As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void betweengalaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like avast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own islanduniverse. Morey worked a moment with his slide rule, then said, "We madegood time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! Yet you had it on atonly half power. . . . "

Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The shipfilled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the airof the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through thedarkness of intergalactic space. 

But suddenly, far off to their left and far to their right, they saw twoshining ships paralleling their course! They held grimly to the courseof the Earth ship, bracketing it like an official guard. 

The Earth scientists stared at them in wonder. "Lord, " muttered Morey, "where can they have come from?"

 * * * * *

John W. Campbell first started writing in 1930 when his first shortstory, _When the Atoms Failed_, was accepted by a science-fictionmagazine. At that time he was twenty years old and still a student atcollege. As the title of the story indicates, he was even at that timeoccupied with the significance of atomic energy and nuclear physics. 

For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientific backgroundthat ran from childhood experiments, to study at Duke University and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction, achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field. 

In 1937 he became the editor of _Astounding Stories_ magazine andapplied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and thefield of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction sincethen has been great. Today he still remains as the editor of thatmagazine's evolved and redesigned successor, _Analog_. 

ISLANDS

OF

SPACE

by

JOHN W. CAMPBELL

ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, N. Y. 10036

ISLANDS OF SPACE

Copyright, 1956, by John W. Campbell, Jr. Copyright, 1930, by Experimenter Publications, Inc. 

An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author. 

All Rights Reserved

_Cover by McKeon_

_Also by John W. Campbell In Ace editions_:

THE BLACK STAR PASSES (F-346)THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE (F-364)

Printed in U. S. A. 

[Illustration]

PROLOGUE

In the early part of the Twenty Second Century, Dr. Richard Arcot, hailed as "the greatest living physicist", and Robert Morey, hisbrilliant mathematical assistant, discovered the so-called "molecularmotion drive", which utilized the random energy of heat to produceuseful motion. 

John Fuller, designing engineer, helped the two men to build a shipwhich used the drive in order to have a weapon to seek out and capturethe mysterious Air Pirate whose robberies were ruining TranscontinentalAirways. 

The Pirate, Wade, was a brilliant but neurotic chemist who haddiscovered, among other things, the secret of invisibility. Cured of hisinstability by modern psychomedical techniques, he was hired by Arcot tohelp build an interplanetary vessel to go to Venus. 

The Venusians proved to be a humanoid race of people who used telepathyfor communication. Although they were similar to Earthmen, their blueblood and double thumbs made them enough different to have causeddistrust and racial friction, had not both planets been drawn togetherin a common bond of defense by the passing of the Black Star. 

The Black Star, Nigra, was a dead, burned-out sun surrounded by aplanetary system very much like our own. But these people had beenforced to use their science to produce enough heat and light to stayalive in the cold, black depths of interstellar space. There was nothingevil or menacing in their attack on the Solar System; they simply wanteda star that gave off light and heat. So they attacked, not realizingthat they were attacking beings equal in intelligence to themselves. 

They were at another disadvantage, too. The Nigrans had spent longmillennia fighting their environment and had had no time to fight amongthemselves, so they knew nothing of how to wage a war. The Earthmen andVenusians knew only too well, since they had a long history of war oneach planet. 

Inevitably, the Nigrans were driven back to the Black Star. [A]

The war was over. And things became dull. And the taste of adventurestill remained on the tongues of Arcot, Wade, and Morey. 

[Footnote A: See "_The Black Star Passes_", Ace Books, F-346. ]

I

Three men sat around a table which was littered with graphs, sketches ofmathematical functions, and books of tensor formulae. Beside the tablestood a Munson-Bradley integraph calculator which one of the men wasusing to check some of the equations he had already derived. The resultsthey were getting seemed to indicate something well above and beyondwhat they had expected. 

And anything that surprised the team of Arcot, Wade, and Morey wassurprising indeed. 

The intercom buzzed, interrupting their work. 

Dr. Richard Arcot reached over and lifted the switch. "Arcot speaking. "

The face that flashed on the screen was businesslike and determined. "Dr. Arcot, Mr. Fuller is here. My orders are to check with you on allvisitors. "

Arcot nodded. "Send him up. But from now on, I'm not in to anyone but myfather or the Interplanetary Chairman or the elder Mr. Morey. If theycome, don't bother to call, just send 'em up. I will not receive callsfor the next ten hours. Got it?"

"You won't be bothered, Dr. Arcot. "

Arcot cut the circuit and the image collapsed. 

Less than two minutes later, a light flashed above the door. Arcottouched the release, and the door slid aside. He looked at the manentering and said, with mock coldness:

"If it isn't the late John Fuller. What did you do--take a plane? Ittook you an hour to get here from Chicago. "

Fuller shook his head sadly. "Most of the time was spent in getting pastyour guards. Getting to the seventy-fourth floor of the TranscontinentalAirways Building is harder than stealing the Taj Mahal. " Trying tosuppress a grin, Fuller bowed low. "Besides, I think it would do yourroyal highness good to be kept waiting for a while. You're paid a coupleof million a year to putter around in a lab while honest people work fora living. Then, if you happen to stub your toe over some useful gadget, they increase your pay. They call you scientists and spend the resourcesof two worlds to get you anything you want--and apologize if they don'tget it within twenty-four hours. 

"No doubt about it; it will do your majesties good to wait. "

With a superior smile, he seated himself at the table and shuffledcalmly through the sheets of equations before him. 

Arcot and Wade were laughing, but not Robert Morey. With a sorrowfulexpression, he walked to the window and looked out at the hundreds ofslim, graceful aircars that floated above the city. 

"My friends, " said Morey, almost tearfully, "I give you the great Dr. Arcot. These countless machines we see have come from one idea of his. Just an idea, mind you! And who worked it into mathematical form andmade it calculable, and therefore useful? I did!

"And who worked out the math for the interplanetary ships? I did!Without me they would never have been built!" He turned dramatically, asthough he were playing King Lear. "And what do I get for it?" He pointedan accusing finger at Arcot. "What do I get? _He_ is called 'Earth'smost brilliant physicist', and I, who did all the hard work, am referredto as 'his mathematical assistant'. " He shook his head solemnly. "It's ahard world. "

At the table, Wade frowned, then looked at the ceiling. "If you'd makeyour quotations more accurate, they'd be more trustworthy. The news saidthat Arcot was the '_System's_ most brilliant physicist', and that youwere the 'brilliant mathematical assistant who showed great genius indeveloping the mathematics of Dr. Arcot's new theory'. " Having deliveredhis speech, Wade began stoking his pipe. 

Fuller tapped his fingers on the table. "Come on, you clowns, knock itoff and tell me why you called a hard-working man away from his draftingtable to come up to this play room of yours. What have you got up yoursleeve this time?"

"Oh, that's too bad, " said Arcot, leaning back comfortably in his chair. "We're sorry you're so busy. We were thinking of going out to see whatAntares, Betelguese, or Polaris looked like at close range. And, if wedon't get too bored, we might run over to the giant model nebula inAndromeda, or one of the others. Tough about your being busy; you mighthave helped us by designing the ship and earned your board and passage. Tough. " Arcot looked at Fuller sadly. 

Fuller's eyes narrowed. He knew Arcot was kidding, but he also knew howfar Arcot would go when he was kidding--and this sounded like he meantit. Fuller said: "Look, teacher, a man named Einstein said that thevelocity of light was tops over two hundred years ago, and nobody's comeup with any counter evidence yet. Has the Lord instituted a new speedlaw?"

"Oh, no, " said Wade, waving his pipe in a grand gesture of importance. "Arcot just decided he didn't like that law and made a new one himself. "

"Now _wait_ a minute!" said Fuller. "The velocity of light is a propertyof space!"

Arcot's bantering smile was gone. "Now you've got it, Fuller. Thevelocity of light, just as Einstein said, is a property of space. Whathappens if we change space?"

Fuller blinked. "Change space? How?"

Arcot pointed toward a glass of water sitting nearby. "Why do thingslook distorted through the water? Because the light rays are bent. Whyare they bent? Because as each wave front moves from air to water, _itslows down_. The electromagnetic and gravitational fields between thoseatoms are strong enough to increase the curvature of the space betweenthem. Now, what happens if we reverse that effect?"

"Oh, " said Fuller softly. "I get it. By changing the curvature of thespace surrounding you, you could get any velocity you wanted. But whatabout acceleration? It would take years to reach those velocities at anyacceleration a man could stand. "

Arcot shook his head. "Take a look at the glass of water again. Whathappens when the light comes _out_ of the water? It speeds up again_instantaneously_. By changing the space around a spaceship, youinstantaneously change the velocity of the ship to a comparable velocityin that space. And since every particle is accelerated at the same rate, you wouldn't feel it, any more than you'd feel the acceleration due togravity in free fall. "

Fuller nodded slowly. Then, suddenly, a light gleamed in his eyes. "Isuppose you've figured out where you're going to get the energy to powera ship like that?"

"He has, " said Morey. "Uncle Arcot isn't the type to forget a littledetail like that. "

"Okay, give, " said Fuller. 

Arcot grinned and lit up his own pipe, joining Wade in an attempt tofill the room with impenetrable fog. 

"All right, " Arcot began, "we needed two things: a tremendous source ofpower and a way to store it. 

"For the first, ordinary atomic energy wouldn't do. It's notcontrollable enough and uranium isn't something we could carry by theton. So I began working with high-density currents. 

"At the temperature of liquid helium, near absolute zero, lead becomes anearly perfect conductor. Back in nineteen twenty, physicists hadsucceeded in making a current flow for four hours in a closed circuit. It was just a ring of lead, but the resistance was so low that thecurrent kept on flowing. They even managed to get six hundred amperesthrough a piece of lead wire no bigger than a pencil lead. 

"I don't know why they didn't go on from there, but they didn't. Possibly it was because they didn't have the insulation necessary tokeep down the corona effect; in a high-density current, the electronstend to push each other sideways out of the wire. 

"At any rate, I tried it, using _lux_ metal as an insulator around thewire. "

"Hold it!" Fuller interrupted. "What, may I ask, is _lux_ metal?"

"That was Wade's idea, " Arcot grinned. "You remember those twosubstances we found in the Nigran ships during the war?"

"Sure, " said Fuller. "One was transparent and the other was a perfectreflector. You said they were made of light--photons so greatlycondensed that they were held together by their gravitational fields. "

"Right. We called them light-metal. But Wade said that was tooconfusing. With a specific gravity of 103. 5, light-metal was certainlynot a light metal! So Wade coined a couple of words. _Lux_ is the Latinfor light, so he named the transparent one _lux_ and the reflecting one_relux_. "

"It sounds peculiar, " Fuller observed, "but so does every coined wordwhen you first hear it. Go on with your story. "

Arcot relit his pipe and went on. "I put a current of ten thousand ampsthrough a little piece of lead wire, and that gave me a current densityof 10^{10} amps per square inch. 

"Then I started jacking up the voltage, and modified the thing with adouble-polarity field somewhat similar to the molecular motion fieldexcept that it works on a sub-nucleonic level. As a result, about halfof the lead fed into the chamber became contraterrene lead! The atomsjust turned themselves inside out, so to speak, giving us an atom withpositrons circling a negatively charged nucleus. It even gave theneutrons a reverse spin, converting them into anti-neutrons. 

"Result: total annihilation of matter! When the contraterrene lead atomsmet the terrene lead atoms, mutual annihilation resulted, giving us pureenergy. 

"Some of this power can be bled off to power the mechanism itself; therest is useful energy. We've got all the power we need--power, literallyby the ton. "

Fuller said nothing; he just looked dazed. He was well beginning tobelieve that these three men could do the impossible and do it to order. 

"The second thing, " Arcot continued, "was, as I said, a way to store theenergy so that it could be released as rapidly or as slowly as we neededit. 

"That was Morey's baby. He figured it would be possible to use thespace-strain apparatus to store energy. It's an old method; inductioncoils, condensers, and even gravity itself are storing energy bystraining space. But with Morey's apparatus we could store a lot more. 

"A torus-shaped induction coil encloses all its magnetic field withinit; the torus, or 'doughnut' coil, has a perfectly enclosed magneticfield. We built an enclosed coil, using Morey's principle, and expectedto store a few watts of power in it to see how long we could hold it. 

"Unfortunately, we made the mistake of connecting it to the city powerlines, and it cost us a hundred and fifty dollars at a quarter of a centper kilowatt hour. We blew fuses all over the place. After that, we usedthe relux plate generator. 

"At any rate, the gadget can store power and plenty of it, and it canput it out the same way. "

Arcot knocked the ashes out of his pipe and smiled at Fuller. "Those arethe essentials of what we have to offer. We give you the job of figuringout the stresses and strains involved. We want a ship with a cruisingradius of a thousand million light years. "

"Yes, sir! Right away, sir! Do you want a gross or only a dozen?" Fullerasked sarcastically. "You sure believe in big orders! And whence comeththe cold cash for this lovely dream of yours?"

"That, " said Morey darkly, "is where the trouble comes in. We have toconvince Dad. As President of Transcontinental Airways, he's my boss, but the trouble is, he's also my father. When he hears that I want to gogallivanting off all over the Universe with you guys, he is very likelyto turn thumbs down on the whole deal. Besides, Arcot's dad has a lot ofinfluence around here, too, and I have a healthy hunch he won't like theidea, either. "

"I rather fear he won't, " agreed Arcot gloomily. 

A silence hung over the room that felt almost as heavy as the pall ofpipe smoke the air conditioners were trying frantically to disperse. 

The elder Mr. Morey had full control of their finances. A ship thatwould cost easily hundreds of millions of dollars was well beyondanything the four men could get by themselves. Their inventions were theproperty of Transcontinental, but even if they had not been, not one ofthe four men would think of selling them to another company. 

Finally, Wade said: "I think we'll stand a much better chance if we showthem a big, spectacular exhibition; something really impressive. We'llpoint out all the advantages and uses of the apparatus. Then we'll showthem complete plans for the ship. They might consent. "

"They might, " replied Morey smiling. "It's worth a try, anyway. Andlet's get out of the city to do it. We can go up to my place in Vermont. We can use the lab up there for all we need. We've got everythingworked out, so there's no need to stay here. 

"Besides, I've got a lake up there in which we can indulge in a littleatavism to the fish stage of evolution. "

"Good enough, " Arcot agreed, grinning broadly. "And we'll need thatlake, too. Here in the city it's only eighty-five because the aircarsare soaking up heat for their molecular drive, but out in the countryit'll be in the nineties. "

"To the mountains, then! Let's pack up!"

II

The many books and papers they had collected were hastily put into thebriefcases, and the four men took the elevator to the landing area onthe roof. 

"We'll take my car, " Morey said. "The rest of you can just leave yourshere. They'll be safe for a few days. "

They all piled in as Morey slid into the driver's seat and turned on thepower. 

They rose slowly, looking below them at the traffic of the great city. New York had long since abandoned her rivers as trade routes; they hadbeen covered solidly by steel decks which were used as public landingfields and ground car routes. Around them loomed titanic structures ofglistening colored tile. The sunlight reflected brilliantly from them, and the contrasting colors of the buildings seemed to blend togetherinto a great, multicolored painting. 

The darting planes, the traffic of commerce down between the greatbuildings, and the pleasure cars above, combined to give a series ofchanging, darting shadows that wove a flickering pattern over the city. The long lines of ships coming in from Chicago, London, Buenos Airesand San Francisco, and the constant flow from across the Pole--fromRussia, India, and China, were like mighty black serpents that woundtheir way into the city. 

Morey cut into a Northbound traffic level, moved into the high-speedlane, and eased in on the accelerator. He held to the traffic patternfor two hundred and fifty miles, until he was well past Boston, then heturned at the first break and fired the ship toward their goal inVermont. 

Less than forty-five minutes since they had left New York, Morey wasdropping the car toward the little mountain lake that offered them aplace for seclusion. Gently, he let the ship glide smoothly into theshed where the first molecular motion ship had been built. Arcot jumpedout, saying:

"We're here--unload and get going. I think a swim and some sleep is inorder before we start work on this ship. We can begin tomorrow. " Helooked approvingly at the clear blue water of the little lake. 

Wade climbed out and pushed Arcot to one side. "All right, out of theway, then, little one, and let a man get going. " He headed for the housewith the briefcases. 

Arcot was six feet two and weighed close to two hundred, but Wade wasanother two inches taller and weighed a good fifty pounds more. His armsand chest were built on the same general plan as those of a gorilla. Hehad good reason to call Arcot little. 

Morey, though still taller, was not as heavily formed, and weighed onlya few pounds more than Arcot, while Fuller was a bit smaller than Arcot. 

Due to several factors, the size of the average human being had beensteadily increasing for several centuries. Only Wade would have beenconsidered a "big" man by the average person, for the average man wasover six feet tall. 

They relaxed most of the afternoon, swimming and indulging in a fewwrestling matches. At wrestling, Wade consistently proved himself notonly built like a gorilla but muscled like one; but Arcot proved thatskill was not without merit several times, for he had found that if hecould make the match last more than two minutes, Wade's huge muscleswould find an insufficient oxygen supply and tire quickly. 

That evening, after dinner, Morey engaged Wade in a fierce battle ofchess, with Fuller as an interested spectator. Arcot, too, was watching, but he was saying nothing. 

After several minutes of uneventful play, Morey stopped suddenly andglared at the board. "Now why'd I make that move? I intended to move myqueen over there to check your king on the red diagonal. "

"Yeah, " replied Wade gloomily, "that's what I wanted you to do. I had asure checkmate in three moves. "

Arcot smiled quietly. 

They continued play for several moves, then it was Wade who remarkedthat something seemed to be influencing his play. 

"I had intended to trade queens. I'm glad I didn't, though; I think thisleaves me in a better position. "

"It sure does, " agreed Morey. "I was due to clean up on the queen trade. You surprised me, too; you usually go in for trades. I'm afraid myposition is hopeless now. "

It was. In the next ten moves, Wade spotted the weak points in everyattack Morey made; the attack crumbled disastrously and white was forcedto resign, his king in a hopeless position. 

Wade rubbed his chin. "You know, Morey, I seemed to know exactly why youmade every move, and I saw every possibility involved. "

"Yeah--so I noticed, " said Morey with a grin. 

"Come on, Morey, let's try a game, " said Fuller, sliding into the chairWade had vacated. 

Although ordinarily equally matched with Fuller, Morey again went downto disastrous defeat in an amazingly short time. It almost seemed as ifFuller could anticipate every move. 

"Brother, am I off form today, " he said, rising from the table. "Comeon, Arcot--let's see you try Wade. "

Arcot sat down, and although he had never played chess as extensively asthe others, he proceeded to clean Wade out lock, stock, and barrel. 

"Now what's come over you?" asked Morey in astonishment as he saw a verycomplicated formation working out, a formation he knew was far betterthan Arcot's usual game. He had just worked it out and felt very proudof it. 

Arcot looked at him and smiled. "That's the answer, Morey!"

Morey blinked. "What--what's the answer to what?"

"Yes--I meant it--don't be so surprised--you've seen it done before. Ihave--no, not under him, but a more experienced teacher. I figured itwould come in handy in our explorations. "

Morey's face grew more and more astonished as Arcot's strange monologuecontinued. 

Finally, Arcot turned to Wade, who was looking at him and Morey inwide-eyed wonder. And this time, it was Wade who began talking in amonologue. 

"You _did_?" he said in a surprised voice. "When?" There was a longpause, during which Arcot stared at Wade with such intensity that Fullerbegan to understand what was happening. 

"Well, " said Wade, "if you've learned the trick so thoroughly, try itout. Let's see you project your thoughts! Go ahead!"

Fuller, now understanding fully what was going on, burst out laughing. "He _has_ been projecting his thoughts! He hasn't said a word to you!"Then he looked at Arcot. "As a matter of fact, you've said so littlethat I don't know how you pulled this telepathic stunt--though I'm quiteconvinced that you did. "

"I spent three months on Venus a while back, " said Arcot, "studying withone of their foremost telepathists. Actually, most of that time wasspent on theory; learning how to do it isn't a difficult proposition. Itjust takes practice. 

"The whole secret is that everyone has the power; it's a very ancientpower in the human brain, and most of the lower animals possess it to agreater degree than do humans. When Man developed language, it gave histhoughts more concreteness and permitted a freer and more clearlyconceived type of thinking. The result was that telepathy fell intodisuse. 

"I'm going to show you how to do it because it will be invaluable if wemeet a strange race. By projecting pictures and concepts, you candispense with going to the trouble of learning the language. 

"After you learn the basics, all you'll need is practice, but watchyourself! Too much practice can give you the great-granddaddy of allheadaches! Okay, now to begin with . . . "

Arcot spent the rest of the evening teaching them the Venerian system oftelepathy. 

 * * * * *

They all rose at nine. Arcot got up first, and the others found itexpedient to follow his example shortly thereafter. He had brought alarge Tesla coil into the bedroom from the lab and succeeded in inducingsufficient voltage in the bedsprings to make very effective, thoughharmless, sparks. 

"Come on, boys, hit the deck! Wade, as chief chemist, you are tosynthesize a little coffee and heat-treat a few eggs for us. We havework ahead today! Rise and shine!" He didn't shut off the coil until hewas assured that each of them had gotten a considerable distance fromhis bed. 

"Ouch!" yelled Morey. "Okay! Shut it off! I want to get my pants! We'reall up! You win!"

After breakfast, they all went into the room they used as a calculatingroom. Here they had two different types of integraph calculators andplenty of paper and equipment to do their own calculations and drawgraphs. 

"To begin with, " said Fuller, "let's decide what shape we want to use. As designer, I'd like to point out that a sphere is the strongest, acube easiest to build, and a torpedo shape the most efficientaerodynamically. However, we intend to use it in space, not air. 

"And remember, we'll need it more as a home than as a ship during thegreater part of the trip. "

"We might need an aerodynamically stable hull, " Wade interjected. "Itcame in mighty handy on Venus. They're darned useful in emergencies. What do you think, Arcot?"

"I favor the torpedo shape. Okay, now we've got a hull. How about someengines to run it? Let's get those, too. I'll name the general thingsfirst; facts and figures can come later. 

"First: We must have a powerful mass-energy converter. We could use thecavity radiator and use cosmic rays to warm it, and drive the individualpower units that way, or we can have a main electrical power unit andwarm them all electrically. Now, which one would be the better?"

Morey frowned. "I think we'd be safer if we didn't depend on any oneplant, but had each as separate as possible. I'm for the individualcavity radiators. "

"Question, " interjected Fuller. "How do these cavity radiators work?"

"They're built like a thermos bottle, " Arcot explained. "The inner shellwill be of rough relux, which will absorb the heat efficiently, whilethe outer one will be of polished relux to keep the radiation inside. Between the two we'll run a flow of helium at two tons per square inchpressure to carry the heat to the molecular motion apparatus. The neckof the bottle will contain the atomic generator. "

Fuller still looked puzzled. "See here; with this new space straindrive, why do we have to have the molecular drive at all?"

"To move around near a heavy mass--in the presence of a stronggravitational field, " Arcot said. "A gravitational field tends to warpspace in such a way that the velocity of light is lower in its presence. Our drive tries to warp or strain space in the opposite manner. The twowould simply cancel each other out and we'd waste a lot of power goingnowhere. As a matter of fact, the gravitational field of the sun is sointense that we'll have to go out beyond the orbit of Pluto before wecan use the space strain drive effectively. "

"I catch, " said Fuller. "Now to get back to the generators. I think thepower units would be simpler if they were controlled from one electricalpower source, and just as reliable. Anyway, the molecular motion poweris controlled, of necessity, from a single generator, so if one is aptto go bad, the other is, too. "

"Very good reasoning, " smiled Morey, "but I'm still strong fordecentralization. I suggest a compromise. We can have the main powerunit and the main verticals, which will be the largest, controlled byindividual cosmic ray heaters, and the rest run by electric power units. They'd be just heating coils surrounded by the field. "

"A good idea, " said Arcot. "I'm in favor of the compromise. Okay, Fuller? Okay. Now the next problem is weapons. I suggest we use aseparate control panel and a separate generating panel for the powertubes we'll want in the molecular beam projectors. "

The molecular beam projector simply projected the field that causedmolecular motion to take place as wanted. As weapons, they wereterrifically deadly. If half a mountain is suddenly thrown into the airbecause all the random motion of its molecules becomes concentrated inone direction, it becomes a difficult projectile to fight. Or touch thebow of a ship with the beam; the bow drops to absolute zero and isdriven back on the stern, with all the speed of its billions ofmolecules. The general effect is similar to that produced by two shipshaving a head-on collision at ten miles per second. 

Anything touched by the beam is broken by its own molecules, twisted byits own strength, and crushed by its own toughness. Nothing can resistit. 

"My idea, " Arcot went on, "was that since the same power is used forboth the beams and the drive, we'll have two separate power-tube banksto generate it. That way, if one breaks down, we can switch to theother. We can even use both at once on the drive, if necessary; themolecular motion machines will stand it if we make them of relux andanchor them with lux metal beams. The projectors would be able to handlethe power, too, using Dad's new system. 

"That will give us more protection, and, at the same time, full power. Since we'll have several projectors, the power needed to operate theship will be about equal to the power required to operate theprojectors. 

"And I also suggest we mount some heat beam projectors. "

"Why?" objected Wade. "They're less effective than the molecular rays. The molecular beams are instantly irresistible, while the heat beamstake time to heat up the target. Sure, they're unhealthy to deal with, but no more so than the molecular beam. "

"True enough, " Arcot agreed, "but the heat beam is more spectacular, andwe may find that a mere spectacular display will accomplish as much asactual destruction. Besides, the heat beams are more local in effect. Ifwe want to kill an enemy and spare his captive, we want a beam that willbe deadly where it hits, not for fifty yards around. "

"Hold it a second, " said Fuller wearily. "Now it's heat beams. Don't youguys think you ought to explain a little bit to the poor goon who'sdesigning this flying battlewagon? How did you get a heat beam?"

Arcot grinned. "Simple. We use a small atomic cavity radiator at one endof which is a rough relux parabolic filter. Beyond that is a lux metallens. The relux heats up tremendously, and since there is no polishedrelux to reflect it back, the heat is radiated out through the lux metallens as a powerful heat beam. "

"Okay, fine, " said Fuller. "But stop springing new gadgets on me, willyou?"

"I'll try not to, " Arcot laughed. "Anyway, let's get on to the mainpower plant. Remember that our condenser coil is a gadget for storingenergy in space; we are therefore obliged to supply it with energy tostore. Just forming the drive field alone will require two times ten tothe twenty-seventh ergs, or the energy of about _two and a half tons_of matter. That means a whale of a lot of lead wire will have to be fedinto our conversion generators; it would take several hours to chargethe coils. We'd better have two big chargers to do the job. 

"The controls we can figure out later. How about it? Any suggestions?"

"Sounds okay to me, " said Morey, and the others agreed. 

"Good enough. Now, as far as air and water go, we can use the standardspacecraft apparatus, Fuller, so you can figure that in any way you wantto. "

"We'll need a lab, too, " Wade put in. "And a machine shop with plenty ofspare parts--everything we can possibly think of. Remember, we may wantto build some things out in space. "

"Right. And I wonder--" Arcot looked thoughtful. "How about theinvisibility apparatus? It may prove useful, and it won't cost much. Let's put that in, too. "

The apparatus he mentioned was simply a high-frequency oscillator tubeof extreme power which caused vibrations approaching light frequency tobe set up in the molecules of the ship. As a result, the ship becametransparent, since light could easily pass through the vibratingmolecules. 

There was only one difficulty; the ship was invisible, all right, but itbecame a radio sender and could easily be detected by a directionalradio. However, if the secret were unknown, it was a very effectivemethod of disappearing. And, since the frequency was so high, a specialdetector was required to pick it up. 

"Is that all you need?" asked Fuller. 

"Nope, " said Arcot, leaning back in his chair. "Now comes the kicker. Isuggest that we make the hull of foot-thick lux metal and line it on theinside with relux wherever we want it to be opaque. And we want reluxshutters on the windows. Lux is too doggone transparent; if we came tooclose to a hot star, we'd be badly burned. "

Fuller looked almost goggle-eyed. "_A--foot--of--lux!_ Good Lord, Arcot! This ship would weigh a quarter of a million tons! That stuff is_dense_!"

"Sure, " agreed Arcot, "but we'll need the protection. With a ship likethat, you could run through a planetoid without hurting the hull. We'llmake the relux inner wall about an inch thick, with a vacuum betweenthem for protection in a warm atmosphere. And if some tremendous forcedid manage to crack the outer wall, we wouldn't be left withoutprotection. "

"Okay, you're the boss, " Fuller said resignedly. "It's going to have tobe a big ship, though. I figure a length of about two hundred feet and adiameter of around thirty feet. The interior I'll furnish with aluminum;it'll be cheaper and lighter. How about an observatory?"

"Put it in the rear of the ship, " Wade suggested. "We'll mount one ofthe Nigran telectroscopes. "

"Control room in the bow, of course, " Morey chipped in. 

"I've got you, " Fuller said. "I'll work the thing out and give you acost estimate and drawings. "

"Fine, " said Arcot, standing up. "Meanwhile, the rest of us will workout our little exhibition to impress Mr. Morey and Dad. Come on, lads, let's get back to the lab. "

III

It was two weeks before Dr. Robert Arcot and his old friend ArthurMorey, president of Transcontinental Airways, were invited to see whattheir sons had been working on. 

The demonstration was to take place in the radiation labs in thebasements of the Transcontinental building. Arcot, Wade, Morey, andFuller had brought the equipment in from the country place in Vermontand set it up in one of the heavily-lined, vault-like chambers that wereused for radiation experiments. 

The two older men were seated before a huge eighty-inchthree-dimensional television screen several floors above the level wherethe actual demonstration was going on. 

"There can't be anyone in the room, because of radiation burns, "explained Arcot, junior. "We could have surrounded the thing with relux, but then you couldn't have seen what's going on. 

"I'm not going to explain anything beforehand; like magic, they'll bemore astounding before the explanation is given. "

He touched a switch. The cameras began to operate, and the screen spranginto life. 

The screen showed a heavy table on which was mounted a small projectorthat looked something like a searchlight with several heavy cablesrunning into it. In the path of the projector was a large lux metalcrucible surrounded by a ring of relux, and a series of points of reluxaimed into the crucible. These points and the ring were grounded. Insidethe crucible was a small ingot of coronium, the strong, hard, Venerianmetal which melted at twenty-five hundred degrees centigrade and boiledat better than four thousand. The crucible was entirely enclosed in alarge lux metal case which was lined, on the side away from theprojector, with roughened relux. 

Arcot moved a switch on the control panel. Far below them, a heavy relayslammed home, and suddenly a solid beam of brilliant bluish light shotout from the projector, a beam so brilliant that the entire screen waslit by the intense glow, and the spectators thought that they couldalmost feel the heat. 

It passed through the lux metal case and through the coronium bar, onlyto be cut off by the relux liner, which, since it was rough, absorbedover ninety-nine percent of the rays that struck it. 

The coronium bar glowed red, orange, yellow, and white in quicksuccession, then suddenly slumped into a molten mass in the bottom ofthe crucible. 

The crucible was filled now with a mass of molten metal that glowedintensely white and seethed furiously. The slowly rising vapors told ofthe rapid boiling, and their settling showed that their temperature wastoo high to permit them to remain hot--the heat radiated away too fast. 

For perhaps ten seconds this went on, then suddenly a new factor wasadded to the performance. There was a sudden crashing arc and a blaze ofblue flame that swept in a cyclonic twisting motion inside the crucible. The blaze of the arc, the intense brilliance of the incandescent metal, and the weird light of the beam of radiation shifted in a fantastic playof colors. It made a strange and impressive scene. 

Suddenly the relay sounded again; the beam of radiance disappeared asquickly as it had come. In an instant, the blue violet glare of therelux plate had subsided to an angry red. The violent arcing hadstopped, and the metal was cooling rapidly. A heavy purplish vapor inthe crucible condensed on the walls into black, flakey crystals. 

The elder Arcot was watching the scene in the screen curiously. "Iwonder--" he said slowly. "As a physicist, I should say it wasimpossible, but if it did happen, I should imagine these would be theresults. " He turned to look at Arcot junior. "Well, go on with yourexhibition, son. "

"I want to know your ideas when we're through, though, Dad, " said theyounger man. "The next on the program is a little more interesting, perhaps. At least it demonstrates a more commercial aspect of thething. "

The younger Morey was operating the controls of the handling robots. Onthe screen, a machine rolled in on caterpillar treads, picked up the luxcase and its contents, and carried them off. 

A minute later, it reappeared with a large electromagnet and a reluxplate, to which were attached a huge pair of silver busbars. The reluxplate was set in a stand directly in front of the projector, and thebig electromagnet was set up directly behind the relux plate. The magnetleads were connected, and a coil, in the form of two torusesintersecting at right angles enclosed in a form-fitting relux case, hadbeen connected to the heavy terminals of the relux plate. An ammeter anda heavy coil of coronium wire were connected in series with the coil, and a kilovoltmeter was connected across the terminals of the reluxplate. 

As soon as the connections were completed, the robot backed swiftly outof the room, and Arcot turned on the magnet and the ray projector. Instantly, there was a sharp deflection of the kilovoltmeter. 

"I haven't yet closed the switch leading into the coil, " he explained, "so there's no current. " The ammeter needle hadn't moved. 

Despite the fact that the voltmeter seemed to be shorted out by therelux plate, the needle pointed steadily at twenty-two. Arcot changedthe current through the magnet, and the reading dropped to twenty. 

The rays had been on at very low power, the air only slightly ionized, but as Arcot turned a rheostat, the intensity increased, and the air inthe path of the beam shone with an intense blue. The relux plate, subject now to eddy currents, since there was no other path for theenergy to take, began to heat up rapidly. 

"I'm going to close the switch into the coil now, " said Arcot. "Watchthe meters. "

A relay snapped, and instantly the ammeter jumped to read 4500 amperes. The voltmeter gave a slight kick, then remained steady. The heavycoronium spring grew warm and began to glow dully, while the ammeterdropped slightly because of the increased resistance. The relux platecooled slightly, and the voltmeter remained steady. 

"The coil you see is storing the energy that is flowing into it, " Arcotexplained. "Notice that the coronium resistor is increasing itsresistance, but otherwise there is little increase in the back E. M. F. The energy is coming from the rays which strike the polarized reluxplate to give the current. "

He paused a moment to make slight adjustments in the controls, thenturned his attention back to the screen. 

The kilovoltmeter still read twenty. 

"Forty-five hundred amperes at twenty thousand volts, " the elder Arcotsaid softly. "Where is it going?"

"Take a look at the space within the right angle of the torus coils, "said Arcot junior. "It's getting dark in there despite the powerfullight shed by the ionized air. "

Indeed, the space within the twin coils was rapidly growing dark; it wasdarkening the image of the things behind it, oddly blurring theiroutlines. In a moment, the images were completely wiped out, and theregion within the coils was filled with a strangely solid blackness. 

"According to the instruments, " young Arcot said, "we have storedfifteen thousand kilowatt hours of energy in that coil and there seemsto be no limit to how much power we can get into it. Just from the powerit contains, that coil is worth about forty dollars right now, figuredat a quarter of a cent per kilowatt hour. 

"I haven't been using anywhere near the power I can get out of thisapparatus, either. Watch. " He threw another switch which shorted aroundthe coronium resistor and the ammeter, allowing the current to run intothe coil directly from the plate. 

"I don't have a direct reading on this, " he explained, "but an indirectreading from the magnetic field in that room shows a current of nearly a_hundred million amperes!_"

The younger Morey had been watching a panel of meters on the other sideof the screen. Suddenly, he shouted: "Cut it, Arcot! The conductors aresetting up a secondary field in the plate and causing trouble. "

Instantly, Arcot's hand went to a switch. A relay slammed open, and theray projector died. 

The power coil still held its field of enigmatic blackness. 

"Watch this, " Arcot instructed. Under his expert manipulation, a smallrobot handler rolled into the room. It had a pair of pliers clutched inone claw. The spectators watched the screen in fascination as the robotdrew back its arm and hurled the pliers at the black field with all itsmight. The pliers struck the blackness and rebounded as if they had hita rubber wall. Arcot caused the little machine to pick up the pliers andrepeat the process. 

Arcot grinned. "I've cut off the power to the coil. Unlike the ordinaryinduction coil, it isn't necessary to keep supplying power to the thing;it's a static condition. 

"You can see for yourself how much energy it holds. It's a handy littlegadget, isn't it?" He shut off the rest of the instruments and thetelevision screen, then turned to his father. 

