!” For an interminable period they sat silent as the panorama of hills glided by at a slow two-hundred miles an hour. Abruptly Arcot exclaimed, “We must capture a ship. We’ll try again—we’ll either destroy or capture it—and either way we’re ahead!”

* * * *

Aimlessly they continued their leisurely course across a vast plain. There were no great mountains on Venus, for this world had known no such violent upheaval as the making of a moon. The men were lost in thought, each intent on his own ideas. At length Wade stood up, and walked slowly back to the power room.

Suddenly the men in the control room heard his call:

“Arcot—quick—the microphone—and rise a mile!”

The Solarite gave a violent lurch as it shot vertically aloft at tremendous acceleration. Arcot reached over swiftly and snapped the switch of the microphone. There burst in upon them the familiar roaring drone of a hundred huge propellers. No slightest hum of motor, only the vast whining roar of the mighty props.

“Another one! They must have been following the first by a few minutes. We’ll get this one!” Arcot worked swiftly at his switches.“Wade—strap yourself in the seat where you are—don’t take time to come up here.”

They followed the same plan which had worked so well before. Suddenly invisible, the Solarite flashed ahead of the great plane. The titanic wave of rushing sound engulfed them—then again came the little hiss of the gas. Now there were no hills in sight, as far as the eye could see. In the dim light that seemed always to filter through these gray clouds they could see the distant, level horizon.

Several dragging minutes passed before there was any evident effect; the men from Earth were waiting for that great ship to waver, to wobble from its course. Suddenly Arcot gave a cry of surprise. Startled amazement was written all over his face, as his companions turned in wonderment to see that he was partially visible! The Solarite, too, had become a misty ghost ship about them; they were becoming visible! Then in an instant it was gone—and they saw that the huge black bulk behind them was wavering, turning; the thunderous roar of the propellers fell to a whistling whine; the ship was losing speed! It dipped, and shot down a bit—gained speed, then step by step it glided down—down—down to the surface below. The engines were idling now, the plane running more and more slowly.

They were near the ground now—and the watchers scarcely breathed. Would this ship, too, crash? It glided to within a half mile of the plain—then it dipped once more, and Arcot breathed his relief as it made a perfect landing, the long series of rollers on the base of the gigantic hull absorbing the shock of the landing. There were small streams in the way—a tree or two, but these were obstacles unnoticed by the gargantuan machine. Its mighty propellers still idling slowly, the huge plane rolled to a standstill.

Swooping down, the Solarite landed beside it, to be lost in the vast shadows of the mighty metal walls.

Arcot had left a small radio receiver with Tonlos in Sonor before he started on this trip, and had given him directions on how to tune in on the Solarite. Now he sent a message to him, telling that the plane had been brought down, and asking that a squadron of planes be sent at once.

Wade and Arcot were elected to make the first inspection of the Kaxorian plane, and clad in their cooling suits, they stepped from the Solarite, each carrying, for emergency use, a small hand torch, burning atomic hydrogen, capable of melting its way through even the heavy armor of the great plane.

As they stood beside it, looking up at the gigantic wall of metal that rose sheer beside them hundreds of feet straight up, it seemed impossible that this mighty thing could fly, that it could be propelled through the air. In awed silence they gazed at its vast bulk.

Then, like pygmies beside some mighty prehistoric monster, they made their way along its side, seeking a door. Suddenly Wade stopped short and exclaimed: “Arcot, this is senseless—we can’t do this! The machine is so big that it’ll take us half an hour of steady walking to go around it. We’ll have to use the Solarite to find an entrance!”

It was well that they followed Wade’s plan, for the only entrance, as they later learned, was from the top. There, on the back of the giant, the Solarite landed—its great weight having no slightest effect on the Kaxorian craft. They found a trap-door leading down inside. However, the apparatus for opening it was evidently within the hull, so they had to burn a hole in the door before they could enter.

What a sight there was for these men of Earth. The low rumble of the idling engines was barely audible as they descended the long ladder.

There was no resemblance whatever to the interior of a flying machine; rather, it suggested some great power house, where the energies of half a nation were generated. They entered directly into a vast hall that extended for a quarter of a mile back through the great hull, and completely across the fuselage. To the extreme nose it ran, and throughout there were scattered little globes that gave off an intense white light, illuminating all of the interior. Translucent bull’s-eyes obscured the few windows.

All about, among the machines, lay Venerians. Dead they seemed, the illusion intensified by their strangely blue complexions. The two Terrestrians knew, however, that they could readily be restored to life. The great machines they had been operating were humming softly, almost inaudibly. There were two long rows of them, extending to the end of the great hall. They suggested mighty generators twenty feet high. From their tops projected two-feet-thick cylinders of solid fused quartz. From these extended other rods of fused quartz, rods that led down through the floor; but these were less bulky, scarcely over eight inches thick.

The huge generator-like machines were disc-shaped. From these, too, a quartz rod ran down through the floor. The machines on the further row were in some way different; those in the front half of the row had the tubes leading to the floor below, but had no tubes jutting into the ceiling. Instead, there were many slender rods connected with a vast switchboard that covered all of one side of the great room. But everywhere were the great quartz rods, suggesting some complicated water system. Most of them were painted black, though the main rods leading from the roof above were as clear as crystal.

Arcot and Wade looked at these gigantic machines in hushed awe. They seemed impossibly huge; it was inconceivable that all this was but the power room of an airplane!

Without speaking, they descended to the level below, using a quite earthly appearing escalator. Despite the motionless figures everywhere, they felt no fear of their encountering resistance. They knew the effectiveness of Wade’s anesthetic.

The hall they entered was evidently the main room of the plane. It was as long as the one above, and higher, yet all that vast space was taken by one single, titanic coil that stretched from wall to wall! Into it, and from it there led two gigantic columns of fused quartz. That these were rods, such as those smaller ones above was obvious, but each was over eight feet thick!

Short they were, for they led from one mighty generator such as they had seen above, but magnified on a scale inconceivable! At the end of it, its driving power, its motor, was a great cylindrical case, into which led a single quartz bar ten inches thick. This bar was alive with pulsing, glowing fires, that changed and maneuvered and died out overall its surface and through all its volume. The motor was but five feet in diameter and a scant seven feet long, yet obviously it was driving the great machine, for there came from it a constant low hum, a deep pitched song of awful power. And the huge quartz rod that led from the titanic coil-cylinder was alive with the same glowing fires that played through the motor rod. From one side of the generator, ran two objects that were familiar, copper bus bars. But even these were three feet thick!

The scores of quartz tubes that come down from the floor above joined, coalesced, and ran down to the great generator, and into it.

They descended to another level. Here were other quartz tubes, but these led down still further, for this floor contained individual sleeping bunks, most of them unoccupied, unready for occupancy, though some were made up.

Down another level; again the bunks, the little individual rooms.

At last they reached the bottom level, and here the great quartz tubes terminated in a hundred smaller ones, each of these leading into some strange mechanism. There were sighting devices on it, and there were ports that opened in the floor. This was evidently the bombing room.

With an occasional hushed word, the Terrestrians walked through what seemed to be a vast city of the dead, passing sleeping officers, and crewmen by the hundreds. On the third level they came at last to the control room. Here were switchboards, control panels, and dozens of officers, sleeping now, beside their instruments. A sudden dull thudding sound spun Arcot and Wade around, nerves taut. They relaxed and exchanged apologetic smiles. An automatic relay had adjusted some mechanism.

They noted one man stationed apart from the rest. He sat at the very bow, protected behind eight-inch coronium plates in which were set masses of fused quartz that were nearly as strong as the metal itself. These gave him a view in every direction except directly behind him. Obviously, here was the pilot.

Returning to the top level, they entered the long passages that led out into the titanic wings. Here, as elsewhere, the ship was brightly lighted. They came to a small room, another bunk room. There were great numbers of these down both sides of the long corridor, and along the two parallel corridors down the wing. In the fourth corridor near the back edge of the wing, there were bunk rooms on one side, and on the other were bombing posts.

As they continued walking down the first corridor, they came to a small room, whence issued the low hum of one of the motors. Entering, they found the crew sleeping, and the motor idling.

“Good Lord!” Wade exclaimed. “Look at that motor, Arcot! No bigger than the trunk of a man’s body. Yet a battery of these sends the ship along at a mile a second! What power!”

Slowly they proceeded down the long hall. At each of the fifty engine mountings they found the same conditions. At the end of the hall there was an escalator that led one level higher, into the upper wing. Here they found long rows of the bombing posts and the corresponding quartz rods.

They returned finally to the control room. Here Arcot spent a long time looking over the many instruments, the controls, and the piloting apparatus.

“Wade,” he said at last, “I think I can see how this is done. I am going to stop those engines, start them, then accelerate them till the ship rolls a bit!” Arcot stepped quickly over to the pilots seat, lifted the sleeping pilot out, and settled in his place.

“Now, you go over to that board there—that one—and when I ask you to, please turn on that control—no, the one below—yes—turn it on about one notch at a time.”

Wade shook his head dubiously, a one-sided grin on his face. “All right, Arcot—just as you say—but when I think of the powers you’re playing with—well, a mistake might be unhealthy!”

“I’m going to stop the motors now,” Arcot announced quietly. All the time they had been on board, they had been aware of the barely inaudible whine of the motors. Now suddenly, it was gone, and the plane was still as death!

Arcot’s voice sounded unnaturally loud. “I did it without blowing the ship up after all! Now we’re going to try turning the power on!”

Suddenly there was a throaty hum; then quickly it became the low whine; then, as Arcot turned on the throttle before him, he heard the tens of thousands of horsepower spring into life—and suddenly the whine was a low roar—the mighty propellers out there had became a blur—then with majestic slowness the huge machine moved off across the field!

Arcot shut off the motors and rose with a broad, relieved smile,“Easy!” he said. They made their way again up through the ship, up through the room of the tremendous cylinder coil, and then into the power room. Now the machines were quiet, for the motors were no longer working.

“Arcot, you didn’t shut off the biggest machine of all down there. How come?”

“I couldn’t, Wade. It has no shut-off control, and if it did have, I wouldn’t use it. I will tell you why when we get back to the Solarite.”

At last they left the mighty machine; walked once more across its broad metal top. Here and there they now saw the ends of those quartz cylinders. Once more they entered the Solarite, through the air lock, and took off the cumbersome insulating suits.

As quickly as possible Arcot outlined to the two who had stayed with the Solarite, the things they had seen, and the layout of the great ship.

“I think I can understand the secret of all that power, and it’s not so different from the Solarite, at that. It, too, draws its power from the sun, though in a different way, and it stores it within itself, which the Solarite does not try to do.

“Light of course, is energy, and therefore, has mass. It exerts pressure, the impact of its moving units of energy—photons. We have electrons and protons of matter, and photons of light. Now we know that the mass of protons and electrons will attract other protons and electrons, and hold them near—as in a stone, or in a solar system. The new idea here is that the photons will attract each other ever more and more powerfully, the closer they get. The Kaxorians have developed a method of getting them so close together, that they will, for a while at least, hold themselves there, and with a little ‘pressure’, will stay there indefinitely.

“In that huge coil and cylinder we found there we saw the main power storage tank. That was full of gaseous light-energy held together by its own attraction, plus a little help of the generator!”

“A little help?” Wade exclaimed. “Quite a little! I’ll bet that thing had a million horsepower in its motor!”

“Yes—but I’ll bet they have nearly fifty pounds of light condensed there—so why worry about a little thing like a million horsepower? They have plenty more where that comes from.

“I think they go up above the clouds in some way and collect the sun’s energy. Remember that Venus gets twice as much as Earth. They focus it on those tubes on the roof there, and they, like all quartz tubes, conduct the light down into the condensers where it is first collected. Then it is led to the big condenser downstairs, where the final power is added, and the condensed light is stored.

“Quartz conducts light just as copper conducts electricity—those are bus bars we saw running around there.

“The bombs we’ve been meeting recently are, of course, little knots of this light energy thrown out by that projector mechanism we saw. When they hit anything, the object absorbs their energy—and is very promptly volatilized by the heat of the absorption.

“Do you remember that column of hissing radiance we saw shooting out of the wrecked plane just before it blew up? That was the motor connection, broken, and discharging free energy. That would ordinarily have supplied all fifty motors at about full speed. Naturally, when it cut loose, it was rather violent.

“The main generator had been damaged, no doubt, so it stopped working, and the gravitational attraction of the photons wasn’t enough, without its influence to hold them bound too long. All those floods of energy were released instantaneously, of course.

“Look—there come the Lanorians now. I want to go back to Sonor and think over this problem. Perhaps we can find something that will release all that energy—though honestly, I doubt it.”

Arcot seemed depressed, overawed perhaps, by the sheer magnitude of the force that lay bound up in the Kaxorian ship. It seemed inconceivable that the little Solarite could in any way be effective against the incredible machine.

The Lanorian planes were landing almost like a flock of birds, on the wings, the fuselage, the ground all about the gigantic ship. Arcot dropped into a chair, gazing moodily into emptiness, his thoughts on the mighty giant, stricken now, but only sleeping. In its vast hulk lay such energies as intelligence had never before controlled; within it he knew there were locked the powers of the sun itself. What could the Solarite do against it?

“Oh, I almost forgot to mention it.” Arcot spoke slowly, dejectedly. “In the heat of the attack back there it went practically unnoticed. Our only weapon beside the gas is useless now. Do you remember how the ship seemed to lose its invisibility for an instant? I learned why when we investigated the ship. Those men are physicists of the highest order. We must realize the terrible forces, both physical and mental that we are to meet. They’ve solved the secret of our invisibility, and now they can neutralize it. They began using it a bit too late this time, but they had located the radio-produced interference caused by the ship’s invisibility apparatus, and they were sending a beam of interfering radio energy at us. We are invisible only by reason of the vibration of the molecules in response to the radio impressed oscillations. The molecules vibrate in tune, at terrific frequency, and the light can pass perfectly. What will happen, however, if someone locates the source of the radio waves? It’ll be simple for them to send out a radio beam and touch our invisible ship with it. The two radio waves impressed on us now will be out of step and the interference will instantly make us visible. We can no longer attack them with our atomic hydrogen blast, or with the gas—both are useless unless we can get close to them, and we can’t come within ten miles of them now. Those bombs of theirs are effective at that distance.”

Again he fell silent, thinking—hoping for an idea that would once more give them a chance to combat the Kaxorians. His three companions, equally depressed and without a workable idea, remained silent. Abruptly Arcot stood up.

“I’m going to speak with the Commander-in-Field here. Then we can start back for Sonor—and maybe we had better head for home. It looks as though there is little we can do here.”

Briefly he spoke to the young Venerian officer, and told him what he had learned about the ship. Perhaps they could fly it to Sonor; or it could be left there undestroyed if he would open a certain control just before he left. Arcot showed him which one—it would drain out the power of the great storage tank, throwing it harmlessly against the clouds above. The Kaxorians might destroy the machine if they wanted to—Arcot felt that they would not wish to. They would hope, with reason, they might recapture it! It would be impossible to move that tremendous machine without the power that its “tank” was intended to hold.

VII

Slowly they cruised back to Sonor, Arcot still engrossed in thought. Would it be that Venus would fall before the attack of the mighty planes, that they would sweep out across space, to Earth—to Mars—to other worlds, a cosmic menace? Would the mighty machines soon be circling Earth? Guided missiles with atomic warheads could combat them, perhaps, as could the molecular motion machines. Perhaps these could be armored with twenty-inch steel walls, and driven into the great propellers, or at miles a second, into the ship itself! But these ships would require long hours, days, even weeks to build, and in that time the Kaxorian fleet would be ready. It would attack Earth within six days now! What hope was there to avert incalculable destruction—if not outright defeat?

In despair Arcot turned and strode quickly down the long hallway of the Solarite. Above him he could hear the smooth, even hum of the sweetly functioning generator, but it only reminded him of the vastly greater energies he had seen controlled that night. The thudding relays in the power room, as Wade maneuvered the ship, seemed some diminutive mockery of the giant relays he had seen in the power room of the Kaxorian plane.

He sat down in the power room, looking at the stacked apparatus, neatly arranged, as it must be, to get all this apparatus in this small space. Then at last he began to think more calmly. He concentrated on the greatest forces known to man—and there were only two that even occurred to him as great! One was the vast energies he had that very night learned of; the other was the force of the molecules, the force that drove his ship.

He had had no time to work out the mathematics of the light compression, mathematics that he now knew would give results. There remained only the molecular motion. What could he do with it that he had not done?

He drew out a small black notebook. In it were symbols, formulas, and page after page of the intricate calculus that had ended finally in the harnessing of this great force that was even now carrying him smoothly along.

Half an hour later he was still busy—covering page after page with swiftly written formulas. Before him was a great table of multiple integers, the only one like it known to exist in the System, for the multiple calculus was an invention of Arcot’s. At last he found the expression he wanted, and carefully he checked his work, excitedly though now, with an expression of eager hope—it seemed logical—it seemed correct—

“Morey—oh, Morey,” he called, holding his enthusiasm in check, “if you can come here—I want you to check some math for me. I’ve done it—and I want to see if you get the same result independently!” Morey was a more careful mathematician than he, and it was to him Arcot turned for verification of any new discovery.

Following the general directions Arcot gave him, Morey went through the long series of calculations—and arrived at the same results. Slowly he looked up from the brief expression with which he had ended.

It was not the formula that astonished him—it was its physical significance.

“Arcot—do you think we can make it?”

There was a new expression in Arcot’s eyes, a tightness about his mouth.

“I hope so, Morey. If we don’t, Lanor is lost beyond a doubt—and probably Earth is, too. Wade—come here a minute, will you? Let Fuller take the controls, and tell him to push it. We have to get to work on this.”

Rapidly Arcot explained their calculations—and the proof he had gotten.

“Our beam of molecular motion-controlling energy directs all molecular motion to go at right angles to it. The mechanism so far has been a field inside a coil really, but if these figures are right, it means that we can project that field to a considerable distance even in air. It’ll be a beam of power that will cause all molecules in its path to move at right angles to it, and in the direction we choose, by reversing the power in the projector. That means that no matter how big the thing is, we can tear it to pieces; we’ll use its own powers, its own energies, to rip it, or crush it.

“Imagine what would happen if we directed this against the side of a mountain—the entire mass of rock would at once fly off at unimaginable speed, crashing ahead with terrific power, as all the molecules suddenly moved in the same direction. Nothing in all the Universe could hold together against it! It’s a disintegration ray of a sort—a ray that will tear, or crush, for we can either make one half move away from the other—or we can reverse the power, and make one half drive toward the other with all the terrific power of its molecules! It is omnipotent—hmmm—” Arcot paused, narrowing his eyes in thought.

“It has one limitation. Will it reach far in the air? In vacuum it should have an infinite range—in the atmosphere all the molecules of the air will be affected, and it will cause a terrific blast of icy wind, a gale at temperatures far below zero! This will be even more effective here on Venus!

“But we must start designing the thing at once! Take some of the Immorpho and give me some, and we can let the sleep accumulate till we have more time! Look—we’re in Sonor already! Land us, Fuller—right where we were, and then come back here. We’re going to need you!”

The gorgeous display of a Venerian dawn was already coloring the east as the great buildings seemed to rise silently about them. The sky, which had been a dull luminous gray, a gray that rapidly grew brighter and brighter, was now like molten silver, through which were filtering the early rays of the intense sun. As the sun rose above the horizon, though invisible for clouds, it still was traceable by the wondrous shell pink that began to suffuse the ten mile layer of vapor. The tiny droplets were, however, breaking the clear light into a million rainbows, and all about the swiftly deepening pink were forming concentric circles of blue, of green, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow, repeated time after time—a wondrous halo of glowing color, which only the doubly intense sun could create.

“It’s almost worth missing the sun all day to see their sunrises and sunsets,” Fuller commented. The men were watching it, despite their need for haste. It was a sight the like of which no Earthman had ever before seen.

