EMPIRE

 A Powerful Novel of Intrigue and Action in the Not-So-Distant Future

 _by_

 CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

 _A Complete ORIGINAL Book_, UNABRIDGED

 WORLD EDITIONS, INC. 105 WEST 40TH STREET NEW YORK 18, NEW YORK

 _Copyright 1951_ _by_ WORLD EDITIONS, INC. 

 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 

Transcriber's Note:

 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 

_CHAPTER ONE_

Spencer Chambers frowned at the spacegram on the desk before him. JohnMoore Mallory. That was the man who had caused so much trouble in theJovian elections. The troublemaker who had shouted for an investigationof Interplanetary Power. The man who had said that Spencer Chambers andInterplanetary Power were waging economic war against the people of theSolar System. 

Chambers smiled. With long, well-kept fingers, he rubbed his iron-graymustache. 

John Moore Mallory was right; for that reason, he was a dangerous man. Prison was the place for him, but probably a prison outside the Jovianconfederacy. Perhaps one of the prison ships that plied to the edge ofthe System, clear to the orbit of Pluto. Or would the prison on Mercurybe better?

Spencer Chambers leaned back in his chair and matched his fingertips, staring at them, frowning again. 

Mercury was a hard place. A man's life wasn't worth much there. Workingin the power plants, where the Sun poured out its flaming blast of heat, and radiations sucked the energy from one's body, in six months, a yearat most, any man was finished. 

Chambers shook his head. Not Mercury. He had nothing against Mallory. Hehad never met the man but he rather liked him. Mallory was just a manfighting for a principle, the same as Chambers was doing. 

He was sorry that it had been necessary to put Mallory in prison. If theman only had listened to reason, had accepted the proposals that hadbeen made, or just had dropped out of sight until the Jovian electionswere over ... Or at least had moderated his charges. But when he hadattempted to reveal the offers, which he termed bribery, something hadto be done. 

Ludwig Stutsman had handled that part of it. Brilliant fellow, thisStutsman, but as mean a human as ever walked on two legs. A man utterlywithout mercy, entirely without principle. A man who would stoop to anydepth. But a useful man, a good one to have around to do the dirty work. And dirty work sometimes was necessary. 

Chambers picked up the spacegram again and studied it. Stutsman, out onCallisto now, had sent it. He was doing a good job out there. The Jovianconfederacy, less than one Earth year under Interplanetary domination, was still half rebellious, still angry at being forced to turn over itsgovernment to the hand-picked officials of Chambers' company. An ironheel was needed and Stutsman was that iron heel. 

 * * * * *

So the people on the Jovian satellites wanted the release of John MooreMallory. "They're getting ugly, " the spacegram said. It had been amistake to confine Mallory to Callisto. Stutsman should have thought ofthat. 

Chambers would instruct Stutsman to remove Mallory from the Callistoprison, place him on one of the prison ships. Give instructions to thecaptain to make things comfortable for him. When this furor had blownover, after things had quieted down in the Jovian confederacy, it mightbe possible to release Mallory. After all, the man wasn't really guiltyof any crime. It was a shame that he should be imprisoned whenracketeering rats like Scorio went scot-free right here in New York. 

A buzzer purred softly and Chambers reached out to press a stud. 

"Dr. Craven to see you, " his secretary said. "You asked to see him, Mr. Chambers. "

"All right, " said Chambers. "Send him right in. "

He clicked the stud again, picked up his pen, wrote out a spacegram toStutsman, and signed it. 

Dr. Herbert Craven stood just inside the door, his black suit wrinkledand untidy, his sparse sandy hair standing on end. 

"You sent for me, " he said sourly. 

"Sit down, Doctor, " invited Chambers. 

 * * * * *

Craven sat down. He peered at Chambers through thick-lensed glasses. 

"I haven't much time, " he declared acidly. 

"Cigar?" Chambers offered. 

"Never smoke. "

"A drink, then?"

"You know I don't drink, " snapped Craven. 

"Doctor, " said Chambers, "you're the least sociable man I've ever known. What do you do to enjoy yourself?"

"I work, " said Craven. "I find it interesting. "

"You must. You even begrudge the time it takes to talk with me. "

"I won't deny it. What do you want this time?"

Chambers swung about to face him squarely across the desk. There was acold look in the financier's gray eyes and his lips were grim. 

"Craven, " he said, "I don't trust you. I've never trusted you. Probablythat's no news to you. "

"You don't trust anyone, " countered Craven. "You're watching everybodyall the time. "

"You sold me a gadget I didn't need five years ago, " said Chambers. "Yououtfoxed me and I don't hold it against you. In fact, it almost made meadmire you. Because of that I put you under a contract, one that you andall the lawyers in hell can't break, because someday you'll findsomething valuable, and when you do, I want it. A million a year is ahigh price to pay to protect myself against you, but I think it's worthit. If I didn't think so, I'd have turned you over to Stutsman long ago. Stutsman knows how to handle men like you. "

"You mean, " said Craven, "that you've found I'm working on something Ihaven't reported to you. "

"That's exactly it. "

"You'll get a report when I have something to report. Not before. "

"That's all right, " said Chambers. "I just wanted you to know. "

Craven got to his feet slowly. "These talks with you are so refreshing, "he remarked. 

"We'll have to have them oftener, " said Chambers. 

Craven banged the door as he went out. 

Chambers stared after him. A queer man, the most astute scientific mindanywhere, but not a man to be trusted. 

 * * * * *

The president of Interplanetary Power rose from his chair and walked tothe window. Below spread the roaring inferno of New York, greatest cityin the Solar System, a strange place of queer beauty and weightymaterialism, dreamlike in its super-skyscraper construction, bututilitarian in its purpose, for it was a port of many planets. 

The afternoon sunlight slanted through the window, softening theiron-gray hair of the man who stood there. His shoulders almost blockedthe window, for he had the body of a fighting man, one, moreover, ingood condition. His short-clipped mustache rode with an air of dignityabove his thin, rugged mouth. 

His eyes looked out on the city, but did not see it. Through his brainwent the vision of a dream that was coming true. His dream spun itsfragile net about the planets of the Solar System, about their moons, about every single foot of planetary ground where men had gone to buildand create a second homeland--the mines of Mercury and the farms ofVenus, the pleasure-lands of Mars and the mighty domed cities on themoons of Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and the great, cold laboratoriesof Pluto. 

Power was the key, supplied by the accumulators owned and rented byInterplanetary Power. A monopoly of power. Power that Venus and Mercuryhad too much of, must sell on the market, and that the other planets andsatellites needed. Power to drive huge spaceships across the void, toturn the wheels of industry, to heat the domes on colder worlds. Powerto make possible the life and functioning of mankind on hostile worlds. 

In the great power plants of Mercury and Venus, the accumulators werecharged and then shipped out to those other worlds where power wasneeded. Accumulators were rented, never sold. Because they belonged atall times to Interplanetary Power, they literally held the fate of allthe planets in their cells. 

A few accumulators were manufactured and sold by other smallercompanies, but they were few and the price was high. Interplanetary sawto that. When the cry of monopoly was raised, Interplanetary could pointto these other manufacturers as proof that there was no restraint oftrade. Under the statute no monopoly could be charged, but the cost ofmanufacturing accumulators alone was protection against seriouscompetition from anyone. 

Upon a satisfactory, efficient power-storage device rested the successor failure of space travel itself. That device and the power it storedwere for sale by Interplanetary ... And, to all practical purposes, byInterplanetary only. 

Accordingly, year after year, Interplanetary had tightened its grip uponthe Solar System. Mercury was virtually owned by the company. Mars andVenus were little more than puppet states. And now the government of theJovian confederacy was in the hands of men who acknowledged SpencerChambers as their master. On Earth the agents and the lobbyistsrepresenting Interplanetary swarmed in every capital, even in thecapital of the Central European Federation, whose people were dominatedby an absolute dictatorship. For even Central Europe neededaccumulators. 

"Economic dictatorship, " said Spencer Chambers to himself. "That's whatJohn Moore Mallory called it. " Well, why not? Such a dictatorship wouldinsure the best business brains at the heads of the governments, wouldgive the Solar System a business administration, would guard against themistakes of popular government. 

Democracies were based on a false presumption--the theory that allpeople were fit to rule. It granted intelligence where there was nointelligence. It presumed ability where there was not the slightesttrace of any. It gave the idiot the same political standing as the wiseman, the crackpot the same political opportunity as the man ofwell-grounded common sense, the weakling the same voice as the strongman. It was government by emotion rather than by judgment. 

 * * * * *

Spencer Chambers' face took on stern lines. There was no softness leftnow. The late afternoon sunlight painted angles and threw shadows andcreated highlights that made him look almost like a granite mask on asolid granite body. 

There was no room for Mallory's nonsense in a dynamic, expandingcivilization. No reason to kill him--even he might have value undercertain circumstances, and no really efficient executive destroysvalue--but he had to be out of the way where his mob-rousing tonguecould do no damage. The damned fool! What good would his idioticidealism do him on a prison spaceship?

_CHAPTER TWO_

Russell Page squinted thoughtful eyes at the thing he had created--atransparent cloud, a visible, sharply outlined cloud of _something_. Itwas visible as a piece of glass is visible, as a globe of water isvisible. There it lay, within his apparatus, a thing that shouldn't be. 

"I believe we have something there, Harry, " he said slowly. 

Harry Wilson sucked at the cigarette that drooped from the corner of hismouth, blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. His eyes twitchednervously. 

"Yeah, " he said. "Anti-entropy. "

"All of that, " said Russell Page. "Perhaps a whole lot more. "

"It stops all energy change, " said Wilson, "as if time stood still andthings remained exactly as they were when time had stopped. "

"It's more than that, " Page declared. "It conserves not only energy _intoto_, not only the energy of the whole, but the energy of the part. Itis perfectly transparent, yet it has refractive qualities. It won'tabsorb light because to do so would change its energy content. In thatfield, whatever is hot stays hot, whatever is cold can't gain heat. "

He scraped his hand over a week's growth of beard, considering. From hispocket he took a pipe and a leather pouch. Thoughtfully he filled thepipe and lit it. 

It had started with his experiments in Force Field 348, an experiment toobserve the effects of heating a conductor in that field. It had beenimpossible to heat the conductor electrically, for that would have upsetthe field, changed it, twisted it into something else. So he had used aBunsen burner. 

Through half-closed eyes, he still could see that slender strand ofimperm wire, how its silvery length had turned to red under the blueflame. Deep red at first and then brighter until it flamed in almostwhite-hot incandescence. And all the while the humming of thetransformer as the force field built up. The humming of the transformerand the muted roaring of the burner and the glowing heat in the lengthof wire. 

Something had happened then ... An awesome something. A weird wrench asif some greater power, some greater law had taken hold. A glove offorce, invisible, but somehow sensed, had closed about the wire andflame. Instantly the roaring of the burner changed in tone; an odor ofgas spewed out of the vents at its base. Something had cut off the flowof flame in the brass tube. Some force, _something_ ... 

The flame was a transparent cloud. The blue and red of flame and hotwire had changed, in the whiplash of a second, to a refractive buttransparent cloud that hung there within the apparatus. 

 * * * * *

The red color had vanished from the wire as the blue had vanished fromthe flame. The wire was shining. It wasn't silvery; it wasn't white. There was no hint of color, just a refractive blur that told him thewire was there. Colorless reflection. _And that meant perfectreflection!_ The most perfect reflectors reflect little more than 98 percent of the light incident and the absorption of the two per cent colorsthose reflectors as copper or gold or chromium. But the imperm wirewithin that force field that had been flame a moment before, wasreflecting _all_ light. 

He had cut the wire with a pair of shears and it had still hung, unsupported, in the air, unchanging within the shimmer that constitutedsomething no man had ever seen before. 

"You can't put energy in, " said Page, talking to himself, chewing thebit of his pipe. "You can't take energy out. It's still as hot as itwas at the moment the change came. But it can't radiate any of thatheat. It can't radiate any kind of energy. "

Why, even the wire was reflective, so that it couldn't absorb energy andthus disturb the balance that existed within that bit of space. Not onlyenergy itself was preserved, but the very form of energy. 

But why? That was the question that hammered at him. Why? Before hecould go ahead, he had to know why. 

Perhaps the verging of the field toward Field 349? Somewhere in betweenthose two fields of force, somewhere within that almost non-existentborderline which separated them, he might find the secret. 

Rising to his feet, he knocked out his pipe. 

"Harry, " he announced, "we have work to do. "

Smoke drooled from Wilson's nostrils. 

"Yeah, " he said. 

Page had a sudden urge to lash out and hit the man. That eternaldrooling of smoke out of his nostrils, that everlasting cigarettedangling limply from one corner of his mouth, the shifty eyes, the dirtyfingernails, got on his nerves. 

But Wilson was a mechanical genius. His hands were clever despite thedirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three-gramelectroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure ofelectronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If onlyhe wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking'yeah'!

Page stopped in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz. Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. Fromthem lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face andshoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded himfrom the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the poolof shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayeda man's skin from his body within the space of seconds. 

 * * * * *

The scientist squinted his eyes against the glare. There was somethingin it that caught him with a deadly fascination. The personification ofpower--the incredibly intense spot of incandescent vapor, the tinysphere of blue-green fire, the spinning surge of that shining pool, theintense glare of ionization. 

Power ... The breath of modern mankind, the pulse of progress. 

In an adjacent room were the accumulators. Not Interplanetaryaccumulators, which he would have had to rent, but ones he had boughtfrom a small manufacturer who turned out only ten or fifteen thousand ayear ... Not enough to bother Interplanetary. 

Gregory Manning had made it possible for him to buy those accumulators. Manning had made many things possible in this little laboratory hiddendeep within the heart of the Sierras, many miles from any otherhabitation. 

Manning's grandfather, Jackson Manning, had first generated thecurvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortunethat approached the five-billion mark. But that had not been all. Fromhis famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientificmind. From his mother's father, Anthony Barret, he had gained an astutebusiness sense. But unlike his maternal grandfather, he had not turnedhis attention entirely to business. Old Man Barret had virtually ruledWall Street for almost a generation, had become a financial myth linkedwith keen business sense, with an uncanny ability to handle men andmoney. But his grandson, Gregory Manning, had become known to the worldin a different way. For while he had inherited scientific ability fromone side of the family, financial sense from the other, he likewise hadinherited from some other ancestor--perhaps remote and unknown--awanderlust that had taken him to the farthest outposts of the SolarSystem. 

 * * * * *

It was Gregory Manning who had financed and headed the rescue expeditionwhich took the first Pluto flight off that dark icebox of a world whenthe exploration ship had crashed. It was he who had piloted home thewinning ship in the Jupiter derby, sending his bulleting craft screamingaround the mighty planet in a time which set a Solar record. It wasGregory Manning who had entered the Venusian swamps and brought back, alive, the mystery lizard that had been reported there. And he was theone who had flown the serum to Mercury when the lives of ten thousandmen depended upon the thrumming engines that drove the shining shipinward toward the Sun. 

Russell Page had known him since college days. They had worked out theirexperiments together in the school laboratories, had spent long hoursarguing and wondering ... Debating scientific theories. Both had lovedthe same girl, both had lost her, and together they had been bitter overit ... Drowning their bitterness in a three-day drunk that made campushistory. 

After graduation Gregory Manning had gone on to world fame, had roamedover the face of every planet except Jupiter and Saturn, had visitedevery inhabited moon, had climbed Lunar mountains, penetrated Venusianswamps, crossed Martian deserts, driven by a need to see and experiencethat would not let him rest. Russell Page had sunk into obscurity, hadburied himself in scientific research, coming more and more to aim hiseffort at the discovery of a new source of power ... Power that would becheap, that would destroy the threat of Interplanetary dictatorship. 

Page turned away from the rectifier room. 

"Maybe I'll have something to show Greg soon, " he told himself. "Maybe, after all these years.... "

 * * * * *

Forty minutes after Page put through the call to Chicago, GregoryManning arrived. The scientist, watching for him from the tiny lawn thatsurrounded the combined home and laboratory, saw his plane bullet intosight, scream down toward the little field and make a perfect landing. 

Hurrying toward the plane as Gregory stepped out of it, Russell notedthat his friend looked the same as ever, though it had been a year ormore since he had seen him. The thing that was discomfiting about Gregwas his apparently enduring youthfulness. 

He was clad in jodhpurs and boots and an old tweed coat, with abrilliant blue stock at his throat. He waved a hand in greeting andhurried forward. Russ heard the grating of his boots across the gravelof the walk. 

Greg's face was bleak; it always was. A clean, smooth face, hard, withsomething stern about the eyes. 

His grip almost crushed Russ's hand, but his tone was crisp. "Yousounded excited, Russ. "

"I have a right to be, " said the scientist. "I think I have foundsomething at last. "

"Atomic power?" asked Manning. There was no flutter of excitement in hisvoice, just a little hardening of the lines about his eyes, a littletensing of the muscles in his cheeks. 

Russ shook his head. "Not atomic energy. If it's anything, it's materialenergy, the secret of the energy of matter. "

They halted before two lawn chairs. 

"Let's sit down here, " invited Russ. "I can tell it to you out here, show it to you afterward. It isn't often I can be outdoors. "

"It is a fine place, " said Greg. "I can smell the pines. "

The laboratory perched on a ledge of rugged rock, nearly 7, 000 feetabove sea level. Before them the land swept down in jagged ruggednessto a valley far below, where a stream flashed in the noonday sun. Beyondclimbed pine-clad slopes and far in the distance gleamed shimmeringspires of snow-capped peaks. 

From his leather jacket Russ hauled forth his pipe and tobacco, lightedup. 

"It was this way, " he said. Leaning back comfortably he outlined thefirst experiment. Manning listened intently. 

"Now comes the funny part, " Russ added. "I had hopes before, but Ibelieve this is what put me on the right track. I took a metal rod, awelding rod, you know. I pushed it into that solidified force field, ifthat is what you'd call it ... Although that doesn't describe it. Therod went in. Took a lot of pushing, but it went in. And though the fieldseemed entirely transparent, you couldn't see the rod, even after I hadpushed enough of it in so it should have come out the other side. It wasas if it hadn't entered the sphere of force at all. As if I were justtelescoping the rod and its density were increasing as I pushed, likepushing it back into itself, but that, of course, wouldn't have beenpossible. "

He paused and puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed on the snowy peaks farin the purple distance. Manning waited. 

"Finally the rod came out, " Russ went on. "Mind you, it came out, evenafter I would have sworn, if I had relied alone upon my eyes, that ithadn't entered the sphere at all. _But it came out ninety degreesremoved from its point of entry!_"

"Wait a second, " said Manning. "This doesn't check. Did you do it morethan once?"

"I did it a dozen times and the results were the same each time. But youhaven't heard the half of it. When I pulled that rod out--yes, I couldpull it out--it was a good two inches shorter than when I had pushed itin. I couldn't believe that part of it. It was even harder to believethan that the rod should come out ninety degrees from its point ofentry. I measured the rods after that and made sure. Kept an accuraterecord. Every single one of them lost approximately two inches by beingshoved into the sphere. Every single one of them repeated the phenomenonof curving within the sphere to come out somewhere else than where I hadinserted them. "

 * * * * *

"Any explanation of it?" asked Manning, and now there was a cold chillof excitement in his voice. 

"Theories, no real explanations. Remember that you can't see the rodafter you push it into the sphere. It's just as if it isn't there. Well, maybe it isn't. You can't disturb anything within that sphere oryou'd change the sum of potential-kinetic-pressure energies within it. The sphere seems dedicated to that one thing ... It cannot change. Ifthe rod struck the imperm wire within the field, it would press the wiredown, would use up energy, decrease the potential energy. So the rodsimply had to miss it somehow. I believe it _moved into some higherplane of existence and went around_. And in doing that it had to turn somany corners, so many fourth-dimensional corners, that the length wasused up. Or maybe it was increased in density. I'm not sure. Perhaps noone will ever know. "

"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?" demanded Manning. "I shouldhave been out here helping you. Maybe I wouldn't be much good, but Imight have helped. "

"You'll have your chance, " Russ told him. "We're just starting. I wantedto be sure I had something before I troubled you. I tried other thingswith that first sphere. I found that metal pushed through the spherewill conduct an electrical current, which is pretty definite proof thatthe metal isn't within the sphere at all. Glass can be forced through itwithout breaking. Not flexible glass, but rods of plain old brittleglass. It turns without breaking, and it also loses some of its length. Water can be forced through a tube inserted in the sphere, but only whenterrific pressure is applied. What that proves I can't even begin toguess. "

"You said you experimented on the first sphere, " said Manning. "Have youmade others?"

Russ rose from his chair. 

"Come on in, Greg, " he said, and there was a grin on his face. "I havesomething you'll have to see to appreciate. "

 * * * * *

The apparatus was heavier and larger than the first in which Russ hadcreated the sphere of energy. Fed by a powerful accumulator battery, five power leads were aimed at it, centered in the space between fourgreat copper blocks. 

Russ's hand went out to the switch that controlled the power. Suddenlythe power beams flamed, changed from a dull glow into an intense, almostintolerable brilliance. A dull grumble of power climbed up to a steadywail. 

The beams had changed color, were bluish now, the typical color ofionized air. They were just power beams, meeting at a common center, butsomehow they were queer, too, for though they were capable of slashingfar out into space, they were stopped dead. Their might was pouring intoa common center and going no farther. A splash of intensely glowinglight rested over them, then began to rotate slowly as a motor somewherehummed softly, cutting through the mad roar and rumble of power thatsurged through the laboratory. 

The glowing light was spinning more swiftly now. A rotating field wasbeing established. The power beams began to wink, falling and rising inintensity. The sphere seemed to grow, almost filling the space betweenthe copper blocks. It touched one and rebounded slightly toward another. It extended, increased slightly. A terrible screaming ripped through theroom, drowning out the titanic din as the spinning sphere came incontact with the copper blocks, as force and metal resulted in weirdfriction. 

With a shocking wrench the beams went dead, the scream cut off, the roarwas gone. A terrifying silence fell upon the room as soon as thesuddenly thunking relays opened automatically. 

 * * * * *

The sphere was gone! In its place was a tenuous refraction that toldwhere it had been. That and a thin layer of perfectly reflectivecopper ... Colorless now, but Manning knew it was copper, for itrepresented the continuation of the great copper blocks. 

His mind felt as if it were racing in neutral, getting nowhere. Withinthat sphere was the total energy that had been poured out by fivegigantic beams, turned on full, for almost a minute's time. Compressedenergy! Energy enough to blast these mountains down to the primal rockwere it released instantly. Energy trapped and held by virtue of somepeculiarity of that little borderline between Force Fields 348 and 349. 

Russ walked across the room to a small electric truck with rubbercaterpillar treads, driven by a bank of portable accumulators. Skillfully the scientist maneuvered it over to the other side of theroom, picked up a steel bar four inches in diameter and five feet long. Holding it by the handler's magnetic crane, he fixed it firmly in thearmlike jaws on the front of the machine, then moved the machine into aposition straddling the sphere of force. 

With smashing momentum the iron jaws thrust downward, driving the steelbar into the sphere. There was a groaning crash as the handler came to ahalt, shuddering, with only eight inches of the bar buried in thesphere. The stench of hot insulation filled the room while the electricmotor throbbed, the rubber treads creaked, the machine groaned andstrained, but the bar would go no farther. 

Russ shut off the machine and stood back. 

"That gives you an idea, " he said grimly. 

"The trick now, " Greg said, "is to break down the field. "

Without a word, Russ reached for the power controls. A sudden roar ofthunderous fury and the beams leaped at the sphere ... But this time thesphere did not materialize again. Again the wrench shuddered through thelaboratory, a wrench that seemed to distort space and time. 

Then, as abruptly as it had come, it was gone. But when it ended, something gigantic and incomprehensibly powerful seemed to rushsoundlessly by ... Something that was felt and sensed. It was like agreat noiseless, breathless wind in the dead of night that rushed bythem and through them, all about them in space and died slowly away. 

But the vanished steel did not reappear with the disappearance of thesphere and the draining away of power. Almost grotesquely now, thehandler stood poised above the place where the sphere had been and inits jaws it held the bar. But the end of the bar, the eight inches thathad been within the sphere, was gone. It had been sliced off so sharplythat it left a highly reflective concave mirror on the severed surface. 

"Where is it?" demanded Manning. "In that higher dimension?"

Russ shook his head. "You noticed that rushing sensation? That may havebeen the energy of matter rushing into some other space. It may be thekey to the energy of matter!"

Gregory Manning stared at the bar. "I'm staying with you, Russ. I'mseeing this thing through. "

"I knew you would, " said Russ. 

Triumph flamed briefly in Manning's eyes. "And when we finish, we'llhave something that will break Interplanetary. We'll smash theirstranglehold on the Solar System. " He stopped and looked at Page. "Lord, Russ, " he whispered, "do you realize what we'll have?"

"I think I do, Greg, " the scientist answered soberly. "Material energyengines. Power so cheap that you won't be able to give it away. Morepower than anybody could ever need. "

_CHAPTER THREE_

Russ hunched over the keyboard set in the control room of the _Comet_and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he hadto do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whetheror not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, finally, they held in their grasp the key to the release of energy thatwould give the System power to spare. 

His glance lifted from the keyboard, looked out the observation port. Through the inkiness of space ran a faint blue thread, a tiny line thatstretched from the ship and away until it was lost in the darkness ofthe void. 

One hundred thousand miles away, that thread touched the surface of asteel ball bearing ... A speck in the immensity of space. 

He thought about that little beam of blue. It took power to do that, power to hold a beam tight and strong and steady through the stress ofone hundred thousand miles. But it had to be that far away ... And theyhad that power. From the bowels of the ship came the deep purr of it, the angry, silky song of mighty engines throttled down. 

He heard Harry Wilson shuffling impatiently behind him, smelled theacrid smoke that floated from the tip of Wilson's cigarette. 

"Might as well punch that key, Russ, " said Manning's cool voice. "Wehave to find out sooner or later. "

Russ's finger hovered over the key, steadied and held. When he punchedthat key, if everything worked right, the energy in the tiny ballbearing would be released instantaneously. The energy of a piece ofsteel, weighing less than an ounce. Over that tight beam of blue wouldflash the impulse of destruction.... 

His fingers plunged down. 

Space flamed in front of them. For just an instant the void seemedfilled with an angry, bursting fire that lapped with hungry tongues ofcold, blue light toward the distant planets. A flare so intense that itwas visible on the Jovian worlds, three hundred million miles away. Itlighted the night-side of Earth, blotting out the stars and Moon, sending astronomers scurrying for their telescopes, rating foot-highstreamers in the night editions. 

Slowly Russ turned around and faced his friend. 

"We have it, Greg, " he said. "We really have it. We've tested thecontrol formulas all along the line. We know what we can do. "

"We don't know it all yet, " declared Greg. "We know we can make it work, but I have a feeling we haven't more than skimmed the surfacepossibilities. "

 * * * * *

Russ sank into a chair and stared about the room. They knew they couldgenerate alternating current of any frequency they chose by use of aspecial collector apparatus. They could release radiant energy in almostany quantity they desired, in any wave-length, from the longest radio tothe incredibly hard cosmics. The electrical power they could measureaccurately and easily by simple voltmeters and ammeters. But radiantenergy was another thing. When it passed all hitherto known bonds, itwould simply fuse any instrument they might use to measure it. 

But they knew the power they generated. In one split second they hadburst the energy bonds of a tiny bit of steel and that energy had glaredbriefly more hotly than the Sun. 

"Greg, " he said, "it isn't often you can say that any event was thebeginning of a new era. You can with this--the era of unlimited power. It kind of scares me. "

Up until a hundred years ago coal and oil and oxygen had been the mainpower sources, but with the dwindling of the supply of coal and oil, manhad sought another way. He had turned back to the old dream of snatchingpower direct from the Sun. In the year 2048 Patterson had perfected thephoto-cell. Then the Alexanderson accumulators made it possible to pumpthe life-blood of power to the far reaches of the System, and on Mercuryand Venus, and to a lesser extent on Earth, great accumulator powerplants had sprung up, with Interplanetary, under the driving genius ofSpencer Chambers, gaining control of the market. 

The photo-cell and the accumulator had spurred interplanetary trade andsettlement. Until it had been possible to store Sun-power for thedriving of spaceships and for shipment to the outer planets, ships hadbeen driven by rocket fuel, and the struggling colonies on the outerworlds had fought a bitter battle without the aid of ready power. 

Coal and oil there were in plenty on the outer worlds, but one otheressential was lacking ... Oxygen. Coal on Mars, for instance, had toburned under synthetic air pressures, like the old carburetor. Theresult was inefficiency. A lot of coal burned, not enough powerdelivered. 

Even the photo-cells were inefficient when attempts were made to operatethem beyond the Earth; that was the maximum distance for maximum Solarefficiency. 

Russ dug into the pocket of his faded, scuffed leather jacket and hauledforth pipe and pouch. Thoughtfully he tamped the tobacco into the bowl. 

"Three months, " he said. "Three months of damn hard work. "

"Yeah, " agreed Wilson, "we sure have worked. "

Wilson's face was haggard, his eyes red. He blew smoke through hisnostrils. 

"When we get back, how about us taking a little vacation?" he asked. 

Russ laughed. "You can if you want to. Greg and I are keeping on. "

"We can't waste time, " Manning said. "Spencer Chambers may get wind ofthis. He'd move all hell to stop us. "

Wilson spat out his cigarette. "Why don't you patent what you have? Thatwould protect you. "

 * * * * *

Russ grinned, but it was a sour one. 

"No use, " said Greg. "Chambers would tie us up in a mile of legal redtape. It would be just like walking up and handing it to him. "

"You guys go ahead and work, " Wilson stated. "I'm taking a vacation. Three months is too damn long to stay out in a spaceship. "

"It doesn't seem long to me, " said Greg, his tone cold and sharp. 

No, thought Russ, it hadn't seemed long. Perhaps the hours had beenrough, the work hard, but he hadn't noticed. Sleep and food had come insnatches. For three months they had worked in space, not daring to carryout their experiments on Earth ... Frankly afraid of the thing they had. 

He glanced at Manning. 

