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Title: The Sun people
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Illustrator: C. C. Senf
Release date: October 27, 2026 [eBook #79868]
Language: English
Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79868
Credits: Greg Weeks and Mary Meehan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUN PEOPLE ***
The Sun People
By Edmond Hamilton
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales, May 1930.]
"Nort Norus, Chairman of the Council of Suns!"
As my name rang forth, I was stepping up onto the great dais at the
center of the Hall of Suns. The roar of dissimilar voices that had
filled that hall a moment before died instantly, and from all the
thousands of differing forms gathered here in the great Council of Suns
of which I was head there came no sound. Great plant-men of Capella,
strange faceless hairy beings from Mizar, big, green-bodied amphibians
from Aldebaran--these and all the countless other unlike forms about
them were silent in that moment as I stood upon the dais, facing them.
And as silent were the two great forms that stood behind me: J'han
Jal, Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, of the bird-like races of
Sirius, his tall body covered with short feathers, his arms and legs
ending in great talons, with a great beak between his two dark keen
eyes; and Mirk En, Chief of the Science Bureau, a big octopus-bodied
Vegan, his round, single-eyed body-mass the center of his nine great
tentacle-limbs.
But though all these stood silent in that moment, there came through
the hall's tall windows an unceasing roar of tumultuous activity from
outside. Through those windows I could look out across the tumult,
across the distant strange black cities towering into the brilliant
white light of great Canopus overhead. And in their streets, I could
see, swarmed great-headed and bodiless Canopans, their thin, piping
voices coming to my ears in a dull roar. Over those shouting, wildly
swirling throngs there soared countless great ships, darting up and out
from Canopus into space or slanting down out of space toward the great
sun's worlds. Only a moment I gazed out over that mighty tumult, and
then turned back to the members of the great Council, who stood in
silence before me.
"Members of the Council," I addressed them, "each one of you knows what
peril to our galaxy it is that has gathered you all here. Each one of
you knows what tremendous panic has gripped all the galaxy's suns and
worlds. Each of you knows, in short, what terrible doom is even at this
moment destroying our universe!"
They were silent before me as I paused, listening to me in an utter
tension of body and spirit, while from outside there came still the
distant roar of the panic-driven crowds. Then I was speaking on.
"Our galaxy, our universe, consists as you all know of thousands of
suns, great and small, gathered together in a roughly disk-shaped mass,
floating here in infinite space. Upon the worlds of almost all these
suns exist our races, races of dissimilar beings who yet combined
long ago into our great Federation of Suns, with its capital here at
Canopus, the mightiest and most central of all the galaxy's suns. For
eons our ships have plied the ways of our universe from sun to sun;
for eons the cruisers of our mighty Interstellar Patrol have watched
and warded the ways between those suns. Banded thus into this mighty
Federation, indeed; our races, our suns, have come to be more and
more dependent upon each other for continued existence. And now that
great Federation of Suns, our great galaxy itself, is being broken up,
destroyed!
"It was but two days ago that the first warning of the thing came to
us. Great Deneb, at the galaxy's edge, was beginning, its astronomers
reported, to move outward into space with ever-increasing speed! Deneb,
like almost all our suns, had moved always through space yet had kept
always inside the galaxy's mass, just as countless bees can each be
moving yet can hold together steadily in a compact swarm. But now, it
was clear, Deneb was doing what never a sun in our universe had done
before, was leaving that universe, was moving out from the galaxy!
"Hardly had that astounding news been received by us, indeed, when
there came from Spica, far around the galaxy's edge from Deneb, the
same startling news. Spica also, its astronomers flashed word, was
moving outward into the void of space. And swiftly from other of the
outer-most and inner suns, from Rigel and Mira and Betelgeuse and
Altair, came the same amazing news, that they also were beginning to
move outward, to separate! Report after swift report we received in
the next hours, from the astronomers of sun after sun, from Sirius and
Algol and Saiph and Arcturus and Procyon, from myriads upon myriads of
others, until by now it is known definitely that practically every sun
in the galaxy, save great Canopus which lies motionless here at the
galaxy's center, is moving away from its swarming fellow-suns; that the
galaxy's great swarm of stars is breaking up as its stars move away in
all directions!