Immediately, then, they plunged into the extremely complex calculation of the electrical apparatus to produce the necessary fields. To get the effect they wanted, they must have two separate fields of the director ray, and a third field of a slightly different nature, which would cause the director ray to move in one direction only. It would be disconcerting, to say the least, if the director ray, by some mistake, should turn upon them!

The work went on more swiftly than they had considered possible, but there was still much to be done on the theoretical end of the job alone when the streets about them began to fill. They noticed that a large crowd was assembling, and shortly after they had finished, after some of these people had stood there for more than an hour and a half, the crowd had grown to great size.

“From the looks of that collection, I should say we are about to become the principals in some kind of a celebration that we know nothing about. Well, we’re here, and in case they want us, we’re ready to come.”

The guard that always surrounded the Solarite had been doubled, and was maintaining a fairly large clear area about the ship.

Shortly thereafter they saw one of the high officials of Lanor come down the walk from the governmental building, walking toward the Solarite.

“Time for us to appear—and it may as well be all of us this time. I’ll tell you what they say afterward, Wade. They’ve evidently gone to considerable trouble to get up this meeting, so let’s cooperate. I hate to slow up the work, but we’ll try to make it short.”

The four Terrestrians got into their cooling suits, and stepped outside the ship. The Lanorian dignitary left his guard, walked up to the quartet from Earth with measured tread, and halted before them.

“Earthmen,” he began in a deep, clear voice, “we have gathered here this morning to greet you and thank you for the tremendous service you have done us. Across the awful void of empty space you have journeyed forty million miles to visit us, only to discover that Venerians were making ready to attack your world. Twice your intervention has saved our city.

“There is, of course, no adequate reward for this service; we can in no way repay you, but in a measure we may show our appreciation. We have learned from the greatest psychologist of our nation, Tonlos, that in your world aluminum is plentiful, but gold and platinum are rare, and that morlus is unknown. I have had a small token made for you, and your friends. It is a little plaque, a disc of morlus, and on it there is a small map of the Solar System. On the reverse side there is a globe of Venus, with one of Earth beside it, as well as our men could copy the small globe you have given us. The northern hemisphere of each is depicted—America, your nation, and Lanor, ours, thus being shown. We want you, and each of your friends, to accept these. They are symbols of your wonderful flight across space!” The Venerians turned to each of the Terrestrians and presented each with a small metal disc.

Arcot spoke for the Terrestrians.

“On behalf of myself and my friends here, two of whom have not had an opportunity to learn your language, I wish to thank you for your great help when we most needed it. You, perhaps, have saved more than a city—you may have made it possible to save a world—our Earth. But the battle here has only begun.

“There are now in the Kaxorian camp eighteen great ships. They have been badly defeated in the three encounters they have had with the Solarite so far. But no longer will they be vulnerable to our earlier methods of attack. Your spies report that the first plane, the plane which was first attacked by the Solarite, is still undergoing repairs. These will be completed within two days, and then, when they can leave a base guard of two ships, they will attack once more. Furthermore, they will attack with a new weapon. They have destroyed the usefulness of our weapon, invisibility, and in turn, now have it to use against us! We must seek out some new weapon. I hope we are on the right track now, but every moment is precious, and we must get back to the work. This address must be short. Later, when we have completed our preliminary work, we will have to give plans to your workmen, which you will be able to turn into metal, for we lack the materials. With this help we may succeed, despite our handicap.”

The address was terminated at once. The Lanorians were probably disappointed, but they fully realized the necessity for haste.

“I wish Terrestrian orators spoke like that,” remarked Morey as they returned to the ship. “He said all there was to say, but he didn’t run miles of speech doing it. He was a very forceful speaker, too!”

“People who speak briefly and to the point generally are,” Arcot said.

It was nearly noon that day before the theoretical discussion had been reduced to practical terms. They were ready to start work at once, but they had reason to work cheerfully now. Even through air they had found their ray would be able to reach thirty-five miles! They would be well out of the danger zone while attacking the gigantic planes of Kaxor.

Morey, Wade and Arcot at once set to work constructing the electrical plant that was to give them the necessary power. It was lucky indeed that they had brought the great mass of spare apparatus! They had more than enough to make all the electrical machinery. The tubes, the coils, the condensers, all were there. The generator would easily supply the power, for the terrific forces that were to destroy the Kaxorian ships were to be generated in the plane itself. It was to destroy itself; the Solarite would merely be the detonator to set it off!

* * * *

While the physicists were busy on this, Fuller was designing the mechanical details of the projector. It must be able to turn through a spherical angle of 180 degrees, and was necessarily controlled electrically from the inside. The details of the projector were worked out by six that evening, and the numerous castings and machined pieces that were to be used were to be made in the Venerian machine shops.

One difficulty after another arose and was overcome. Night came on, and still they continued work. The Venerian workmen had promised to have the apparatus for them by ten o’clock the next morning—or what corresponded to ten o’clock.

Shortly after three o’clock that morning they had finished the apparatus, had connected all the controls, and had placed the last of the projector directors. Except for the projector they were ready, and Morey, Wade and Fuller turned in to get what sleep they could. But Arcot, telling them there was something he wished to get, took another dose of Immorpho and stepped out into the steaming rain.

A few minutes after ten the next morning Arcot came back, followed by half a dozen Venerians, each carrying a large metal cylinder in a cradle. These were attached to the landing gear of the Solarite in such fashion that the fusing of one piece of wire would permit the entire thing to drop free.

“So that’s what you hatched out, eh? What is it?” asked Wade as he entered the ship.

“Just a thing I want to try out—and I’m going to keep it a deep, dark secret for a while. I think you’ll get quite a surprise when you see those bombs in action! They’re arranged to be released by turning current into the landing lights. We’ll have to forgo lights for the present, but I needed the bombs more.

“The mechanics have finished working on your projector parts, Fuller, and they’ll be over here in a short time. Here comes the little gang I asked to help us. You can direct them.” Arcot paused and scowled with annoyance. “Hang it all—when they drill into the outer wall, we’ll lose the vacuum between the two walls, and all that hot air will come in. This place will be roasting in a short time. We have the molecular motion coolers, but I’m afraid they won’t be much good. Can’t use the generator—it’s cut off from the main room by vacuum wall.

“I think we’d better charge up the gas tanks and the batteries as soon as this is done. Then tonight we’ll attack the Kaxorian construction camp. I’ve just learned that no spy reports have been coming in, and I’m afraid they’ll spring a surprise.”

Somewhat later came the sound of drills, then the whistling roar as the air sucked into the vacuum, told the men inside that the work was under way. It soon became uncomfortably hot as, the vacuum destroyed, the heat came in through all sides. It was more than the little molecular coolers could handle, and the temperature soon rose to about a hundred and fifteen. It was not as bad as the Venerian atmosphere, for the air seemed exceedingly dry, and the men found it possible to get along without cooling suits, if they did not work. Since there was little they could do, they simply relaxed.

It was nearly dark before the Lanorians had finished their work, and the gas tanks had been recharged. All that time Arcot had spent with Tonlos determining the position of the Kaxorian construction camp. Spy reports and old maps had helped, but it was impossible to do very accurate work by these means.

It was finally decided that the Kaxorian construction camp was about 10,500 miles to the southwest. The Solarite was to start an hour after dark. Travelling westward at their speed, they hoped to reach the camp just after nightfall.

VIII

The Solarite sped swiftly toward the southwest. The sky slowly grew lighter as the miles flashed beneath them. They were catching up with the sun. As they saw the rolling ocean beneath them give way to low plains, they realized they were over Kaxorian land. The Solarite was flying very high, and as they showed no lights, and were not using the invisibility apparatus, they were practically undetectable. Suddenly they saw the lights of a mighty city looming far off to the east.

“It’s Kanor. Pass well to the west of it. That’s their capital. We’re on course.” Arcot spoke from his position at the projector, telling Wade the directions to follow on his course to the berth of the giant planes.

The city dropped far behind them in moments, followed by another, and another. At length, veering southward into the dusk, they entered a region of low hills, age-old folds in the crust of the planet, rounded by untold millennia of torrential rains.

“Easy, Wade. We are near now.” Mile after mile they flashed ahead at about a thousand miles an hour—then suddenly they saw far off to the east a vast glow that reached into the sky, painting itself on the eternal clouds miles above.

“There it is, Wade. Go high, and take it easy!”

Swiftly the Solarite climbed, hovering at last on the very rim of the cloud blanket, an invisible mote in a sea of gray mist. Below them they saw a tremendous field carved, it seemed, out of the ancient hills. From this height all sense of proportion was lost. It seemed but an ordinary field, with eighteen ordinary airplanes resting on it. One of these now was moving, and in a moment it rose into the air! But there seemed to be no men on all the great field. They were invisibly small from this height.

Abruptly Arcot gave a great shout. “That’s their surprise! They’re ready far ahead of the time we expected! If all that armada gets in the air, we’re done! Down, Wade, to within a few hundred feet of the ground, and close to the field!”

The Solarite flashed down in a power dive—down with a sickening lurch. A sudden tremendous weight seemed to crush them as the ship was brought out of the dive not more than two hundred feet from the ground. Close to blacking out, Wade nevertheless shot it in as close to the field as he dared. Anxiously he called to Arcot, who answered with a brief “Okay!” The planes loomed gigantic now, their true proportions showing clearly against the brilliant light of the field. A tremendous wave of sound burst from the loudspeaker as the planes rolled across the ground to leap gracefully into the air—half a million tons of metal!

From the Solarite there darted a pale beam of ghostly light, faintly gray, tinged with red and green—the ionized air of the beam. It moved in a swift half circle. In an instant the whirr of the hundreds, thousands of giant propellers was drowned in a terrific roar of air. Great snowflakes fell from the air before them; it was white with the solidified water vapor. Then came a titanic roar and the planet itself seemed to shake! A crash, a snapping and rending as a mighty fountain of soil and rock cascaded skyward, and with it, twisting, turning, hurled in a dozen directions at once, twelve titanic ships reeled drunkenly into the air!

For a barely perceptible interval there was an oppressive silence as the ray was shut off. Then a bedlam of deafening sound burst forth anew, a mighty deluge of unbearable noise as the millions of tons of pulverized rock, humus and metal fell back. Some of it had ascended for miles; it settled amid a howling blizzard—snow that melted as it touched the madly churned airfield.

High above there were ten planes flying about uncertainly. Suddenly one of these turned, heading for the ground far below, its wings screaming their protest as the motors roared, ever faster, with the gravity of the planet aiding them. There was a rending, crackling crash as the wings suddenly bent back along the sides. An instant later the fuselage tore free, rocketing downward; the wings followed more slowly—twisting, turning, dipping in mile-long swoops.

The Solarite shot away from the spot at maximum speed—away and up, with a force that nailed the occupants to the floor. Before they could turn, behind them flared a mighty gout of light that struck to the very clouds above, and all the landscape, for miles about, was visible in the glare of the released energy.

As they turned, they saw on the plain, below a tremendous crater, in its center a spot that glowed white and bubbled like the top of a huge cauldron.

Nine great planes were circling in the air; then in an instant they were gone, invisible. As swiftly the Solarite darted away with a speed that defied the aim of any machine.

High above the planes they went, for with his radar Arcot could trace them. They were circling, searching for the Solarite.

The tiny machine was invisible in the darkness, but its invisibility was not revealed by the Kaxorian’s radio detectors. In the momentary lull, Fuller asked a question.

“Wade, how is it that those ships can be invisible when they are driven by light, and have the light stored in them? They’re perfectly transparent. Why can’t we see the light?”

“They are storing the light. It’s bound—it can’t escape. You can’t see light unless it literally hits you in the eye. Their stored light can’t reach you, for it is held by its own attraction and by the special field of the big generators.”

They seemed to be above one of the Kaxorian planes now. Arcot caught the roar of the invisible propellers.

“To the left, Wade—faster—hold it—left—ah!” Arcot pushed a button.

Down from the Solarite there dropped a little canister, one of the bombs that Arcot had prepared the night before. To hit an invisible target is ordinarily difficult, but when that target is far larger than the proverbial side of a barn, it is not very difficult, at that. But now Arcot’s companions watched for the crash of the explosion, the flash of light. What sort of bomb was it that Arcot hoped would penetrate that tremendous armor?

Suddenly they saw a great spot of light, a spot that spread with startling rapidity, a patch of light that ran, and moved. It flew through the air at terrific speed. It was a pallid light, green and wan and ghostly, that seemed to flow and ebb.

For an instant Morey and the others stared in utter surprise. Then suddenly Morey burst out laughing.

“Ho—you win, Arcot. That was one they didn’t think of, I’ll bet! Luminous paint—and by the hundred gallon! Radium paint, I suppose, and no man has ever found how to stop the glow of radium. That plane sticks out like a sore thumb!”

Indeed, the great luminous splotch made the gigantic plane clearly evident against the gray clouds. Visible or not, that plane was marked.

Quickly Arcot tried to maneuver the Solarite over another of the great ships, for now the danger was only from those he could not see. Suddenly he had an idea.

“Morey—go back to the power room and change the adjustment on the meteorite avoider to half a mile!” At once Morey understood his plan, and hastened to put it into effect.

The illuminated plane was diving, twisting wildly now. The Solarite flashed toward it with sickening speed, then suddenly the gigantic bulk of the plane loomed off to the right of the tiny ship, the great metal hull, visible now, rising in awesome might. They were too near; they shot away to a greater distance—then again that ghostly beam reached out—and for just a fraction of a second it touched the giant plane.

The titanic engine of destruction seemed suddenly to be in the grip of some vastly greater Colossus—a clutching hand that closed! The plane jumped back with an appalling crash, a roar of rending metal. For an instant there came the sound like a mighty buzz-saw as the giant propellers of one wing cut into the body of the careening plane. In that instant, the great power storage tank split open with an impact like the bursting of a world. The Solarite was hurled back by an explosion that seemed to rend the very atoms of the air, and all about them was a torrid blaze of heat and light that seemed to sear their faces and hands with its intensity.

Then in a time so brief that it seemed never to have happened, it was gone, and only the distant drone of the other ships’ propellers came to them. There was no luminous spot. The radium paint had been destroyed in the only possible way—it was volatilized through all the atmosphere!

The Terrestrians had known what to expect; had known what would happen; and they had not looked at the great ship in that last instant. But the Kaxorians had naturally been looking at it. They had never seen the sun directly, and now they had been looking at a radiance almost as brilliant. They were temporarily blinded; they could only fly a straight course in response to the quick order of their squadron commander.

And in that brief moment that they were unable to watch him, Arcot dropped two more bombs in quick succession. Two bright spots formed in the black night. No longer did these planes feel themselves invulnerable, able to meet any foe! In an instant they had put on every last trace of power, and at their top speed they were racing west, away from their tiny opponent—in the only direction that was open to them.

But it was useless. The Solarite could pick up speed in half the time they could, and in an instant Arcot again trained his beam on the mighty splotch of light that was a fleeing plane.

Out of the darkness came a ghostly beam, for an instant of time so short that before the explosive shells of the other could be trained on it, the Solarite had moved. Under that touch the mighty plane began crumbling, then it splintered beneath the driving blow of the great wing, as it shot toward the main body of the plane at several miles a second—driving into and through it! The giant plane twisted and turned as it fell swiftly downward into the darkness—and, again there came that world-rocking explosion, and the mighty column of light.

Again and yet again the Solarite found and destroyed Kaxorian super-planes, protected in the uneven conflict by their diminutive size and the speed of their elusive maneuvering.

But to remind the men of the Solarite that they were not alone, there came a sudden report just behind them, and they turned to see that one of the energy bombs had barely fallen short! In an instant the comparative midget shot up at top speed, out of danger. It looped and turned, hunting, feeling with its every detector for that other ship. The great planes were spread out now. In every direction they could be located—and all were leaving the scene of the battle. But one by one the Solarite shot after them, and always the speed of the little ship was greater.

Two escaped. They turned off their useless invisibility apparatus and vanished into the night.

The Solarite, supported by her vertical lift units, coasted toward a stop. The drone of the fleeing super-planes diminished and was gone, and for a time the thrum of the generator and the tap-dance of relays adjusting circuits was the only sound aboard.

Wade sighed finally. “Well, gentlemen, now we’ve got it, what do we do with it?”

“What do you mean?” Morey asked.

“Victory. The Jack-pot. Having the devices we just demonstrated, we are now the sole owners, by right of conquest, of one highly disturbed nation of several million people. With that gadget there, we can pick it up and throw it away.

“Personally, I have a feeling that we’ve just won the largest white elephant in history. We don’t just walk off and leave it, you know. We don’t want it. But we’ve got it.

“Our friends in Sonor are not going to want the problem either; they just wanted the Kaxorians combed out of their hair.

“As I say—we’ve got it, now—but what do we do with it?”

“It’s basically their problem, isn’t it?” protested Fuller. Morey looked somewhat stricken, and thoroughly bewildered. “I hadn’t considered that aspect very fully; I’ve been too darned busy trying to stay alive.”

Wade shook his head. “Look, Fuller—it was their problem before, too, wasn’t it? How’d they handle it? If you just let them alone, what do you suppose they’ll do with the problem this time?”

“The same thing they did before,” Arcot groaned. “I’m tired. Let’s get some sleep first, anyway.”

“Sure; that makes good sense,” Wade agreed. “Sleep on it, yes. But go to sleep on it—well, that’s what the not-so-bright Sonorans tried doing.

“And off-hand, I’d say we were elected. The Kaxorians undoubtedly have a nice, two thousand year old hatred for the Sonorans who so snobbishly ignored them, isolated them, and considered them unfit for association. The Sonorans, on the other hand, are now thoroughly scared, and will be feeling correspondingly vindictive. They won this time by a fluke—our coming. I can just see those two peoples getting together and settling any kind of sensible, long-term treaty of mutual cooperation!”

Arcot and Morey both nodded wearily. “That is so annoyingly correct,” Morey agreed. “And you know blasted well none of us is going to sleep until we have some line of attack on this white elephant disposal problem. Anybody any ideas?”

Fuller looked at the other three. “You know, in design when two incompatible materials must be structurally united, we tie each to a third material that is compatible with both.

“Sonor didn’t win this fight. Kaxor didn’t win it. Earth—in the persona of the Solarite—did. Earth isn’t mad at anybody, hasn’t been damaged by anybody, and hasn’t been knowingly ignoring anybody.

“The Sonorans want to be let alone; it won’t work, but they can learn that. I think if we run the United Nations in on this thing, we may be able to get them to accept our white elephant for us.

“They’ll be making the same mistake Sonor did if they don’t—knowingly ignoring the existence of a highly intelligent and competent race. It doesn’t seem to work, judging from history both at home and here.”

The four looked at each other, and found agreement.

“That’s something more than a problem to sleep on,” Morey said. “I’ll get in touch with Sonor and tell ’em the shooting is over, so they can get some sleep too.

“It’s obvious a bunch of high-power research teams are going to be needed in both countries. Earth has every reason to respect Sonoran mental sciences as well as Kaxorian light-engineering. And Earth—as we just thoroughly demonstrated—has some science of her own. Obviously, the interaction of the three is to the maximum advantage of each—and will lead to a healing of the breach that now exists.”

Arcot looked up and yawned. “I’m putting this on autopilot at twenty miles up, and going to sleep. We can kick this around for a month anyway—and this is not the night to start.”

“The decision is unanimous,” Wade grinned.

BOOK THREE: THE BLACK STAR PASSES

PROLOGUE

Taj Lamor gazed steadily down at the vast dim bulk of the ancient city spread out beneath him. In the feeble light of the stars its mighty masses of up-flung metal buildings loomed strangely, like the shells of some vast race of crustacea, long extinct. Slowly he turned, gazing now out across the great plaza, where rested long rows of slender, yet mighty ships. Thoughtfully he stared at their dim, half-seen shapes.