"The demonstration is over. Got any theories, Dad?"

The elder Dr. Arcot frowned in thought. "The only thing I can think ofthat would produce an effect like that is a stream of positrons--orcontraterrene nuclei. That would explain not only the heating, but theelectrical display. 

"As far as the coil goes, that's easy to understand. Any energy storagedevice stores energy in the strain in space; here you can actually seethe strain in space. " Then he smiled at his son. "I see my ex-laboratoryassistant has come a long way. You've achieved controlled, usable atomicenergy through total annihilation of mass. Right?"

Arcot smiled back and nodded. "Right, Dad. "

"Son, I wonder if you'd give me your data sheets on that process. I'dlike to work out some of the mathematical problems involved. "

"Sure, Dad. But right now--" Arcot turned toward the elder Mr. Morey. "--I'm more interested in the mathematics of finance. We have aproposition to put to you, Mr. Morey, and that proposition, simplystated, is--"

Perhaps it was simply stated, but it took fully an hour for Arcot, Wade, and Morey to discuss the science of it with the two older men, andFuller spent another hour over the carefully drawn plans for the ship. 

At last, the elder Mr. Morey settled back and looked vacantly at theceiling. They were seated now in the conference room of TranscontinentalAirways. 

"Well, boys, " said Mr. Morey, "as usual, I'm in a position where I'mforced to yield. I might refuse financial backing, but you could sellany one of those gadgets for close to a billion dollars and finance theexpedition independently, or you could, with your names, request themoney publicly and back it that way. " He paused a moment. "I am, however, thinking more in terms of your safety than in terms of money. "There was another long pause, then he smiled at the four younger men. 

"I think, however, that we can trust you. Armed with cosmic andmolecular rays, you should be able to put up a fair scrap anywhere. Also, I have never detected any signs of feeblemindedness in any of you;I don't think you'll get yourselves in a jam you can't get out of. I'llback you. "

"I hate to interrupt your exuberance, " said the elder Dr. Arcot, "but Ishould like to know the name of this remarkable ship. "

"What?" asked Wade. "Name? Oh, it hasn't any. "

The elder Morey shook his head sadly. "That is indeed an importantoversight. If a crew of men can overlook so fundamental a thing, Iwonder if they _are_ to be trusted. "

"Well, what are we going to call it, then?" asked Arcot. 

"_Solarite II_ might do, " suggested Morey. "It will still be from theSolar System. "

"I think we should be more broadminded, " said Arcot. "We aren't going tostay in this system--not even in this galaxy. We might call it the_Galaxian_. "

"Did you say broadminded?" asked Wade. "Let's really be broad and callit the _Universite_ or something like that. Or, better yet, call it_Fluorine!_ That's everywhere in the universe and the most activeelement there is. This ship will go everywhere in the universe and bethe most active thing that ever existed!"

"A good name!" said the elder Morey. "That gets my vote!"

Young Arcot looked thoughtful. "That's mighty good--I like theidea--but it lacks ring. " He paused, then, looking up at the ceiling, repeated slowly:

 _"Alone, alone, all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea; Nor any saint took pity on My soul in agony. "_

He rose and walked over to the window, looking out where the brightpoints of light that were the stars of space rode high in the deepviolet of the moonlit sky. 

"The sea of all space--the sea of vastness that lies between thefar-flung nebulae--the mighty void--alone on a sea, the vastness ofwhich no man can imagine--alone--alone where no other man has been;alone, so far from all matter, from all mankind, that not even light, racing at billions of miles each day, could reach home in less than amillion years. " Arcot stopped and stood looking out of the window. 

Morey broke the silence. "_The Ancient Mariner. _" He paused. "'Alone'will certainly be right. I think that name takes all the prizes. "

Fuller nodded slowly. "I certainly agree. _The Ancient Mariner. _ It'skind of long, but it is _the_ name. "

It was adopted unanimously. 

IV

The _Ancient Mariner_ was built in the big Transcontinental shops inNewark; the power they needed was not available in the smaller shops. 

Working twenty-four hours a day, in three shifts, skilled men took twomonths to finish the hull according to Fuller's specifications. The hugewalls of lux metal required great care in construction, for they couldnot be welded; they had to be formed in position. And they could only bepolished under powerful magnets, where the dense magnetic field softenedthe lux metal enough to allow a diamond polisher to do the job. 

When the hull was finished, there came the laborious work of installingthe power plant and the tremendous power leads, the connectors, thecircuits to the relays--a thousand complex circuits. 

Much of it was standard: the molecular power tubes, the molecular rayprojectors, the power tubes for the invisibility apparatus, and manyother parts. All the relays were standard, the gyroscopic stabilizerswere standard, and the electromagnetic braking equipment for the gyroswas standard. 

But there would be long days of work ahead for Arcot, Wade, and Morey, for only they could install the special equipment; only they could putin the complicated wiring, for no one else on Earth understood thecircuits they had to establish. 

During the weeks of waiting, Arcot and his friends worked on auxiliarydevices to be used with the ship. They wanted to make some improvementson the old molecular ray pistols, and to develop atomic powered heatprojectors for hand use. The primary power they stored in smallspace-strain coils in the handgrip of the pistol. Despite their smallsize, the coils were capable of storing power for thirty hours ofcontinuous operation of the rays. The finished weapon was scarcelylarger than a standard molecular ray pistol. 

Arcot pointed out that many of the planets they might visit would belarger than Earth, and they lacked any way of getting about readilyunder high gravity. Since something had to be done about that, Arcot didit. He demonstrated it to his friends one day in the shop yard. 

Morey and Wade had just been in to see Fuller about some details of theship, and as they came out, Arcot called them over to his work bench. Hewas wearing a space suit without the helmet. 

The modern space suit is made of woven lux metal wires of extremelysmall diameter and airproofed with a rubberoid fluorocarbon plastic, andfurnished with air and heating units. Made as it was, it offeredprotection nothing else could offer; it was almost a perfect insulatorand was resistant to the attack of any chemical reagent. Not evenelemental fluorine could corrode it. And the extreme strength of the luxmetal fiber made it stronger, pound for pound, than steel or coronium. 

On Arcot's back was a pack of relux plated metal. It was connected byrelux web belts to a broad belt that circled Arcot's waist. One thincable ran down the right arm to a small relux tube about eight incheslong by two inches in diameter. 

"Watch!" Arcot said, grinning. 

He reached to his belt and flipped a little switch. 

"So long! See you later!" He pointed his right arm toward the ceilingand sailed lightly into the air. He lowered the angle of his arm andmoved smoothly across the huge hangar, floating toward the shining bulkof the rapidly forming _Ancient Mariner_. He circled the room, risingand sinking at will, then headed for the open door. 

"Come out and watch me where there's more room, " he called. 

Out in the open, he darted high up into the air until he was a merespeck in the sky. Then he suddenly came dropping down and landed lightlybefore them, swaying on his feet and poised lightly on his toes. 

"Some jump, " said Morey, in mock surprise. 

"Yeah, " agreed Fuller. "Try again. "

"Or, " Wade put in, "give me that weight annihilator and I'll beat you atyour own game. What's the secret?"

"That's a cute gadget. How much load does it carry?" asked Morey, morepractically. 

"I can develop about ten tons as far as it goes, but the human bodycan't take more than five gravities, so we can only visit planets withless than that surface gravity. The principle is easy to see; I'll showyou. "

He unhooked the cables and took the power pack from his back. "The mainthing is the molecular power unit here, electrically heated and mountedon a small, massive gyroscope. That gyro is necessary, too. I triedleaving it out and almost took a nosedive. I had it coupled directly tothe body and leaned forward a little bit when I was in the air. Withouta gyro to keep the drive upright, I took a loop and started heading forthe ground. I had to do some fancy gymnastics to keep from ending up sixfeet under--literally. 

"The power is all generated in the pack with a small power plate andseveral storage coils. I've also got it hooked to these holsters at mybelt so we can charge the pistols while we carry them. 

"The control is this secondary power cable running down my arm to myhand. That gives you your direction, and the rheostat here at the beltchanges the velocity. 

"I've only made this one so far, but I've ordered six others like it. Ithought you guys might like one, too. "

"I think you guessed right!" said Morey, looking inside the power case. "Hey! Why all the extra room in the case?"

"It's an unperfected invention as yet; we might want to put some morestuff in there for our own private use. "

Each of the men tried out the apparatus and found it quite satisfactory. 

Meanwhile, there was other work to be done. 

Wade had been given the job of gathering the necessary food and anythingelse in the way of supplies that he might think of. Arcot was collectingthe necessary spare parts and apparatus. Morey was gathering a smalllibrary and equipping a chemistry laboratory. Fuller was to get togetherthe necessary standard equipment for the ship--tables, seats, bunks, andother furniture. 

It took months of work, and it seemed it would never be finished, butfinally, one clear, warm day in August, the ship was completely equippedand ready to go. 

On the last inspection, the elder Dr. Arcot and the elder Mr. Morey wentwith the four younger men. They stood beside the great intergalacticcruiser, looking up at its shining hull. 

"We came a bit later than we expected, son, " said Dr. Arcot, "but westill expect a good show. " He paused and frowned, "I understand youdon't intend to take any trial trip. What's the idea?"

Arcot had been afraid his father would be worried about that, so heframed his explanation carefully. "Dad, we figured this ship out to thelast decimal place; it's the best we can make it. Remember, themolecular motion drive will get a trial first; we'll give it a trialtrip when we leave the sun. If there's any trouble, naturally, we'llreturn. But the equipment is standard, so we're expecting no trouble. 

"The only part that would require a trial trip is the space-controlapparatus, and there's no way to give that a trial trip. Remember, wehave to get far enough out from the sun so that the gravitational fieldwill be weak enough for the drive to overcome it. If we tried it thisclose, we'd just be trying to neutralize the sun's gravity. We'd bepouring out energy, wasting a great deal of it; but out away from thesun, we'll get most of the energy back. 

"On the other hand, when we do get out and get started we will go fasterthan light, and we'd be hopelessly beyond the range of the molecularmotion drive in an instant. In other words, if the space-control drivedoesn't work, we can't come back, and if it does work, there's no needto come back. 

"And if anything goes wrong, we're the only ones who could fix it, anyway. If anything goes wrong, I'll radio Earth. You ought to be ableto hear from me in about a dozen years. " He smiled suddenly. "Say! Wemight go out and get back here in time to hear ourselves talking!

"But you can see why we felt that there was little reason for a trialtrip. If it's a failure, we'll never be back to say so; if it isn't, we'll be able to continue. "

His father still looked worried, but he nodded in acquiescence. "Perfectlogic, son, but I guess we may as well give up the discussion. Personally, I don't like it. Let's see this ship of yours. "

The great hull was two hundred feet long and thirty feet in diameter. The outer wall, one foot of solid lux metal, was separated from theinner, one-inch relux wall by a two inch gap which would be evacuated inspace. The two walls were joined in many places by small lux metalcross-braces. The windows consisted of spaces in the relux wall, allowing the occupants to see through the transparent lux hull. 

From the outside, it was difficult to detect the exact outline of theship, for the clear lux metal was practically invisible and the foot ofit that surrounded the more visible part of the ship gave a curiousoptical illusion. The perfect reflecting ability of the relux made theinner hull difficult to see, too. It was more by absence than presencethat one detected it; it blotted out things behind it. 

The great window of the pilot room disclosed the pilot seats and thegreat switchboard to one side. Each of the windows was equipped with arelux shield that slid into position at the touch of a switch, and thesewere already in place over the observatory window, so only the long, narrow portholes showed the lighted interior. 

For some minutes, the elder men stood looking at the graceful beauty ofthe ship. 

"Come on in--see the inside, " suggested Fuller. 

They entered through the airlock close to the base of the ship. Theheavy lux door was opened by automatic machinery from the inside, butthe combination depended on the use of a molecular ray and the knowledgeof the correct place, which made it impossible for anyone to open itunless they had the ray and knew where to use it. 

From the airlock, they went directly to the power room. Here they heardthe soft purring of a large oscillator tube and the indistinguishablemurmur of smoothly running AC generators powered by large contraterrenereactors. 

The elder Dr. Arcot glanced in surprise at the heavy-duty ammeter in acontrol panel. 

"Half a billion amperes! Good Lord! Where is all that power going?" Helooked at his son. 

"Into the storage coils. It's going in at ten kilovolts, so that's afive billion kilowatt supply. It's been going for half an hour and hashalf an hour to run. It takes two tons of matter to charge the coil tocapacity, and we're carrying twenty tons of fuel--enough for tencharges. We shouldn't need more than three tons if all goes well, but'all' seldom does. 

"See that large black cylinder up there?" Arcot asked, pointing. 

Above them, lying along the roof of the power room, lay a great blackcylinder nearly two feet in diameter and extending out through the wallin the rear. It was made integral with two giant lux metal beams thatreached to the bow of the ship in a long, sweeping curve. From one ofthe power switchboards, two heavy cables ran up to the giant cylinder. 

"That's the main horizontal power unit. We can develop an accelerationof ten gravities either forward or backward. In the curve of the ship, on top, sides, and bottom, there are power units for motion in the othertwo directions. 

"Most of the rest of the stuff in this section is old hat to you, though. Come on into the next room. "

Arcot opened the heavy relux door, leading the way into the next room, which was twice the size of the power room. The center of the floor wasoccupied by a heavy pedestal of lux metal upon which was a huge, relux-encased, double torus storage coil. There was a large switchboardat the opposite end, while around the room, in ordered groups, stood thefamiliar double coils, each five feet in diameter. The space within themwas already darkening. 

"Well, " said Arcot, senior, "that's some battery of power coils, considering the amount of energy one can store. But what's the big onefor?"

"That's the main space control, " the younger Arcot answered. "While ourpower is stored in the smaller ones, we can shoot it into this one, which, you will notice, is constructed slightly differently. Instead ofholding the field within it, completely enclosed, the big one willaffect all the space about it. We will then be enclosed in what might becalled a hyperspace of our own making. "

"I see, " said his father. "You go into hyperspace and move at any speedyou please. But how will you see where you're going?"

"We won't, as far as I know. I don't expect to see a thing while we'rein that hyperspace. We'll simply aim the ship in the direction we wantto go and then go into hyperspace. The only thing we have to avoid isstars; their gravitational fields would drain the energy out of theapparatus and we'd end up in the center of a white-hot star. Meteors andsuch, we don't have to worry about; their fields aren't strong enough todrain the coils, and since we won't be in normal space, we can't hitthem. "

The elder Morey looked worried. "If you can't see your way back you'llget lost! And you can't radio back for help. "

"Worse than that!" said Arcot. "We couldn't receive a signal of any kindafter we get more than three hundred light years away; there weren't anyradios before that. 

"What we'll do is locate ourselves through the sun's light. We'll takephotographs every so often and orient ourselves by them when we comeback. "

"That sounds like an excellent method of stellar navigation, " agreedMorey senior. "Let's see the rest of the ship. " He turned and walkedtoward the farther door. 

The next room was the laboratory. On one side of the room was a completephysics lab and on the other was a well-stocked and well-equippedchemistry lab. They could perform many experiments here that no man hadbeen able to perform due to lack of power. In this ship they had moregenerating facilities than all the power stations of Earth combined!

Arcot opened the next door. "This next room is the physics and chemistrystoreroom. Here we have a duplicate--in some cases, six or sevenduplicates--of every piece of apparatus on board, and plenty of materialto make more. Actually, we have enough equipment to make a new ship outof what we have here. It would be a good deal smaller, but it wouldwork. 

"The greater part of our materials is stored in the curvature of theship, where it will be easy to get at if necessary. All our water andfood is there, and the emergency oxygen tanks. 

"Now let's take the stairway to the upper deck. "

The upper deck was the main living quarters. There were several smallrooms on each side of the corridor down the center; at the extreme nosewas the control room, and at the extreme stern was the observatory. Theobservatory was equipped with a small but exceedingly powerfultelectroscope, developed from those the Nigrans had left on one of thedeserted planets Sol had captured in return for the loss of Pluto to theBlack Star. The arc commanded by the instrument was not great, but itwas easy to turn the ship about, and most of their observations could bemade without trouble. 

Each of the men had a room of his own; there was a small galley and alibrary equipped with all the books the four men could think of as beinguseful. The books and all other equipment were clamped in place to keepthem from flying around loose when the ship accelerated. 

The control room at the nose was surrounded by a hemisphere oftransparent lux metal which enabled them to see in every directionexcept directly behind, and even that blind spot could be covered bystationing a man in the observatory. 

There were heat projectors and molecular ray projectors, each operatedfrom the control room in the nose. To complete the armament, there weremore projectors in the stern, controlled from the observatory, and aset on either side controlled from the library and the galley. 

The ship was provisioned for two years--two years without stops. Withthe possibility of stopping on other planets, the four men could existindefinitely in the ship. 

After the two older men had been shown all through the intergalacticvessel, the elder Arcot turned to his old friend. "Morey, it looks as ifit was time for us to leave the _Ancient Mariner_ to her pilots!"

"I guess you're right. Well--I'll just say goodbye--but you all knowthere's a lot more I could say. " Morey senior looked at them and startedtoward the airlock. 

"Goodbye, son, " said the elder Arcot. "Goodbye, men. I'll be expectingyou any time within two years. We can have no warning, I suppose; yourship will outrace the radio beam. Goodbye. " Dr. Arcot joined his oldfriend and they went outside. 

The heavy lux metal door slid into place behind them, and the thickplastic cushions sealed the entrance to the airlock. 

The workmen and the other personnel around the ship cleared the area andstood well back from the great hull. The two older men waved to the meninside the ship. 

Suddenly the ship trembled, and rose toward the sky. 

V

Arcot, at the controls of the _Ancient Mariner_, increased theacceleration as the ship speared up toward interplanetary space. Soon, the deep blue of the sky had given way to an intense violet, and thisfaded to the utter black of space as the ship drew away from the planetthat was its home. 

"That lump of dust there is going to look mighty little when we getback, " said Wade softly. 

"But, " Arcot reminded him, "that little lump of dust is going to pull usacross a distance that our imaginations can't conceive of. And we'll bedarned happy to see that pale globe swinging in space when we getback--provided, of course, that we do get back. "

The ship was straining forward now under the pull of its molecularmotion power units, accelerating at a steady rate, rapidly increasingthe distance between the ship and Earth. 

The cosmic ray power generators were still charging the coils, preventing the use of the space strain drive. Indeed, it would be a goodmany hours before they would be far enough from the sun to throw theship into hyperspace. 

In the meantime, Morey was methodically checking every control as Arcotcalled out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working toperfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test was yet to come. 

They were well beyond the orbit of Pluto when they decided they would besafe in using the space strain drive and throwing the ship intohyperspace. 

Morey was in the hyperspace control room, watching the instrumentsthere. They were ready!

"Hold on!" called Arcot. "Here we go--if at all!" He reached out to thecontrol panel before him and touched the green switch that controlledthe molecular motion machines. The big power tubes cut off, and theiracceleration ceased. His fingers pushed a brilliant red switch--therewas a dull, muffled thud as a huge relay snapped shut. 

Suddenly, a strange tingling feeling of power ran through them--spacearound them was suddenly black. The lights dimmed for an instant as thetitanic current that flowed through the gigantic conductors set up aterrific magnetic field, reacting with the absorption plates. The powerseemed to climb rapidly to a maximum--then, quite suddenly, it wasgone. 

The ship was quiet. No one spoke. The meters, which had flashed over totheir limits, had dropped back to zero once more, except those whichindicated the power stored in the giant coil. The stars that had shonebrilliantly around them in a myriad of colors were gone. The spacearound them glowed strangely, and there was a vast cloud of strange, violet or pale green stars before them. Directly ahead was one greenstar that glowed big and brilliant, then it faded rapidly and shrank toa tiny dot--a distant star. There was a strange tenseness about the men;they seemed held in an odd, compelled silence. 

Arcot reached forward again. "Cutting off power, Morey!" The red tumblersnapped back. Again space seemed to be charged with a vast surplus ofenergy that rushed in from all around, coursing through their bodies, producing a tingling feeling. Then space rocked in a gray cloud aboutthem; the stars leaped out at them in blazing glory again. 

"Well, it worked once!" breathed Arcot with a sigh of relief. "Lord, Imade some errors in calculation, though! I hope I didn't make any more!Morey--how was it? I only used one-sixteenth power. "

"Well, don't use any more, then, " said Morey. "We sure traveled! Thethings worked perfectly. By the way, it's a good thing we had all therelays magnetically shielded; the magnetic field down here was so strongthat my pocket kit tried to start running circles around it. 

"According to your magnetic drag meter, the conductors were carryingover fifty billion amperes. The small coils worked perfectly. They'recharged again; the power went back into them from the big coil with onlya five percent loss of power--about twenty thousand megawatts. "

"Hey, Arcot, " Wade said. "I thought you said we wouldn't be able to seethe stars. "

Arcot spread his hands. "I did say that, and all my apologies for it. But we're not seeing them by light. The stars all haveprojections--shadows--in this space because of their intensegravitational fields. There are probably slight fluctuations in thefield, perhaps one every minute or so. Since we were approaching them attwenty thousand times the speed of light, the Doppler effect gives uswhat looks like violet light. 

"We saw the stars in front of us as violet points. The green ones wereactually behind us, and the green light was tremendously reduced infrequency. It certainly can't be anything less than gamma rays andprobably even of greater frequency. 

"Did you notice there were no stars off to the side? We weren'tapproaching them, so they didn't give either effect. "

"How did you know which was which?" asked Fuller skeptically. 

"Did you see that green star directly ahead of us?" Arcot asked. "Theone that dwindled so rapidly? That could only have been the sun, sincethe sun was the only star close enough to show up as a disc. Since itwas green and I knew it was behind us, I decided that all the green oneswere behind us. It isn't proof, but it's a good indication. "

"You win, as usual, " admitted Fuller. 

"Well, where are we?" asked Wade. "I think that's more important. "

"I haven't the least idea, " confessed Arcot. "Let's see if we can findout. I've got the robot pilot on, so we can leave the ship to itself. Let's take a look at Old Sol from a distance that no man ever reachedbefore!"

They started for the observatory. Morey joined them and Arcot put theview of Sol and his family on the telectroscope screen. He increased themagnification to maximum, and the four men looked eagerly at the system. The sun glowed brilliantly, and the planets showed plainly. 

"Now, if we wanted to take the trouble, we could calculate when theplanets were in that position and determine the distance we have come. However, I notice that Pluto is still in place, so that means we areseeing the Solar System as it was before the passing of the Black Star. We're at least two light years away. "

"More than that, " said Morey. He pointed at the screen. "See here, howMars is placed in relation to Venus and Earth? The planets were in thatconfiguration seven years ago. We're seven light years from Earth. "

"Good enough!" Arcot grinned. "That means we're within two light yearsof Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the shipso we can take a look at it with the telectroscope. "

Since the power had been cut off, the ship was in free fall, and the menwere weightless. Arcot didn't try to walk toward the control room; hesimply pushed against the wall with his feet and made a long, slow divefor his destination. 

The others reached for the handgrips in the walls while Arcot swung theship gently around so that its stern was pointed toward Sirius. Becauseof its brilliance and relative proximity to Sol, Sirius is the brighteststar in the heavens, as seen from Earth. At this much lesser distance, it shone as a brilliant point of light that blazed wonderfully. Theyturned the telectroscope toward it, but there was little they could seethat was not visible from the big observatory on the Moon. 

"I think we may as well go nearer, " suggested Morey, "and see what wefind on close range observation. Meanwhile, turn the ship back aroundand I'll take some pictures of the sun and its surrounding star fieldfrom this distance. Our only way of getting back is going to be thisseries of pictures, so I think we had best make it complete. For thefirst light century, we ought to take a picture every ten light years, and after that one each light century until we reach a point where weare only getting diminishing pictures of the local star cluster. Afterthat, we can wait until we reach the edge of the Galaxy. "

"Sounds all right to me, " agreed Arcot. "After all, you're theastronomer, I'm not. To tell you the truth, I'd have to search a whileto find Old Sol again. I can't see just where he is. Of course, I couldlocate him by means of the gyroscope settings, but I'm afraid I wouldn'tfind him so easily visually. "

"Say! You sure are a fine one to pilot an expedition in space!" criedWade in mock horror. "I think we ought to demote him for that! Imagine!He plans a trip of a thousand million light years, and then gets us outseven light years and says he doesn't know where he is! Doesn't evenknow where home is! I'm glad we have a cautious man like Morey along. "He shook his head sadly. 

They took a series of six plates of the sun, using differentmagnifications. 

"These plates will help prove our story, too, " said Morey as he lookedat the finished plates. "We might have gone only a little way intospace, up from the plane of the ecliptic and taken plates through a wideangle camera. But we'd have had to go at least seven years into the pastto get a picture like this. "

The new self-developing short-exposure plates, while not in perfectcolor balance, were more desirable for this work, since they took lesstime on exposure. 

Morey and the others joined Arcot in the control room and strappedthemselves into the cushioned seats. Since the space strain mechanismhad proved itself in the first test, they felt they needed no moreobservations than they could make from the control room meters. 

Arcot gazed out at the spot that was their immediate goal and saidslowly: "How much bigger than Sol is that star, Morey?"

"It all depends on how you measure size, " Morey replied. "It is two anda half times as heavy, has four times the volume, and radiatestwenty-five times as much light. In other words, one hundred milliontons of matter disappear each second in that star. 

"That's for Sirius A, of course. Sirius B, its companion, is a differentmatter; it's a white dwarf. It has only oneone-hundred-twenty-five-thousandths the volume of Sirius A, but itweighs _one third_ as much. It radiates more per square inch than oursun, but, due to its tiny size, it is very faint. That star, thoughalmost as massive as the sun, is only about the size of Earth. "

"You sure have those statistics down pat!" said Fuller, laughing. "ButI must say they're interesting. What's that star made of, anyway? Solidlux metal?"

"Hardly!" Morey replied. "Lux metal has a density of around 103, whilethis star has a density so high that one cubic inch of its matter wouldweigh a ton on Earth. "

"Wow!" Wade ejaculated. "I'd hate to drop a baseball on my toe on thatstar!"

"It wouldn't hurt you, " Arcot said, smiling. "If you could lift thedarned thing, you ought to be tough enough to stand dropping it on yourtoe. Remember, it would weigh about two hundred tons! Think you couldhandle it?"

"At any rate, here we go. When we get there, you can get out and tryit. "

Again came the shock of the start. The heavens seemed to reel aboutthem; the bright spot of Sirius was a brilliant violet point thatswelled like an expanding balloon, spreading out until it filled a largeangle. 

Then again the heavens reeled, and they were still. The control room wasfilled with a dazzling splendor of brilliant blue-white light, and anintense heat beat in upon them. 

"Brother! Feel that heat, " said Arcot in awe. "We'd better watchourselves; that thing is giving off plenty of ultraviolet. We could endup with third-degree sunburns if we're not careful. " Suddenly he stoppedand looked around in surprise. "Hey! Morey! I thought you said this wasa double star! Look over there! That's no white dwarf--_it's a planet_!"

"Ridiculous!" snapped Morey. "It's impossible for a planet to be inequilibrium about a double star! But--" He paused, bewildered. "But itis a planet! But--but it can't be! We've made too many measurements onthis star to make it possible!"

"I don't give a hang whether it can or not, " Wade said coolly, "the factremains that it is. Looks as if that shoots a whole flock of holes inthat bedtime story you were telling us about a superdense star. "

"I make a motion we look more closely first, " said Fuller, quitelogically. 

But at first the telectroscope only served to confuse them more. It wasmost certainly a planet, and they had a strange, vague feeling of havingseen it before. 

Arcot mentioned this, and Wade launched into a long, pedantic discussionof how the left and right hemispheres of the brain get out of step attimes, causing a sensation of having seen a thing before when it wasimpossible to have seen it previously. 

Arcot gave Wade a long, withering stare and then pushed himself into thelibrary without saying a word. A moment later, he was back with a largevolume entitled: "_The Astronomy of the Nigran Invasion_, " by _D. K. Harkness_. He opened the volume to a full-page photograph of the thirdplanet of the Black Star as taken from a space cruiser circling theplanet. Silently, he pointed to it and to the image swimming on thescreen of the telectroscope. 

"Good Lord!" said Wade in astonished surprise. "It's impossible! We camehere faster than light, and that planet got here first!"

"As you so brilliantly remarked a moment ago, " Arcot pointed out, "Idon't give a hang whether it can or not--it is. How they did it, I don'tknow, but it does clear up a number of things. According to the recordswe found, the ancient Nigrans had a force ray that could move planetsfrom their orbits. I wonder if it couldn't be used to break up a doublestar? Also, we know their scientists were looking for a method of movingfaster than light; if we can do it, so could they. They just moved theirwhole system of planets over here after getting rid of the upsettinginfluence of the white dwarf. "

"Perfect!" exclaimed Morey enthusiastically. "It explains everything. "

"Except that we saw that companion star when we stopped back there, halfan hour ago, " said Fuller. 

"Not half an hour ago, " Arcot contradicted. "Two years ago. We saw thelight that left the companion before it was moved. It's rather liketraveling in time. "

"If that's so, " asked Fuller, suddenly worried, "what is our time inrelation to Earth?"

"If we moved by the space-strain drive at all times, " Arcot explained, "we would return at exactly the same time we left. Time is passingnormally on Earth as it is with us right now, but whenever we use thespace-strain, we move instantaneously from one point to another as faras Earth and the rest of the universe is concerned. It seems to taketime to us because we are within the influence of the field. 

"Suppose we were to take a trip that required a week. In other words, three days traveling in space-strain, a day to look at the destination, and three more days coming back. When we returned to Earth, they wouldinsist we had only been gone one day, the time we spent out of thedrive. See?"

"I catch, " said Fuller. "By the way, shouldn't we take some photographsof this system? Otherwise, Earth won't get the news for several yearsyet. "

"Right, " agreed Morey. "And we might as well look for the other planetsof the Black Star, too. "

They made several plates, continuing their observations until all theplanets had been located, even old Pluto, where crews of Nigrantechnicians were obviously at work, building giant structures of luxmetal. The great cities of the Nigrans were beginning to bloom on theonce bleak plains of the planet. The mighty blaze of Sirius had warmedPluto, vaporizing its atmosphere and thawing its seas. The planet thatthe Black Star had stolen from the Solar System was warmer than it hadbeen for two billion years. 

"Well, that's it, " said Arcot when they had finished taking thenecessary photographs. "We can prove we went faster than light easily, now. The astronomers can take up the work of classifying the planets andgetting details of the orbits when we get back. 

"Since the Nigrans now have a sun of their own, there should be noreason for hostility between our race and theirs. Perhaps we can startcommercial trade with them. Imagine! Commerce over quintillions of milesof space!"

"And, " interrupted Wade, "they can make the trip to this system in lesstime than it takes to get to Venus!"

"Meanwhile, " said Morey, "let's get on with our own exploration. "

They strapped themselves into the control seats once more and Arcotthrew in the molecular drive to take them away from the sun toward whichthey had been falling. 

When the great, hot disc of Sirius had once more diminished to a tinywhite pinhead of light, Arcot turned the ship until old Sol once moreshowed plainly on the cross-hairs of the aiming telescope in the rearof the vessel. 

"Hold on, " Arcot cautioned, "here we go again!"

Again he threw the little red tumbler that threw a flood of energy intothe coils. The space about them seemed to shiver and grow dim. 

Arcot had thrown more power into the coils this time, so the stars aheadof them instead of appearing violet were almost invisible; they wereradiating in the ultra-violet now. And the stars behind them, instead ofappearing to be green, had subsided to a dull red glow. 

Arcot watched the dull red spark of Sirius become increasingly dimmer. Then, quite suddenly, a pale violet disc in front of them ballooned outof nowhere and slid off to one side. 

The spaceship reeled, perking the men around in the control seats. Heavysafety relays thudded dully; the instruments flickered under a suddenlyrising surge of power--then they were calm again. Arcot had snapped overthe power switch. 

"That, " he said quietly, "is not so good. "

"Threw the gyroscopes, didn't it?" asked Morey, his voice equally asquiet. 

"It did--and I have no idea how far. We're off course and we don't knowwhich direction we're headed. "

VI

"What's the matter?" asked Fuller anxiously. 

Arcot pointed out the window at a red star that blazed in the distance. "We got too near the field of gravity of that young giant and he threwus for a loss. We drained out three-fourths of the energy from our coilsand lost our bearings in the bargain. The attraction turned thegyroscopes and threw the ship out of line, so we no longer know wherethe sun is. 

"Well, come on, Morey; all we can do is start a search. At thisdistance, we'd best go by Sirius; it's brighter and nearer. " He lookedat the instrument panel. "I was using the next lowest power and I stillcouldn't avoid that monster. This ship is just a little _too_ hot tohandle. "

Their position was anything but pleasant. They must pick out from thevast star field behind them the one star that was home, not knowingexactly where it was. But they had one tremendous help--the photographsof the star field around Sol that they had taken at the last stop. Allthey had to do was search for an area that matched their photographs. 

They found the sun at last, after they had spotted Sirius, but they hadhad to rotate the ship through nearly twenty-five degrees to do it. After establishing their bearings, they took new photographs for theirfiles. 

Meanwhile, Wade had been recharging the coils. When he was finished, hereported the fact to Arcot. 

"Fine, " Arcot said. "And from now on, I'm going to use the leastpossible amount of power. It certainly isn't safe to use more. "

They started for the control room, much relieved. Arcot dived first, with Wade directly behind him. Wade decided suddenly to go into his roomand stopped himself by grabbing a handhold. Morey, following closebehind, bumped into him and was brought to rest, while Wade was pushedinto his room. 

But Fuller, coming last, slammed into Morey, who moved forward with newvelocity toward the control room, leaving Fuller hanging at rest in themiddle of the corridor. 

"Hey, Morey!" he laughed. "Send me a skyhook! I'm caught!" Isolated ashe was in the middle of the corridor, he couldn't push on anything andremained stranded. 

"Go to sleep!" advised Morey. "It's the most comfortable bed you'llfind!"

Wade looked out of his room just then. "Well, if it isn't oldWeakmuscles Fuller! Weighs absolutely nothing and is still so weak hecan't push himself around. "

"Come on, though, Morey--give me a hand--I got you off dead center. "Fuller flailed his hand helplessly. 

"Use your brains, if you have any, " said Morey, "and see what you cando. Come on, Wade--we're going. "

Since they were going to use the space control, they would remain infree fall, and Fuller would remain helplessly suspended in mid-air. 

The air of the ship suddenly seemed supercharged with energy as thespace around them became gray; then the stars were all before them. Theship was moving forward again. 

"Well, old pals, " said Fuller, "at least I have traffic blocked fairlywell if I feel like it, so eventually you'd have to help me. However--"He floundered clumsily as he removed one of his foam-rubber space-boots, "--my brains tell me that action is equal and opposite to reaction!" Andhe threw the boot with all possible velocity toward Morey!

The reaction of the motion brought him slowly but surely to a handholdin the wall. 

In the meantime, the flying boot caught Morey in the chest with apronounced _smack_! as he struggled vainly to avoid it. Handicapped bythe lack of friction, his arms were not quite powerful enough to movehis mass as quickly as his legs might have done, for his inertia was asgreat as ever, so he didn't succeed in ducking. 

"Round one!" called Arcot, laughing. "Won by Kid Fuller on a TKO! Itappears he has brains and knows how to use them!"

"You win, " laughed Morey. "I concede the battle!"

Arcot had cut off the space-strain drive by the time Fuller reached thecontrol room, and the men set about making more observations. They tookadditional photographs and turned on the drive again. 

Time passed monotonously after they had examined a few stars. There waslittle difference; each was but a scene of flaming matter. There waslittle interest in this work, and, as Fuller remarked, this was supposedto be a trip of exploration, not observation. They weren't astronomers;they were on a vacation. Why all the hard work? They couldn't do as gooda job as an experienced astronomer, so they decided to limit theirobservations to those necessary to retrace their path to Earth. 

"But we want to investigate for planets to land on, don't we?" askedMorey. 

"Sure, " agreed Fuller. "But do we have to hunt at random for them? Can'twe look for stars like our own sun? Won't they be more apt to haveplanets like Sol's?"

"It's an idea, " replied Morey. 

"Well, why not try it then?" Fuller continued logically. "Let's pick outa G-0 type sun and head for it. "

They were now well out toward the edge of the Galaxy, some thirtythousand light years from home. Since they had originally headed outalong the narrow diameter of the lens-shaped mass of stars that formsour Island Universe, they would reach the edge soon. 