The three months had left no mark upon him, no hint of fatigue orstrain. Russ understood now how Manning had done the things he did. Theman was all steel and flame. Nothing could touch him. 

"We still have a lot to do, " said Manning. 

Russ leaned back and puffed at his pipe. 

Yes, there was a lot to do. Transmission problems, for instance. Toconduct away such terrific power as they knew they were capable ofdeveloping would require copper or silver bars as thick as a man'sthigh, and even so at voltages capable of jumping a two-foot spark gap. 

Obviously, a small machine such as they now had would be impractical. Nomatter how perfectly it might be insulated, the atmosphere itself wouldnot be an insulator, with power such as this. And if one tried todeliver the energy as a mechanical rotation of a shaft, what shaft couldtransmit it safely and under control?

"Oh, hell, " Russ burst out, "let's get back to Earth. "

 * * * * *

Harry Wilson watched the couple alight from the aero-taxi, walk up thebroad steps and pass through the magic portals of the Martian Club. Hecould imagine what the club was like, the deference of the management, the exotic atmosphere of the dining room, the excellence of the long, cold drinks served at the bar. Mysterious drinks concocted ofingredients harvested in the jungles of Venus, spiced with produce fromthe irrigated gardens of Mars. 

He puffed on the dangling cigarette and shuffled on along the airyhighwalk. Below and above him, all around him flowed the beauty and theglamor, the bravery and the splendor of New York. The city's song was inhis ears, the surging noises that were its voice. 

Two thousand feet above his head reared giant pinnacles of shiningmetal, glinting in the noonday sun, architecture that bore the alienstamp of other worlds. 

Wilson turned around, stared at the Martian Club. A man needed money topass through those doors, to taste the drinks that slid across its bar, to sit and watch its floor shows, to hear the music of its orchestras. 

For a moment he stood, hesitating, as if he were trying to make up hismind. He flipped away the cigarette, turned on his heel, walked brisklyto the automatic elevator which would take him to the lower levels. 

There, on the third level, he entered a Mecho restaurant, sat down at atable and ordered from the robot waiter, pushing ivory-tipped buttons onthe menu before him. 

He ate leisurely, smoked ferociously, thinking. Looking at his watch, hesaw that it was nearly two o'clock. He walked to the cashier machine, inserted the metallic check with the correct change and received fromthe clicking, chuckling register the disk that would let him out thedoor. 

"Thank you, come again, " the cashier-robot fluted. 

"Don't mention it, " growled Wilson. 

Outside the restaurant he walked briskly. Ten blocks away he came to abuilding roofing four square blocks. Over the massive doorway, set intothe beryllium steel, was a map of the Solar System, a map that served asa cosmic clock, tracing the movement of the planets as they swung intheir long arcs around the Sun. The Solar System was straddled byglowing, golden letters. They read: INTERPLANETARY BUILDING. 

It was from here that Spencer Chambers ruled his empire built on power. 

Wilson went inside. 

_CHAPTER FOUR_

The new apparatus was set up, a machine that almost filled thelaboratory ... A giant, compact mass of heavy, solidly built metal work, tied together by beams of girderlike construction. It was meant to standup under the hammering of unimaginable power, the stress of unknownspatial factors. 

Slowly, carefully, Russell Page tapped keys on the control board, setting up an equation. Sucking thoughtfully at his pipe, he checked andrechecked them. 

Harry Wilson regarded him through squinted eyes. 

"What the hell is going to happen now?" he asked. 

"We'll have to wait and see, " Russ answered. "We know what we want tohappen, what we hope will happen, but we never can be sure. We areworking with conditions that are entirely new. "

Sitting beside a table littered with papers, staring at the giganticmachine before him, Gregory Manning said slowly: "That thing simply hasto adapt itself to spaceship drive. There's everything there that'sneeded for space propulsion. Unlimited power from a minimum of fuel. Split-second efficiency. Entire independence of any set condition, because the stuff creates its own conditions. "

He slowly wagged his head. 

"The secret is some place along the line, " he declared. "I feel that wemust be getting close to it. "

Russ walked from the control board to the table, picked up a sheaf ofpapers and leafed through them. He selected a handful and shook them inhis fist. 

"I thought I had it here, " he said. "My math must have been wrong, somefactor that I didn't include in the equation. "

"You'll keep finding factors for some time yet, " Greg prophesied. 

"Repulsion would have been the answer, " said Russ bitterly. "And theLord knows we have it. Plenty of it. "

"Too much, " observed Wilson, smoke drooling from his nostrils. 

"Not too much, " corrected Greg. "Inefficient control. You jump atconclusions, Wilson. "

"The math didn't show that progressive action, " said Russ. "It showedrepulsion, negative gravity that could be built up until it would shootthe ship outside the Solar System within an hour's time. Faster thanlight. We don't know how many times faster. "

"Forget it, " advised Greg. "The way it stands, it's useless. You getrepulsion by progressive steps. A series of squares with one constantfactor. It wouldn't be any good for space travel. Imagine trying to useit on a spaceship. You'd start with a terrific jolt. The accelerationwould fade and just when you were recovering from the first jolt, you'dget a second one and that second one would iron you out. A spaceshipcouldn't take it, let alone a human body. "

 * * * * *

"Maybe this will do it, " said Wilson hopefully. 

"Maybe, " agreed Russ. "Anyhow we'll try it. Equation 578. "

"It might do the trick, " said Greg. "It's a new approach to the gravityangle. The equation explains the shifting of gravitational lines, thechanging and contortion of their direction. Twist gravity and you have aperfect space drive. As good as negative gravity. Better, perhaps, moreeasily controlled. Would make for more delicate, precise handling. "

Russ laid down the sheaf of papers, lit his pipe and walked to theapparatus. 

"Here goes, " he said. 

His hand went out to the power lever, eased it in. With a roar thematerial energy engine built within the apparatus surged into action, sending a flow of power through the massive leads. The thunder mountedin the room. The laboratory seemed to shudder with the impact. 

Wilson, watching intently, cried out, a brief, choked-off cry. A wave ofdizziness engulfed him. The walls seemed to be falling in. The room andthe machine were blurring. Russ, at the controls, seemed horriblydisjointed. Manning was a caricature of a man, a weird, strange figurethat moved and gestured in the mad room. 

Wilson fought against the dizziness. He tried to take a step and thefloor seemed to leap up and meet his outstretched foot, throwing him offbalance. His cigarette fell out of his mouth, rolled along the floor. 

Russ was shouting something, but the words were distorted, loud oneinstant, rising over the din of the apparatus, a mere whisper the next. They made no sense. 

There was a peculiar whistling in the air, a sound such as he had neverheard before. It seemed to come from far away, a high, thin shriek thatwas torture in one's ears. 

Giddy, seized with deathly nausea, Wilson clawed his way across thefloor, swung open the laboratory door and stumbled outdoors. He weavedacross the lawn and clung to a sun dial, panting. 

He looked back at the laboratory and gasped in disbelief. All the treeswere bent toward the building, as if held by some mighty wind. Theirbranches straining, every single leaf standing at rigid attention, thetrees were bending in toward the structure. _But there was no wind. _

And then he noticed something else. No matter where the trees stood, nomatter in what direction from the laboratory, they all bent inwardtoward the building ... And the whining, thundering, shrieking machine. 

Inside the laboratory an empty bottle crashed off a table and smashedinto a thousand fragments. The tinkling of the broken glass was asilvery, momentary sound that protested against the blasting thrum ofpower that shook the walls. 

Manning fought along the floor to Russ's side. Russ roared in his ear:"Gravitational control! Concentration of gravitational lines!"

The papers on the desk started to slide, slithering onto the floor, danced a crazy dervish across the room. Liquids in the laboratorybottles were climbing the sides of glass, instead of lying at restparallel with the floor. A chair skated, bucking and tipping crazily, toward the door. 

 * * * * *

Russ jerked the power lever back to zero. The power hum died. Theliquids slid back to their natural level, the chair tipped over and laystill, papers fluttered gently downward. 

The two men looked at one another across the few feet of floor spacebetween them. Russ wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead withhis shirt sleeve. He sucked on his pipe, but it was dead. 

"Greg, " Russ said jubilantly, "we have something better thananti-gravity! We have something you might call _positive_ gravity ... Gravity that we can control. Your grandfather nullified gravity. We'vegone him one better. "

Greg gestured toward the machine. "You created an attraction center. What else?"

"But the center itself is not actually an attracting force. The fourthdimension is mixed up in this. We have a sort of fourth-dimensional lensthat concentrates the lines of any gravitational force. Concentration inthe fourth dimension turns the force loose in three dimensions, but wecan take care of that by using mirrors of our anti-entropy. We canarrange it so that it turns the force loose in only one dimension. "

Greg was thoughtful for a moment. "We can guide a ship by a series oflenses, " he declared at last. "But here's the really important thing. That field concentrates the forces of gravity already present. Thoseforces exist throughout all of space. There are gravitational lineseverywhere. We can concentrate them in any direction we want to. Inreality, we fall toward the body which originally caused the force ofgravitation, not to the concentration. "

 * * * * *

Russ nodded. "That means we can create a field immediately ahead of theship. The ship would fall into it constantly, with the concentrationmoving on ahead. The field would tend to break down in proportion to thestrain imposed and a big ship, especially when you are building upspeed, would tend to enlarge it, open it up. But the field could be kepttight by supplying energy and we have plenty of that ... Far more thanwe'd ever need. We supply the energy, but that's only a small part ofit. The body emitting the gravitational force supplies the fulcrum thatmoves us along. "

"It would operate beyond the planets, " said Greg. "It would operateequally well anywhere in space, for all of space is filled withgravitational stress. We could use gravitational bodies many light yearsaway as the driver of our ships. "

A half-wild light glowed momentarily in his eyes. 

"Russ, " he said, "we're going to put space fields to work at last. "

He walked to the chair, picked it up and sat down in it. 

"We'll start building a ship, " he stated, "just as soon as we know themechanics of this gravity concentration and control. Russ, we'll buildthe greatest ship, the fastest ship, the most powerful ship the SolarSystem has ever known!"

 * * * * *

"Damn, " said Russ, "that thing's slipped again. "

He glared at the offending nut. "I'll put a lock washer on it thistime. "

Wilson stepped toward the control board. From his perch on theapparatus, Russ motioned him away. 

"Never mind discharging the field, " he said. "I can get around itsomehow. "

Wilson squinted at him. "This tooth is near killing me. "

"Still got a toothache?" asked Russ. 

"Never got a wink of sleep last night. "

"You better run down to Frisco and have it yanked out, " suggested thescientist. "Can't have you laid up. "

"Yeah, that's right, " agreed Wilson. "Maybe I will. We got a lot to do. "

Russ reached out and clamped his wrench on the nut, quickly backed itoff and slipped on the washer. Viciously he tightened it home. Thewrench stuck. 

Gritting his teeth on the bit of his pipe, Russ cursed soundlessly. Heyanked savagely at the wrench. It slipped from his hand, hung for aminute on the nut and then plunged downward, falling straight into theheart of the new force field they had developed. 

Russ froze and watched, his heart in his throat, mad thoughts in hisbrain. In a flash, as the wrench fell, he remembered that they knewnothing about this field. All they knew was that any matter introducedin it suddenly acquired an acceleration in the dimension known as time, with its normal constant of duration reduced to zero. 

When that wrench struck the field, it would cease to exist! Butsomething else might happen, too, something entirely unguessable. 

The wrench fell only a few feet, but it seemed to take long seconds asRuss watched, frozen in fascination. 

He saw it strike the hazy glow that defined the limits of the field, sawit floating down, as if its speed had been slowed by some dense medium. 

In the instant that hazy glow intensified a thousand times--became ablinding sun-burst! Russ ducked his head, shielded his eyes from theterrible blast of light. A rending, shuddering thud seemed to echo ... In space rather than in air ... And both field and wrench were gone!

A moment passed, then another, and there was the heavy, solid clangingthud of something striking metal. This time the thud was not in space, but a commonplace noise, as if someone had dropped a tool on the floorabove. 

Russ turned around and stared at Wilson. Wilson stared back, his mouthhanging open, the smoldering, cigarette dangling from his mouth. 

"Greg!" Russ shouted, his cry shattering the silence in the laboratory. 

A door burst open and Manning stepped into the main laboratory room, acalculation pad in one hand, a pencil in the other. 

"What's the matter?" he demanded. 

"We have to find my wrench!"

"Your wrench?" Greg was puzzled. "Can't you get another?"

"I dropped it into the field. Its time-dimension was reduced to zero. Itbecame an 'instantaneous wrench'. "

"Nothing new in that, " said Greg, unruffled. 

"But there is, " persisted Russ. "The field collapsed, you see. Maybe thewrench was too big for it to handle. And when the field collapsed thewrench gained a new time-dimension. I heard it. We have to find it. "

The three of them pounded up the stairs to the room where Russ had heardthe thump. There was nothing on the floor. They searched the room fromend to end, then the other rooms. There was no wrench. 

At the end of an hour Greg went back to the main laboratory, broughtback a portable fluoroscope. 

"Maybe this will do the trick, " he announced bleakly. 

 * * * * *

It did. They found the wrench _inside the space between the walls_!

Russ stared at the shadow in the fluoroscope plate. Undeniably it wasthe shadow of the wrench. 

"Fourth dimension, " he said. "Transported in time. "

The muscles in Greg's cheeks were tensed, that old flame of excitementburning in his eyes, but otherwise his face was the mask of old, thecalm, almost terrible mask that had faced a thousand dangers. 

"Power and time, " he corrected. 

"If we can control it, " said Russ. 

"Don't worry. We can control it. And when we can, it's the biggest thingwe've got. "

Wilson licked his lips, dredged a cigarette out of a pocket. 

"If you don't mind, " he said, "I'll hit for Frisco tonight. This toothof mine is getting worse. "

"Sure, can't keep an aching tooth, " agreed Russ, thinking of the wrenchwhile talking. 

"Can I take your ship?" asked Wilson. 

"Sure, " said Russ. 

Back in the laboratory they rebuilt the field, dropped little ballbearings in it. The ball bearings disappeared. They found themeverywhere--in the walls, in tables, in the floor. Some, still existingin their new time-dimension, hung in mid-air, invisible, intangible, butthere. 

Hours followed hours, with the sheet of data growing. Math machineswhirred and chuckled and clicked. Wilson departed for San Francisco withhis aching tooth. The other two worked on. By dawn they knew what theywere doing. Out of the chaos of happenstance they were finding rules oforder, certain formulas of behavior, equations of force. 

The next day they tried heavier, more complicated things and learnedstill more. 

A radiogram, phoned from the nearest spaceport, forty miles distant, informed them that Wilson would not be back for a few days. His toothwas worse than he had thought, required an operation and treatment ofthe jaw. 

"Hell, " said Russ, "just when he could be so much help. "

With Wilson gone the two of them tackled the controlling device, laboredand swore over it. But finally it was completed. 

Slumped in chairs, utterly exhausted, they looked proudly at it. 

"With that, " said Russ, "we can take an object and transport it anyplace we want. Not only that, we can pick up any object from anindefinite distance and bring it to us. "

"What a thing for a lazy burglar, " Greg observed sourly. 

Worn out, they gulped sandwiches and scalding coffee, tumbled into bed. 

 * * * * *

The outdoor camp meeting was in full swing. The evangelist was in histop form. The sinners' bench was crowded. Then suddenly, as theevangelist paused for a moment's silence before he drove home animportant point, the music came. Music from the air. Music fromsomewhere in the sky. The soft, heavenly music of a hymn. As if anangels' chorus were singing in the blue. 

The evangelist froze, one arm pointing upward, with index finger readyto sweep down and emphasize his point. The sinners kneeling at the benchwere petrified. The congregation was astounded. 

The hymn rolled on, punctuated, backgrounded by deep celestial organnotes. The clear voice of the choir swept high to a bell-like note. 

"Behold!" shrieked the evangelist. "Behold, a miracle! Angels singingfor us! Kneel! Kneel and pray!"

Nobody stood. 

 * * * * *

Andy McIntyre was drunk again. In the piteous glare of mid-morning, hestaggered homeward from the poker party in the back of Steve Abram'sharness shop. The light revealed him to the scorn of the entire village. 

At the corner of Elm and Third he ran into a maple tree. Uncertainly hebacked away, intent on making another try. Suddenly the tree spoke tohim:

"Alcohol is the scourge of mankind. It turns men into beasts. It robsthem of their brains, it shortens their lives ... "

Andy stared, unable to believe what he heard. The tree, he had no doubt, was talking to him personally. 

The voice of the tree went on: "... Takes the bread out of the mouths ofwomen and children. Fosters crime. Weakens the moral fiber of thenation. "

"Stop!" screamed Andy. "Stop, I tell you!"

The tree stopped talking. All he could hear was the whisper of windamong its autumn-tinted leaves. 

Suddenly running, Andy darted around the corner, headed home. 

"Begad, " he told himself, "when trees start talkin' to you it's time tolay off the bottle!"

 * * * * *

In another town fifty miles distant from the one in which the tree hadtalked to Andy McIntyre, another miracle happened that same Sundaymorning. 

Dozens of people heard the bronze statue of the soldier in the courtyardspeak. The statue did not come to life. It stood as ever, a solid pieceof golden bronze, in spots turned black and green by weather. But fromits lips came words ... Words that burned themselves into the souls ofthose who heard. Words that exhorted them to defend the principles forwhich many men had died, to grasp and hold high the torch of democracyand liberty. 

In somber bitterness, the statue called Spencer Chambers the greatestthreat to that liberty and freedom. For, the statue said, SpencerChambers and Interplanetary Power were waging an economic war, abloodless one, but just as truly war as if there were cannons firing andbombs exploding. 

For a full five minutes the statue spoke and the crowd, growing by theminute, stood dumbfounded. 

Then silence fell over the courtyard. The statue stood as before, unmoving, its timeless eyes staring out from under the ugly helmet, itshands gripping the bayoneted rifle. A blue and white pigeon flutteredsoftly down, alighted on the bayonet, looked the crowd over and thenflew to the courthouse tower. 

 * * * * *

Back in the laboratory, Russ looked at Greg. 

"That radio trick gives me an idea, " he said. "If we can put a radio instatues and trees without interfering with its operation, why can't wedo the same thing with a television set?"

Greg started. "Think of the possibilities of that!" he burst out. 

Within an hour a complete television sending apparatus was placed withinthe field and a receptor screen set up in the laboratory. 

The two moved chairs in front of the screen and sat down. Russ reachedout and pulled the switch of the field control. The screen came to life, but it was only a gray blur. 

"It's traveling too fast, " said Greg. "Slow it down. "

Russ retarded the lever. "When that thing's on full, it's almostinstantaneous. It travels in a time dimension and any speed slower thaninstantaneity is a modification of that force field. "

On the screen swam a panorama of the mountains, mile after mile ofsnow-capped peaks and valleys ablaze with the flames of autumn foliage. The mountains faded away. There was desert now and then a city. Russdropped the televisor set lower, down into a street. For half an hourthey sat comfortably in their chairs and watched men and women walking, witnessed one dog fight, cruised slowly up and down, looking intowindows of homes, window-shopping in the business section. 

"There's just one thing wrong, " said Greg. "We can see everything, butwe can't hear a sound. "

"We can fix that, " Russ told him. 

He lifted the televisor set from the streets, brought it back across thedesert and mountains into the laboratory. 

"We have two practical applications now, " said Greg. "Space drive andtelevision spying. I don't know which is the best. Do you realize thatwith this television trick there isn't a thing that can be hidden fromus?"

"I believe we can go to Mars or Mercury or anywhere we want to with thisthing. It doesn't seem to have any particular limits. It handlesperfectly. You can move it a fraction of an inch as easily as a hundredmiles. And it's fast. Almost instantaneous. Not quite, for even withour acceleration within time, there is a slight lag. "

By evening they had an audio apparatus incorporated in the set, hadwired the screen for sound. 

"Let's put this to practical use, " suggested Greg. "There's a show atthe New Mercury Theater in New York I've been wanting to see. Let'sknock off work and take in that show. "

"Now, " said Russ, "you really have an idea. The ticket scalpers arecharging a fortune, and it won't cost us a cent to get in!"

_CHAPTER FIVE_

Pine roots burned brightly in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling asthe blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, GregManning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted hisglass, squinting at the flames through the amber drink. 

"There's something that's been worrying me a little, " he said. "I hadn'ttold you about it because I figured it wasn't as serious as it looked. Maybe it isn't, but it looks funny. "

"What's that?" asked Russ. 

"The stock market, " replied Greg. "There's something devilish funnygoing on there. I've lost about a billion dollars in the last twoweeks. "

"A _billion_ dollars?" gasped Russ. 

Greg swirled the whiskey in his glass. "Don't sound so horrified. Theloss is all on paper. My stocks have gone down. Most of them cut inhalf. Some even less than that. Martian Irrigation is down to 75. I paid185 for it. It's worth 200. "

"You mean something has happened to the market?"

"Not to the market. If that was it, I wouldn't worry. I've seen themarket go up and down. That's nothing to worry about. But the market, except for a slight depression, has behaved normally in these past twoweeks. It almost looks as if somebody was out to get me. "

"Who'd want to and why?"

Greg sighed. "I wish I knew. I haven't really lost a cent, of course. Myshares can't stay down for very long. The thing is that right now Ican't sell them even for what I paid for them. If I sold now I'd losethat billion. But as long as I don't have to sell, the loss is merely onpaper. "

He sipped at the drink and stared into the fire. 

"If you don't have to, what are you worrying about?" asked Russ. 

"Couple of things. I put that stock up as collateral to get the cash tobuild the spaceship. At present prices, it will take more securitiesthan I thought. If the prices continue to go down, I'll have the bulk ofmy holdings tied up in the spaceship. I might even be forced toliquidate some of it and that would mean an actual loss. "

He hunched forward in the chair, stared at Russ. 

"Another thing, " he said grimly, "is that I hate the idea of somebodysingling me out as a target. As if they were going to make a financialexample of me. "

"And it sounds as if someone has, " agreed Russ. 

Greg leaned back again, drained his glass and set it down. 

"It certainly does, " he said. 

Outside, seen through the window beside the fireplace, the harvest moonwas a shield of silver hung in the velvet of the sky. A lonesome windmoaned in the pines and under the eaves. 

"I got a report from Belgium the other day, " said Greg. "The spaceshipis coming along. It'll be the biggest thing afloat in space. "

"The biggest and the toughest, " said Russ, and Greg nodded silentagreement. 

The ship itself was being manufactured at the great Space Works inBelgium, but other parts of it, apparatus, engines, gadgets of everydescription, were being manufactured at other widely scattered points. Anyone wondering what kind of ship the finished product would be wouldhave a hard time gathering the correct information, which, of course, was the idea. The "anyone" they were guarding against was SpencerChambers. 

 * * * * *

"We need a better television set, " said Russ. "This one we have is allright, but we need the best there is. I wonder if Wilson could get usone in Frisco and bring it back. "

"I don't see why not, " said Greg. "Send him a radio. "

Russ stepped to the phone, called the spaceport and filed the message. 

"He always stays at the Greater Martian, " he told Greg. "We'll probablycatch him there. "

 * * * * *

Two hours later the phone rang. It was the spaceport. 

"That message you sent to Wilson, " said the voice of the operator, "can't be delivered. Wilson isn't at the Greater Martian. The clerk saidhe checked out for New York last night. "

"Didn't he leave a forwarding address?" asked Russ. 

"Apparently not. "

Russ hung up the receiver, frowning. "Wilson is in New York. "

Greg looked up from a sheet of calculations. 

"New York, eh?" he said and then went back to work, but a moment laterhe straightened from his work. "What would Wilson be doing in New York?"

"I wonder ... " Russ stopped and shook his head. 

"Exactly, " said Greg. He glanced out of the window, considering, themuscles in his cheeks knotting. "Russ, we both are thinking the samething. "

"I hate to think it, " said Russ evenly. "I hate to think such a thingabout a man. "

"One way to find out, " declared Greg. He rose from the chair and walkedto the television control board, snapped the switch. Russ took a chairbeside him. On the screen the mountains danced weirdly as the setrocketed swiftly away and then came the glint of red and yellow desert. Blackness blanked out the screen as the set plunged into the ground, passing through the curvature of the Earth's surface. The blacknesspassed and fields and farms were beneath them on the screen, a green andbrown checkerboard with tiny white lines that were roads. 

New York was in the screen now. Greg's hand moved the control and thecity rushed up at them, the spires speeding toward them like plungingspears. Down into the canyons plunged the set, down into the financialdistrict with its beetling buildings that hemmed in the roaring traffic. 

Grimly, surely, Greg drove his strange machine through New York. Throughbuildings, through shimmering planes, through men. Like an arrow thetelevision set sped to its mark and then Greg's hand snapped back thelever and in the screen was a building that covered four whole blocks. Above the entrance was the famous Solar System map and straddling themap were the gleaming golden letters: INTERPLANETARY BUILDING. 

"Now we'll see, " said Greg. 

He heard the whistle of the breath in Russ's nostrils as the televisionset began to move, saw the tight grip Russ had upon the chair arms. 

The interior of the building showed on the screen as he drove the setthrough steel and stone, offices and corridors and brief glimpses ofsteel partitions, until it came to a door marked: SPENCER CHAMBERS, PRESIDENT. 

Greg's hand twisted the control slightly and the set went through thedoor, into the office of Spencer Chambers. 

Four men were in the room--Chambers himself; Craven, the scientist;Arnold Grant, head of Interplanetary's publicity department, _and HarryWilson_!

Wilson's voice came out of the screen, a frantic, almost terrifiedvoice. 

"I've told you all I know. I'm not a scientist. I'm a mechanic. I'vetold you what they're doing. I can't tell you how they do it. "

Arnold Grant leaned forward in his chair. His face was twisted in fury. 

"There were plans, weren't there?" he demanded. "There were equationsand formulas. Why didn't you bring us some of them?"

Spencer Chambers raised a hand from the desk, waved it toward Grant. "The man has told us all he knows. Obviously, he can't be any more helpto us. "

"You told him to go back and see if he couldn't find something else, didn't you?" asked Grant. 

"Yes, I did, " Chambers told him. "But apparently he couldn't find it. "

"I tried, " pleaded Wilson. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. Thecigarette in his mouth was limp and dead. "One of them was always there. I never could get hold of any papers. I asked questions, but they weretoo busy to answer. And I couldn't ask too much, because then they wouldhave suspected me. "

"No, you couldn't do that, " commented Craven with an open sneer. 

 * * * * *

In the laboratory Russ pounded the arm of his chair with a clenchedfist. "The rat sold us out!"

Greg said nothing, but his face was stony and his eyes werecrystal-hard. 

On the screen Chambers was speaking to Wilson. "Do you think you couldfind something out if you went back again?"

Wilson squirmed in his chair. 

"I'd rather not. " His voice sounded like a whimper. "I'm afraid theysuspect me now. I'm afraid of what they'd do if they found out. "

"That's his conscience, " breathed Russ in the laboratory. "I neversuspected him. "

"He's right about one thing, though, " Greg said. "He'd better not comeback. "

Chambers was talking again: "You realize, of course, that you haven'tbeen much help to us. You have only warned us that another kind of powergeneration is being developed. You've set us on our guard, but otherthan that we're no better off than we were before. "

Wilson bristled, like a cowardly animal backed into a corner. "I toldyou what was going on. You can be ready for it now. I can't help it if Icouldn't find out how all them things worked. "

"Look here, " said Chambers. "I made a bargain with you and I keep mybargains. I told you I would pay you twenty thousand dollars for theinformation you gave me when you first came to see me. I told you I'dpay you for any further additional information you might give. Also Ipromised you a job with the company. "

Watching the financier, Wilson licked his lips. "That's right, " he said. 

Chambers reached out and pulled a checkbook toward him, lifted a penfrom its holder. "I'm paying you the twenty thousand for the warning. I'm not paying you a dime more, because you gave me no otherinformation. "

Wilson leaped to his feet, started to protest. 

"Sit down, " said Chambers coldly. 

"But the job! You said you'd give me a job!"

Chambers shook his head. "I wouldn't have a man like you in myorganization. If you were a traitor to one man, you would be toanother. "

"But ... But ... " Wilson started to object and then sat down, his facetwisted in something that came very close to fear. 

Chambers ripped the check out of the book, waved it slowly in the air todry it. Then he arose and held it out to Wilson, who reached out atrembling hand and took it. 

"And now, " said Chambers, "good day, Mr. Wilson. "

For a moment Wilson stood uncertain, as if he intended to speak, butfinally he turned, without a word, and walked through the door. 

 * * * * *

In the laboratory Russ and Greg looked at one another. 

"Twenty thousand, " said Greg. "Why, that was worth millions. "

"It was worth everything Chambers had, " said Russ, "because it's thething that's going to wreck him. "

Their attention snapped back to the screen. 

Chambers was hunched over his desk, addressing the other two. 

"Now, gentlemen, " he asked, "what are we to do?"

Craven shrugged his shoulders. There was a puzzled frown in the eyesback of the thick-lensed glasses. "We haven't much to go on. Wilsondoesn't know a thing about it. He hasn't the brain to grasp even themost fundamental ideas back of the whole thing. "

Chambers nodded. "The man knew the mechanical setup perfectly, but thatwas all. "

"I've constructed the apparatus, " said Craven. "It's astoundinglysimple. Almost too simple to do the things Wilson said it would do. Hedrew plans for it, so clear that it was easy to duplicate the apparatus. He himself checked the machine and says it is the same as Page andManning have. But there are thousands of possible combinations forhookups and control board settings. Too many to try to go through andhit upon the right answer. Because, you see, one slight adjustment inany one of a hundred adjustments might do the trick ... But which ofthose adjustments do you have to make? We have to have the formulas, theequations, before we can even move. "

"He seemed to remember a few things, " said Grant hopefully. "Certainrules and formulas. "

Craven flipped both his hands angrily. "Worse than nothing, " heexploded. "What Page and Manning have done is so far in advance ofanything that anyone else has even thought about that we are completelyat sea. They're working with space fields, apparently, and we haven'teven scratched the surface in that branch of investigation. We simplyhaven't got a thing to go on. "

 * * * * *

"No chance at all?" asked Chambers. 

Craven shook his head slowly. 