Taj Lamor was not human. Though he was humanoid, Earth had never seen creatures just like him. His seven foot high figure seemed a bit ungainly by Terrestrial standards, and his strangely white, hairless flesh, suggesting unbaked dough, somehow gave the impression of near-transparency. His eyes were disproportionately large, and the black disc of pupil in the white corneas was intensified by contrast. Yet perhaps his race better deserved the designation homo sapiens than Terrestrians do, for it was wise with the accumulated wisdom of uncounted eons.

He turned to the other man in the high, cylindrical, dimly lit tower room overlooking the dark metropolis, a man far older than Taj Lamor, his narrow shoulders bent, and his features grayed with his years. His single short, tight-fitting garment of black plastic marked him as one of the Elders. The voice of Taj Lamor was vibrant with feeling:

“Tordos Gar, at last we are ready to seek a new sun. Life for our race!”

A quiet, patient, imperturbable smile appeared on the Elder’s face and the heavy lids closed over his great eyes.

“Yes,” he said sadly, “but at what cost in tranquility! The discord, the unrest, the awakening of unnatural ambitions—a dreadful price to pay for a questionable gain. Too great a price, I think.” His eyes opened, and he raised a thin hand to check the younger man’s protest. “I know—I know—in this we do not see as one. Yet perhaps some day you will learn even as I have that to rest is better than to engage in an endless struggle. Suns and planets die. Why should races seek to escape the inevitable?” Tordos Gar turned slowly away and gazed fixedly into the night sky.

Taj Lamor checked an impatient retort and sighed resignedly. It was this attitude that had made his task so difficult. Decadence. A race on an ages-long decline from vast heights of philosophical and scientific learning. Their last external enemy had been defeated millennia in the past; and through easy forgetfulness and lack of strife, ambition had died. Adventure had become a meaningless word.

Strangely, during the last century a few men had felt the stirrings of long-buried emotion, of ambition, of a craving for adventure. These were throwbacks to those ancestors of the race whose science had built their world. These men, a comparative handful, had been drawn to each other by the unnatural ferment within them; and Taj Lamor had become their leader. They had begun a mighty struggle against the inertia of ages of slow decay, had begun a search for the lost secrets of a hundred-million-year-old science.

Taj Lamor raised his eyes to the horizon. Through the leaping curve of the crystal clear roof of their world glowed a blazing spot of yellow fire. A star—the brightest object in a sky whose sun had lost its light. A point of radiance that held the last hopes of an incredibly ancient race.

The quiet voice of Tordos Gar came through the semidarkness of the room, a pensive, dreamlike quality in its tones.

“You, Taj Lamor, and those young men who have joined you in this futile expedition do not think deeply enough. Your vision is too narrow. You lack perspective. In your youth you cannot think on a cosmic scale.” He paused as though in thought, and when he continued, it seemed almost as though he were speaking to himself.

“In the far, dim past fifteen planets circled about a small, red sun. They were dead worlds—or rather, worlds that had not yet lived. Perhaps a million years passed before there moved about on three of them the beginnings of life. Then a hundred million years passed, and those first, crawling protoplasmic masses had become animals, and plants, and intermediate growths. And they fought endlessly for survival. Then more millions of years passed, and there appeared a creature which slowly gained ascendancy over the other struggling life forms that fought for the warmth of rays of the hot, red sun.

“That sun had been old, even as the age of a star is counted, before its planets had been born, and many, many millions of years had passed before those planets cooled, and then more eons sped by before life appeared. Now, as life slowly forced its way upward, that sun was nearly burned out. The animals fought, and bathed in the luxury of its rays, for many millennia were required to produce any noticeable change in its life-giving radiations.

“At last one animal gained the ascendancy. Our race. But though one species now ruled, there was no peace. Age followed age while semi-barbaric peoples fought among themselves. But even as they fought, they learned.

“They moved from caves into structures of wood and stone—and engineering had its beginning. With the buildings came little chemical engines to destroy them; warfare was developing. Then came the first crude flying-machines, using clumsy, inefficient engines. Chemical engines! Engines so crude that one could watch the flow of their fuel! One part in one hundred thousand million of the energy of their propellents they released to run the engines, and they carried fuel in such vast quantities that they staggered under its load as they left the ground! And warfare became world-wide. After flight came other machines and other ages. Other scientists began to have visions of the realms beyond, and they sought to tap the vast reservoirs of Nature’s energies, the energies of matter.

“Other ages saw it done—a few thousand years later there passed out into space a machine that forced its way across the void to another planet! And the races of the three living worlds became as one—but there was no peace.

“Swiftly now, science grew upon itself, building with ever faster steps, like a crystal which, once started, forms with incalculable speed.

“And while that science grew swiftly greater, other changes took place, changes in our universe itself. Ten million years passed before the first of those changes became important. But slowly, steadily our atmosphere was drifting into space. Through ages this gradually became apparent. Our worlds were losing their air and their water. One planet, less favored than another, fought for its life, and space itself was ablaze with the struggles of wars for survival.

“Again science helped us. Thousands of years before, men had learned how to change the mass of matter into energy, but now at last the process was reversed, and those ancestors of ours could change energy into matter, any kind of matter they wished. Rock they took, and changed it to energy, then that energy they transmuted to air, to water, to the necessary metals. Their planets took a new lease of life!

“But even this could not continue forever. They must stop that loss of air. The process they had developed for reformation of matter admitted of a new use. Creation! They were now able to make new elements, elements that had never existed in nature! They designed atoms as, long before, their fathers had designed molecules. At last their problem was solved. They made a new form of matter that was clearer than any crystal, and yet stronger and tougher than any metal known. Since it held out none of the sun’s radiations, they could roof their worlds with it and keep their air within!

“This was a task that could not be done in a year, nor a decade, but all time stretched out unending before them. One by one the three planets became tremendous, roofed-in cities. Only their vast powers, their mighty machines made the task possible, but it was done.”

The droning voice of Tordos Gar ceased. Taj Lamor, who had listened with a mixture of amusement and impatience to the recital of a history he knew as well as the aged, garrulous narrator, waited out of the inborn respect which every man held for the Elders. At length he exclaimed: “I see no point—”

“But you will when I finish—or, at least, I hope you will.” Tordos Gar’s words and tone were gently reproving. He continued quietly:

“Slowly the ages drifted on, each marked by greater and greater triumphs of science. But again and again there were wars. Some there were in which the population of a world was halved, and all space for a billion miles about was a vast cauldron of incandescent energy in which tremendous fleets of space ships swirled and fused like ingredients in some cosmic brew. Forces were loosed on the three planets that sent even their mighty masses reeling drunkenly out of their orbits, and space itself seemed to be torn by the awful play of energies.

“Always peace followed—a futile peace. A few brief centuries or a few millennia, and again war would flame. It would end, and life would continue.

“But slowly there crept into the struggle a new factor, a darkening cloud, a change that came so gradually that only the records of instruments, made during a period of thousands of years, could show it. Our sun had changed from bright red to a deep, sullen crimson, and ever less and less heat poured from it. It was waning!

“As the fires of life died down, the people of the three worlds joined in a conflict with the common menace, death from the creeping cold of space. There was no need for great haste; a sun dies slowly. Our ancestors laid their plans and carried them out. The fifteen worlds were encased in shells of crystal. Those that had no atmosphere were given one. Mighty heating plants were built—furnaces that burned matter, designed to warm a world! At last a state of stability had been reached, for never could conditions change—it seemed. All external heat and light came from far-off stars, the thousands of millions of suns that would never fail.

“Under stress of the Great Change one scarcely noticed, yet almost incredible, transformation had occurred. We had learned to live with each other. We had learned to think, and enjoy thinking. As a species we had passed from youth into maturity. Advancement did not stop; we went on steadily toward the goal of all knowledge. At first there was an underlying hope that we might some day, somehow, escape from these darkened, artificial worlds of ours, but with the passing centuries this grew very dim and at length was forgotten.

“Gradually as millennia passed, much ancient knowledge was also forgotten. It was not needed. The world was unchanging, there was no strife, and no need of strife. The fifteen worlds were warm, and pleasant, and safe. Without fully realizing it, we had entered a period of rest. And so the ages passed; and there were museums and libraries and laboratories; and the machines of our ancestors did all necessary work. So it was—until less than a generation ago. Our long lives were pleasant, and death, when it came, was a sleep. And then—”

“And then,” Taj Lamor interrupted, a sharp edge of impatience in his tone, “some of us awakened from our stupor!”

The Elder sighed resignedly. “You cannot see—you cannot see. You would start that struggle all over again!” His voice continued in what Taj Lamor thought of as a senile drone, but the younger man paid scant attention. His eyes and thoughts were centered on that brilliant yellow star, the brightest object in the heavens. It was that star, noticeably brighter within a few centuries, that had awakened a few men from their mental slumbers.

They were throwbacks, men who had the divine gift of curiosity; and sparked by their will to know, they had gone to the museums and looked carefully at the ancient directions for the use of the telectroscope, the mighty electrically amplified vision machine, had gazed through it. They had seen a great sun that seemed to fill all the field of the apparatus with blazing fire. A sun to envy! Further observation had revealed that there circled about the sun a series of planets, five, definitely; two more, probably; and possibly two others.

Taj Lamor had been with that group, a young man then, scarcely more than forty, but they had found him a leader and they had followed him as he set about his investigation of the ancient books on astronomy.

How many, many hours had he studied those ancient works! How many times had he despaired of ever learning their truths, and gone out to the roof of the museum to stand in silent thought looking out across the awful void to the steady flame of the yellow star! Then quietly he had returned to his self-set task.

With him as teacher, others had learned, and before he was seventy there were many men who had become true scientists, astronomers. There was much of the ancient knowledge that these men could not understand, for the science of a million centuries is not to be learned in a few brief decades, but they mastered a vast amount of the forgotten lore.

They knew now that the young, live sun, out there in space, was speeding toward them, their combined velocities equalling more than 100 miles each second. And they knew that there were not seven, but nine planets circling about that sun. There were other facts they discovered; they found that the new sun was far larger than theirs had ever been; indeed, it was a sun well above average in size and brilliance. There were planets, a hot sun—a home! Could they get there?

When their ancestors had tried to solve the problem of escape they had concentrated their work on the problem of going at speeds greater than that of light. This should be an impossibility, but the fact that the ancients had tried it, seemed proof enough to their descendants that it was possible, at least in theory. In the distant past they had needed speeds exceeding that of light, for they must travel light years; but now this sun was coming toward them, and already was less than two hundred and fifty billion miles away!

They would pass that other star in about seventy years. That was scarcely more than a third of a man’s lifetime. They could make the journey with conceivable speeds—but in that brief period they must prepare to move!

The swift agitation for action had met with terrific resistance. They were satisfied; why move?

But, while some men had devoted their time to arousing the people to help, others had begun doing work that had not been done for a long, long time. The laboratories were reopened, and workshops began humming again. They were making things that were new once more, not merely copying old designs.

Their search had been divided into sections, search for weapons with which to defend themselves in case they were attacked, and search for the basic principles underlying the operation of their space ships. They had machines which they could imitate, but they did not understand them. Success had been theirs on these quests. The third section had been less successful. They had also been searching for secrets of the apparatus their forefathers had used to swing the planets in their orbits, to move worlds about at will. They had wanted to be able to take not only their space ships, but their planets as well, when they went to settle on these other worlds and in this other solar system.

But the search for this secret had remained unrewarded. The secret of the spaceships they learned readily, and Taj Lamor had designed these mighty ships below there with that knowledge. Their search for weapons had been satisfied; they had found one weapon, one of the deadliest that their ancestors had ever invented. But the one secret in which they were most interested, the mighty force barrage that could swing a world in its flight through space, was lost. They could not find it.

They knew the principles of the driving apparatus of their ships, and it would seem but a matter of enlargement to drive a planet as a ship, but they knew this was impossible; the terrific forces needed would easily be produced by their apparatus, but there was no way to apply them to a world. If applied in any spot, the planet would be torn asunder by the incalculable strain. They must apply the force equally to the entire planet. Their problem was one of application of power. The rotation of the planet made it impossible to use a series of driving apparatus, even could these be anchored, but again the sheer immensity of the task made it impossible.

Taj Lamor gazed down again at the great ships in the plaza below. Their mighty bulks seemed to dwarf even the huge buildings about them. Yet these ships were his—for he had learned their secrets and designed them, and now he was to command them as they flew out across space in that flight to the distant star.

He turned briefly to the Elder, Tordos Gar. “Soon we leave,” he said, a faint edge of triumph in his voice. “We will prove that our way is right.”

The old man shook his head. “You will learn—” he began, but Taj Lamor did not want to hear.

He turned, passed through a doorway, and stepped into a little torpedo-shaped car that rested on the metal roof behind him. A moment later the little ship rose, and then slanted smoothly down over the edge of the roof, straight for the largest of the ships below. This was the flagship. Nearly a hundred feet greater was its diameter, and its mile and a quarter length of gleaming metal hull gave it nearly three hundred feet greater length than that of the ships of the line.

This expedition was an expedition of exploration. They were prepared to meet any conditions on those other worlds—no atmosphere, no water, no heat, or even an atmosphere of poisonous gases they could rectify, for their transmutation apparatus would permit them to change those gases, or modify them; they knew well how to supply heat, but they knew too, that that sun would warm some of its planets sufficiently for their purposes.

Taj Lamor sent his little machine darting through the great airlock in the side of the gigantic interstellar ship and lowered it gently to the floor. A man stepped forward, opened the door for the leader, saluting him briskly as he stepped out; then the car was run swiftly aside, to be placed with thousands of others like it. Each of these cars was to be used by a separate investigator when they reached those other worlds, and there were men aboard who would use them.

Taj Lamor made his way to a door in the side of a great metal tube that threaded the length of the huge ship. Opening the door he sat down in another little car that shot swiftly forward as the double door shut softly, with a low hiss of escaping air. For moments the car sped through the tube, then gently it slowed and came to rest opposite another door. Again came the hissing of gas as the twin doors opened, and Taj Lamor stepped out, now well up in the nose of the cruiser. As he stepped out of the car the outer and inner doors closed, and, ready now for other calls, the car remained at this station. On a ship so long, some means of communication faster than walking was essential. This little pneumatic railway was the solution.

As Taj Lamor stepped out of the tube, a half-dozen men, who had been talking among themselves, snapped quickly to attention. Following the plans of the long-gone armies of their ancestors, the men of the expedition had been trained to strict discipline; and Taj Lamor was their technical leader and the nominal Commander-in-Chief, although another man, Kornal Sorul, was their actual commander.

Taj Lamor proceeded at once to the Staff Cabin in the very nose of the great ship. Just above him there was another room, walled on all sides by that clear, glass-like material, the control cabin. Here the pilot sat, directing the motions of the mighty ship of space.

Taj Lamor pushed a small button on his desk and in a moment a gray disc before him glowed dimly, then flashed into life and full, natural color. As though looking through a glass porthole, Taj Lamor saw the interior of the Communications Room. The Communications Officer was gazing at a similar disc in which Taj Lamor’s features appeared.

“Have they reported from Ohmur, Lorsand, and Throlus, yet, Morlus Tal?” asked the commander.

“They are reporting now, Taj Lamor, and we will be ready within two and one half minutes. The plans are as before; we are to proceed directly toward the Yellow Star, meeting at Point 71?”

“The plans are as before. Start when ready.”

The disc faded, the colors died, and it was gray again. Taj Lamor pulled another small lever on the panel before him, and the disc changed, glowed, and was steady; and now he saw the preparations for departure, as from an eye on the top of the great ship. Men streamed swiftly in ordered columns all about and into the huge vessels. In an incredibly short time they were in, and the great doors closed behind them. Suddenly there came a low, dull hum through the disc, and the sound mounted quickly, till all the world seemed humming to that dull note. The warning!

Abruptly the city around him seemed to blaze in a riot of colored light! The mighty towering bulks of the huge metal buildings were polished and bright, and now, as the millions of lights, every color of the spectrum, flashed over all the city from small machines in the air, on the ground, in windows, their great metal walls glistening with a riot of flowing color. Then there was a trembling through all the frame of the mighty ship. In a moment it was gone, and the titanic mass of glistening metal rose smoothly, quickly to the great roof of their world above them. On an even keel it climbed straight up, then suddenly it leaped forward like some great bird of prey sighting its victim. The ground beneath sped swiftly away, and behind it there came a long line of ships, quickly finding their position in the formation. They were heading toward the giant airlock that would let them out into space. There was but one lock large enough to permit so huge a ship to pass out, and they must circle half their world to reach it.

On three other worlds there were other giant ships racing thus to meet beyond their solar system. There were fifty ships coming from each planet; two hundred mighty ships in all made up this Armada of Space, two hundred gargantuan interstellar cruisers.

One by one the giant ships passed through the airlock and out into space. Here they quickly reformed as they moved off together, each ship falling into its place in the mighty cone formation, with the flagship of Taj Lamor at the head. On they rushed through space, their speed ever mounting. Suddenly there seemed to leap out of nowhere another mass of shining machines that flew swiftly beside them. Like some strange, shining ghosts, these ships seemed to materialize instantly beside and behind their fleet. They fell in quickly in their allotted position behind the Flagship’s squadron. One—two more fleets appeared thus suddenly in the dark, and together the ships were flashing on through space to their goal of glowing fire ahead!

Hour after hour, day after day the ships flashed on through the awful void, the utter silence relieved by the communications between themselves and the slowly weakening communications from the far-off home planets.

But as those signals from home grew steadily weaker, the sun before them grew steadily larger. At last the men began to feel the heat of those rays, to realize the energy that that mighty sea of flame poured forth into space, and steadily they watched it grow nearer.

Then came a day when they could make out clearly the dim bulk of a planet before them, and for long hours they slowed down the flying speed of the ships. They had mapped the system they were approaching; there were nine planets of varying sizes, some on the near and some on the far side of the sun. There were but three on the near side; one that seemed the outermost of the planets, about 35,000 miles in diameter, was directly in their path, while there were two more much nearer the sun, about 100,000,000 and 70,000,000 miles distant from it, each about seven to eight thousand miles in diameter, but they were on opposite sides of the sun. These more inviting and more accessible worlds were numbers two and three of the planetary system. It was decided to split the expedition into two parts; one part was to go to planet two, and the other to three. Taj Lamor was to lead his group of a hundred ships to the nearer planet at once.

In a very brief time the great ships slanted down over what seemed to be a mighty globe of water. They were well in the northern hemisphere, and they had come near the planet first over a vast stretch of rolling ocean. The men had looked in wonder at such vast quantities of the fluid. To them it was a precious liquid, that must be made artificially, and was to be conserved, yet here they saw such vast quantities of natural water as seemed impossible. Still, their ancient books had told of such things, and of other strange things, things that must have been wondrously beautiful, though they were so old now, these records, that they were regarded largely as myths.

Yet here were the strange proofs! They saw great masses of fleecy water vapor, huge billowy things that seemed solid, but were blown lightly in the wind. And natural air! The atmosphere extended for hundreds of miles off into space; and now, as they came closer to the surface of this world the air was dense, and the sky above them was a beautiful blue, not black, even where there were stars. The great sun, so brilliantly incandescent when seen from space, and now a glowing globe of reddish-yellow.

And as they came near land, they looked in wonder at mighty masses of rock and soil that threw their shaggy heads high above the surrounding terrain, huge masses that rose high, like waves in the water, till they towered in solemn grandeur miles into the air! What a sight for these men of a world so old that age long erosion had washed away the last traces of hills, and filled in all of the valleys!

In awe they looked down at the mighty rock masses, as they swung low over the mountains, gazing in wonder at the green masses of the strange vegetation; strange, indeed, for they for uncounted ages had grown only mushroom-like cellulose products, and these mainly for ornament, for all their food was artificially made in huge factories.

Then they came over a little mountain lake, a body of water scarcely large enough to berth one of their huge ships, but high in the clear air of the mountains, fed by the melting of eternal snows. It was a magnificent sapphire in a setting green as emerald, a sparkling lake of clear water, deep as the sea, high in a cleft in the mountains.