"We won't have much chance of finding a G-0 this far out, " Arcot pointedout. "We're about out of stars. We've left most of the Galaxy behindus. "

"Then let's go on to another of the galactic nebulae, " said Morey, looking out into the almost unbroken night of intergalactic space. Onlyhere and there could they see a star, separated from its nearestneighbor by thousands of light years of empty space. 

"You know, " said Wade slowly, "I've been wondering about the progressalong scientific lines that a race out here might make. I mean, supposethat one of those lonely stars had planets, and suppose intelligent lifeevolved on one of those planets. I think their progress would be muchslower. "

"I see what you mean, " Arcot said. "To us, of Earth, the stars aregigantic furnaces a few light years away. They're titanic tests tubes ofnature, with automatic reading devices attached, hung in the sky for usto watch. We have learned more about space from the stars than all theexperiments of the physicists of Earth ever secured for us. It was inthe atoms of the suns that we first counted the rate of revolutions ofthe electrons about their nuclei. "

"Couldn't they have watched their own sun?" Fuller asked. 

"Sure, but what could they compare it with? They couldn't see a whitedwarf from here. They couldn't measure the parallax to the nearest star, so they would have no idea of stellar distances. They wouldn't know howbright S Doradus was. Or how dim Van Maanen's star was. "

"Then, " Fuller said speculatively, "they'd have to wait until one oftheir scientists invented the telectroscope. "

Arcot shook his head. "Without a knowledge of nuclear physics, theinvention of the telectroscope is impossible. The lack of opportunity towatch the stars that might teach them something would delay theirknowledge of atomic structure. They might learn a great deal aboutchemistry and Newtonian physics, and go quite a ways with math, but eventhere they would be handicapped. Morey, for instance, would never havedeveloped the autointegral calculus, to say nothing of tensor and spinorcalculus, which were developed two hundred years ago, without theknowledge of the problems of space to develop the need. I'm afraid sucha race would be quite a bit behind us in science. 

"Suppose, on the other hand, we visit a race that's far ahead of us. We'd better not stay there long; think what they might do to us. Theymight decide our ship was too threatening and simply wipe us out. Orthey might even be so far advanced that we would mean nothing to them atall--like ants or little squalling babies. " Arcot laughed at thethought. 

"That isn't a very complimentary picture, " objected Fuller. "With thewonderful advances we've made, there just isn't that much left to beable to say we're so little. "

"Fuller, I'm surprised at you!" Arcot said. "Today, we are only openingour eyes on the world of science. Our race has only a few thousand yearsbehind it and hundreds of millions yet to come. How can any man oftoday, with his freshly-opened eyes of science, take in the mightypyramid of knowledge that will be built up in those long, long years ofthe future? It's too gigantic to grasp; we can't imagine the things thatthe ever-expanding mind of man will discover. "

Arcot's voice slowed, and a far-off look came in his eyes. 

"You might say there can be no greater energy than that of matterannihilation. I doubt that. I have seen hints of something new--anenergy so vast--so transcendently tremendous--that it frightens me. Theenergies of all the mighty suns of all the galaxies--of the wholecosmos--in the hand of man! The energy of a billion billion billionsuns! And every sun pouring out its energy at the rate of quintillionsof horsepower every instant!

"But it's too great for man to have--I am going to forget it, lest manbe destroyed by his own might. "

Arcot's halting speech told of his intense thought--of a dream of suchawful energies as man had never before conceived. His eyes lookedunseeing at the black velvet of space with its few, scattered stars. 

"But we're here to decide which way to go, " he added with a suddenbriskness as he straightened his shoulders. "Every now and then, I get anew idea and I--I sort of dream. That's when I'm most likely to see thesolution. I think I know the solution now, but unless the need arises, I'm never going to use it. It's too dangerous a toy. "

There was silence for a moment, then Morey said, quietly:

"I've got a course plotted for us. We'll leave this Galaxy at a steepangle--about forty-five degrees from the Galactic plane--to give us agood view of our own Galaxy. And we can head for one of the nebulae inthat general area. What do you say?"

"I say, " remarked Fuller, "that some of the great void without seems tohave leaked into my own poor self. It's been thirty thousand years sinceI am going to have a meal this morning--whatever it is I mean--and Iwant another. " He looked meaningfully at Wade, the official cook of theexpedition. 

Arcot suddenly burst out laughing. "So that's what I've been wanting!"It had been ten chronometer hours since they had eaten, but since theyhad been outracing light, they were now thirty thousand years in Earth'spast. 

The weightlessness of free fall makes it difficult to recognize normallyfamiliar sensations, and the feeling of hunger is one of them. There waslittle enough work to be done, so there was no great need fornourishment, but the ordinary sensation of hunger is not caused by lackof nourishment, but an empty stomach. 

Sleep was another problem. A restless body will not permit a tired brainto sleep, and though they had done a great deal of hard mental work, thelack of physical fatigue made sleep difficult. The usual "day" in spacewas forty hours, with thirty-hour waking periods and ten hours of sleep. 

"Let's eat, then, " Arcot decided. "Afterwards, we'll take a fewphotographs and then throw this ship into high and really make time. "

 * * * * *

Two hours later, they were again seated at the control board. Arcotreached out and threw the red switch. "I'm going to give her half powerfor ten seconds. " The air about them seemed suddenly snapping withunprecedented power--then it was gone as the coil became fully charged. 

"Lucky we shielded those relays, " Arcot muttered. The tremendous surgeof current set up a magnetic field that turned knives and forks and, asWade found to his intense disgust, stopped watches that were notmagnetically shielded. 

Space was utterly black about them now; there wasn't the slightest hintof light. The ten seconds that Arcot had allowed dragged slowly. Then atlast came the heavy crashing of the huge relays; the current flowed backinto the storage coils, and space became normal again. They were alonein the blackness. 

Morey dove swiftly for the observatory. Before them, there was little tosee; the dim glow of nebulae millions of light years away was scarcelyvisible to the naked eye, despite the clarity of space. 

Behind them, like a shining horizon, they saw the mass of the Galaxy forthe first time as free observers. 

Morey began to make swift calculations of the distance they had come bymeasuring the apparent change in diameter of the Galaxy. 

Arcot floated into the room after him and watched as Morey made hisobservations and began to work swiftly with pencil and paper. "What doyou make?" Arcot asked. 

"Mmmmm. Let's see. " Morey worked a moment with his slide rule. "We madegood time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! You had it on at halfpower--the velocity goes up as the cube of the power--doubling thepower, then, gives us eight times the velocity--Hmmmmmm. " He readjustedthe slide rule and slid the hairline over a bit. "We can make tenmillion light years in a little less than five days at full power. 

"But I suggest we make another stop in six hours. That will put us aboutfive radii, or half a million light years from the Galaxy. We'll need totake some more photographs to help us retrace our steps to Earth. "

"All right, Morey, " Arcot agreed. "It's up to you. Get your photos hereand we'll go on. By the way, I think you ought to watch the instrumentsin the power room; this will be our first test at full power. We figuredwe'd make twenty light years per second, and it looks as if it's goingto be closer to twenty-four. "

A few minutes later, Arcot seated himself at the control board andflipped on the intercom to the power room. "All ready, Morey? I justhappened to think--it might be a good idea to pick out our galaxy nowand start toward it. "

"Let's wait, " cautioned Morey. "We can't make a very careful choice atthis distance, anyway; we're beyond the enlarging power range of thetelectroscope here. In another half million light years, we'll have amuch better view, and that comparatively short distance won't take usmuch out of our way. "

"Wait a minute, " said Fuller. "You say we're beyond the magnificationrange of the telectroscope. Then why would half a million light yearsout of ten million make that much difference?"

"Because of the limit of amplification in the tubes, " Arcot replied. "You can only have so many stages of amplification; after that, you'reamplifying noise. The whole principle of the vacuum tube depends onelectronic emission; if you get _too much_ amplification, you can hearevery single electron striking the plate of the first tube by the timethe thing reaches the last amplifying stage! In other words, if yourincoming signal is weaker than the minimum noise level on the firstamplifying stage, no amount of amplification will give you anything butmore noise. 

"The same is true of the telectroscope image. At this distance, thelight signal from those galaxies is weaker than the noise level. We'donly get a flickering, blurred image. But if we go on another halfmillion light years, the light signal from the nearer nebulae will be_stronger_ than the base noise level, and full amplification will giveus a good image on the screen. "

Fuller nodded. "Okay, then let's go that additional half million lightyears. I want to take a look at another galaxy. "

"Right. " Arcot turned to the intercom. "Ready, Morey?"

"Anytime you are. "

"Here goes!" said Arcot. He pushed over the little red control. 

At full power, the air filled with the strain of flowing energy andactually broke down in spots with the terrific electrical energy of thecharge. There were little snapping sparks in the air, which, thoughharmless electrically, were hot enough to give slight burns, as Wadefound to his sorrow. 

"Yike! Say, why didn't you tell us to bring lightning rods?" he askedindignantly as a small spark snapped its way over his hand. 

"Sorry, " grinned Arcot, "but most people know enough to stay out of theway of those things. Seriously, though, I didn't think the electrostaticcurvature would be so slow to adjust. You see, when we build up ourlight-rate distortion field, other curvatures are affected. We get somegravity, some magnetic, and some electrostatic field distortion, too. You can see what happens when they don't leak their energy back into thecoil. 

"But we're busy with the instruments; leave the motorman alone!"

Morey was calling loudly for tests. Although the ship seemed to bebehaving perfectly, he wanted check tests to make sure the relays werenot being burned, which would keep them from responding properly. Byrerouting the current around each relay, Arcot checked them one by one. 

It was just as they had finished testing the last one that Fulleryelled. 

"Hey! _Look!_" He pointed out the broad viewport in the side of theship. 

Far off to their left and far to their right, they saw two shining shipsparalleling their course. They were shining, sleek ships, their long, longitudinal windows glowing with white light. They seemed to be movingat exactly the same speed, holding grimly to the course of the _AncientMariner_. They bracketed the ship like an official guard, despite theterrific velocity of the Earthmen's ship. 

Arcot stared in amazement, his face suddenly clouded in wonder. Morey, who had come up from the power room, stared in equal wonder. 

Quickly, Wade and Fuller slid into the ray control seats. Their longpractice with the rays had made them dead shots, and they had beenchosen long before as the ship's official ray operators. 

"Lord, " muttered Morey as he looked at the ships, "where can they havecome from?"

VII

Silently, the four men watched the two ships, waiting for any hostilemovement. There was a long, tense moment, then something happened forwhich three of them were totally unprepared. 

Arcot burst into sudden laughter. 

"Don't--ho--hoh-ho--oh--don't shoot!" he cried, laughing so hard it wasalmost impossible to understand him. "Ohoh--space--curved!" he managedto gasp. 

For a moment more, Morey looked puzzled--then he was laughing as hard asArcot. Helplessly, Wade and Fuller looked at them, then at each other. Then, suddenly, Wade caught the meaning of Arcot's remark and joined theother two in laughter. 

"All right, " said Fuller, still mystified, "when you half-wittedphysicists recover, please let me in on the joke!" He knew it hadsomething to do with the mysterious ships, so he looked closely at themin hopes that he would get the point, too. When he saw it, he blinked inamazement. "Hey! What is this? Those ships are exact duplicates of the_Ancient Mariner_!"

"That--that's what I was laughing at, " Arcot explained, wiping his eyes. "Four big, brave explorers, scared of their own shadows!"

"The light from our own ship has come back to us, due to the intensecurvature of the space which encloses us. In normal space, a light raywould take hundreds of millions of years to travel all the way aroundthe Universe and return to its point of origin. Theoretically, it wouldbe possible to photograph our own Galaxy as it was thousands ofmillennia ago by the light which left it then and has traveled all theway around the curvature of space. 

"But our space has such terrific curvature that it only takes a fractionof a second for light to make the trip. It has gone all the way aroundour little cosmos and come back again. 

"If we'd shot at it, we would have really done ourselves in! The raybeam would go around and hit us from behind!"

"Say, that is a nice proposition!" laughed Fuller. "Then we'll beaccompanied by those ghosts all the way? There goes the spirit 'ninefathoms deep' which moves the ship--the ghosts that work the sails. Thiswill be a real _Ancient Mariner_ trip!"

It was like that famed voyage in another way, too. The men found littleto do as they passed on at high speed through the vast realm of space. The chronometer pointed out the hours with exasperating slowness. Thesix hours that were to elapse before the first stop seemed as many days. They had thought of this trip as a wonderful adventure in itself, butthe soundless continued monotony was depressing. They wandered around, aimlessly. Wade tried to sleep, but after lying strapped in his bunk forhalf an hour, he gave up in despair. 

Arcot saw that the strain of doing nothing was not going to be good forhis little crew and decided to see what could be done about it. 

He went down to the laboratory and looked for inspiration. He found it. 

"Hey! Morey! Wade! Fuller! Come on down here! I've got an idea!" hecalled. 

They came to find him looking meditatively at the power pack from one ofthe flying suits he had designed. He had taken the lux metal case offand was looking at the neat apparatus that lay within. 

"These are equipped for use with the space suits, of course, " Moreypointed out, "and that gives us protection against gases. But I wonderif we might install protection against mechanical injury--with intent todamage aforethought! In other words, why not equip these suits with asmall invisibility apparatus? We have it on the ship, but we might needpersonal protection, too. "

"Great idea, " said Wade, "provided you can find room in that case. "

"I think we can. We won't need to add anything but a few tuning devices, really, and they don't take a whale of a lot of power. "

Arcot pointed out the places where they could be put; also, he replacedsome of the old induction coils with one of his new storage cells andgot far higher efficiency from the tubes. 

But principally, it was something to do. 

Indeed, it was so thoroughly something to do that the six hours hadalmost elapsed before they realized it. In a very short time, theyreturned again to the control room and strapped themselves in. 

Arcot reached toward the little red switch that controlled the titanicenergies of the huge coil below and pulled it back a quarter of the way. 

"There go the ghosts!" he said. The images had quickly disappeared, seemingly leaping away from them at terrific speed as the space in whichthe ship was enclosed opened out more and more and the curvaturedecreased. They were further away from themselves!

Easing back a quarter at a time, to prevent sparks again flying about inthe atmosphere of the ship, Arcot cut the power to zero, and the shipwas standing still once more. 

They hurriedly dived to the observatory and looked eagerly out thewindow. 

Far, far behind them, floating in the marvelous, soft, utter blacknessof space, was a shining disc made up of myriads of glowing points. Andit didn't seem to be a huge thing at a great distance, but simply asmall glowing object a few feet outside the window. 

So perfectly clear was their view through the lux metal wall and theblack, empty space that all sense of distance was lost. It seemed more aminiature model of their universe--a tiny thing that floated closebehind them, unwavering, shining with a faint light, a heatlessillumination that made everything in the darkened observatory glow veryfaintly. It was the light of three hundred million suns seen at adistance of three million million million miles! And it seemed smallbecause there was nothing with which to compare it. 

It was an amazingly beautiful thing, that tiny floating disc of light. 

Morey floated over to the cameras and began to take pictures. 

"I'd like to take a color shot of that, " he said a few minutes later, "but that would require a direct shot through the reflector telescopeand a time exposure. And I can't do that; the ship is moving. "

"Not enough to make any difference, " Arcot contradicted. "We're movingaway from it in a straight line, and that thing is three quintillionmiles away. We're not moving fast enough to cause any measurablecontraction in a time exposure. As for having a steady platform, thisship weighs a quarter of a million tons and is held by gyroscopes. Wewon't shake it. "

While Morey took the time exposure, Arcot looked at the enlarged imagein the telectroscope and tried to make angular measurements from theindividual stars. This he found impossible. Although he could spotBetelgeuse and Antares because of their tremendous radiation, they weretoo close together for measurements; the angle subtended was too small. 

Finally, he decided to use the distance between Antares and S Doradus inthe Lesser Magellanic Cloud, one of the two clouds of stars which floatas satellites to the Galaxy itself. 

To double-check, he used the radius of the Galaxy as base to calculatethe distance. The distances checked. The ship was five hundred thousandlight years from home!

After all the necessary observations were made, they swung the ship onits axis and looked ahead for a landing place. 

The nebulae ahead were still invisible to the naked eye except aspoints, but the telectroscope finally revealed one as decidedly nearerthan the rest. It seemed to be a young Island Universe, for there wasstill a vast cloud of gas and dust from which stars were yet to be bornin the central whorl--a single titanic gas cloud that stretched outthrough a million billion miles of space. 

"Shall we head for that?" asked Arcot at last, as Morey finished hisobservations. 

"I think it would be as good as any--there are more stars there than wecan hope to visit. "

"Well, then, here we go!"

Arcot dived for the control room, while Morey shut off the telectroscopeand put the latest photographs in the file. 

Suddenly space was snapping about him--they were off again. Anothershock of surging energy--another--the ship leaped forward at tremendousspeed--still greater--then they were rushing at top speed, and besidethem ran the ghost ships of the _Ancient Mariner_. 

Morey pushed himself into the control room just as Arcot, Wade, andFuller were getting ready to start for the lab. 

"We're off for quite a while, now, " he said. "Our goal is about fivedays away. I suggest we stop at the end of four days, make moreaccurate measurements, then plan a closer stop. 

"I think from now on we ought to sleep in relays, so that there will bethree of us awake at all times. I'll turn in now for ten hours, and thensomeone else can sleep. Okay?"

It was agreed, and in the meantime the three on duty went down to thelab to work. 

Arcot had finished the installation of the invisibility apparatus in hissuit at the end of ten hours, much to his disappointment. He tested it, then cast about for something to do while Wade and Morey added thefinishing touches to theirs. 

Morey came down, and when Wade had finished his, which took anotherquarter of an hour, he took the off duty shift. 

Arcot had gone to the library, and Morey was at work down below. Fullerhad come up, looking for something to do, and had hit upon the excellentidea of fixing a meal. 

He had just begun his preparations in the kitchen when suddenly the_Ancient Mariner_ gave a violent leap, and the men, not expecting anyweight, suddenly fell in different ways with terrific force!

Fuller fell half the length of the galley and was knocked out by theblow. Wade, asleep in bed, was awakened violently by the shock, andMorey, who had been strapped in his chair, was badly shaken. 

Everyone cried out simultaneously--and Arcot was on his way to thecontrol room. The first shock was but a forerunner of the storm. Suddenly the ship was hurled violently about; the air was shot throughwith great burning sparks; the snapping hiss of electricity waseverywhere, and every pointed metal object was throwing streamers ofblue electric flame into the air! The ship rocked, heaved, and cavortedwildly, as though caught in the play of titanic forces!

Scrambling wildly along the hand-holds, Arcot made his way towards thecontrol room, which was now above, now below, and now to one side of himas the wildly variable acceleration shook the ship. Doggedly, he workedhis way up, frequently getting severe burns from the flaming sparks. 

Below, in the power room, the relays were crashing in and out wildly. 

Then, suddenly, a new sound was added just as Arcot pulled himself intothe control chair and strapped himself down. The radiation detectorbuzzed out its screaming warning!

"COSMIC RAYS!" Arcot yelled. "HIGH CONCENTRATION!"

He slapped at the switch which shot the heavy relux screens across everywindow in the ship. 

There was a sudden crash and a fuse went out below--a fuse made of asilver bar two feet thick! In an instant, the flames of the burningsparks flared up and died. The ship cavorted madly, shaking mightily inthe titanic, cosmic forces that surrounded it--the forces that made thehighest energy form in the universe!

Arcot knew that nothing could be done with the power coil. It wasdrained; the circuit was broken. He shifted in the molecular drive, pushing the acceleration to four gravities, as high as the men couldstand. 

And still the powerful ship was being tossed about, the plaything ofinconceivable forces. They lived only because the forces did not try toturn the ship more violently, not because of the strength of the ship, for nothing could resist the awful power around them. 

As a guide, Arcot used the compass gyroscope, the only one not twistedfar out of its original position; with it, he managed to steer a fairlystraight course. 

Meanwhile, in the power room, Wade and Morey were working frantically toget the space-strain drive coil recharged. Despite the strength-sappingstrain of working under four gravities of acceleration, they managed toget the auxiliary power unit into operation. In a few moments, they hadit pouring its energies into the coil-bank so that they could charge upthe central drive coil. 

Another silver bar fuse was inserted, and Wade checked the relays tomake sure they were in working order. 

Fuller, who had regained consciousness, worked his way laboriously downto the power room carrying three space-suits. He had stopped in the labto get the power belts, and the three men quickly donned them to helpthem overcome the four-gravity pull. 

Another half hour sped by as the bucking ship forced its way through theterrific field in space. 

Suddenly they felt a terrific jolt again--then the ship was moving moresmoothly, and gradually it was calm. They were through!

"Have we got power for the space-strain drive yet?" Arcot called throughthe intercom. 

"Enough, " Morey cried. "Try it!"

Arcot cut off the molecular motion drive, and threw in all thespace-control power he had. The ship was suddenly supercharged withenergy. It jarred suddenly--then was quiet. He allowed ten minutes topass, then he cut off the drive and allowed the ship to go into freefall. 

Morey's voice came over the intercom. "Arcot, things are really bustedup down here! We had to haywire half the drive together. "

"I'll be right down. Every instrument on the ship seems to be out ofkilter!"

It was a good thing they had plenty of spare parts; some of the smallerrelays had burned out completely, and several of the power leads hadfused under the load that had been forced through them. 

The space-strain drive had been leaking energy at a terrific rate;without further repair, it could not function much longer. 

In the power room, Arcot surveyed the damage. "Well, boys, we'd betterget to work. We're stranded here until we get that drive repaired!"

VIII

Forty hours later, Arcot was running the ship smoothly at top speed onceagain. The four men had gone to bed after more than thirty hours of hardwork. That, coupled with the exhaustion of working under four gravities, as they had while the ship was going through the storm, was enough tomake them sleep soundly. 

Arcot had awakened before the others and had turned on the drive afterresetting their course. 

After that was done, there was little to do, and time began to hangheavily on Arcot's hands. He decided to make a thorough inspection ofthe hull when the others awoke. The terrific strain might have openedcracks in the lux metal hull that would not be detectable from theinside because the inner wall was separated from the outer envelope. 

Accordingly, he got out the spacesuits, making sure the oxygen tankswere full and all was ready. Then he went into the library, got out somebooks, and set about some calculations he had in mind. 

When Morey woke, some hours later, he found Arcot still at work on hiscalculations. 

"Hey!" he said, swinging himself into the chair beside Arcot, "I thoughtyou'd be on the lookout for more cosmic rays!"

"Curious delusion, wasn't it?" asked Arcot blandly. "As a matter offact, I've been busy doing some figuring. I think our chance of meetinganother such region is about one in a million million million million. Considering those chances, I don't think we need to worry. I don't seehow we ever met _one_--but the chances of hitting one are better thanhitting two. "

Just then Fuller stuck his head in the door. 

"Oh, " he said, "so you're at it already? Well, I wonder if one of youcould tell me just what it was we hit? I've been so busy I haven't had achance to think. "

"Don't take the chance now, then, " grinned Morey. "You might strain yourbrain. "

"_Please_!" Fuller pleaded, wincing. "Not before breakfast. Just explainwhat that storm was. "

"We simply came to a region in space where cosmic rays are created, "explained Arcot. 

Fuller frowned. "But there's nothing out here to generate cosmic rays!"

Arcot nodded. "True. I think I know their real source, but I believeI'll merely say they are created here. I want to do more work on this. My idea for an energy source greater than any other in the universe hasbeen confirmed. 

"At any rate, they are created in that space, a perfect vacuum, and thespace there is distorted terrifically by the titanic forces at work. Itis bent and twisted far out of the normal, even curvature, and it wasthat bumpy spot in space that threw us about so. 

"When we first entered, using the space-strain drive, the space aroundthe ship, distorted as it was, conflicted with the region of the cosmicray generation and the ship lost out. The curvature of space that theship caused was sometimes reinforced and sometimes cancelled out by thetwisted space around it, and the tremendous surges of current back andforth from the main power coil to the storage coils caused the electricdischarges that kept burning through the air. I notice we all got a fewburns from that. The field was caused by the terrific surges of current, and that magnetic field caused the walls of the ship to heat up due tothe generation of electric current in the walls. "

Fuller looked around at the walls of the ship. "Well, the _AncientMariner_ sure took a beating. "

"As a matter of fact, I was worried about that, " said Arcot. "Strong asthat hull is, it might easily have been strained in that field ofterrific force. If it happened to hit two 'space waves' at once, itmight have given it an acceleration in two different directions at once, which would strain the walls with a force amounting to thousands oftons. I laid out the suits up front, and I think we might reasonably getout there and take a look at the old boat. When Wade gets up--well, well--speak of the devil! My, doesn't he look energetic?"

Wade's huge body was floating in through the library door. He wasyawning sleepily and rubbing his eyes. It was evident he had not yetwashed, and his growing beard, which was heavy and black on his cheeks, testified to his need for a shave. The others had shaved before cominginto the library. 

"Wade, " said Arcot, "we're going outside, and we have to have someone inhere to operate the airlock. Suppose you get to work on the hirsuteadornment; there's an atomic hydrogen cutting torch down in the lab youcan use, if you wish. The rest of us are going outside. " Then Arcot'svoice became serious. "By the way, don't try any little jokes likestarting off with a little acceleration. I don't think you would--you'vegot good sense--but I like to make certain. If you did, we'd be leftbehind, and you'd never find us in the vast immensity of intergalacticspace. "

It wasn't a pleasant idea to contemplate. Each of the suits had a radiofor communication with each other and with the ship, but they would onlycarry a few hundred miles. A mere step in space!

Wade shook his head, grinning. "I have no desire to be left all bymyself on this ship, thank you. You don't need to worry. "

A few minutes later, Arcot, Morey, and Fuller stepped out of the airlockand set to work, using power flashlights to examine the outer hull forany signs of possible strain. 

The flashlights, equipped as they were with storage coils for power, were actually powerful searchlights, but in the airlessness of space, the rays were absolutely invisible. They could only be seen when theyhit the relux inner wall at such an angle that they were reflecteddirectly into the observer's eyes. The lux metal wall, beingtransparent, was naturally invisible, and the smooth relux, reflectingone hundred percent of the incident light, did not become illuminated, for illumination is the result of the scattering of light. 

It was necessary to look closely and pass the beams over every squareinch of the surface. However, a crack would be rough, and hence wouldscatter light and be even more readily visible than otherwise. 

To their great relief, after an hour and a half of careful inspection, none of them had found any signs of a crack, and they went back into theship to resume the voyage. 

Again they hurled through space, the twin ghost ships following themclosely. Hour after hour the ship went on. Now they had something elseto do. They were at work calculating some problems that Arcot hadsuggested in connection with the velocities of motion that had beenobserved in the stars at the edge of the island universe they wereapproaching. Since these stars revolved about the mass of the entiregalaxy, it was possible to calculate the mass of the entire universe byaveraging the values from several stars. Their results were not exact, but they were reliable enough. They found the universe to have a mass oftwo hundred and fifty million suns, only a little less than the homeGalaxy. It was an average-sized nebula. 

Still the hours dragged as they came gradually nearer theirgoal--gradually, despite their speed of twenty-four light years persecond!

At the end of the second day after their trouble with the cosmic rayfield, they stopped for observation. They were now so near the IslandUniverse that the stars spread out in a huge disc ahead of them. 

"About three hundred thousand light years distant, I should guess, " saidMorey. 

"We know our velocity fairly accurately, " said Wade. "Why can't wecalculate the distance between two of these stars and then go on in?"

"Good idea, " agreed Arcot. "Take the angle, will you, Morey? I'll swingthe ship. "

After taking their measurements, they advanced for one hour. Knowingthis distance from experience, they were able to calculate the diameterof this galaxy. It turned out to be on the order of ninety thousandlight years. 

They were now much closer; they seemed, indeed, on the very edge of thegiant universe. The thousands of stars flamed bright below them, stretching across their horizon more and more--a galaxy the eyes of menhad never before seen at such close range! This galaxy had not yetcondensed entirely to stars, and in its heart there still remained thevast gas cloud that would eventually be stars and planets. The vastmisty cloud was plainly visible, glowing with a milky light like somevast frosted light bulb. 

It was impossible to conceive the size of the thing; it looked only likesome model, for they were still over a quarter of a million light yearsfrom it. 

Morey looked up from his calculations. "I think we should be there inabout three hours. Suppose we go at full speed for about two hours andthen change to low speed?"

"You're the astronomical boss, Morey, " said Arcot. "Let's go!"

They swung the ship about once more and started again. As they drewnearer to this new universe, they began to feel more interest in thetrip. Things were beginning to happen!

The ship plunged ahead at full speed for two hours. They could seenothing at that velocity except the two ghost ships that were theirever-present companions. Then they stopped once more. 

About them, they saw great suns shining. One was so close they could seeit as a disc with the naked eye. But they could not see clearly; theentire sky was misty and the stars that were not close were blotted out. The room seemed to grow warm. 

"Hey! Your calculations were off!" called Arcot. "We're getting out ofhere!"

Suddenly the air snapped and they were traveling at low speed under thedrive of the space-strain apparatus. The entire space about them was litwith a dim violet glow. In ten minutes, the glow was gone and Arcot cutthe drive. 

They were out in ordinary dark space, with its star-studded blackness. 

"What was the matter with my calculations?" Morey wanted to know. 

"Oh, nothing much, " Arcot said casually. "You were only about thirtythousand light years off. We landed right in the middle of the centralgas cloud, and we were plowing through it at a relative velocity ofaround sixteen thousand miles per second! No wonder we got hot!

"We're lucky we didn't come near any stars in the process; if we had, wecould have had to recharge the coil. "

"It's a wonder we didn't burn up at that velocity, " said Fuller. 

"The gas wasn't dense enough, " Arcot explained. "That gas is a bettervacuum than the best pump could give you on Earth; there are fewermolecules per cubic inch than there are in a radio tube. 

"But now that we're out of that, let's see if we can find a planet. Noneed to take photographs going in; if we want to find the star again, wecan take photos as we leave. If we don't want to find it, we would justwaste film. 

"I'll leave it to Morey to find the star we want. "

Morey set to work at once with the telescope; trying to find the neareststar of spectral type G-0, as had been agreed upon. He also wanted tofind one of the same magnitude, or brilliance. At last, afterinvestigating several such suns, he discovered one which seemed tofulfill all his wishes. The ship was turned, and they started toward theadventure they had really hoped to find. 

As they rushed through space, the distorted stars shining vividly beforethem, they saw the one which was their goal. A bright, slowly changingviolet point on the cross-hairs of the aiming telescope. 

"How far is it?" asked Arcot. 

"About thirty light centuries, " replied Morey, watching the stareagerly. 

They drove on in silence. Then, suddenly, Morey cried out: "Look! It'sgone!"

"What happened?" asked Arcot in surprise. 

Morey rubbed his chin in thought. "The star suddenly flared brightly foran instant, then disappeared. Evidently, it was a G-0 giant which hadburned up most of the hydrogen that stars normally use for fuel. Whenthat happens, a star begins to collapse, increasing in brilliance due tothe heat generated by the gas falling toward the center of the star. 

"Then other nuclear reactions begin to take place, and, due to theincreased transparency of the star, a supernova is produced. The starblows away most of its gaseous envelope, leaving only the superdensecore. In other words, it leaves a white dwarf. " He paused and looked atArcot. "I wonder if that star did have any planets?"

They all knew what he meant. What was the probable fate of beings whosesun had suddenly collapsed to a tiny, relatively cold point in the sky?

Suddenly, there loomed before them the dim bulk of the star, a discalready, and Arcot snapped the ship over to the molecular motion driveat once. He knew they must be close. Before them was the angry disc ofthe flaming white star. 

Arcot swung the ship a bit to one side, running in close to the flamingstar. It was not exceedingly hot, despite the high temperature andintense radiation, for the radiating surface was too small. 

They swung about the star in a parabolic orbit, for, at their velocity, the sun could not hold them in a planetary orbit. 

"Our velocity, relative to this star, is pretty high, " Arcot announced. "I'm swinging in close so that I can use the star's attraction as abrake. At this distance, it will be about six gravities, and we can addto that a molecular drive braking of four gravities. 

"Suppose you look around and see if there are any planets. We can breakfree and head for another star if there aren't. "

Even at ten gravities of deceleration, it took several hours to reducetheir speed to a point which would make it possible to head for anyplanet of the tiny sun. 

Morey went to the observatory and swept the sky with the telectroscope. 

It was difficult to find planets because the reflected light from theweak star was so dim, but he finally found one. He took angular readingson it and on the central sun. A little later, he took more readings. Because of the changing velocity of the ship, the readings were not tooaccurate, but his calculations showed it to be several hundred millionmiles out. 

They were decelerating rapidly, and soon their momentum had been reducedto less than four miles a second. When they reached the planet, Arcotthrew the ship into an orbit around it and began to spiral down. 

Through the clear lux windows of the control room, the men looked downupon a bleak, frozen world. 

IX

Below the ship lay the unfamiliar panorama of an unknown world thatcircled, frozen, around a dim, unknown sun, far out in space. Cold andbleak, the low, rolling hills below were black, bare rock, coated inspots with a white sheen of what appeared to be snow, though each of themen realized it must be frozen air. Here and there ran strange riversof deep blue which poured into great lakes and seas of blue liquid. There were mighty mountains of deep blue crystal looming high, and inthe hollows and cracks of these crystal mountains lay silent, motionlessseas of deep blue, unruffled by any breeze in this airless world. It wasa world that lay frozen under a dim, dead sun. 

They continued over the broad sweep of the level, crystalline plain asthe bleak rock disappeared behind them. This world was about tenthousand miles in diameter, and its surface gravity about a quartergreater than that of Earth. 

On and on they swept, swinging over the planet at an altitude of lessthan a thousand feet, viewing the unutterably desolate scene of thecold, dead world. 

Then, ahead of them loomed a bleak, dark mass of rock again. They hadcrossed the frozen ocean and were coming to land again--a land no moresolid than the sea. 

Everywhere lay the deep drifts of snow, and here and there, throughvalleys, ran the streams of bright blue. 

"Look!" cried Morey in sudden surprise. Far ahead and to their leftloomed a strange formation of jutting vertical columns, covered with thewhite burden of snow. Arcot turned a powerful searchlight on it, and itstood out brightly against the vast snowfield. It was a dead, frozencity. 

As they looked at it, Arcot turned the ship and headed for it without aword. 

It was hard to realize the enormity of the catastrophe that had broughta cold, bleak death to the population of this world--death to anintelligent race. 

Arcot finally spoke. "I'll land the ship. I think it will be safe for usall to leave. Get out the suits and make sure all the tanks are chargedand the heaters working. It will be colder here than in space. Outthere, we were only cooled by radiation, but those streams are probablyliquid nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and there's a slight atmosphere ofhydrogen, helium and neon cooled to about fifty degrees Absolute. We'llbe cooled by conduction and convection. "

As the others got the suits ready, he lowered the ship gently to thesnowy ground. It sank into nearly ten feet of snow. He turned on thepowerful searchlight, and swept it around the ship. Under the warmbeams, the frozen gasses evaporated, and in a few moments he had clearedthe area around the ship. 

Morey and the others came back with their suits. Arcot donned his, andadjusted his weight to ten pounds with the molecular power unit. 

A short time later, they stepped out of the airlock onto the ice fieldof the frozen world. High above them glowed the dim, blue-white disc ofthe tiny sun, looking like little more than a bright star. 

Adjusting the controls on the suits, the four men lifted into thetenuous air and headed toward the city, moving easily about ten feetabove the frozen wastes of the snow field. 

"The thing I don't understand, " Morey said as they shot toward the city, "is why this planet is here at all. The intense radiation from the sunwhen it went supernova should have vaporized it!"

Arcot pointed toward a tall, oddly-shaped antenna that rose from thehighest building of the city. "There's your answer. That antenna issimilar to those we found on the planets of the Black Star; it's a heatscreen. They probably had such antennas all over the planet. 

"Unfortunately, the screen's efficiency goes up as the fourth power ofthe temperature. It could keep out the terrific heat of a supernova, butcouldn't keep in the heat of the planet after the supernova had died. The planet was too cool to make the screen work efficiently!"

At last they came to the outskirts of the dead city. The vertical wallsof the buildings were free of snow, and they could see the blank, staring eyes of the windows, and within, the bleak, empty rooms. Theyswept on through the frozen streets until they came to one huge buildingin the center. The doors of bronze had been closed, and through thewindows they could see that the room had been piled high with some sortof insulating material, evidently used as a last-ditch attempt to keepout the freezing cold. 