"At least you could try, " snapped Grant. 

"Now, wait, " Chambers snapped back. "You seem to forget Dr. Craven isone of the best scientists in the world today. I'm relying on him. "

Craven smiled. "I can't do anything with what Page and Manning have, butI might try something of my own. "

"By all means do so, " urged Chambers. He turned to Grant. "I observedyou have carried out the plans we laid. Martian Irrigation hit a new lowtoday. "

Grant grinned. "It was easy. Just a hint here and there to the rightpeople. "

Chambers looked down at his hands, slowly closing into fists. "We haveto stop them some way, any way at all. Keep up the rumors. We'll makeit impossible for Greg Manning to finance this new invention. We'll takeaway every last dollar he has. "

He glared at the publicity man. "You understand?"

"Yes, sir, " said Grant, "I understand perfectly. "

"All right, " said Chambers. "And your job, Craven, is to either developwhat Page has found or find something we can use in competition. "

Craven growled angrily. "What happens if your damn rumors can't ruinManning? What if I can't find anything?"

"In that case, " said Chambers, "there are other ways. "

"Other ways?"

Chambers suddenly smiled at them. "I have a notion to call Stutsman backto Earth. "

Craven drummed his fingers idly on the arm of his chair. "Yes, I guessyou do have other ways, " he said. 

 * * * * *

Greg's hand snapped the switch and the screen suddenly was blank as thetelevisor set returned instantly to the laboratory. 

"That explains a lot of things, " he said. "Among them what has happenedto my stocks. "

Russ sat in his chair, numbed. "That little weak-kneed, ratting traitor, Wilson. He'd sell his mother for a new ten-dollar bill. "

"We know, " said Greg, "and Chambers doesn't know we know. We'll followevery move he makes. We'll know every one of his plans. "

Pacing up and down the room, he was already planning their campaign. 

"There are still a few things to do, " he added. "A few possibilities wemay have overlooked. "

"But will we have time?" asked Russ. 

"I think so. Chambers is going to go slow. The gamble is too big to riskany slip. He doesn't want to get in bad with the law. There won't be anystrong-arm stuff ... Not until he recalls Stutsman from Callisto. "

He paused in mid-stride, stood planted solidly on the floor. 

"When Stutsman gets into the game, " he said, "all hell will breakloose. "

He took a deep breath. 

"But we'll be ready for it then!"

_CHAPTER SIX_

"If we can get television reception with this apparatus of ours, " askedGreg, "what is to prevent us from televising? Why can't we send as wellas receive?"

Russ drew doodles on a calculation sheet. "We could. Just something elseto work out. You must remember we're working in a four-dimensionalmedium. That would complicate matters a little. Not like working inthree dimensions alone. It would ... "

He stopped. The pencil fell from his finger and he swung around slowlyto face Manning. 

"What's the matter now?" asked Greg. 

"Look, " said Russ excitedly. "We're working in four dimensions. And ifwe televised through four dimensions, what would we get?"

Greg wrinkled his brow. Suddenly his face relaxed. "You don't mean wecan televise in _three_ dimensions, do you?"

"That's what it should work out to, " declared Russ. He swung back to thetable again, picked up his pencil and jotted down equations. He lookedup from the sheet. "Three-dimensional television!" he almost whispered. 

"Something new again, " commented Greg. 

"I'll say it's new!"

Russ reached out and jerked a calculator toward him. Rapidly he set upthe equations, pressed the tabulator lever. The machine gurgled andchuckled, clicked out the result. Bending over to read it, Russ suckedin his breath. 

"It's working out right, " he said. 

"That'll mean new equipment, lots of it, " Greg pointed out. "Wilson'sgone, damn him. Who's going to help us?"

"We'll do it ourselves, " said Russ. "When we're the only ones here, wecan be sure there won't be any leak. "

It took hours of work on the math machines, but at the end of that timeRuss was certain of his ground. 

"Now we go to work, " he said, gleefully. 

In a week's time they had built a triple televisor, but simplificationsof the standard commercial set gave them a mechanism that weighed littlemore and was far more efficient and accurate. 

During the time the work went on they maintained a watch over both theoffice of Spencer Chambers and the laboratory in which Dr. HerbertCraven worked 16 hours a day. Unseen, unsuspected, they were silentcompanions of the two men during many hours. They read what the menwrote, read what was written to them, heard what they said, saw how theyacted. Doing so, the pair in the high mountain laboratory gained a deepinsight into the characters of unsuspecting quarries. 

"Both utterly ruthless, " declared Greg. "But apparently men who aresincere in thinking that the spoils belong to the strong. Strange, almost outdated men. You can't help but like Chambers. He's good enoughat heart. He has his pet charities. He really, I believe, wants to helpthe people. And I think he actually believes the best way to do it is togain a dictatorship over the Solar System. That ambition ruleseverything in his life. It has hardened him and strengthened him. Hewill crush ruthlessly, without a single qualm, anything that stands inhis path. That's why we'll have a fight on our hands. "

 * * * * *

Craven seemed to be making little progress. They could only guess atwhat he was trying to develop. 

"I think, " said Russ, "he's working on a collector field to suck inradiant energy. If he really gets that, it will be something worthhaving. "

For hours Craven sat, an intent, untidy, unkempt man, sunk deep in thecushions of an easy chair. His face was calm, with relaxed jaw and eyesthat seemed vacant. But each time he would rouse himself from the chairto pencil new notations on the pads of paper that littered his desk. Newideas, new approaches. 

The triple televisor was completed except for one thing. 

"Sound isn't so easy, " said Russ. "If we could only find a way totransmit it as well as light. "

"Listen, " said Greg, "why don't you try a condenser speaker. "

"A condenser speaker?"

"Sure, the gadget developed way back in the 1920s. It hasn't been usedfor years to my knowledge, but it might do the trick. "

Russ grinned broadly. "Hell, why didn't I think of that? Here I've beenracking my brain for a new approach, a new wrinkle ... And exactly whatI wanted was at hand. "

"Should work, " declared Greg. "Just the opposite of a condensermicrophone. Instead of radiating sound waves mechanically, it radiates achanging electric field and this field becomes audible directly withinthe ear. Even yet no one seems to understand just how it works, but itdoes ... And that's good enough. "

"I know, " said Russ. "It really makes no sound. In other words itcreates an electric field that doubles for sound. It ought to be justthe thing because nothing can stop it. Metal shielding can, I guess, ifit's thick enough, but it's got to be pretty damn thick. "

It took time to set the mechanism up. Ready, the massive apparatus, within which glowed a larger and more powerful force field, was operatedby two monstrous material energy engines. The controls were equippedwith clockwork drives, designed so that the motion of the Earth could benullified completely and automatically for work upon outlying planets. 

 * * * * *

Russ stood back and looked at it. "Stand in front of that screen, Greg, "he said, "and we'll try it on you. "

Greg stepped in front of the screen. The purr of power came on. Suddenly, materializing out of the air, came Greg's projection. Hazy andundefined at first, it rapidly assumed apparent solidity. Greg waved hisarm; the image moved its arm. 

Russ left the controls and walked across the laboratory to inspect theimage. Examined from all sides, it looked solid. Russ walked throughit and felt nothing. There was nothing there. It was just athree-dimensional image. But even from two feet away, it was as if theman himself stood there in all the actuality of flesh and blood. 

"Hello, Russ, " the image whispered. It held out a hand. "Glad to see youagain. "

Laughing, Russ thrust out his hand. It closed on nothing in mid-air, butthe two men appeared to shake hands. 

They tested the machine that afternoon. Their images strode above thetrees, apparently walking on thin air. Gigantic replicas of Greg stoodon a faraway mountain top and shouted with a thunderous voice. Smallerimages, no more than two inches high, shinnied up a table leg. 

Satisfied, they shut off the machine. 

"That's one of the possibilities you mentioned, " suggested Russ. 

Greg nodded grimly. 

 * * * * *

An autumn gale pelted the windows with driving rain, and a wild, wetwind howled through the pines outside. The fire was leaping and flaringin the fireplace. 

Deep in his chair, Russ stared into the flame and puffed at his pipe. 

"The factory wants more money on the spaceship, " said Greg from theother chair. "I had to put up some more shares as collateral on a newloan. "

"Market still going down?" asked Russ. 

"Not the market, " replied Greg. "My stocks. All of them hit new lowstoday. "

Russ dragged at the pipe thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about thatstock business, Greg. "

"So have I, but it doesn't seem to do much good. "

"Look, " said Russ slowly, "what planets have exchanges?"

"All of them except Mercury. The Jovian exchange is at Ranthoor. There'seven one out at Pluto. Just mining and chemical shares listed, though. "

Russ did not reply. Smoke curled up from his pipe. He was staring intothe fire. 

"Why do you ask?" Greg wanted to know. 

"Just something stirring around in my mind. I was wondering whereChambers does most of his trading. "

"Ranthoor now, " said Greg. "Used to do it on Venus. The listing islarger there. But since he took over the Jovian confederacy, he switchedhis business to it. The transaction tax is lower. He saw to that. "

"And the same shares are listed on the Callisto market as on the NewYork boards?"

"Naturally, " said Greg, "only not as many. "

Russ watched the smoke from his pipe. "How long does it take light totravel from Callisto to Earth?"

"Why, about 45 minutes, I guess. Somewhere around there. " Greg satupright. "Say, what's light got to do with this?"

"A lot, " said Russ. "All commerce is based on the assumption that lightis instantaneous, but it isn't. All business, anywhere throughout theSolar System, is based on Greenwich time. When a noon signal sent outfrom Earth reaches Mars, it's noon there, but as a matter of fact, it isactually 15 minutes or so past noon. When the same signal reachesCallisto, the correct time for the chronometer used in commerce would benoon when it is really a quarter to one. That system simplifies things. Does away with varying times. And it has worked all right so far becausethere has been, up to now, nothing that could go faster than light. Nonews can travel through space, no message, no signal can be sent at anyspeed greater than that. So everything has been fine. "

Greg had come out of the chair, was standing on his feet, the glow ofthe blaze throwing his athletic figure into bold relief. That calmexterior had been stripped from him now. He was excited. 

"I see what you are getting at! We have something that is almostinstantaneous!"

"Almost, " said Russ. "Not quite. There's a time lag somewhere. But itisn't noticeable except over vast distances. "

"But it would beat ordinary light signals to Callisto. It would beatthem there by almost 45 minutes. "

"Almost, " Russ agreed. "Maybe a split second less. "

Greg strode up and down in front of the fireplace like a caged lion. "Byheaven, " he said, "we've got Chambers where we want him. We can beat thestock quotations to Callisto. With that advance knowledge of what theboard is doing in New York, we can make back every dime I've lost. Wecan take Mr. Chambers to the cleaners!"

Russ grinned. "Exactly, " he said. "We'll know 45 minutes in advance ofthe other traders what the market will be. Let's see Chambers beatthat. "

_CHAPTER SEVEN_

Ben Wrail was taking things easy. Stretched out in his chair, with hiscigar lit and burning satisfactorily, he listened to a radio programbroadcast from Earth. 

Through the window beside him, he could look out of his skyscraperapartment over the domed city of Ranthoor. Looming in the sky, slightlydistorted by the heavy quartz of the distant dome, was massive Jupiter, a scarlet ball tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sightthat brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sightthat even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomablefascination. 

Ben Wrail stared at it now, puffing at his cigar, listening to theradio. An awe-inspiring thing, a looming planet that seemed almost readyto topple and crash upon this airless, frigid world. 

Wrail was an old-timer. For thirty years--Earth years--he had made hishome in Ranthoor. He had seen the city grow from a dinky little miningcamp enclosed by a small dome to one that boasted half a millionpopulation. The dome that now covered the city was the fourth one. Fourtimes, like the nautilus, the city had outgrown its shell, until todayit was the greatest domed city in the Solar System. Where life had oncebeen cheap and where the scum of the system had held rendezvous, he hadseen Ranthoor grow into a city of dignity, capital of the Jovianconfederacy. 

He had helped build that confederacy, had been elected a member of theconstitution commission, had helped create the government and for over adecade had helped to make its laws. 

But now ... Ben Wrail spat angrily and stuffed the cigar back in hismouth again, taking a fresh and fearsome grip. Now everything hadchanged. The Jovian worlds today were held in bond by Spencer Chambers. The government was in the hands of his henchmen. Duly elected, ofcourse, but in an election held under the unspoken threat thatInterplanetary Power would withdraw, leaving the moons circling thegreat planet without heat, air, energy. For the worlds of the Jovianconfederacy, every single one of them, depended for their life upon theaccumulators freighted outward from the Sun. 

Talk of revolt was in the air, but, lacking a leader, it would getnowhere. John Moore Mallory was imprisoned on one of the prisonspaceships that plied through the Solar System. Mallory, months ago, hadbeen secretly transferred from the Callisto prison to the spaceship, butin a week's time the secret had been spread in angry whispers. If therehad been riots and bloodshed, they would have been to no purpose. Forrevolution, even if successful, would gain nothing. It would merely goadInterplanetary Power into withdrawing, refusing to service the domedcities on the moons. 

 * * * * *

Ben Wrail stirred restlessly in his chair. The cigar had gone out. Theradio program blared unheard. His eyes still looked out the windowwithout seeing Jupiter. 

"Damn, " said Ben Wrail. Why did he have to go and spoil an eveningthinking about this damned political situation? Despite his part in thebuilding of the confederacy, he was a businessman, not a politician. Still, it hurt to see something torn down that he had helped to build, though he knew that every pioneering strike in history had been takenover by shrewd, ruthless, powerful operators. Knowing that should havehelped, but it didn't. He and the other Jovian pioneers had hoped itwouldn't happen and, of course, it had. 

"Ben Wrail, " said a voice in the room. 

Wrail swung around, away from the window. 

"Manning!" he yelled, and the man in the center of the room grinnedbleakly at him. "How did you come in without me hearing you? When didyou get here?"

"I'm not here, " said Greg. "I'm back on Earth. "

"You're what?" asked Wrail blankly. "That's a pretty silly statement, isn't it, Manning? Or did you decide to loosen up and pull a gag now andthen?"

"I mean it, " said Manning. "This is just an image of me. My body is backon Earth. "

"You mean you're dead? You're a ghost?"

The grin widened, but the face was bleak as ever. 

"No, Ben, I'm just alive as you are. Let me explain. This is atelevision image of me. Three-dimensional television. I can travelanywhere like this. "

Wrail sat down in the chair again. "I don't suppose there'd be any usetrying to shake hands with you. "

"No use, " agreed Manning's image. "There isn't any hand. "

"Nor asking you to have a chair?"

Manning shook his head. 

"Anyhow, " said Wrail, "I'm damn glad to see you--or think I see you. Idon't know which. Figure you can stay and talk with me a while?"

 * * * * *

"Certainly, " said Manning. "That is what I came for. I want to ask yourhelp. "

"Listen, " declared Wrail, "you can't be on Earth, Manning. I saysomething to you and you answer right back. That isn't possible. Youcan't hear anything I say until 45 minutes after I say it, and then I'dhave to wait another 45 minutes to hear your answer. "

"That's right, " agreed the image, "if you insist upon talking about thevelocity of light. We have something better than that. "

"We?"

"Russell Page and myself. We have a two-way television apparatus thatworks almost instantaneously. To all purposes, so far as the distancebetween Earth and Callisto is concerned, it is instantaneous. "

Wrail's jaw fell. "Well, I be damned. What have you two fellows been upto now?"

"A lot, " said Manning laconically. "For one thing we are out to bustInterplanetary Power. Bust them wide open. Hear that, Wrail?"

Wrail stared in stupefaction. "Sure, I hear. But I can't believe it. "

"All right then, " said Manning grimly, "we'll give you proof. Whatcould you do, Ben, if we told you what was happening on the stock marketin New York ... _without you having to wait the 45 minutes it takes thequotations to get here_?"

Wrail sprang to his feet. "What could I do? Why, I could run the pantsoff every trader in the exchange! I could make a billion a minute!" Hestopped and looked at the image. "But this isn't like you. This isn'tthe way you'd do things. "

"I don't want you to hurt anyone but Chambers, " said Manning. "Ifsomebody else gets in the way, of course they have to take the rap alongwith him. But I do want to give Chambers a licking. That's what I camehere to see you about. "

"By Heaven, Greg, I'll do it, " said Wrail. He stepped quickly forward, held out his hand to close the deal, and encountered only air. 

Manning's image threw back its head and laughed. 

"That's your proof, Ben. Good enough?"

"I'll say it is, " said Wrail shakily, looking down at the solid-seeminghand that his own had gone right through. 

 * * * * *

November 6, 2153, was a day long remembered in financial circlesthroughout the Solar System. The Ranthoor market opened easy with littleactivity. Then a few stocks made fractional gains. Mining droppedfractionally. Martian Irrigation still was unexplainably low, as wasPluto Chemical and Asteroid Mining. 

Trading through two brokers, Ben Wrail bought 10, 000 shares of VenusFarms, Inc. When the market opened at 83-1/2. A few minutes later theybought 10, 000 shares of Spacesuits Ltd. At 106-1/4. The farm stocksdropped off a point. Spacesuits gained a point. Then suddenly both rose. In the second hour of trading the Venus stocks had boomed a full fivepoints and Wrail sold. Ten minutes later they sagged. At the end of theday they were off two points from the opening. In late afternoon Wrailthrew his 10, 000 shares of Spacesuits on the market, sold them at aneven 110. Before the close they had dropped back with a gain of onlyhalf a point over the opening. 

Those were only two transactions. There were others. SpaceshipFabrication climbed three points before it fell and Wrail cashed in onthat. Mercury Metals rose two points and crashed back to close with afull point loss. Wrail sold just before the break. He had realized acool half million in the day's trade. 

The next day it was a million and then the man who had always been asafe trader, who had always played the conservative side of the market, apparently sure of his ground now, plunged deeper and deeper. It wasuncanny. Wrail knew when to buy and when to sell. Other traders watchedclosely, followed his lead. He threw them off by using different brokersto disguise his transactions. 

Hectic day followed hectic day. Ben Wrail did not appear on the floor. Calls to his office netted exactly nothing. Mr. Wrail was not in. Sosorry. 

His brokers, well paid, were close-mouthed. They bought and sold. Thatwas all. 

Seated in his office, Ben Wrail was busy watching two television screensbefore him. One showed the board in the New York exchange. In the otherwas the image of Gregory Manning, hunched in a chair in Page's mountainlaboratory back on Earth. And before Greg likewise were two screens, oneshowing the New York exchange board, the other trained on Ben Wrail'soffice. 

"That Tourist stuff looks good, " said Greg. "Why not buy a block of it?I happen to know that Chambers owns a few shares. He'll be dabbling init. "

Ben Wrail grinned. "It's made a couple of points, hasn't it? It'sselling here for 60 right now. In 45 minutes it'll be quoted at 62. "

He picked up a telephone. "Buy all you can of Tourist, " he said. "Rightaway. I'll tell you when to sell. Get rid of whatever you have in TitanCopper at 10:30. "

"Better let go of your holdings of Ranthoor Dome, " suggested Greg. "It'sbeginning to slip. "

"I'll watch it, " promised Ben. "It may revive. "

They lapsed into silence, watching the board in New York. 

"You know, Greg, " said Ben finally, "I really didn't believe all thiswas true until I saw those credit certificates materialize on my desk. "

"Simple, " grunted Greg. "This thing we've got can take anything anyplace. I could reach out there, grab you up and have you down here in asplit second. "

Ben sucked his breath in between his teeth. "I'm not doubting anythingany more. You sent me half a billion two days ago. It's more thandoubled now. "

He picked up the phone again and spoke to his broker on the other end. 

"Unload Ranthoor Dome when she reaches 79. "

 * * * * *

The real furor came on the Ranthoor floor when Wrail cornered TitanCopper. Striking swiftly, he purchased the stock in huge blocks. Theshares rocketed as the exchanges throughout the System were thrown intoan uproar. Under the cover of the excitement he proceeded to cornerSpacesuits Ltd. Spacesuits zoomed. 

For two days the main exchanges on four worlds were in a frenzy astraders watched the shares climb swiftly. Operators representingInterplanetary Power made offerings. No takers were reported. The sharesclimbed. 

Within one hour, however, the entire Wrail holdings in both stocks weredumped on the market. The Interplanetary Power traders, frantic over theprospect of losing control of the two important issues, bought heavily. The price plummeted. 

Spencer Chambers lost three billion or more on the deal. Overnight BenWrail had become a billionaire many times over. Greg Manning added tohis own fortune. 

"We have enough, " said Greg. "We've given Chambers what he had coming tohim. Let's call it off. "

"Glad to, " agreed Ben. "It was just too damned easy. "

"Be seeing you, Ben. "

"I'll get down to Earth some day. Come see me when you have a minute. Drop in for an evening. "

"That's an invitation, " said Greg. "It's easy with this three-dimensionstuff. "

He reached out a hand, snapped a control. The screens in Wrail's officewent dead. 

Wrail reached for a cigar, lit it carefully. He leaned back in hischair, put his feet on the desk. 

"By Heaven, " he said satisfiedly, "I've never enjoyed anything so muchin all my life. "

_CHAPTER EIGHT_

A giant cylindrical hull of finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in thescreen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster crossbeams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted thescene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing thescurrying workmen who swarmed over it. 

"She's a beauty, " said Russ, puffing at his pipe. 

Greg nodded agreement. "They're working on her day and night to get herfinished. We may need it some day and need it in a hurry. If Chambersreally gets that machine of his to rolling, space will be the only placebig enough to hide in. "

He chuckled, a grim chuckle, deep in his throat. 

"But we won't have to hide long. Just until we get organized and thenwill come the time when we'll call for the showdown. Chambers will haveto spread his cards. "

Russ snapped the television switch and the screen went blank. Thelaboratory suddenly was a place of queer lights and shadows, bulgingwith grotesque machines, with sprawling apparatus, a place that hinteddarkly of vast power and mighty forces. 

The scientist sat up in his chair. "We've come a long way, Greg. A long, long way. We have the greatest power man has ever known; we have analmost incomprehensible space drive; we have three-dimensionaltelevision. "

"And, " said Greg dryly, "we took Chambers to the cleaners on themarket. "

They sat in silence. Greg smelled the smoke from Russ's pipe, mixed withthe taint of lubricant and the faint lingering scent of ionized air. 

"We mustn't underrate Chambers, however, " he declared. "The man made onemistake. He underrated us. We can't repeat his mistake. He is dangerousall the time. He will stop at nothing. Not even murder. "

"He's going easy now, " said Russ. "He's hoping Craven can find somethingthat will either equal our stuff or beat it. But Craven isn't having anyluck. He's still driving himself on the radiation theory, but he doesn'tseem to make much headway. "

"If he got it, just what would it mean?"

"Plenty. With that he could turn all radiations in space to work. Thecosmics, heat, light, everything. Space is full of radiation. "

"If it hadn't been for Wilson, " Greg said, his voice a snarl, "wewouldn't have to be worrying about Chambers. Chambers wouldn't knowuntil we were ready to let him know. "

"Wilson!" ejaculated Russ, suddenly leaning forward. "I had forgottenabout Wilson. What do you say we try to find him?"

 * * * * *

Harry Wilson sat at his table in the Martian Club and watched the exoticMartian dance, performed by near-nude girls. Smoke trailed up lazilyfrom his drooping cigarette as he watched through squinted eyes. Therewas something about the dance that got under Wilson's skin. 

The music rose, then fell to whispering undertones and suddenly, unexpectedly, crashed and stopped. The girls were running from thefloor. A wave of smooth, polite applause rippled around the tables. 

Wilson sighed and reached for his wine glass. He crushed the cigaretteinto a tray and sipped his wine. He glanced around the room, scanningthe bobbing, painted faces of the night--the great, the near-great, thenear-enough-to-touch-the-great. Brokers and businessmen, artists andwriters and actors. There were others, too, queer night-life shadowsthat no one knew much about, or that one heard too much about ... Theplayboys and the ladies of family and fortune, correctly attired men, gorgeously, sleekly attired women. 

And--Harry Wilson. The waiters called him Mr. Wilson. He heard peoplewhispering about him asking who he was. His soul soaked it in and criedfor more. Good food, good drinks, the pastels of the walls, the softlights and weird, exotic music. The cold but colorful correctness of itall. 

Just two months ago he had stood outside the club, a stranger in thecity, a mechanic from a little out-of-the-way laboratory, a man who waspaid a pittance for his skill. He had stood outside and watched hisemployers walk up the steps and through the magic doors. He had watchedin bitterness.... 

But now!

The orchestra was striking up a tune. A blonde nodded at him from anear-by table. Solemnly, with the buzz of wine in his brain and itshotness in his blood, he returned the nod. 

Someone was speaking to him, calling him by name. He looked around, butthere was no one looking at him now. And once again, through that flowof music, through the hum of conversation, through the buzzing of hisown brain, came the voice, cold and sharp as steel:

"Harry Wilson!"

It sent a shudder through him. He reached for the wine glass again, buthis hand stopped half-way to the stem, paused and trembled at what hesaw. 

 * * * * *

For there was a gray vagueness in front of him, a sort of shimmer ofnothingness, and out of that shimmer materialized a pencil. 

As he watched, in stricken terror, the point of the pencil dropped tothe tablecloth and slowly, precisely, it started to move. He stared, hypnotized, unbelieving, with the fingers of madness probing at hisbrain. The pencil wrote:

 Wilson, you sold me out. 

The man at the table tried to speak, tried to shriek, but his tongue andthroat were dry and only harsh breath rattled in his mouth. 

The pencil moved on mercilessly:

 But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me. 

The pencil slowly lifted its point from the table and suddenly was gone, as if it had never been. Wilson, eyes wide and filled with terriblefear, stared at the black words on the cloth. 

 Wilson, you sold me out. But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me. 

The music pulsated in the room, the hum of conversation ran like anundertone, but Wilson did not hear. His entire consciousness wascentered on the writing, the letters and the words that filled his soulwith dread. 

Something seemed to snap within him. The cold wind of terror reached outand struck at him. He staggered from the chair. His hand swept the wineglass from the table and it shattered into chiming shards. 

"They can't do this to me!" he shrieked. 

There was a silence in the room a silence of terrible accusation. Everyone was staring at him. Eyebrows raised. 

 * * * * *

A waiter was at his elbow. "Do you feel ill, sir?"

And then, on unsteady feet, he was being led away. Behind him he heardthe music once again, heard the rising hum of voices. 

Someone set his hat on his head, was holding his coat. The cold air ofthe night struck his face and the doors sighed closed behind him. 

"I'd take it easy going down the step, sir, " counseled the doorman. 

An aero-taxi driver held open the door of the cab and saluted. 

"Where to, sir?"

Wilson stumbled in and stammered out his address. The taxi droned intothe traffic lane. 

Hands twitching, Wilson fumbled with the key, took minutes to open thedoor into his apartment. Finally the lock clicked and he pushed open thedoor. His questing finger found the wall switch. Light flooded the room. 

Wilson heaved a sigh of relief. He felt safe here. This place belongedto him. It was his home, his retreat.... 

A low laugh, hardly more than a chuckle, sounded behind him. He whirledand for a moment, blinking in the light, he saw nothing. Then somethingstirred by one of the windows, gray and vague, like a sheet of movingfog. 

As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened, took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, aface that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fireof anger in the eyes. 

"Manning!" shrieked Wilson. "Manning!" He wheeled and sprinted for thedoor, but the gray figure moved, too ... Incredibly fast, as if it werewind-blown vapor, and barred his path to the door. 

"Why are you running away?" Manning's voice mocked. "Certainly youaren't afraid of me. "

"Look, " Wilson whimpered, "I didn't think of what it meant. I just wastired of working the way Page made me work. Tired of the little salary Igot. I wanted money. I was hungry for money. "

"So you sold us out, " said Manning. 

"No, " cried Wilson, "I didn't think of it that way. I didn't stop tothink. "

"Think now, then, " said Manning gravely. "Think of this. No matter whereyou are, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, I'll always bewatching you, I'll never let you rest. I'll never give you a minute'speace. "

"Please, " pleaded Wilson. "Please, go away and leave me. I'll give youback the money ... There's some of it left. "

"You sold out for twenty thousand, " said Manning. "You could have gottentwenty million. Chambers would have paid that much to know what youcould tell him, because it was worth twenty billion. "

Wilson's breath was coming in panting gasps. He dropped his coat andbacked away. The back of his knees collided with a chair and he foldedup, sat down heavily, still staring at the gray mistiness that was aman. 

"Think of that, Wilson, " Manning went on sneeringly. "You could havebeen a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. You could have had all thefine things these other people have. But you only got twenty thousand. "

"What can I do?" begged Wilson. 

The misty face split in a sardonic grin. 

"I don't believe there's anything left for you to do. "

Before Wilson's eyes the face dissolved, lost its lines, seemed to meltaway. Only streaming, swirling mist, then a slight refraction in the airand then nothing. 

Slowly Wilson rose to his feet, reached for the bottle of whiskey on thetable. His hand shook so that the liquor splashed. When he raised theglass to his mouth, his still-shaking hand poured half the drink overhis white shirt front. 

_CHAPTER NINE_

Ludwig Stutsman pressed his thin, straight lips together. "So that's thesetup, " he said. 

Across the desk Spencer Chambers studied the man. Stutsman was like awolf, lean and cruel and vicious. He even looked like a wolf, with hislong, thin face, his small, beady eyes, the thin, bloodless lips. But hewas the kind of man who didn't always wait for instructions, but wentahead and used his own judgment. And in a ruthless sort of way, hisjudgment was always right. 

"Only as a last resort, " cautioned Chambers, "do I want you to use theextreme measures you are so fond of using. If they should provenecessary, we can always use them. But not yet. I want to settle thisthing in the quietest way possible. Page and Manning are two men whocan't simply disappear. There'd be a hunt, an investigation, an uglysituation. "

"I understand, " agreed Stutsman. "If something should happen to theirnotes, if somebody could find them. Perhaps you. If you found them onyour desk one morning. "

The two men measured one another with their eyes, more like enemiesthan men working for the same ends. 