In wonder the men looked down at these strange sights. What a marvelous home!

Steadily the great machines proceeded, and at last the end of the giant mountain was reached, and they came to a great plain. But that plain was strangely marked off with squares, as regularly as though plotted with a draftsman’s square. This world must be inhabited by intelligent beings!

Suddenly Taj Lamor saw strange specks off in the far horizon to the south, specks that seemed to grow in size with terrific velocity; these must be ships, the ships of these people, coming to defend their home. The strangely pallid face of Taj Lamor tightened into lines of grim resolution. This was a moment he had foreseen and had dreaded. Was he to withdraw and leave these people unmolested, or was he to stand and fight for this world, this wonderfully beautiful home, a home that his race could live in for millions of years to come? He had debated this question many times before in his mind, and he had decided. There would never, never be another chance for his people to gain a new home. They must fight.

Swiftly he gave his orders. If resistance came, if an attack were made, they were to fight back at once, with every weapon at their disposal.

The strangers’ ships had grown swiftly larger to the eye, but still, though near now, they seemed too small to be dangerous. These giant interstellar cruisers were certainly invulnerable to ships so small; their mere size would give them protection! These ships were scarcely as long as the diameter of the smaller of the interstellar ships—a bare two hundred and fifty feet for the largest.

The interstellar cruisers halted in their course, and waited for the little ships to approach. They were fast, for they drew alongside quickly, and raced to the front of the flagship. There was one small one that was painted white, and on it there was a large white banner, flapping in the wind of its passage. The rest of the ships drew off as this came forward, and stopped, hanging motionless before the control room of the giant machine. There were men inside—three strange men, short and oddly pink-skinned—but they were gesturing now, motioning that the giant machine settle to the ground beneath. Taj Lamor was considering whether or not to thus parley with the strangers, when suddenly there leaped from the white craft a beam of clear white—a beam that was directed toward the ground, then swung up toward the great cruiser in a swift arc!

As one, a dozen swift beams of pale red flared out from the giant and bathed the pigmy craft. As they reached it, the white ray that had been sweeping up suddenly vanished, and for an instant the ship hung poised in the air; then it began to swing crazily, like the pendulum of a clock—swung completely over—and with a sickening lurch sped swiftly for the plain nearly five miles below. In moments there came a brief flare, then there remained only a little crater in the soft soil.

But the red beams had not stopped with the little ship; they had darted out to the other machines, trying to reach them before they could bring those strange white rays into play. The cruisers obviously must win, for they carried dozens of projectors, but they might be damaged, their flight delayed. They must defeat those strangers quickly. The rays of Taj Lamor’s ship lashed out swiftly, but almost before they had started, all the other ships, a full hundred, were in action, and the flagship was darting swiftly up and away from the battle. Below, those pale red rays were taking a swift toll of the little ships, and nearly twenty of them rolled suddenly over, and dashed to destruction far below.

But now the little ships were in swift darting motion. Because of their small size, they were able to avoid the rays of the larger interstellar cruisers, and as their torpedo-shaped hulls flashed about with bewildering speed, they began to fight back. They had been taken utterly by surprise, but now they went into action with an abandon and swiftness that took the initiative away from the gigantic interstellar liners. They were in a dozen places at once, dodging and twisting, unharmed, out of the way of the deadly red beams, and were as hard to hit as so many dancing feathers suspended over an air jet.

And if the pilots were skillful in avoiding enemy rays, their ray men were as accurate in placing theirs. But then, with a target of such vast size, not so much skill was necessary.

These smaller vessels were the ships of Earth. The people of the dark star had entered the solar system quite unannounced, except that they had been seen in passing the orbit of Mars, for a ship had been out there in space, moving steadily out toward Neptune, and the great interstellar cruisers, flashing in across space, away from that frigid planet, had not seen the tiny wanderer. But he had seen those mighty hulks, and had sent his message of danger out on the ether, warning the men of Earth. They had relayed it to Venus, and the ships that had gone there had received an equally warm reception, and were even now finding their time fully occupied trying to beat off the Interplanetary Patrol.

The battle ended as swiftly as it began, for Taj Lamor, in his machine high above, saw that they were outclassed, and ordered them to withdraw at once. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed, yet they had lost twenty-two of their giant ships.

The expedition that had gone to Venus reported a similarly active greeting. It was decided at once that they should proceed cautiously to the other planets, to determine which were inhabited and which were not, and to determine the chemical and physical conditions on each.

The ships formed again out in space, on the other side of the sun, however, and started at once in compact formation for Mercury.

Their observations were completed without further mishap, and they set out for their distant home, their number depleted by forty-one ships, for nineteen had fallen on Venus.

I

The Terrestrian and Venerian governments had met in conference, a grim, businesslike discussion with few wasted words. Obviously, this was to be a war of science, a war on a scale never before known on either world. Agreements were immediately drawn up between the two worlds for a concerted, cooperative effort. A fleet of new and vastly more powerful ships must be constructed—but first they must have a complete report on the huge invading craft that had fallen in western Canada, and on Venus, for they might conceivably make their secrets their own.

They called for the scientists whose work had made possible their successful resistance of the marauders: Arcot, Morey and Wade. They found them working in the Arcot Laboratories.

“Wade,” called Arcot tensely as he snapped the switch of the televisophone, “bring Morey and meet me at the machine on the roof at once. That was a call from Washington. I’ll explain as soon as you get there.”

On the roof Arcot opened the hangar doors, and entered the five-passenger molecular motion ship inside. Its sleek, streamlined sides spoke of power and speed. This was a special research model, designed for their experiments, and carrying mechanisms not found in commercial crafts. Among these were automatic controls still in the laboratory stage, but permitting higher speed, for no human being could control the ship as accurately as these.

It took the trio a little less than a quarter of an hour to make the 5,000 mile trip from New York to the battlefield of Canada. As they sped through the air, Arcot told them what had transpired. The three were passed through the lines at once, and they settled to the ground beside one of the huge ships that lay half buried in the ground. The force of the impact had splashed the solid soil as a stone will splash soft mud, and around the ship there was a massive ridge of earth. Arcot looked at the titanic proportions of this ship from space, and turned to his friends:

“We can investigate that wreck on foot, but I think it’ll be far more sensible to see what we can do with the car. This monster is certainly a mile or more long, and we’d spend more time in walking than in investigation. I suggest, we see if there isn’t room for the car inside. This beats even those huge Kaxorian planes for size.” Arcot paused, then grinned. “I sure would have liked to mix in the fight they must have had here—nice little things to play with, aren’t they?”

“It would make a nice toy,” agreed Wade as he looked at the rows of wicked-looking projectors along the sides of the metal hull,“and I wonder if there might not be some of the crew alive in there? If there are, the size of the ship would prevent their showing themselves very quickly, and since they can’t move the ship, it seems to me that they’ll let us know shortly that they’re around. Probably, with the engines stopped, their main weapons are useless, but they would doubtless have some sort of guns. I’m highly in favor of using the car. We carry a molecular director ray, so if the way is blocked, we can make a new one.”

Wade’s attention was caught by a sudden flare of light a few miles across the plain.“Look over there—that ship is still flaming—reddish, but almost colorless. Looks like a gas flame, with a bit of calcium in it. Almost as if the air in the ship were combustible. If we should do any exploring in this baby, I suggest we use altitude suits—they can’t do any harm in any case.”

Three or four of the great wrecks, spread over a wide area, were burning now, hurling forth long tongues of colorless, intensely hot flame. Several of the ships had been only slightly damaged; one had been brought down by a beam that had torn free the entire tail of the ship, leaving the bow in good condition. Apparently this machine had not fallen far; perhaps the pilot had retained partial control of the ship, his power failing when he was only a comparatively short distance from Earth. This was rather well to one side of the plain, however, and they decided to investigate it later.

The ship nearest them had crashed nose first, the point being crushed and shattered. Arcot maneuvered his craft cautiously toward the great hole at the nose of the ship, and they entered the mighty vessel slowly, a powerful spotlight illuminating the interior. Tremendous girders, twisted and broken by the force of impact, thrust up about them. It soon became evident that there was little to fear from any living enemies, and they proceeded more rapidly. Certainly no creature could live after the shock that had broken these huge girders! Several times metal beams blocked their path, and they were forced to use the molecular director ray to bend them out of the way.

“Man,” said Arcot as they stopped a moment to clear away a huge member that was bent across their path, “but those beams do look as if they were built permanently! I’d hate to ram into one of them! Look at that one—if that has anywhere near the strength of steel, just think of the force it took to bend it!”

At last they had penetrated to the long tube that led through the length of the ship, the communication tube. This admitted the small ship easily, and they moved swiftly along till they came to what they believed to be about the center of the invader. Here Arcot proposed that they step out and see what there was to be seen.

The others agreed, and they at once put on their altitude suits of heavy rubberized canvas, designed to be worn outside the ship when at high altitude, or even in space. They were supplied with oxygen tanks that would keep the wearer alive for about six hours. Unless the atmosphere remaining in the alien ship was excessively corrosive, they would be safe. After a brief discussion, they decided that all would go, for if they met opposition, there would be strength in numbers.

They met their first difficulty in opening the door leading out of the communication tube. It was an automatic door, and resisted their every effort—until finally they were forced to tear it out with a ray. It was impossible to move it in any other way. The door was in what was now the floor, since the ship seemed to have landed on one side rather than on its keel.

They let themselves through the narrow opening one at a time, and landed on the sloping wall of the corridor beyond.

“Lucky this wasn’t a big room, or we’d have had a nice drop to the far wall!” commented Wade. The suits were equipped with a thin vibrating diaphragm that made speech easy, but Wade’s voice came through with a queerly metallic ring.

Arcot agreed somewhat absently, his attention directed toward their surroundings. His hand light pierced the blackness, finally halting at a gaping opening, apparently the entrance to a corridor. As they examined it, they saw that it slanted steeply downward.

“It seems to be quite a drop,” said Wade as he turned his light into it, “but the surface seems to be rather rough. I think we can do it. I notice that you brought a rope, Morey; I think it’ll help. I’ll go first, unless someone else wants the honor.”

“You go first?” Arcot hesitated briefly. “But I don’t know—if we’re all going, I guess you had better, at that. It would take two ordinary men to lower a big bulk like you. On the other hand, if anybody is going to stay, you’re delegated as elevator boy!

“Hold everything,” continued Arcot. “I have an idea. I think none of us will need to hold the weight of the others with the rope. Wade, will you get three fairly good-sized pieces of metal, something we can tie a rope to? I think we can get down here without the help of anyone else. Morey, will you cut the rope in three equal pieces while I help Wade tear loose that girder?”

Arcot refused to reveal his idea till his preparations were complete, but worked quickly and efficiently. With the aid of Wade, he soon had three short members, and taking the rope that Morey had prepared, he tied lengths of cord to the pieces of metal, leaving twenty foot lengths hanging from each. Now he carefully tested his handiwork to make sure the knots would not slip.

“Now, let’s see what we can do.” Arcot put a small loop in one end of a cord, thrust his left wrist through this, and grasped the rope firmly with his hand. Then he drew his ray pistol, and adjusted it carefully for direction of action. The trigger gave him control over power. Finally he turned the ray on the block of metal at the other end of the rope. At once the metal pulled vigorously, drawing the rope taut, and as Arcot increased the power, he was dragged slowly across the floor.

“Ah—it works.” He grinned broadly over his shoulder. “Come on, boys, hitch your wagon to a star, and we’ll go on with the investigation. This is a new, double action parachute. It lets you down easy, and pulls you up easier! I think we can go where we want now.” After a pause he added, “I don’t have to tell you that too much power will be very bad!”

With Arcot’s simple brake, they lowered themselves into the corridor below, descending one at a time, to avoid any contact with the ray, since the touch of the beam was fatal.

The scene that lay before them was one of colossal destruction. They had evidently stumbled upon the engine room. They could not hope to illuminate its vast expanse with their little hand lights, but they could gain some idea of its magnitude, and of its original layout. The floor, now tilted at a steep angle, was torn up in many places, showing great, massive beams, buckled and twisted like so many wires, while the heavy floor plates were crumpled like so much foil. Everywhere the room seemed covered with a film of white silvery metal; it was silver, they decided after a brief examination, spattered broadcast over the walls of the room.

Suddenly Morey pointed ceilingward with his light. “That’s where the silver came from!” he exclaimed. A network of heavy bars ran across the roof, great bars of solid silver fully three feet thick. In one section gaped a ragged hole, suggesting the work of a disintegration ray, a hole that went into the metal roof above, one which had plainly been fused, as had the great silver bars.

Arcot looked in wonder at the heavy metal bars. “Lord—bus bars three feet thick! What engines they must have! Look at the way those were blown out! They were short-circuited by the crash, just before the generator went out, and they were volatilized! Some juice!”

With the aid of their improvised elevators, the three men attempted to explore the tremendous chamber. They had scarcely begun, when Wade exclaimed:

“Bodies!”

They crowded around his gruesome find and caught their first glimpse of the invaders from space. Anatomical details could not be distinguished since the bodies had been caught under a rain of crushing beams, but they saw that they were not too different from both Terrestrians and Venerians—though their blood seemed strangely pallid, and their skin was of a ghastly whiteness. Evidently they had been assembled before an unfamiliar sort of instrument panel when catastrophe struck; Morey indicated the dials and keys.

“Nice to know what you’re fighting,” Arcot observed.“I’ve a hunch that we’ll see some of these critters alive—but not in this ship!”

They turned away and resumed their examination of the shattered mechanisms.

A careful examination was impossible; they were wrecks, but Arcot did see that they seemed mainly to be giant electrical machines of standard types, though on a gargantuan scale. There were titanic masses of wrecked metal, iron and silver, for with these men silver seemed to replace copper, though nothing could replace iron and its magnetic uses.

“They are just electrical machines, I guess,” said Arcot at last. “But what size! Have you seen anything really revolutionary, Wade?”

Wade frowned and answered. “There are just two things that bother me. Come here.” As Arcot jumped over, nearly suspended by his ray pistol, Wade directed his light on a small machine that had fallen in between the cracks in the giant mass of broken generators. It was a little thing, apparently housed in a glass case. There was only one objection to that assumption. The base of a large generator lay on it, metal fully two feet thick, and that metal was cracked where it rested on the case, and the case, made of material an inch and a half thick, was not dented!

“Whewww—that’s a nice kind of glass to have!” Morey commented. “I’d like to have a specimen for examination. Oh—I wonder—yes, it must be! There’s a window in the side up there toward what was the bow that seemed to me to be the same stuff. It’s buried about three feet in solid earth, so I imagine it must be.”

The three made their way at once to where they had seen the window. The frame appeared to be steel, or some such alloy, and it was twisted and bent under the blow, for this was evidently the outer wall, and the impact of landing had flattened the rounded side. But that “glass” window was quite undisturbed! There was, as a further proof, a large granite boulder lying against it on the outside—or what had been a boulder, though it had been shattered by the impact.

“Say—that’s some building material!” Arcot indicated the transparent sheet. “Just look at that granite rock—smashed into sand! Yet the window isn’t even scratched! Look how the frame that held it is torn—just torn, not broken. I wonder if we can tear it loose altogether?” He stepped forward, raising his pistol. There was a thud as his metal bar crashed down when the ray was shut off. Then, as the others got out of the way, he stepped toward the window and directed his beam toward it. Gradually he increased the power, till suddenly there was a rending crash, and they saw only a leaping column of earth and sand and broken granite flying up through the hole in the steel shell. There was a sudden violent crash, then a moment later a second equally violent crash as the window, having flown up to the ceiling, came thumping back to the floor.

After the dust had settled they came forward, looking for the window. They found it, somewhat buried by the rubbish, lying off to one side. Arcot bent down to tilt it and sweep off the dirt; he grasped it with one hand, and pulled. The window remained where it was. He grasped it with both hands and pulled harder. The window remained where it was.

“Uh—say, lend a hand will you, Wade.” Together the two men pulled, but without results. That window was about three feet by two feet by one inch, making the total volume about one-half a cubic foot, but it certainly was heavy. They could not begin to move it. An equal volume of lead would have weighed about four hundred pounds, but this was decidedly more than four hundred pounds. Indeed, the combined strength of the three men did not do more than rock it.

“Well—it certainly is no kind of matter we know of!” observed Morey. “Osmium, the heaviest known metal, has a density of twenty-two and a half, which would weigh about 730 pounds. I think we could lift that, so this is heavier than anything we know. At least that’s proof of a new system. Between Venus and Earth we have found every element that occurs in the sun. These people must have come from another star!”

“Either that,” returned Arcot, “or proof of an amazing degree of technological advancement. It’s only a guess, of course—but I have an idea where this kind of matter exists in the solar system. I think you have already seen it—in the gaseous state. You remember, of course, that the Kaxorians had great reservoirs for storing light-energy in a bound state in their giant planes. They had bound light, light held by the gravitational attraction for itself, after condensing it in their apparatus, but they had what amounted to a gas—gaseous light. Now suppose that someone makes a light condenser even more powerful than the one the Kaxorians used, a condenser that forces the light so close to itself, increases its density, till the photons hold each other permanently, and the substance becomes solid. It will be matter, matter made of light—light matter—and let us call it a metal. You know that ordinary matter is electricity matter, and electricity matter metals conduct electricity readily. Now why shouldn’t our ‘light matter’ metal conduct light? It would be a wonderful substance for windows.”

“But now comes the question of moving it,” Wade interposed. “We can’t lift it, and we certainly want to examine it. That means we must take it to the laboratory. I believe we’re about through here—the place is clearly quite permanently demolished. I think we had better return to the ship and start to that other machine we saw that didn’t appear to be so badly damaged. But—how can we move this?”

“I think a ray may do the trick.” Arcot drew his ray pistol, and stepped back a bit, holding the weapon so the ray would direct the plate straight up. Slowly he applied the power, and as he gradually increased it, the plate stirred, then moved into the air.

“It works! Now you can use your pistol, Morey, and direct it toward the corridor. I’ll send it up, and let it fall outside, where we can pick it up later.” Morey stepped forward, and while Arcot held it in the air with his ray, Morey propelled it slowly with his, till it was directly under the corridor leading upward. Then Arcot gave a sudden increase in power, and the plate moved swiftly upward, sailing out of sight. Arcot shut off his ray, and there came to their ears a sudden crash as the plate fell to the floor above.

The three men regained their ropes and “double action parachutes” as Arcot called them, and floated up to the next floor. Again they started the process of moving the plate. All went well till they came to the little car itself. They could not use the ray on the car, for fear of damaging the machinery. They had to use some purely mechanical method of hoisting it in.

Finally they solved the problem by using the molecular director ray to swing a heavy beam into the air, then one man pulled on the far end of it with a rope, and swung it till it was resting on the door of the ship on one end, and the other rested in a hole they had torn in the lining of the tube.

Now they maneuvered the heavy plate till it was resting on that beam; then they released the plate, and watched it slide down the incline, shooting through the open doorway of the car. In moments the job was done. The plate at last safely stowed, the three men climbed into the car, and prepared to leave.

The little machine glided swiftly down the tube through the mighty ship, finally coming out through the opening that had admitted them. They rose quickly into the air, and headed for the headquarters of the government ships.

II

A great number of scientists and military men were already gathered about the headquarters ship. As Arcot’s party arrived, they learned that each of the wrecks was being assigned to one group. They further learned that because of their scientific importance, they were to go to the nearly perfect ship lying off to the west. Two Air Patrolmen were to accompany them.

“Lieutenant Wright and Lieutenant Greer will go with you,” said the Colonel. “In the event of trouble from possible—though unlikely—survivors, they may be able to help. Is there anything further we can do?”

“These men are armed with the standard sidearms, aren’t they?” Arcot asked. “I think we’ll all be better off if I arm them with some of the new director-ray pistols. I have several in my boat. It will be all right, I suppose?”

“Certainly, Dr. Arcot. They are under your command.”