"Shall we break in?" asked Arcot. 

"We may as well, " Morey's voice answered over the radio. "There may besome records we could take back to Earth and have deciphered. In a timelike this, I imagine they would leave some records, hoping that somerace _might_ come and find them. "

They worked with molecular ray pistols for fifteen minutes tearing a waythrough. It was slow work because they had to use the heat ray pistolsto supply the necessary energy for the molecular motion. 

When they finally broke through, they found they had entered on thesecond floor; the deep snow had buried the first. Before them stretcheda long, richly decorated hall, painted with great colored murals. 

The paintings displayed a people dressed in a suit of some soft, whitecloth, with blond hair that reached to their shoulders. They wereshorter and more heavily built than Earthmen, perhaps, but there was agrace to them that denied the greater gravity of their planet. Themurals portrayed a world of warm sunlight, green plants, and tall treeswaving in a breeze--a breeze of air that now lay frozen on the stonefloors of their buildings. 

Scene after scene they saw--then they came to a great hall. Here theysaw hundreds of bodies; people wrapped in heavy cloth blankets. And overthe floor of the room lay little crystals of green. 

Wade looked at the little crystals for a long time, and then at thepeople who lay there, perfectly preserved by the utter cold. They seemedonly sleeping--men, women, and children, sleeping under a blanket ofsoft snow that evaporated and disappeared as the energy of the lightsfell on it. There was one little group the men looked at before theyleft the room of death. There were three in it--a young man, a fair, blonde young woman who seemed scarcely more than a girl, and betweenthem, a little child. They were sleeping, arms about each other, warm inthe arms of Death, the kindly Reliever of Pain. 

Arcot turned and rose, flying swiftly down the long corridor toward thedoor. 

"That was not meant for us, " he said. "Let's leave. "

The others followed. 

"But let's see what records they left, " he went on. "It may be that theywanted us to know their tragic story. Let's see what sort ofcivilization they had. "

"Their chemistry was good, at least, " said Wade. "Did you notice thosegreen crystals? A quick, painless poison gas to relieve them of thestruggle against the cold. "

They went down to the first floor level, where there was a single greatcourt. There were no pillars, only a vast, smooth floor. 

"They had good architecture, " said Morey. "No pillars under all the vastload of that building. "

"And the load is even greater under this gravity, " remarked Arcot. 

In the center of the room was a great, golden bronze globe resting on aplatform of marble. It must have been new when this world froze, forthere was no sign of corrosion or oxidation. The men flew over to it andstood beside it, looking at the great sphere, nearly fifteen feet indiameter. 

"A globe of their world, " said Fuller, looking at it with interest. 

"Yes, " agreed Arcot, "and it was set up after they were sure the coldwould come, from the looks of it. Let's take a look at it. " He flew upto the top of it and viewed it from above. The whole globe was acarefully chiseled relief map, showing seas, mountains, and continents. 

"Arcot--come here a minute, " called Morey. Arcot dropped down to whereMorey was looking at the globe. On the edge of one of the continents wasa small raised globe, and around the globe, a circle had been etched. 

"I think this is meant to represent this globe, " Morey said. "I'm almostcertain it represents this very spot. Now look over here. " He pointed toa spot which, according to the scale of the globe, was about fivethousand miles away. Projecting from the surface of the bronze globewas a little silver tower. 

"They want us to go there, " continued Morey. "This was erected onlyshortly before the catastrophe; they must have put relics there thatthey want us to get. They must have guessed that eventually intelligentbeings would cross space; I imagine they have other maps like this inevery large city. 

"I think it's our duty to visit that cairn. "

"I quite agree, " assented Arcot. "The chance of other men visiting thisworld is infinitely small. "

"Then let's leave this City of the Dead!" said Wade. 

It gave them a sense of depression greater than that inspired by thevast loneliness of space. One is never so lonely as when he is with thedead, and the men began to realize that the original _Ancient Mariner_had been more lonely with strange companions than they had been in thedepths of ten million light years of space. 

They went back to the ship, floating through the last remnants of thisworld's atmosphere, back through the chill of the frozen gases to thecheering, warm interior of the ship. 

It was a contrast that made each of them appreciate more fully the giftthat a hot, blazing sun really is. Perhaps that was what made Fullerask: "If this happened to a star so much like our sun, why couldn't ithappen to Sol?"

"Perhaps it may, " said Morey softly. "But the eternal optimism of mankeeps us saying: 'It can't happen here. ' And besides--" He put a hand onthe wall of the ship, "--we don't ever have to worry about anything likethat now. Not with ships like this to take us to a new sun--a newplanet. "

Arcot lifted the ship and flew over the cold, frozen ground beneaththem, following the route indicated on the great globe in the dead city. Mile after mile of frozen ice fields flew by as they shot over it atthree miles per second. 

Suddenly, the bleak bulk of a huge mountain loomed gigantic before them. Arcot reversed the power and brought the ship to a stop. With thepowerful searchlight, he swept the area, looking for the tower he knewshould be here. At last, he made it out, a pyramid rather than a tower, and coated over with ice. They soon thawed out the frozen gasses byplaying the energy of three powerful searchlights upon them, and in afew minutes the glint of gold showed through the melting ice and show. 

"It looks, " said Wade, "as though they have an outer wall of gold over astrong wall of iron or steel to protect it from corrosion. Certainlygold doesn't have enough tensile strength to hold itself up under thisgravity--not in such masses as that. "

Arcot brought the ship down beside the tower and the men once more wentout through the airlock into the cold of the almost airless world. Theyflew across to the pyramid and looked for some means of entrance. Inseveral places, they noticed hieroglyphics carved in great, foot-highcharacters. They searched in vain for a door until they noticed that thepyramid was not perfect, but truncated, leaving a flat area on top. Theonly joint in the walls seemed to be there, but there was no handle orvisible methods of opening the door. 

Arcot turned his powerful light on the surface and searched carefullyfor some opening device. He found a bas-relief engraving of a handpointing to a corner of the door. He looked more closely and found asmall jewel-like lens set in the metal. 

Suddenly the men felt a vibration! There was a heavy click, and the doorpanel began to drop slowly. 

"Get on it!" Arcot cried. "We can always break our way out if we'retrapped!"

The four men leaped on it and sank slowly with it. The massive walls ofthe tower were nearly five feet thick, and made of some tough, whitemetal. 

"Pure iron!" diagnosed Wade. "Or perhaps a silicon-iron alloy. Not asstrong as steel, but very resistant to corrosion. "

When the elevator stopped, they found themselves in a great chamber thatwas obviously a museum of the lost race. All around the walls werearranged models, books, and diagrams. 

"We can never hope to take all this in our ship!" said Arcot, looking atthe great collection. "Look--there's an old winged airplane! And a steamengine--and that's an electric motor! And that thing looks like somekind of an electric battery. "

"But we can't take all that stuff, " objected Fuller. 

"No, " Morey agreed. "I think our best bet would be to take all the bookswe can--making sure we get the introductory ones, so we can read thelanguage. 

"See--over there--they have marked those shelves with a single verticalmark. The ones next to them have two vertical marks, and next onesthree. I suggest we load up with those books and take them to the ship. "

The rest agreed, and they began carrying armloads of books, flying outthrough the top of the pyramid to the ship and back for more. 

Instead of flying back to the pyramid for the last load, Arcot announcedthat he was going to leave a note for anyone who might come here later. While the others went back for the last load, he worked at drawing the"note". 

"Let's see your masterpiece, " said Morey as the three men returned tothe ship with the last of the books. 

Arcot had used a piece of tough, heavy plastic which would resist anycorrosion the cold, almost airless world might have to offer. 

Near the top, he had drawn a representation of their ship, and beneathit a representation of the route they had taken from universe touniverse. The galaxy they were in was represented by a cloud of gas, itsmain identifying feature. Underneath the dotted line of their routethrough space, he had printed "200, 000, 000, 000, _u_". 

Then followed a little table. The numeral "1" followed by a straightbar, then "2" followed by two bars, and so on up to ten. Ten wasrepresented by ten bars and, in addition, an S-shaped sign. Twenty wasnext, followed by twenty bars and two S-shaped signs. Thus he hadworked up to "100". 

The system he used would make it clear to any reasoning creature that hehad used a decimal system and that the zeroes meant ten times. 

Next below, he had drawn the planetary system of the frozen world, andthe distance from the planet they were on to the central sun he labeled"_u_". Thus, the finders could reason that they had come a distance oftwo hundred billion units, where a distance of three hundred millionmiles was taken as the unit; they had, then, come from another galaxy. Certainly any creature with enough intelligence to reach this frozenworld would understand this!

"Since the year of this planet is approximately eight times our own, "Arcot continued, "I am indicating that we came here approximately fivehundred years after the catastrophe. " He pointed at several of the otherdrawings. 

They left the message in the tower, and Arcot closed the door, leavingthe pyramid exactly as it had been before they had come. 

"Say!" Morey commented, "how did you open and close that door, anyway?"

Arcot grinned. "Didn't you notice the jewel at the corner? It was thelens of a photoelectric cell. My flashlight opened the door. I didn'tfigure it out; it just worked accidentally. "

Morey raised an eyebrow. "But if the darned thing is so simple, anycreature, intelligent or not, might be able to get in and destroy therecords!"

Arcot looked at him. "And where are your savages going to come from?There are none on this planet, and anyone intelligent enough to build aspaceship isn't going to destroy the contents of the tower. "

"Oh. " Morey looked a little sheepish. 

They went into the airlock and took off their suits. Then they beganpacking the precious books in specimen cases that had been brought forthe purpose of preserving such things. 

When the last of them was carefully stowed, they returned to thecontrol room. They looked silently out across this strange, dead world, thinking how much it must have been like Earth. It was dead now, andfrozen forever. The low hills that stretched out beneath them were dimlylighted by the weak rays of a shrunken sun. Three hundred million milesaway, it glowed so weakly that this world received only a little moreheat than it might have received from a small coal fire a mile away. 

So weakly it flared that in this thin atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, its little corona glowed about it plainly, and even the stars around itshone brilliantly. The men could see one constellation that groupeditself in the outlines of a dragon, with the sun of this system as itscold, baleful eye. 

Gradually, Arcot lifted the ship, and, as they headed out into space, they could see the dim frozen plains fall behind. It was as if a load ofoppressing loneliness parted from them as they flew out into the vastspaces of the eternal stars. 

X

Arcot looked speculatively at the star field in the great broad windowbefore him. "We'll want to find another G-0 sun, naturally, but I don'tthink we ought to go directly from here. If we did, we'd have to do alot of backtracking to get back to this dead star. I suggest we go backto the edge of this galaxy, taking pictures on the way out, so that anyfuture investigators can come in directly. It'll only take a few hours. "

"I think you're right, " agreed Morey. "Besides, that will give us awider choice of stars to pick our next G-0 from. Let's get going. "

Arcot moved the red switch, and the ship shot away at half speed. Theywatched the green image of the white dwarf fade and then suddenly flareup and become bright again as they outraced the light that had left itfive centuries before. 

They stopped and took more photographs so that the path could be marked. They stopped every light century until they reached a point where thestar was merely a dim point, almost lost in the myriad of stars aroundit. 

Then out to the edge of the galaxy they went, out toward their ownuniverse. 

"Arcot, " Morey called, "let's go out, say one million light years intospace, at an angle to this galaxy, and see if we can get both galaxieson one plate. It will make navigation between them easier. "

"Good idea. We can get out and back in one day--and this 'time' won'tcount back on Earth, anyway. " Since they would travel in thespace-strain all the time, it would not count as Earth time. 

Arcot pushed the red control all the way forward, and the ship began tomove at its top velocity of twenty-four light years per second. Thehours dragged heavily, as they had when they were coming in, and Arcotremained alone on watch while the others went to their rooms for somesleep, strapping their weightless bodies securely in the bunks. 

It was hours later when Morey awoke with a sudden premonition oftrouble. He looked at the chronometer on the wall--he had slept twelvehours! They had gone beyond the million light year mark! It didn'tmatter, except it showed that something had happened to Arcot. 

Something had. Arcot was sound asleep in the middle of thelibrary--exactly in the middle, floating in the room ten feet from eachwall. 

Morey called out to him, and Arcot awoke with a guilty start. "A finesentry you make, " said Morey caustically. "Can't even keep awake whenall you have to do is sit here and see that we don't run into anything. We've gone more than our million light years already, and we're stillgoing strong. Come on--snap out of it!"

"I'm sorry--I apologize--I know I shouldn't have slept, but it was soperfectly quiet here except for your deep-toned, musical snores that Icouldn't help it, " grinned Arcot. "Get me down from here and we'llstop. "

"Get you down, nothing!" Morey snapped. "You stay right there while Icall the others and we decide what's to be done with a sleeping sentry. "

Morey turned and left to wake the others. 

He had awakened Wade and told him what had happened, and they were ontheir way to wake up Fuller, when suddenly the air of the ship crackledaround them! The space was changing! They were coming out of hyperspace!

In amazement, Morey and Wade looked at each other. They knew that Arcotwas still floating helplessly in the middle of the room, but--

"Hold on, you brainless apes! We're turning around!" came Arcot's voice, full of suppressed mirth. 

Suddenly they were both plastered against the wall of the ship underfour gravities of acceleration! Unable to walk, they could only crawllaboriously toward the control room, calling to Arcot to shut off thepower. 

When Morey had left him stranded in the library, Arcot had decided itwas high time he got to the floor. Quickly, he looked around for a meansof doing so. Near him, floating in the air, was the book he had beenreading, but it was out of reach. He had taken off his boots when hestarted to read, so the Fuller rocket method was out. It seemedhopeless. 

Then, suddenly, came the inspiration! Quickly, he slipped off his shirtand began waving it violently in the air. He developed a velocity ofabout two inches a second--not very fast, but fast enough. By the timehe had put his shirt back on, he had reached the wall. 

After that, it was easy to shoot himself over to the door, out into thecorridor and into the control room without being seen by Morey, who wasin Wade's room. 

Just as Wade and Morey reached the doorway to the control room, Arcotdecided it was time to shut the power off. Both of the men, laboringunder more than eight hundred pounds of weight, were suddenlyweightless. All the strength of their powerful muscles were expended inhurling them against the far wall. 

The complaints were loud, but they finally simmered down to an earnestdemand to know how in the devil Arcot had managed to get off deadcenter. 

"Why, that was easy, " he said airily. "I just turned on a little power;I fell under the influence of the weight and then it was easy to get tothe control room. "

"Come on, " Wade demanded. "The truth! How did you get here?"

"Why, I just pushed myself here. "

"Yes; no doubt. But how did you get hold of anything to push?"

"I just took a handful of air and threw it away and reached the wall. "

"Oh, of course--and how did you hold the air?"

"I just took some air and threw it away and reached the wall. "

Which was all they could learn. Arcot was going to keep his systemsecret, it seemed. 

"At any rate, " Arcot continued, "I am back in the control room, where Ibelong, and you are not in the observatory where you belong. Now get outof my territory!"

Morey pushed himself back to the observatory, and after a few minutes, his voice came over the intercom. "Let's move on a bit more, Arcot. Westill can't get both galaxies on the same plate. Let's go on for anotherhour and take our pictures from that point. "

Fuller had awakened and come in in the meantime, and he wanted to knowwhy they didn't take some pictures from this spot. 

"No point in it, " said Morey. "We have the ones we took coming in; whatwe want is a wide-angle shot. "

Arcot threw on the space-strain drive once more, and they headed on attop speed. 

They were all in the control room, watching the instruments andjoking--principally the latter--when it happened. One instant they weremoving smoothly, weightlessly along. The next instant, the ship rockedas though it had been struck violently! The air was a snapping infernoof shooting sparks, and there came the sharp crash of the suddenlyvolatilized silver bar that was their main power fuse. Simultaneously, they were hurled forward with terrific force; the straps that held themin place creaked with the sudden strain, and the men felt weak andfaint. 

Consciousness nearly left them; they had been burned in a dozen placesby the leaping sparks. 

Then it was over. Except that the ghost ships no longer followed them, the _Ancient Mariner_ seemed unchanged. Around them, they could see thedim glowing of the galaxies. 

"Brother! We came near something!" Arcot cried. "It may be a wanderingstar! Take a look around, quick!"

But the dark of space seemed utterly empty around them as they coastedweightless through space. Then Arcot snapped off the lights of thecontrol room, and in a moment his eyes had become accustomed to the dimlights. 

It was dead ahead of them. It was a dull red glow, so dim it wasscarcely visible. Arcot realized it was a dead star. 

"There it is, Morey!" he said. "A dead star, directly ahead of us! GoodGod, how close are we?"

They were falling straight toward the dim red bulk. 

"How far are we from it?" Fuller asked. 

"At least several million--" Morey began. Then he looked at the distancerecorded on the meteor detector. "ARCOT! FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE DO SOMETHING!THAT THING IS ONLY A FEW HUNDRED MILES AWAY!"

"There's only one thing to do, " Arcot said tightly. "We can never hopeto avoid that thing; we haven't got the power. I'm going to try for anorbit around it. We'll fall toward it and give the ship all theacceleration she'll take. There's no time to calculate--I'll just pileon the speed until we don't fall into it. "

The others, strapped into the control chairs, prepared themselves forthe acceleration to come. 

If the _Ancient Mariner_ had dropped toward the star from an infinitedistance, Arcot could have applied enough power to put the ship in ahyperbolic orbit which would have carried them past the star. But theyhad come in on the space drive, and had gotten fairly close before thegravitational field had drained the power from the main coil, and it wasnot until the space field had broken that they had started to acceleratetoward the star. Their velocity would not be great enough to form anescape orbit. 

Even now, they would fall far short of enough velocity to get into anelliptical orbit unless they used the molecular drive. 

Arcot headed toward one edge of the star, and poured power into themolecular drive. The ship shot forward under an additional five and ahalf gravities of acceleration. Their velocity had been five thousandmiles per second when they entered hyperspace, and they were swiftlyadding to their original velocity. 

They did not, of course, feel the pull of the sun, since they were infree fall in its field; they could only feel the five and a halfgravities of the molecular drive. Had they been able to experience thepull of the star, they would have been crushed by their own weight. 

Their speed was mounting as they drew nearer to the star, and Arcot wasforcing the ship on with all the additional power he could get. But heknew that the only hope they had was to get the ship in a closed ellipsearound the star, and a closed ellipse meant that they would be foreverbound to the star as a planet! Helpless, for not even the titanic powerof the _Ancient Mariner_ could enable them to escape!

As the dull red of the dead sun ballooned toward them, Arcot said: "Ithink we'll make an orbit, all right, but we're going to be awfullyclose to the surface of that thing!"

The others were quiet; they merely watched Arcot and the star as Arcotmade swift movements with the controls, doing all he could to establishthem in an orbit that would be fairly safe. 

It seemed like an eternity--five and a half gravities of accelerationheld the men in their chairs almost as well as the straps of theantiacceleration units that bound them. When a man weighs better thanhalf a ton, he doesn't feel like moving much. 

Fuller whispered to Morey out of the corner of his sagging mouth. "Whaton Earth--I mean, what in Space is that thing? We're within only a fewhundred miles, you said, so it must be pretty small. How could it pullus around like this?"

"It's a dead white dwarf--a 'black dwarf', you might say, " Moreyreplied. "As the density of such matter increases, the volume of thestar depends less and less on its temperature. In a dwarf with the massof the sun, the temperature effect is negligible; it's the action of theforces within the electron-nucleon gas which makes up the star thatreigns supreme. 

"It's been shown that if a white dwarf--or a black one--is increased inmass, it begins to decrease sharply in volume after a certain point isreached. In fact, no _cold_ star can exist with a volume greater thanabout one and a half times the mass of the sun--as the mass increasesand the pressure goes up, the star shrinks in volume because of thedegenerate matter in it. At a little better than 1. 4 times the mass ofthe sun--our sun, I mean: Old Sol--the star would theoretically collapseto a point. 

"That has almost happened in this case. The actual limit is when thestar has reached the density of a neutron, and this star hasn'tcollapsed that far by a long shot. 

"But that star is only forty kilometers--_or less than twenty-fivemiles_ in diameter!"

It took nearly two hours of careful juggling to get an orbit whichArcot considered reasonably circular. 

And when they finally did, Wade looked at the sky above them andshouted: "Say, look! What are all those streaks?"

Arcing up from the surface of the dull red plain below them and goingover the ship, were several dim streaks of light across the sky. One ofthem was brighter than the rest, a bright white streak. The streaksdidn't move; they seemed to have been painted on the sky overhead, glowing bands of unwavering light. 

"Those, " said Arcot, "are the nebulae. That wide streak is the one wejust left. The bright streak must be a nearby star. 

"They look like streaks because we're moving so fast in so small anorbit. " He pointed to the red star beneath them. "We're less than twentymiles from the center of that thing! We're almost exactly thirtykilometers from its center, or about ten kilometers from its surface!But, because of it's great mass, our orbital velocity is somethingterrific!

"We're going around that thing better than three hundred times everysecond; our 'year' is three milliseconds long! Our orbital velocity is_seven hundred thousand kilometers per second_!

"We're moving along at about a fifth of the speed of light!"

"Are we safe in this orbit?" Fuller asked. 

"Safe enough, " said Arcot bitterly. "So damned safe that I don't see howwe'll ever break free. We can't pull away with all the power on thisship. We're trapped!

"Well, I'm worn out from working under all that gravity; let's eat andget some sleep. "

"I don't feel like sleeping, " said Fuller. "You may call this safe, butit would only take an instant to fall down to the surface of that thingthere. " He looked down at their inert, but titanically powerful enemywhose baleful glow seemed even now to be burning their funeral pyre. 

"Well, " said Arcot, "falling into it and flying off into space are twothings you don't have to worry about. If we started toward it, we'd befalling, and our velocity would increase; as a result, we'd bounce rightback out again. The magnitude of the force required to make us fall intothat sun is appalling! The gravitational pull on us now amounts to aboutfive _billion_ tons, which is equalized by the centrifugal force of ourorbital velocity. Any tendency to change it would be like trying to benda spring with that much resistance. 

"We'd require a tremendous force to make us either fall into thatstar--or get away from it. 

"To escape, we have to lift this ship out against gravity. That meanswe'd have to lift about five million tons of mass. As we get fartherout, our weight will decrease as the gravitational attraction drops off, but we would need such vast amounts of energy that they are beyond humanconception. 

"We have burned up two tons of matter recharging the coils, and are nowusing another two tons to recharge them again. We need at least fourtons to spare, and we only started out with twenty. We simply haven'tgot fuel enough to break loose from this star's gravitational hold, vastas the energy of matter is. Let's eat, and then we can sleep on theproblem. "

Wade cooked a meal for them, and they ate in silence, trying to think ofsome way out of their dilemma. Then they tried to sleep on the problem, as Arcot had suggested, but it was difficult to relax. They werephysically tired; they had gone through such great strains, even in theshort time that they had been maneuvering, that they were very tired. 

Under a pull five times greater than normal gravity, they had tired inone-fifth the time they would have at one gravity, but their brains werestill wide awake, trying to think of some way--_any way_--to get awayfrom the dark sun. 

But at last sleep came. 

XI

Morey thought he was the first to waken when, seven hours later, hedressed and dove lightly, noiselessly, out into the library. Suddenly, he noticed that the telectroscope was in operation--he heard the low humof its smoothly working director motors. 

He turned and headed back toward the observatory. Arcot was busy withthe telectroscope. 

"What's up, Arcot?" he demanded. 

Arcot looked up at him and dusted off his hands. "I've just beengimmicking up the telectroscope. We're going around this dead dwarf onceevery three milliseconds, which makes it awfully hard to see the starsaround us. So I put in a cutoff which will shut the telectroscope offmost of the time; it only looks at the sky once every threemilliseconds. As a result, we can get a picture of what's going onaround us very easily. It won't be a steady picture, but since we'regetting a still picture three hundred times a second, it will be betterthan any moving picture film ever projected as far as accuracy isconcerned. 

"I did it because I want to take a look at that bright streak in thesky. I think it'll be the means to our salvation--if there is any. "

Morey nodded. "I see what you mean; if that's another white dwarf--whichit most likely is--we can use it to escape. I think I see what you'redriving at. "

"If it doesn't work, " Arcot said coolly, "we can profit by the exampleof the people we left back there. Suicide is preferable to dying ofcold. "

Morey nodded. "The question is: How helpless are we?"

"Depends entirely on that star; let's see if we can get a focus on it. "

At the orbital velocity of the ship, focussing on the star was indeed adifficult thing to do. It took them well over an hour to get the imagecentered in the screen without its drifting off toward one edge; it tookeven longer to get the focus close enough to a sphere to give them adefinite reading on the instruments. The image had started out as astreak, but by taking smaller and smaller sections of the streak at theproper times, they managed to get a good, solid image. But to get itbright enough was another problem; they were only picking up a fractionof the light, and it had to be amplified greatly to make a visibleimage. 

When they finally got what they were looking for, Morey gazed steadilyat the image. "Now the job is to figure the distance. And we haven't gotmuch parallax to work with. "

"If we compute in the timing in our blinker system at opposite sides ofthe orbit, I think we can do it, " Arcot said. 

They went to work on the problem. When Fuller and Wade showed up, theywere given work to do--Morey gave them equations to solve withouttelling them to what the figures applied. 

Finally Arcot said: "Their period about the common center of gravity isthirty-nine hours, as I figure it. "

Morey nodded. "Check. And that gives us a distance of two million milesapart. "

"Just what are you two up to?" asked Fuller. "What good is another star?The one we're interested in is this freak underneath us. "

"No, " Arcot corrected, "we're interested in getting _away_ from the onebeneath us, which is an entirely different matter. If we were midwaybetween this star and that one, the gravitational effects of the twowould be cancelled out, since we would be pulled as hard in onedirection as the other. Then we'd be free of both pulls and couldescape!

"If we could get into that neutral area long enough to turn on our spacestrain drive, we could get away between them fast. Of course, a lot ofour energy would be eaten up, but we'd get away. 

"That's our only hope, " Arcot concluded. 

"Yes, and what a whale of a hope it is, " Wade snorted sarcastically. "How are you going to get out to a point halfway between these two starswhen you don't have enough power to lift this ship a few miles?"

"If Mahomet can not go to the mountain, " misquoted Arcot, "then themountain must come to Mahomet. "

"What are you going to do?" Wade asked in exasperation. "Beat Joshua? Hemade the sun stand still, but this is a job of throwing them around!"

"It is, " agreed Arcot quietly, "and I intend to throw that star in sucha way that we can escape between the twin fields! We can escape betweenthe hammer and the anvil as millions of millions of millions of tons ofmatter crash into each other. "

"And you intend to swing that?" asked Wade in awe as he thought of thespectacle there would be when two suns fell into each other. "Well, Idon't want to be around. "

"You haven't any choice, " Arcot grinned. Then his face grew serious. "What I want to do is simple. We have the molecular ray. Those stars arehot. They don't fall into each other because they are rotating abouteach other. Suppose that rotation were stopped--stopped suddenly andcompletely? The molecular ray acts catalytically; we won't supply thepower to stop that star, the star itself will. All we have to do iscause the molecules to move in a direction opposite to the rotation. We'll supply the impulse, and the star will supply the energy!

"Our job will be to break away when the stars get close enough; we arereally going to hitch our wagon to a star!

"The mechanics of the job are simple. We will have to calculate when andhow long to use the power, and when and how quickly to escape. We'llhave to use the main power board to generate the ray and project itinstead of the little ray units. With luck, we ought to be free of thisstar in three days!"

Work was started at once. They had a chance of life in sight, and theyhad every intention of taking advantage of it! The calculating machinesthey had brought would certainly prove worth their mass in this one use. The observations were extremely difficult because the ship was rocketingaround the star in such a rapid orbit. The calculations of the mass anddistance and orbital motion of the other star were therefore verydifficult, but the final results looked good. 

The other star and this one formed a binary, the two being of onlyslightly different mass and rotating about each other at a distance ofroughly two million miles. 

The next problem was to calculate the time of fall from that point, assuming that it would stop instantaneously, which would beapproximately true. 

The actual fall would take only seven hours under the tremendousacceleration of the two masses! Since the stars would fall toward eachother, the ship would be drawn toward the falling mass, and since theirorbit around the star took only a fraction of a second to complete, theyhad to make sure they were in the right position at the halfway pointjust before collision occurred. Also, their orbit would be greatlyperturbed as the star approached, and it was necessary to calculate thatin, too. 

Arcot calculated that in twenty-two hours, forty-six minutes, they wouldbe in the most favorable position to start the fall. They could havestarted sooner, but there were some changes that had to be made in thewiring of the ship before they could start using the molecular ray atfull power. 

"Well, " said Wade as he finally finished the laborious computations, "Ihope we don't make a mistake and get caught between the two! And whathappens if we find we haven't stopped the star after all?"

"If we don't hit it exactly the first time, " Morley replied, "we'll haveto juggle the ray until we do. "

They set to work at once, installing the heavy leads to the rayprojectors, which were on the outside of the hull in countersunkrecesses. Morey and Wade had to go outside the ship to help attach thecables. 

Out in space, floating about the ship, they were still weightless, forthey, too, were supported by centrifugal force. 

The work of readjusting the projectors for greater power was completedin an hour and a quarter, which still left over twenty hours before theycould use them. During the next ten hours, they charged the greatstorage coils to capacity, leaving the circuits to them open, controlledby the relays only. That would keep the coils charged, ready to start. 

Finally, Wade dusted off his hands and said: "We're all ready to gomechanically, and I think it would be wise if we were ready physically, too. I know we're not very tired, but if we sit around in suspense we'llbe as nervous as cats when the time comes. I suggest we take a couple ofsleeping tablets and turn in. If we use a mild shock to awaken us, wewon't oversleep. "

The others agreed to the plan and prepared for their wait. 

Awakened two hours before the actual moment of action, Wade preparedbreakfast, and Morey took observations. He knew just where the starshould be according to their calculations, and looked for it there. Hebreathed a sigh of relief--it was exactly in place! Their mathematicsthey had been sure of, but on such a rapidly moving machine, it wasexceedingly difficult to make good observations. 

The two hours seemed to drag interminably, but at last Arcot signalledfor the full power of the molecular rays. They waited, breathlessly, forsome response. Nearly twenty seconds later, the other sun went out. 

"We did it!" said Wade in a hushed voice. It was almost a shock torealize that this ship had power enough to extinguish a sun!

Arcot and Morey weren't awed; they didn't have time. There were otherthings to do and do fast. 

They had checked the time required for them to see that the white dwarfhad gone out. Half of this gave them the distance from the star in lightseconds. 

The screen had already been rigged to flash the information into acomputer, which in turn gave a time signal to the robot pilot that wouldturn on the drive at precisely the right instant. There was no time forhuman error here; the velocities were too great and the time for errortoo small. 

Then they waited. They had to wait for seven hours spinning dizzilyaround an improbably tiny star with an equally improbably titanicgravitational field. A star only a couple of dozens of miles across, andyet so dense that it weighed half a million times as much as the Earth!And they had to wait while another star like it, chilled now to absolutezero, fell toward them!

"I wish we could stay around to see the splash, " Arcot said. "It's goingto be something to see. All the kinetic energy of those two massesslamming into each other is going to be a blaze of light that willreally be something!"

Wade was looking nervously at the telectroscope plate. "I wish we couldsee that other sun. I don't like the idea of a thing that big creepingup on us in the dark. "

"Calm down, " Morey said quietly. "It's out of our hands now; we took achance, and it was a chance we _had_ to take. If you want to watchsomething, watch Junior down there. It's going to start doing somepretty interesting tricks. "

As the dense black sun approached them, Junior, as Morey had called it, did begin to do tricks. At first they seemed to be optical effects, asthough the eye itself were playing tricks. The red, glowing ball beneaththem began to grow transparent around its surface, leaving an opaque redcore which seemed to be shrinking slowly. 

"What's happening?" Fuller asked. 

"Our orbit around the star is becoming more and more elliptical, " Arcotreplied. "As the other sun pulls us, the star beneath us grows smallerwith the distance; then, as we begin to fall back toward it, it growslarger again. Since this is taking place many hundreds of times persecond, the visual pictures all seem to blend in together. "

"Watch the clock, " Morey said suddenly, pointing. 

The men watched tensely as the hand moved slowly around. 

"Ten--nine--eight--seven--six--five--four--three--two--one--ZERO!"

A relay slammed home, and almost instantaneously, everyone on the shipwas slammed into unconsciousness. 

XII

Hours later, Arcot regained consciousness. It was quiet in the ship. Hewas still strapped in his seat in the control room. The relux screenswere in place, and all was perfectly peaceful. He didn't know whetherthe ship was motionless or racing through space at a speed faster thanlight, and his first semiconscious impulse was to see. 

He reached out with an arm that seemed to be made of dry dust, ready tocrumble; an arm that would not behave. His nerves were jumping wildly. He pulled the switch he was seeking, and the relux screens dropped downas the motors pulled them back. 

They were in hyperspace; beside them rode the twin ghost ships. 

Arcot looked around, trying to decide what to do, but his brain wasclogged. He felt tired; he wanted to sleep. Scarcely able to think, hedragged the others to their rooms and strapped them in their bunks. Thenhe strapped himself in and fell asleep almost at once. 

Still more hours passed, then Arcot was waking slowly to insistentshaking by Morey. 

"Hey! Arcot! Wake up! ARCOT! HEY!"

Arcot's ears sent the message to his brain, but his brain tried toignore it. At last he slowly opened his eyes. 

"Huh?" he said in a low, tired voice. 

"Thank God! I didn't know whether you were alive or not. None of usremembered going to bed. We decided you must have carried us there, butyou sure looked dead. "

"Uhuh?" came Arcot's unenthusiastic rejoinder. 

"Boy, is he sleepy!" said Wade as he drifted into the room. "Use a wetcloth and some cold water, Morey. "

A brisk application of cold water brought Arcot more nearly awake. Heimmediately clamored for the wherewithal to fill an aching void that wasmaking itself painfully felt in his midsection. 

"He's all right!" laughed Wade. "His appetite is just as healthy asever!"

They had already prepared a meal, and Arcot was promptly hustled to thegalley. He strapped himself into the chair so that he could eatcomfortably, and then looked around at the others. "Where the devil arewe?"

"That, " replied Morey seriously, "was just what we wanted to ask you. Wehaven't the beginnings of an idea. We slept for two days, all told, andby now we're so far from all the Island Universes that we can't tell onefrom another. We have no idea where we are. 

"I've stopped the ship; we're just floating. I'm sure I don't know whathappened, but I hoped you might have an idea. "

"I have an idea, " said Arcot. "I'm hungry! You wait until after I'veeaten, and I'll talk. " He fell to on the food. 

After eating, he went to the control room and found that every gyroscopein the place had been thrown out of place by the attractions they hadpassed through. He looked around at the meters and coils. 

It was obvious what had happened. Their attempt to escape had beensuccessful; they had shot out between the stars, into the space. Theenergy had been drained from the power coil, as they had expected. Thenthe power plant had automatically cut in, recharging the coils in twohours. Then the drive had come on again, and the ship had flashed oninto space. But with the gyroscopes as erratic as they were, there wasno way of knowing which direction they had come; they were lost inspace!

"Well, there are lots of galaxies we can go to, " said Arcot. "We oughtto be able to find a nice one and stay there if we can't get homeagain. "

"Sure, " Wade replied, "but I like Earth! If only we hadn't all passedout! What caused that, Arcot?"

Arcot shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know. My only theory is that thedouble gravitational field, plus our own power field, produced a sort ofcross-product that effected our brains. 

"At any rate, here we are. "

"We certainly are, " agreed Morey. "We can't possibly back track; what wehave to do is identify our own universe. What identifying features doesit have that will enable us to recognize it?

"Our Galaxy has two 'satellites', the Greater and Lesser MagellanicClouds. If we spent ten years photographing and studying and comparingwith the photographs we already have, we might find it. We know thatsystem will locate the Galaxy, but we haven't the time. Any othersuggestions?"

"We came out here to visit planets, didn't we?" asked Arcot. "Here's ourchance--and our only chance--of getting home, as far as I can see. Wecan go to any galaxy in the neighborhood--within twenty or thirtymillion light years--and look for a planet with a high degree ofcivilization. 

"Then we'll give them the photographs we have, and ask them if they'veany knowledge of a galaxy with two such satellites. We just keep tryinguntil we find a race which has learned through their research. I thinkthat's the easiest, quickest, and most satisfactory method. What do youthink?"