"Not my desk, " snapped Chambers, "Craven's. So that Craven coulddiscover this new energy. Whatever Craven discovers belongs toInterplanetary. "

Chambers rose from his chair and walked to the window, looked out. Aftera moment's time, he turned and walked back again, sat down in his chair. Leaning back, he matched his fingertips, his teeth flashing in a grinunder his mustache. 

"I don't know anything about what's going on, " he said. "I don't evenknow someone has discovered material energy. That's up to Craven. He hasto find it. Both you and Craven work alone. I know nothing about eitherof you. "

Stutsman's jaw closed like a steel trap. "I've always worked alone. "

"By the way, " said Chambers, the edge suddenly off his voice, "how arethings going in the Jovian confederacy? I trust you left everything ingood shape. "

"As good as could be expected, " Stutsman replied. "The people are stilluneasy, half angry. They still remember Mallory. "

"But Mallory, " objected Chambers, "is on a prison ship. In near Mercurynow, I believe. "

Stutsman shook his head. "They still remember him. We'll have troubleout there one of these days. "

"I would hate to have that happen, " remarked Chambers softly. "I wouldregret it very much. I sent you out there to see that nothing happened. "

"The trouble out there won't be a flash to this thing you were tellingme about, " snapped Stutsman. 

"I'm leaving that in your hands, too, " Chambers told him. "I know youcan take care of it. "

Stutsman rose. "I can take care of it. "

"I'm sure you can, " Chambers said. 

He remained standing after Stutsman left, looking at the door throughwhich the man had gone. Maybe it had been a mistake to call Stutsman infrom Callisto. Maybe it was a mistake to use Stutsman at all. He didn'tlike a lot of things the man did ... Or the way he did them. Brutalthings. 

 * * * * *

Slowly Chambers sat down again and his face grew hard. 

He had built an empire of many worlds. That couldn't be done with gentlemethods and no sure goal. Fighting every inch from planet to planet, hehad used power to gain power. And now that empire was threatened by twomen who had found a greater power. That threat had to be smashed! Itwould be smashed!

Chambers leaned forward and pressed a buzzer. 

"Yes, Mr. Chambers?" said a voice in the communicator. 

"Send Dr. Craven in, " commanded Chambers. 

Craven came in, slouchily, his hair standing on end, his eyes peeringthrough the thick-lensed glasses. 

"You sent for me, " he growled, taking a chair. 

"Yes, I did, " said Chambers. "Have a drink?"

"No. And no smoke either. "

Chambers took a long cigar from the box on his desk, clipped off the endand rolled it in his mouth. 

 * * * * *

"I'm a busy man, " Craven reminded him. 

Puckering lines of amusement wrinkled Chambers' eyes as he lit up, watching Craven. 

"You do seem to be busy, Doctor, " he said. "I only wish you hadsomething concrete to report. "

The scientist bristled. "I may have in a few days, if you leave me aloneand let me work. "

"I presume that you are still working on your radiation collector. Anyprogress?"

"Not too much. You can't expect a man to turn out discoveries to order. I'm working almost night and day now. If the thing can be solved, I'llsolve it. "

Chambers glowed. "Keep up the good work. But I wanted to talk to youabout something else. You heard, I suppose, that I lost a barrel ofmoney on the Ranthoor exchange. "

Craven smiled, a sardonic twisting of his lips. "I heard something aboutit. "

"I thought you had, " said Chambers sourly. "If not, you would have beenthe only one who hadn't heard how Ben Wrail took Chambers for a ride. "

"He really took you then, " commented Craven. "I thought maybe it wasjust one of those stories. "

"He took me, but that's not what's worrying me. I want to know how hedid it. No man, not even the most astute student of the market, couldhave foretold the trend of the market the way he did. And Wrail isn'tthe most astute. It isn't natural when a man who has always played thesafe side suddenly turns the market upside down. Even less natural whenhe never makes a mistake. "

"Well, " demanded Craven, "what do you want me to do about it? I'm ascientist. I've never owned a share of stock in my life. "

"There's an angle to it that might interest you, " said Chamberssmoothly, leaning back, puffing at the cigar. "Wrail is a close friendof Manning. And Wrail himself didn't have the money it took to swingthose deals. Somebody furnished that money. "

"Manning?" asked Craven. 

"What do you think?"

"If Manning's mixed up in it, " said Craven acidly, "there isn't anythingany of us can do about it. You're bucking money and genius together. This Manning is no slouch of a scientist himself and Page is better. They're a combination. "

 * * * * *

"You think they're good?" asked Chambers. 

"Good? Didn't they discover material energy?" The scientist glowered athis employer. "That ought to be answer enough. "

"Yes, I know, " Chambers agreed irritably. "But can you tell me how theyworked this market deal?"

Craven grimaced. "I can guess. Those boys didn't stop with just findinghow to harness material energy. They probably have more things than youcan even suspect. They were working with force fields, you remember, when they stumbled onto the energy. Force fields are something we don'tknow much about. A man monkeying around with them is apt to find almostanything. "

"What are you getting at?"

"My guess would be that they have a new kind of television working inthe fourth dimension, using time as a factor. It would penetrateanything. Nothing could stop it. It could go anywhere, at a speed manytimes the speed of light ... Almost instantaneously. "

Chambers sat upright in his chair. "Are you _sure_ about this?"

Craven shook his head. "Just a guess. I tried to figure out what I woulddo if I were Page and Manning and had the things they had. That's all. "

"And what would you do?"

Craven smiled dourly. "I'd be using that television right in thisoffice, " he said. "I'd keep you and me under observation all the time. If what I think is true, Manning is watching us now and has heard everyword we said. "

Chambers' face was a harsh mask of anger. "I don't believe it could bedone!"

"Doctor Craven is right, " said a quiet voice. 

Chambers swung around in his chair and gasped. Greg Manning stood insidethe room, just in front of the desk. 

"I hope you don't mind, " said Greg. "I've been wanting to have a talkwith you. "

Craven leaped to his feet, his eyes shining. "Three dimensions!" hewhispered. "How did you do it?"

Greg chuckled. "I haven't patented the idea, Doctor. I'd rather not tellyou just now. "

"You will accept my congratulations, however?" asked Craven. 

"That's generous of you. I really hadn't expected this much. "

"I mean it, " said Craven. "Damned if I don't. " Chambers was on his feet, leaning across the desk, with his hand held out. Greg's right hand cameout slowly. 

"Sorry, I really can't shake hands, " he said. "I'm not here, you know. Just my image. "

Chambers' hand dropped to the desk. "Stupid of me not to realize that. You looked so natural. " He sat back in his chair again, brushed his graymustache. A smile twisted his lips. "So you've been watching me?"

"Off and on, " Greg said. 

"And what is the occasion of this visit?" asked Chambers. "You couldhave held a distinct advantage by remaining unseen. I didn't entirelybelieve what Craven told me, you know. "

"That isn't the point at all, " declared Greg. "Maybe we can get tounderstand one another. "

"So you're ready to talk business. "

"Not in the sense you mean, " Greg said. "I'm not willing to makeconcessions, but there's no reason why we have to fight one another. "

"Why, no, " said Chambers, "there's no reason for that. I'll be willingto buy your discovery. "

"I wouldn't sell it to you, " Greg told him. 

"You wouldn't? Why not? I'm prepared to pay for it. "

"You'd pay the price, all right. Anything I asked ... Even if itbankrupted you. Then you'd mark it down to loss, and scrap materialenergy. And I'll tell you why. "

 * * * * *

A terrible silence hung in the room as the two men eyed one anotheracross the table. 

"You wouldn't use it, " Greg went on, "because it would remove thestranglehold you have on the planets. It would make power too cheap. Itwould eliminate the necessity of your rented accumulators. The Jovianmoons and Mars could stand on their feet without the power you ship tothem. You could make billions in legitimate profits selling theapparatus to manufacture the energy ... But you wouldn't want that. Youwant to be dictator of the Solar System. And that is what I intend tostop. "

"Listen, Manning, " said Chambers, "you're a reasonable man. Let's talkthis thing over without anger. What do you plan to do?"

"I could put my material engines on the market, " said Greg. "That wouldruin you. You wouldn't move an accumulator after that. YourInterplanetary stock wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. Material energy would wipe you out. "

"You forget I have franchises on those planets, " Chambers reminded him. "I'd fight you in the courts until hell froze over. "

"I'd prove convenience, economy and necessity. Any court in any land, onany planet, would rule for me. "

Chambers shook his head. "Not Martian or Jovian courts. I'd tell them torule for me and the courts outside of Earth do what I tell them to. "

 * * * * *

Greg straightened and backed from the desk. "I hate to ruin a man. You've worked hard. You've built a great company. I would be willing, inreturn for a hands-off policy on your part, to hold up any announcementof my material energy until you had time to get out, to save what youcould. "

Hard fury masked Chambers' face. "You'll never build a material energyengine outside your laboratory. Don't worry about ruining me. I won'tallow you to stand in my way. I hope you understand. "

"I understand too well. But even if you are a dictator out on Mars andVenus, even if you do own Mercury and boss the Jovian confederacy, you're just a man to me. A man who stands for things that I don't like. "

Greg stopped and his eyes were like ice crystals. 

"You talked to Stutsman today, " he said. "If I were you, I wouldn't letStutsman do anything rash. Russ Page and I might have to fight back. "

Mockery tinged Chambers' voice. "Am I to take this as a declaration ofwar, Mr. Manning?"

"Take it any way you like, " Greg said. "I came here to give you aproposition, and you tell me you're going to smash me. All I have to sayto you, Chambers, is this--when you get ready to smash me, you'd betterhave a deep, dark hole all picked out for yourself to hide in. BecauseI'll hand you back just double anything you hand out. "

_CHAPTER TEN_

"One of us will have to watch all the time, " Greg told Russ. "We can'ttake any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and wehave to be ready for him. "

He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning besidethe bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles ofthe laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed. 

The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger shipspearing down toward the airport south of them. 

"With the port that close, " said Russ, "we'll get a lot of signals. "

"I ordered the Belgium factory to rush work on the ship, " said Greg. "But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight andwait. As soon as we have the ship we'll start in on Chambers; but untilwe get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive. "

He studied the scene in the screen. The ship had leveled off, wasbanking in to the port. His eyes turned away, took in the laboratorywith its crowding mass of machinery. 

"We don't want to fool ourselves about Chambers, " he said. "He may nothave the power here on Earth that he does on the other planets, but he'sgot plenty. Feeling the way he does, he'll try to finish us off in ahurry now. "

Russ reached out to the table that stood beside the bank of controls andpicked up a small, complicated mechanism. Its face bore nine dials, withthe needles on three of them apparently registering, the other sixmotionless. 

"What is that?" asked Greg. 

"A mechanical detective, " said Russ. "A sort of mechanical shadow. Whileyou were busy with the stock market stunt, I made several of them. Onefor Wilson and another for Chambers and still another for Craven. " Hehoisted and lowered the one in his hand. "This one is for Stutsman. "

"A shadow?" asked Greg. "Do you mean that thing will trail Stutsman?"

"Not only trail him, " said Russ. "It will find him, wherever he may be. Some object every person wears or carries is made of iron or some othermagnetic metal. This 'shadow' contains a tiny bit of that ridiculousmilitary decoration that Stutsman never allows far away from him. Findthat decoration and you find Stutsman. In another one I have a chunk ofWilson's belt buckle, that college buckle, you know, that he's so proudof. Chambers has a ring made of a piece of meteoric iron and that's thebait for another machine. Have a tiny piece off Craven's spectacles inhis machine. It was easy to get the stuff. The force field enables a manto reach out and take anything he wants to, from a massive machine to amicroscopic bit of matter. It was a cinch to get the stuff I needed. "

Russ chuckled and put the machine back on the table. He gestured towardit. 

"It maintains a tiny field similar to our television field, " heexplained. "But it's modified along a special derivation with a magneticresult. It can follow and find the original mass of any metallicsubstance it may contain. "

"Clever, " commented Greg. 

Russ lit his pipe, puffed comfortably. "We needed something like that. "

The red light on the board snapped on and blinked. Russ reached out andslammed home the lever, twirled dials. It was only another passengership. They relaxed, but not too much. 

 * * * * *

"I wonder what he's up to, " said Russ. 

Stutsman's car had stopped in the dock section of New York. Crumbling, rotting piers and old tumbledown warehouses, deserted and unused sincethe last ship sailed the ocean before giving way to air commerce, loomeddarkly, like grim ghosts, in the darkness. 

Stutsman had gotten out of the car and said: "Wait here. "

"Yes, sir, " said the voice of the driver. 

Stutsman strode away, down a dark street. The televisor kept pace withhim and on the screen he could be seen as a darker shape moving amongthe shadows of that old, almost forgotten section of the Solar System'sgreatest city. 

Another shadow detached itself from the darkness of the street, shuffledtoward Stutsman. 

"Sir, " said a whining voice, "I haven't eaten ... "

There was a swift movement as Stutsman's stick lashed out, a thud as itconnected with the second shadow's head. The shadow crumpled on thepavement. Stutsman strode on. 

Greg sucked in his breath. "He isn't very sociable tonight. "

Stutsman ducked into an alley where even deeper darkness lay. Russ, witha delicate adjustment, slid the televisor along, closer to Stutsman, determined not to lose sight of him for an instant. 

The man suddenly turned into a doorway so black that nothing could beseen. Sounds of sharp, impatient rappings came out of the screen asStutsman struck the door with his stick. 

Brilliant illumination sprang out over the doorway, but Stutsman seemednot to see it, went on knocking. The colors on the screen werepeculiarly distorted. 

"Ultra-violet, " grunted Greg. "Whoever he's calling on wants to have agood look before letting anybody in. "

The door creaked open and a shaft of normal light spewed out into thestreet, turning its murkiness to pallid yellow. 

Stutsman stepped inside. 

The man at the door jerked his head. "Back room, " he said. 

 * * * * *

The televisor slid through the door into the lighted room behindStutsman. Dust lay thick on the woodwork and floors. Patches of plasterhad broken away. Furrows zigzagged across the floor, marking the path ofheavy boxes or furniture which had been pushed along in utter disdain ofthe flooring. Cheap wall-paper hung in tatters from the walls, streakedwith water from some broken pipe. 

But the back room was a startling contrast to the first. Rich, comfortable furniture filled it. The floor was covered with asteel-cloth rug and steel-cloth hangings, colorfully painted, hid thewalls. 

A man sat under a lamp, reading a newspaper. He rose to his feet, likethe sudden uncoiling of springs. 

Russ gasped. That face was one of the best known faces in the entireSolar System. A ratlike face, with cruel cunning printed on it that hadbeen on front pages and TV screens often, but never for pay. 

"Scorio!" whispered Russ. 

Greg nodded and his lips were drawn tight. 

"Stutsman, " said Scorio, surprised. "You're the last person in the worldI was expecting. Come in. Have a chair. Make yourself comfortable. "

Stutsman snorted. "This isn't a social call. "

"I didn't figure it was, " replied the gangster, "but sit down anyway. "

Gingerly Stutsman sat down on the edge of a chair, hunched forward. Scorio resumed his seat and waited. 

"I have a job for you, " Stutsman announced bluntly. 

"Fine. It isn't often you have one for me. Three-four years ago, wasn'tit?"

"We may be watched, " warned Stutsman. 

The mobster started from his chair, his eyes darting about the room. 

Stutsman grunted disgustedly. "If we're watched, there isn't anything wecan do about it. "

"We can't, huh?" snarled the gangster. "Why not?"

"Because the watcher is on the West Coast. We can't reach him. If he'swatching, he can see every move we make, hear every word we say. "

"Who is it?"

 * * * * *

"Greg Manning or Russ Page, " said Stutsman. "You've heard of them?"

"Sure. I heard of them. "

"They have a new kind of television, " said Stutsman. "They can see andhear everything that's happening on Earth, perhaps in all the SolarSystem. But I don't think they're watching us now. Craven has a machinethat can detect their televisor. It registers certain field effects theyuse. They weren't watching when I left Craven's laboratory just a fewminutes ago. They may have picked me up since, but I don't think so. "

"So Craven has made a detector, " said Greg calmly. "He can tell whenwe're watching now. "

"He's a clever cuss, " agreed Russ. 

"Take a look at that machine now, " urged Scorio. "See if they'rewatching. You shouldn't have come here. You should have let me know andI would have met you some place. I can't have people knowing where myhideout is. "

"Quiet down, " snapped Stutsman. "I haven't got the machine. It weighshalf a ton. "

Scorio sank deeper into his chair, worried. "Do you want to take achance and talk business?"

"Certainly. That's why I'm here. This is the proposition. Manning andPage are working in a laboratory out on the West Coast, in themountains. I'll give you the exact location later. They have some paperswe want. We wouldn't mind if something happened to the laboratory. Itmight, for example blow up. But we want the papers first. "

 * * * * *

Scorio said nothing. His face was quiet and cunning. 

"Give me the papers, " said Stutsman, "and I'll see that you get to anyplanet you want to. And I'll give you two hundred thousand inInterplanetary Credit certificates. Give me proof that the laboratoryblew up or melted down or something else happened to it and I'll boostthe figure to five hundred thousand. "

Scorio did not move a muscle as he asked: "Why don't you have some ofyour own mob do this job?"

"Because I can't be connected with it in any way, " said Stutsman. "Ifyou slip up and something happens, I won't be able to do a thing foryou. That's why the price is high. "

The gangster's eyes slitted. "If the papers are worth that much to you, why wouldn't they be worth as much to me?"

"They wouldn't be worth a dime to you. "

"Why not?"

"Because you couldn't read them, " said Stutsman. 

"I can read, " retorted the gangster. 

"Not the kind of language on those papers. There aren't more than twodozen people in the Solar System who could read it, perhaps a dozen whocould understand it, maybe half a dozen who could follow the directionsin the papers. " He leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at thegangster. "And there are only two people in the System who could writeit. "

"What the hell kind of a language is it that only two dozen people couldread?"

"It isn't a language, really. It's mathematics. "

"Oh, arithmetic. "

"No, " Stutsman said. "Mathematics. You see? You don't even know thedifference between the two, so what good would the papers do you?"

Scorio nodded. "Yeah, you're right. "

_CHAPTER ELEVEN_

The Paris-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic shipthat rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lightsof eastern Europe. 

Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. Therewas nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and theother occupants of the ship ... Alone in the dark world that surroundedthem. 

But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides thepilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the three stodgytraveling men who were his fellow passengers. 

Wilson's hair ruffled at the base of his skull, tingling with an unknownfear that left him shaken. 

A voice whispered in his ear: "Harry Wilson. So you are running away!"

Just a tiny voice that seemed hardly a voice at all, it seemed at onceto come from far away and yet from very near. The voice, with an edge ofcoldness on it, was one he never would forget. 

He cowered in his seat, whimpering. 

The voice came again: "Didn't I tell you that you couldn't run away?That no matter where you went, I'd find you?"

"Go away, " Wilson whispered huskily. "Leave me alone. Haven't youhounded me enough?"

"No, " answered the voice, "not enough. Not yet. You sold us out. Youwarned Chambers about our energy and now Chambers is sending men to killus. But they won't succeed, Wilson. "

"You can't hurt me, " said Wilson defiantly. "You can't do anything buttalk to me. You're trying to drive me mad, but you can't. I won't letyou. I'm not going to pay any more attention to you. "

The whisper chuckled. 

"You can't, " argued Wilson wildly. "All you can do is talk to me. You'venever done anything but that. You drove me out of New York and out ofLondon and now you're driving me out of Paris. But Berlin is as far as Iwill go. I won't listen to you any more. "

"Wilson, " whispered the voice, "look inside your bag. The bag, Wilson, where you are carrying that money. That stack of credit certificates. Almost eleven thousand dollars, what is left of the twenty thousandChambers paid you. "

With a wild cry Wilson clawed at his bag, snapped it open, pawed throughit. 

 * * * * *

The credit certificates were gone!

"You took my money, " he shrieked. "You took everything I had. I haven'tgot a cent. Nothing except a few dollars in my pocket. "

"You haven't got that either, Wilson, " whispered the voice. 

There was a sound of ripping cloth as something like a great, powerfulhand flung aside Wilson's coat, tore away the inside pocket. There was abrief flash of a wallet and a bundle of papers, which vanished. 

The hostess was hurrying toward him. 

"Is there something wrong?"

"They took ... " Wilson began and stopped. 

What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across theworld had robbed him?

The three traveling men were looking at him. 

"I'm sorry, miss, " he stammered. "I really am. I fell asleep anddreamed. "

He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner ofhis seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, highin the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin ... Stranded withoutmoney, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and thefew personal effects in his bag. 

Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The planewas entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, wasno place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. Athousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They might think he wasa spy. He might be cited for illegal entry. He might be framed by secretpolice. 

Terror perched on his shoulder and whispered to him. He shiveredviolently and drew farther back into the corner of the seat. He claspedhis hands, beat them against his huddled knees. 

He would cable friends back in America and have them identify him andvouch for his character. He would borrow some money from them, justenough to get back to America. But whom would he cable? And with achingbitterness in his breast, Harry Wilson came face to face with thehorrible realization that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the SolarSystem, was there a single person who was his friend. There was no oneto help him. 

He bowed his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders jerkingspasmodically, the sobs racking his body. 

The traveling men stared at him unable to understand. The hostess lookedbriskly helpless. Wilson knew he looked like a scared fool and he didn'tcare. 

He _was_ scared. 

 * * * * *

Gregory Manning riffled the sheaf of credit certificates, the wallet, the passport and pile of other papers that lay upon the desk in front ofhim. 

"That closes one little incident, " he said grimly. "That takes care ofour friend Wilson. "

"Maybe you were a bit too harsh with him, Greg, " suggested Russell Page. 

Greg shook his head. "He was a traitor, the lowest thing alive. He soldthe confidence we placed in him. He traded something that was not his totrade. He did it for money and now I've taken that money from him. "

He shoved the pile of certificates to one side. 

"Now I've got this stuff, " he said, "I don't know what to do with it. Wedon't want to keep it. "

"Why not send it to Chambers?" suggested Russ. "He will find thepassport and the money on his desk in the morning. Give him something tothink about tomorrow. "

_CHAPTER TWELVE_

Scorio snarled at the four men: "I want you to get the thing done right. I don't want bungling. Understand?"

The bulky, flat-faced man with the scar across his cheek shuffleduneasily. "We went over it a dozen times. We know just what to do. "

He grinned at Scorio, but the grin was lopsided, more like a sneeringgrimace. At one time the man had failed to side-step a heat ray and ithad left a neat red line drawn across the right cheek, nipped the end ofthe ear. 

"All right, Pete, " said Scorio, glaring at the man, "your job is theheavy work, so just keep your mind on it. You've got the two heaters andthe kit. "

Pete grinned lopsidedly again. "Yeah, my own kit. I can open anythinghollow with this rig. "

"You got a real job tonight, " snarled Scorio. "Two doors and a safe. Sure you can do it?"

"Just leave it to me, " Pete growled. 

"Chizzy, you're to pilot, " Scorio snapped. "Know the coordinates?"

"Sure, " said Chizzy, "know them by heart. Do it with my eyes shut. "

"Keep your eyes open. We can't have anything go wrong. This is tooimportant. You swoop in at top speed and land on the roof. Stand by thecontrols and keep a hand on the big heater just in case of trouble. Pete, Max and Reg will go to the lockdoor. Reg will stay there with thebuzzer and three drums of ammunition. "

He whirled on Reg. "You got that ammunition?"

Reg nodded emphatically. "Four drums of it, " he said. "One solid roundin the gun. Another drum of solid and two explosive. "

"There's a thousand rounds in each drum, " snapped Scorio, "but they lastonly a minute, so do your firing in bursts. "

"I ain't handled buzzers all these years without knowing something aboutthem. "

"There's only two men there, " said Scorio, "and they'll probably beasleep. Come down with your motor dead. The lab roof is thick and theplane landing on those thick tires won't wake them. But be on your guardall the time. Pete and Max will go through the lockdoor into thelaboratory and open the safe. Dump all the papers and money and whateverelse you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the planeand take off. When you're clear of the building, turn the heaters on it. I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don't leaveeven a button unmelted. Get it?"

 * * * * *

"Sure, chief, " said Pete. He dusted his hands together. 

"Now get going. Beat it. "

The four men turned and filed out of the room, through the door leadingto the tumbledown warehouse where was hidden the streamlined metal ship. Swiftly they entered it and the ship nosed gently upward, blasting outthrough a broken, frameless skylight, climbing up and up, over thegleaming spires of New York. 

Back in the room hung with steel-cloth curtains, alone, Scorio lit acigarette and chuckled. "They won't have a chance, " he said. 

"Who won't?" asked a tiny voice from almost in front of him. 

"Why, Manning and Page ... " said Scorio, and then stopped. The fire ofthe match burned down and scorched his fingers. He dropped it. "Whoasked that?" he roared. 

"I did, " said the piping voice. 

Scorio looked down. A three-inch man sat on a matchbox on the desk!

"Who are you?" the gangster shouted. 

"I'm Manning, " said the little man. "The one you're going to kill. Don'tyou remember?"

"Damn you!" shrieked Scorio. His hand flipped open a drawer and pulledout a flame pistol. The muzzle of the pistol came up and blasted. Screwed down to its smallest diameter, the gun's aim was deadly. Astraight lance of flame, no bigger than a pencil, streamed out, engulfedthe little man, bored into the table top. The box of matches explodedwith a gush of red that was a dull flash against the blue blaze of thegun. 

But the figure of the man stood _within the flame_! Stood there andwaved an arm at Scorio. The piping voice came out of the heart of thegun's breath. 

"Maybe I'd better get a bit smaller. Make me harder to hit. More sportthat way. "

 * * * * *

Scorio's finger lifted from the trigger. The flame snapped off. Laboriously climbing out of the still smoking furrow left in the oakentable top was Greg Manning, not more than an inch tall now. 

The gangster laid the gun on the table, stepped closer, warily. With thepalm of a mighty hand he swatted viciously at the little figure. 

"I got you now!"

But the figure seemed to ooze upright between his fingers, calmlystepped off his hand onto the table. And now it began to grow. Watchingit, Scorio saw it grow to six inches and there it stopped. 

"What are you?" he breathed. 

"I told you, " said the little image. "I'm Gregory Manning. The man youset out to kill. I've watched every move you've made and knowneverything you planned. "

"But that isn't possible, " protested Scorio. "You're out on the WestCoast. This is some trick. I'm just seeing things. "

"You aren't seeing anything imaginary. I'm really here, in this roomwith you. I could lift my finger and kill you if I wished ... And maybeI should. "

Scorio stepped back a pace. 

"But I'm not going to, " said Manning. "I have something better saved foryou. Something more appropriate. "

"You can't touch me!"

"Look, " said Manning sternly. He pointed his finger at a chair. Itsuddenly grew cloudy, became a wisp of trailing smoke, was gone. 

The gangster backed away, eyes glued to the spot where the chair hadvanished. 

"Look here, " piped the little voice. Scorio jerked his head around andlooked. 

The chair was in Manning's hand. A tiny chair, but the very one that haddisappeared from the room a moment before. 

"Watch out!" warned Manning, and heaved the chair. The tiny chairseemed to float in the air. Then with a rush it gathered speed, grewlarger. In a split second it was a full-sized chair and it was hurtlingstraight at the gangster's head. 

With a strangled cry Scorio threw up his arms. The chair crashed intohim, bowled him over. 

"Now do you believe me?" demanded Manning. 

Scrambling to his feet, Scorio gibbered madly, for the six-inch figurewas growing. He became as large as the average man, and then muchlarger. His head cleared the high ceiling by scant inches. His mightyhands reached out for the gangster. 

Scorio scuttled away on hands and knees, yelping with terror. 

Powerful hands seemed to seize and lift him. The room was blotted out. The Earth was gone. He was in a place where there was nothing. No light, no heat, no gravitation. For one searing, blasting second he seemed tobe floating in strangely suspended animation. Then with a jolt he becameaware of new surroundings. 

He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in a great laboratory thathummed faintly with the suggestion of terrific power, that smelled ofozone and seemed filled with gigantic apparatus. 

Two men stood in front of him. 

He staggered back. 

"Manning!" he gasped. 

Manning grinned savagely at him. "Sit down, Scorio. You won't have longto wait. Your boys will be along any minute now. "

 * * * * *

Chizzy crouched over the controls, his eyes on the navigation chart. Only the thin screech of parted air disturbed the silence of the ship. The high scream and the slow, precise snack-snack of cards as Reg andMax played a game of double solitaire with a cold, emotionlessprecision. 

The plane was near the stratosphere, well off the traveled air lanes. Itwas running without lights, but the cabin bulbs were on, carefullyshielded. 

Pete sat in the co-pilot's chair beside Chizzy. His blank, expressionless eyes stared straight ahead. 

"I don't like this job, " he complained. 

"Why not?" asked Chizzy. 

"Page and Manning aren't the kind of guys a fellow had ought to befooling around with. They ain't just chumps. You fool with characterslike them and you got trouble. "

Chizzy growled at him disgustedly, bent to his controls. 

Straight ahead was a thin sliver of a dying Moon that gave barelyenough illumination to make out the great, rugged blocks of themountains, like dark, shadowy brush-strokes on a newly started canvas. 

Pete shuddered. There was something about the thin, watery moonlight, and those brush-stroke hills.... 

"It seems funny up here, " he said. 

"Hell, " growled Chizzy, "you're going soft in your old age. "

Silence fell between the two. The snack-snack of the cards continued. 

"You ain't got nothing to be afraid of, " Chizzy told Pete. "This tub isthe safest place in the world. She's overpowered a dozen times. She canoutfly anything in the air. She's rayproof and bulletproof andbombproof. Nothing can hurt us. "

But Pete wasn't listening. "That moonlight makes a man see things. Funnythings. Like pictures in the night. "

"You're balmy, " declared Chizzy. 

Pete started out of his seat. His voice gurgled in his throat. Hepointed with a shaking finger out into the night. 

"Look!" he yelled "Look!"

Chizzy rose out of his seat ... And froze in sudden terror. 

Straight ahead of the ship, etched in silvery moon-lines against thebackground of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face. 

It was as big and hard as a mountain. 

_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_

The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Regand Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy. 

"It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!"

Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls werelocked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and theship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth. 

"Do something!" screamed Max. "You damn fool, do something!"