The party, increased to five now, returned to the ship, where Arcot showed the men the details of the ray pistols, and how to use them. The control for direction of operation was rather intricate in these early models, and required considerable explanation. The theoretical range of even these small hand weapons was infinity in space, but in the atmosphere the energy was rather rapidly absorbed by ionization of the air, and the dispersion of the beam made it ineffective in space over a range of more than thirty-five miles.

Again entering the little molecular motion car, they went at once to the great hull of the fallen ship. They inspected it cautiously from overhead before going too close, for the dreadnought, obviously, had landed without the terrific concussion that the others had experienced, and there was a possibility that some of the crew had survived the crash. The entire stern of the huge vessel had been torn off, and evidently the ship was unable to rise, but there were lights glowing through the portholes on the side, indicating that power had not failed completely.

“I think we’d better treat that monster with respect,” remarked Wade, looking down at the lighted windows. “They have power, and the hull is scarcely dented except where the stern was caught by a beam. It’s lucky we had those ray projector ships! They’ve been in service only about four months, haven’t they, Lieutenant?”

“Just about that, sir,” the Air Patrolman replied. “They hadn’t gotten the hand weapons out in sufficient quantities to be issued to us as yet.”

Morey scowled at the invader. “I don’t like this at all. I wonder why they didn’t greet us with some of their beams,” he said in worried tones. It did seem that there should be some of the rays in action now. They were less than a mile from the fallen giant, and moving rather slowly.

“I’ve been puzzled about that myself,” commented Arcot,“and I’ve come to the conclusion that either the ray projectors are fed by a separate system of power distribution, which has been destroyed, or that the creatures from space are all dead.”

They were to learn later, in their exploration of the ship, that the invaders’ ray projectors were fed from a separate generator, which produced a special form of alternating current wave for them. This generator had been damaged beyond use.

The little machine was well toward the stern of the giant now, and they lowered it till it was on a level with the torn metal. It was plain that the ship had been subjected to some terrific tension. The great girders were stretched and broken, and the huge ribs were bent and twisted. The central tube, which ran the length of the ship, had been drawn down to about three quarters of its original diameter, making it necessary for them to use their ray to enter. In moments their speedster glided into the dark tunnel. The searchlight reaching ahead filled the metal tunnel with a myriad deceptive reflections. The tube was lighted up far ahead of them, and seemed empty. Cautiously they advanced, with Arcot at the controls.

“Wade—Morey—where will we stop first?” he asked. “The engines? They’ll probably be of prime importance. We know their location. What do you say?”

“I agree,” replied Wade, and Morey nodded his approval.

They ran their craft down the long tube till they reached the door they knew must be the engine room landing, and stepped out, each wearing an altitude suit. This ship had landed level, and progress would be much easier than in the other one. They waited a moment before opening the door into the engine room, for this led into a narrow corridor where only one could pass. Caution was definitely in order. The Air Patrolmen insisted on leading the way. They had been sent along for the express purpose of protecting the scientists, and it was their duty to lead. After a brief argument Arcot agreed.

The two officers stepped to the door, and standing off to one side, tore it open with a ray from their pistols. It fell with a clatter to the rounded metal floor of the tube, and lay there vibrating noisily, but no rays of death lanced out from beyond it. Cautiously they peered around the corner of the long corridor, then seeing nothing, entered. Wade came next, then Arcot, followed by Morey.

The corridor was approximately thirty feet long, opening into the great engine room. Already the men could hear the smooth hum of powerful machines, and could see the rounded backs of vast mechanisms. But there was no sign of life, human or otherwise. They halted finally at the threshold of the engine room.

“Well,” Arcot said softly. “We haven’t seen anyone so far, and I hope no one has seen us. The invaders may be behind one of those big engines, quite unaware of us. If they’re there, and they see us, they’ll be ready to fight. Now remember, those weapons you have will tear loose anything they hit, so take it easy. You know something about the power of those engines, so don’t put them out of commission, and have them splash us all over the landscape.

“But look out for the crew, and get them if they try to get you!”

Cautiously but quickly they stepped out into the great room, forming a rough half circle, pistols ready for action. They walked forward stealthily, glancing about them—and simultaneously the enemies caught sight of each other. There were six of the invaders, each about seven feet tall, and surprisingly humanoid. They somewhat resembled Venerians, but they weren’t Venerians, for their skin was a strange gray-white, suggesting raw dough. It seemed to Arcot that these strange, pale creatures were advancing at a slow walk, and that he stood still watching them as they slowly raised strange hand weapons. He seemed to notice every detail: their short, tight-fitting suits of some elastic material that didn’t hamper their movements, and their strange flesh, which just seemed to escape being transparent. Their eyes were strangely large, and the black spot of the pupil in their white corneas created an unnatural effect.

Then abruptly their weapons came up—and Arcot responded with a sudden flick of his ray, as he flung himself to one side. Simultaneously his four companions let their beams fly toward the invaders. They glowed strangely red here, but they were still effective. The six beings were suddenly gone—but not before they had released their own beams. And they had taken toll. Lieutenant Wright lay motionless upon the floor.

The Terrestrians scarcely had a chance to notice this, for immediately there was a terrific rending crash, and clean daylight came pouring in through a wide opening in the wall of the ship. The five rays had not stopped on contact with the enemy, but had touched the wall behind them. An irregular opening now gaped in the smooth metal.

Suddenly there came a second jarring thud, a dull explosion; then a great sheet of flame filled the hole—a wall of ruddy flame swept rapidly in. Arcot swung up his ray pistol, pointing it at the mass of flaming gas. A mighty column of air came through the narrow corridor from the tube, rushing toward the outside, and taking the flame with it. A roaring mass of gas hovered outside of the ship.

“Lieutenant,” said Arcot, swiftly, “turn your ray on that hole, and keep it there, blowing that flame outside with it. You’ll find you can’t put the fire out, but if you keep it outside the ship, I believe we’ll be reasonably safe.” The Patrolman obeyed instantly, relieving Arcot.

Wade and Morey were already bending over the fallen man.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for him,” the latter said grimly, “and every moment here is dangerous. Let’s continue our investigation and carry him back to the ship when we leave.” Arcot nodded silently.

Solemnly they turned away from the motionless figure on the floor and set out on their investigation.

“Arcot,” began Morey after a moment, “why is that gas burning like that? Can’t we put it out?”

“Let’s get through with this job first,” replied Arcot somewhat tersely. “The discussion comes after.”

The bodies of the invaders were gone, so they could not examine them now. That was a matter for the doctors and biologists, anyway. The engines were their main interest, huge things which overshadowed everything about them.

It must have been the concealment afforded by the engines that permitted three of the enemy to get so close. The only warning the Terrestrians had was a faint pink haze as they stepped around the corner of an engine; and a sudden feeling of faintness swept over them. They leaped back, out of sight, peering around the corner with nerves and muscles tensed. There was no sign of movement.

As they watched, they saw a pallid hand reaching out with a ray gun; and Wade swiftly pointed his own weapon. There came a sudden crash of metal, a groan and quiet. Two other aliens leaped from behind the great engine just as the Terrestrians dodged further back; as swiftly, they too found concealment.

Arcot swung his ray up, and was about to pull the trigger that would send the huge engine toppling over upon them, when he saw that it was running. He thought of the unknown energies in the machine, the potential destruction, and he shook his head. Cautiously he looked around the edge of the towering mass, waiting—his beam flashed out, and there was a snapping sound as the ray caught a reaching hand and hurled its owner against a mighty transformer of some sort. For an instant the huge mass tottered, then was still. In the low concentration of power that Arcot had used, only a small portion had been touched, and the molecules of this portion had not been enough to tip over its tremendous weight.

Only one enemy remained; and Arcot learned swiftly that he was still in action, for before he could dodge back there came that now-familiar pink haziness. It touched Arcot’s hand, outstretched as it had been when he fired, and a sudden numbness came over it. His pistol hand seemed to lose all feeling of warmth or cold. It was there; he could still feel the weapon’s deadened weight. Reflex action hurled him back, his hand out of range of the ray. In seconds feeling began to return, and in less than ten his hand was normal again.

He turned to the others with a wry grin. “Whew—that was a narrow squeak! I must say their ray is a gentlemanly sort of thing. It either kills you, or doesn’t injure you at all. There it goes again!”

A shaft of pink radiance reached the end of the engine, just grazing it, evidently absorbed by its mass. “Pinning us down,” Wade grated. They certainly couldn’t step out into the open space—but they couldn’t stay where they were indefinitely, either. Reinforcements might arrive!

“Look,” Wade pointed with his pistol, “he’s under that big metal bar—up there in the roof—see it? I’ll pull it down; he may get nervous and come into sight.” Swiftly Arcot sprang forward and caught his arm.

“Lord—don’t do that, Wade—there’s too much stuff here that we don’t know anything about. Too much chance of your smashing us with him. I’m going to try to get around to the other side of this machine and see what I can do, while you fellows keep him occupied.”

Arcot disappeared around the black humming giant. Interminably the others waited for something to happen; then suddenly the beam that had been playing at irregular intervals across the end of the machine, swung quickly to the other side; and simultaneously another ray seemed to leap from the machine itself. They met and crossed. There came a momentary crashing arc, then both went dead, as the apparatus that generated them blew out under terrific overload.

The invader evidently carried a spare, for the watchers saw him dart from concealment, clawing at his pocket pouch. They turned their rays on him, and just as his projector came free, a ray hurled him violently to the left. He crashed into a huge motor, and the result was not nice.

The projector had been jerked from his hand and lay off to the side. Arcot ran to it and picked it up just as they heard the Lieutenant call an alarmed inquiry.

“I think we’re okay now,” Arcot answered. “I hope there are no more—but by all means stay where you are, and use as little power as possible in blowing that flame outside. It uses up the atmosphere of the ship, and though we don’t need it, I think we’d better take things easy. Call us if anything looks odd to you.”

For several minutes the three scientists looked about them in awe-struck wonder. They were the first men of Earth to see the driving equipment of one of the tremendous Kaxorian planes, and they felt tiny beside its great bulk; but now, as they examined this engine room, they realized that even the huge plane shrank into insignificance beside this interstellar cruiser.

All about them loomed the great rounded backs of giant electric motor-generators of some sort. Across the roof ran a network of gigantic metal bars, apparently conductors, but so large that they suggested heavy structural members. The machines they ran into loomed fully thirty feet into the air; they were longer than cylinders, thirty feet in diameter, and there was a group of four main machines fully a hundred twenty feet long! There were many smaller mechanisms—yet these smaller ones would easily have constituted a complete power supply for the average big city. Along each wall ran a bank of transformers, cast in the same heroic mold. These seemed connected with the smaller machines, there being four conductors leading into each of the minor units, two intake, and two, apparently, output leads, suggesting rotary converters. The multiple units and the various types and sizes of transformers made it obvious that many different frequencies were needed. Some of the transformers had air cores, and led to machines surrounded with a silvery white metal instead of the usual iron. These, apparently, were generating current at an extremely high frequency.

“Well,” Morey commented, “they ought to have power enough. But do you notice that those four main units have their leads radiating in different directions? The one on the left there seems to lead to that big power board at the front—or better, bow. I think it would be worth investigating.”

Arcot nodded. “I had the same idea. You notice that two of the main power units are still working, but that those other two have stopped? Probably the two dead ones have something to do with the motion of the ship. But there’s one point I think is of even greater interest. All the machines we have seen, all the conspicuous ones, are secondary power sources. There are no primary sources visible. Notice that those two main conduits lead over to the right, and toward the bow. Let’s check where they go to.”

As they talked they followed the huge conductors back to their point of convergence. Suddenly they rounded one of the huge main power units, and saw before them, at the center of square formed by these machines, a low platform of transparent light-metal. At the exact center of this platform, which was twenty feet in diameter, there was a table, about seven feet across and raised about five feet above the level of the platform on stout light-metal legs. On the table were two huge cubes of solid silver, and into these cubes ran all the conductors they had seen.

In the space of about six inches left between the blocks of metal, there was a small box constructed of some strange new material. It was the most perfect reflecting surface that any of the men had ever imagined. Indeed, it was so perfect a reflector that they were unable to see it, but could detect its presence only by the mirror images, and the fact that it blotted out objects behind it.

Now they noticed that through the huge blocks of metal there were two small holes, and two thin wires of this same reflecting material led into those holes. The wires led directly up to the roof, and, suspended on three-foot hangers of the light-metal, continued on toward the bow.

Could this be the source of power for the entire ship? It seemed impossible, yet there were many other seeming impossible things here, among them that strangely reflecting matter.

There was a low railing about the central platform, apparently intended to keep observers at a safe distance, so they decided against any more detailed investigation. As they were about to discuss their unusual find, the Lieutenant called that he heard sounds behind him.

At once the three ran rapidly toward the narrow corridor that had given them entrance. The flaming gas was still shooting through the hole in the wall of the ship, and the rush of air through the corridor made it difficult to hear any sounds there, and exceedingly difficult to walk.

“Turn on more power, Lieutenant, and see if we can’t draw out the enemy,” suggested Arcot, while they braced themselves around the tube exit.

As the Patrolman increased the power of his beam, the moan of the air through the corridor increased suddenly to a terrific roar, and a cyclonic gale swept through. But none of the invaders were drawn out.

After the Lieutenant had shut off the blast from his pistol at Arcot’s signal, the latter said: “I don’t think anything less than a war tank could stand that pressure. It’s probable that we’ll be attacked if we stay here much longer, though—and we may not be able to get out at all. I think, Lieutenant, I’ll ask you to stay here while we go out and get the ship ready to leave.” He paused, grinning. “Be sure to keep that flame outside. You’ll be in the position of Hercules after Atlas left him holding the skies on his shoulders. You can’t shut off the ray for long or we’ll have a first-rate explosion. We’ll signal when we’re ready by firing a revolver, and you make it to the ship as fast as you can travel.”

Arcot’s expression became solemn. “We’ll have to carry Wright back to the ship. He was a brave man, and he certainly deserves burial in the soil of his own world. And, Morey, we’ll have to look up his family. Your father’s company will have to take care of them if they need help.”

Slowly the men forced their way back toward their ship, fighting against the roaring column of air, their burden hindering them somewhat; but at last they reached the open tunnel. Even here the air was in violent motion.

They got into their boat as quickly as possible, and set the controls for reverse flight. Then Wade fired the signal shot. In moments they saw Lieutenant Greer bucking against the current of air, continuing under its own momentum.

By the time he was in the ship an ominous calm had fallen. Swiftly they sped down the corridor, and had almost reached the open air, when suddenly there was a dull rumble behind them, and they were caught on a wave of pressure that hurled them along at terrific speed. In a flash they sped into the open air, the great tunnel with its thick walls and flared opening acting like a gigantic blunderbuss, with the ship as its bullet. Arcot made no attempt to slow down the little craft, but pressed his foot heavily on the vertical accelerator. The ship rocketed up with terrific speed, and the acceleration pinned the men down to their seats with tripled weight.

Anxiously they watched the huge invader as they sped away from it. At Arcot’s direction Morey signaled the other groups of scientists to get out of danger with all speed, warning of the impending blow-up. As the moments sped by the tension mounted. Arcot stared fixedly into the screen before him, keeping the giant space ship in focus. As they sped mile upon miles away from it, he began to relax a bit.

Not a word was spoken as they watched and waited. Actually, very little time passed before the explosion, but to the watchers the seconds dragged endlessly. Then at twenty-seven miles, the screen flared into a sheet of blinding white radiance. There was a timeless instant—then a tremendous wave of sound, a roaring, stunning concussion smote the ship, shaking it with unrestrained fury—to cease as abruptly as it came.

Immediately they realized the reason. They were rushing away from the explosion faster than the sound it made, hence could not hear it. After the first intolerable flash, details became visible. The great ship seemed to leap into countless tremendous fragments, each rushing away from the point of the blow-up. They did not go far; the force was not sustained long enough, nor was it great enough to overcome the inertia of so vast a mass for more than moments. Huge masses rained to earth, to bury themselves in the soil.

There came a momentary lull. Then suddenly, from the mass which evidently held the wrecked engine room, there shot out a beam of intense white light that swept around in a wide, erratic arc. Whatever it touched fused instantly into a brilliantly glowing mass of liquid incandescence. The field itself, fragments of the wreckage, fused and mingled under its fury. The beam began to swing, faster and faster, as the support that was holding it melted; then abruptly it turned upon itself. There came a sudden blast of brilliance to rival that of the sun—and the entire region became a molten lake. Eyes streaming, temporarily blinded, the men turned away from the screen.

“That,” said Arcot ruefully, “is that! It seems that our visitors don’t want to leave any of their secrets lying around for us to investigate. I’ve an idea that all the other wrecks will go like this one did.” He scowled. “You know, we really didn’t learn much. Guess we’d better call the headquarters ship and ask for further instructions. Will you attend to it, Lieutenant Greer?”

III

Swiftly Arcot’s sleek cruiser sped toward New York and the Arcot Laboratories. They had halted briefly at the headquarters ship of the Earth-Venus forces to report on their experience; and alone again, the three scientists were on their way home.

With their course set, Arcot spoke to the others. “Well, fellows, what are your opinions on—what we’ve seen? Wade, you’re a chemist—tell us what you think of the explosion of the ship, and of the strange color of our molecular ray in their air.”

Wade shook his head doubtfully. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I can’t quite believe my results. Still, I can’t see any other explanation. That reddish glow looked like hydrogen ions in the air. The atmosphere was certainly combustible when it met ours, which makes it impossible for me to believe that their air contained any noticeable amount of oxygen, for anything above twenty per cent oxygen and the rest hydrogen would be violently explosive. Apparently the gas had to mix liberally with our air to reach that proportion. That it didn’t explode when ionized, showed the absence of hydro-oxygen mixture.

“All the observed facts except one seem to point to an atmosphere composed largely of hydrogen. That one—there are beings living in it! I can understand how the Venerians might adapt to a different climate, but I can’t see how anything approaching human life can live in an atmosphere like that.”

Arcot nodded. “I have come to similar conclusions. But I don’t see too much objection to the thought of beings living in an atmosphere of hydrogen. It’s all a question of organic chemistry. Remember that our bodies are just chemical furnaces. We take in fuel and oxidize it, using the heat as our source of power. The invaders live in an atmosphere of hydrogen. They eat oxidizing fuels, and breathe a reducing atmosphere; they have the two fuel components together again, but in a way different from our method. Evidently, it’s just as effective. I’m sure that’s the secret of the whole thing.”

“Sounds fairly logical.” Wade agreed. “But now I have a question for you. Where under the sun did these beings come from?”

Arcot’s reply came slowly. “I’ve been wondering the same thing. And the more I wonder, the less I believe they did come from—under our sun. Let’s eliminate all the solar planets—we can do that at one fell swoop. It’s perfectly obvious that those ships are by no means the first crude attempts of this race to fly through space. We’re dealing with an advanced technology. If they have had those ships even as far away as Pluto, we should certainly have heard from them by now.

“Hence, we’ve got to go out into interstellar space. You’ll probably want to ram some of my arguments down my throat—I know there is no star near enough for the journey to be made in anything less than a couple of generations by all that’s logical; and they’d freeze in the interstellar cold doing it. There is no known star close enough—but how about unknowns?”

“What have they been doing with the star?” Morey snorted.“Hiding it behind a sun-shade?”

Arcot grinned. “Yes. A shade of old age. You know a sun can’t radiate forever; eventually they die. And a dead sun would be quite black, I’m sure.”

“And the planets that circle about them are apt to become a wee bit cool too, you know.”

“Agreed,” said Arcot, “and we wouldn’t be able to do much about it. But give these beings credit for a little higher order of intelligence. We saw machines in that space ship that certainly are beyond us! They are undoubtedly heating their planets with the same source of energy with which they are running their ships.