It was the obvious choice, and they all agreed. The next proposition wasto select a galaxy. 

"We can go to any one we wish, " said Morey, "but we're now moving atthirty thousand miles per second; it would take us quite a while to slowdown, stop, and go in the other direction. There's a nice, big galacticnebula right in front of us, about three days away--six million lightyears. Any objections to heading for that?"

The rest looked at the glowing point of the nebula. Out in space, a staris a hard, brilliant, dimensionless point of light. But a nebula glowswith a faint mistiness; they are so far away that they never have anybright glow, such as stars have, but they are so vast, their dimensionsso great, that even across millions of light years of space they appearas tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men lookedout of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light onthe soft black curtain of space. 

It was as good a course as any, and the ship's own inertia recommendedit; they had only to redirect the ship with greater accuracy. 

Setting the damaged gyroscopes came first, however. There were a numberof things about the ship that needed readjustment and replacement afterthe strain of escaping from the giant star. 

After they had made a thorough inspection Arcot said:

"I think we'd best make all our repairs out here. That flame that hit usburned off our outside microphone and speaker, and probably did a lot ofdamage to the ray projectors. I'd rather not land on a planet unarmed;the chances are about fifty-fifty that we'd be greeted with open cannonmuzzles instead of open arms. "

The work inside was left to Arcot and Fuller, while Morey and Wade puton spacesuits and went out onto the hull. 

They found surprisingly little damage--far less than they had expected. True, the loudspeaker, the microphone, and all other instruments made ofordinary matter had been burned off clean. They didn't even have toclean out the spaces where they had been recessed into the wall. At atemperature of ten thousand degrees, the metals had all boiledaway--even tungsten boils at seven thousand degrees, and all othernormal matter boils even more easily. 

The ray projectors, which had been adjusted for the high power necessaryto stop a sun in its orbit, were readjusted for normal power, and theheat beams were replaced. 

After nearly four hours work, everything had been checked, from relaysand switch points to the instruments and gyroscopes. Stock had beentaken, and they found they were running low on replacement parts. Ifanything more happened, they would have to stop using some of themachinery and break it up for spare parts. Of their original supply oftwenty tons of lead fuel, only ten tons of the metal were left, but leadwas a common metal which they could easily pick up on any planet theymight visit. They could also get a fresh supply of water and refilltheir air tanks there. 

The ship was in as perfect condition as it had ever been, for everybearing had been put in condition and the generators and gyroscopes wererunning smoothly. 

They threw the ship into full speed and headed for the galaxy ahead ofthem. 

"We are going to look for intelligent beings, " Arcot reminded theothers, "so we'll have to communicate with them. I suggest we allpractice the telepathic processes I showed you--we'll need them. "

The time passed rapidly with something to do. They spent a considerablepart of it reading the books on telepathy that Arcot had brought, and onpracticing it with each other. 

By the end of the second day of the trip, Morey and Fuller, who hadpeculiarly adaptable minds, were able to converse readily and rapidly, Fuller doing the projecting and Morey the receiving. Wade had dividedhis time about equally between projecting and reading, with the resultthat he could do neither well. 

Early on the fourth day, they entered the universe toward which theywere heading. They had stopped at about half a million light years anddecided that a large local cluster of very brilliant suns promised thebest results, since the stars were closer together there, and there weremany of the yellow G-0 type for which they were seeking. 

They had penetrated into the galaxy as far as was safe, using halfspeed; then, at lower speeds, they worked toward the local cluster. 

Arcot cut the drive several light years from the nearest sun. "Well, we're where we wanted to be; now what do we do? Morey, pick us out a G-0star. We await your royal command to move. "

After a few minutes at the telectroscope, Morey pointed to one of thepinpoints of light that gleamed brightly in the sky. "That one lookslike our best bet. It's a G-0 a little brighter than Sol. "

Morey swung the ship about, pointing the axis of the ship in the samedirection as its line of flight. The observatory had been leading, butnow the ship was turned to its normal position. 

They shot forward, using the space-strain drive, for a full hour atone-sixteenth power. Then Arcot cut the drive, and the disc of the sunwas large before them. 

"We're going to have a job cutting down our velocity; we're travelingpretty fast, relative to that sun, " Arcot told the others. Theirvelocity was so great that the sun didn't seem to swerve them greatly asthey rushed nearer. Arcot began to use the molecular drive to brake theship. 

Morey was busy with the telectroscope, although greatly hampered by thefact that it was a feat of strength to hold his arm out at right anglesto his body for ten seconds under the heavy acceleration Arcot wasapplying. 

"This method works!" called Morey suddenly. "The Fuller System ForFinding Planets has picked another winner! Circle the sun so that I canget a better look!"

Arcot was already trying vainly to decrease their velocity to a figurethat would permit the attraction of the sun to hold them in its grip andallow them to land on a planet. 

"As I figure it, " Arcot said, "we'll need plenty of time to come torest. What do you think, Morey?"

Morey punched figures into the calculator. "Wow! Somewhere in theneighborhood of a hundred days, using all the acceleration that will besafe! At five gravities, reducing our present velocity of twenty-fivethousand miles per second to zero will take approximately twenty-fourhundred hours--one hundred days! We'll have to use the gravitationalattraction of that sun to help us. "

"We'll have to use the space control, " said Arcot. "If we move close tothe sun by the space control, all the energy of the fall will be used inovercoming the space-strain coil's field, and thus prevent our falling. When we start to move away again, we will be climbing against thatgravity, which will aid us in stopping. But even so, it will take usabout three days to stop. We wouldn't get anywhere using molecularpower; that giant sun was just too damned generous with his energy offall!"

They started the cycles, and, as Arcot had predicted, they took a fullthree days of constant slowing to accomplish their purpose, burning upnearly three tons of matter in doing so. They were constantly oppressedby a load of five gravities except for the short intervals when theystopped to eat and when they were moving in the space control field. Even in sleeping, they were forced to stand the load. 

The massive sun was their principal and most effective brake. At no timedid they go more than a few dozen million miles from the primary, forthe more intense the gravity, the better effect they got. 

Morey divided his time between piloting the ship while Arcot rested, andobserving the system. By the end of the third day, he had made verycreditable progress with his map. 

He had located only six planets, but he was certain there were others. For the sake of simplicity, he had assumed circular orbits andcalculated their approximate orbital velocities from their distance fromthe sun. He had determined the mass of the sun from direct weighingsaboard their ship. He soon had a fair diagram of the system constructedmathematically, and experimental observation showed it to be a veryclose approximation. 

The planets were rather more massive than those of Sol. The innermostplanet had a third again the diameter of Mercury and was four millionmiles farther from the primary. He named it Hermes. The next one, whichhe named Aphrodite, the Greek goddess corresponding to the Roman Venus, was only a little larger than Venus and was some eight million milesfarther from its primary--seventy-five million miles from the centralsun. 

The next, which Morey called Terra, was very much like Earth. At adistance of a hundred and twenty-four million miles from the sun, itmust have received almost the same amount of heat that Earth does, forthis sun was considerably brighter than Sol. 

Terra was eight thousand two hundred miles in diameter, with a fairlyclear atmosphere and a varying albedo which indicated clouds in theatmosphere. Morey had every reason to believe that it might beinhabited, but he had no proof because his photographs were consistentlypoor due to the glare of the sun. 

The rest of the planets proved to be of little interest. In the placewhere, according to Bode's Law, another planet, corresponding to Mars, should have been, there was only a belt of asteroids. Beyond this wasstill another belt. And on the other side of the double asteroid beltwas the fourth planet, a fifty-thousand-mile-in-diameter methane-ammoniagiant which Morey named Zeus in honor of Jupiter. 

He had picked up a couple of others on his plates, but he had not beenable to tell anything about them as yet. In any case, the planetsAphrodite and Terra were by far the most interesting. 

"I think we picked the right angle to come into this system, " saidArcot, looking at Morey's photographs of the wide bands of asteroids. They had come into the planetary group at right angles to the plane ofthe ecliptic, which had allowed them to miss both asteroid belts. 

They started moving toward the planet Terra, reaching their objective inless than three hours. 

The globe beneath them was lit brightly, for they had approached it fromthe daylight side. Below them, they could see wide, green plains andgently rolling mountains, and in a great cleft in one of the mountainranges was a shimmering lake of clearest blue. 

The air of the planet screamed about them as they dropped down, and theroar in the loudspeaker grew to a mighty cataract of sound. Morey turneddown the volume. 

The sparkling little lake passed beneath them as they shot on, seventy-five miles above the surface of the planet. When they had firstentered the atmosphere, they had the impression of looking down on avast, inverted bowl whose edge rested on a vast, smooth table of deepviolet velvet. But as they dropped and the violet became bluer andbluer, they experienced the strange optical illusion of "flopping" ofthe scene. The bowl seemed to turn itself inside out, and they werelooking down at its inner surface. 

They shot over a mountain range, and a vast plain spread out beforethem. Here and there, in the far distance, they could see darker spotscaused by buckled geological strata. 

Arcot swung the ship around, and they saw the vast horizon swing aboutthem as their sensation of "down" changed with the acceleration of theturn. They felt nearly weightless, for they were lifting again in a higharc. 

Arcot was heading back toward the mountains they had passed over. Hedropped the ship again, and the foothills seemed to rise to meet them. 

"I'm heading for that lake, " Arcot explained. "It seems absolutelydeserted, and there are some things we want to do. I haven't had anydecent exercise for the past two weeks, except for straining under highgravity. I want to do some swimming, and we need to distill some waterfor drink; we need to refill the tanks in case of emergencies. If theatmosphere contains oxygen, fine; if it doesn't, we can get it out ofthe water by electrolysis. 

"But I hope that air is good to breathe, because I've been wanting aswim and a sun bath for a long time!"

XIII

The _Ancient Mariner_ hung high in the air, poised twenty-five milesabove the surface of the little lake. Wade, as chemist, tested the airwhile the others readied the distillation and air condensationapparatus. By the time they had finished, Wade was ready with hisreport. 

"Air pressure about 20 psi at the surface; temperature aroundninety-five Fahrenheit. Composition: eighteen percent oxygen, seventy-five percent nitrogen, four-tenths of one percent carbondioxide, residue--inert gasses. That's not including water vapor, ofwhich there is a fair amount. 

"I put a canary into the air, and the bird liked it, so I imagine it'squite safe except for bacteria, perhaps. Naturally, at this altitude theair is germ-free. "

"Good, " said Morey, "then we can take our swim and work without worryingabout spacesuits. "

"Just a minute!" Fuller objected. "What about those germs Wadementioned? If you think I'm going out in my shorts where some flock ofbacteria can get at my tender anatomy, you've got another think coming!"

"I wouldn't worry about it, " Wade said. "The chances of organismsdeveloping along the same evolutionary line is quite slim. We may findthe inhabitants of the same shape as those of another world, because thehuman body is fairly well constructed anatomically. The head is in aplace where it will be able to see over a wide area and it's in a safeplace. The hand is very useful and can be improved upon but little. True, the Venerians have a second thumb, but the principle is the same. 

"But chemically, the bodies are probably very different. The people ofVenus are widely different chemically; the bacteria that can make aVenerian deathly ill is killed the instant it enters our body, or elseit starves to death because it can't find the kind of chemical food itneeds to live. And the same thing happens when a Venerian is attacked byan Earthly microorganism. 

"Even on Earth, evolution has produced such widely varying types of lifethat an organism that can feed on one is totally incapable of feeding onanother. You, for instance, couldn't catch tobacco mosaic virus, and thetobacco plant can't catch the measles virus. 

"You couldn't expect a microorganism to evolve here that was capable offeeding on Earth-type tissues; they would have starved to death longago. "

"What about bigger animals?" Fuller asked cautiously. 

"That's different. You would probably be indigestible to an aliencarnivore, but he'd probably kill you first to find out. If he ate you, it might kill him in the end, but that would be small consolation. That's why we're going to go out armed. "

Arcot dropped the ship swiftly until they were hovering a bare hundredfeet over the waters of the lake. There was a little stream winding itsway down the mountainside, and another which led the clear overflowaway. 

"I doubt if there's anything of great size in that lake, " Arcot saidslowly and thoughtfully. "Still, even small fish might be deadly. Let'splay safe and remove all forms of life, bacterial and otherwise. Alittle touch of the molecular motion ray, greatly diffused, will do thetrick. "

Since the molecular ray directed the motion of the molecules of matter, it prevented chemical reactions from taking place, even when greatlydiffused; all the molecules tend to go in the same direction to such anextent that the delicate balance of chemical reactions that is life isupset. It is too delicate a thing to stand any power that upsets thereactions so violently. All things are killed instantly. 

As the light haze of the ionized air below them glowed out in a hugecone, the water of the lake heaved and seemed to move in its depths, butthere was no great movement of the waters; they lost only a fraction oftheir weight. But every living thing in that lake died instantly. 

Arcot turned the ship, and the shining hull glided softly over to oneside of the lake where a little sandy beach invited them. There seemedno indication of intelligent life about. 

Each of them took a load of the supplies they had brought, and carriedthem out under the shade of an immense pine-like tree--a gigantic columnof wood that stretched far into the sky to lose its green leaves in awaving sea of foliage. The mottled sunlight of the bright star abovethem made them feel very much at home. Its color, intensity, and warmthwere all exactly the same as on Earth. 

Each of the men wore his power suit to aid in carrying the things theyhad brought, for the gravity here was a bit higher than that of Earth. The difference in air pressure was so little as to be scarcelynoticeable; they even adjusted the interior of the ship to it. 

They had every intention of staying here for awhile. It was pleasant tolie in the warm sun once more; so pleasant that it became difficult toremember that they were countless trillions of long miles from their ownhome planet. It was hard to realize that the warm, blazing star abovethem was not Old Sol. 

Arcot was carrying a load of food in a box. He had neutralized hisweight until, load and all, he weighed about a hundred pounds. This wasnecessary in order to permit him to drag a length of hose behind himtoward the water, so it could be used as an intake for the pumps. 

Morey, meanwhile, was having trouble. He had been carrying a load ofassorted things to use--a few pneumatic pillows, a heavy iron pot forboiling the water, and a number of other things. 

He reached his destination, having floated the hundred or so feet fromthe ship by using his power suit. He forgot, momentarily, and droppedhis load. Immediately, he too began to "drop"--upward! He had abuoyancy of around three hundred pounds, and a weight of only two fifty. In dropping the load, the sudden release had caused the power unit tojerk him upward, and somehow the controlling knob on the power pack wastorn loose. 

Morey shot up into the air, showing a fair rate of progress toward hislate abode--space! And he had no way to stop himself. His hand powerunit was far too weak to overcome the pull of his power-pack, and he wasrising faster and faster!

He realized that his friends could catch him, and laughingly calleddown: "Arcot! Help! I'm being kidnapped by my power suit! To therescue!"

Arcot looked up quickly at Morey's call and realized immediately thathis power control had come off. He knew there was twenty miles or so ofbreathable air above, and long before Morey rose that far, he couldcatch him in the _Ancient Mariner_, if necessary. 

He turned on his own power suit, using a lift of a hundred pounds, whichgave him double Morey's acceleration. Quickly he gathered speed thatshot him up toward his helpless friend, and a moment later, he hadcaught up with him and passed him. Then he shut off his power anddrifted to a halt before he began to drop again. As Morey rose towardhim, Arcot adjusted the power in his own suit to match Morey's velocity. 

Arcot grabbed Morey's leg and turned his power down until he had aweight of fifty pounds. Soon they were both falling again, and whentheir rate of fall amounted to approximately twenty miles per hour, Arcot cut their weight to zero and they continued down through theirmomentum. Just short of the ground, he leaped free of Morey, who, carried on by momentum, touched the ground a moment later. Wade at oncejumped in and held him down. 

"Now, now! Calm yourself, " said Wade solicitously. "Don't go up in theair like that over the least little thing. "

"I won't, if you'll get busy and take this damned thing off--or fastensome lead to my feet!" replied Morey, starting to unstrap the mechanism. 

"You'd better hold your horses there, " said Arcot. "If you take that offnow, we sure will need the _Ancient Mariner_ to catch up with it. Itwill produce an acceleration that no man could ever stand--something onthe order of five thousand gravities, if the tubes could stand it. Andsince that one is equipped with the invisibility apparatus, you'd be outone good invisibility suit. Restrain yourself, boy, and I'll go get anew knob control. 

"Wade, get the boy a rock to hold him down. Better tie it around hisneck so he won't forget it and fly off into space again. It's a nuisancelocating so small an object in space and I promised his father I'd bringthe body back if there was anything left of it. " He released Morey asWade handed him a large stone. 

A few minutes later, he returned with a new adjustment dial and repairedMorey's apparatus. The strain was released when he turned it, and Moreyparted with the rock with relief. 

Morey grunted in relief, and looked at the offending pack. 

"You know, that being stuck with a sky-bound gadget that you can't turnoff is the nastiest combination of feeling stupid, helpless, comical, silly and scared I've hit yet. It now--somewhat late--occurs to me thatthis is powered with a standard power coil, straight off the productionline, and that it has a standard overload cut-out for protection ofassociated equipment. I want to install an emergency cutoff switch, incase a knob, or something else, goes sour. But I want to have theemergency overload where I can decide whether or not an emergencyoverload is to be accepted. I'd feel a sight more than silly if thatoverload relay popped while I was a couple thousand feet up. 

"Trouble with all this new stuff of ours is that we simply haven't hadtime to find out all the 'I never thought of that' things that can gowrong. If the grid resistor on that oscillator went out, for instance, what would it do?"

Arcot cocked an eye at the power pack, visualizing the circuits. "Fullblast, straight up, and no control. But modern printed resistors don'tfail. "

"That's what it says in all the books. " Wade nodded wisely. "And youshould see the stock of replacement units every electronics shop stocksfor purposes of replacing infallible units, too. You've got a point, myfriend. "

"I can see four ways we can change these things to fail-safe operation, if we add Morey's emergency cut-off switch. If it did go on-full then, you could use intermittent operation and get down, " Arcot acknowledged. 

"Anybody know what silly fail-unsafe tricks we overlooked in the_Ancient Mariner_?" Fuller asked. 

"That, " said Wade with a grimace, "is a silly question. The 'I didn'tthink of that' type of failure occurs because I didn't think of that, and the reason I didn't think of it is because it never occurred to me. If we'd been able to think of 'em, we would have. We'll probably getstuck with a few more yet, before we get back. But at least we can cleanup a few bugs in these things now. "

"Forget it for now, Wade, and get that chow on, " suggested Fuller. Hewas lying on his back, clad only in a pair of short trunks, completelyrelaxed and enjoying life. "We can do that when it's dark here. "

"Fuller has the right idea, " said Morey, looking at Fuller with ajudicious eye. "I think I'll follow his example. "

"Which makes three in favor and one on the way, " said Arcot, as he cameout of the ship and sank down on the soft sand of the beach. 

They lay around for a while after lunch, and then decided to swim in thecool waters of the lake. One of them was to stand guard while the otherswent in swimming. Standing guard consisted of lying on his back on thesoft sand, and staring up at the delightful contrast of lush greenfoliage and deep blue sky. 

It was several hours before they gathered up their things and returnedto the ship. They felt more rested than they had before their exercise. They had not been tired before, merely restless, and the physicalexercise had made them far more comfortable. 

They gathered again in the control room. All the apparatus had beentaken in; the tanks were filled, and the compressed oxygen replenished. They closed the airlock and were ready to start again. 

As they lifted into the air, Arcot looked at the lake that was shrinkingbelow them. "Nice place for a picnic; we'll have to remember that place. It isn't more than twenty million light years from home. "

"Yes, " agreed Morey, "it is handy. But suppose we find out where home isfirst; let's go find the local inhabitants. "

"Excellent idea. Which way do we go to look?" Wade asked. 

"This lake must have an outlet to the sea, " Morey answered. "I suggestwe follow it. Most rivers of any size have a port near the mouth, and aport usually means a city. "

"Let's go, " said Arcot, swinging the shining ship about and headingsmoothly down along the line of the little stream that had its beginningat the lake. They moved on across the mountains and over the greenfoothills until they came to a broad, rolling plain. 

"I wonder if this planet _is_ inhabited, " Arcot mused. "None of thisland seems to be cultivated. "

Morey had been scanning the horizon with a pair of powerful binoculars. "No, the land isn't cultivated, but take a look over there--see thatrange of little hills over to the right? Take a look. " He handed thebinoculars to Arcot. 

Arcot looked long and quietly. At last he lowered the binoculars andhanded them to Wade, who sat next to him. 

"It looks like the ruins of a city, " Arcot said. "Not the ruins that astorm would make, but the ruins that high explosives would make. I'd saythere had been a war and the people who once lived here had been drivenoff. "

"So would I, " rejoined Morey. "I wonder if we could find theconquerors?"

"Maybe--unless it was mutual annihilation!"

They rose a bit higher and raised their speed to a thousand miles anhour. On and on they flew, high above the gently rolling plain, mileafter mile. The little brooklet became a great river, and the river keptgrowing more and more. Ahead of them was a range of hills, and theywondered how the river could thread its way among them. They found thatit went through a broad pass that twisted tortuously between highmountains. 

A few miles farther on, they came to a great natural basin in the pass, a wide, level bowl. And in almost the exact center, they saw a loomingmass of buildings--a great city!

"Look!" cried Morey. "I told you it was inhabited!"

Arcot winced. "Yes, but if you shout in my ear like that again, you'llhave to write things out for me for ever after. " He was just as excitedas Morey, nevertheless. 

The great mass of the city was shaped like a titanic cone that stoodhalf mile high and was fully a mile and a half in radius. But theremarkable thing about it was the perfect uniformity with which thebuildings and every structure seemed to conform to this plan. It seemedas though an invisible, but very tangible line had been drawn in theair. 

It was as though a sign had been posted: "Here there shall be buildings. Beyond this line, no structure shall extend, nor any vehicle go!"

The air directly above the city was practically packed with slim, long, needle-like ships of every size--from tiny private ships less thanfifteen feet long to giant freighters of six hundred feet and longer. And every one of them conformed to the rule perfectly!

Only around the base of the city there seemed to be a slight deviation. Where the invisible cone should have touched the ground, there was aseries of low buildings made of some dark metal, and all about them theground appeared scarred and churned. 

"They certainly seem to have some kind of ray screen over that city, "Morey commented. "Just look at that perfect cone effect and those lowbuildings are undoubtedly the projectors. "

Arcot had brought the ship to a halt as he came through the pass in themountain. The shining hull was in the cleft of the gorge, and was, nodoubt, quite hard to see from the city. 

Suddenly, a vagrant ray of the brilliant sun reached down through abreak in the overcast of clouds and touched the shining hull of the_Ancient Mariner_ with a finger of gold. Instantly, the ship shone likethe polished mirror of a heliograph. 

Almost immediately, a low sound came from the distant city. It was apulsing drone that came through the microphone in a weird cadence; alow, beating drone, like some wild music. Louder and stronger it grew, rising in pitch slowly, then it suddenly ended in a burst of risingsound--a terrific whoop of alarm. 

As if by magic, every ship in the air above the city shot downward, dropping suddenly out of sight. In seconds, the air was cleared. 

"It seems they've spotted us, " said Arcot in a voice he tried to makenonchalant. 

A fleet of great, long ships was suddenly rising from the neighborhoodof the central building, the tallest of the group. They went in acompact wedge formation and shot swiftly down along the wall of theinvisible cone until they were directly over the low building nearestthe _Ancient Mariner. _ There was a sudden shimmer in the air. In aninstant, the ships were through and heading toward the _Ancient Mariner_at a tremendous rate. 

They shot forward with an acceleration that was astonishing to the menin the spaceship. In perfect formation, they darted toward the lone, shining ship from far-off Earth!

XIV

The four earthmen watched the fleet of alien ships roar through the airtoward them. 

"Now how shall we signal them?" asked Morey, also trying to benonchalant, and failing as badly as Arcot had. 

"Don't try the light beam method, " cautioned Arcot. The last time theyhad tried to use a light beam signal was when they first contacted theNigrans. The Nigrans thought it was some kind of destruction ray. Thathad started the terrible destructive war of the Black Star. 

"Let's just hang here peaceably and see what they do, " Arcot suggested. 

Motionless, the _Ancient Mariner_ hung before the advancing attack ofthe great battle fleet. The shining hull was a thing of beauty in thegolden sunlight as it waited for the advancing ships. 

The alien ships slowed as they approached and spread out in a greatfan-shaped crescent. 

Suddenly, the _Ancient Mariner_ gave a tremendous leap and hurtledtoward them at a terrific speed, under an acceleration so great thatArcot was nearly hurled into unconsciousness. He would have been exceptfor the terrific mass of the ship. To produce that acceleration in sogreat a mass, a tremendous force was needed, a force that even made theenemy fleet reel under its blow!

But, sudden as it was, Arcot had managed to push the power into reverse, using the force of the molecular drive to counteract the attraction thealiens had brought to bear. 

The whole mighty fabric of the ship creaked as the titanic load cameupon it. They were using a force of a million tons!

The mighty lux beams withstood the stress, however, and the ship came toa halt, then was swiftly backing away from the alien battle fleet. 

"We can give them all they want!" said Arcot grimly. He noticed thatWade and Fuller had been knocked out by the sudden blow, but Morey, though slightly groggy, was still in possession of his senses. 

"Let's not, " Morey remonstrated. "We may be able to make friends withthem, but not if we kill them off. "

"Right!" replied Arcot, "but we're going to give them a littledemonstration of power!"

The _Ancient Mariner_ leaped suddenly upward with a speed that defiedthe eyes of the men at the rays of the enemy ships. Then, as they turnedto follow the sudden motion of the ship--_it was not there!_

The _Ancient Mariner_ had vanished!

Morey was startled for an instant as the ship and his companionsdisappeared around him, then he realized what had happened. Arcot hadused the invisibility apparatus!

Arcot turned and raced swiftly far off to one side, behind the strangeships, and hovered over the great cliff that made the edge of the cleftthat was the river bed. Then he snapped the ship into full visibility. 

Wade and Fuller had recovered by now, and Arcot started barking outorders. "Wade--Fuller--take the molecular ray, Wade, and tear down thatcliff--throw it down into the valley. Fuller, turn the heat beams onwith all the power you can get and burn that refuse he tears down into aheap of molten lava!

"I'm going to show them what we can do! And, Wade--after Fuller gets itmelted down, throw the molten lava high in the air!"

From the ship, a long pencil of rays, faintly violet from the air theyionized, reached out and touched the cliff. In an instant, it had torndown a vast mass of the solid rock, which came raining down into thevalley with a roaring thunder and threw the dirt of the valley into theair like splashed mud. 

Then the violet ray died, and two rays of blinding brilliance reachedout. The rock was suddenly smoking, steaming. Then it became red, dullat first, then brighter and brighter. Suddenly it collapsed into a greatpool of white-hot lava, flowing like water under the influence of thebeams from the ship. 

Again the pale violet of the molecular beams touched the rock--which wasnow bubbling lava. In an instant, the great mass of flaming incandescentrock was flying like a glowing meteor, up into the air. It shot up withterrific speed, broke up in mid-air, and fell back as a rain of red-hotstone. 

The bright rays died out, but the pale fingers of the molecular beamstraced across the level ground. As they touched it, the solid soilspouted into the air like some vast fountain, to fall back asfrost-covered powder. 

The rays that had swung a sun into destruction were at work! What chancehad man, or the works of man against such? What mattered a tiny planetwhen those rays could hurl one mighty sun into another, to blaze up inan awful conflagration that would light up space for a million lightyears around with a mighty glare of light!

As if by a giant plow, the valley was torn and rent in great streaks bythe pale violet rays of the molecular force. Wade tore loose a giantboulder and sent it rocketing into the heavens. It came down with aterrific crash minutes later, to bury itself deep in the soil as itsplintered into fragments. 

Suddenly the _Ancient Mariner_ was jerked violently again. Evidentlyundaunted by their display of power, the aliens' rays had gripped theEarthmen's ship again and were drawing it with terrific acceleration. But this time the ship was racing toward the city, caught by the beam ofone of the low-built, sturdy buildings that housed the protective rayprojectors. 

Again Arcot threw on the mighty power units that drove the ship, bracingthem against the pull of the beam. 

"Wade! Use the molecular ray! Stop that beam!" Arcot ordered. 

The ship was stationary, quivering under the titanic forces thatstruggled for it. The enemy fleet raced toward them, trying to come tothe aid of the men in the tower. 

The pale glow of the molecular beam reached out its ghostly finger andtouched the heavy-walled ray projector building. There was a suddenflash of discharging energy, and the tower was hurled high in the air, leaving only a gaping hole in the ground. 

Instantly, with the collapse of the beam that held it, the _AncientMariner_ shot backward, away from the scene of the battle. Arcot snappedoff the drive and turned on the invisibility apparatus. They hungmotionless, silent and invisible in the air, awaiting developments. 

In close formation, one group of ships blocked the opening in the wallof rays that the removal of one projector building had caused. Threeother ships went to investigate the wreck of the building that hadfallen a mile away. 

The rest of the fleet circled the city, darting around, searchingfrantically for the invisible enemy, fully aware of the danger ofcollision. The unnerving tension of expecting it every second made themerratic and nervous to the _n_th degree. 

"They're sticking pretty close to home, " said Arcot. "They don't seem tobe too anxious to play with us. "

"They don't, do they?" Morey said, looking angry. "They might at leasthave been willing to see what we wanted. I want to investigate someother cities. Come on!" He had thoroughly enjoyed the rest at the littlemountain lake, and he was disappointed that they had been driven away. Had they wanted to, he knew, they could easily have torn the entire cityout by the roots!

"I think we ought to smash them thoroughly, " said Wade. "They'recertainly inhospitable people!"

"And I, for one, would like to know what that attraction ray was, " saidFuller curiously. 

"The ray is easily understood after you take a look at the wreck itmade of some of these instruments, " Arcot told him. "It was projectedmagnetism. I can see how it might be done if you worked on it for awhile. The ray simply attracted everything in its path that wasmagnetic, which included our lux metal hull. 

"Luckily, most of our apparatus is shielded against magnetism. The fewthings that aren't can be repaired easily. But I'll bet Wade finds hisgear in the galley thrown around quite a bit. "

"Where do we go from here, then?" Wade asked. 

"Well, this world is bigger than Earth, " said Morey. "Even if they'reafraid to go out of their cities to run farms, they must have othercities. The thing that puzzles me, though, is how they do it--I don'tsee how they can possibly raise enough food for a city in the area theyhave available!"

"'People couldn't possibly live in hydrogen instead of oxygen', " Arcotquoted, grinning. "That's what they told me when I made my littleannouncement at the meeting on the Black Star situation. The onlytrouble was--they did. That suggestion of yours meets the same fate, Morey!"

"All right, you win, " agreed Morey. "Now let's see if we can find theother nations on this world more friendly. "

Arcot looked at the sun. "We're now well north of the equator. We'll goup where the air is thin, put on some speed, and go into the southtemperate zone. We'll see if we can't find some people there who aremore peaceably inclined. "

Arcot cut off the invisibility tubes. Instantly, all the enemy ships inthe neighborhood turned and darted toward them at top speed. But theshining _Ancient Mariner_ darted into the deep blue vault of the sky, and a moment later was lost to their view. 

"They had a lot of courage, " said Arcot, looking down at the city as itsank out of sight. "It doesn't take one-quarter as much courage to fighta known enemy, no matter how deadly, as it does to fight an unknownenemy force--something that can tear down mountains and throw theirforts into the air like toys. "

"Oh, they had courage, all right, " Morey conceded, "but I wish theyhadn't been quite so anxious to display it!"

They were high above the ground now, accelerating with a force of onegravity. Arcot cut the acceleration down until there was just enough toovercome the air resistance, which, at the height they were flying, wasvery low. The sky was black above them, and the stars were showingaround the blazing sun. They were unfamiliar stars in unfamiliarconstellations--the stars of another universe. 

In a very short time, the ship was dropping rapidly downward again, thehorizontal power off. The air resistance slowed them rapidly. Theydrifted high over the south temperate zone. Below them stretched theseemingly endless expanse of a great blue-green ocean. 

"They don't lack for water, do they?" Wade commented. 

"We could pretty well figure on large oceans, " Arcot said. "The land isgreen, and there are plenty of clouds. "

Far ahead, a low mass of solid land appeared above the blue of thehorizon. It soon became obvious that it was not a continent they wereapproaching, but a large island, stretching hundreds of miles north andsouth. 

Arcot dropped the ship lower; the mountainous terrain had become sobroken that it would be impossible to detect a city from thirty milesup. 

The green defiles of the great mountains not only provided goodcamouflage, but kept any great number of ships from attacking the sides, where the ray stations were. The cities were certainly located with aneye for war! Arcot wondered what sort of conflict had lasted so longthat cities were designed for perpetual war. Had they never had peace?

"Look!" Fuller called. "There's another city!" Below them, situated in alittle natural bowl in the mountains, was another of the cone cities. 

Wade and Fuller manned the ray projectors again; Arcot dropped the shiptoward the city, one hand on the _reverse_ switch in case theinhabitants tried to use the magnetic beam again. 

At last, they had come quite low. There were no ships in the air, andno people in sight. 

Suddenly, the outside microphone picked up a low, humming sound. A long, cigar-shaped object was heading toward the ship at high speed. It hadbeen painted a dark, mottled green, and was nearly invisible againstbackground of foliage beneath the ship. 

"Wade! Catch that on the ray!" Arcot commanded sharply, moving the shipto one side at the same time. Instantly, the guided missile turned andkept coming toward them. 

Wade triggered the molecular beam, and the missile was suddenly dashingtoward the ground with terrific speed. There was a terrific flash offlame and a shock wave of concussion. A great hole gaped in the ground. 

"They sure know their chemistry, " remarked Wade, looking down at thegreat hole the explosion had torn in the ground. "That wasn't atomic, but on the other hand, it wasn't dynamite or TNT, either! I'd like toknow what they use!"

"Personally, " said Arcot angrily, "I think that was more or less agentle hint to move on!" He didn't like the way they were beingreceived; he had wanted to meet these people. Of course, the otherplanet might be inhabited, but if it wasn't--

"I wonder--" said Morey thoughtfully. "Arcot, those people wereobviously warned against our attack--probably by that other city. Now, we've come nearly halfway around this world; certainly we couldn't havegone much farther away and still be on the planet. And we find this cityin league with the other! Since this league goes halfway around theworld, and they expected us to do the same, isn't it fair to assume, just on the basis of geographical location, that all this world is inone league?"

"Hmmm--an interplanetary war, " mused Arcot. "That would certainly provethat one of the other planets is inhabited. The question is--which one?"

"The most probable one is the next inner planet, Aphrodite, " repliedMorey. 

Arcot fired the ship into the sky. "If your conclusions arecorrect--and I think they are--I see no reason to stay on this planet. Let's go see if their neighbors are less aggressive!"

With that, he shot the ship straight up, rotating the axis until it waspointing straight away from the planet. He increased the accelerationuntil, as they left the outer fringes of the atmosphere, the ship washitting a full four gravities. 

"I'm going to shorten things up and use the space control, " Arcot said. "The gravitational field of the sun will drain a lot of our energy out, but so what? Lead is cheap, and before we're through, we'll have plentyor I'll know the reason why!"

Dr. Richard Arcot was angry--boiling all the way through!

XV

There was the familiar tension in the air as the space field built upand they were hurled suddenly forward; the star-like dot of the planetsuddenly expanded as they rushed forward at a speed far greater thanthat of light. In a moment, it had grown to a disc; Arcot stopped thespace control. Again they were moving forward on molecular drive. 

Very shortly, Arcot began to decelerate. Within ten minutes, they werebeginning to feel the outermost wisps of the cloud-laden atmosphere. Theheat of the blazing sun was intense; the surface of the planet was, nodoubt, a far warmer place than Earthmen would find comfortable. Theywould have been far better suited to remain on the other planet, butthey very evidently were not wanted!

They dropped down through the atmosphere, sinking for miles as the shipslowed to the retarding influence of the air and the molecular power. Down they went, through mile after mile of heavy cloud layer, unable tosee the ground beneath them. 

Then, suddenly, the thick, all-enveloping mists that held them weregone. They were flying smoothly along under leaden skies--perpetual, dim, dark clouds. Despite the brightness of the sun above them, theclouds made the light dim and gray. They reflected such an enormouspercentage of the light that struck them that the climate was not as hotas they had feared. 

The ground was dark under its somber mantle of clouds; the hills, therivers that crawled across wide plains, and the oddly stunted forestsall looked as though they had been modeled in a great mass ofgreenish-gray putty. It was a discouraging world. 