"I can't, " moaned Chizzy. "The ship is out of control. "

It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reservepower far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream ... It wastops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerfulthan the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over. 

"Manning's got us!" squealed Pete. "We came out to get him and now hehas us instead!"

The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against itsplates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel andhear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greaterpace through the tenuous atmosphere. 

The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon andthe brush-stroke mountains far below. 

Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, downinto the saw-teeth of the mountains. 

"We're falling!" yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him. 

But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspendedabove a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top. 

"That's Manning's laboratory, " whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones. 

The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over, drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into theengines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined andscreamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast ofheat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of theframe creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines ... But theship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills. 

Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand beganclawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were onlytwo men in the cabin with him--Reg and Max. Pete had gone!

"He just disappeared, " Max jabbered. "He was standing there in front ofus. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke. Then he was gone. "

 * * * * *

Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, noheat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind hadbecome disembodied. 

Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on alight. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split secondbefore, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound. 

It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, alaboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery, lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illuminationwhite as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day. 

Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile onhis lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. Thesmiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!

With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights cameup and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heatthat sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemedto strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with aflare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into thegangster's body. 

His finger released its pressure and the gun dangled limply from hishand. He moaned with the pain of burns upon his unprotected face andhands. He beat feebly at tiny, licking blazes that ran along hisclothing. 

Manning was still smiling at him. 

"You can't reach me, Pete, " he said. "You can only hurt yourself. You'reenclosed within a solid wall of force that matter cannot penetrate. "

A voice came from one corner of the room: "I'll bring Chizzy down next. "

Pete whirled around and saw Russell Page for the first time. Thescientist sat in front of a great control board, his swift, skillfulfingers playing over the banks of keys, his eyes watching the instrumentand the screen that slanted upward from the control banks. 

Pete felt dizzy as he stared at the screen. He could see the interior ofthe ship he had been yanked from a moment before. He could see his threecompanions, talking excitedly, frightened by his disappearance. 

 * * * * *

His eyes flicked away from the screen, looked up through the skylightabove him. Outlined against the sky hung the ship. At the nose andstern, two hemispheres of blue-white radiance fitted over the metalframework, like the jaws of a powerful vise, holding the craftimmovable. 

His gaze went back to the screen again, just in time to see Chizzydisappear. It was as if the man had been a mere figure chalked upon aboard ... And then someone had taken a sponge and wiped him out. 

Russ's fingers were flying over the keys. His thumb reached out andtripped a lever. There was a slight hum of power. 

And Chizzy stood beside him. 

Chizzy did not pull his gun. He whimpered and cowered within theinvisible cradle of force. 

"You're yellow, " Pete snarled at him, but Chizzy only covered his eyeswith his arms. 

"Look, boss, " said Pete, addressing Scorio, "what are you doing here? Weleft you back in New York. "

Scorio did not answer. He merely glared. Pete lapsed into silence, watching. 

 * * * * *

Manning stood poised before the captives, rocking back and forth on hisheels. 

"A nice bag for one evening, " he told Russ. 

Russ grinned and stoked up his pipe. 

Manning turned to the gangster chief. "What do you think we ought to dowith these fellows? We can't leave them in those force shells too longbecause they'll die for lack of air. And we can't let them loose becausethey might use their guns on us. "

"Listen, Manning, " Scorio rasped hoarsely, "just name your price to letus loose. We'll do anything you want. "

Manning drew his mouth down. "I can't think of a thing. We just don'tseem to have any use for you. "

"Then what in hell, " the gangster asked shakily, "are you going to dowith us?"

"You know, " said Manning, "I may be a bit old-fashioned along somelines. Maybe I am. I just don't like the idea of killing people formoney. I don't like people stealing things other people have worked hardto get. I don't like thieves and murderers and thugs corrupting citygovernments, taking tribute on every man, woman and child in our bigcities. "

"But look here, Manning, " pleaded Scorio, "we'd be good citizens if wejust had a chance. "

Manning's face hardened. "You sent these men here to kill us tonight, didn't you?"

"Well, not exactly. Stutsman kind of wanted you killed, but I told theboys just to get the stuff in the safe and never mind killing you. Isaid to them that you were pretty good eggs and I didn't like to bumpyou off, see?"

"I see, " said Manning. 

He turned his back on Scorio and started to walk away. The gangsterchief came half-way out of his chair, and as he did so, Russ reached outa single finger and tapped a key. Scorio screamed and beat with hisfists against the wall of force that had suddenly formed about him. Thatsingle tap on the great keyboard had sprung a trap, had been the onefactor necessary to bring into being a force shell already spun andwaiting for him. 

Manning did not even turn around at Scorio's scream. He slowly paced hisway down the line of standing gangsters. He stopped in front of Pete andlooked at him. 

"Pete, " he said, "you've sprung a good many prisons, haven't you?"

"There ain't a jug in the System that can hold me, " Pete boasted, "andthat's a fact. "

"I believe there's one that could, " Greg told him. "One that no man hasever escaped from, or ever will. "

"What's that?" demanded Pete. 

"The Vulcan Fleet, " said Greg. 

Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose inthose eyes. "Don't send me there! Send me any place but there!"

Greg turned to Russ and nodded. Russ's fingers played their tune of doomupon the keyboard. His thumb depressed a lever. With a roar fivegigantic material energy engines screamed with thrumming power. 

Pete disappeared. 

The engines roared with thunderous throats, a roar that seemed to drownthe laboratory in solid waves of sound. A curious refractive effectdeveloped about the straining hulks as space near them bent under theirlashing power. 

Months ago Russ and Greg had learned a better way of transmitting powerthan by metal bars or through conducting beams. Beams of such power aswere developing now would have smashed atoms to protons and electrons. Through a window in the side of the near engine, Greg could see the ironingot used as fuel dwindling under the sucking force. 

 * * * * *

The droning died and only a hum remained. 

"He's in a prison now he'll never get out of, " said Greg calmly. "Iwonder what they'll think when they find him, dressed in civilianclothes and carrying a heat gun. They'll clap him into a photo-cell andkeep him there until they investigate. When they find out who he is, hewon't get out--he has enough unfinished prison sentences to last acentury or two. "

For Pete was on one of the Vulcan Fleet ships, the hell-ships of theprison fleet. There were confined only the most vicious and the mostdepraved of the Solar System's criminals. He would be forced to workunder the flaming whip-lashes of a Sun that hurled such intenseradiations that mere spacesuits were no protection at all. The workerson the Vulcan Fleet ships wore suits that were in reality photo-cellswhich converted the deadly radiations into electric power. For electricpower can be disposed of where heat cannot. 

Quailing inside his force shell, Scorio saw his men go, one by one. Sawthem lifted and whisked away, out through the depths of space by themagic touch upon the keyboards. With terror-widened eyes he watchedRuss set up the equations, saw him trip the activating lever, saw themen disappear, listened to the thunderous rumbling of the mightyengines. 

Chizzy went to the Outpost, the harsh prison on Neptune's satellite. Regwent to Titan, clear across the Solar System, where men in the infamouspenal colony labored in the frigid wastes of that moon of Saturn. Maxwent to Vesta, the asteroid prison, which long had been the target ofreformers, who claimed that on it 50 per cent of the prisoners died ofboredom and fear. 

Max was gone and only Scorio remained. 

"Stutsman's the one who got us into this, " wailed the gangster. "He'sthe man you want to get. Not me. Not the boys. Stutsman. "

"I promise you, " said Greg, "that we'll take care of Stutsman. "

"And Chambers, too, " chattered Scorio. "But you can't touch Chambers. You wouldn't dare. "

"We're not worrying about Chambers, " Greg told him. "We're not worryingabout anyone. You're the one who had better start doing some. "

Scorio cringed. 

"Let me tell you about a place on Venus, " said Greg. "It's in the centerof a big swamp that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. It's a sort of mountain rising out of the swamp. And the swamp is filledwith beasts and reptiles of every kind. Ravenous things, lusting forblood. But they don't climb the mountain. A man, if he stayed on themountain, would be safe. There's food there. Roots and berries andfruits and even small animals one could kill. A man might go hungry fora while, but soon he'd find the things to eat. 

"But he'd be alone. No one ever goes near that mountain. I am the onlyman who ever set foot on it. Perhaps no one ever will again. At nightyou hear the screaming and the crying of the things down in swamp, butyou mustn't pay any attention to them. "

 * * * * *

Scorio's eyes widened, staring. "You won't send me _there_!"

"You'll find my campfires, " Greg told him, "if the rain hasn't washedthem away. It rains a lot. So much and so drearily that you'll want toleave that mountain and walk down into the swamp, of your own free will, and let the monsters finish you. "

Scorio sat dully. He did not move. Horror glazed his eyes. 

Greg signed to Russ. Russ, pipe clenched between his teeth, reached outhis fingers for the keys. The engines droned. 

Manning walked slowly to a television control, sat down in the chairand flipped over a lever. A face stared out of the screen. It wasstrangely filled with anger and a sort of half-fear. 

"You watched it, didn't you, Stutsman?" Greg asked. 

Stutsman nodded. "I watched. You can't get away with it, Manning. Youcan't take the law into your own hands that way. "

"You and Chambers have been taking the law into your hands for years, "said Greg. "All I did tonight was clear the Earth of some vermin. Everyone of those men was guilty of murder ... And worse. "

"What did you gain by it?" asked Stutsman. 

Greg gave a bitter laugh. "I convinced you, Stutsman, " he said, "that itisn't so easy to kill me. I think it'll be some time before you tryagain. Better luck next time. "

He flipped the switch and turned about in the chair. 

Russ jerked his thumb at the skylight. "Might as well finish the shipnow. "

Greg nodded. 

An instant later there was a fierce, intolerably blue-white light thatlit the mountains for many miles. For just an instant it flared, exploding into millions of brilliant, harmless sparks that died intodarkness before they touched the ground. The gangster ship was destroyedbeyond all tracing, disintegrated. The metal and quartz of which it wasmade were simply gone. 

Russ brought his glance back from the skylight, looked at his friend. "Stutsman will do everything he can to wipe us out. By tomorrow morningthe Interplanetary machine will be rolling. With only one purpose--tocrush us. "

"That's right, " Greg agreed, "but we're ready for them now. Our shipleft the Belgium factories several hours ago. The _Comet_ towed it outin space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours the _Comet_ will behere to pick us up. "

"War in space, " said Russ, musingly. "That's what it will be. "

"Chambers and his gang won't fight according to any rules. There'll beno holds barred, no more feeble attempts like the one they triedtonight. From now on we need a base that simply can't be located. "

"The ship, " said Russ. 

_CHAPTER FOURTEEN_

The _Invincible_ hung in space, an empty, airless hull, the largestthing afloat. 

Chartered freighters, leaving their ports from distant parts of theEarth, had converged upon her hours before, had unloaded cratedapparatus, storing it in the yawning hull. Then they had departed. 

Now the sturdy little space-yacht, _Comet_, was towing the great shipout into space, 500, 000 miles beyond the orbit of the Moon. Slowly thehull was being taken farther and farther away from possible discovery. 

Work on the installation of the apparatus had started almost as soon asthe _Comet_ had first tugged at the ponderous mass. Leaving only askeleton crew in charge of the _Comet_, the rest of the selected crewhad begun the assembly of the mighty machines which would transform the_Invincible_ into a thing of unimaginable power and speed. 

The doors were closed and sealed and the air, already stored in theship's tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the _Comet's_towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but notenough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. Anelectric cable was run back from the little yacht and the _Invincible_took her first breath of life. 

The work advanced rapidly, for every man was more than a mere engineeror spacebuster. They were a selected crew, the men who had helped tomake the name of Gregory Manning famous throughout the Solar System. 

First the engines were installed, then the two groups of five massivepower plants and the single smaller engine as an auxiliary supply plantfor the light, heat, air. 

The accumulators of the _Comet_ were drained in a single tremendoussurge and the auxiliary generator started. It in turn awoke to life theother power plants, to leave them sleeping, idling, but ready forinstant use to develop power such as man never before had dreamed ofholding and molding to his will. 

Then, with the gigantic tools these engines supplied ... Tools of pureforce and strange space fields ... The work was rapidly completed. Thepower boards were set in place, welded in position by a sudden furiousblast of white hot metal and as equally sudden freezing, to be followedby careful heating and recooling till the beryl-steel reached itsmaximum strength. Over the hull swarmed spacesuited men, using thatstrange new power, heat-treating the stubborn metal in a manner neverbefore possible. 

The generators were charging the atoms of the ship's beryl-steel hidewith the same hazy force that had trapped and held the gangster ship ina mighty vise. Thus charged, no material thing could penetrate them. Thegreatest meteor would be crushed to drifting dust without so much asscarring that wall of mighty force ... Meteors traveling with a speedand penetrative power that no gun-hurled projectile could ever hope toattain. 

Riding under her own power, driven by the concentration of gravitationallines, impregnable to all known forces, containing within her hull thesecrets of many strange devices, the _Invincible_ wheeled in space. 

 * * * * *

Russell Page lounged in a chair before the control manual of thetele-transport machine. He puffed placidly at his pipe and looked outthrough the great sweep of the vision panel. Out there was the black ofspace and the glint of stars, the soft glow of distant Jupiter. 

Greg Manning was hunched over the navigation controls, sharp eyeswatching the panorama of space. 

Russ looked at him and grinned. On Greg's face there was a smile, butabout his eyes were lines of alert watchfulness and thought. GregManning was in his proper role at the controls of a ship such as the_Invincible_, a man who never stepped backward from danger, whose spirithungered for the vast stretches of void that lay between the worlds. 

Russ leaned back, blowing smoke toward the high-arched control roomceiling. 

They had burned their bridges behind them. The laboratory back in themountains was destroyed. Locked against any possible attack by a sphereof force until the tele-transport had lifted from it certain items ofequipment, it had been melted into a mass of molten metal that formed apool upon the mountain top, that ran in gushing, fiery ribbons down themountain side, flowing in gleaming curtains over precipices. It wouldhave been easier to have merely disintegrated in one bursting flash ofenergy, but that would have torn apart the entire mountain range, overwhelmed and toppled cities hundreds of miles away, dealt Earth astaggering blow. 

A skeleton crew had taken the _Comet_ back to Earth and landed it onGreg's estate. Once again the tele-transport had reached out, wrappedits fingers around the men who stepped from the little ship. In lessthan the flash of a strobe light, they had been snatched back to the_Invincible_, through a million miles of space, through the very wallsof the ship itself. One second they had been on Earth, the next secondthey were in the control room of the _Invincible_, grinning, salutingGreg Manning, trotting back to their quarters in the engine rooms. 

 * * * * *

Russ stared out at space, puffed at his pipe, considering. 

A thousand years ago men had held what they called tournaments. Armoredknights rode out into the jousting grounds and broke their lances toprove which was the better man. Today there was to be anothertournament. This ship was to be their charger, and the gauntlet had beenflung to Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power. And all of space wasto be the jousting grounds. 

This was war. War without trappings, without fanfare, but bitter warupon which depended the future of the Solar System. A war to break thegrip of steel that Interplanetary accumulators had gained upon theplanets, to shatter the grim dream of empire held by one man, a war forthe right to give to the people of the worlds a source of power thatwould forever unshackle them. 

Back in those days, a thousand years ago, men had built a system ofgovernment that historians called the feudal system. By this systemcertain men were called lords or barons and other titles. They held thepower of life and death over the men "under" them. 

This was what Spencer Chambers was trying to do with the SolarSystem ... What he would do if someone did not stop him. 

 * * * * *

Russ bit viciously on his pipe-stem. 

The Earth, the Solar System, never could revert to that ancient way ofgovernment. The proud people spawned on the Earth, swarming outward tothe other planets, must never have to bow their heads as minions to anoverlord. 

The thrum of power was beating in his brain, the droning, humming powerfrom the engine rooms that would blast, once and forever, the lastthreat of dictatorship upon any world. The power that would free apeople, that would help them on and up and outward to the great destinythat was theirs. 

And this had come because, wondering, groping, curiously, he had soughtto heat a slender thread of imperm wire within Force Field 348, becauseanother man had listened and had made available his fortune to continuethe experiments. Blind luck and human curiosity ... Perhaps even themadness of a human dream ... And from those things had come this greatship, this mighty power, these many bulking pieces of equipment thatwould perform wonders never guessed at less than a year ago. 

Greg Manning swiveled his chair. "Well, Russ, we're ready to begin. Let's get Wrail first. "

Russ nodded silently, his mind still half full of fleeting thought. Absent-mindedly he knocked out his pipe and pocketed it, swung around tothe manual of the televisor. His fingers reached out and tapped apattern. 

Callisto appeared within the screen, leaped upward at them. Then thesurface of the frozen little world seemed to rotate swiftly and a domeappeared. 

The televisor dived through the dome, sped through the city, straightfor a penthouse apartment. 

Ben Wrail sat slumped in a chair. A newspaper was crumpled at his feet. In his lap lay a mangled dead cigar. 

"Greg!" yelled Russ. "Greg, there's something wrong!"

Greg leaped forward, stared at the screen. Russ heard his smothered cryof rage. 

In Wrail's forehead was a tiny, neatly drilled hole from which a singledrop of blood oozed. 

"Murdered!" exclaimed Russ. 

"Yes, murdered, " said Greg, and there was a sudden calmness in hisvoice. 

Russ grasped the televisor control. Ranthoor's streets ran beneath them, curiously silent and deserted. Here and there lay bodies. A few shopwindows were smashed. But the only living that stirred was a dog thatslunk across the street and into the shadows of an alley. 

Swiftly the televisor swung along the streets. Straight into the screenclanked a marching detail of government police, herding before them ahalf dozen prisoners. The men had their hands bound behind their backs, but they walked with heads held high. 

"Revolution, " gasped Russ. 

"Not a revolution. A purge. Stutsman is clearing the city of all whomight be dangerous to him. This will be happening on every other planetwhere Chambers holds control. "

Perspiration ran down Russ's forehead and dripped into his eyes as hemanipulated the controls. 

"Stutsman is striking first, " said Greg, calmly ... Far too calmly. "He's consolidating his position, possibly on the pretense that plotshave been discovered. "

A few buildings were bombed. A line of bodies were crumpled at the footof a steel wall, marking the spot where men had been lined up and moweddown with one sweeping blast from a heater. 

Russ turned the television controls. "Let's see about Venus and Mars. "

The scenes in Ranthoor were duplicated in Sandebar on Mars, in NewChicago, the capital of Venus. Everywhere Stutsman had struck ... Everywhere the purge was wiping out in blood every person who mightrevolt against the Chambers-dictated governments. Throughout the SolarSystem violence was on the march, iron-shod boots trampling the rightsof free men to tighten the grip of Interplanetary. 

 * * * * *

In the control room of the _Invincible_ the two men stared at oneanother. 

"There's one man we need, " said Greg. "One man, if he's still alive, andI think he is. "

"Who is that?" asked Russ. 

"John Moore Mallory, " said Greg. 

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. He was imprisoned in Ranthoor, but Stutsman transferredhim some place else. Possibly to one of the prison fleet. "

"If we had the records of the Callisto prison, " suggested Russ, "wecould find out. "

"If we had the records ... "

"We'll get them!" Russ said. 

He swung back to the keyboard again. 

A moment later the administration offices of the prison were on thescreen. 

The two men searched the vision plate. 

"The records are most likely in that vault, " said Russ. "And the vaultis locked. "

"Don't worry about the lock, " snapped Greg. "Just bring the whole damnthing here--vault and records and all. "

Russ nodded grimly. His thumb tripped the tele-transport control andfrom the engine rooms came a drone of power. In Ranthoor Prison, greatbands of force wrapped themselves around the vault, clutching it, enfolding it within a sphere of power. Back in the _Invincible_ theengines screamed and the vault was ripped out of the solid steel wall aseasily as a man might rip a button from his shirt. 

_CHAPTER FIFTEEN_

John Moore Mallory sat on the single metal chair within his cell andpressed his face against the tiny vision port. For hours he had satthere, staring out into the blackness of space. 

There was bitterness in John Moore Mallory's soul, a terrible and futilebitterness. So long as he had remained within the Ranthoor prison, therehad always been a chance of escape. But now, aboard the penal ship, there was no hope. Nothing but the taunting reaches of space, themocking pinpoints of the stars, the hooting laughter of the engines. 

Sometimes he had thought he would go mad. The everlasting routine, themeaningless march of hours. The work period, the sleep period ... Thework period, the sleep period ... Endless monotony, an existence withouta purpose. Men buried alive in space. 

"John Moore Mallory, " said a voice. 

Mallory heard, but he did not stir. An awful thought crossed his mind. Now he was hearing voices calling his name!

"John Mallory, " said the voice again. 

Mallory slowly turned about and as he turned he started from his chair. 

A man stood in the cell! A man he had never seen before, who had comesilently, for there had been no screech of opening door. 

"You are John Moore Mallory, aren't you?" asked the man. 

"Yes, I am Mallory. Who are you?"

"Gregory Manning. "

"Gregory Manning, " said Mallory wonderingly. "I've heard of you. You'rethe man who rescued the Pluto Expedition. But why are you here? How didyou get in?"

"I came to take you away with me, " said Greg. "Back to Callisto. Back toany place you want to go. "

Mallory flattened himself against the partition, his face white withdisbelief. "But I'm in a prison ship. I'm not free to go and come as Iplease. "

Greg chuckled. "You are free to go and come as you please from now on, "he said. "Even prison ships can't hold you. "

"You're mad, " whispered Mallory. "Either you're mad or I am. You're adream. I'll wake up and find you gone. "

Manning stood in silence, looking at the man. Mallory bore the marks ofprison on him. His eyes were haunted and his rugged face was pinched andthin. 

"Listen closely, Mallory, " said Greg softly. "You aren't going mad andI'm not mad. You aren't seeing things. You aren't hearing things. You'reactually talking to me. "

 * * * * *

There was no change in the other's face. 

"Mallory, " Greg went on, "I have what you've always needed--means ofgenerating almost unlimited energy at almost no cost, the secret of theenergy of matter. A secret that will smash Interplanetary, that willfree the Solar System from Spencer Chambers. But I can't make thatsecret available to the people until Chambers is crushed, until I'm surethat he can't take it from me. And to do that I need your help. "

Mallory's face lost its expression of bewilderment, suddenly lightedwith realization. But his voice was harsh and bitter. 

"You came too late. I can't help you. Remember, I'm in a prison shipfrom which no one can escape. You have to do what you can ... You mustdo what you can. But I can't be with you. "

Manning strode forward. "You don't get the idea at all. I said I'd getyou out of here and I'm going to. I could pick up this ship and put itwherever I wanted. But I don't want to. I just want you. "

Mallory stared at him. 

"Just don't be startled, " said Greg. "Something will happen soon. Getready for it. "

Feet drummed on the metal corridor outside. 

"Hey, you, pipe down!" yelled the voice of the guard. "You know there'sno talking allowed now. Go to sleep. "

"That's the guard, " Mallory whispered fiercely. "They'll stop us. "

Greg grinned viciously. "No, they won't. "

 * * * * *

The guard came into view through the grilled door. 

"So it's you, Mallory ... " he began, stopping in amazement. "Hey, you!"he shouted at Greg. "Who are you? How did you get in that cell?"

Greg flipped a hand in greeting. "Pleasant evening, isn't it?"

The guard grabbed for the door, but he did not reach the bars. Someforce stopped him six inches away. It could not be seen, could not befelt, but his straining against it accomplished nothing. 

"Mallory and I are leaving, " Greg told the guard. "We don't like ithere. Too stuffy. "

The guard lifted a whistle and blew a blast. Feet pounded outside. Aprisoner yelled from one of the cells. Another catcalled. Instantly theship was in an uproar. The convicts took up the yammering, shaking thebars on their doors. 

"Let's get started, " Greg said to Mallory. "Hold tight. "

Blackness engulfed Mallory. He felt a peculiar twisting wrench. And thenhe was standing in the control room of a ship and Gregory Manning andanother man were smiling at him. White light poured down from a clusterof globes. Somewhere in the ship engines purred with the hum of power. The air was fresh and pure, making him realize how foul and stale theair of the prison ship had been. 

Greg held out his hand. "Welcome to our ship. "

Mallory gripped his hand, blinking in the light. "Where am I?"

"You are on the _Invincible_, five million miles off Callisto. "

"But were you here all the time?" asked Mallory. "Were you in my cellback there or weren't you?"

"I was really in your cell, " Greg assured him. "I could have just thrownmy image there, but I went there personally to get you. Russ Page, here, sent me out. When I gave him the signal, he brought both of us back. "

"I'm glad you're with us, " Russ said. "Perhaps you'd like a cup ofcoffee, something to eat. "

Mallory stammered. "Why, I really would. " He laughed. "Rations weren'ttoo good in the prison ship. "

They sat down while Russ rang the galley for coffee and sandwiches. 

Crisply, Greg informed Mallory of the situation. 

"We want to start manufacturing these engines as soon as possible, " heexplained, "but I haven't even dared to patent them. Chambers wouldsimply buy out the officials if I tried it on Earth, delay the patentfor a few days and then send through papers copied from ours. You knowwhat he'd do with it if he got the patent rights. He'd scrap it and theold accumulator business would go on as always. If I tried it on anyother world, with any other government, he'd see that laws were passedto block us. He'd probably instruct the courts to rule against themanufacture of the engines on the grounds that they were dangerous. "

Mallory's face was grave. "There's only one answer, " he said. "With thesituation on the worlds, with this purge you told me about, there's onlyone thing to do. We have to act at once. Every minute we wait givesStutsman just that much longer to tighten his hold. "

"And that answer?" asked Russ. 

"Revolution, " said Mallory. "Simultaneous revolution in the Jovianconfederacy, on Mars and Venus. Once free, the planets will stay freewith your material energy engines. Spencer Chambers and his idea ofSolar System domination will be too late. "

 * * * * *

Greg's forehead was wrinkled in thought, his facial muscles tensed. 

"First thing to do, " he said, "is to contact all the men we can find ... Men we can rely on to help us carry out our plans. We'll need moretelevisor machines, more teleport machines, some for use on Mars andVenus, others for the Jovian moons. We will have to bring the men hereto learn to operate them. It'll take a few days. We'll get some men towork on new machines right away. "

He started to rise from his chair, but at that moment the coffee andsandwiches arrived. 

Greg grinned. "We may as well eat first. "

Mallory looked grateful and tried to keep from wolfing the food. Theothers pretended not to notice. 

 * * * * *

Grim hours followed, an unrelenting search over two planets and fourmoons for men whom Mallory considered loyal to his cause--men willing torisk their lives to throw off the yoke of Interplanetary. 

They were hard to find. Many of them were dead, victims of the purge. The others were in hiding and word of them was difficult to get. 

But slowly, one by one, they were ferreted out, the plan explained tothem, and then, by means of the tele-transport, they were brought to the_Invincible_. 

Hour after hour men worked, stripped to their waists, in the glaringinferno of terrible force fields, fashioning new television units. Asfast as the sets were constructed, they were placed in operation. 

The work went faster than could be expected, yet it was maddeninglyslow. 

For with the passing of each hour, Stutsman clamped tighter his irongrip on the planets. Concentration camps were filled to overflowing. Buildings were bombed and burned. Murders and executions were becomingtoo common to be news. 

Then suddenly there was a new development. 

"Greg, Craven has found something!" Russ cried. "I can't get him!"

Supervising the installation of a new televisor set, Greg spun around. "What's that?"

"Craven! I can't reach him. He's blocking me out!"

Greg helped, but the apparatus was unable to enter the Interplanetarybuilding in New York. Certain other portions of the city adjacent to thebuilding also were blanketed out. In all the Solar System, theInterplanetary building was the only place they could not enter, exceptthe Sun itself. 

Craven had developed a field from which their field shied off. Thetelevisor seemed to roll off it like a drop of mercury. That definitelyended all spying on Craven and Chambers. 

Russ mopped his brow, sucked at his dead pipe. 

"Light penetrates it, " he said. "Matter penetrates it, electricity, allordinary forces. But this field won't. It's ... Well, whatever Cravenhas is similarly dissimilar. The same thing of opposite nature. Itrepels our field, but doesn't affect anything else. That means he hasanalyzed our fields. We have Wilson to thank for this. "

Greg nodded gravely. "There's just one thing to be thankful for, " hedeclared. "He probably isn't any nearer our energy than he was before. But now we can't watch him. And that field of his shows that he hastremendous power of some sort. "

"We can't watch him, but we can follow him, " corrected Russ. "He can'tshake us. None of them can. The mechanical shadow will take care ofthat. I have one for Craven with a bit of 'bait' off his spectacles andhe'll keep those spectacles, never fear. He's blind as a bat withoutthem. And we can track Chambers with his ring. "

"That's right, " agreed Greg, "but we've got to speed up. Craven isgetting under way now. If he does this, he can do something else. Something that will really hurt us. The man's clever ... Too damnclever. "

_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_

A miracle came to pass in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had beenabandoned suddenly appeared within the city's streets. But he appearedto be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of aman. He was pale, like a wraith from out of space, and one could seestraight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms andtricks. 

In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread ... The spiritof John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulkedfour times the height of a normal man and there was that singularghostliness about him. From where he had come, or how, or why, no oneseemed to know. 

But when he reached the steps of the federation's administrationbuilding and walked straight through a line of troopers that suddenlymassed to bar his way, and when he turned on those steps and spoke tothe people who had gathered, there was none to doubt that at last a signhad come. The sign that now, if ever, was the time to avenge the purge. Now the time to take vengeance for the blood that flowed in gutters, forthe throaty chortling of the flame guns that had snuffed out livesagainst a broad steel wall. 

Standing on the steps, shadowy but plainly visible, John Moore Mallorytalked to the people in the square below, and his voice was the voicethey remembered. They saw him toss his black mane of hair, they saw hisclenched fist raised in terrible anger, they heard the boom of the wordshe spoke. 

Like a shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberatingfrom the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every cornerof the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured outa mass of humanity that surrounded the capitol and blackened the squareand the converging streets with a mob that shrieked its hatred, bellowedits anger. 

"Power!" thundered the mighty shadow on the steps. "Power to burn! Powerto give away. Power to heat the dome, to work your mines, to drive yourspaceships!"