“I believe I have confirmation of that statement in two things. They are absolutely colorless; they don’t even have an opaque white skin. Any living creature exposed to the rays of a sun, which is certain to emit some chemical rays, is subject to coloration as a protection against those rays. The whites, who have always lived where sunlight is weakest, have developed a skin only slightly opaque. The Orientals, who live in more tropical countries, where less clothes and more sun is the motto, have slightly darker skins. In the extreme tropics Nature has found it necessary to use a regular blanket of color to stop the rays. Now extrapolating the other way, were there no such rays, the people would become a pigmentless race. Since most proteins are rather translucent, at least when wet, they would appear much as these beings do. Remember, there are very few colored proteins. Hemoglobin, such as in our blood, and hemocyanin, like that in the blue blood of the Venerians, are practically unique in that respect. For hydrogen absorption, I imagine the blood of these creatures contains a fair proportion of some highly saturated compound, which readily takes on the element, and gives it up later.

“But we can kick this around some more in the lab.”

Before starting for New York, Arcot had convinced the officer in charge that it would be wise to destroy the more complete of the invaders’ ships at once, lest one of them manage to escape. The fact that none of them had any rays in operation was easily explained; they would have been destroyed by the Patrol if they had made any show of weapons. But they might be getting some ready, to be used in possible escape attempts. The scientists were through with their preliminary investigations. And the dismembered sections would remain for study, anyway.

The ships had finally been rayed apart, and when the three had left, their burning atmosphere had been sending mighty tongues of flame a mile or more into the air. The light gas of the alien atmosphere tended to rise in a great globular cloud, a ball that quickly burned itself out. It had not taken long for the last of the machines to disintegrate under the rays. There would be no more trouble from them, at any rate!

Now Morey asked Arcot if he thought that they had learned all they could from the ships; would it not have been wiser to save them, and investigate more fully later, taking a chance on stopping any sudden attack by surviving marauders by keeping a patrol of Air Guards there.

To which Arcot replied, “I thought quite a bit before I suggested their destruction, and I conferred for a few moments with Forsyth, who’s just about tops in biology and bacteriology. He said that they had by no means learned as much as they wished to, but they’d been forced to leave in any event. Remember that pure hydrogen, the atmosphere we were actually living in while on the ship, is quite as inert as pure oxygen—when alone. But the two get very rough when mixed together. The longer those ships lay there the more dangerously explosive they became. If we hadn’t destroyed them, they would have wrecked themselves. I still think we followed the only logical course.

“Dr. Forsyth mentioned the danger of disease. There’s a remote possibility that we might be susceptible to their germs. I don’t believe we would be, for our chemical constitution is so vastly different. For instance, the Venerians and Terrestrians can visit each other with perfect freedom. The Venerians have diseases, and so do we, of course; but there are things in the blood of Venerians that are absolutely deadly to any Terrestrian organism. We have a similar deadly effect on Venerian germs. It isn’t immunity—it’s simply that our respective constitutions are so different that we don’t need immunity. Similarly, Forsyth thinks we would be completely resistant to all diseases brought by the invaders. However, it’s safer to remove the danger, if any, first, and check afterward.”

The three men sped rapidly back to New York, flying nearly sixty miles above the surface of the Earth, where there would be no interfering traffic, till at length they were above the big city, and dropping swiftly in a vertical traffic lane.

Shortly thereafter they settled lightly in the landing cradle at the Arcot Laboratories. Arcot’s father, and Morey’s, were there, anxiously awaiting their return. The elder Arcot had for many years held the reputation of being the nation’s greatest physicist, but recently he had lost it—to his son. Morey Senior was the president and chief stockholder in the Transcontinental Air Lines. The Arcots, father and son, had turned all their inventions over to their close friends, the Moreys. For many years the success of the great air lines had been dependent in large part on the inventions of the Arcots; these new discoveries enabled them to keep one step ahead of competition, and as they also made the huge transport machines for other companies, they drew tremendous profits from these mechanisms. The mutual interest, which had begun as a purely financial relationship, had long since become a close personal friendship.

As Arcot stepped from his speedster, he called immediately to his father, telling of their find, the light-matter plate.

“I’ll need a handling machine to move it. I’ll be right back.” He ran to the elevator and dropped quickly to the heavy machinery lab on the lower floor. In a short time he returned with a tractor-like machine equipped with a small derrick, designed to get its power from the electric mains. He ran the machine over to the ship. The others looked up as they heard the rumble and hum of its powerful motor. From the crane dangled a strong electro-magnet.

“What’s that for?” asked Wade, pointing to the magnet.“You don’t expect this to be magnetic, do you?”

“Wait and see!” laughed Arcot, maneuvering the handling machine into position. One of the others made contact with the power line, and the crane reached into the ship, lowering the magnet to the plate of crystal. Then Arcot turned the power into the lifting motor. The hum rose swiftly in volume and pitch till the full load began to strain the cables. The motor whined with full power, the cables vibrating under the tension. The machine pulled steadily, until, to Arcot’s surprise, the rear end of the machine rose abruptly from the floor, tipping forward.

“Well—it was magnetic, but how did you know?” asked the surprised Wade. Since the ship was made of the Venerian metal, coronium, which was only slightly magnetic, the plate was obviously the magnet’s only load.

“Never mind. I’ll tell you later. Get an I-beam, say about twenty feet long, and see if you can’t help lift that crazy mass. I think we ought to manage it that way.”

And so it proved. With two of them straddling the I-beam, the leverage was great enough to pull the plate out. Running it over to the elevator, they lowered the heavy mass, disconnected the cable, and rode down to Arcot’s laboratory. Again the I-beam and handling machine were brought into play, and the plate was unloaded from the car. The five men gathered around the amazing souvenir from another world.

“I’m with Wade in wondering how you knew the plate was magnetic, son,” commented the elder Arcot. “I can accept your explanation that the stuff is a kind of matter made of light, but I know you too well to think it was just a lucky guess. How did you know?”

“It really was pretty much of a guess, Dad, though there was some logic behind the thought. You ought to be able to trace down the idea! How about you, Morey?” Arcot smiled at his friend.

“I’ve kept discreetly quiet,” replied Morey, “feeling that in silence I could not betray my ignorance, but since you ask me, I can guess too. I seem to recall that light is affected by a powerful magnet, and I can imagine that that was the basis for your guess. It has been known for many years, as far back as Clerk Maxwell, that polarized light can be rotated by a powerful magnet.”

“That’s it! And now we may as well go over the whole story, and tell Dad and your father all that happened. Perhaps in the telling, we can straighten out our own ideas a bit.”

For the next hour the three men talked, each telling his story, and trying to explain the whys and wherefores of what he had seen. In the end all agreed on one point: if they were to fight this enemy, they must have ships that could travel though space with speed to match that of the invaders, ships with a self-contained source of power.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Morey commented rather sarcastically: “I wonder if Arcot will now kindly explain his famous invisible light, or the lost star?” He was a bit nettled by his own failure to remember that a star could go black. “I can’t see what connection this has with their sudden attack. If they were there, they must have developed when the star was bright, and as a star requires millions of years to cool down, I can’t see how they could suddenly appear in space.”

Before answering, Arcot reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out an old blackened briar pipe. Methodically he filled it, a thoughtful frown on his face; then carefully lighting it, he leaned back, puffing out a thin column of gray smoke.

“Those creatures must have developed on their planets before the sun cooled.” He puffed slowly. “They are, then, a race millions of years old—or so I believe. I can’t give any scientific reason for this feeling; it’s merely a hunch. I just have a feeling that the invaders are old, older than our very planet! This little globe is just about two billion years old. I feel that that race is so very ancient they may well have counted the revolutions of our galaxy as, once every twenty or thirty million years, it swung about its center.

“When I looked at those great machines, and those comparatively little beings as they handled their projectors, they seemed out of place. Why?” He shrugged. “Again, just a hunch, an impression.” He paused again, and the slow smoke drifted upward.

“If I’m granted the premise that a black, dead star is approaching the Solar System, then my theorizing may seem more logical. You agree?” The listeners nodded and Arcot continued. “Well—I had an idea—and when I went downstairs for the handling machine, I called the Lunar Observatory.” He couldn’t quite keep a note of triumph out of his voice. “Gentlemen—some of the planets have been misbehaving! The outermost planets, and even some of those closer to the sun have not been moving as they should. A celestial body of appreciable mass is approaching the System; though thus far nothing has been seen of the visitor!”

A hubbub of excited comment followed this startling revelation. Arcot quieted them with an upraised hand. “The only reason you and the world at large haven’t heard about this as yet is the fact that the perturbation of the planets is so very slight that the astronomers figured they might have made an error in calculation. They’re rechecking now for mistakes.

“To get back to my visualization—It must have been many millions of years ago that life developed on the planets of the black star, a warm sun then, for it was much younger. It was probably rather dim as suns go even its younger days. Remember, our own sun is well above average in brilliance and heat radiation.

“In those long-gone ages I can imagine a race much like ours developing, differing chemically, in their atmosphere of hydrogen; but the chemical body is not what makes the race, it’s the thought process. They must have developed, and then as their science grew, their sun waned. Dimmer and dimmer it became, until their planets could not maintain life naturally. Then they had to heat them artificially. There is no question as to their source of power; they had to use the energy of matter—so called atomic energy—for no other source would be great enough to do what had to be done. It is probable that their science had developed this long before their great need arose.

“With this must also have come the process of transmutation, and the process they use in driving their interstellar cruisers. I am sure those machines are driven by material energy.

“But at last their star was black, a closed star, and their cold, black planets must circle a hot, black sun forever! They were trapped for eternity unless they found a way to escape to some other stellar system. They could not travel as fast as light, and they could escape only if they found some near-by solar system. Their star was dead—black. Let’s call it Nigra—the Black One—since like every other star it should have a name. Any objection?”

There was none, so Arcot continued:

“Now we come to an impossibly rare coincidence. That two suns in their motion should approach each other is beyond the point of logic. That both suns have a retinue of planets approaches the height of the ridiculous. Yet that is what is happening right now. And the Nigrans—if that’s the correct term—have every intention of taking advantage of the coincidence. Since our sun has been visible to them for a long, long time, and the approaching proximity of the suns evident, they had lots of time to prepare.

“I believe this expedition was just an exploratory one; and if they can send such huge machines and so many of them, for mere exploration, I’m sure they must have quite a fleet to fight with.

“We know little about their weapons. They have that death ray, but it’s not quite as deadly as we might have feared, solely because our ships could outmaneuver them. Next time, logically, they’ll bring with them a fleet of little ships, carried in the bellies of those giants, and they’ll be a real enemy. We’ll have to anticipate their moves and build to circumvent them.

“As for their ray, I believe I have an idea how it works. You’re all familiar with the catalytic effects of light. Hydrogen and chlorine will stand very peacefully in the same jar for a long time, but let a strong light fall on them, and they combine with terrific violence. This is the catalytic effect of a vibration, a wave motion. Then there is such a thing as negative catalysis. In a certain reaction, if a third element or compound is introduced, all reaction is stopped. I believe that’s the principle of the Nigran death ray; it’s a catalyst that simply stops the chemical reactions of a living body, and these are so delicately balanced that the least resistance will upset them.”

Arcot halted, and sat puffing furiously for a moment. During his discourse the pipe had died to an ember; with vigorous puffing he tried to restore it. At last he had it going and continued.

“What other weapons they have we cannot say. The secret of invisibility must be very old to them. But we’ll guard against the possibility by equipping our ships against it. The only reason the patrol ships aren’t equipped already is that invisibility is useless with modern criminals; they all know the secret and how to fight it.”

Morey interrupted with a question.

“Arcot, it’s obvious that we have to get out into space to meet the enemy—and we’ll have to have freedom of movement there. How are we going to do it? I was wondering if we could use Wade’s system of storing the atomic hydrogen in solution. That yields about 100,000 calories for every two grams, and since this is a method of storing heat energy, and your molecular motion director is a method of converting heat into mechanical work with 100 per cent efficiency, why not use that? All we need, really, is a method of storing heat energy for use while we’re in space.”

Arcot exhaled slowly before answering, watching the column of smoke vanish into the air.

“I thought of that, and I’ve been trying to think of other, and if possible, better, cheaper, and quicker ways of getting the necessary power.

“Let’s eliminate the known sources one by one. The usual ones, the ones men have been using for centuries, go out at once. The atomic hydrogen reaction stores more energy per gram than any other chemical reaction known. Such things as the storage battery, the electro-static condenser, the induction coil, or plain heat storage, are worthless to us. The only other method of storing energy we know of is the method used by the Kaxorians in driving their huge planes.

“They use condensed light-energy. This is efficient to the ultimate maximum, something no other method can hope to attain. Yet they need huge reservoirs to store it. The result is still ineffective for our purpose; we want something we can put in a small space; we want to condense the light still further. That will be the ideal form of energy storage, for then we will be able to release it directly as a heat ray, and so use it with utmost efficiency. I think we can absorb the released energy in the usual cavity radiator.”

A queer little smile appeared on Arcot’s face. “Remember—what we want is light in a more condensed form, a form that is naturally stable, and that does not need to be held in a bound state, but actually requires urging to bring about the release of energy. For example—”

A shout from Wade interrupted him. “That’s really rare! Whoo—I have to hand it to you! That takes all the prizes!” He laughed delightedly. In puzzled wonder Morey and the two older men looked at him, and at Arcot who was grinning broadly now.

“Well, I suppose it must be funny,” Morey began, then hesitated. “Oh—I see—say, that is good!” He turned to his father. “I see now what he’s been driving at. It’s been right here under our noses all the time.

“The light-matter windows we found in the wrecked enemy ships contain enough bound light-energy to run all the planes we could make in the next ten years! We’re going to have the enemy supply us with power we can’t get in any other way. I can’t decide, Arcot, whether you deserve a prize for ingenuity, or whether we should receive booby-prizes for our stupidity.”

Arcot Senior smiled at first, then looked dubiously at his son.

“There’s definitely plenty of the right kind of energy stored there—but as you suggested, the energy will need encouragement to break free. Any ideas?”

“A couple. I don’t know how they’ll work, of course; but we can try.” Arcot puffed at his pipe, serious now as he thought of the problems ahead.

Wade interposed a question. “How do you suppose they condense that light energy in the first place, and, their sun being dead, whence all the light? Back to the atom, I suppose.”

“You know as much as I do, of course, but I’m sure they must break up matter for its energy. As for the condensation problem, I think I have a possible solution of that too—it’s the key to the problem of release. There’s a lot we don’t know now—but we’ll have a bigger store of knowledge before this war is over—if we have anything at all!” he added grimly. “It’s possible that man may lose knowledge, life, his planets and sun—but there’s still plenty of hope. We’re not finished yet.”

“How do you think they got their energy loose?” asked Wade. “Do you think those big blocks of what appeared to be silver were involved in the energy release?”

“Yes, I do. Those blocks were probably designed to carry away the power once it was released. How the release was accomplished, though, I don’t know. They couldn’t use material apparatus to start their release of material energy; the material of the apparatus might ‘catch fire’ too. They had to have the disintegrating matter held apart from all other matter. This was quite impossible, if you are going to get the energy away by any method other than by the use of fields of force. I don’t think that is the method. My guess is that a terrific current of electricity would accomplish it if anything would.

“How then are we going to get the current to it? The wires will be subject to the same currents. Whatever they do to the matter involved, the currents will do to the apparatus—except in one case. If that apparatus is made of some other kind of matter, then it wouldn’t be affected. The solution is obvious. Use some of the light-matter. What will destroy light-matter, won’t destroy electricity-matter, and what will destroy electricity-matter, won’t disturb light-matter.

“Do you remember the platform of light-metal, clear as crystal? It must have been an insulating platform. What we started as our assumptions in the case of the light-metal, we can now carry further. We said that electricity-metals carried electricity, so light-metals would carry or conduct light. Now we know that there is no substance which is transparent to light, that will carry electricity by metallic conduction. I mean, of course, that there is no substance transparent to light, and at the same time capable of carrying electricity by electronic transmission. True, we have things like NaCl solutions in ordinary H2O which will carry electricity, but here it’s ionic conduction. Even glass will carry electricity very well when hot; when red hot, glass will carry enough electricity to melt it very quickly. But again, glass is not a solid, but a viscous liquid, and it is again carried by ionic conduction. Iron, copper, sodium, silver, lead—all metals carry the current by means of electron drift through the solid material. In such cases we can see that no transparent substance conducts electricity.

“Similarly, the reverse is true. No substance capable of carrying electricity by metallic conduction is transparent. All are opaque, if in any thickness. Of course, gold is transparent when in leaf form—but when it’s that thin it won’t conduct very much! The peculiar condition we reach in the case of the invisible ship is different. There the effects are brought about by the high frequency impressed. But you get my point.

“Do you remember those wires that we saw leading to that little box of the reflecting material? So perfectly reflecting it was that we didn’t see it. We only saw where it must be; we saw the light it reflected. That was no doubt light-matter, a non-metal, and as such, non-conductive to light. Like sulphur, an electric non-metal, it reflected the base of which it was formed. Sulphur reflects the base of which it was formed. Sulphur reflects electricity and—in the crystalline form—passes light. This light-non-metal did the same sort of thing; it reflected light and passed electricity. It was a conductor.

“Now we have the things we need, the matter to disintegrate, and the matter to hold the disintegrating material in. We have two different types of matter. The rest is obvious—but decidedly not easy. They have done it, though; and after the war is over, there should be many of their machines drifting about in space waiting to give up their secrets.”

Arcot Senior clapped his son on the back. “A fair foundation on which to start, anyway. But I think it’s time now that you got working on your problem; and since I’m officially retired, I’m going downstairs. You know I’m working in my lab on a method to increase the range and power of your projector for the molecular motion field. Young Norris is helping me, and he really has ideas. I’ll show you our math later.”

The party broke up, the three younger men staying in their own labs, the older men leaving.

IV

The three immediately set to work. At Arcot’s suggestion, Wade and Morey attacked the plate of crystal in an attempt to tear off a small piece, on which they might work. Arcot himself went into the televisophone room and put through a second call to the Tychos Observatory, the great observatory that had so recently been established on the frigid surface of the Moon. The huge mirror, twenty feet in diameter, allowed an immense magnification, and stellar observations were greatly facilitated, for no one bothered them, and the “seeing” was always perfect.

However, the great distance was rather a handicap to the ordinary televisophone stations, and all calls put through to the astronomers had to be made through the powerful sending station in St. Louis, where all interplanetary messages were sent and received, while that side of the Earth was facing the station; and from Constantinople, when that city faced the satellite. These stations could bridge the distance readily and clearly.

For several minutes Arcot waited while connections were being made with the Moon; then for many more minutes he talked earnestly with the observer in this distant station, and at last satisfied, he hung up.

He had outlined his ideas concerning the black star, based upon the perturbation of the planets; then he had asked them to investigate the possibilities, and see if they could find any blotting out of stars by a lightless mass.

Finally he returned to Morey and Wade who had been working on the crystal plate. Wade had an expression of exasperation on his face, and Morey was grinning broadly.

“Hello, Arcot—you missed all the fun! You should have seen Wade’s struggle with that plate!” The plate, during his absence, had been twisted and bent, showing that it had undergone some terrific stresses. Now Wade began to make a series of highly forceful comments about the properties of the plate in language that was not exactly scientific. It had value, though, in that it seemed to relieve his pent-up wrath.

“Why, Wade, you don’t seem to like that stuff. Maybe the difficulty lies in your treatment, rather than in the material itself. What have you tried?”

“Everything! I took a coronium hack saw that will eat through molybdenum steel like so much cheese, and it just wore its teeth off. I tried some of those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor, and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using a little force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clamped it—the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds—but it began to bend, so I had to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I tried twisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thing yield under the pressure. But it’s not brittle; it merely bends.

“And I can’t cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. You said you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specific gravity, but the stuff is so dense you’d need only a tiny scrap—and I can’t break it loose!” Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust.

Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for the stuff certainly was stubborn. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you fellows about what you’d run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through to the Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable. Now, Wade, if you’ll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws, I’ll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use the one made of coronium.”

Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows, then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.

Arcot returned in about five minutes with a small handling machine, and a huge magnet. It must have weighed nearly half a ton. This he quickly connected to the heavy duty power lines of the lab. Now, running the handling machine into position, he quickly hoisted the bent and twisted plate to the poles of the magnet, with the aid of the derrick. Then backing the handling machine out of the way, he returned briskly to his waiting associates.

“Now we’ll see what we will see!” With a confident smile Arcot switched on the current of the big magnet. At once a terrific magnetic flux was set up through the light-metal. He took the little compressed-air saw, and applied it to the crystal plate. The smooth hiss of the air deepened to a harsh whine as the load came on it, then the saw made contact with the refractory plate.

Unbelievingly Wade saw the little diamond-edge saw bite its way slowly but steadily into the plate. In a moment it had cut off a little corner of the light-matter, and this fell with a heavy thud to the magnet pole, drawn down by the attraction of the magnet and by gravity.

Shutting off the magnet, Arcot picked up a pair of pliers and gripped the little fragment.

“Whew—light-metal certainly isn’t light metal! I’ll bet this little scrap weights ten pounds! We’ll have to reduce it considerably before we can use it. But that shouldn’t be too difficult.”

By using the magnet and several large diamond faceplates they were able to work the tough material down to a thin sheet; then with a heavy press, they cut some very small fragments, and with these, determined the specific gravity.

“Arcot,” Wade asked finally, “just how does the magnet make that stuff tractable? I’m not physicist enough to figure out what takes place inside the material.”

“Magnetism worked as it did,” Arcot explained, “because in this light-matter every photon is affected by the magnetism, and every photon is given a new motion. That stuff can be made to go with the speed of light, you know. It’s the only solid that could be so affected. This stuff should be able, with the aid of a molecular motion beam, which will make all the photons move in parallel paths, to move at the full speed of each photon—186,000 miles a second. The tremendous speed of these individual photons is what makes the material so hard. Their kinetic impulse is rather considerable! It’s the kinetic blow that the molecules of a metal give that keeps other metal from penetrating it. This simply gives such powerful impulse that even diamonds wouldn’t cut it.

“You know that an iron saw will cut platinum readily, yet if both are heated to say, 1600 degrees, the iron is a liquid, and the platinum very soft—but now the platinum cuts through the iron!

“Heat probably won’t have any effect on this stuff, but the action of the magnet on the individual photons corresponds to the effect of the heat on the individual atoms and molecules. The mass is softened, and we can work it. At least, that’s the way I figure it out.

“But now, Wade, I wish you’d see if you can determine the density of the stuff. You’re more used to those determinations and that type of manipulation than we are. When you get through, we may be able to show you some interesting results ourselves!”

Wade picked up a tiny chip of the light-metal and headed for his own laboratory. Here he set up his Jolly balance, and began to work on the fragment. His results were so amazing that he checked and rechecked his work, but always with the same answer. Finally he returned to the main lab where Arcot and Morey were busy at the construction of a large and complicated electro-static apparatus.

“What did you find?” called out Arcot, as he saw Wade reenter the room. “Hold your report a second and give us a hand here, will you? I have a laboratory scale apparatus of the type the Kaxorians used in the storage of light. They’ve known, ever since they began working with them, that their machines would release the energy with more than normal violence, if certain changes were made in them. That is, the light condenser, the device that stored the photons so close to each other, would also serve to urge them apart. I’ve made the necessary changes, and now I’m trying to set up the apparatus to work on solid light-matter. It was developed for gaseous material, and it’s a rather tricky thing to change it over. But I think we’ve almost got it.

“Wade, will you connect that to the high frequency oscillator there—no—through that counterbalanced condenser. We may have to change the oscillator frequency quite a bit, but a variable condenser will do that.

“Now, what results did you get?”

Wade shook his head doubtfully. “We all know it’s amazing stuff—and of course, it must be heavy—but still—well, anyway, I got a density of 103.5!”

“Whewww—103.5! Lord! That’s almost five times as heavy as the heaviest metal hitherto known. There’s about half a cubic foot of the material; that would mean about 4000 pounds for the whole mass, or two tons. No wonder we couldn’t lift the plate!”

They stopped their work on the Kaxorian apparatus to discuss the amazing results of the density test, but now they fell to again, rapidly assembling the device, for each was a trained experimenter. With all but the final details completed, Arcot stood back and surveyed their handiwork.

“I think we’ll have enough urge to cause disintegration right here,” he said, “but I want to make sure, and so, before we set up the case over it, I think we may as well put that big magnet in place, and have it there to help in the work of disintegration, if need be.”

At last the complete apparatus was set up, and the tiny bit of light-matter they were to work on was placed on the table of a powerful Atchinson projector microscope, the field of view being in the exact center of the field of both the magnet and the coil. Carefully, then, step by step, Arcot, Morey and Wade went over their work, checking and rechecking.

“Well, we’re ready,” said Arcot finally, as he placed the projector screen in position and dimmed the lights in the room. A touch of the switch, and the projection screen was illuminated with the greatly enlarged image of the tiny scrap of light-metal.

With his hand on the switch, Arcot spoke to the other two. “I won’t say there’s no danger, since we haven’t done this before; and if all the energy should be released at once, it’ll blow the top out of the building. But I’m reasonably sure that it will work safely. Any objections?”

Wade shook his head, and Morey said: “I can’t see any flaws in our work.”

Arcot nodded, and unconsciously tensing, he closed the switch. This put the powerful Arcot oscillator tubes into action, and the power was ready for application.

Slowly he closed the rheostat and put the power into the coil. The little sliver of metal on the slide seemed to throb a bit, and its outline grew hazy; but at last, with full power on, the release was so slow as to be imperceptible.

“Guess we need the magnet after all; I’ll put it on this time.”

He opened the coil circuit and closed the magnet circuit at half voltage, then again he increased the current through the rheostat. This time the plate throbbed quite violently, it took the appearance of a bit of iodine. Dense vapors began pouring from it, and instantly those vapors became a blindingly brilliant flood of light. Arcot had snapped open the switch the moment he saw this display start, and it had had little time to act, for the instant the circuit was opened, it subsided. But even in that brief time, the light aluminum screen had suddenly become limp and slumped down, molten! The room was unbearably hot, and the men were half blinded by the intensity of the light.

“It works!” yelled Wade. “It works! That sure was hot, too—it’s roasting in here.” He flung open a window. “Let’s have some air.”

Arcot and Morey gripped hands with a broad grin. That display meant that Earth and Venus would have space ships with which to fight space ships. Reason enough for their joy.

Though they had made an unusual amount of progress already, there was still a great deal of development work to be done. Fuller was needed, Arcot decided, so he called the elder Morey and requested his services if he could be spared from his present work. He could, and would arrive later that day.

When Fuller appeared about mid-afternoon, he found the three friends already at work on the development of a more compact apparatus than the makeshift hookup used in making that first release mechanism.

“And so you can see,” said Arcot as he finished his summary of their work to that point, “we still have quite a job ahead of us. I’m now trying to find some data for you to work on, but I can tell you this: We’ll need a ship that has plenty of strength and plenty of speed. There will be the usual power plant, of course; the generators, the power-tube board, and the electro-magnetic relays for the regular molecular motion controls. Then, in addition, we must have controls for the ray projector, though that must wait a while, for Dad is working on a method of doubling our range.… Oh yes, the driving units will be inside the ship now, for all our power will come from the energy of the light-matter.”

They spent the next hour in discussing the manifold details involved in the design of their space ship: the mechanism involved in transferring the light-energy to the drivers; a means of warming the ship in interstellar space; a main horizontal drive for forward and backward motion as well as braking; three smaller vertical power units to give them freedom of direction in climb or descent; other smaller horizontal power units for turning and moving sideways.

The ships, they decided, must be capable of six or seven thousand miles a second. They would need three types of ships: a small single-man speedster, without bunk or living quarters, simply a little power plant and weapon. Designed for speed and mobility, it would be very hard to hit, and because of its own offensive power would be dangerous to the enemy. They would need a fleet of mother ships—ships that would hold both the speedsters and their pilots—say thirty to a cruiser. There would also be some ten-man scouts, operating in the same manner as the larger cruisers, but with a smaller fleet of speedsters dependent on them.

“For defense,” Arcot concluded, “we’ll have to depend on armor as heavy as we can make and still remain within the bounds of practical construction. I don’t believe we’ll be able to build up enough mass to insulate against their negative catalysis ray. We’ll have to depend on mobility and offense.

“But now let’s get back to work. I think, Fuller, that you might call in the engineers of all the big aircraft and machine tool manufacturers and fabricators, and have them ready to start work at once when the plans are finally drawn up. You’d better get in touch with the Venerian producers, too. Those new works in Sorthol, Kaxor, will certainly be able to help a lot.

“I suppose the Interplanetary Patrol men will have something to say, so they better be called in. Likewise the Venerian Council. Morey, maybe your dad can handle some of this.”

As one they arose and set to work on their respective tasks—the planning and building of the Earth-Venus war fleet.

V

Despite their utmost endeavor and the hard work of the industrial might of two worlds, it was nearly six weeks before the fleet had grown to a thing of importance. The tests to which they subjected the tiny speedsters had been more than satisfactory. They behaved wonderfully, shooting about at terrific speed, and with all the acceleration a pilot could stand. These speedsters were literally piloted projectiles, and their amazing mobility made them a powerful arm of offense.

There came into being a special corp dubbed, oddly enough, the “Rocket Squad”, a group of men who could stand plenty of “G’s”. This “Rocket Squad” was composed solely of Terrestrians, for they were accustomed to the gravity of Earth and could stand greater acceleration strains than could the Venerians. The pick of the Air Patrol formed the nucleus of this new military organization; and in short order, so great is the appeal of the new and novel, the cream of the young men of the planet were competing for a place among the Rocketeers.

Each ship, both speedster and mother craft, was equipped with an invisibility locator, a sensitive short-wave directional receiver, that would permit the operator to direct his rays at invisible targets. The ships themselves could not be made invisible, since they depended in their very principle on the absorption of light-energy. If the walls of every part of the ship were perfectly transparent, they could absorb no energy at all, and they would still be plainly visible—even more so than before! They must remain visible, but they could also force the enemy to remain visible.

Each ten-man ship carried an old-fashioned cannon that was equipped to hurl canisters carrying the luminous paint. They decided that these would have advantages, even if the invaders did not use invisibility, for in space a ship is visible only because it reflects or emits light. For this reason the ships were not equipped with any portholes except in the pilot room and at the observation posts. No light could escape. To reduce the reflection to the absolute minimum, the ships had each been painted with a 99% absorptive black. In space they would be exceedingly difficult targets.

The heating effect of the sun on the black pigment when near the great star was rather disagreeably intense, and to cool the speedsters they had installed molecular director power units, which absorbed the heat and used the energy to drive the ship. Heaters offset the radiation loss of the black surface when too far from the sun.

Each of the speedsters was equipped with a small machine-gun shooting luminous paint bullets. One of these, landing on another craft, made it visible for at least two hours, and since they could cover an area of about thirty feet, they were decidedly effective.

It was found that ray practice was rather complicated. The government had ranges set up in great mountain districts away from any valuable property, but they soon found that spatial war-play could not be carried on on Earth. The rays very quickly demolished the targets, and in a short time made good progress toward demolishing the mountains as well. The problem was solved by using the barren surface of the moon and the asteroid belt beyond Mars as a proving ground.

The ships were sent out in squadrons as fast as they could be finished and the men could be brought together and trained. They were establishing a great shield of ships across all that section of the system whence the Nigrans had appeared, and they hoped to intercept the next attack before it reached Earth, for they were certain the next attack would be in full force.

Arcot had gone to the conference held on Venus with the other men who had investigated the great wrecks, and each scientist had related his view of things and had offered suggestions. Arcot’s idea of the black star was not very favorably received. As he later told Wade and Morey, who had not gone, there was good reason for their objection to his idea. Though the scientists were willing to admit that the invaders must have come from a great distance, and they agreed that they lived in an atmosphere of hydrogen, and judging from their pale skins, that they were not used to the rays of a sun, they still insisted on the theory of an outer planet of Sol.

“You remember,” explained Arcot, “several years ago there was considerable discussion about the existence of a planet still further out from the sun than Pluto. It is well known that there are a number of irregularities in the orbits of Neptune and Pluto that can’t be caused by known planets, and an outer planet could have the necessary mass and orbit to account for them.

“This attack from outer space was immediately taken as proof of that theory, and it was very easily supported, too. My one good point that stood for any length of time under their attacks was the fact that those ships weren’t developed in a year, nor a century, and that the chemical constitution of the men was so different. There were no new elements discovered, except the light-matter, but they are rather wondering about the great difference of earthly chemical constitution and the constitution of these invaders.

“They had one argument that was just about enough to throw mine out, though they pointed to the odds against the thing happening. You know, of course, how planets are formed? They are the results of tidal action on two passing suns.

“You can imagine two mighty stars careening through space and then drawing slowly nearer, till at last they come within a few billion miles of each other, and their gigantic masses reach out and bind them with a mighty chain of gravity. Their titanic masses swing about each other, each trying to pull free, and continue its path about the center of the galactic system. But as their huge bulks come nearer, the chains that bind them become stronger and stronger, and the tremendous pull of the one gargantuan fire ball on the other raises titanic tides of flame. Great streamers of gas shoot out, and all the space about is lighted by the flaming suns. The pull of gravity becomes more and more intense, and as the one circles the other, the tide is pulled up, and the mighty ball of fire, which, for all its existence has been practically motionless as far as rotation goes, begins to acquire a greater and greater rotational speed as the tidal drag urges it on. The flames begin to reach higher and higher, and the tides, now urged from the sun by centrifugal force, rise into an ever greater crest, and as the swinging suns struggle to break loose, the flaming gas is pulled up and up, and becomes a mighty column of fire, a column that reaches out across three—four—a dozen millions of miles of space and joins the two stars at last, as stalactites and stalagmites grow together. A flaming tie of matter joins them, two titanic suns, and a mighty rope of fire binds them, while far mightier chains of gravity hold them together.

“But now their original velocity reasserts itself, and having spiraled about each other for who can say how long—a year—a million years seems more probable—but still only an instant in the life of a star—they begin to draw apart, and the flaming column is stretched out, and ever thinner it grows, and the two stars at last separate. But now the gas will never fall back into the sun. Like some giant flaming cigar it reaches out into space and it will stay thus, for it has been set in rotation about the sun at such a speed as is needed to form an orbit. The giant mass of gas is, however, too cool to continue to develop energy from matter, for it was only the surface of the sun, and cool. As it cools still further, there appear in it definite condensations, and the beginnings of the planets are there. The great filament that stretched from the sun to sun was cigar-shaped, and so the matter is more plentiful toward the center, and larger planets develop. Thus Jupiter and Saturn are far larger than any of the others. The two ends are tapering, thus Earth is larger than Venus, which is larger than Mercury, and Uranus and Neptune are both smaller than Saturn, Pluto being smaller than either.

“Mars and the asteroids are hard to explain. Perhaps it is easier to understand when we remember that the planets thus formed must necessarily have been rotating in eccentric orbits when they were first born, and these planets came too near the sun while gaseous, or nearly so, and Mars lost much of its matter, while the other, which now exists only as the asteroids, broke up.

“But now that other flaming star has retired, wandering on through space. The star has left its traces, for behind it there are planets where none existed before. But remember that it, too, must have planets now.

“All this happened some 2,000 million years ago.

“But in order that it might happen, it requires that two stars pass within the relatively short distance of a few billion miles of each other. Space is not overcrowded with matter, you know. The density of the stars has been compared with twenty tennis balls roaming about 8,000-mile sphere that the Earth fills up—twenty tennis balls in some 270 billion cubic miles of space. Now imagine two of those tennis balls—with plenty of room to wander in—passing within a few yards of each other. The chances are about as good as the chances of two stars passing close enough to make planets.

“Now let us consider another possibility.

“The Black Star, as I told you, has planets. That means that it must have thus passed close to another star. Now we have it coming close to another sun that has been similarly afflicted. The chances of that happening are inconceivably small. It is one chance in billions that the planets will form. Two stars must pass close to each other, when they have all space to wander about in. Then those afflicted stars separate, and one of them passes close by a new star, which has thus been similarly afflicted with that one chance in billions—well, that is then a chance in billions of billions.

“So my theory was called impossible. I don’t know but what it is. Besides, I thought of an argument the other men didn’t throw at me. I’m surprised they didn’t, too—the explanation of the strange chemical constitution of these men of a solar system planet would not be so impossible. It is quite possible that they live on a planet revolving about the sun which is, nevertheless, a planet of another star. It is quite conceivable to me that the chemical constitution of Neptune and Pluto will be found to be quite different from that of the rest of our planets. The two filaments drawn out from the suns may not have mingled, though I think they did, but it is quite conceivable that, just before parting, our sun tore one planet, or even two or three, from the other star.

“And that would explain these strange beings.

“My other ideas were accepted. The agreed-on plan for the release of energy, and the source of the power.” Arcot puffed on his pipe meditatively for several moments, then stood up and stretched.

“Ho—I wish they’d let me go on active duty with the space fleet! A scientific reputation can be an awful handicap at times,” he grinned. He had been rejected very emphatically when he had tried to enlist. The Interplanetary governments had stated flatly that he was too important as a scientist to be risked as a pilot of a space ship.

On two worlds the great construction plants were humming with activity. Civilian production of all but the barest essentials had been put aside for the duration of the emergency. Space ships were being turned out at top speed, getting their fuel from the wrecks of the invaders’ cruisers. Each ship needed only a small amount of the light-metal, for the energy content was tremendous. And those ships had been gigantic.

Already there was a fleet of speedsters and mother ships out there in space, and with every passing hour others left the home planets, always adding to the fighting force that was to engage the attackers deep in space, where no stray ships might filter through to destroy the cities of Earth or Venus. Assembly lines were now turning out ships so rapidly that the training of their operators was the most serious problem. This difficulty had finally been overcome by a very abbreviated training course in the actual manipulation of the controls on the home planets, and subsequent training as the squadrons raced on their outward courses.

It was soon decided that there must be another service beside that of the ordinary ships. One plant was devoted to making huge interstellar liners. These giants, made on Venus, were nearly a quarter of a mile long, and though diminutive in comparison with the giant Nigran ships, they were still decidedly large. Twelve of these could be completed within the next month, it was found; and one was immediately set aside as an officers’ headquarters ship. It was recognized that the officers must be within a few hundred thousand miles of the actual engagements, for decisions would have to be made without too much loss of time in the transmission of reports.

The ship must not be brought too near the front lest the officers be endangered and the entire engagement lost for want of the organizing central headquarters. The final solution had been the huge central control ship.

The other large vessels were to be used to carry food and supplies. They were not to enter the engagement, for their huge size would make them as vulnerable to the tiny darting mites of space as the Nigran ships had been to the Interplanetary Patrol. The little ships could not conveniently stock for more than a week of engagement, then drop back to these warehouses of space, and go forward again for action.

Throughout the long wait the officers of the Solarian forces organized their forces to the limit of their ability, planning each move of their attack. Space had been marked off into a great three-dimensional map, and each ship carried a small replica, the planets moving as they did in their orbits. The space between the planets was divided off into definite points in a series of Cartesian co-ordinates, the sun being the origin, and the plane of the elliptic being the X-Y plane.

The OX line was taken pointing toward one of the brightest of the fixed stars that was in the plane of the elliptic. The entire solar system was thus marked off as had been the planets long ages before, into a system of three dimensional latitude and longitude. This was imperative, in order to assure the easy location of the point of first attack, and to permit the entire fleet to come into position there. A scattered guard was to remain free, to avoid any false attacks and a later attack from a point millions of miles distant. Earth and Venus were each equipped with gigantic ray projectors, mighty weapons that could destroy anything, even a body as large as the Moon, at a distance of ten thousand miles. Still, a ship might get through, and with the death ray—what fearful toll might be exacted from a vast city such as Chicago—with its thirty millions! Or Karos, on Venus, with its fifteen and one half millions!