"I'm glad we didn't wait for our swim here, " remarked Wade. "It surelooks like rain. "

Arcot stopped the ship and held it motionless at ten miles while Wademade his chemical analysis of the air. The report looked favorable;plenty of oxygen and a trace of carbon dioxide mixed with nitrogen. 

"But the water vapor!" Wade said. "The air is saturated with it! Itwon't be the heat, but the humidity that'll bother us--to coin aphrase. "

Arcot dropped the ship still farther, at the same time moving forwardtoward a sea he had seen in the distance. Swiftly, the ground spedbeneath them. The low plain sloped toward the sea, a vast, level surfaceof gray, leaden water. 

"Oh, brother, what a pleasant world, " said Fuller sarcastically. 

It was certainly not an inspiring scene. The leaden skies, the heavyclouds, the dark land, and the gray-green of the sea, always shaded inperpetual half-light, lest the burning sun heat them beyond endurance. It was a gloomy world. 

They turned and followed the coast. Still no sign of inhabitants wasvisible. Mile after mile passed beneath them as the shining shipfollowed up the ragged shore. Small indentations and baylets ran into ashallow, level sea. This world had no moon, so it was tideless, exceptfor the slight solar tides. 

Finally, far ahead of them, and well back from the coast, Arcot spotteda great mountain range. 

"I'm going to head for that, " he told the others. "If these people areat war with our very inimical friends of the other planet, chances arethey'll put their cities in the mountains, too. "

They had such cities. The _Ancient Mariner_ had penetrated less than ahundred miles along the twisted ranges of the mountains before they saw, far ahead, a great, cone-shaped city. The city was taller, larger thanthose of the other planet, and the cone ran up farther from the actualcity buildings, leaving the aircraft more room. 

Arcot stopped and watched the city a long time through the telescope. Itseemed similar to the others in all respects. The same type ofneedle-like ships floated in the air above it, and the same type of coneray projectors nestled in the base of the city's invisible protection. 

"We may as well take a chance, " said Arcot. He shot the ship forwarduntil they were within a mile of the city, in plain sight of theinhabitants. 

Suddenly, without any warning signal, apparently, all the air trafficwent wild--then it was gone. Every ship seemed to have ducked into someunseen place of refuge. 

Within a few minutes, a fleet of battleships was winging its way towardthe invisible barrier. Then it was out, and, in a great semi-cylinder aquarter of a mile high, and a quarter of a mile in radius, they advancedtoward the _Ancient Mariner_. 

Arcot kept the ship motionless. He knew that their only weapon was themagnetic ray; otherwise they would have won the war long ago. And heknew he could cope with magnetism. 

Slowly the ships advanced. At last, they halted a quarter of a mile fromthe Earth ship. A single ship detached itself from the mass andadvanced to within a few hundred feet of the _Ancient Mariner_. 

Quickly, Arcot jumped to his feet. "Morey, take the controls. Evidentlythey want to parley, not fight. I'm going over there. "

He ran the length of the corridor to his room and put on his power suit. A moment later, he left the airlock and launched himself into space, flying swiftly toward the ship. He had come alone, but armed as he was, he was probably more than a match for anything they could bring to bearon him. 

He went directly toward the broad expanse of glass that marked thecontrol room of the alien ship and looked in curiously. 

The pilot was a man much like Arcot; quite tall, and of tremendousgirth, with a huge chest and great powerful arms. His hands, like thoseof the Venerians, had two thumbs. 

With equal curiosity, the man stared at Arcot, floating in the airwithout apparent means of support. 

Arcot hung there a moment, then motioned that he wished to enter. Thegiant alien motioned him around to the side of the ship. Halfway downthe length of the ship, Arcot saw a port suddenly open. He flew swiftlyforward and entered. 

The man who stood there was a giant as tall as Wade and even moremagnificently muscled, with tremendous shoulders and giant chest. Histhighs, rounded under a close-fitting gray uniform, were bulging withsmooth muscle. 

He was considerably larger than the man in the pilot room, and whereasthe other had been a pale yellow in color, this man was burned to a morehealthy shade of tan. His features were regular and pleasing; his hairwas black and straight; his high forehead denoted a high degree ofintelligence, and his clear black eyes, under heavy black eyebrows, seemed curious, but friendly. 

His nose was rather thin, but not sharp, and his mouth was curved in asmile of welcome. His chin was firm and sharp, distinct from his faceand neck. 

They looked each other over, and Arcot smiled as their eyes met. 

"Torlos, " said the alien, pointing to his great chest. 

"Arcot, " replied the Earthman, pointing to himself. Then he pointed tothe stranger. "Torlos. " He knew he hadn't pronounced it exactly as thealien had, but it would suffice. 

The stranger smiled in approval. "Ahcut, " he said, pointing to theEarthman. 

Then he pointed to the comparatively thin arms of the Earthman, and tohis own. Then he pointed to Arcot's head and to the mechanism he wore onhis back, then to his own head, and went through the motions of walkingwith great effort. 

Again he pointed at Arcot's head, nodding his own in approval. 

Arcot understood immediately what was meant. The alien had indicatedthat the Earthman was comparatively weak, but that he had no need ofmuscle, for he made his head and his machines work for him. And he haddecided that the head was better!

Arcot looked at the man's eyes and concentrated on the idea offriendship, projecting it with all his mental power. The black eyessuddenly widened in surprise, which quickly turned to pleasure as hetried to concentrate on one thought. 

It was difficult for Arcot to interpret the thoughts of the alien; allhis concepts were in a different form. At last, he caught the idea oflocation--but it was location in the interrogative! How was he tointerpret that?

Then it hit him. Torlos was asking: "Where are you from?"

Arcot pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from his pocket and began tosketch rapidly. First, he drew the local galaxy, with dots for stars, and swept his hand around him. He made one of the dots a little heavierand pointed at the bright blur in the cloudy sky above them. Then hedrew a circle around that dot and put another dot on it, at the sametime indicating the planet beneath them. 

Torlos showed that he understood. 

Arcot continued. At the other end of the paper, he drew another galaxy, and indicated Earth. Then he drew a dotted line from Earth to the planetthey were now on. 

Torlos looked at him in incredulous wonder. Again he indicated hisrespect for Arcot's brain. 

Arcot smiled and indicated the city. "Can we go there?" he projectedinto the other's mind. 

Torlos turned and glanced toward the end of the corridor. There was noone in sight, so he shouted an order in a deep, pleasant voice. Instantly, another giant man came striding down the corridor with alithe softness that indicated tremendous muscular power, excellentlycontrolled. He saluted by placing his left hand over the right side ofhis chest. Arcot noted that for future reference. 

Torlos spoke to the other alien for a moment. The other left andreturned a minute later and said something to Torlos. Torlos turned toArcot indicating that he should return to his ship and follow them. 

Arcot suddenly turned his eyes and looked directly into the black eyesof the alien. "Torlos, " he projected, "will you come with us on ourship?"

"I am commander of this ship. I can not go without the permission of mychief. I will ask my chief. "

Again he turned and left Arcot. He was back in a few minutes carrying asmall handbag. "I can go. This keeps me in communication with my ship. "

Arcot adjusted his weight to zero and floated lightly out the doorway. He rose about six feet above the landing, then indicated to Torlos thathe was to grasp Arcot's feet, one in each hand. Torlos closed a grip ofsteel about each ankle and stepped off the platform. 

At once, they dropped, for the power suit had not been adjusted to theload. Arcot yelped in pain as Torlos, in his surprise at not floating, involuntarily gripped tighter. Quickly, Arcot turned on more power andgasped as he felt the weight mount swiftly. He had estimated Torlos'weight at two hundred seventy or so--and it was more like three hundredand fifty! Soon, however, he had the weight adjusted, and they floatedeasily up toward the _Ancient Mariner_. 

They floated in through the door of the ship, and, once inside, Torlosreleased his hold. Arcot was immediately slammed to the roof with aweight of three hundred and fifty pounds!

A moment later, he was again back on the floor, rubbing his back. Heshook his head and frowned, then smiled and pretended to limp. 

"Don't let go so suddenly, " he admonished telepathically. 

"I did not know. I am sorry, " Torlos thought contritely. 

"Who's your friend?" asked Wade as he entered the corridor. "Hecertainly looks husky. "

"He is, " Arcot affirmed. "And he must be weighted with lead! I thoughthe'd pull my legs off. Look at those arms!"

"I don't want to get him mad at me, " Wade grinned. "He looks like he'dmake a mean opponent. What's his name?"

"Torlos, " replied Arcot, just as Fuller stepped in. 

Torlos was looking curiously at a crowbar that had been lying in a rackon the wall. He picked it up and flexed it a bit, as a man might flex arapier to test its material. Then he held it far out in front of him andproceeded to tie a knot in the inch-thick metal bar! Then, stillfrowning in puzzlement, he untied it, straightened it as best he could, and put it back in the rack. 

The Earthmen were staring in utter astonishment to see the terrificstrength the man displayed. 

He smiled as he turned to them again. 

"If he could do that at arm's length, " Wade said thoughtfully, "whatcould he do if he really tried?"

"Why don't you try and see?" Fuller asked sweetly. 

"I can think of easier--but probably no quicker--ways of committingsuicide, " Wade replied. 

Arcot laughed and, looking at Torlos, projected the general meaning ofthe last remarks. Torlos joined them in the laugh. 

"All my people are strong, " he thought. "I can not understand why youare not. That was a tool? We could not use it so; it is too weak. "

Wade and the others picked up the thought, and Wade laughed. "I supposethey use old I-beams to tie up their Christmas presents. "

Arcot held a moment of silent consultation with Torlos, then turned tothe others. "We are supposed to follow these men to their city to havesome kind of an audience with their ruler, according to Torlos. Let'sget started; the rest of the fleet is waiting. "

Arcot led Torlos through the main engine room, and was going into themain coil room when Torlos stopped him. 

"Is this all your drive apparatus?" he thought. 

"Yes, it is, " Arcot projected. 

"It is smaller than the power equipment of a small private machine!" Histhoughts radiated surprise. "How could you make so great a distance?"

"Power, " said Arcot. "Look!" He drew his molecular ray pistol. "Thisalone is powerful enough to destroy all your battle fleet without anydanger on our part. And, despite your strength, you are helpless againstme!"

Arcot touched a switch on his belt and vanished. 

In amazement, Torlos reached out a hand to the spot where Arcot hadstood. There was nothing there. Suddenly, he turned, touching the backof his head. Something had tugged at his hair!

He looked all around him and moved his arms around--to no avail. Therewas nothing there. 

Then, in the blink of an eye, Arcot was floating in the air before him. "What avails strength against air, Torlos?" he asked, smiling. 

"For safety's sake, " Torlos thought, "I want to be your friend!" Hegrinned widely. 

Arcot led the way on into the control room, where Morey had alreadystarted to follow the great fleet toward the city. 

"What are we going to do at the city?" Arcot asked Torlostelepathically. 

"This is the capital of the world, Sator, and here is thecommander-of-all-military-and-civil-forces. It is he you will see. Hehas been summoned, " Torlos replied carefully. 

"We visited the third world of this system first, " Arcot told thealien, "and they repulsed us. We tried to be friendly, but they attackedus at once. In order to keep from being damaged, we had to destroy oneof their city-protecting ray buildings. " This last thought was hard totransmit; Arcot had pictured mentally a scene in which the ray buildingwas ripped out of the ground and hurled into the air. 

In sudden anxiety and concern, Torlos stared into Arcot's eyes. And inthat look, Arcot read what even telepathy had hidden heretofore. 

"Did you destroy the city?" asked Torlos anxiously. But it was not thequestion of a man hoping for the destruction of his enemies' cities;Arcot got the mental picture of the city, but with it, he picked up theidea of "home"! Of course, the ideas of "city" and "home" might besynonymous with these people; they never seemed to leave their cities. But why this feeling of worry?

"No, we didn't want to hurt them, " Arcot thought. "We destroyed the raybuilding only in self defense. "

"I understand. " Despite obvious mental efforts, Torlos positivelyradiated a feeling of relief!

"Are you at war with that world?" Arcot asked coolly. 

"The two worlds have been at war for many generations, " Torlos said, then quickly changed the subject. "You will soon meet the leader of allthe forces of Sator. He is all-powerful here. His word must beabsolutely obeyed. It would be wise if you did not unnecessarily offendhim. I see from what your mind tells me that you have great power, butthere are many ships on Sator, more than Nansal can boast. 

"Our commander, Horlan, is a military commander, but since every man isnecessarily a soldier, he is a true ruler. "

"I understand, " Arcot thought. He turned to Morey and spoke in English, which Torlos could not understand. "Morey, we're going to see the topman here. He rules the army, which runs everything. You and I will go, and leave Wade and Fuller behind as a rear guard. It may not bedangerous, but after being chased off one world, we ought to be ascareful as possible. 

"We'll go fully armed, and we'll stay in radio contact at all times. Watch yourselves; we don't want them even to touch this ship until weknow what kind of people they are. "

They had followed the Satorian ships toward the city. The giant magneticray barrier opened for them, and the _Ancient Mariner_ followed. Theywere inside the alien city. 

XVI

Below the _Ancient Mariner_, the great buildings of the alien cityjutted up in the gray light of this gray world; their massiveness seemedonly to accentuate the depressing light. 

On the broad roofs, they saw hundreds of people coming out to watch themas they moved across the city. According to Torlos, they were the firstfriendly strangers they had ever seen. They had explored all the planetsof this system without finding friendly life. 

The buildings sloped up toward the center of the city, and the mass ofthe great central building loomed before them. 

The fleet that was leading the Earth ship settled down to a widecourtyard that surrounded the building. Arcot dropped the _AncientMariner_ down beside them. The men from Torlos' ship formed into twosquads as they came out of the airlocks and marched over to the greatshining ship of Earth. They formed two neat rows, one on each side ofthe airlock. 

"Come on, Morey, " said Arcot. "We're wanted. Wade, keep the radio goingat full amplification; the building may cut out some of the power. I'lltry to keep you posted on what's going on, but we'll probably be busyanswering questions telepathically. "

Arcot and Morey followed Torlos out into the dim light of the gray sky, walking across the courtyard between the ranks of the soldiers fromTorlos' ship. 

Before them was a heavy gate of solid bronze which swung on massivebronze hinges. The building seemed to be made of a dense, gray stone, much like granite, which was depressing in its perfectly unrelievedfront. There were no bright spots of color as there were on all Earthlyand Venerian structures. Even the lines were grimly utilitarian; thereseemed to be no decoration. 

Through the great bronze door they walked, and across a small vestibule. Then they were in a mighty concourse, a giant hallway that wentcompletely through the structure. All around them great granite pillarsrose to support the mighty building above. Square cut, they lent butlittle grace to the huge room, but the floor and walls were made of ahard, light green stone, almost the same color as foliage. 

On one wall there was a giant tablet, a great plaque fifteen feet high, made of a deep violet stone, and inlaid with a series of characters inthe language of this world. Like English letters, they seemed to readhorizontally, but whether they read from left to right or right to leftthere was no way of knowing. The letters themselves were made of somered metal which Arcot and Morey didn't recognize. 

Arcot turned to Torlos and projected a thought: "What is that tablet?"

"Ever since the beginning of the war with the other planet, Nansal, thenames of our mighty leaders have been inscribed on that plaque in therarest metal. "

The term "rarest metal" was definite to Torlos, and Arcot decided toquestion him further on the meaning of it when time permitted. 

They crossed the great hall and came to what was evidently an elevator. The door slid open, and the two Earthmen followed Torlos and hislieutenant into the cubicle. Torlos pushed a small button. The door slidshut, and a moment later, Arcot and Morey staggered under the suddenterrific load as the car shot upward under an acceleration of at leastthree gravities!

It continued just long enough for the Earthmen to get used to it, thenit snapped off, and they went flying up toward the ceiling as itcontinued upward under its own momentum. It slowed under the influenceof the planet's gravitation and came to a stop exactly opposite thedoorway of a higher floor. 

"Wow! Some elevator!" exclaimed Morey as he stepped out, flexing hisknees as he tried to readjust himself. "That's what I call a violent wayof getting upstairs! It wasn't designed by a lazy man or a cripple! Iprefer to walk, thanks! What I want to know is how the old people getupstairs. Or do they die young from using their elevators?"

"No, " mused Arcot. "That's the funny thing. They don't seem to bebothered by the acceleration. They actually jumped a little off thefloor when we started, and didn't seem to experience much difficultywhen we stopped. " He looked thoughtful for a moment. "You know, whenTorlos was bending that crowbar back there in the ship, I picked up acurious thought--I wonder if--" He turned to the giant alien. "Torlos, you once gave me the thought-idea 'bone metal'; what is that?"

Torlos looked at him in surprise and then pointed mutely to a heavy belthe wore--made of closely woven links of iron wire!

"I was right, Morey!" Arcot exclaimed. "These men have _iron bones_! Nowonder he could bend that crowbar! It would be as easy as it would foryou or me to snap a human arm bone!"

"But, wait a minute!" Morey objected. "How could iron grow?"

"How can stone grow?" countered Arcot. "That's what your bones are, essentially--calcium phosphate rock! It's just a matter of differentbody chemistry. Their body fluids are probably alkaline, and iron won'trust in an alkaline solution. " Arcot was talking rapidly as theyfollowed the aliens down the long corridor. 

"The thing that confirms my theory is that elevator. It's merely aniron cage in a magnetic beam, and it's pulled up with a terrificacceleration. With iron bones, these men would be similarly influenced, and they wouldn't notice the acceleration so much. "

Morey grinned. "I'll be willing to bet they don't use cells in theirprisons, here! Just magnetize the floor, and the poor guy could neverget away!"

Arcot nodded. "Of course, the bones must be pure iron; their bonesevidently don't retain any of the magnetism when they leave the field. "

"We seem to be here, " Morey interrupted. "Let's continue the discussionlater. "

Their party had stopped just outside a large, elaborately carved door, the first sign of ornamentation the Earthmen had seen. There were fourguards armed with pistols, which, they discovered later, were powered bycompressed air under terrific pressure. They hurled a small metal slugthrough a rifled barrel, and were effective over a distance of about amile, although they could only fire four times without reloading. 

Torlos spoke briefly with the guard, who saluted and opened the door. The two Earthmen followed Torlos into a large room. 

Before them was a large, crescent-shaped table, around which were seatedseveral men. At the center of the crescent curve sat a man in a grayuniform, but he was so bedecked with insignia, medals, ribbons, anddecorations that his uniform was scarcely visible. 

The entire assemblage, including the leader, rose as the Earthmenentered. Arcot and Morey, taking the hint, snapped to attention anddelivered a precise military salute. 

"We greet you in the name of our planet, " said Arcot aloud. "I know youdon't understand a word I'm saying, but I hope it sounds impressiveenough. We salute you, O High Muckymuck!"

Morey, successfully keeping a straight face, raised his hand and saidsonorously: "That goes double for me, bub. "

In his own language, the leader replied, putting his hands to his hipswith a definite motion, and shaking his head from side to side at thesame time. 

Arcot watched the man closely while he spoke. He was taller than Torlos, but less heavily built, as were all the others here. It seemed thatTorlos was unusually powerful, even for this world. 

When the leader had finished, Arcot smiled and turned to project thisthoughts at Torlos. 

"Tell your leader that we come from a planet far away across the vastdepths of space. We come in peace, and we will leave in peace, but wewould like to ask some favors of him, which we will repay by giving himthe secret of our weapons. With them, he can easily conquer Nansal. 

"All we want is some wire made from the element lead and someinformation from your astronomers. "

Torlos turned and spoke to his leader in a deep, powerful voice. 

Meanwhile, Morey was trying to get in communication with the ship. Thewalls, however, seemed to be made of metal, and he couldn't get throughto Wade. 

"We're cut off from the ship, " he said quietly to Arcot. 

"I was afraid of that, but I think it'll be all right. Our propositionis too good for them to turn down. "

Torlos turned back to Arcot when the leader had finished speaking. "TheCommanding One asks that you prove the possibilities of your weapons. His scientists tell him that it is impossible to make the trip that youclaim to have made. "

"What your scientists say is true, to an extent, " Arcot thought. "Theyhave learned that no body can go faster than the speed of light--is thatnot so?"

"Yes. Such, they say, is the fact. To have made this trip, you must, ofnecessity, be not less than twenty million years old!"

"Tell them that there are some things they do not yet know about space. The velocity of light is a thing that is fixed by the nature of space, right?"

Torlos consulted with the scientists again, then turned back to Arcot. "They agree that they do not know all the secrets of the Universe, butthey agree that the speed of light is fixed by the nature of space. "

"How fast does sound travel?" Arcot asked. 

"They ask in what medium do you mean?"

"How fast does light travel? In air? In glass? The speed of light is asvariable as that of sound. If I can alter the nature of space, so as tomake the velocity of light greater, can I not then go faster than innormal space?"

"They say that this is true, " Torlos said, after more conversation withthe men at the table, "but they say that space is unalterable, since itis emptiness. "

"Ask them if they know of the curvature of space. " Arcot was becomingworried for fear his explanation would be unintelligible; unless theyknew his terms, he could not explain, and it would take a long time toteach them. 

"They say, " Torlos thought, "that I have misunderstood you. They sayspace could not possibly be curved, for space is emptiness, and howcould empty nothingness be curved. "

Arcot turned to Morey and shrugged his shoulders. "I give up, Morey;it's a bad case. If they insist that space is nothing, and can't becurved, I can't go any further. "

"If they don't know of the curvature of space, " said Morey, "ask themhow they learned that the velocity of light is the limiting velocity ofa moving body. "

Torlos translated and the scientists gave their reply. "They say thatyou do not know more of space than they, for they know that the speed oflight is ultimate. They have tested this with spaceships at high speedsand with experiments with the smallest particles of electricity. "

The scientists were looking at Arcot now in protest; they felt he wastrying to foist something off on them. 

Arcot, too, was becoming exasperated. "Well, if they insist that wecouldn't have come from another star, where do they think I come from?They have explored this system and found no such people as we, so I musthave come from another star. How? If they won't accept my explanations, let them think up a theory of their own to explain the facts!" Hepaused for Torlos to translate, then went on. "They say I don't know anymore than they do. Tell them to watch this. "

He drew his molecular ray pistol and lifted a heavy metal chair into theair. Then Morey drew his heat beam and turned it on the chair. In a fewseconds, it was glowing white hot, and then it collapsed into a fieryball of liquid metal. Morey shut off the heat beam, and Arcot held theball in the air while it cooled rapidly under the influence of themolecular ray. Then he lowered it to the floor. 

It was obvious that the scientists were impressed, and the Emperor wastalking eagerly with the men around him. They talked for severalminutes, saying nothing to the Earthmen. Torlos stood quietly, waitingfor a message to relay. 

The Emperor called out, and some of the guards moved inside the door. 

Torlos turned to Arcot. "Show no emotion!" came his telepathic warning. "I have been listening to them as they spoke. The Commanding One wantsyour weapons. Regardless of what his scientists tell him about thepossibility of your trip, he knows those weapons work, and he wantsthem. 

"You see, I am not a Satorian at all. I'm from Nansal, sent here manyyears ago as a spy. I have served in their fleets for many years, andhave gained their trust. 

"I am telling you the truth, as you will soon see. 

"These people are going to follow their usual line of action and takethe most direct way toward their end. They are going to attack you, believing that you, despite your weapons, will go down before superiornumbers. 

"And you'd better move fast; he's calling the guards already!"

Arcot turned to Morey, his face calm, his heart beating like avibrohammer. "Keep your face straight, Morey. Don't look surprised. They're planning to jump us. We'll rip out the right wall and--"

He stopped. It was too late! The order had been given, and the guardswere leaping toward them. Arcot grabbed at his ray pistol, but one ofthe guards jumped him before he had a chance to draw it. 

Torlos seized the man by one leg and an arm and, tensing his hugemuscles, hurled him thirty feet against the Commanding One with suchforce that both were killed instantly! He turned and grabbed anotherbefore his first victim had landed and hurled him toward the advancingguards. Arcot thought fleetingly that here was proof of Torlos' story ofbeing from Nansal; the greater gravity of the third planet made him agreat deal stronger than the Satorians!

One of the guards was trying to reach for Arcot. Acting instinctively, the Earthman lashed out with a hard jab to the point of the Satorian'sjaw. The iron bones transmitted the shock beautifully to the delicatebrain; the man's head jerked back, and he collapsed to the floor. Arcot's hand felt as though he'd hit it with a hammer, but he was fartoo busy to pay any attention to the pain. 

Morey, too, had realized the futility of trying to overcome the guardsby wrestling. The only thing to do was dodge and punch. The guards weretrying to take the Earthmen alive, but, because of their greater weight, they couldn't move quite as fast as Arcot and Morey. 

Torlos was still in action. He had seen the success of the Earthmen who, weak as they were, had been able to knock a man out with a blow to thejaw. Driving his own fists like pistons, he imitated their blows withdeadly results; every man he struck went down forever. 

The dead were piling around him, but through the open door he could seereinforcements arriving. Somehow, he had to save these Earthmen; ifSator got their secrets, Nansal would be lost!

He reached down and grabbed one of the fallen men and hurled him acrossthe room, smashing back the men who struggled to attack. Then he pickedup another and followed through with a second projectile. Then a third. With the speed and tirelessness of some giant engine of war, he slammedhis macabre ammunition against the oncoming reinforcements with tellingresults. 

At last Arcot was free for a moment, and that was all he needed. Hejerked his molecular ray pistol from its holster and beamed itmercilessly toward the door, hurling the attackers violently backwards. They died instantly, their chilled corpses driving back against theircomrades with killing force. 

In a moment, every man in the room was dead except for the two Earthmenand the giant Torlos. 

Outside the room, they could hear shouted orders as more of the Satorianguards were rallied. 

"They'll try to kill us now!" Arcot said. "Come on, we've got to get outof here!"

"Sure, " said Morey, "but which way?"

XVII

"Morey, pull down the wall over that door to block their passage, " Arcotordered. "I'll get the other wall. "

Arcot pointed his pistol and triggered it. The outer wall flew outwardin an explosion of flying masonry. He switched on his radio and called_the Ancient Mariner_. 

"Wade! We were cut off because of the metal in the walls! We've beendoublecrossed--they tried to jump us. Torlos warned us in time. We'vetorn out the wall; just hang outside with the airlock open and wait forus. Don't use the rays, because we'll be invisible, and you might hitus. "

Suddenly the room rocked under an explosion, and the debris Morey's rayhad torn down over the door was blasted away. A score of men leapedthrough the gap before the dust had settled. Morey beamed them downmercilessly before they could fire their weapons. 

"In the air, quick!" Arcot yelled. He turned on his power suit and roseinto the air, signalling Torlos to grab his ankles as he had donebefore. Morey slammed another parting shot toward the doorway as helifted himself toward the ceiling. Then both Earthmen snapped on theirinvisibility units. Torlos, because of his direct contact with Arcot, also vanished from sight. 

More of the courageous, but foolhardy Satorians leaped through theopening and stared in bewilderment as they saw no one moving. Arcot, Morey, and Torlos were hanging invisible in the air above them. 

Just then, the shining bulk of the _Ancient Mariner_ drifted into view. They drew back behind the wall and sought shelter. One of them began tofire his compressed air gun at it with absolutely no effect; the heavylux walls might as well have been hit by a mosquito. 

As the airlock swung open, Arcot and Morey headed out through the breachin the wall. A moment later, they were inside the ship. The heavy doorhissed closed behind them as they settled to the floor. 

"I'll take the controls, " Arcot said. "Morey, head for the rear; youtake the moleculars and take Torlos with you to handle the heat beam. "He turned and ran toward the control room, where Wade and Fuller werewaiting. "Wade, take the forward molecular beams; Fuller, you handle theheat projector. "

Arcot strapped himself into the control chair. 

Suddenly, there was a terrific explosion, and the titanic mass of theship was rocked by the detonation of a bomb one of the men in thebuilding had fired at the ship. 

Torlos had evidently understood the operation of the heat beam projectorquickly; the stabbing beam reached out, and the great tower, from floorto roof, suddenly leaned over and slumped as the entire side of thebuilding was converted into a mass of glowing stone and molten steel. Then it crashed heavily to the ground a half mile below. 

But already there were forty of the great battleships rising to meetthem. 

"I think we'd better get moving, " Arcot said. "We can't let a magneticray touch us now; it would kill Torlos. I'm going to cut in theinvisibility units, so don't use the heat beams whatever you do!"

Arcot snapped the ship into invisibility and darted to one side. Theenemy ships suddenly halted in their wild rush and looked around inamazement for their opponent. 

Arcot was heading for the magnetic force field which surrounded the citywhen Torlos made a mistake. He turned the powerful heat beam downwardsand picked off an enemy battleship. It fell, a blazing wreck, but theray touched a building behind it, and the ionized air established aconducting path between the ship and the planet. 

The apparatus was not designed to make a planet invisible, but it made anoble effort. As a result one of the tubes blew, and the _AncientMariner_ was visible again. Arcot had no time to replace the tube; theSatorian fleet kept him too busy. 

Arcot drove the ship, shooting, twisting upward; Wade and Morey keptfiring the molecular beams with precision. The pale rays reached out totouch the battleship, and wherever they touched, the ships went down inwreckage, falling to the city below. In spite of the odds against it, the _Ancient Mariner_ was giving a good account of itself. 

And always, Arcot was working the ship toward the magnetic wall and thebase of the city. 

Suddenly, giant pneumatic guns from below joined in the battle, hurlinghuge explosive shells toward the Earth-ship. They managed to hit the_Ancient Mariner_ twice, and each time the ship was staggered by theforce of the blast, but the foot-thick armor of lux metal ignored theexplosions. 

The magnetic rays touched them a few times, and each time Torlos wasthrown violently to the floor, but the ship was in the path of the beamsfor so short a time that he was not badly injured. He more than made upfor his injuries with the ray he used, and Morey was no mean gunner, either, judging from the work he was doing. 

Three ships attempted to commit suicide in their efforts to destroy theEarthmen. They were only semi-successful; they managed to commitsuicide. In trying to crash into the ship, they were simply caught byMorey's or Wade's molecular beam and thrown away. Morey actuallydeveloped a use for them. He caught them in the beam and used them asbullets to smash the other ships, throwing them about on the molecularray until they were too cold to move. 

Arcot finally managed to reach the magnetic wall. 

"Wade!" he called. "Get that projector building!"

A molecular beam reached down, and the black metal dome sailed high intothe sky, breaking the solidity of the magnetic wall. An instant later, the _Ancient Mariner_ shot through the gap. In a few moments, they wouldbe far away from the city. 

Torlos seemed to realize this. Moving quickly, he pushed Morey away fromthe molecular beam projector, taking the controls away from him. 

He did not realize the power of that ray; he did not know that theseprojectors could move whole suns out of their orbits. He only knew thatthey were destructive. They were several miles from the city when heturned the projector on it, after twisting the power control up. 

To his amazement, he saw the entire city suddenly leap into the air andflash out into space, a howling meteor that vanished into the cloudbankoverhead. Behind it was a deep hole in the planet's surface, a mightychasm lined with dark granite. 

Torlos stared at it in amazement and horror. 

Arcot turned back slowly, and they sailed over the spot where the cityhad been. They saw a dozen or so battleships racing away from them tospread the news of the disaster; they were the few which had beenfortunate enough to be outside the city when the beam struck. 

Arcot maneuvered the ship directly over the mighty pit and sank slowlydown, using the great searchlights to illuminate the dark chasm. Far, far down, he could see the solid rock of the bottom. The thing was milesdeep. 

Then Arcot lifted the ship and headed up through the cloud layer andinto the bright light of the great yellow sun, above the sea of graymisty clouds. 

Arcot signalled Morey, who had come into the control room, to take overthe controls of the ship. "Head out into space, Morey. I want to findout why Torlos pulled that last stunt. Wade, will you put a new tube inthe invisibility unit?"

"Sure, " Wade replied. "By the way, what happened back there? We weresurprised as the very devil to hear you yelling for help; everythingseemed peaceful up to then. "

Arcot flexed his bruised hands and grinned ruefully. "Plenty happened. "He went on to explain to Wade and Fuller what had happened in theirmeeting with the Satorian Commander. 

"Nice bunch of people to deal with, " Wade said caustically. "They triedto get everything and lost it all. We would have given them plenty ifthey'd been decent about it. But what sort of war is this that thepeople of these two planets are carrying on, anyway?"

"That's the question I intend to settle, " replied Arcot. "We haven't hadan opportunity to talk to Torlos yet. He had just admitted to me that hewas a spy for Nansal when the fun began, and we've been too busy to askquestions ever since. Come on, let's go into the library. "

Arcot indicated to Torlos that he was to go with him. Wade and Fullerfollowed. 

When they had all seated themselves, Arcot began the telepathicquestioning. "Torlos, why did you force Morey to leave the ray and thendestroy the city? You certainly had no reason to kill all thenon-combatant women and children in that city, did you? And why, after Itold you absolutely not to use the heat beam while we were invisible, did you use the rays on that battleship? You made our invisibility breakdown and destroyed a tube. Why did you do this?"

"I am sorry, man of Earth, " replied Torlos. "I can only say that I didnot fully understand the effect the rays would have. I did not know howlong we would remain invisible; the thing has been accomplished in ourlaboratories, but only for fractions of a second, and I feared we mightbecome visible soon. That was one of their latest battleships, equippedwith a new, secret, and very deadly weapon. I do not know exactly whatthe weapon is, but I knew that ship could be deadly against us, and Iwanted to make sure we were not attacked by it. That is why I used thebeam while your ship was invisible. 

"And I did not intend to destroy the city. I was only trying to tear upthe factory that builds these battleships; I only wanted to destroytheir machines. I had no conception of the power of that ray. I was ashorrified to see the city disappear as you were; I only wanted toprotect my people. " Torlos smiled bitterly. "I have lived among thesetreacherous people for many years, and I cannot say that I had noprovocation to destroy their city and everyone in it. But I had nointention of doing it, Earthman. "

Arcot knew he was sincere. There could be no deception whencommunicating telepathically. He wished he had used it whencommunicating with the Commanding One of Sator; the trouble would havebeen stopped quickly!

"You still do not have any conception of the magnitude of the power ofthat beam, Torlos, " Arcot told him. "With the rays of this ship, we torea sun from its orbit and threw it into another. What you did to thatcity, we could do to the whole planet. Do not tamper with forces you donot understand, Torlos. 

"There are forces on this ship that would make the energies of yourgreatest battleship seem weak and futile. We can race through space abillion times faster than the speed of light; we can tear apart anddestroy the atoms of matter; we can rip apart the greatest of planets;we can turn the hurtling stars and send them where we want them; we cancurve space as we please; we can put out the fires of a sun, if we wish. 

"Torlos, respect the powers of this ship, and do not release itsenergies unknowingly; they are too great. "

Torlos looked around him in awe. He had seen the engines--small, apparently futile things, compared with the solid might of the giantengines in his ship--but he had seen explosive charges that he knewwould split any ship open from end to end bounce harmlessly from thesmooth walls of this ship. He had seen it destroy the fleet of magneticships that had formed a supposedly impregnable guard around themightiest city of Sator. 

Then he himself had touched a button, and the giant city had shot offinto space, leaving behind it only a screaming tornado and a vast chasmin the crust of the blasted planet. 

He could not appreciate the full significance of the velocities Arcothad told him about--he only knew that he had made a bad mistake inunderrating the powers of this ship! "I will not touch these thingsagain without your permission, Earthman, " Torlos promised earnestly. 

The _Ancient Mariner_ drove on through space, rapidly eating up themillions of miles that separated Nansal from Sator. Arcot sat in thecontrol room with Morey discussing their passenger. 

"You know, " Arcot mused, "I've been thinking about that man's strength;an iron skeleton doesn't explain it all. He has to have muscles to movethat skeleton around. "

"He's got muscles, all right, " Morey grinned. "But I see what you mean;muscles that big should tire easily, and his don't seem to. He seemstireless; I watched him throw those men one after another like bulletsfrom a machine gun. He threw the last one as violently as the first--andthose men weighed over three hundred pounds! Apparently his muscles feltno fatigue!"

"There's another thing, " pointed out Arcot. "The way he was breathingand the way he seemed to keep so cool. When I got through there, I wasdripping with sweat; that hot, moist air was almost too much for me. Ourfriend? Cool as ever, if not more so. 

"And after the fight, he wasn't even breathing heavily!"