"Power!" answered the voice of the crowd. "Power!" It sounded like abattle cry. 

"No more accumulators, " roared the towering image. "Never again need yourely on Spencer Chambers for your power. Callisto is yours. Ranthoor isyours. "

The black crowd surged forward, reached the steps and started to climb, wild cheers in their throat, the madness of victory in their eyes. Upthe steps came men with nothing but bare hands, screaming women, jeeringchildren. 

Officers snapped orders at the troops that lined the steps, but thetroopers, staring into the awful, raging maw of that oncoming crowd, dropped their guns and fled, back into the capitol building, with themob behind them, shrilling blood lust and long-awaited vengeance. 

 * * * * *

Out of the red and yellow wilderness of the deserts, a man came toSandebar on Mars. He had long been thought dead. The minions of thegovernment had announced that he was dead. But he had been in hiding forsix years. 

His beard was long and gray, his eyes were curtained by hardship, hiswhite hair hung about his shoulders and he was clothed in the tatteredleather trappings of the spaceways. 

But men remembered him. 

Tom Brown had lead the last revolt against the Martian government, anill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when thetroopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets withwashing waves of flame. 

When he climbed to the base of a statue in Techor Park to address thecrowd that gathered, the police shouted for him to come down and hedisregarded them. They climbed the statue to reach him and their handswent through him. 

Tom Brown stood before the people, in plain view, and spoke, but hewasn't there!

Other things happened in Sandebar that day. A voice spoke out of thinair, a voice that told the people the reign of Interplanetary was over. It told of a mighty new source of power. Power that would cost almostnothing. Power that would make the accumulators unnecessary ... Wouldmake them out of date. A voice that said the people need no longersubmit to the yoke of Spencer Chambers' government in order to obtainthe power they needed. 

There was no one there ... No one visible at all. And yet that voicewent on and on. A great crowd gathered, listening, cheering. The policetried to break it up and failed. The troops were ordered out and thepeople fought them until the voice told them to disband peaceably and goto their homes. 

Throughout Mars it was the same. 

In a dozen places in Sandebar the voice spoke. It spoke in a dozenplaces, out of empty air, in Malacon and Alexon and Adebron. 

Tom Brown, vanishing into the air after his speech was done, reappeareda few minutes later in Adebron and there the police, warned of what hadhappened in Sandebar, opened fire upon him when he stood on a park benchto address the people. But the flames passed through and did not touchhim. Tom Brown, his long white beard covering his chest, his mad eyesflashing, stood in the fiery blast that bellowed from the muzzles of theflame rifles and calmly talked. 

 * * * * *

The chief of police at New Chicago, Venus, called the policecommissioner. "There's a guy out here in the park, just across thestreet. He's preaching treason. He's telling the people to overthrow thegovernment. "

In the ground glass the police commissioner's face grew purple. 

"Arrest him, " he ordered the chief. "Clap him in the jug. Do you have tocall me up every time one of those fiery-eyed boys climbs a soap box?Run him in. "

"I can't, " said the chief. 

The police commissioner seemed ready to explode. "You can't? Why thehell not?"

"Well, you know that hill in the center of the park? Memorial Hill?"

"What has a hill got to do with it?" the commissioner roared. 

"He's sitting on top of that hill. He's a thousand feet tall. His headis way up in the sky and his voice is like thunder. How can you arrestanybody like that?"

 * * * * *

Everywhere in the System, revolt was flaming. New marching songs rolledout between the worlds, wild marching songs that had the note of angerin them. Weapons were brought out of hiding and polished. New standardswere raised in an ever-rising tide against oppression. 

Freedom was on the march again. The right of a man to rule himself theway he chose to rule. A new declaration of independence. A Solar MagnaCarta. 

There were new leaders, led by the old leaders. Led by spirits thatmarched across the sky. Led by voices that spoke out of the air. Led bysigns and symbols and a new-born courage and a great and a deepconviction that right in the end would triumph. 

 * * * * *

Spencer Chambers glared at Ludwig Stutsman. "This is one time you wenttoo far. "

"If you'd given me a free hand before, this wouldn't have beennecessary, " Stutsman said. "But you were soft. You made me go easy whenI should have ground them down. You left the way open for all sorts ofplots and schemes and leaders to develop. "

The two men faced one another, one the smooth, tawny lion, the other thesnarling wolf. 

"You've built up hatred, Stutsman, " Chambers said. "You are the mosthated man in the Solar System. And because of you, they hate me. Thatwasn't my idea. I needed you because I needed an iron fist, but I neededit to use judiciously. And you have been ruthless. You've used forcewhen conciliation was necessary. "

Stutsman sneered openly. "Still that old dream of a benevolentdictatorship. Still figuring yourself a little bronze god to be set upin every household. A dictatorship can't be run that way. You have tolet them know you're boss. "

Chambers was calm again. "Argument won't do us any good now. The damageis done. Revolt is flaming through all the worlds. We have to dosomething. "

He looked at Craven, who was slouched in a chair beside the desk acrosswhich he and Stutsman faced each other. 

"Can you help us, doctor?" he asked. 

Craven shrugged. "Perhaps, " he said acidly. "If I could only be left tomy work undisturbed, instead of being dragged into these stupidconferences, I might be able to do something. "

"You already have, haven't you?" asked Chambers. 

"Very little. I've been able to blank out the televisor that Manning andPage are using, but that is all. "

"Do you have any idea where Manning and Page are?"

"How could I know?" Craven asked. "Somewhere in space. "

"They're at the bottom of this, " snarled Stutsman. "Their damned tricksand propaganda. "

"We know they're at the bottom of it, " said Craven. "That's no news tous. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have this trouble now, despiteyour bungling. But that doesn't help us any. With this new discovery ofmine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can'tspy on us any more. But that's as far as I've got. "

"They televised the secret meeting of the emergency council when it metin Satellite City on Ganymede the other day, " said Chambers. "The wholeJovian confederacy watched and listened to that meeting, heard oursecret war plans, for fully ten minutes before the trick was discovered. Couldn't we use your shield to prevent such a situation again?"

"Better still, " suggested Stutsman, "let's shield the whole satellite. Without Manning's ghostly leaders, this revolt would collapse of its ownweight. "

Craven shook his head. "It takes fifty tons of accumulators to build upthat field, and a ton of fuel a day to maintain it. Just for thisbuilding alone. It would be impossible to shield a whole planet, anentire moon. "

 * * * * *

"Any progress on your collector field?" asked Chambers. 

"Some, " Craven admitted. "I'll know in a day or two. "

"That would give us something with which to fight Manning and Page, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, " agreed Craven. "It would be something to fight them with. If Ican develop that collector field, we would be able to utilize everyradiation in space, from the heat wave down through the cosmics. Withinthe Solar System, our power would be absolutely limitless. Youraccumulators depend for their power storage upon just one radiation ... Heat. But with this idea I have you'd use all types of radiations. "

"You say you could even put the cosmics to work?" asked Chambers. 

Craven nodded. "If I can do anything at all with the field, I can. "

"How?" demanded Stutsman. 

"By breaking them up, you fool. Smash the short, high-powered waves intoa lot of longer, lower-powered waves. " Craven swung back to faceChambers. "But don't count on it, " he warned. "I haven't done it yet. "

"You have to do it, " Chambers insisted. 

Craven rose from his chair, his blue eyes blazing angrily behind theheavy lenses. "How often must I tell you that you cannot hurryscientific investigation? You have to try and try ... Follow one tinyclue to another tiny clue. You have to be patient. You have to hope. Butyou cannot force the work. "

He strode from the room, slammed the door behind him. 

Chambers turned slowly in his chair to face Stutsman. His gray eyesbored into the wolfish face. 

"And now, " he suggested, "suppose you tell me just why you did it. "

Stutsman's lips curled. "I suppose you would rather I had allowed thosetroublemakers to go ahead, consolidate their plans. There was only onething to do--root them out, liquidate them. I did it. "

"You chose a poor time, " said Chambers softly. "You would have to dosomething like this, just at the time when Manning is lurking around theSolar System somewhere, carrying enough power to wipe us off the face ofthe Earth if he wanted to. "

"That's why I did it, " protested Stutsman. "I knew Manning was around. Iwas afraid he'd start something, so I beat him to it. I thought it wouldthrow a scare into the people, make them afraid to follow Manning whenhe acted. "

 * * * * *

"You have a low opinion of the human race, don't you?" Chambers said. "You think you can beat them into a mire of helplessness and fear. "

Chambers rose from his chair, pounded his desk for emphasis. 

"But you can't do it, Stutsman. Men have tried it before you, from thevery dawn of history. You can destroy their homes and kill theirchildren. You can burn them at the stake or in the electric chair, hangthem or space-walk them or herd them into gas chambers. You can drivethem like cattle into concentration camps, you can keep the tortureracks bloody, but you can't break them. 

"Because the people always survive. Their courage is greater than thecourage of any one man or group of men. They always reach the man whohas oppressed them, they always tear him down from the place he sits, and they do not deal gently with him when they do. In the end thepeople always win. "

Chambers reached across the desk and caught Stutsman by the slack of theshirt. A twist of his hand tightened the fabric around Stutsman's neck. The financier thrust his face close to the wolfish scowl. "That is whatis going to happen to you and me. We'll go down in history as just acouple of damn fools who tried to rule and couldn't make the grade. Thanks to you and your damned stupidity. You and your blood purges!"

Patches of anger burned on Stutsman's cheeks. His eyes glittered and hislips were white. But his whisper was bitter mockery. "Maybe we shouldhave coddled and humored them. Made them just so awful happy that bigbad old Interplanetary had them. So they could have set up little bronzeimages of you in their homes. So you could have been sort of a solargod!"

"I still think it would have been the better way. " Chambers flungStutsman from him with a straight-armed push. The man reeled andstaggered across the carpeted floor. "Get out of my sight!"

Stutsman straightened his shirt, turned and left. 

Chambers slumped into his chair, his hands grasping the arms on eitherside of his great body, his eyes staring out through the window fromwhich flooded the last rays of the afternoon Sun. 

 * * * * *

Drums pounded in his brain ... The drums of rebellion out in space, ofrebellion on those other worlds ... Drums that were drowning out andshattering forever the dream that he had woven. He had wanted economicdictatorship ... Not the cold, passionless, terrible dictatorship thatStutsman typified ... But one that would bring peace and prosperity andhappiness to the Solar System. 

He closed his eyes and thought. Snatches of ambition, snatches ofhopes ... But it was useless to think, for the drums and the imaginedshouting drowned out his thoughts. 

Mankind didn't give a damn for good business administration, nor a hootfor prosperity or peace or happiness. Liberty and the right to rule, theright to go risk one's neck ... To climb a mountain or cross a desert orexplore a swamp, the right to aim one's sights at distant stars, tofling a taunting challenge into the teeth of space, to probe with clumsyfingers and force nature to lay bare her secrets ... That was whatmankind wanted. That was what those men out on Mars and Venus and inthe Jovian worlds were fighting for. Not against Spencer Chambers orLudwig Stutsman or Interplanetary Power, but for the thing that droveman on and made of him a flame that others might follow. Fighting for aheritage that was first expressed when the first man growled at theentrance to his cave and dared the world to take it from him. 

Spencer Chambers closed his eyes and rocked back and forth in thetilting office chair. 

It had been a good fight, a hard fight. He had had a lot of fun out ofit. But he was licked, after all these years. He had held the biggestdream of any man who ever lived. Alexander and Napoleon, Hitler, Stalinand those other fellows had been pikers alongside of Spencer Chambers. They had only aimed at Earthly conquest while he had reached out to grabat all the worlds. But by heaven, he'd almost made it!

A door grated open. 

"Chambers!" said a voice. 

His feet hit the floor with a thud and he sat stiff and staring at thefigure in the door. 

It was Craven and the man was excited. His glasses were slid far down onhis nose, his hair was standing on end, his tie was all awry. 

"I have it!" Craven whooped. "I have it at last!"

Hope clutched at Chambers, but he was almost afraid to speak. 

"Have what?" he whispered tensely. 

"The collector field! It was under my nose all the time, but I didn'tsee it!"

Chambers was out of his chair and striding across the room. A tumultbuzzed within his skull. 

Licked? Hell, he hadn't even started! He'd win yet. He'd teach thepeople to revolt! He'd run Manning and Page out to the end of space andpush them through!

_CHAPTER SEVENTEEN_

It was a weird revolution. There were few battles, little blood shed. There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, nopasswords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion againsttyranny. 

It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police werehelpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and thetroopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest wereshadows that flitter here and there ... Large and substantial shadows, but impossible to seize and imprison. 

Every scheme that was hatched within the government circles was knownalmost at once to the ghostly leaders who stalked the land. Policedetachments, armed with warrants for the arrests of men who hadparticipated in some action which would stamp them as active rebels, found the suspects absent when they broke down the doors. Someone hadwarned them. Troops, hurried to points where riots had broken out, arrived to find peaceful scenes, but with evidence of recent battle. Therioters had been warned, had made their getaway. 

When the rebels struck it was always at the most opportune time, whenthe government was off balance or off guard. 

In the first day of the revolt, Ranthoor fell when the maddenedpopulace, urged on by the words of a shadowy John Moore Mallory, chargedthe federation buildings. The government fled, leaving all recordsbehind, to Satellite City on Ganymede. 

In the first week three Martian cities fell, but Sandebar, the capital, still held out. On Venus, Radium City was taken by the rebels withintwenty-four hours after the first call to revolt had rung across theworlds, but New Chicago, the seat of government, still was in thegovernment's hands, facing a siege. 

Government propagandists spread the word that the material energyengines were not safe. Reports were broadcast that on at least twooccasions the engines had blown up, killing the men who operated them. 

But this propaganda failed to gain credence, for in the cities that werein the rebel hands, technicians were at work manufacturing and settingup the material engines. Demonstrations were given. The people saw them, saw what enormous power they developed. 

 * * * * *

Russ Page stared incredulously at the television screen. It seemed to beshifting back and forth. One second it held the distorted view ofSatellite City on Ganymede, and the next second the view of jumbled, icydesert somewhere outside the city. 

"Look here, Greg, " he said. "Something's wrong. "

Greg Manning turned away from the calculator where he had been workingand stared at the screen. 

"How long has it been acting that way?" he asked. 

"Just started, " said Russ. 

Greg straightened and glanced down the row of television machines. Someof them were dead, their switches closed, but on the screens of many ofthe others was the same effect as on this machine. Their operators wereworking frustratedly at the controls, trying to focus the image, bringit into sharp relief. 

"Can't seem to get a thing, sir, " said one of the men. "I was working onthe fueling station out on Io, and the screen just went haywire. "

"Mine seems to be all right, " said another man. "I've had it on Sandebarfor the last couple of hours and there's nothing wrong. "

A swift check revealed one fact. The machines, when trained on theJovian worlds, refused to function. Anywhere else in space, however, they worked perfectly. 

Russ stoked and lit his pipe, snapped off his machine and swung aroundin the operator's chair. 

"Somebody's playing hell with us out around Jupiter, " he stated calmly. 

"I've been expecting something like this, " said Greg. "I have beenafraid of this ever since Craven blanketed us out of the Interplanetarybuilding. "

 * * * * *

"He really must have something this time, " Russ agreed. "He's blanketingout the entire Jovian system. There's a space field of low intensitysurrounding all of Jupiter, enclosing all the moons. He keeps shiftingthe intensity so that, even though we can force our way through hisfield, the irregular variations make it impossible to line up anything. It works, in principle, just as effectively as if we couldn't getthrough at all. "

Greg whistled soundlessly through suddenly bared teeth. 

"That takes power, " he said, "and I'm afraid Craven has it. Power toburn. "

"The collector field?" asked Russ. 

Greg nodded. "A field that sucks in radiant energy. Free energy that hejust reaches out and grabs. And it doesn't depend on the Sun alone. Itprobably makes use of every type of radiation in all of space. "

Russ slumped in his chair, smoking, his forehead wrinkled in thought. 

"If that's what he's got, " he finally declared, "he's going to be hardto crack. He can suck in any radiant vibration form, any spacevibration. He can shift them around, break them down and build them up. He can discharge them, direct them. He's got a vibration plant that'sthe handiest little war machine that ever existed. "

Greg suddenly wheeled and walked to a wall cabinet. From it he took abox and, opening it, lifted out a tiny mechanism. 

He chuckled deep in his throat. "The mechanical shadow. The littlemachine that always tells us where Craven is--as long as he's wearinghis glasses. "

"He always wears them, " said Russ crisply. "He's blind as a bat withoutthem. "

Greg set the machine down on the table. "When we find Craven, we'll findthe contraption that's blanketing Jupiter and its moons. "

Dials spun and needles quivered. Rapidly Russ jotted down the readingson a sheet of paper. At the calculator, he tapped keys, depressed theactivator. The machine hummed and snarled and chuckled. 

Russ glanced at the result imprinted on the paper roll. 

"Craven is out near Jupiter, " he announced. "About 75, 000 miles distantfrom its surface, in a plane normal to the Sun's rays. "

"A spaceship, " suggested Greg. 

Russ nodded. "That's the only answer. "

The two men looked at one another. 

"That's something we can get hold of, " said Greg. 

He walked to the ship controls and lowered himself into the pilot'schair. A hand came out and hauled back a lever. 

The _Invincible_ moved. 

From the engine rooms came the whine of the gigantic power plant as itbuilt up and maintained the gravity concentration center suddenlycreated in front of the ship. 

Russ, standing beside Greg at the control panel, looked out into spaceand marveled. They were flashing through space, their speed building upat a breath-taking rate, yet they had no real propulsion power. Thediscovery of the gravity concentrator had outdated such a method ofdriving a spaceship. Instead, they were falling, hurtling downward intothe yawning maw of an artificial gravity field. And such a method madefor speed, terrible speed. 

Jupiter seemed to leap at them. It became a great crimson and yellowball that filled almost half the vision plate. 

 * * * * *

The _Invincible's_ speed was slacking off, slower and slower, until itbarely crawled in comparison to its former speed. 

Slowly they circled Jupiter's great girth, staring out of the visionport for a sight of Craven's ship. They were nearing the position thelittle mechanical shadow had indicated. 

"There it is, " said Russ suddenly, almost breathlessly. 

Far out in space, tiny, almost like a dust mote against the great bulkof the monster planet, rode a tiny light. Slowly the _Invincible_crawled inward. The mote of light became a gleaming silver ship, amighty ship--one that was fully as large as the _Invincible_!

"That's it all right, " said Greg. "They're lying behind a log out hereraising hell with our television apparatus. Maybe we better tickle thema little bit and see what they have. "

Rising from the control board, he went to another control panel. Russremained standing in front of the vision plate, staring down at theship out in space. 

Behind him came a shrill howl from the power plant. The _Invincible_staggered slightly. A beam of deep indigo lashed across space, a fingersuddenly jabbing at the other ship. 

Space was suddenly colored, for thousands of miles, as the beam struckCraven's ship and seemed to explode in a blast of dazzling indigo light. The ship reeled under the impact of the blow, reeled and weaved in spaceas the beam struck it and delivered to it the mighty power of thescreaming engines back in the engine room. 

"What happened?" Greg screamed above the roar. 

Russ shrugged his shoulders. "You jarred him a little. Pushed himthrough space for several hundred miles. Made him know something had hithim, but it didn't seem to do any damage. "

"That was pure cosmic I gave him! Five billion horsepower--and it juststaggered him!"

"He's got a space lens that absorbs the energy, " said Russ. "The lensconcentrates it and pours it into a receiving chamber, probably a hugephoto-cell. Nobody yet has burned out one of those things on a closedcircuit. "

Greg wrinkled his brow, perplexed. "What he must have is a special fieldof some sort that lowers the wave-length and the intensity. He's gettingnatural cosmics all the time and taking care of them. "

"That wouldn't be much of a trick, " Russ pointed out. "But when he takescare of cosmics backed by five billion horsepower ... That's somethingelse!"

Greg grinned wickedly. "I'm going to hand him a long heat radiation. Ifhis field shortens that any, he'll have radio beam and that will blowphoto-cells all to hell. "

He stabbed viciously at the keys on the board and once again the shrillhowl of the engines came from the rear of the ship. A lance of redsplashed out across space and touched the other ship. Again space waslit, this time with a crimson glow. 

 * * * * *

Russ shook his head. "Nothing doing. "

Greg sat down and looked at Russ. "Funny thing about this. They just satthere and let us throw two charges at them, took everything we gave themand never tried to hand it back. "

"Maybe they haven't anything to hand us, " Russ suggested hopefully. 

"They must have. Craven wouldn't take to space with just a purelydefensive weapon. He knew we'd find him and he'd have a fight on hishands. "

Russ found his pipe was dead. Snapping his lighter, he applied flame tothe blackened tobacco. Walking slowly to the wall cabinet, he lifted twoother boxes out, set them on the table and took from them two othermechanical shadows. He turned them on and leaned close, watching thespinning dials, the quivering needles. 

"Greg, " he whispered, "Chambers and Stutsman are there in that ship withCraven! Look, their shadows register identical with the one that spottedCraven. "

"I suspected as much, " Greg replied. "We got the whole pack cornered outhere. If we can just get rid of them, the whole war would be won in onestroke. "

Russ lifted a stricken face from the row of tiny mechanisms. "This isour big chance. We may never get it again. The next hour could decidewho is going to win. "

Greg rose from the chair and stood before the control board. Grimly hepunched a series of keys. The engines howled again. Greg twisted a dialand the howl rose into a shrill scream. 

From the _Invincible_ another beam lashed out ... Another and another. Space was speared with beam after beam hurtling from the great ship. 

Swiftly the beams went through the range of radiation, through radio andshort radio, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, X-ray, the gammasand the cosmics--a terrific flood of billions of horsepower. 

Craven's ship buckled and careened under the lashing impacts of thebombardment, but it seemed unhurt!

Greg's face was bleaker than usual as he turned from the board to lookat Russ. 

"We've used everything we have, " he said, "and he's stopped them all. Wecan't touch him. "

 * * * * *

Russ shivered. The control room suddenly seemed chilly with afrightening kind of cold. 

"He's carrying photo-cells and several thousand tons of accumulatorstacks. Not much power left in them. He could pour a billion horsepowerinto them for hours and still have room for more. "

Greg nodded wearily. "All we've been doing is feeding him. "

The engines were humming quietly now, singing the low song of power heldin leash. 

But then they screamed like a buzz saw biting into an iron-hard stick ofwhite oak. Screamed in a single, frightful agony as they threw into theprotecting wall that enclosed the _Invincible_ all the power they coulddevelop. 

The air of the ship was instantaneously charged with a hazy, bluishglow, and the sharp, stinging odor of ozone filled the ship. 

 * * * * *

Outside, an enormous burst of blue-white flame splashed and spatteredaround the _Invincible_. Living lightning played in solid, snappingsheets around the vision port and ran in trickling blazing fire acrossthe plates. 

Russ cried out and backed away, holding his arm before his eyes. It wasas if he had looked into a nova of energy exploding before his eyes. 

In the instant the scream died and the splash of terrific fire hadvanished. Only a rapidly dying glow remained. 

"What was it?" asked Russ dazedly. "What happened? Ten engines every oneof them capable of over five billion horsepower and every one of themscreaming!"

"Craven, " said Greg grimly. "He let us have everything he had. He simplydrained his accumulator stacks and threw it all into our face. But he'sdone now. That was his only shot. He'll have to build up power now andthat will take a while. But we couldn't have taken much more. "

"Stalemate, " said Russ. "We can't hurt him, he can't hurt us. "

"Not by a damn sight, " declared Greg. "I still have a trick or two inmind. "

He tried them. From the _Invincible_ a fifty-billion-horsepower bolt ofliving light and fire sprang out as all ten engines thundered with aninsane voice that racked the ship. 

Fireworks exploded in space when the bolt struck Craven's ship. Screenafter screen exploded in glittering, flaming sparks, but the ship rodethe lashing charge, finally halted the thrust of power. The beam glowedfaintly, died out. 

Perspiration streamed down Greg's face as he bent over a calculator andconstructed the formula for a magnetic field. He sent out a field ofsuch unimaginable intensity that it would have drawn any beryl-steelwithin a mile of it into a hard, compact mass. Even the _Invincible_, ahundred miles away, lurched under the strain. But Craven's ship, afterthe first wild jerk, did not move. A curious soft glow spread out fromthe ship, veered sharply and disappeared in the magnetic field. 

Greg swore softly. "He's cutting it down as fast as I try to build itup, " he explained, "and I can't move it any nearer. "

From Craven's ship lashed out another thunderbolt and once again theengines screamed in terrible unison as they poured power into the ship'striple screen. The first screen stopped all material things. The secondstopped radiations by refracting them into the fourth dimension. Thethird shield was akin to the anti-entropy field, which stopped allmatter ... And yet the ten engines bellowed like things insane as Cravenstruck with flaming bolts, utilizing the power he had absorbed from thefifty billion horsepower Greg had thrown at him. 

There was anger in Greg Manning's face ... A terrible anger. His fistsknotted and he shook them at the gleaming ship that lay far down nearJupiter. 

"I've got one trick left, " he shouted, almost as if he expected Cravento hear. "Just one trick. Damn you, see if you can stop this one!"

He set up the pattern on the board and punched the activating lever. Theten engines thrummed with power. Then the howling died away. 

Four times they screamed and four times they ebbed into a gentle hum. 

"Get on the navigation controls!" yelled Greg. "Be ready to give theship all you've got. "

Greg leaped for the control chair, grasped the acceleration lever. 

"Now, " growled Greg, "look out, Craven, we're coming at you!"

Greg, teeth gritted, slammed the acceleration over. 

Suddenly all space wrenched horribly with a nauseating, terrible thudthat seemed to strain at the very anchors of the Universe. 

_CHAPTER EIGHTEEN_

Jupiter and the Jovian worlds leaped suddenly backward, turned swiftlygreen, then blue, and faded in an instant into violet. The Sun spuncrazily through space, retreating, dimming to a tiny ruby-tinted star. 

The giant generators in the _Invincible_ hummed louder now, continuallylouder, a steel-throated roar that trembled through every plate, throughevery girder, through every bit of metal in the ship. 

The ship itself was plunging spaceward, streaking like a runaway starfor the depths of space beyond the Solar System. And behind it, caughttight, gripped and held, Craven's ship trailed at the end of a tractorfield that bound it to the space-rocketing _Invincible_. 

The acceleration compensator, functioning perfectly, had taken up theslack as the ship had plunged from a standing start into a speed thatneared the pace of light. But it had never been built to stand suchsudden, intense acceleration, and for an instant Russ and Greg seemedto be crushed by a mighty weight that struck at them. The sensationswiftly lifted as the compensator took up the load. 

 * * * * *

Greg shook his head, flinging the trickling perspiration from his eyes. 

"I hope their compensator worked as well as ours, " he said. 

"If it didn't, " declared Russ, "we're towing a shipload of dead men. "

Russ glanced at the speed dial. They were almost touching the speed oflight. "He hasn't cut down our speed yet. "

"We threw him off his balance. His drive depends largely on the mass ofsome planet as a body to take up the reaction of his ship. Jupiter isthe ideal body for that ... But he's leaving Jupiter behind. He has todo something soon or it'll be too late. "

"He's getting less energy, too, " said Russ. "We're retreating from hismain sources of energy, the Sun and Jupiter. Almost the speed of lightand that would cut down his energy intake terrifically. He has to usewhat he's got in his accumulators, and after that last blast at us, theymust be nearly drained. "

As Russ watched, the speed needle fell off slightly. Russ held hisbreath. It edged back slowly, creeping. The speed was being cut down. 

"Craven is using whatever power he has, " he said. "They're alive backthere, all right. He's trying to catch hold of Jupiter and make itsgravity work for him. "

The _Invincible_ felt the strain of the other ship now. Felt it asCraven poured power into his drive, fighting to get free of theinvisible hawser that had trapped him, fighting against being draggedinto outer space at the tail-end of a mighty craft heading spacewardwith frightening speed. 

Girders groaned in the _Invincible_, the engines moaned and throbbed. The speed needle fell back, creeping down the dial, slowly, unwillingly, resisting any drop in speed. But Craven was cutting it down. And as hecut it, he was able to absorb more energy with his collector lens. Buthe was fighting two things ... Momentum and the steadily decreasinggravitational pull of Jupiter and the Sun. The Sun's pull was dwindlingslowly, Jupiter's rapidly. 

The needle still crept downward. 

"What's his point of equality to us?" demanded Greg. "Will we make it?"

Russ shook his head. "Won't know for hours. He'll be able to slow usup ... Maybe he'll even stop us or be able to jerk free, although Idoubt that. But every minute takes him farther away from his main sourceof power, the Solar System's radiation. He could collect power anywherein space, you know, but the best place to collect it is near largeradiant bodies. "

Russ continued to crouch over the dial, begrudging every backwardflicker of the needle. 

This was the last play, the final hand. If they could drag Craven andhis ship away from the Solar System, maroon him deep in space, farremoved from any source of radiation, they would win, for they could goback and finish the work of smashing Interplanetary. 

But if Craven won--if he could halt their mad dash for space, if hecould shake free--they'd never have another chance. He would be studyingthat field they had wrapped around him, be ready for it next time, mighteven develop one like it and use it on the _Invincible_. If Craven couldwin his way back to the Sun, he would be stronger than they were, couldtop them in power, shatter all their plans, and once again the worldswould bow to Interplanetary and Spencer Chambers. 

Russ watched the meter. The speed was little more than ten miles asecond now and dropping rapidly. He sat motionless, hunched, sucking athis dead pipe, listening to the thrumming of the generators. 

 * * * * *

"If we only had a margin, " he groaned. "If we just had a few morehorsepower. Just a few. But we're wide open. Every engine is developingeverything it can!"

Greg tapped him on the shoulder, gently. Russ turned his head and lookedinto the face of his friend, a face as bleak as ever, but with a hint ofsmile in the corners of the eyes. 

"Why not let Jupiter help us?" he asked. "He could be a lot of help. "

Russ stared for a moment, uncomprehending. Then with a sob of gladnesshe reached out a hand, shoved over a lever. Mirrors of anti-entropyshifted, assumed different angles, and the _Invincible_ sheered off. They were no longer retreating directly from the Sun, but at an anglequartering off across the Solar System. 