The tension became greater and greater as with each passing day the populace of two worlds awaited the call from the far-flung guard. The main bulk of the fleet had been concentrated in the center of their great spherical shell of ships. They could only wait—and watch—and prepare! Hundreds of miles apart, yet near enough so that no ship except perhaps a one-man craft could pass them undetected; and behind them were ships with delicate apparatus that could detect any foreign body of any size whatever within a hundred thousand miles of them.

The Solar System was prepared to repel boarders from the vast sea of space!

VI

Taj Lamor gazed down at the tremendous field below him. In it lay close packed a great mass of ships, a concourse of Titans of Space, dreadnoughts that were soon to set out to win—not a nation, not even a world, but to conquer a solar system, and to win for their owners a vast new sun, a sun that would light them and heat them for long ages to come.

Momentarily Taj Lamor’s gaze followed the retreating figure of Tordos Gar, the Elder; a figure with stooped shoulders and bowed head. His quiet yet vibrant parting words still resounded in his ears:

“Taj Lamor, remember what I tell you. If you win this awful war—you lose. As will our race. Only if you lose will you win.”

With a frown Taj Lamor stared down at the vast metal hulls glistening softly in the dull light of far-off stars, the single brightly beaming star that was their goal, and the dim artificial lighting system. From the distance came to him the tapping and humming of the working machines below as they strove to put the finishing touches to the great ships.

He raised his eyes toward the far-off horizon, where a great yellow star flamed brilliantly against the black velvet of space. He thought of that planet where the sky had been blue—an atmosphere of such intensity that it colored the sky!

Thoughtfully he gazed at the flaming yellow point.

He had much to consider now. They had met a new race, barbarians in some ways, yet they had not forgotten the lessons they had learned; they were not decadent. Between his eon-old people and their new home stood these strange beings, a race so young that its age could readily be counted in millennia, but withal a strong, intelligent form of life. And to a race that had not known war for so many untold ages, it was an unthinkable thing that they must kill other living, intelligent beings in order that they might live.

They had no need of moving, Tordos Gar and many others had argued; they could stay where they were forever, and never find any need for leaving their planet. This was the voice of decadence, Taj Lamor told himself; and he had grown to hate that voice.

There were other men, men who had gone to that other solar system, men who had seen vast oceans of sparkling water, showering from their ruffled surfaces the brilliant light of a great, hot sun. They had seen towering masses of mountains that reached high into the blue sky of a natural atmosphere, their mighty flanks clothed with green growth; natural plants in abundance.

And best of all, they had fought and seen action, such as no member of their race had known in untold ages. They knew Adventure and Excitement, and they had learned things that no member of their ancient race had known for millennia. They had learned the meaning of advancement and change. They had a new ardor, a new strength, a new emotion to drive them, and those who would have held them back became enthusiasts themselves. Enthusiasm may be contagious, but the spirit of their decadence was rapidly failing before this new urge. Here was their last chance and they must take it; they would!

They had lost many men in that battle on the strange world, but their race was intelligent; they learned quickly, the small ships had been very hard targets, while their big ships were too easy to strike. They must have small ships, yet they must have large ships for cargo, and for the high speed driving apparatus. The small ships were not able to accelerate to the terrific speed needed. Once their velocity had been brought up to the desired value, it was easy to maintain it with the infinitely small friction of space as the only retarding force; one atom per cubic inch was all they must meet. This would not hold them up, but the great amount of fuel and the power equipment needed to accelerate to the desired speed could not be packed into the small ship. Into the vast holds of the huge ships the smaller ones were packed, long shining rows of little metal projectiles. Tiny they were, but they could dart and twist and turn as swiftly as could the ships they had met on that other world—tiny ships that flashed about with incredible suddenness, a target that seemed impossible to hit. These ships would be a match for those flashing motes of the Yellow Sun. Now it might be that their great transport and battle ships could settle down to those worlds and arrange them for their own people!

And they had discovered new weapons, too. One of their mightiest was a very old apparatus, one that had been forgotten for countless ages. A model of it was in existence in some forgotten museum on a deserted planet, and with it long forgotten tomes that told of its principles, and of its consequences. Invisibility was now at their command. It was an ancient weapon, but might be exceedingly effective!

And one other. They had developed a new thing! They had not learned of it in books, it was their invention! They did not doubt that there were other machines like it in their museums, but the idea was original with them. It was a beam of electrical oscillatory waves, projected with tremendous energy, and it would be absorbed by any conductor. They could melt a ship with this!

And thus that great field had been filled with Giants of Space! And in each of these thousand great warships there nestled three thousand tiny one-man ships.

Here was a sight to inspire any race!

Taj Lamor watched as the last of the working machines dragged its slow way out of the great ships. They were finished! The men were already in them, waiting to start, and now there was an enthusiasm and an activity that had not been before; now the men were anxious to get that long journey completed and to be there, in that other system!

Taj Lamor entered his little special car and shot swiftly down to the giant cruisers. He stepped out of his little craft and walked over to the tube conveyor ready for the trip to the nose of the great vessel. Behind him attendants quickly moved his car to a locked cradle berth beside long rows of similar vehicles.

A short while later those who were to remain on the dark planet saw the first of the monsters of space rise slowly from the ground and leap swiftly forward; then as methodically as though released by automatic machinery, the others leaped in swift pursuit, rushing across half a world to the tremendous space lock that would let them out into the void. In a long, swift column they rushed on. Then one at a time they passed out into the mighty sea of space. In space they quickly formed and set out.

As though by magic, far to the left of their flight, there suddenly appeared a similar flight of giant ships, and then to the right, and above them, another seemed to leap out of nothingness as the ships of other planets came into sight. Quickly they formed a vast cone about their leader’s ship, a protecting screen, yet a powerful offensive formation.

Endlessly, it seemed, they sped on through the darkness. Then as the yellow star flamed brighter and brighter before them, they slowed their ships till the small fliers could safely be released into space.

Like a swarm of insects flying about giant birds of space the little ships circled the mighty masses of the battle cruisers. So huge were they, that in the combined mass of the fleet there rested sufficient gravitational attraction to force the little fliers to form orbits about them. And so they sped on through the void, the vast conical fleet with its slowly circling belt of little ships. A fleet whose counterpart had never entered the Solar System.

It was well beyond the orbit of Pluto that the first of the Solarian scouts detected the approaching invasion fleet. The tension that had gripped Earth and Venus and their guardian ships for so long a time suddenly snapped; and like a great machine set into sudden motion, or a huge boulder, balanced, given the last push that sends it spinning with destructive violence down a slope, the fleet went into action.

It was merely a little scout, a ten-man cruiser, that sent in the message of attack, and then, upon receiving headquarters’ permission, went into action. Some of the tacticians had wanted to try to get the entire fleet into battle range for a surprise attack in power; but others felt that this could not possibly succeed. Most important, they decided, was the opportunity of learning if the invaders had any new weapons.

The Nigrans had no warning, for a ten-man cruiser was invisible to them, though the vast bulk of their own ships stood out plainly, lighted by a blazing sun. No need here to make the sun stand still while the battle was finished! There was no change out here in all time! The first intimation of attack that the Nigrans had was the sudden splitting and destruction of the leading ship. Then, before they could realize what was happening, thirty-five other destructive molecular motion beams were tearing through space to meet them! The little ten-man cruiser and its flight of speedsters was in action! Twenty-one great ships crumpled and burst noiselessly in the void, their gases belching out into space in a great shining halo of light as the sun’s light struck it.

Unable to see their tiny enemies, who now were striking as swiftly, as desperately as possible, knowing that death was practically certain, hoping only to destroy a more equal number of the giants, they played their beams of death about them, taking care to miss their own ships as much as possible.

Another ship silently crumpled, and suddenly one cruiser right in the line of the flight was brought to a sudden halt as all its molecules were reversed. The ships behind it, unable to stop so suddenly, piled up on it in chaotic wreckage! A vast halo of shining gas spread out fifty thousand miles about, blinding further the other ships, the radiance about them making it impossible to see their tiny enemies.

Now other of the Solarian ships were coming swiftly to the attack. Suddenly a combination of three of the ten-man cruisers stopped another of the great ships instantaneously. There was another soundless crash, and the giant mass of wreckage that heaped suddenly up glowed dully red from the energy of impact.

But now the little ships of the invaders got into action. They had been delayed by the desperate attempts of the dreadnoughts to wipe out their enemies with the death rays, and they could not cover the great distances without some delay.

When a battle spreads itself out through a ten-thousand mile cube of space—through a thousand billion cubic miles of space—it is impossible to cover it instantaneously with any machine.

Already nearly a hundred and fifty of the giant liners had gone into making that colossal mass of junk in space. They must protect the remaining cruisers! And it was that flight of small ships that did protect them. Many of the Solarians went down to death under their rays. The death rays were exceedingly effective, but the heat rays were not able to get quite as long a range, and they were easily detected by the invisibility locators, which meant certain destruction, for a molecular motion ray would be there in moments, once they had been located.

The main fleet of the Solar System was already on its way, and every moment drew closer to this running battle, for the great ships of the Nigrans had, although they were entering the system cautiously, been going at a very high speed, as interplanetary speeds are measured. The entire battle had been a running encounter between the two forces. The Solarian force, invisible because of its small size, was certainly getting the better of the encounter thus far, but now that the odds were changing, now that the small ships had come into the fray, engaging them at close range, they were not having so easy time of it.

It would be many hours before the full strength of the Solarian fleet could be brought to bear on the enemy. They were not able to retire and await their arrival, for they must delay the Nigran fleet. If even one of those great ships should safely reach the two planets behind them—!

But within a half hour of the original signal, the Rocket Squad had thrown itself into the battle with a fervor and abandon that has given that famous division a name that will last forever.

The small fliers of the Nigrans were beginning to take an appalling toll in the thinning ranks of the Solarians. The coming of the Rocket Squad was welcome indeed! They were able to maneuver as swiftly as the enemy; the speedsters were harder to spot than the Solarian ten-man and thirty-man boats. The Solarian speedsters were even smaller than the comparable Nigran craft, and some of these did a tremendous amount of damage. The heat ray was quite ineffective against the ten-man ships, even when working at full capacity, when produced by the small generators of the Nigran one-man boats. The cruisers could absorb the heat and turn it into power faster than the enemy could supply it. Beams from the monster interstellar liners were another matter, of course.

But the one-man speedsters had a truly deadly plan of attack against the liners. The plan was officially frowned upon because of the great risks the pilots must take. They directed their boats at one of the monster ships, all the power units on at full drive. As close to target as possible the man jumped from his ship, clothed, of course, in an altitude suit equipped with a radio transmitter and receiver.

Death rays could not stop the speedsters, and with their momentum, the invaders could not make it less deadly with their heat beam, for, molten, it was still effective. A projectile weighing twenty-two tons, moving a hundred miles a second, can destroy anything man can lift off a planet! Their very speed made it impossible to dodge them, and usually they found their mark. As for the risk, if the Solarian forces were victorious, the pilots could be picked up later, provided too long a time had not elapsed!

In the midst of the battle, the Solarians began to wonder why the Nigran fleet was decreasing so rapidly—certainly they had not caused all that damage! Then suddenly they found the answer. One of their ships—then another—and another fell victim to a pale red ray that showed up like a ghostly pillar of luminosity coming from nowhere and going nowhere! The answer? The invaders’ ships were becoming invisible! The invisibility detectors were being overloaded now, and the hunt was hard, while the Nigrans were slipping past them and silently destroying Solarian ships! The molecular motion rays were quite effective on an invisible ship—once it had been found. They were destroying the Nigrans as rapidly as they were being destroyed, but they were letting some of them slip past! The luminous paint bombs and bullets were now called into play. All enemy ships were shot at with these missiles, and invisibility was forestalled.

At long last the dark bulk of the main fleet approached, a scarcely visible cloud of tiny darting metal ships. The battle so far had been a preliminary engagement. The huge ships of the Nigrans were forced to stop their attack, and releasing the last of the fliers, to retire to a distance, protected by a screen of small ships, for they were helpless against the Solarian speedsters. Invisibility fell into disfavor, too, now that there were plenty of Solarian ships, for the Nigrans were more conspicuous when invisible than when visible. The radio detector could pick them out at once.

The entire Nigran fleet was beginning to reveal the disorder and uncertainty that arose from desperation, for they were cornered in the most undesirable position possible. They were outside the Solarian fleet, and their ships were lighted by the glare of the sun. The defenders, on the other hand, were in such a position that the enemy could see only the “night” side of them—the shadowed side—and, as there was no air to diffuse the light, they were exceedingly hard to find. In the bargain, the radium paint was making life for the Nigrans a brief and flitting thing!

The invaders began to pay an awful toll in this their first real engagement. They lacked the necessary power to cover the entire Solarian fleet with their death rays, and their heat weapons were of little help. The power of the small ships did not count for much—and the big liners could not use their weapons effectively for their small fliers must be between them and their adversary. Despite this, however, the Nigrans so greatly outnumbered the Earth-Venus forces that it looked as though a long and costly war lay ahead.

At last the Solarian generals tried a ruse, a ruse they hoped would work on these beings; but they who never before had to plan a war in space, were not sure that their opponents had not had experience in the art. True, the Nigrans hadn’t revealed any especially striking generalship—had, in fact, committed some inexcusable blunders—but they couldn’t be sure. Though they didn’t know it, the Solarians had the advantage of thousands of years of planetary warfare to rely on. This stood them in good stead now.

The Nigrans were rallying rapidly. To their surprise, the forces of the Solarians were dwindling, and no matter how desperately this remnant fought, they could not hold back the entire force of the Nigran fliers. At last it appeared certain that the small ships could completely engage the Solarian fleet!

Quickly the giant cruisers formed a great dense cone of attack, and at a given signal, the fliers cleared a hole for them through the great disc-shaped shield of the defenders. And with all their rays fanned out in a 100% overlap ahead of them, the Nigran fleet plunged through the disc of ships at close to four hundred miles per second. They broke through—were on their way to the unprotected planets!

The Solarian ships closed the gap behind them, and eighteen of the giant ships burst into wreckage as powerful beams found them, but for the most part the remnant of the defending forces were far too busy with the fliers to attack the large ships. Now, as the monster engines of destruction raced on toward the planets still approximately two billion miles away, they knew that, far behind them, their fliers were engaging the Solarians. They had left their guard—but the guard was keeping the enemy occupied while they were free to drive in!

Then from nowhere came the counterattack! Nearly five thousand thirty-man ships of Earth and Venus, invisible in the darkness of space, suddenly leaped into action as the dreadnoughts sped past. Their destroying rays played over the nigh-helpless giants, and the huge ships were crumbling into colossal derelicts. With the last of their guard stripped from them, they fell easy prey to the attackers. Faster than they could keep count they were losing their warships of space!

The ruse had worked perfectly! Nearly all of the ten-man and one-man ships had been left behind them in the original disc, while all the thirty-man light cruisers, and a few hundred each of the ten-man and one-man crafts sped away to form a great ring twenty thousand miles farther back. The Nigran fleet had flown blindly into the ambush.

There was only one thing left for them to do. They were defeated. They must return to their far-off black star and leave the Solarians in possession of their worlds. For all battle purposes their great force was nearly wiped out, only the fliers remained in force; and these could no longer be carried in the remnant of the great liners. Swiftly they fell back, passing again through the disc, losing thirty more vessels, then raced swiftly away from the fleet of their enemies.

The Solarians, however, were not content. Their ships were forming in a giant hollow cylinder, and as the sphere of the Nigrans retreated, their beams playing behind them, the cylinder moved forward until it surrounded them, and they raced together toward the distant lightless sun. The Solar end of the cylinder swiftly closed, blocked by a group of huge ships which had taken no visible part in the battle. The Nigrans had stopped using their rays; and the Solarians followed in armed readiness, not molesting as long as they were not molested.

Many days this strange flight lasted, till at last the great yellow sun, Sol, had faded in the distance to an unusually brilliant star. Then, suddenly visible out of the darkness, a strange black world loomed ahead, and the Nigran ships settled swiftly toward it. Through the airlocks the great liners settled to their planet. No action was taken so long as the Solarian ships were not menaced, but for eight long months the darting ships hung above the four englobed worlds of Nigra.

Then at last the astronomers of Earth and Venus sent through the billions of miles of ether their message of safety. The guard could return home, for the sun they had been guarding would soon be too far from Earth or Venus to make any attack logical. Despite this, for years to come the fleet would guard the rim of the System, just to be sure; but it appeared that the suns had passed, never again to meet.

A strange thing had happened during the passing of the stars. Pluto no longer circled Sol; it had been captured by Nigra! The great fleet returned to a changed Solar system. Sol was still at its center, but there were now ten planets, including two new ones that the sun had captured from Nigra in return for Pluto; and all the planets had shifted a bit in their orbits.

What the ultimate effect on the planets will be, we cannot say as yet. The change thus far is certainly not very great, though a somewhat warmer climate exists now on Earth, and it is a bit cooler on Venus. The long-range difference, however, will be exceedingly interesting.

The Solar System has just passed through an experience which is probably unique in all the history of the mighty nebula of which our sun is an infinitesimal part. The chances that one star, surrounded by a system of planets, should pass within a hundred billion miles of another star, similarly accompanied, was one in billions of billions. That both systems should have been inhabited by intelligent races—

It is easy to understand why the scientists could not believe Arcot’s theory of attack from another sun until they had actually seen those other worlds.

In that war between two solar systems we learned much and lost much. Yet, in all probability we gained more than we lost, for those two new-old planets will mean tremendous things to us. Already scientists are at work in the vast museums and ancient laboratories that are on them, and every day new things are being discovered. We lost many men, but we saved our worlds, and we learned many invaluable secrets from the invaders. In addition, we have but scratched the surface of a science that is at least a thousand million years old!

EPILOGUE

Taj Lamor looked out across the void of space toward a fading point of yellow light. Far in the distance it glowed, and every second moved it many more miles farther from him. They had lost their struggle for life and a new sun, he had thought when he turned back, defeated, from that distant sun. But time had brought new hope.

They had lost many men in that struggle, and their dwindling resources had been strained to the limit, but now there was hope, for a new spirit had been born in their race. They had fought, and lost, but they had gained a spirit of adventure that had been dormant for millions of years.

Below him, in the great dim mass that was their city, he knew that many laboratories were in the full swing of active work. Knowledge and its application were being discovered and rediscovered. New uses were being found for old things, and their daily life was changing. It was again a race awake, rejuvenated by a change!

As the great sea of yellow fire that was that strange sun had faded behind their fleeing ships, leaving their dead planets still circling a dead sun, he had thought their last chance was gone forever. But hope had reawakened, with the birth of new ideas, new ways of doing things.

Tordos Gar had been right! They had lost—but in the losing, they had won!

Taj Lamor shifted his gaze to a blazing point of light, where a titanic sea of flame was burning with a brilliance and power that, despite the greater distance, made the remote yellow sun seem pale and dim. The blue-white glow told of a monster star, a star far brighter than the one they had just left. It had become the brightest star in their heavens. On their ancient star charts it was listed as a red giant, named Tongsil-239-e, which meant it was of the fifth magnitude and very distant. But in the long ages that had passed since it was classified, it had become a mighty sun—a star in its prime.

How were they to reach it? It was eight and one half light years away!

Their search for the force that would swing a world from its orbit had at last been successful. The knowledge had come too late to aid them in their fight for the yellow sun, but they might yet use it—they might even tear their planets from their orbits, and drive them as free bodies across the void. It would take ages to make the trip—but long ages had already passed as their dark planet swung through the void. What difference would it make if they were or were not accompanied by a dead star?

True, the star that was now their goal was a double star; their planets could not find orbits about it, but they might remedy that—they could tear one star free and hurl it into space, making the remaining sun suitable for their use.

But they would escape this dead sun.