"No, " agreed Morey. "But did you notice him _during_ the fight? He wasbreathing heavily, deeply, and swiftly--not the shallow, panting breathof a runner, but deep and full, yet faster than I can breathe. I couldhear him breathing in spite of all the noise of the battle. "

"I noticed it, " Arcot said. "He started breathing _before_ the fightstarted. A human being can fight very swiftly, and with tremendousvigor, for ten seconds, putting forth his best effort, and only breatheonce or twice. For another two minutes, he breathes more heavily thanusual. But after that, he can't just slow down back to normal. He hasused up the surplus oxygen in his system, and that has to be replaced;he has run into 'oxygen debt'. He has to keep on breathing hard to getback the oxygen surplus his body requires. 

"But not Torlos! No fatigue for him! Why? _Because he doesn't use theoxygen of the air to do work, and therefore his body is not a chemicalengine!_"

Morey nodded slowly. "I see what you're driving at. His body uses theheat energy of the air! His muscles turn heat energy into motion thesame way our molecular beams do!"

"Exactly--he lives on heat!" Arcot said. "I've noticed that he seemsalmost cold-blooded; his body is at the temperature of the room at alltimes. In a sense, he is reptilian, but he's vastly more efficient andgreatly different than any reptile Earth ever knew. He eats food, allright, but he only needs it to replace his body cells and to fuel hisbrain. "

"Oh, _brother_, " said Morey softly. "No wonder he can do the things hedid! Why, he could have kept up that fight for hours without gettingtired! Fatigue is as unknown to him as cold weather. He'd only needsleep to replace worn parts. His world is warm and upright on its axis, so there are no seasons. He couldn't survive in the Arctic, but he'sobviously the ideal form of life for the tropics. "

As the two men found out later, Morey was wrong on that last point. Themen of Torlos' race had a small organ, a mass of cells in the lowerabdomen which could absorb food from the bloodstream and oxidize it, yielding heat, whenever the temperature of the blood dropped below acertain point. Then they could live very comfortably in the Arcticzones; they carried their own heaters. Their vast strength was limitedthen, however, and they were forced to eat more and were more subject tofatigue. 

Wade and Fuller had been trying to speak with Torlos telepathically, andhad evidently run into difficulty, for Fuller called into the controlroom: "Hey, Arcot, come here a minute! I thought telepathy was auniversal language, but this guy doesn't get our ideas at all! And wecan't make out some of his. Just now, he seemed to be thinking of'nourishment' or 'food', and I found out he was thinking of 'heat'!"

"I'll be right down, " Arcot told him, heading for the library. 

As he entered, Torlos smiled at him; Arcot picked up his thought easily:"Your friends do not seem to understand my thoughts. "

"We are not made as you are, " Arcot explained, "and our thought formsare different. To you, 'heat' and 'food' are practically the same thing, but we do not think of them as such. "

He continued, explaining carefully to Torlos the differences betweentheir bodies and their methods of using energy. 

"Stone bones!" Torlos thought in amazement. "And chemical engines formuscles! No wonder you seem so weak. And yet, with your brains, I wouldhate to have to fight a war with your people!"

"Which brings me to another point, " Arcot continued. "We would like toknow how the war between the people of Sator and the people of Nansalbegan. Has it been going on very long?"

Torlos nodded. "I will tell you the story. It is a history that beganmany centuries ago; a history of persecution and rebellion. And yet, forall that, I think it an interesting history. 

"Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal . . . "

XVIII

Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliantteacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, acode of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility withoutarrogance, pride without stubbornness, and humility without servility. 

About him had gathered a group of men who began to develop and spreadhis ideals. As the new philosophy spread across the planet, more andmore Nansalians adopted it and began to raise their children accordingto its tenets. 

But no philosophy, however workable, however noble, can hope to converteveryone. There always remains a hard core of men who feel that "the oldway is the best way". In this case, it was the men whose lives had beenbased on cunning, deceit, and treachery. 

One of these men, a brilliant, but warped genius, named Sator, had builtthe first spaceship, and he and his men had fled Nansal to set up theirown government and free themselves from the persecution they believedthey suffered at the hands of the believers of Norus. 

They fled to the second planet, where the ship crashed and the builder, Sator, was killed. For hundreds of years, nothing was heard of theemigrants, and the people of Nansal believed them dead. Nansal was atpeace. 

But the Satorians managed to live on the alien world, and they built acivilization there, a civilization based on an entirely differentsystem. It was a system of cunning. To them, cunning was right. The manwho could plot most cunningly, gain his ends by deceiving his friendsbest, was the man who most deserved to live. There were a fewrestrictions; they had loyalty, for one thing--loyalty to their countryand their world. 

In time, the Satorians rediscovered the space drive, but by this time, living on the new planet had changed them physically. They were somewhatsmaller than the Nansalians, and lighter in color, for their world wasalways sunless. The warm rays of the sun had tanned the skins of theNansalians to a darker color. 

When the Satorians first came to Nansal, it was presumably in peace. After so many hundreds of years without war, the Nansalians acceptedthem, and trade treaties were signed. For years, the Satorians tradedpeacefully. 

In the meantime, Satorian spies were working to find the strengths andweaknesses of Nansal, searching to discover their secret weapons andprocesses, if any. And they rigorously guarded their own secrets. Theyrefused to disclose the secrets of the magnetic beam and the magneticspace drive. 

Finally, there were a few of the more suspicious Nansalians who realizedthe danger in such a situation. There were three men, students in one ofthe great scientific schools of Nansal, who realized that the situationshould be studied. There was no law prohibiting the men of Nansal fromgoing to Sator, but it seemed that Nature had raised a more impenetrablebarrier. 

All Nansalians who went to Sator died of a mysterious disease. A methodwas found whereby a man's body could be sterilized, bacteriologicallyspeaking, so he could not spread the disease, and this was used on allSatorians entering Nansal. But you can't sterilize a whole planet. Nansalians could not go to Sator. 

But these three men had a different idea. They carefully studied thespeech and the mannerisms and customs of the Satorians. They learned toimitate the slang and idioms. They went even further; they picked threeSatorian spaceship navigators and studied them minutely every time theygot a chance, in order to learn their habits and their speech patterns. The three Satorians were exceptionally large men, almost perfect doublesof the three Nansalians--and, one by one, the Nansalians replaced them. 

They had bleached their faces, and surgeons, working from photographs, changed their features so that the three Nansalians were exact doublesof the three astrogators. Then they acted. On three trips, one of themen that went back as navigator was a Nansalian. 

It was six years before they returned to Nansal, but when they finallydid, they had learned two things. 

In the first place, the 'disease' which had killed Nansalians who hadcome in contact with Satorians on Nansal was nothing but a poison whichacted on contact with the skin. The Nansalians who had gone to Sator hadsimply been murdered. There was no disease; it had simply been aSatorian plot to keep Nansalians from going to Sator. 

The second thing they had learned was the secret of the Satorianmagnetic space drive. 

It was common knowledge on Sator that their commander would soon leadthem across space to conquer Nansal and settle on a world of clear airand cloudless skies, where they could see the stars of space at night. They were waiting only until they could build up a larger fleet andlearned all they could from the Nansalians. 

They attacked three years after the three Nansalian spies returned withtheir information. 

During those three years, Nansal had secretly succeeded in building up afleet of the magnetic ships, but it went down quickly before the vastlygreater fleet of the Satorians. Their magnetic rays were deadly, killingeveryone they struck. They could lift the iron-boned Nansalians highinto the air, then drop them hundreds of feet to their death. 

The buildings, with their steel and iron frames, went down, crushinghundreds of others. They practically depopulated the whole planet. 

But the warnings of the three spies had been in time. They had enlargedsome of the great natural caverns and dug others out of solid rock. Herethey had built laboratories, factories, and dwelling places farunderground, where the Satorians could never find them. 

Enough men reached the caverns before the disaster struck to carry on. They had been chosen from the strongest, healthiest, and mostintelligent that Nansal had. They lived there for over a century, whilethe planet was overrun by the conquerors and the cities were rebuilt bythe Satorians. 

During this century, the magnetic ray shield was developed by the hiddenNansalians. Daring at last to face their conquerors, they built a cityon the surface and protected it with the magnetic force screen. 

By the time the Satorians found the city, it was too late. A battlefleet was mobilized and rushed to the spot, but the city wasimpregnable. The great domed power stations were already in operation, and they were made of nonmagnetic materials, so they could not be pulledfrom the ground. The magnetic beams were neutralized by the shield, andno ship could pass through it without killing every man aboard. 

That first city was a giant munitions plant. The Nansalians builtfactories there and laughed while the armies of Sator raged impotentlyat the magnetic barrier. They tried sending missiles through, but theinduction heating in every metal part of the bombs either caused them toexplode instantly or to drop harmlessly and burn. 

In the meantime, the men of Nansal were building their fleet. TheSatorians stepped up production, too, but the Nansalians had developed amethod of projecting the magnetic screen. Any approaching Satorian shiphad its magnetic support cut from under it, and it crashed to theground. 

It took nearly thirty years of hard work and harder fighting for theNansalians to convince the people of Sator that Nansal and thephilosophy of Norus had not only not been wiped out, but was capable ofwiping out the Satorians. 

With their screened and protected fleet, the followers of Norus smashedthe Satorian cities, and drove their enemy back to Sator. 

There were only three enemy cities left on Nansal when, somehow, theymanaged to learn the secret of the magnetic screen. 

By this time, the forces of Nansal had increased tremendously, and theydeveloped the next surprise for the Satorians. One after another, thethree remaining cities were destroyed by a barrage of poison gas. 

The fleet of Sator tried to retaliate, but the Nansalians were preparedfor them. Every building had been sealed and filters had been built intothe air conditioning systems. 

Shortly, the men of Nansal were again in control of their planet, andthe fleet stood guard over the planet. 

The Satorians, beaten technologically, were still not ready to give up. Falling back on their peculiar philosophy of life, they pulled a trickthe Nansalians would never have thought of. They sued for peace. 

The government of Nansal was willing; they had had enough of bloodshed. They permitted a delegation to arrive. The ship was escorted into thecity and the parleying began. 

The Satorian delegation asked for absolutely unreasonable terms. Theydemanded fleet bases on Nansal; they demanded an unreasonable rate ofexchange between the two powers, one which would be highly favorable toSator; they wanted to impose fantastic restrictions on Nansalian traveland none whatsoever on their own. 

Month followed month and months became years as the diplomats of Nansaltried, patiently and logically, to show the Satorians how unreasonabletheir demands were. 

Not once did they suspect that the Satorians had no intention of tryingto get the conditions they asked for. Their sole purpose was to drag theparleying on and on, bickering, quarreling, demanding, and concedingjust enough to give the Nansalians hope that a treaty might eventuallybe consummated. 

And during all that time, the factories of Sator were working furiouslyto build the greatest fleet that had ever crossed the space between thetwo planets!

When they were ready to attack, the Satorian delegation told Nansalfrankly that they would not treaty with them. The day the delegationleft, the Satorian fleet swept down upon Nansal!

The Nansalians were again beaten back into their cities, safe behindtheir magnetic screens, but unable to attack. But the forces of Satorhad not won easily--they had, in fact, not won at all. Their supply linewas too long and their fleet had suffered greatly at the hands of thedefenders of Nansal. 

For a long while, the balance of power was so nearly equal that neitherside dared attack. 

Then the balance again swung toward Nansal. A Nansalian scientistdiscovered a compact method of storing power. Oddly enough, it wassimilar to the method Dr. Richard Arcot had discovered a hundredthousand light centuries away! It did not store nearly the power, andwas inefficient, but it was a great improvement over their older methodof generating energy in the ship itself. 

The Nansalian ships could be made smaller, and lighter, and moremaneuverable, and at the same time could be equipped with heavier, morepowerful magnetic beam generators. 

Very shortly, the Satorians were again at the mercy of Nansal. Theycould not fight the faster, more powerful ships of the Nansalians, andagain they went down in defeat. 

And again they sued for peace. 

This time, Nansal knew better; they went right on developing their fleetwhile the diplomats of Sator argued. 

But the Satorians weren't fools; they didn't expect Nansal to swallowthe same bait a second time. Sator had another ace up her sleeve. 

Ten days after they arrived, every diplomat and courier of the Satoriandelegation committed suicide!

Puzzled, the government of Nansal reported the deaths to Sator at once, expecting an immediate renewal of hostilities; they were quite sure thatSator assumed they had been murdered. Nansal was totally unprepared forwhat happened; Sator acknowledged the message with respects and saidthey would send a new commission. 

Two days later, Nansal realized it had been tricked again. A horribledisease broke out and spread like wildfire. The incubation period wastwelve days; during that time it gave no sign. Then the flesh began torot away, and the victim died within hours. No wonder the ambassadorshad committed suicide!

Millions died, including Torlos' own father, during the raging epidemicthat followed. But, purely by lucky accident, the Nansalian medicalresearch teams came up with a cure and a preventive inoculation beforethe disease had spread over the whole planet. 

Sator's delegation had inoculated themselves with the disease and, atthe sacrifice of their own lives, had spread it on Nansal. Although theSatorians had developed the horribly virulent strain of virus, they hadnot found a cure; the diplomats knew they were going to die. 

Having managed to stop the disease before it swept the planet, theNansalians decided to pull a trick of their own. Radio communicationwith Sator was cut off in such a way as to lead the Satorian governmentto believe that Nansal was dying of the disease. 

The scientists of Sator knew that the virus was virulent; in fact, toovirulent for its own good. It killed the host every time, and the viruscould not live outside a living cell. They knew that shortly after everyNansalian died, the virus, too, would be dead. 

Their fleet started for Nansal six months after radio contact had brokenoff. Expecting to find Nansal a dead planet, they were totallyunprepared to find them alive and ready for the attack. The Satorianfleet, vastly surprised to find a living, vigorous enemy, was totallywiped out. 

Since that time, both planets had remained in a state of armed truce. Neither had developed any weapon which would enable them to gain anadvantage over their enemy. Each was so spy-infested that no move couldpass undiscovered. 

Stalemate. 

XIX

Torlos spread his hands eloquently. "That is the history of our war. Canyou wonder that my people were suspicious when your ship appeared? Canyou wonder that they drove you away? They were afraid of the men ofSator; when they saw your weapons, they were afraid for theircivilization. 

"On the other hand, why should the men of Sator fear? They knew that ourcode of honor would not permit us to make a treacherous attack. 

"I regret that my people drove you away, but can you blame them?"

Arcot had to admit that he could not. He turned to Morey. "They werecertainly reasonable in driving us from their cities; experience hastaught them that it's the safest way. A good offense is always the bestdefense. 

"But experience has taught me that, unlike Torlos, I have to eat. Iwonder if it might not be a good idea to get a little rest too--I'mbushed. "

"Good idea, " agreed Morey. "I'll ask Wade to stand guard while we sleep. If Torlos wants company, he can talk to Wade as well as anyone. I'm duefor some sleep myself. "

Arcot, Morey, and Fuller went to their rooms for some rest. Arcot andMorey were tired, but after an hour, Fuller rose and went down to thecontrol room where Wade was communicating telepathically with Torlos. 

"Hello, " Wade greeted him. "I thought you were going to join theSnoring Chorus. "

"I tried to, but I couldn't get in tune. What have you been doing?"

"I've been talking with Torlos--and with fair success. I'm getting thetrick of thought communication, " Wade said enthusiastically. "I askedTorlos if he wanted to sleep, and it seems that they do it regularly, one day in ten. And when they sleep, they sleep soundly. It's more of acoma, something like the hibernation of a bear or a possum. 

"If you want to do business with Mr. John Doe, and he happens to beasleep, your business will have to wait. It takes something reallydrastic to wake these people up. 

"I remember a remark one of my classmates made while I was going tocollege. He was totally unconscious of the humor in the thing. He said:'I've got to go to more lectures. I've been losing a lot of sleep. '

"He intended them to be totally disconnected thoughts, but the rest ofus knew his habits, and we almost knocked ourselves out laughing. 

"I was just wondering what would happen if a Nansalian were to drop offin class. They'd probably have to call an ambulance or something tocarry him home!"

Fuller looked at the giant. "I doubt it. One of his classmates wouldjust tuck him under his arm and take him on home--or to the nextlecture. Remember, they only weigh about four hundred pounds on Nansal, which is no more to them than fifty pounds is to us. "

"True enough, " Wade agreed. "But you know, I'd hate to have him wrapthose arms of his about me. He might get excited, or sneeze orsomething, and--_squish!_"

"You and your morbid imagination. " Fuller sat down in one of the seats. "Let's see if we can't get a three-way conversation going; this guy isinteresting. "

Arcot and Morey awoke nearly three hours later, and the Earthmen atetheir breakfast, much to Torlos' surprise. 

"I can understand that you need far more food than we do, " he commented, "but you only ate a few hours ago. It seems like a tremendous amount offood to me. How could you possibly grow enough in your cities?"

"So _that's_ why they don't have any farms!" Fuller said. 

"Our food is grown out on the plains outside the cities, where there isroom, " Arcot explained. "It's difficult, but we have machines to helpus. We could never have developed the cone type of city you have, however, for we need huge huge quantities of food. If we were to sealourselves inside our cities as your people have to protect themselvesfrom enemies, we would starve to death very quickly. "

"You know, " Morey said, "I'll have to admit that Torlos' people are ahigher type of creation than we are. Man, and all other animals onEarth, are parasites of the plant world. We're absolutely incapable ofproducing our own foods. We can't gather energy for ourselves. We'reutterly dependent on plants. 

"But these men aren't--at least not so much so. They at least generatetheir own muscular energy by extracting heat from the air they breathe. They combine all the best features of plants, reptiles, and mammals. Idon't know where they'd be classified biologically!"

After the meal, they went to the control room and strapped themselvesinto the control seats. Arcot checked the fuel gauge. 

"We have plenty of lead left, " he said to Morey, "and Torlos has assuredme that we will be able to get more on Nansal. I suggest we show him howthe space control works, so that he can tell the Nansalian scientistsabout it from personal experience. 

"In this sun's gravitational field, we'll lose a lot of power, but aslong as it can be replaced, we're all right. "

Turning to the Nansalian, Arcot pointed out towards the little spark oflight that was Torlos' home planet. "Keep your eyes on that, Torlos. Watch it grow when we use our space control drive. "

Arcot pushed the little red switch to the first notch. The air aroundthem pulsed with power for an instant, then space had readjusted itself. 

The point that was Nansal grew to a disc, and then it was swiftlyleaping toward them, welling up to meet them, expanding its bulk withawesome speed. Torlos watched it tensely. 

There was a sudden splintering crash, and Arcot jerked open the circuitin alarm. They were almost motionless again as the stars reeled aboutthem. 

Torlos had been nervous. Like any man so effected, he had unconsciouslytightened his muscles. His fingers had sunk into the hard plastic of thearm rest on his chair, and crushed it as though it had been put betweenthe jaws of a hydraulic press!

"I'm glad we weren't holding hands, " said Wade, eyeing the brokenplastic. 

"I am very sorry, " Torlos thought humbly. "I did not intend to do that. I forgot myself when I saw that planet rushing at me so fast. " Hischagrin was apparent on his face. 

Arcot laughed. "It is nothing, Torlos. We are merely astonished at theterrific strength of your hand. Wade wasn't worried; he was joking!"

Torlos looked relieved, but he looked at the splintered arm rest andthen at his hand. "It is best that I keep my too-strong hands away fromyour instruments. "

The ship was falling toward Nansal at a relatively slow rate, less thanfour miles a second. Arcot accelerated toward the planet for two hours, then began to decelerate. Five hundred miles above the planet's surface, their velocity cut the ship into a descending spiral orbit to allow theatmosphere to check their speed. 

The outer lux hull began to heat up, and he closed the relux screens tocut down the radiation from it. When he opened them again, the ship wasspeeding over the broad plains of the planet. 

Torlos told Arcot that by far the greater percentage of the surface ofNansal was land. There was still plenty of water, for their seas weremuch deeper than those of Earth. Some of the seas were thirty miles deepover broad areas--hundreds of square miles. As if to compensate, theland surfaces were covered with titanic mountain ranges, some of themover ten miles above sea level. 

Torlos, his eyes shining, directed the Earthmen to his home city, thecapital of the world-nation. 

"Is there no traffic between the cities here, Torlos?" Morey asked. "Wehaven't seen any ships. "

"There's continuous traffic, " Torlos replied, "but you have come in farto the north, well away from the regularly scheduled routes. Thecommerce must be densely populated with warships as well, and bothwarships and commercial craft are made to look as much alike as possibleso that the enemy can not know when ships of war are present and whenthey are not, and their attacks are more easily beaten off. They areforced to live off our commerce while they are here. Before we inventedthe magnetic storage device, they were forced to get fuel from our shipsin order to make the return journey; they could not carry enough for theround trip. "

Suddenly his smile broadened, and he pointed out the forward window. "Our city is behind that next range of mountains!"

They were flying at a height of twenty miles, and the range Torlosindicated was far off in the blue distance, almost below the horizon. Asthey approached them, the mountains seemed to change slowly as theirperspective shifted. They seemed to crawl about on one another likeliving things, growing larger and changing from blue to blue-green, andthen to a rich, verdant emerald. 

Soon the ship was rocketing smoothly over them. Ahead and below, in therocky gorge of the mountains, lay a great cone city, the largest theEarthmen had yet seen. As they approached, they could see another conebehind it--the city was a double cone! They resembled the circus tentsof two centuries earlier, connected by a ridge. 

"Ah--home!" smiled Torlos. "See--that twin cone idea is new. It was notthus when I left it, years ago. It is growing, growing--and in that newsection! See? They have bright colors on all the buildings! And alreadythey are digging foundations out to the left for a third cone!" He wasso excited that it was difficult for Arcot to read his thoughtscoherently. 

"But we won't have to build more fortifications, " Torlos continued, "ifyou will give us the secret of the rays you use!

"But, Arcot, you must hide in the hills now; drop down and deposit me inthe hills. I will walk to the city on foot. 

"I will be able to identify myself, and I will soon be inside the city, telling the Supreme Three that I have salvation and peace for them!"

"I have a better idea, " Arcot told him. "It will save you a long walk. We'll make the ship invisible, and take you close to the city. You candrop, say ten feet from the ship to the ground, and continue from there. Will that be all right?"

Torlos agreed that it would. 

Invisible, the _Ancient Mariner_ dove down toward the city, stoppingonly a few hundred feet from the base of the magnetic wall, near one ofthe gigantic beam stations. 

"I will come out in a one-man flier, slowly, and at low altitude, towardthat mountain there, " Torlos told Arcot, pointing. "Then you may becomevisible and follow me into the city. 

"You need fear no treachery from my people, " he assured them. Then, smiling: "As if you need fear treachery from the hands of any people!You have certainly proven your ability to defend yourselves!

"Even if my people were treacherously inclined, they would certainlyhave been convinced by your escape from the Satorians. And they haveundoubtedly heard all about it by now through the secret radios of ourspies. After all, I was not the only Nansalian spy there, and some ofthe others must surely have escaped in the ships that ran away after Idestroyed the city. " Arcot could feel the sadness in his mind as hethought of the fact that his inadvertent destruction of the city hadundoubtedly killed some of his own people. 

Torlos paused a moment, then asked: "Is there any message you wish me togive the Supreme Council of Three?"

"Yes, " replied Arcot. "Repeat to them the offer we so foolishly made tothe Commanding One of Sator. We will give them the molecular ray whichtore the city out of the ground, and, as your people have seen, alsotore a mountain down. We will give them our heat beam, which will meltanything except the material of which this ship is made. And we willgive them the knowledge to make this material, too. 

"Best of all, we will give them the secret of the most terrific energysource known to mankind; the energy of matter itself. With these in yourhands, Sator will soon be peaceful. 

"In return, we ask only two things. They will cost you almost nothing, but they are invaluable to us. We have lost our way. In the vastness ofspace, we can no longer locate our own galaxy. But our own IslandUniverse has features which could be distinguished on an astronomicalplate, and we have taken photographs of it which your astronomers cancompare with their own to help us find our way back. 

"In addition, we need more fuel--lead wire. Our space control drive doesnot use up energy except in the presence of a strong gravitationalfield; most of it is drained back into our storage coils, with verylittle loss. But we have used it several times near a large sun, and thepower drainage goes up exponentially. We would not have enough to getback home if we happened to run into any more trouble on the way. "

Arcot paused a moment, considering. "Those two things are all we reallyneed, but we would like to take back more, if your Council is willing. We would like samples of your books and photographs and other artifactsof your civilization to take back home to our own people. 

"That, and peace, are all we ask. "

Torlos nodded. "The things you ask, I am sure the Council will readilyagree to. It seems little enough payment for the things you intend to dofor us. "

"Very well, then. We will wait for you. Good luck!"

Torlos turned and jumped out of the airlock. The ship rose high abovehim as he suddenly became visible on the plain below. He was runningtoward the city in great leaps of twenty feet--graceful, easy leaps thatshowed his tremendous power. 

Suddenly, a ship was darting down from the city toward him. As it curveddown, Torlos stopped and made certain signals with his arms, then hestood quietly with his hands in the air. 

The ship hovered above him, and two men dropped thirty feet to theground and questioned him for several minutes. 

Finally, they motioned to the ship, which dropped to ten feet, and thethree men leaped lightly to its door and entered. The door snapped shut, and the ship shot toward the city. The magnetic wall opened for amoment, and the ship shot through. Within seconds, if was out of sight, lost in the busy air traffic above the city. 

"Well, " said Arcot, "now we go back to the hills and wait. "

XX

For two days, the _Ancient Mariner_ lay hidden in the hills. It wasvisible all that time, but at least two of the men were watching the skyevery hour of the day. Torlos himself was, they knew, perfectlytrustworthy, but they did not know whether his people were as honorableas he claimed them to be. 

Arcot and Wade were in the control room on the afternoon of the secondday--not Earth days, but the forty-hour Nansalian days--and they hadbeen quietly discussing the biological differences between themselvesand the inhabitants of this planet. 

Suddenly, Wade saw a slowly moving speck in the sky. 

"Look, Arcot! There's Torlos!"

They waited, ready for any hostile action as the tiny ship approachedrapidly, circling slowly downward as it came nearer. It landed a fewhundred feet away, and Torlos emerged, running rapidly toward the Earthship. Arcot let him in through the airlock. 

Torlos smiled broadly. "I had difficulty in convincing the Council thatmy story was true. When I told them that you could go faster than light, they strongly objected. But they had to admit that you had certainlybeen able to tear down the mountain very effectively, and they hadreceived reports of the destruction of the Satorian capitol. 

"It seems you first visited the city of Thanso when you came here. Thepeople were nearly panic-stricken when they saw you rip that mountaindown and uproot the magnetic ray station. No one ship had ever done thatbefore!

"But the fact that several guards had seen me materialize out of thinair, plus the fact that they knew you could make yourselves invisible, convinced them that my story was true. 

"They want to talk to you, and they say that they will gladly grant yourrequests. But you must promise them one thing--you must stay away fromany of our people, for they are afraid of disease. Bacteria that do notbother you very much might be deadly to us. The Supreme Council of Threeis willing to take the risk, but they will not allow anyone else to beexposed. "

"We will keep apart from your people if the Council wishes, " Arcotagreed, "but there is no real danger. We are so vastly different fromyou that it will be impossible for you to get our diseases, or for us tocontract yours. However, if the Council wants it, we will do as theyask. "

Torlos at once went back to his ship and headed toward the city. 

Arcot followed in the _Ancient Mariner_, keeping about three hundredfeet to the rear. 

When they reached the magnetic screen of the city, one of the beamstations cut its power for a few moments, leaving a gap for the twoships to glide smoothly through. 

On the roofs of the buildings, men and women were collected, watchingthe shining, polished hull of the strange ship as it moved silentlyabove them. 

Torlos led them to the great central building and dropped to the hugelanding field beside it. All around them, in regular rows, the greathulls of the Nansal battleships were arranged. Arcot landed the _AncientMariner_ and shut off the power. 

"I think Wade is the man to go with me this time, " Arcot said. "He haslearned to communicate with Torlos quite well. We will each carry bothpistols and wear our power suits. And we'll be in radio communicationwith you at all times. 

"I don't think they'll start anything we don't like this time, but I'mnot as confident as I was, and I'm not going to take any uselesschances. This time I'm going to make arrangements. If I die here, there's going to be a very costly funeral, and these men are going topay the costs!

"I'll call you every three minutes, Morey. If I don't, check up on me. If you still don't get an answer, take this place apart because youwon't be able to hurt us then. 

"I'm going to tell Torlos about our precautions. If the building shieldsthe radio, I'll be listening for you and I'll retrace my steps until Ican contact you again. Right? Then come on, Wade!" Arcot, fullyequipped, strode down the corridor to the airlock. 

Torlos was waiting for them with another man, whom Torlos explained wasa high-ranking officer of the fleet. Torlos, it seemed, was withoutofficial rank. He was a secret service agent without official status, and therefore an officer had been assigned to accompany the Earthmen. 

Torlos seemed to be relaxing in the soft, warm sunlight of his nativeworld. It had been years since he had seen that yellow sun except fromthe windows of a space flier. Now he could walk around in the clear airof the planet of his birth. 

Arcot explained to him the precautions they had taken against troublehere, and Torlos smiled. "You have certainly learned greater caution. Ican't blame you. We certainly seem little different from the men ofSator; we can only stand on trial. But I know you will be safe. "

They walked across the great court, which was covered with a soft, springy turf of green. The hot sun shining down on them, the brilliantcolors of the buildings, the towering walls of the magnificent edificethey were approaching, and, behind them, the shining hull of the_Ancient Mariner_ set among the dark, needle-shaped Nansalian ships, allcombined to make a picture that would remain in their minds for a longtime. 

Here, there were no guards watching them as they were conducted to themeeting of the Supreme Council of Three. 

They went into the main entrance of the towering government building andstepped into the great hall on the ground floor. It was like theinterior of an ancient Gothic cathedral, beautiful and dignified. Greatpillars of green stone rose in graceful, fluted columns, smoothlycurving out like the branches of some stylized tree to meet in archesthat rose high in pleasing curves to a point midway between fourpillars. The walls were made of a dark green stone as a background; onthem had been traced designs in colored tile. 

The whole hall was a thing of colored beauty; the color gave it life, asthe yellow sunlight gave life to the trees of the mountains. 

They crossed the great hall and came at last to the elevator. Its doorwas made of narrow strips of metal, so bound together that the wholemade a flexible, but strong sheet. In principle, the doors worked likethe cover of an antique roll-top desk. The idea was old, but these menhad made their elevator doors very attractive by the addition of color. In no way did they detract from the dignified grace of the magnificenthall. 

Torlos turned to Arcot. "I wonder if it would not be wise to shut offyour radio as we enter the elevator. Might not the magnetic force affectit?"

"Probably, " Arcot agreed. He contacted Morey and told him that the radiowould be cut off for a short while. "But it won't be more than threeminutes, " Arcot finished. "If it is--you know what to do. "

As they entered the elevator, Torlos smiled at the two Earthmen. "Wewill ascend more gradually this time, so that the acceleration won't beso tiring to you. " He moved the controls carefully, and by gentle stepsthey rose to the sixty-third floor of the giant building. 

As they stepped out of the elevator, Torlos pointed toward an openwindow that stretched widely across one wall. Below them, they could seethe _Ancient Mariner_. 

"Your radio contact should be good, " Torlos commented. 

Wade put in a call to Morey, and to his relief, he made contactimmediately. 

The officer was leading them down a green stone corridor toward a simpledoor. He opened it, and they entered the room beyond. 

In the center of the room was a large triangular table. At a place atthe center of each side sat one man on a slightly raised chair, while oneach side of him sat a number of other men. 

Torlos stopped at the door and saluted. Then he spoke in rapid, liquidsyllables to the men sitting at the table, halting once or twice andshowing evident embarrassment as he did so. 

He paused, and one of the three men in command replied rapidly in apleasant voice that had none of the harsh command that Arcot had noticedin the voice of the Satorian Commanding One. Arcot liked the voice andthe man. 

Judging by Earth standards, he was past middle age--whatever that mightbe on Nansal--with crisp black hair that was bleaching slightly. Hisface showed the signs of worry that the making of momentous decisionsalways leaves, but although the face was strong with authority, therewas a gentleness that comes with a feeling of kindly power. 

Wade was talking rapidly into the radio, describing the scene beforethem to Morey. He described the great table of dark wood, and the menabout it, some in the blue uniform of the military, and some in theloose, soft garments of the civilian. Their colored fabrics, individually in good taste and harmony, were frequently badly out ofharmony with the costume of a neighbor, a difficulty accompanying thisbrightly tinted clothing. 

Torlos turned to Arcot. "The Supreme council asks that you be seated atthe table, in the places left for you. " He paused, then quickly added:"I have told them of your precautions, and they have said: 'A wise man, having been received treacherously once, will not again be trapped. 'They approve of your policy of caution. 

"The men who sit at the raised portions of the table are the SupremeThree; the others are their advisors who know the details of Science, Business, and War. No one man can know all the branches of humanendeavor, and this is but a meeting place of those who know best theindividual lines. The Supreme Three are elected from the advisors incase of the death of one of the Three, and they act as co-ordinators forthe rest. 

"The man of Science is to your left; directly before you is the man ofBusiness, and to your right is the Commander of the Military. 

"To whom do you wish to speak first?"

Arcot considered for a moment, then: "I must first tell the Scientistwhat it is I have, then tell the Commander how he can use it, andfinally I will tell the Businessman what will be needed. "

Arcot had noticed that the military officers all wore holsters for theirpneumatic pistols, but they were conspicuously empty. He was bothpleased and embarrassed. What should he do--he, who carried two deadlypistols. He decided on the least conspicuous course and left them wherethey were. 

Arcot projected his thoughts at Torlos. "We have come a vast distanceacross space, from another galaxy. Let your astronomer tell them whatdistance that represents. "

Arcot paused while Torlos put the thoughts into the words of theNansalian language. A moment later, one of the scientists, a tall, powerfully built man, even for these men of giant strength, rose andspoke to the others. When he was seated, a second rose and spoke also, with an expression of puzzled wonder. 

"He says, " Torlos translated, "that his science has taught him that aspeed such as you say you have made is impossible, but the fact that youare here proves his science wrong. 

"He reasoned that since your kind live on no planet of this system, youmust come from another star. Since his science says that this is just asimpossible as coming from another galaxy, he is convinced of the fallacyin the theories. "

Arcot smiled. The sound reasoning was creditable; the man did not labelas "impossible" something which was proven by the presence of the twoEarthmen. 

Arcot tried to explain the physical concepts behind his space-straindrive, but communication broke down rapidly; Torlos, a warrior, not ascientist, could not comprehend the ideas, and was completely unable totranslate them into his own language. 

"The Chief Physicist suggests that you think directly at him, " Torlosfinally told Arcot. "He suggests that the thoughts might be morefamiliar to him than to me. " He grinned. "And they certainly aren'tclear to me!"

Arcot projected his thoughts directly toward the physicist; to hissurprise, the man was a perfect receiver. He had a natural gift for it. Quickly, Arcot outlined the system that had made his intergalacticvoyage possible. 

The physicist smiled when Arcot was finished, and tried to reply, but hewas not a good transmitter. Torlos aided him. 

"He says that the science of your people is far ahead of us. Theconceptions are totally foreign to his mind, and he can only barelygrasp the significance of the idea of bent emptiness that you have givenhim. He says, however, that he can fully appreciate the possibility thatyou have shown him. He has given your message to the Three, and they areanxious to hear of the weapons you have. "

Arcot drew the molecular pistol, and holding it up for all to see, projected the general theory of its operation toward the physicist. 

To the Chief Physicist of Nansal, the idea of molecular energy was anold one; he had been making use of it all his life, and it was wellknown that the muscles used the heat of air to do their work. Heunderstood well how it worked, but not until Arcot projected into hismind the mental impression of how the Earthmen had thrown one sun intoanother did he realize the vast power of the ray. 

Awed, the man translated the idea to his fellows. 

Then Arcot drew the heat pistol and explained how the annihilation ofmatter within it was converted into pure heat by the relux lens. 

"I will show you how they work, " Arcot continued. "Could we have a lumpof metal of some kind?"

The Scientist spoke into an intercom microphone, and within a fewminutes, a large lump of iron--a broken casting--was brought in. Arcotsuspended it on the molecular beam while Wade melted it with the heatbeam. It melted and collapsed into a ball that glowed brilliantly andflamed as its surface burned in the oxygen of the air. Wade cut off hisheat ray, and the ball quickly cooled under the influence of themolecular beam until Arcot lowered it to the floor, a perfect spherecrusted with ice and frost. 