Greg grinned. "We're falling behind Jupiter now. Letting Jupiter runaway from us as he circles his orbit, following the Sun. Adds miles persecond to our velocity of retreat, even if it doesn't show on the dial. "

The cosmic tug of war went on, grimly--two ships straining, fightingeach other, one seeking to escape, the other straining to snake thesecond ship into the maw of open, hostile space. 

The speed was down to five miles a second, then a fraction lower. Theneedle was flickering now, impossible to decide whether it was droppingor not. And in the engine rooms, ten great generators howled in theirattempt to make that needle move up the dial again. 

Russ lit his pipe, his eyes not leaving the dial. The needle wascreeping lower again. Down to three miles a second now. 

He puffed clouds of smoke and considered. Saturn fortunately was ninetydegrees around in his orbit. On the present course, only Neptuneremained between them and free space. Pluto was far away, but even if ithad been, it really wouldn't count, for it was small and had littleattraction. 

In a short while Ganymede and Callisto would be moving around on the farside of Jupiter and that might help. Everything counted so much now. 

The dial was down to two miles a second and there it hung. Hung andstayed. Russ watched it with narrowed eyes. By this time Cravencertainly would have given up much hope of help from Jupiter. If the bigplanet couldn't have helped him before, it certainly couldn't now. Inanother hour or two Earth would transit the Sun and that would cut downthe radiant energy to some degree. But in the meantime Craven wasloading his photo-cells and accumulators, was laying up a power reserve. As a last desperate resort he would use that power, in a final attemptto break away from the _Invincible_. 

Russ waited for that attempt. There was nothing that could be done aboutit. The engines were developing every watt of power that could be urgedout of them. If Craven had the power to break away, he would breakaway ... That was all there would be to it. 

An hour passed and the needle crept up a fraction of a point. Russ wasstill watching the dial, his mind foggy with concentration. 

 * * * * *

Suddenly the _Invincible_ shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as ifsomething, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. Theneedle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to halfa mile. 

Russ sat bolt upright, holding his breath, his teeth clenched with deathgrip upon the pipe-stem. 

Craven had blasted with everything he had! He had used every lasttrickle of power in the accumulators ... All the power he had beenstoring up. 

Russ leaped from the chair and raced to the periscopic mirror. Stooping, he stared into it. Far back in space, like a silver bauble, swung Craven's ship. It swung back and forth in space, like a mighty, cosmic pendulum. Breathlessly he watched. The ship was still in the gripof the space field!

"Greg, " he shouted, "we've got him!"

He raced back to the control panel, snapped a glance at the speed dial. The needle was rising rapidly now, a full mile a second. Within anotherfifteen minutes, it had climbed to a mile and a half. The _Invincible_was starting to go places!

The engines still howled, straining, shrieking, roaring their defiance. 

In an hour the needle indicated the speed of four miles a second. Twohours later it was ten and rising visibly as Jupiter fell far behind andthe Sun became little more than a glowing cinder. 

Russ swung the controls to provide side acceleration and the two shipsswung far to the rear of Neptune. They would pass that massive planet atthe safe distance of a full hundred million miles. 

"He won't even make a pass at it, " said Greg. "He knows he's licked. "

"Probably trying to store some more power, " suggested Russ. 

"Sweet chance he has to do that, " declared Greg. "Look at that needlewalk, will you? We'll hit the speed of light in a few more hours andafter that he may just as well shut off his lens. There just won't beany radiation for him to catch. "

Craven didn't make a try at Neptune. The planet was far away when theyintersected its orbit ... Furthermore, a wall of darkness had closed inabout the ships. They were going three times as fast as light and thespeed was still accelerating!

Hour after hour, day after day, the _Invincible_ and its trailingcaptive sped doggedly outward into space. Out into the absolute wastesof interstellar space, where the stars were flecks of light, like tinyeyes watching from very far away. 

 * * * * *

Russ lounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. Therewas nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn't been anything to see ordo for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines stillhammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched anempty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by anyintelligence, certainly not by man. 

Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn't seemmysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous. Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled. 

There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn't go faster thanlight. Also, men had claimed that it would be impossible to force natureto give up the secret of material energy. But here they were, speedingalong faster than light, their engines roaring with the power ofmaterial energy. 

They were plowing a new space road, staking out a new path across thedeserts of space, pioneering far beyond the 'last frontier. '

Greg's steps sounded across the room. "We've gone a long way, Russ. Maybe we better begin to slow down a bit. "

"Yes, " agreed Russ. He leaned forward and grasped the controls. "We'llslow down now, " he said. 

Sudden silence smote the ship. Their ears, accustomed for days to thethroaty roarings of the engines, rang with the torture of no sound. 

Long minutes and then new sounds began to be heard ... The soft hummingof the single engine that provided power for the interior apparatus andthe maintenance of the outer screens. 

"Soon as we slow down below the speed of light, " said Greg, "we'll throwthe televisor on Craven's ship and learn what we can about hisapparatus. No use trying it now, for we couldn't use it, because we'rein the same space condition it uses in normal operation. "

"In fact, " laughed Russ, "we can't do much of anything except move. Energies simply can't pass through this space we're in. We're marooned. "

Greg sat down in a chair, gazed solemnly at Russ. 

"Just what was our top speed?" he demanded. 

Russ grinned. "Ten thousand times the speed of light, " he said. 

Greg whistled soundlessly. "A long way from home. "

 * * * * *

Far away, the stars were tiny pinpoints, like little crystals shining bythe reflection of a light. Pinpoints of light and shimmering masses oflacy silver ... Star dust that seemed ghostly and strange, but was inreality the massing of many million mighty stars. And great empty blackspaces where there was not a single light, where the dark went on and onand did not stop. 

Greg exhaled his breath softly. "Well, we're here. "

"Wherever that might be, " amended Russ. 

There were no familiar constellations, not a single familiar star. Everysign post of the space they had known was wiped out. 

"There really aren't any brilliant stars, " said Russ. "None at all. Wemust be in a sort of hole in space, a place that's relatively empty ofany stars. "

Greg nodded soberly. "Good thing we have those mechanical shadows. Without them we'd never find our way back home. But we have several thatwill lead us back. "

Outside the vision panel, they could see Craven's ship. Freed now of thespace field, it was floating slowly, still under the grip of themomentum they had built up in their dash across space. It was so closethat they could see the lettering across its bow. 

"So they call it the _Interplanetarian_, " said Russ. 

Greg nodded. "Guess it's about time we talk to them. I'm afraid they'regetting pretty nervous. "

 * * * * *

"Do you have any idea where we are?" demanded Ludwig Stutsman. 

Craven shook his head. "No more idea than you have. Manning snaked usacross billions of miles, clear out of the Solar System intointerstellar space. Take a look at those stars and you get some idea. "

Spencer Chambers stroked his gray mustache, asked calmly: "What do youfigure our chances are of getting back?"

"That's something we'll know more about later, " said Craven. "Doesn'tlook too bright right now. I'm not worrying about that. What I'mwondering about is what Manning and Page are going to do now that theyhave us out here. "

"I thought you'd be, " said a voice that came out of clear air. 

They stared at the place from which the voice had seemed to come. Therewas a slight refraction in the air; then, swiftly, a man took shape. Itwas Manning. He stood before them, smiling. 

"Hello, Manning, " said Craven. "I figured you'd pay us a call when yougot around to it. "

"Look here, " snarled Stutsman, but he stopped when Chambers' hand fellupon his shoulder, gripped it hard. 

"Got plenty of air?" asked Greg. 

"Air? Sure. Atmosphere machines working perfectly, " Craven replied. 

"Fine, " said Greg. "How about food and water? Plenty of both?"

"Plenty, " said Craven. 

"Look here, Manning, " broke in Chambers, "where's all this questioningleading? What have you got up your sleeve?"

"Just wanted to be sure, " Greg told him. "Would hate to have you fellowsstarve on me, or go thirsty. Wouldn't want to come back and find you alldead. "

"Come back?" asked Chambers wonderingly. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Is this a joke of some sort?"

"No joke, " said Greg grimly. "I thought you might have guessed. I'mgoing to leave you here. "

"Leave us here?" roared Stutsman. 

"Keep your shirt on, " snapped Greg. "Just for a while, until we can goback to the Solar System and finish a little job we're doing. Then we'llcome back and get you. "

Craven grimaced. "I thought it would be something like that. " Hesquinted at Manning through the thick lenses. "You never miss a bet, doyou?"

Greg laughed. "I try not to. "

A little silence fell upon the three men and Manning's image. 

Greg broke it. "How about your energy collector?" he asked Craven. "Willit maintain the ship out here? You get cosmic rays. Not too much else, I'm afraid. "

Craven grinned wryly. "You're right, but we can get along. Theaccumulators are practically drained, though, and we won't be able tostore anything. Would you mind shooting us over just a little power?Enough to charge the accumulators a little for emergency use. "

He looked over his shoulder, almost apprehensively. 

"There might be an emergency out here, you know. Nobody knows anythingabout this place. "

"I'll give you a little power, " Greg agreed. 

"Thank you very much, " said Craven, half in mockery. "No doubt you thinkyourself quite smart, Manning, getting us out here. You know you have usstranded, that we can't collect more than enough power to live on. "

"That's why I did it, " Greg said, and vanished. 

_CHAPTER NINETEEN_

Craven watched the _Invincible_ gather speed and tear swiftly throughthe black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, eitherswallowed by the distance or snapping into the strange super-space thatexisted beyond the speed of light. 

He turned from the window, chuckling. 

Stutsman snarled at him: "What's so funny?"

The scientist glared at the wolfish face and without speaking, walked tothe desk and sat down. He reached for pencil and paper. 

Chambers walked over to watch him. 

"You've found something, Doctor, " he said quietly. 

Craven laughed, throatily. "Yes, I have. I've found a lot. Manningthinks he can keep us out here, but he's wrong. We'll be in the SolarSystem less than a week after he gets there. "

Chambers stifled a gasp, tried to speak calmly. "You mean this?"

"Of course I mean it. I don't waste my time with foolish jokes. "

"You have the secret of material energy?"

"Not that, " the scientist growled, "but I have something else asvaluable. I have the secret of Manning's drive: I know what it is thatenables him to exceed the speed of light ... To go ten thousand times asfast as light ... The Lord knows how much faster if he wanted to. "

"No ordinary drive would do that, " said Chambers. "It would take morethan power to make a ship go that fast. "

"You bet your life it would, and Manning is the boy who's got it. Heuses a space field. I think I can duplicate it. "

"And how long will it take you to do this work?"

"About a week, " Craven told him. "Perhaps a little longer, perhaps alittle less. But once we go, we'll go as fast as Manning does. We'll beshort on power, but I think I can do something about that, too. "

Chambers took a chair beside the desk. "But do we know the way home?"

"We can find it, " said Craven. 

"But there are no familiar constellations, " objected Chambers. "Hedragged us out so far that there isn't a single star that any one of uscan identify. "

"I said I'd find the Solar System, " Craven declared impatiently, "and Iwill. Manning started out for it, didn't he? I saw the way he went. TheSun is a type G star and all I'll do is look for a type G star. "

"But there may be more than one type G star, " objected the financier. 

"Probably are, " Craven agreed, "but there are other ways of finding theSun and identifying it. "

He volunteered no further information, went back to work with the padand pencil. Chambers rose wearily from his chair. 

"Tell me when you know what we can do, " he said. 

"Sure, " Craven grunted. 

 * * * * *

"That's the Sun, " said Craven. "That faint star between those twobrighter ones. "

"Are you sure of it?" demanded Stutsman. 

"Of course. I don't make blunders. "

"It's the only type G star in that direction, " suggested Chambers, helpfully. 

"Not that, either, " declared Craven. "In fact, there are several type Gstars. I examined them all and I know I'm right. "

"How do you know?" challenged Stutsman. 

"Spectroscopic examination. That collector field of ours gathers energyjust like a burning glass. You've seen a burning glass, haven't you?"

He stared at Stutsman, directing the question at him. 

Stutsman shuffled awkwardly, unhappily. 

"Well, " Craven went on, "I used that for a telescope. Gathered the lightfrom the suns and analyzed it. Of course it didn't act like a realtelescope, produce an image or anything like that, but it was ideal forspectroscopic work. "

They waited for him to explain. Finally, he continued:

"All of the stars I examined were just type G stars, nothing else, butthere was a difference in one of them. First, the spectroscope showedlines of reflected light passing through oxygen and hydrogen, watervapor and carbon dioxide. Pure planetary phenomena, never found on astar itself. Also it showed that a certain per cent of the light waspolarized. Now remember that I examined it for a long time and I foundout something else from the length of observation which convinces me. The light varied with a periodic irregularity. The chronometers aren'tworking exactly right out here, so I can't give you any explanation interms of hours. But I find a number of regularly recurring changes inlight intensity and character ... And that proves the presence of anumber of planetary bodies circling the star. That's the only way onecould explain the fluctuations for the G-type star is a steady type. Itdoesn't vary greatly and has no light fluctuations to speak of. Not likethe Cepheid and Mira types. "

"And that proves it's our Sun?" asked Chambers. 

Craven nodded. "Fairly definitely, I'd say. "

"How far away is it?" Stutsman wanted to know. 

 * * * * *

Craven snorted. "You would ask something like that. "

"But, " declared Stutsman, "there are ways of measuring how far a star isaway from any point, measuring both the distance and the size of thestar. "

"Okay, " agreed Craven, "you find me something solid and within reachthat's measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or soacross. Then I'll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is notin an orbit. It's not fixed in space. I have no accurate way ofmeasuring distances and angles simultaneously and accurately. Especiallyangles as small as these would be. "

Craven and Stutsman glared at one another. 

"It's a long way however you look at it, " the financier said. "If we'regoing to get there, we'll have to start as soon as possible. How sooncan we start, Doctor?"

"Very soon. I have the gravity concentration field developed andManning left me just enough power to get a good start. " He chuckled, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses and put them back on again. "Imagine him giving me that power!"

"But after we use up that power, what are we going to do?" demandedChambers. "This collector lens of yours won't furnish us enough to keepgoing. "

"You're right, " Craven conceded, "but we'll be able to get more. We'llbuild up what speed we can and then we'll shut off the drive and letmomentum carry us along. In the meantime our collector will gather powerfor us. We're advancing toward the source of radiation now, instead ofaway from it. Out here, where there's little gravity stress, fewerconflicting lines of gravitation, we'll be able to spread out the field, widen it, make it thousands of miles across. And the new photo-cellswill be a help as well. "

"How are the photo-cells coming?" asked Chambers. 

Craven grinned. "We'll have a bank of them in within a few hours, andreplace the others as fast as we can. I have practically the whole crewat work on them. Manning doesn't know it, but he found the limit ofthose photo-cells when he was heaving energy at us back in the SolarSystem. He blistered them. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but itwas. You have to hand it to Manning and Page. They are a couple of smartmen. "

To the eye there was only one slight difference between the old cellsand the new ones. The new type cell, when on no load, appeared milkywhite, whereas the old cells on no load were silvery. The granularsurface of the new units was responsible for the difference inappearance, for each minute section of the surface was covered with evenmore minute metallic hexagonal pyramids and prisms. 

"Just a little matter of variation in the alloy, " Craven explained. "Crystalization of the alloy, forming those little prisms and pyramids. As a result, you get a surface thousands of times greater than in theold type. Helps you absorb every bit of the energy. "

 * * * * *

The _Interplanetarian_ arrowed swiftly starward, driving ahead withterrific momentum while the collector lens, sweeping up the oncomingradiations, charged the great banks of accumulators. The G-type startoward which they were heading was still pale, but the two brighterstars to either side blazed like fiery jewels against the black ofspace. 

"You say we'll be only a week or so behind Manning?" asked Chambers. 

Craven looked at the financier, his eyes narrowed behind the heavylenses. He sucked in his loose lips and turned once again to the controlboard. 

"Perhaps a little longer, " he admitted finally. "We're losing time, having to go along on momentum in order to collect power. But the nearerwe get to those stars, the more power we'll have and we'll be able tomove faster. "

Chambers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, thinking. 

"Perhaps there's time yet, " he said, half to himself. "With the powerwe'll have within the Solar System, we can stop Manning and therevolution. We can gain control again. "

 * * * * *

Craven was silent, watching the dials. 

"Manning might even pass us on the way back to look for us, " Chamberswent on. "He thinks we're still out there. He wouldn't expect to find uswhere we are, light years from where we started. "

Craven shot him a curious look. "I wouldn't be too sure of that. Manninghas a string of some sort tied to us. He's got us tagged ... Good andproper. He's always been able to find us again, no matter where we were. I have a hunch he'll find us again, even way out here. "

Chambers shrugged his shoulders. "It really doesn't matter. Just so weget close enough to the Sun so we can load those accumulators and jamthe photo-cells full. With a load like that we can beat him hands down. "

The financier fell into a silence. He stared out of the vision plate, watching the stars. Still far away, but so much nearer than they hadbeen. 

His brain hummed with dreams. Old dreams, revived again, old dreams ofconquest and of empire, dreams of a power that held a solar system inits grip. 

Craven broke his chain of thoughts. "Where's our friend Stutsman? Ihaven't seen him around lately. "

Chambers chuckled good-naturedly. "He's sulking. He seems to have gottenthe idea neither one of us likes him. He's been spending most of histime back in the engine room with the crew. "

"Were you talking about me?" asked a silky voice. 

They spun around to see Stutsman standing in the doorway of the controlroom. His face was twisted into a wolfish grin and in his right hand heheld a heat gun. 

Chambers' voice was sharp, like the note of a clanging bell. "What'sthis?"

Stutsman's face twisted into an even more exaggerated grin. "This, " hesaid, "is mutiny. I'm taking over!" He laughed at them. 

"No use calling the crew. They're with me. "

"Damn you!" shouted Chambers, taking a step forward. He halted asStutsman jerked the pistol up. 

"Forget it, Chambers. You're just second man from now on. Maybe not evensecond man. You tried out this dictator business and you bungled it. Youwent soft. You're taking orders from me from now on. No questions, noback talk. You do as I say and maybe you won't get hurt. "

"You're mad, Stutsman!" cried Chambers. "You can't get away with this. "

Stutsman barked out a brittle laugh. "Who is going to stop me?"

"The people, " Chambers shouted at him. "The people will. They won'tallow this. When you get back to the Solar System ... "

Stutsman growled, stepping toward Chambers, pistol leveled. "The peoplewon't have anything to say about this. I'll rule the Solar System theway I want to. There won't be anyone else who'll have a thing to sayabout it. So you dreamed of empire, did you? You dreamed of a solardictatorship. Well, watch me! I'll build a real empire. But I'll be thehead of it ... Not you. "

Craven sat down in his chair, crossed his knees. "Just what do you planto do, Dictator Stutsman?"

 * * * * *

Stutsman fairly foamed at the mouth over the insolence of Craven'svoice. "I'll smash Manning first. I'll wipe him out. This ship will doit. You said yourself it would. You have ten times the power he has. Andthen ... "

Craven raised a hand and waved him into silence. "So you plan to reachthe Solar System, do you? You plan to meet Manning, and destroy hisship. Nice plan. "

"What's wrong with it?" challenged Stutsman. 

"Nothing, " said Craven calmly. "Absolutely nothing at all ... _exceptthat we may never reach the Solar System_!"

Stutsman seemed to sag. The wolfish snarl on his lips drooped. His eyesstared. Then with an effort he braced himself. 

"What do you mean? Why can't we?" He gestured toward the vision plate, toward the tiny yellow star between the two brighter stars. 

"That, " said Craven, "isn't our Sun. It has planets, but it isn't ourSun. "

Chambers stepped quickly to Craven, reached out a hand and hoisted himfrom the chair, shook him. 

"You must be joking! That has to be the Sun!"

Craven shrugged free of Chambers' clutch, spoke in an even voice. "Inever joke. We made a mistake, that's all. I hadn't meant to tell youyet. I had intended to get in close to the star and take on a full loadof power and then try to locate our Sun. But I'm afraid it's a hopelesstask. "

"A hopeless task?" shrieked Stutsman. "You are trying to trick me. Thisis put up between the two of you. That's the Sun over there. I know itis!"

"It isn't, " said Craven. "Manning tricked us. He started off in thewrong direction. He made us think he was going straight back to theSolar System, but he didn't. He circled and went in some otherdirection. "

The scientist eyed Stutsman calmly. Stutsman's knuckles were white withthe grip he had upon the gun. 

"We're lost, " Craven told him, looking squarely at him. "We may neverfind the Solar System!"

_CHAPTER TWENTY_

The revolution was over. Interplanetary officials and army heads hadfled to the sanctuary of Earth. Interplanetary was ended ... Endedforever, for on every world, including Earth, material energy engineswere humming. The people had power to burn, to throw away, power socheap that it was practically worthless as a commodity, but invaluableas a way to a new life, a greater life, a fuller life ... A broaderdestiny for the human race. 

Interplanetary stocks were worthless. The mighty power plants on Venusand Mercury were idle. The only remaining tangible asset were the fleetsof spaceships used less than a month before to ship the accumulators tothe outer worlds, to bring them Sunward for recharging. 

Patents protecting the rights to the material energy engines had beenobtained from every government throughout the Solar System. Newgovernments were being formed on the wreckage of the old. John MooreMallory already had been inaugurated as president of the Jovianconfederacy. The elections on Mars and Venus would be held within aweek. 

Mercury, its usefulness gone with the smashing of the accumulator trade, had been abandoned. No human foot now trod its surface. Its mighty domeswere empty. It went its way, as it had gone for billions of years, alittle burned out, worthless planet, ignored and shunned. For a briefmoment it had known the conquering tread of mankind, had played its partin the commerce of the worlds, but now it had reverted to its formerstate ... A lonely wanderer of the regions near the Sun, a pariah amongthe other planets. 

 * * * * *

Russell Page looked across the desk at Gregory Manning. He heaved a sighand dug the pipe out of his jacket pocket. 

"It's finished, Greg, " he said. 

Greg nodded solemnly, watching Russ fill the bowl and apply the match. 

Except for the small crew, they were alone in the _Invincible_. JohnMoore Mallory and the others were on their own worlds, forming their owngovernments, carrying out the dictates of the people, men who would godown in solar history. 

The _Invincible_ hung just off Callisto. Russ looked out at the mightymoon, saw the lonely stretches of its ice-bound surface, saw the silveryspot that was the dome of Ranthoor. 

"All done, " said Greg, "except for one thing. "

"Go out and get Chambers and the others, " said Russ, puffing at thepipe. 

Greg nodded. "We may as well get started. "

Russ rose slowly, went to the wall cabinet and lifted out a box, themechanical shadow with its tiny space field surrounding the fleck ofsteel that would lead them to the _Interplanetarian_. Carefully helifted the machine from its resting place and set it on the desk. Bending over it, he watched the dials. 

Suddenly he whistled. "Greg, they've moved! They aren't where we leftthem!"

Greg sprang to his side and stared at the readings. "They're movingfarther away from us ... Out into space. Where can they be going?"

Russ straightened, scowling, pulling at the pipe. "They probably foundanother G-type star, and are heading for that. They must think it is oldSol. "

"That sounds like it, " said Greg. "We spun all over the map to throwCraven off and looped several times so he'd lose all sense of direction. Naturally he would be lost. "

"But he's evidently got something, " Russ pointed out. "We left himmarooned ... Dead center, out where he didn't have too much radiationand couldn't get leverage on any single body. Yet he's moving--andgetting farther away all the time. "

"He solved our gravitation concentration screen, " said Greg. "He trickedus into giving him power to build it. "

The two men looked at one another for a long minute. 

"Well, " said Russ, "that's that. Craven and Chambers and Stutsman. Thethree villains. All lost in space. Heading for the wrong star. Hopelessly lost. Maybe they'll never find their way back. "

He stopped and relit his pipe. An aching silence fell in the room. 

"Poetic justice, " said Russ. "Hail and farewell. "

Greg rubbed his fist indecisively along the desk. "I can't do it, Russ. We took them out there. We marooned them. We have to get them back or Icouldn't sleep nights. "

Russ laughed quietly, watching the bleak face that stared at him. "Iknew that's what you'd say. "

He knocked out the pipe, crushed a fleck of burning tobacco with hisboot. Pocketing the pipe, he walked to the control panel, sat down andreached for the lever. The engines hummed louder and louder. The_Invincible_ darted spaceward. 

 * * * * *

"It's too late now, " said Chambers. "By the time we reach that planetarysystem and charge our accumulators, Manning and Page will haveeverything under control back in the Solar System. Even if we couldlocate the star that was our Sun, we wouldn't have a chance to get therein time. "

"Too bad, " Craven said, and wagged his head, looking like a solemn owl. "Too bad. Dictator Stutsman won't have a chance to strut his stuff. "

Stutsman started to say something and thought better of it. He leanedback in his chair. From his belt hung a heat pistol. 

Chambers eyed the pistol with ill-concealed disgust. "There's no pointin playing soldier. We aren't going to try to upset your mutiny. So faryour taking over the ship hasn't made any difference to us ... So whyshould we fight you?"

"It isn't going to make any difference either, " said Craven. "Becausethere are just two things that will happen to us. We're either lostforever, will never find our way back, will spend the rest of our dayswandering from star to star, or Manning will come out and take us by theear and lead us home again. "

Chambers started, leaned forward and fastened his steely eyes on Craven. "Do you really think he could find us?"

"I have no doubt of it, " Craven replied. "I don't know how he does it, but I'm convinced he can. Probably, however, he'll find that we are lostand get rid of us that way. "

"No, " said Chambers, "you're wrong there. Manning wouldn't do that. He'll come to get us. "

"I don't know why he should, " snapped Craven. 

"Because he's that sort of man, " declared Chambers. 

"What you going to do when he does get out here?" demanded Stutsman. "Fall on his neck and kiss him?"

Chambers smiled, stroked his mustache. "Why, no, " he said. "I imaginewe'll fight. We'll give him everything we've got and he'll do the same. It wouldn't seem natural if we didn't. "

"You're damned right we will, " growled Stutsman. "Because I'm runningthis show. You seem to keep forgetting that. We have power enough, whenwe get those accumulators filled, to wipe him out. And that is exactlywhat I'm going to do. "

"Fine, " said Craven, mockingly, "just fine. There's just one thing youforget. Manning is the only man who can lead us back to the SolarSystem. "

"Hell, " stormed Stutsman, "that doesn't make any difference. I'll findmy way back there some way. "

"You're afraid of Manning, " Chambers challenged. 

Stutsman's hand went down to the heat pistol's grip. His eyes glazed andhis face twisted itself into utter hatred. "I don't know why I keep onletting you live. Craven is valuable to me. I can't kill him. But youaren't. You aren't worth a damn to anyone. "

 * * * * *

Chambers matched his stare. Stutsman's hand dropped from the pistol andhe slouched to his feet, walked from the room. 

Afraid of Manning! He laughed, a hollow, gurgling laugh. Afraid ofManning!

But he was. 

Within his brain hammered a single sentence. Words he had heard Manningspeak as he watched over the television set at Manning's mockinginvitation. Words that beat into his brain and seared his reason andmade his soul shrivel and grow small. 

Manning talking to Scorio. Talking to him matter-of-factly, but grimly:"_I promise you that we'll take care of Stutsman!_"

Manning had taken Scorio and his gangsters one by one and sent them tofar corners of the Solar System. One out to the dreaded Vulcan Fleet, one to the Outpost, one to the Titan prison, and one to the hell-holeon Vesta, while Scorio had gone to a little mountain set in a Venusswamp. They hadn't a chance. They had been locked within a force shelland shunted through millions of miles of space. No trial, no hearing ... Nothing. Just terrible, unrelenting judgment. 

"_I promise you that we'll take care of Stutsman!_"

 * * * * *

"Craven's only a few billion miles ahead now, " said Gregory Manning. "With our margin of speed, we should overhaul him in a few more hours. He is still short on power, but he's remedying that rapidly. He'sgetting nearer to that sun every minute. Running in toward it as he is, he tends to sweep up outpouring radiations. That helps him collect awhole lot more than he would under ordinary circumstances. "

Russ, sitting before the controls, pipe clenched in his teeth, watchingthe dials, nodded soberly. 

"All I'm afraid of, " he said, "is that he'll get too close to that sunbefore we catch up with him. If he gets close enough so he can fillthose accumulators, he'll pack a bigger wallop than we do. It'll all bein one bolt, of course, for his power isn't continuous like ours. He hasto collect it slowly. But when he's really loaded, he can give us acesand still win. I'd hate to take everything he could pack into thoseaccumulators. "

Greg shuddered. "So would I. "

The _Invincible_ was exceeding the speed of light, was enveloped in themysterious darkness that characterized the speed. They could see nothingoutside the ship, for there was nothing to see. But the tiny mechanicalshadow, occupying a place of honor on the navigation board, kept theminformed of the position and the distance of the _Interplanetarian_. 

Greg lolled in his chair, watching Russ. 

"I don't think we need to worry about him throwing the entire load ofthe accumulators at us, " he said. "He wouldn't dare load thoseaccumulators to peak capacity. He's got to leave enough carryingcapacity in the cells to handle any jolts we send him and he knows wecan send him plenty. He has to keep that handling margin at all times, over and above what he takes in for power, because his absorption screenis also a defensive screen. And he has to use some power to keep ourtelevision apparatus out. "

Russ chuckled. "I suppose, at that, we have him plenty worried. "

The thunder of the engines filled the control room. For days now thatthunder had been in their ears. They had grown accustomed to it, nowhardly noticed it. Ten mighty engines, driving the _Invincible_ at apace no other ship had ever obtained, except, possibly, the_Interplanetarian_, although lack of power should have held Craven'sship down to a lower speed. Craven wouldn't have dared to build up theacceleration they had now attained, for he would have drained his banksand been unable to charge them again. 

"Maybe he won't fight, " said Russ. "Maybe he's figured out by this timethat he's heading for the wrong star. He may be glad to see us andfollow us back to the Solar System. "

"No chance of that. Craven and Chambers won't pass up a chance for afight. They'll give us a few wallops if only for the appearance ofthings. "

"We're crawling up all the time, " said Russ. "If we can catch him withinfour or five billion miles of the star, he won't be too tough to handle. Be getting plenty of radiations even then, but not quite as much as hewould like to have. "

"He'll have to start decelerating pretty soon, " Greg declared. "He can'trun the chance of smashing into the planetary system at the speed he'sgoing. He won't want to waste too much power using his field as a brake, because he must know by this time that we're after him and he'll wantwhat power he has to throw at us. "

Hours passed. The _Invincible_ crept nearer and nearer, suddenly seemedto leap ahead as the _Interplanetarian_ began deceleration. 

"Keep giving her all you got, " Greg urged Russ. "We've got plenty ofpower for braking. We can overhaul him and stop in a fraction of thetime he does. "

Russ nodded grimly. The distance indicator needle on the mechanicalshadow slipped off rapidly. Greg, leaping from his chair, hung over it, breathlessly. 

"I think, " he said, "we better slow down now. If we don't, we'll beinside the planetary system. "

"How far out is Craven?" asked Russ. 

"Not far enough, " Greg replied unhappily. "He can't be more than threebillion miles from the star and that star's hot. A class G, all right, but a good deal younger than old Sol. "

 * * * * *

"We'll let them know we've arrived, " grinned Greg. He sent a stabbingbeam of half a billion horsepower slashing at the _Interplanetarian_. 

The other ship staggered but steadied itself. 

"They know, " said Russ cryptically from his position in front of thevision plate. "We shook them up a bit. "

They waited. Nothing happened. 

Greg scratched his head. "Maybe you were right. Maybe they don't want tofight. "

Together they watched the _Interplanetarian_. It was still moving intoward the distant sun, as if nothing had happened. 

"We'll see, " said Greg. 

Back at the controls he threw out a gigantic tractor beam, catching theother ship in a net of forces that visibly cut its speed. 

Space suddenly vomited lashing flame that slapped back and licked andcrawled in living streamers over the surface of the _Invincible_. Theengines moaned in their valiant battle to keep up the outer screen. Thepungent odor of ozone filtered into the control room. The whole ship wasbucking and vibrating, creaking, as if it were being pulled apart. 

"So they don't want to fight, eh?" hooted Russ. 

Greg gritted his teeth. "They snapped the tractor beam. "

"They have power there, " Russ declared. 

"Too much, " said Greg. "More power than they have any right to have. "

His hand went out to the lever on the board and pulled it back. A beamsmashed out, with the engines' screaming drive behind it, billions ofhorsepower driving with unleashed ferocity at the other ship. 

Greg's hand spun a dial, while the generators roared thunderousdefiance. 

"I'm giving them the radiation scale, " said Greg. 

The _Interplanetarian_ was staggering under the terrific bombardment, but its screen was handling every ounce of the power that Greg waspouring into it. 

"Their photo-cells can't handle that, " cried Russ. "No photo-cell wouldhandle all that stuff you're shooting at them. Unless ... "

"Unless what?"

"Unless Craven has improved on them. "

"We'll have to find out. Get the televisor. "

 * * * * *

Russ leaped for the television machine. 

A moment later he lifted a haggard face. 

"I can't get through, " he said. "Craven's got our beams stopped and nowhe has our television blocked out. "

Greg nodded. "We might have expected that. When he could scramble ourtelevisors back in the Jovian worlds, he certainly ought to be able toscreen his ship against them. "

He shoved the lever clear over, slamming the extreme limit of powerinto the beam. The engines screamed like demented things, howling andshrieking. Instantly a tremendous sheet of solid flame spun a fiery webaround the _Interplanetarian_, turning it into a blazing inferno oflapping, leaping fire. 

A dozen terrific beams, billions of horsepower in each, stabbed back atthe _Invincible_ as the _Interplanetarian_ shunted the terrific energyinflux from the overcharged accumulators to the various automatic energydischarges. 

The _Invincible's_ screen flared in defense and the ten great engineswailed in utter agony. More stabbing flame shot from the_Interplanetarian_ in slow explosions. 

The temperature in the _Invincible's_ control room was rising. The ozonewas sharp enough to make their eyes water and nostrils burn. The visionglass was blanked out by the lapping flames that crawled and writhedover the screen outside the glass. 

Russ tore his collar open, wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. "Try apure magnetic!"

Greg, his face set and bleak as a wall of stone, grunted agreement. Hisfingers danced over the control manual. 

Suddenly the stars outside twisted and danced, like stars gone mad, asif they were dancing a riotous jig in space, some uproariously hoppingup and down while others were applauding the show that was beingprovided for their unblinking eyes. 

The magnetic field was tightening now, twisting the light from thosedistant stars and bending it straight again. The _Interplanetarian_reeled like a drunken thing and the great arcs of electric flame loopedmadly and plunged straight for the field's very heart. 

 * * * * *

The stars danced weirdly in far-off space again as the_Interplanetarian's_ accumulators lashed out with tremendous force tooppose the energy of the field. 

The field glowed softly and disappeared. 

"They have us stopped at every turn, " groaned Russ. "There must be someway, something we can do. " He looked at Greg. Greg grinned withouthumor, wiping his face. "There is something we can do, " said Russgrimly. "We should have thought of it long ago. "

He strode to the desk, reached out one hand and drew a calculator near. 

"You keep them busy, " he snapped. "I'll have this thing figured out injust a while. "

From the engine rooms came the roar and hum of the laboring units andthe _Invincible_ shuddered once again as Greg grimly hurled one beamafter another, at the _Interplanetarian_. 

The _Interplanetarian_ struck back, using radio frequency that flamedfiercely against the _Invincible's_ outer screen. Simultaneously the_Interplanetarian_ leaped forward with a sudden surge of accumulatedenergy, driving at the star that lay not more than three billion milesaway. 

Greg worked desperately, cursing under his breath. He pulled down theouter screen that was fighting directly against the radio frequency, energy for energy, and allowed the beam to strike squarely on the secondscreen, the inversion field that shunted the major portion of the energyimpacting against it through 90 degrees into another space. 

The engines moaned softly and settled into a quieter rumble as thenecessity of supplying the first screen was eliminated. But theyscreamed once again as Greg sent out a tractor beam that seized andheld, dragged the _Interplanetarian_ to a standstill. Craven's ship hadgained millions of miles, though, and established a tremendous advantageby fighting nearer to its source of energy. 

"Russ, " gasped Greg, "if you don't get that scheme of yours figured outpretty soon, we're done for. They've stopped everything we've got. They're nearer the sun. We won't stand a chance if they make anotherbreak like that. "

Russ glanced up to answer, but his mouth fell open in amazement and hedid not speak. A streak of terrible light was striking at them from the_Interplanetarian_, blinding white light, and along that highway oflight swarmed a horde of little green figures, like squirming greenamebas. Swarming toward the _Invincible_, stretching out hungry, pale-green pseudopods toward the inversion barrier ... _and eatingthrough it_!

Wherever they touched, holes appeared. They drifted through theinversion screen easily and began drilling into the inner screen ofanti-entropy. Eating their way into the anti-entropy ... _into a stateof matter which Russ and Greg had thought would resist all change_!

 * * * * *

For seconds both men stood transfixed, unable to believe the evidence oftheir eyes. But the ameba things came on in ever-increasing throngs, creatures that gnawed and slobbered at the anti-entropy, eating into it, flaking it away, drilling their way through it. 

When they pierced the anti-entropy, they would cut through the steelplates of the _Invincible_ like so much paper!

And more were coming. More and more!

With a grunt of amazement, Greg slammed a beam straight into the heartof the amebas. They ate the beam and vanished as mistily as before, little glowing things that ate and died. But there were always more totake their place. They overwhelmed the beam and ate back along itslength, attacked the screen again. 

They ate through walls of force and walls of metal, and a rush ofhissing air began to flame into ions in the terrific battle of energiesoutside the _Invincible_. 

Russ was crouching over the manual of the televisor board. His breathmoaned in his throat as his fingers flew. 

"I have to have power, Greg, " he said. "Lots of power. "

"Take it. " Greg replied. "I haven't been able to do anything with it. Itisn't any use to me. "

Russ's thumb reached out and tripped the activating lever. The giantengines shrieked and yowled. 

Something was happening on the television screen ... Somethingterrifying. Craven's ship seemed to retreat suddenly for millions ofmiles ... And as suddenly the _Invincible_ appeared on the screen. For asingle flashing instant, the view held; then it was gone in blankgrayness. For seconds nothing happened on the screen, unnerving secondswhile the two men held their breath. 

The screen's grayness fled and they looked into the control room of the_Interplanetarian_. Craven was hunched in a chair, intent upon a seriesof controls. Behind him and to one side stood Stutsman, a heat pistoldangled from his hand, his face twisted into a sneer of triumph. Therewas no sign of Chambers. 

"You damn fool, " Craven was snapping at Stutsman. "You're cheating usout of the only chance we ever had of getting home. "

 * * * * *

"Shut up, " snarled Stutsman, the pistol jerking in his hand. "Have yougot that apparatus on full power?"

"It's been on full power for minutes now, " said Craven. "It must beeating holes straight through Manning's ship. "

"See you keep it that way. I really don't need you any more, anyhow. I've watched and I know all the tricks. I could carry on this battlesingle-handed. "

Craven did not reply, merely hunched closer over the controls, eyeswatching flickering dials. 

Greg jogged Russ's elbow. "That must be the apparatus over there, in thecorner of the room. That triangular affair. A condenser of some sort. That stuff they're throwing at us must be super-saturated force fieldsand they'd need a space-field condenser for that. "

Russ nodded. "We'll take care of that. "

His fingers moved swiftly and a transport beam whipped out, riding thetelevision beam. Bands of force wrapped around the triangular machineand wrenched viciously. In the screen the apparatus disappeared ... Simply was gone. It now lay within the _Invincible's_ control room, jerked there by the tele-transport. 

The flood of dazzling light reaching out from the _Interplanetarian_snapped off and the little green ameba things were gone. The shrillwhistle of escaping air stopped as the eaten screens clamped down again, sealing in the atmosphere despite the holes bored through the metalplates. 

In the television screen, Craven leaped from his chair, was staring withStutsman at the place where the concentrator had stood. The machine hadbeen ripped from a welded base and jagged, bright, torn metal gleamed inthe control room lights. Snapped cables and broken busbars lay piledabout the room. 

"What happened?" Stutsman was screaming. They heard Craven laugh at theterror in the other's voice. "Manning just walked in and grabbed it awayfrom us. "

"But he couldn't! We had the screen up! He couldn't get through!"

Craven shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know how he did it, but he did. Probably he could clean out the whole place if he wanted to. "

"That's a good idea, " said Russ, judiciously. 

He stripped bank after bank of the other ship's photo-cells from theirmoorings, wrecked the force field controls, ripped cables from theengines and left the ship without means of collecting power, withoutmeans of using power, without means of movement, of offense or defense. 

 * * * * *

He leaned back in his chair and regarded the screen with deepsatisfaction. 

"That, " he decided, "should hold them for a while. "

He hauled the pipe out of his pocket and filled it from the batteredleather pouch. 

Greg regarded him with a quizzical stare. "You sent the televisor backin time. You got it inside the _Interplanetarian_ before Craven had runup his screen and then you brought it forward. "

"You guessed it, " said Russ, tamping the tobacco into the bowl. "Weshould have thought of that long ago. We have a time factor there. Infact, the whole thing revolves around time. We move the televisor, weuse the tele-transport, by giving the objects we wish to move anacceleration in time. "

Greg wrinkled his brow. "Maybe that means we can really investigate thepast, or even the future. Can sit here before our screen and seeeverything that has happened, everything that is going to happen. "

Russ shook his head. "I don't know, Greg. Notice, though, that we got noscreen response until the televisor came up out of the past and actuallyreached the point which coincided with the present. That is, the screenand the televisor itself have to be on the same time level for them tooperate. We might modify the screen, even modify the televisor so thatwe could travel in time, but it will take a lot of research, a lot ofwork. And especially it will take a whale of a lot of power. "

"We have the power, " said Greg. 

Russ moved the lighter back and forth over the tobacco, igniting itcarefully. Clouds of blue smoke swirled around his head. He spoke out ofthe smoke. 

"Right now, " he said, "we better see how Craven and our other friendsare getting along. I didn't like the way Stutsman was talking or the wayhe was swinging that gun around. And Chambers wasn't anywhere in sight. There's something screwy about the entire thing. "

 * * * * *

"What are we going to do now?" demanded Stutsman. 

Craven grinned at him. "That's up to you. Remember, you're the mastermind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things. "He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-outapparatus. "Well, there you are. Go ahead and run the joint. "

"But you will have to help, " pleaded Stutsman, his face twisted until itseemed that he was suffering intense physical agony. "You know what todo. I don't. "

Craven shook his head. "There isn't any use starting. Manning will bealong almost anytime now. We'll wait and see what he has in mind. "

"Manning!" shrieked Stutsman, waving the pistol wildly. "Always Manning. One would think you were working for Manning. "

"He's the big shot out in this little corner of space right now, " Cravenpointed out. "There isn't any way you can get around that. "

Stutsman backed carefully away. His gun came up and he looked at Cravenappraisingly, as if selecting his targets. 

"Put down that gun, " said a voice. 

Gregory Manning stood between Stutsman and Craven. There had been nofoggy forerunner of his appearance. He had just snapped out of emptyair. 

Stutsman stared at him, his eyes widening, but the gun remained steadyin his hand. 

"Look out, Craven, " warned Greg. "He's going to fire and it will goright through me and hit you. "

 * * * * *

There was the thump of a falling body as Craven hurled himself out ofhis chair, hit the floor and rolled. Stutsman's gun vomited flame. Thespouting flame passed through Greg's image, blasted against the chair inwhich Craven had sat, fused it until it fell in on itself. 

"Russ, " said Greg quietly, "disarm this fellow before he hurtssomebody. "

An unseen force reached out and twisted the gun from Stutsman's hand, flung it to one side. Swiftly Stutsman's hands were forced behind hisback and held there by invisible bonds. 

Stutsman cried out, tried to struggle, but he was unable to move. It wasas if giant hands had gripped him, were holding him in a viselikeclutch. 

"Thanks, Manning, " said Craven, getting up off the floor. "The foolwould have shot this time. He's threatened it for days. He has beendeveloping a homicidal mania. "

"We don't need to worry about him now, " declared Greg. He turned aroundto face Craven. "Where's Chambers?"

"Stutsman locked him up, " said Craven. "I imagine he has the key in hispocket. Locked him up in the stateroom. Chambers jumped him and tried totake the gun away from him and Stutsman laid him out, hit him over thehead. He kept Chambers locked up after that. Hasn't allowed anyone to gonear the room. Hasn't even given him food and water. That was three daysago. "

"Get the key out of his pocket, " directed Greg. "Go and see how Chambersis. "

Alone in the control room with Stutsman, Greg looked at him. 

"I have a score to settle with you, Stutsman, " he said. "I had intendedto let it ride, but not now. "

"You can't touch me, " blustered Stutsman. "You wouldn't dare. "

"What makes you think I wouldn't?"

"You're bluffing. You've got a lot of tricks, but you can't do thethings you would like me to think you can. You've got Chambers andCraven fooled, but not me. "

"It may be that I can offer you definite proof. "

Chambers staggered over the threshold. His clothing was rumpled. A rudebandage was wound around his head. His face was haggard and his eyesred. 

"Hello, Manning, " he said. "I suppose you've won. The Solar System mustbe in your control by now. "

He lifted his hand to his mustache, brushed it, a feeble attempt atplaying the old role he'd acted so long. 

"We've won, " said Greg quietly, "but you're wrong about our being incontrol. The governments are in the hands of the people, where theyshould be. "

Chambers nodded. "I see, " he mumbled. "Different people, differentideas. " His eyes rested on Stutsman and Greg saw sudden rage sweepacross the gray, haggard face. "So you've got him, have you? What areyou going to do with him? What are you going to do with all of us?"

"I haven't had time to think about it, " said Greg. "I've principallybeen thinking about Stutsman here. "

"He mutinied, " rasped Chambers. "He seized the ship, turned the crewagainst me. "

"And the penalty for that, " said Greg, quietly, "is death. Death bywalking in space. "

Stutsman writhed within the bands of force that held him tight. His facecontorted. "No, damn you! You can't do that! Not to me, you can't!"

"Shut up, " roared Chambers and Stutsman quieted. 

"I was thinking, too, " said Greg, "that at his order thousands of peoplewere mercilessly shot down back in the Solar System. Stood against awall and mowed down. Others were killed like wild animals in the street. Thousands of them. "

 * * * * *

He moved slowly toward Stutsman and the man cringed. 

"Stutsman, " he said, "you're a butcher. You're a stench in the nostrilsof humanity. You aren't fit to live. "

"Those, " said Craven, "are my sentiments exactly. "

"You hate me, " screamed Stutsman. "All of you hate me. You are doingthis because you hate me. "

"Everyone hates you, Stutsman, " said Greg. "Every living person hatesyou. You have a cloud of hate hanging over you as black and wide asspace. "

The man closed his eyes, trying to break free of the bonds. 

"Bring me a spacesuit, " snapped Greg, watching Stutsman's face. 

Craven brought it and dropped it at Stutsman's feet. 

"All right, Russ, " said Greg. "Turn him loose. "

Stutsman swayed and almost fell as the bands of force released him. 

"Get into that suit, " ordered Greg. 

Stutsman hesitated, but something he saw in Greg's face made him liftthe suit, step into it, fasten it about his body. 

"What are you going to do with me?" he whimpered. "You aren't going totake me back to Earth again, are you? You aren't going to make me standtrial?"

"No, " said Greg, gravely, "we aren't taking you back to Earth. Andyou're standing trial right now. "

Stutsman read his fate in the cold eyes that stared into his. Chatteringfrightenedly, he rushed at Greg, plunged through him, collided with thewall of the ship and toppled over, feebly attempting to rise. 

Invisible hands hoisted him to his feet, gripped him, held him upright. Greg walked toward him, stood facing him. 

"Stutsman, " he said, "you have four hours of air. That will give youfour hours to think, to make your peace with death. " He turned towardthe other two. Chambers nodded grimly. Craven said nothing. 

"And now, " said Greg to Craven, "if you will fasten down his helmet. "

The helmet clanged shut, shutting out the pleas and threats that camefrom Stutsman's throat. 

 * * * * *

Stutsman saw distant stars, cruel, gleaming eyes that glared at him. Empty space fell away on all sides. 

Numbed by fear, he realized where he was. Manning had picked him up andthrown him far into space ... Out into that waste where for hundreds oflight years there was only the awful nothingness of space. 

He was less than a speck of dust, in this great immensity of emptiness. There was no up or down, no means of orientation. 

Loneliness and terror closed in on him, a terrible agony of fear. Infour hours his air would be gone and then he would die! His body wouldswirl and eddy through this great cosmic ocean. It would never be found. It would remain here, embalmed by the cold of space, until the last clapof eternity. 

There was one way, the easy way. His hand reached up and grasped theconnection between his helmet and the air tank. One wrench and he woulddie swiftly, quickly ... Instead of letting death stalk him through thedarkness for the next four hours. 

He shivered and his hand loosened its hold, dropped away. He was afraidto hasten death. He wanted to put it off. He was afraid of death ... Horribly afraid. 

The stars mocked him and he seemed to hear hooting laughter fromsomewhere far away. Curiously, it sounded like his own laughter.... 

 * * * * *

"I'll make it easy for you, Manning, " Chambers said. "I know that all ofus are guilty. Guilty in the eyes of the people and the law. Guilty inyour eyes. If we had won, there would have been no penalty. There'snever a penalty for the one who wins. "

"Penalty, " said Greg, his eyes half smiling. "Why, yes, I think thereis. I'm going to order you aboard the _Invincible_ for something to eatand to get some rest. "

"You mean to say that we aren't prisoners?"

Greg shook his head. "Not prisoners, " he said. "Why, I came out here toguide you back to Earth. I hauled you out here and got you into thisjam. It was up to me to get you out of it. I would have done the samefor Stutsman, too, but ... "

He hesitated and looked at Chambers. 

Chambers stared back and slowly nodded. 

"Yes, Manning, " he said. "I think I understand. "

_CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE_

Chambers lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair. 

"I wish you could see it my way, Manning, " he said. "There's no placefor me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I triedand failed. I'm just a has-been back there. "

He laughed quietly. "Somehow, I can't imagine myself coming back in therole of the defeated tribal leader, chained to your chariot, so tospeak. "

"But it wouldn't be that way, " protested Greg. "Your company is gone, true, and your stocks are worthless, but you haven't lost everything. You still have a fleet of ships. With our new power, the Solar Systemwill especially need ships. Lots of ships. For the spacelanes will befilled with commerce. You'd be coming back to a new deal, a new SolarSystem, a place that has been transformed almost overnight by powerthat's practically free. "

"Yes, yes, I know all that, " said Chambers. "But I climbed too high. Igot too big. I can't come back now as something small, a failure. "

"You have things we need, " said Greg. "The screen that blankets out ourtelevision and tele-transport, for example. We need your screen as asafeguard against the very thing we have created. Think of what criminaluses could be made of the tele-transport. No vault, no net of chargedwires, nothing, could stop a thief from taking anything he wanted. Prisons would cease to be prisons. Criminals could reach in and pick uptheir friends, no matter how many guards there were. Prisons and bankvaults and national treasuries could be cleaned out in a single day. "

"Then there's the super-saturated space fields, " added Russ, ruefully. "Those almost got us. If I hadn't thought of moving the televisorthrough time, we would have had to pull stakes and run for it. "

"No, you wouldn't, " pointed out Craven. "You could have wiped us out ina moment. You can disintegrate matter. Send it up in a puff of smoke ... Rip every electron apart and send it hurtling away. "

"Of course we could have, Craven, " said Greg, "but we wouldn't. "

Chambers laughed softly. "Not quite mad enough at us to do that, eh?"

Greg looked at him. "I guess that must have been it. "

"But I'm curious about the green space fields, " persisted Russ. 

"Simple, " said Craven. "They were just fields that had more energypacked into a certain portion of space than space could take. Spacefields that had far more than their share of energy, more than theycould hold. A super-saturated solution will crystalize almostimmediately onto the tiniest crystal put into it. Those fields acted thesame way. They crystalized instantly into hyper-space the moment theycame into contact with other energy, whether as photons of radiation, matter or other space fields. Your anti-entropy didn't stand a chanceunder those conditions. When they crystalized, they took a chunk of thefield along with them, a small chunk, but one after another they ate ahole right through your screen. "

 * * * * *

"Something like that would have a commercial value, " said Greg. "Usefulin war, too, and now that mankind has taken to space, now that we'respreading out, we must think of possible attack. There must be life onother planets throughout the Galaxy. Someday they'll come. If theydon't, someday we'll go to them. And we may need every type of armamentwe can get our hands on. "

Chambers knocked the ash off his cigar and was staring out the visionport. The ship had swung so that through the port could be seen thedistant star toward which the _Interplanetarian_ had been driving. 

"For my part, " said Chambers, slowly, measuring each word, "you can havethose findings of ours. We'll give them to you, knowing you will usethem as they should be used. Craven can tell you how they work. That is, if Craven wants to. He is the man who developed them. "

"Certainly, " said Craven. "They'll be something to remember us by. "

 * * * * *

"But you are coming back with us, aren't you?" asked Greg. 

Craven shook his head. "No, I'm going with Chambers. I don't know whathe's thinking of, but whatever it is, it's all right with me. We've beentogether too long. I'd miss someone to fight with. "

Chambers was still staring out the vision port. He was talking, but hedid not seem to be talking to them. 

"I had a dream, you see. I saw the people struggling against theinefficiency and stupidity of popular government. I saw the periodicrise of bad leaders. I saw them lead the people into blunders. I readhistory and I saw that since the time man had risen from the ape, thishad been going on. So I proposed to give the people scientificgovernment ... A business administration. An administration that wouldhave run the government exactly as a successful businessman runs hisbusiness. The people would have resented it if I had told them theydidn't know how to run their affairs. There was only one way to doit ... Gain control and force it down their throats. "

Chambers was no longer a beaten man, no longer a man with a whitebandage around his head and his power stripped from him. Once again hewas the fighting financier who had sat back at the desk in theInterplanetary building on Earth and issued orders ... Orders that spedacross millions of miles of space. 

He shrugged his shoulders. "They didn't want it. Man doesn't want tolive under scientific government. He doesn't want to be protectedagainst blunders. He wants what he calls freedom. The right to do thethings he wants to do, even if it means making a damn fool of himself. The right to rise to great heights and tumble to equally low depths. That's human nature and I ruled it out. But you can't rule out humannature. "

They sat in silence, no one speaking. Russ cupped his pipe bowl in hishand and watched Chambers. Chambers leaned back and slowly puffed atthe cigar. Greg just sat, his face unchanging. 

Craven finally broke the silence. "Just what are you planning to do?"

Chambers flicked his hand toward the distant sun that gleamed throughthe vision port. 

"There's a new solar system out there, " he said. "New worlds, a new sun. A place to start over again. You and I discovered it. It's ours by rightof discovery. We'll go there and stake out our claim. "

"But there may be nothing there, " protested Greg. "That sun is youngerthan our Sun. The planets may not have cooled as yet. Life may not havedeveloped. "

"In such a case, " said Chambers, "we shall find another planetary systemaround another sun. A system that has cooled, where there is life. "

Russ gasped. Here was something important, something that should set aprecedent. The first men to roam from star to star seeking new worlds. The first men to turn their backs on the old solar system and strike outin search of new worlds swinging in their paths around distant suns. 

Greg was saying, "All right, if that's the way you want it. I was hopingyou'd come back with us. But we'll help you repair your ship. We'll giveyou all the supplies we can spare. "

Russ rose to his feet. "That, " he said, "calls for a little drink. "

He opened a cabinet and took out bottles and glasses. 

"Only three, " said Chambers. "Craven doesn't drink. "

Craven interrupted. "Pour one for me, too, Page. "

Chambers looked at the scientist, astounded. "I never knew you to take adrink in your life. "

Craven twisted his face into a grin. "This is a special occasion. "

 * * * * *

The _Invincible_ was nearing Mars, heading for Earth, which was still agreenish sphere far to one side of the flaming Sun. 

Russ watched the little green globe, thinking. 

Earth was home. To him it always would be home. But that would bechanged soon. Just a few more generations, and, to millions uponmillions of human beings, Earth no longer would be home. 

With the new material energy engines, life on every planet would bepossible now, even easy. The cost of manufacture, mining, shippingacross the vast distances between the planets would be only a fractionof what it had been when man had been forced to rely upon the unwieldy, expensive accumulator system of supplying life-giving power. 

Now Mars would have power of her own. Even Pluto could generate her own. And power was ... Well, it was power. The power to live, the power towork, to establish and maintain commerce, to adjust gravity to Earthstandard or to any standard. The power to remake and reshape and rebuildplanetary conditions to suit man exactly. 

Earthmen and Earthwomen would be moving out en masse now to the new andvirgin fields of endeavor--to the farms of Venus, to the manufacturingcenters that were springing up on Mars, to the mines of the Jovianworlds, to the great laboratory plants that would spring up on Titan andon Pluto and on the other colder worlds. 

The migration of races had started long ago. In the Old Stone Age, theCro-Magnon had swept out of nowhere to oust the Neanderthal. Centurieslater the barbarians of the north, in another of those restlessmigrations, had overwhelmed and swept away the Roman Empire. And manycenturies later, migration had turned from Europe to a new world acrossthe sea, and fighting Americans had battled their way from east to west, conquering a continent. 

And now another great migration was on--man was leaving the Earth, moving into space. He was leaving behind him the world that had rearedand fostered him. He was striking out and out. First the planets wouldbe overrun, and then man would leap from the planets to the stars!

 * * * * *

For years after America had become a country, had built a tradition ofher own, Europe was regarded by millions as the homeland. But as theyears swept by, this had ceased to be and the Americas were a world untothemselves, owing nothing to Europe. 

And that was the way it would be with Earth. For centuries, forthousands of years, Earth would be the Mother Planet, the homeland forall the millions of roaming men and women who dared the gulfs of spaceand the strangeness of new worlds. There would be trips back to theEarth for sentimental reasons ... To see the place where one's ancestorswere born and had lived, to goggle at the monument which marked thepoint from which the first spaceship had taken off for the Moon, tovisit old museums and see old cities and breathe the air that men andwomen had breathed for thousands of years before they found the power totake them anywhere. 

In the end, Earth would be just a worn-out planet. Even now herminerals were rapidly being exhausted; her oil wells were dry and allher coal was mined; her industry stabilized and filled; her businessesinterlocking and highly competitive. A world that was too full, that hadtoo many things, too many activities, too many people. A world thatdidn't need men and women. A world where even genius was kept fromrising to the top. 

And this was what was driving mankind away from the Earth. Thecompetition, the crowded conditions, in business and industrial fields, the lack of opportunity for new development, the everlasting struggle toget ahead, fighting for a place to live when millions of others werefighting for the same thing. But not entirely that, not that alone. There was something else--that old adventuresome spirit, the drivingurge to face new dangers, to step over old frontiers, to do and dare, tomake a damn fool of one's self, or to surpass the greatestaccomplishments of history. 

But Earth would never die, for there was a part of Earth in every manand woman who would go forth into space, part of Earth's courage, partof Earth's ideals, part of Earth's dreams. The habits and the virtuesand the faults that Earth had spawned and fostered ... These were thingsthat would never die. Old Earth would live forever. Even when she wasdrifting dust and the Sun was a dead, cold star, Earth would live on inthe courage and the dreams that by that time would be spreading to thefar corners of the Galaxy. 

Russ dug the pipe out of his pocket, searched for the pouch, found it onthe desk behind him. It was empty. 

"Hell, " he said, "my tobacco's all gone. "

Greg grinned. "You won't have to wait long. We'll be back on Earth in afew more hours. "

Russ put the stem between his teeth, bit down on it savagely. "I guessthat's right. I can dry smoke her until we get there. "

Earth was larger now. Mars had swung astern. 

Suddenly a winking light stabbed out into space from the night side ofEarth. Signaling ... Signaling ... Clearing the spacelanes for a greaterfuture than any human prophet had ever predicted. 

The End