Arcot continued for the better part of an hour to explain to the Councilexactly what he had, how they could be used, and what materials andprocesses were needed to make them. 

When he was finished, the Supreme Three conferred for several minutes. Then the Scientist asked, through Torlos: "How can we repay you forthese things you have given us?"

"First, we need lead to fuel our ship. " Arcot gave them the exactspecifications for the lead wire they needed. 

He received his answer from the man of Business and Manufacturing. "Wecan give you that easily, for lead is cheap. Indeed, it seems hardlyenough to repay you. "

"The second thing we need, " Arcot continued, "is information. We becamelost in space and are unable to find our way home. I would like toexplain the case to the Astronomer. "

The Astronomer proved to be a man of powerful intelligence as well aspowerful physique, and was a better transmitter than receiver. It tookevery bit of Arcot's powerful mind to project his thoughts to the man. 

He explained the dilemma that he and his friends were in, and told himhow he could recognize the Galaxy on his plates. The Astronomer said hethought he knew of such a nebula, but he would like to compare his ownphotographs with Arcot's to make sure. 

"In return, " Arcot told him, "we will give you another weapon--a weapon, this time, to defeat the astronomer's greatest enemy, distance. It is anelectrical telescope which will permit you to see life on every planetof this system. With it, you can see a man at a distance ten times asgreat as the distance from Nansal to your sun!"

Eagerly, the Astronomer questioned Arcot concerning the telectroscope, but others were clamoring for Arcot's attention. 

The Biologist was foremost among the contenders; he seemed worried aboutthe possibility of the alien Earthmen carrying pathogenic bacteria. 

"Torlos has told us that you have an entirely different internalorganization. What is it that is different? I can't believe that he hascorrectly understood you. "

Arcot explained the differences as carefully as possible. By the time hewas finished, the Biologist felt sure that any such creature wassufficiently far removed from them to be harmless biologically, but hewanted to study the Man of Earth further. 

Arcot had brought along a collection of medical books as a possible aidin case of accident. He offered to give these to Nansal in exchange fora collection of Nansalian medical texts. The English would have to beworked out with the aid of a dictionary and a primary working aid whichArcot would supply. Arcot also asked for a skeleton to take with him, and the Biologist readily agreed. 

"We'd like to give you one in return, " Arcot grinned, "But we onlybrought four along, and, unfortunately, we are using them at themoment. "

The Biologist smiled back and assured him that they would not think oftaking a piece of apparatus so vitally necessary to the Earthmen. 

The Military Leader was the man who demanded attention next. Arcot had along conference with him, and they decided that the best way for theMilitary Leader to learn the war potential of the _Ancient Mariner_ wasto personally see a demonstration of its powers. 

The Council decided that the Three would go on the trip. The MilitaryCommander picked two of his aides to go, and the Scientist picked theAstronomer and the Physicist. The head of Business and Manufacturingdeclined to bring any of his advisors. 

"We would learn nothing, " he told Arcot, "and would only be in the way. I, myself, am going only because I am one of the Three. "

"Very well, " said Arcot. "Let's get started. "

XXI

The party descended to the ground floor and walked out to the ship. Theyfiled into the airlock, and in the power room they looked in amazementat the tiny machines that ran the ship. The long black cylinder of themain power unit for the molecular drive looked weak and futile comparedto the bulky machines that ran their own ships. The power storage coils, with their fields of intense, dead blackness, interested the Physicistimmensely. 

The ship was a constant source of wonder to them all. They investigatedthe laboratory and then went up to the second floor. Morey and Fullergreeted them at the door, and each of the four Earthmen took a grouparound the ship, explaining as they went. 

The library was a point of great interest, exceeded only by the controlroom. Arcot found some difficulty in taking care of all his visitors;there were only four chairs in the control room. The Three could sitdown, but Arcot needed the fourth chair to pilot the ship. The rest ofthe party had to hold on as best they could, which was not too difficultfor men of such physical strength; they were accustomed to highaccelerations in their elevators. 

Morey, Wade, and Fuller strapped themselves into the seats at the rayprojectors at the sides and stern. 

Arcot wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ship's armamentfirst, and then the maneuverability. He picked a barren hillside for thefirst demonstration. It was a great rocky cliff, high above the timberline, towering almost vertically a thousand feet above them. 

Wade triggered his molecular projector, and a pale beam reached outtoward the cliff. Instantly, the cliff leaped ten miles into the air, whining and roaring as it shot up through the atmosphere. Then itstarted to fall. Heated by its motion through the air, it struck themountaintop as a mass of red hot rock which shattered into fragmentswith a terrific roar! The rocks rolled and bounced down themountainside, their path traced by a line of steam clouds. 

Then, at Arcot's order, the heat beams were all turned on the mountainat full power. In less than a minute, the peak began to melt, sendingstreamers of lava down the sides. The beams began to eat out a crater inthe center, where the rock began to boil furiously under the terrificenergy of the heat beams. 

Then Arcot shut off the heat beams and turned on the molecular ray. 

The molecules of the molten rock were traveling at high velocities--theheat was terrific. Arcot could see that the rock was boiling quitefreely. When the molecular beam hit it, every one of those fast movingmolecules shot upward together! With the roar of a meteor, it plungedtoward space at five miles a second!

It had dropped to absolute zero when the beam hit it, but at that speedthrough the air, it didn't stay cold long! Arcot followed it up in the_Ancient Mariner_. It was going too slowly for him. The air had slowedit down and heated it up, so Arcot hit it with the molecular ray again, converting the heat back into velocity. 

By the time they reached free space, Arcot had maneuvered the lump ofrock into an orbit around the planet. 

"Tharlano, " he thought at the Astronomer, "your planet now has a newsatellite!"

"So I perceive!" replied Tharlano. "Now that we are in space, can we usethe instrument you told me of?"

Arcot established the ship in an orbit twenty thousand miles from theplanet and led them back to the observatory, where Morey had alreadytrained the telectroscope on the planet below. There wasn't much to see;the amplification showed only the rushing ground moving by so fast thatthe image blurred. 

He turned it to Sator. It filled the screen as they increased the power, but all they could see was billowing clouds. Another poor subject. 

Morey showed Tharlano, the Astronomer, how to use the controls, and hebegan to sweep the sky with the instrument, greatly pleased with itsresolving ability and tremendous magnification. 

The Military Leader of the Three pointed out that the Satorians stillhad a weapon that was reported deadly, and they were in imminent dangerunless Arcot's inventions were applied at once. All the way back toNansal, they spent the time discussing the problem in the _AncientMariner_'s Library. 

It was finally agreed that the necessary plans and blueprints were to begiven to the Nansalians, who could start production at once. The biggestproblem was in the supply of lux and relux, which, because of their vastenergy-content, required the atomic converters of the _Ancient Mariner_to make them. The Earthmen agreed to supply the power and the necessarymaterials to begin operations. 

When the ship landed, a meeting of the manufacturers was called. Fullerdistributed prints of the microfilmed plans for the equipment that hehad packed in the library, and the factory engineers worked from them tobuild the necessary equipment. 

The days that followed were busy days for Earthmen and Nansalians alike. 

The Nansalians were fearful of the consequences of the weapon that theSatorians were rumored to have. The results of their investigationsthrough their agents had, so far, resulted only in the death of thesecret service men. All that was known was exactly what the Satorianswanted them to know; the instrument was new, and it was deadly. 

On the other hand, the Satorians were not entirely in the dark as to theprogress of Nansal, as Arcot and Morey discovered one day. 

After months of work designing and tooling up the Nansalian factories, making the tools to make the tools to make the war material needed, andtraining the engineers of Nansal all over the planet to produce theequipment needed, Arcot and Morey finally found time to take a few daysoff. 

Tharlano had begun a systematic search of the known nebulae, comparingthem with the photographs the Earthmen had given him, and looking for agalaxy with two satellite star clouds of exactly the right size anddistance from the great spiral. 

After months of work, he had finally picked one which filled the billexactly! He invited Arcot and Morey to the observatory to confirm hisfindings. 

The observatory was located on the barren peak of a great mountain morethan nine miles high. It was almost the perfect place for anastronomical telescope. Here, well above the troposphere, the air wasthin and always clear. The solid rock of the mountain was far fromdisturbing influences which might cause any vibration in the telescope. 

The observatory was accessible only from a spaceship or air flyer, and, at that altitude, had to be pressurized and sealed against the thin, cold air outside. Within, the temperature was kept constant to afraction of a degree to keep thermal expansion from throwing the mirrorout of true. 

Arcot and Morey, accompanied by Tharlano and Torlos, settled the_Ancient Mariner_ to the landing field that had been blasted out of therock of the towering mountain. They went over to the observatory andwere at once admitted to the airlock. 

The floor was of smoothed, solid rock, and in this, the great clockwhich timed and moved the telescope was set. 

The entire observatory was, of course, surrounded by a magnetic shield, and it was necessary to make sure there were no enemy ships aroundbefore using the telescope, because the magnetic field affected thelight rays passing through it. 

The mirror for the huge reflecting telescope was nearly three hundredinches in diameter, and was powerful enough to spot a spaceship leavingSator. Its military usefulness, however, was practically nil, sincepainting the ships black made them totally invisible. 

There were half a dozen assistants with Tharlano at the observatory atall times, one of them in charge of the great file of plates that werekept on hand. Every plate made was printed in triplicate, to preventtheir being destroyed in a raid. The original was kept at theobservatory, and copies were sent to two of the largest cities onNansal. It was from this file that Tharlano had gathered the datanecessary to show Arcot his own galaxy. 

Tharlano was proudly explaining the telescope to Arcot, realizing thatthe telectroscope was far better, but knowing that the Earthmen wouldappreciate this triumph of mechanical perfection. Arcot and Morey wereboth intensely interested in the discussion, while Torlos, slightlybored by a subject he knew next to nothing about, was examining the restof the observatory. 

Suddenly, he cried out in warning, and leaped a full thirty feet overthe rock floor to gather Arcot and Morey in his great arms. There was asharp, distinct snap of a pneumatic pistol, and the thud of a bullet. Arcot and Morey each felt Torlos jerk!

Quick as a flash, Torlos pushed the two men behind the great tube of thetelescope. He leaped over it and across the room, and disappeared intothe supply room. There was the noise of a scuffle, another crack from apneumatic pistol, and the sudden crash and tinkle of broken glass. 

Suddenly, the figure of a man described a wide arc as it flew out of thesupply room and landed with a heavy crash on the floor. Instantly, Torlos leaped at him. There was a trickle of blood from his leftshoulder, but he gripped the man in his giant arms, pinning him to thefloor. The struggle was brief. Torlos simply squeezed the man's chest inhis arms. There was the faint creak of metal, and the man's chest beganto bend! In a moment, he was unconscious. 

Torlos pulled a heavy leather belt off of the unconscious man and tiedhis arms with it, wrapping it many times around the wrists, and waspicking the man up when Tharlano arrived, followed by Arcot and Morey. Torlos smiled broadly. 

"This is one Satorian spy that won't report. I could have finished himwhen I got my hold on him, but I wanted to take him before the Councilfor questioning. He'll be all right; I just dented his chest a little. "

"We owe our lives to you again, Torlos, " Arcot told him gravely. "Butyou certainly risked your life; the bullet might well have penetratedyour heart instead of striking a rib, as it seems to have done. "

"Rib? What is a rib?" The thought concept seemed totally unfamiliar toTorlos. 

Arcot looked at him oddly, then reached out and ran an exploratory handover Torlos' chest. It was smooth and solid!

"Morey!" Arcot exclaimed. "These men have no ribs! Their chest is assolid as their skulls!"

"Then how do they breathe?" Morey asked. 

"How do you breathe? I mean most of the time. You use your diaphragm andyour abdominal muscles. These people do, too!"

Morey grinned. "No wonder Torlos jumped in front of that bullet! Hedidn't have as much to fear as we do--he had a built-in bullet proofvest! You'd have to shoot him in the abdomen to reach any vital organ. "

Arcot turned back to Torlos. "Who is this man?"

"Undoubtedly a Satorian spy sent to murder you Earthmen. I saw themuzzle of his pistol as he was aiming and jumped in the way of thebullet. There is not much damage done. "

"We'd better get back to the city, " Arcot said. "Fuller and Wade mightbe in danger!"

They bundled the Satorian spy into the ship, where Morey tied himfurther with thin strands of lux cable no bigger than a piece of string. 

Torlos looked at it and shook his head. "He will break that as soon ashe awakens, without even knowing it. You forget the strength of ourpeople. " Morey smiled and wrapped the cord around Torlos' wrists. 

Torlos looked amused and pulled. His smile vanished. He pulled harder. His huge muscles bulged and writhed in great ridges along his arms. Thethin cord remained complacently undamaged. Torlos relaxed and grinnedsheepishly. 

"You win, " he thought. "I'll make no more comments on the things I seeyou do. "

They returned to the capital at once. Arcot shoved the speed up as highas he dared, for Torlos felt there might be some significance in theattempt to remove Arcot and Morey. Wade and Fuller had already beenwarned by radio, and had immediately retired to the Council Room of theThree. The members of the Investigation Board joined them to questionthe prisoner upon his arrival. 

When they arrived, Arcot and Morey went in with Torlos, who was carryingthe struggling, shackled spy over his shoulder. 

The Earthmen watched while the expert interrogators of the InvestigationBoard questioned the prisoner. The philosophy of Norus did not permittorture, even for a vicious enemy, but the questioners were shrewd andingenious in their methods. For hours, they took turns poundingquestions at the prisoner, cajoling, threatening, and arguing. 

They got nowhere. Solidly, the prisoner stuck by his guns. Why had hetried to shoot the Earthmen? He didn't know. What were his orders fromSator? Silence. What were Sator's plans? Silence. Did he know anythingof the new weapon? A shrug of the shoulders. 

Finally, Arcot spoke to the Chief Investigation Officer. "May I try myluck? I think I'm powerful enough to use a little combination ofhypnosis and telepathy that will get the information out of him. " TheInvestigator agreed to try it. 

Arcot walked over as if to inspect the prisoner. For an instant, the manlooked defiantly at Arcot. Arcot glared back. At the same time, hispowerful mind reached out and began to work subtly within the prisoner'sbrain. Slowly, a helpless, blank expression came over the man's faceas his eyes remained fixed on Arcot's own. The man was as helplesslybound mentally as the lux cable bound him physically. 

For a full quarter of an hour, the two men, Earthmen and Satorian, stoodlocked in a frozen tableau, staring into each other's eyes. Theonlookers waited in watchful silence. 

Finally, Arcot turned and shook his head, as if to clear it. As he didso, the spy slumped forward in his chair, unconscious. 

Arcot rubbed his own temples and spoke in English to Morey. "Some job!You'll have to tell them what I found out; my head is splitting! With aheadache like this, I can't communicate. 

"Torlos was right; they were trying to get rid of all four of us. We'rethe only ones who can operate the ship, and that ship is the onlydefense against them. 

"He knows several other spies here in the city, and we can, I think, practically wipe out the Satorian spy system all over the planet withthe information he gave me and what we can get from others we arrest. 

"Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything about the new weapon; thehigher-ups aren't telling anyone, not even their own men. I get the ideathat only those on board the ships using it will know about it beforethe attack. 

"An attack is planned, and very soon. He didn't know when. We can onlylie in readiness and do everything we can to help these people withtheir work. "

While Morey relayed this information to the Investigating Board and theCouncil, Wade was talking in low tones to Arcot. 

"They had a lot of workmen bring twenty tons of lead wire on board thisevening, and the distilled water tanks are full. The tanks are full ofoxygen, and they gave us some synthetic food which we can eat. 

"They have it all over us in the field of chemistry. They've found thesecret of catalysis, and can actually synthesize any catalytic agentthey want. They can make any possible reaction go in either directionat any rate they desire. 

"They took a slice of flesh from my arm and analyzed it down to the lastdetail. From that, they were able to predict what sort of food we wouldneed to eat. They can actually synthesize living things!

"I've tried the food they made, and it has a very good flavor. Theyguaranteed it would have all the necessary ingredients, right down tothe smallest trace element!

"We're fully stocked for a long trip. The Three said it was their firstconsideration that we should be able to return to our homes. "

"How about their armament?" Arcot asked. He was holding his head in hishands to ease the throbbing ache within it. 

"Each city has a projector supplied by the regular power station on topof their central building. The molecular ray, of course; they stilldon't have enough power to run a heat beam. 

"We didn't have time to make more than one for each city, but this onewill give the Satorians a nasty time if they come near it. It worksnicely through the magnetic screen, so it won't be necessary for them tolower the barrier to shoot. "

Morey had finished telling the Council what Arcot had discovered fromthe prisoner, and the Councilmen were leaving one by one to go to theirduties in preparing for the attack. 

"I think we had best go back to the _Ancient Mariner_, " Arcot said. "Ineed an aspirin and some sleep. "

"Same here, " agreed Fuller. "These men make me feel as though I werelazy. They work for forty or fifty hours and think nothing of it. Thenthey snooze for five hours and they're ready for another long stretch. Ifeel like a lounge lizard if I take six hours out of every twenty-four. "

They asked Torlos to stand guard on the ship while they got some muchneeded sleep, and Torlos consented readily after getting the permissionof the Supreme Three. The Earthmen were returned to their ship underheavy guard to prevent further attempts at assassination. 

It was seven hours after they had gone to sleep that it came. 

Through the ship came the low hum that rose quickly to a screeching callof danger--the warning! The city was under attack!

XXII

The Nansalian fleet was already outside the city and hard at it. Thefight was on! But Arcot saw that the fight was one-sided in the extreme. Ship after ship of the Nansalian fleet seemed to burst into sudden, inexplicable flame and fall blazing against another of their own ships!It seemed as though some irresistible attraction drew the ships togetherand smashed them against each other in a blaze of electric flame, whilethe ships of Sator did nothing but stay far off to one side and dodgethe rays of the Nansalian ships. 

Quickly, Arcot turned to Torlos. "Torlos, go out! Leave the ship! We canwork better when you aren't here, since we don't have to worry aboutexposure to magnetic rays. I don't like to make you miss this, but it'sfor your world!"

Torlos showed his disappointment; he wanted to be in this battle. But herealized that what the Earthman said was true. Their weak, stone boneswere completely immune to the effects of even the most powerful magneticray. 

He nodded. "I'll go. Good Luck! And give them a few shots for me!"

He turned and ran down the corridor to the airlock. As soon as he wasoutside, Arcot lifted the ship. 

It had taken less than a minute to get into the air, but in thatminute, the Nansalian fleet had taken a terrific beating. Arcot noticedthat the few ships of Sator that had been hit smashed into the groundwith a terrible blaze of violet light that left nothing but a pile offused metal. 

"They've got something, all right, " Arcot thought to himself as he drovethe _Ancient Mariner_ into battle. 

It would be impossible for the Nansalians to lower their magneticscreen, even for a second, so Arcot simply aimed the ship toward it andturned on the power. 

"Hold on!" he called as they struck it. The ship reeled and sanksuddenly planetward, then it bounced up and outward. They were throughthe wall. 

The rooms were suddenly oppressively hot, and the molecular cooler wasstruggling to lower it. "We made it, " Morey said triumphantly, "but theeddy currents sure heated up the hull!"

They were out of the city now, speeding toward the battle. Following aprearranged system, the Nansalian ships retreated, leaving the Earthmena free hand. They needed no help!

Wade, Fuller, and Morey began to lash out with the molecular beams, smashing the Satorian ships in on themselves, crushing them to theground, where they exploded in violet flame. 

Wade and Fuller began to work together. Wade caught one ship in themolecular ray, and Fuller hit with a heat beam. Like some titanic broomthey swept it around at dozens of miles a second, leaping, twisting, smashing ship after ship. Like a snowball, the lump of glowing metalgrew with each crash, till a dozen ships had fallen into it. It was anew broom, and it swept clean!

Then a magnetic beam caught the _Ancient Mariner_. With a shock, itslowed down at a terrific rate. Then Arcot turned on more power, andsimply dragged the other ship along by its own magnetic beam! Wade torethe ship loose with his molecular beam, but the mighty mass of metalthat had been his broom was gone, a glowing mass of metal on the ground. 

"We haven't seen that new weapon yet, " Morey called. 

"Can't find us!" Arcot replied into the intercom. The sun was setting, and the blazing red star was lighting the ship, making it seem like aball of fire when still and a flashing streak of red light when inmotion. 

Ship after ship of the Satorians was going down before the three beamsof the Earth ship; the great fleet was dissolving like a lump of sugarin boiling water. 

Suddenly, just ahead of them, an enemy ship drove toward them withobvious intent to ram; if his magnetic beam caught them, and drew themtowards him, there would be a head-on collision. 

Wade caught it with a molecular beam, and it became a blazing wreck onthe ground. 

"All rays off!" Arcot called. As soon as they were off, Arcot hit aswitch, and the _Ancient Mariner_ vanished. 

Arcot drove the invisible ship high above the battle. Below, theSatorians were searching wildly for the ship. They knew it must besomewhere near, and feared that at any second it might materializebefore them with its deadly rays. 

Arcot stayed above them for nearly a minute while the ships belowtwisted and turned, wildly seeking him. Then they went into formationagain and started back for the city. 

"That's what I wanted!" Arcot said grimly. "In formation, they're likesitting ducks!" He dropped the ship like a plummet while the rayoperators prepared to sweep the formation with their beams. 

Suddenly the _Ancient Mariner_ was visible again. Simultaneously, threerays leaped down and bathed the formation in their pale radiance. Thefront ranks vanished, and the line broke, attacking the ship that hungabove them now. Four magnetic beams hit the _Ancient Mariner_ at once!Arcot couldn't pull away from all four, and his gunners couldn't tellwhich ships were holding them. 

All at once, the men felt a violent electrical shock! The air about themwas filled with the blue haze of the electric weapon they had seen!

Instantly, the magnetic beams left them, and they saw behind them asingle Satorian ship heading toward them, surrounded by that same bluishhalo of light. A suicide ship!

Arcot accelerated away from it as Fuller hit it with a molecular beam. The ship reeled and stopped, and the _Ancient Mariner_ pulled away fromit rapidly. Then, the frost-covered ship of the dead came on, stillheading for them!

Arcot turned and went off to the right, but like a pursuing Nemesis, thestrange ship came after them in the shortest, most direct route!

The molecular beams were useless now; there was no molecular energy leftin the frozen hulk that accelerated toward them. Suddenly, the twoenvelopes of blue light touched and coalesced! A great, blinding arcleaped between the two ships as the speeding Satorian hull smashedviolently against the side of the _Ancient Mariner_! The men duckedautomatically, and were hurled against their seat-straps with tremendousforce. There was a rending, crashing roar, a sea of flame--and darkness. 

They could only have been unconscious a few seconds, for when the fogwent away, they could see the glowing mass of the enemy ship stillfalling far beneath them. The lux wall where it had hit was stillglowing red. 

"Morey!" Arcot called. "You all right? Wade? Fuller?"

"Okay!" Morey answered. 

So were Wade and Fuller. 

"It was the lux hull that saved us, " Arcot said. "It wouldn't break, andthe temperature of the arc didn't bother it. And since it wouldn't carrya current, we didn't get the full electrical effect. 

"I'm going to convince those birds that this ship is made of somethingthey can't touch! We'll give them a real show!"

He dived downward, back into the battle. 

It was a show, all right! It was impossible to fight the Earth ship. Theenemy had to concentrate four magnetic rays on it to use their electricweapon, and they could only do that by sheer luck!

And even that was of little use, for they simply lost one of their ownships without harming the _Ancient Mariner_ in the least. 

Ship after ship crumpled in on itself like crushed tinfoil or hurleditself violently to the ground as the molecular beams touched them. TheSatorian fleet was a fleet no longer; it was a small collection ofdisorganized ships whose commanders had only one thought--to flee!

The few ships that were left spearheaded out into space, using every bitof acceleration that the tough bodies of the Satorians could stand. Witha good head start, they were rapidly escaping. 

"We can't equal that acceleration, " said Wade. "We'll lose them!"

"Nope!" Arcot said grimly. "I want a couple of those ships, and I'mgoing to get them!"

At four gravities of acceleration, the _Ancient Mariner_ drove after thefleeing ships of Sator, but the enemy ships soon dropped rapidly fromsight. 

Twenty five thousand miles out in space, Arcot cut the acceleration. "We'll catch them now, I think, " he said softly. He pushed the littlered switch for an instant, then opened it. A moment before, the planetNansal had been a huge disc behind them. Now it was a tiny thing, a fullmillion miles away. 

It took the Satorian fleet over an hour to reach them. They appeared asdim lights in the telectroscope. They rapidly became larger. Arcot hadextinguished the lights, and since they were on the sunward side of theapproaching ships, the _Ancient Mariner_ was effectively invisible. 

"They're going to pass us at a pretty good clip, " Morey said quietly. "They've been accelerating all this time. "

Arcot nodded in agreement. "We'll have to hit them as they come towardus. We'd never get one in passing. "

As the ships grew rapidly in the plate, Arcot gave the order to fire!

The molecular rays slashed out toward the onrushing ships, picking themoff as fast as the beams could be directed. The rays were invisible inspace, so they managed to get several before the Satorians realized whatwas happening. 

Then, in panic, they scattered all over space, fleeing madly from theimpossible ship that was firing on them. They knew they had left itbehind, yet here it was, waiting for them!

"Let them go, " Arcot said. "We've got our specimens, and the rest cancarry the word back to Sator that the war is over for them. "

It was several hours later that the _Ancient Mariner_ approached Nansalagain, bringing with it two Satorian ships. By careful use of the heatbeam and the molecular beam, the Earthmen had managed to jockey the twobattle cruisers back to Nansal. 

It was nighttime when they landed. The whole area around the city wasilluminated by giant searchlights. Men were working recovering thebodies of the dead, aiding those who had survived, and examining thewreckage. 

Arcot settled the two Satorian ships to the ground, and landed the_Ancient Mariner_. 

Torlos sprinted over the ground toward them as he saw the great silvership land. He had been helping in the examination of the wrecked enemyships. 

"Have they attacked anywhere else on the planet?" Arcot asked as heopened the airlock. 

Torlos nodded. "They hit five other cities, but they didn't use as big afleet as they did here. The plan of battle seems to have been for theships with the new weapons to hit here first and then hit each of theother cities in turn. They didn't have enough to make a full-scaleattack; evidently, your presence here made them desperate. 

"At any rate, the other cities were able to beat off the magnetic beamships with the projectors of molecular beams. "

"Good, " Arcot thought. "Then the Nansal-Sator war is practically over!"

XXIII

Richard Arcot stepped into the open airlock of the _Ancient Mariner_ andwalked down the corridor to the library. There, he found Fuller and Wadebattling silently over a game of chess and Morey relaxed in a chair witha book in his hands. 

"What a bunch of loafers, " Arcot said acidly. "Don't you ever _do_anything?"

"Sure, " said Fuller. "The three of us have entered into a lifelong pactwith each other to refrain from using a certain weapon which would makethis war impossible for all time. "

"What war?" Arcot wondered. "And what weapon?"

"This war, " Wade grinned, pointing at the chess board. "We have agreedabsolutely never to read each other's minds while playing chess. "

Morey lowered his book and looked at Arcot. "And just what have you beenso busy about?"

"I've been investigating the weapon on board the Satorian ships wecaptured, " Arcot told them. "Quite an interesting effect. The Nansalianscientists and I have been analyzing the equipment for the past threedays. 

"The Satorians found a way to cut off and direct an electrostatic field. The energy required was tremendous, but they evidently separated thecharges on Sator and carried them along on the ships. 

"You can see what would happen if a ship were charged negatively and theship next to it were charged positively! The magnitude of electrostaticforces is terrific! If you put two ounces of iron ions, with a positivecharge, on the north pole, and an equivalent amount of chlorine ions, negatively charged, on the south pole, the attraction, even across thatdistance, would be three hundred and sixty tons!

"They located the negative charges on one ship and the positive chargeson the one next to it. Their mutual attraction pulled them toward eachother. As they got closer, the charges arced across, heating and fusingthe two ships. But they still had enough motion toward each other tocrash. 

"They were wrecked by less than a tenth of an ounce of ions which wereprojected to the ship and held there by an automatic field until theships got close enough to arc through it. 

"We still haven't been able to analyze that trick field, though. "

"Well, now that we've gotten things straightened out, " Fuller said, "let's go home! I'm anxious to leave! We're all ready to go, aren't we?"

Arcot nodded. "All except for one thing. The Supreme Three want to seeus. We've got a meeting with them in an hour, so put on your best Sundaypants. "

In the Council of Three, Arcot was officially invited to remain withthem. The fleet of molecular motion ships was nearing completion--thefirst one was to roll off the assembly line the next day--but theywanted Arcot, Wade, Morey, and Fuller to remain on Nansal. 

"We have a large world here, " the Scientist thought at them. "Thanks toyou people, we can at last call it our own. We offer you, in the name ofthe people, your choice of any spot in this world. And we giveyou--this!" The Scientist came forward. He had a disc-shaped plaque, perhaps three inches in diameter, made of a deep ruby-red metal. In theexact center was a green stone which seemed to shine of its own accord, with a pale, clear, green light; it was transparent and highlyrefractive. Around it, at the three points of a triangle, were threesimilar, but smaller stones. Engraved lines ran from each of the stonesto the center, and other lines connected the outer three in a triangle. The effect was as though one were looking down at the apex of a regulartetrahedron. 

There were characters in Nansalese at each point of the tetrahedron, andother characters engraved in a circle around it. 

Arcot turned it in his hand. On the back was a representation of theNansalian planetary system. The center was a pale yellow, highly-facetedstone which represented the sun. Around this were the orbits of planets, and each of the eleven planets was marked by a different colored stone. 

The Scientist was holding in the palm of his hand another such disc, slightly smaller. On it, there were three green stones, one slightlylarger than the others. 

"This is my badge of office as Scientist of the Three. The stone markedScience is here larger. Your plaque is new. Henceforth, it shall be theThree and a Coordinator!

"Your vote shall outweigh all but a unanimous vote of the Three. To you, this world is answerable, for you have saved our civilization. And whenyou return, as you have promised, you shall be Coordinator of thissystem!"

Arcot stood silent for a moment. This was a thing he had never thoughtof. He was a scientist, and he knew that his ability was limited to thatfield. 

At last, he smiled and replied: "It is a great honor, and it is a greatwork. But I can not spend my time here always; I must return to my ownplanet. I can not be fairly in contact with you. 

"Therefore, I will make my first move in office now, and suggest thatthis plaque signify, not the Coordinator, and first power of yourcountry, but Counselor and first friend in all things in which I canserve you. 

"The tetrahedron you have chosen; so let it be. The apex is out of theplane of the other points, and I am out of this galaxy. But there is arelationship between the apex and the points of the base, and theselines will exist forever. 

"We have been too busy to think of anything else as yet, but our worldsare large, and your worlds are large. Commerce can develop across theten million light years of space as readily as it now exists across thelittle space of our own system. It is a journey of but five days, andlater machines will make it in less! Commerce will come, and with itwill come close communication. 

"I will accept this plaque with the understanding that I am but yourfriend and advisor. Too much power in the hands of one man is bad. Eventhough you trust me completely, there might be an unscrupuloussuccessor. 

"And I must return to my world. 

"Your first ship will be ready tomorrow, and when it is completed, myfriends and I will leave your planet. 

"We will return, though. We are ten million light years apart, but theuniverse is not to be measured in space anymore, but in time. We arefive days apart. I will be nearer to you at all times than is Sator!

"If you wish, others of my race shall come, too. But if you do not wantthem to come, they will not. I alone have Tharlano's photographs of theroute, and I can lose them. "

For a moment, the Three spoke together, then the Scientist was againthinking at Arcot. 

"Perhaps you are right. It is obvious your people know more than we. They have the molecular ray, and they know no wars; they do not destroyeach other. They must be a good race, and we have seen excellentexamples in you. 

"We can realize your desire to return home, but we ask you to comeagain. We will remember that you are not ten million light years, butfive days, from our planet. "

When the conference was ended, Arcot and his friends returned to theirship. Torlos was waiting for them outside the airlock. 

"Abaout haow saon you laive?" he asked in English. 

"Why--tomorrow, " Arcot said, in surprise. "Have you been practicing ourlanguage?"

Torlos reverted to telepathy. "Yes, but that is not what I came to talkto you about. Arcot--can a man of Nansal visit Earth?" Anxiously, hopefully, and hesitatingly, he asked. "I could come back on one of yourcommercial vessels, or come back when you return. And--and I'm sure Icould earn my living on your world! I'm not hard to feed, you know!" Hehalf smiled, but he was too much in earnest to make a perfect success. 

Arcot was amazed that he should ask. It was an idea he would very muchlike to see fulfilled. The idea of metal-boned men with tremendousstrength and strange molecular-motion muscles would inspire nofriendship, no feeling of kinship, in the people of Earth. But the manhimself--a pleasant, kindly, sincere, intelligent giant--would be a fargreater argument for the world of Nansal that the most vivid oratorwould ever be. 

Arcot asked the others, and the vote was unanimous--let him come!

The next day, amid great ceremony, the first of the new Nansalian shipscame from the factories. When the celebration was over, the fourEarthmen and the giant Torlos entered the _Ancient Mariner_. 

"Ready to go, Torlos?" Arcot grinned. 

"Pearfactly, Ahcut. Tse soonah tse bettah!" he said in his oddlyaccented English. 

Five hours saw them out of the galaxy. Twelve hours more, and they wereheading for home at full speed, well out in space. 

The Home Galaxy was looming large when they next stopped forobservation. Old Tharlano had guided them correctly!

They were going home!

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=ISLANDS

OF

SPACE=

"John Campbell's book was written as a sequel to _The Black StarPasses_ . . . And believe me, it was a world-beater in those days. 

"Arcot, Wade, Morey, and their computer, Fuller, put together a shipwhich will travel faster than light . . . They give us what may have beenthe first space-warp drive. The concept was simple; to make it plausiblewasn't--unless you were John Campbell. 

"With this out-of-space drive they hightail it among the stars. Theylocate the fugitive planets of the Black Star . . . Find a frozencemetery-world of a lost race . . . Then head out for another galaxy . . . Andwind up in a knock-down-drag-out interplanetary war in the othergalaxy. "

 --P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding Science Fiction

Transcriber notes:

page 006 - Corrected spelling of millenia to millenniapage 007 - Corrected intergraph to integraph to be consistent w/ other instance - 1st paragraph (Google shows intergraph to be a company and integraph to be a calculator)page 009 - Added a single ' that was dropped in the 3rd paragragh before . . . Brilliant mathematical assistantpage 013 - Corrected spelling of whench to whencepage 027 - Corrected spelling of withing to within, 6th paragraphpage 028 - Missing word - replaced "energy the strain" with "energy in the strain" - 6th paragraphpage 029 - Corrected spelling of Flourine to Fluorinepage 030 - Italicized "Ancient Mariner" on the first line of Ch. IV to be consistent with the dozens of other instancespage 032 - Corrected spelling of flourine to fluorine - 2nd paragraphpage 032 - Corrected spelling of flurocarbon to fluorocarbon - 2nd paragraphpage 037 - Corrected typo of 'that that' to 'than that' - 6th paragraphpage 052 - Corrected spelling of paralax to parallax - 5nd paragraphpage 059 - Corrected spelling of millenia to millennia - 3rd paragraphpage 074 - Corrected typo of 'ro' to 'to' in 1st line of 8th paragraphpage 085 - Corrected spelling of airly to airilypage 098 - Corrected typo of 'as' to 'was' - 1st line of the 7 paragraphpage 116 - Corrected typo of turned to turn - paragraph 10page 117 - Corrected typo of builder to boulder - paragraph 6page 118 - Corrected typo of seen to seem - paragraph 7page 119 - Corrected typo of 'a known' to 'an unknown' - last paragraphpage 126 - Corrected typo of Earthmen to Earthman - paragraph 3page 142 - Corrected typo of might to mighty - paragraph 7page 143 - Corrected typo of opporutnity to opportunity - paragraph 6page 145 - Corrected typo of mightest to mightiest - first paragraphpage 152 - Corrected typo of parelying to parleying - last paragraphpage 155 - Corrected typo of eloguently to eloquently - 3rd paragraphpage 161 - Corrected typo of could to would - 7th paragraphpage 164 - Corrected typo of communicaton to communication - paragraph 6page 173 - Corrected typo of Astonomer to Astronomer - paragraph 7next-to-last page - Replaced the cents character with the word 'cents' since these are the only non-ASCII characters in the text