"But what caused this outward movement of all the galaxy's suns? That
is what we sought first to learn, since it might be that this movement
was but a temporary phenomenon. You know that the galaxy's suns have
been held together by their gravitational attraction toward each other.
It is that attraction of sun for sun that has held them always in the
galaxy's disk-like mass, regardless of their own movements, in the
same way that chips floating in water will gather in a mass despite
their own movements. If that gravitational attraction between the
galaxy's suns did not exist, they would no longer be held together, the
swarm would disintegrate; since besides their movements the unopposed
light-pressure of one sun upon another would cause them to spread out
in all directions. If that gravitational attraction between the suns
of the galaxy did not exist, that was what would happen, we knew, and
since that _was_ happening, we knew that in some way the gravitational
attraction had been nullified.
"That, indeed, was what our Science Bureau soon found to be the case.
They found that there were radiating out through our galaxy unceasing
vibrations of immense force which were destroying the gravitational
pull of our suns upon each other. You know that long ago we found
gravitational attraction to be a vibratory force, whose wave-length
or frequency depends upon the size of the gravitational body. Thus
gravitation, like any other vibratory force, can be destroyed by
opposing to its vibrations other dampening vibrations of equal
wave-length and frequency. And that, we found, is what this strange
force, this strange vibration radiating out through our galaxy, is
doing: it is annihilating the pull of our great suns upon each other.
The gravitational force of their worlds is so much lower in frequency
by reason of their far smaller size that it is unaffected by the
strange vibrations which are destroying the attraction of our suns for
each other. Thus the worlds of each sun cling to that sun by their own
attraction for it, move with that sun still, but the suns themselves
no longer attract each other and thus are spreading outward from the
galaxy in all directions.
"And that outward movement marks the end of our galaxy's mighty swarm
of suns. Already its countless stars are spreading outward, farther
and farther from each other, in all directions. Slowly now they are
moving outward, but ever faster, and within twenty hours more, we have
calculated, the great outer suns will be so far out that even were
this destroying vibration removed and the attraction of our suns for
each other restored, it would be too late to draw them back into the
galaxy's swarm. Outward--outward--all are moving outward save great
Canopus here at the center, which soon will be left alone in space
where once floated the great universe of which it was capital. For by
then each of the great suns of that universe will be pursuing its own
way into the great void, separated for all time from its fellow-suns of
our galaxy, and that it is that has sent blind terror rolling across
all the peoples of our suns and worlds. For it means the end forever
of our mighty Federation of Suns, the end forever of our galaxy, our
universe!"
* * * * *
I paused for a moment, and a death-like silence greeted me, a silence
more terrible than any shout of fear. And I saw that all eyes were upon
me in an utter tenseness of fear and hope.
We of the Council of Suns have gathered here to stand against that doom
even now while it separates forever our swarming suns. Whence is coming
that great radiating vibration that is breaking up our universe? That
is the question that we sought first to solve. Working unceasingly
on that question in the first hours after the alarm, our scientists
strove to locate the source of those vibrations, using directional-ray
apparatus to test them from a score of different suns. By charting
and combining their findings, they have managed to locate the source
of those great vibrations. And that source, they found, lies at the
very center of the galaxy's mightiest and most central sun, lies at
the center of great Canopus! From far within Canopus' fires are coming
these vibrations that are wrecking our galaxy. The fact is beyond
dispute. Whether these are being loosed, as our scientists think, by
some chance combination of atomic forces at Canopus' heart, or whether
they are loosed from some other source, it is certain that it is from
the great sun's center that those vibrations are coming. And so, to
save our universe, there is but one thing that must be done, that can
be done. And that is to penetrate down to Canopus' center and destroy
if possible whatever great centers of atomic force have formed there
that are loosing these radiating vibrations that are destroying our
galaxy!
"To penetrate down to Canopus' center! That may seem to you impossible,
insane, to penetrate through the awful white fires of the galaxy's
greatest sun, that titanic ball of fire whose terrific heat is such
as to break up the atomic structures of even the gases of which it is
composed, whose radiated heat alone warms scores of circling worlds.
To penetrate to the great sun's center--what cruiser, you will say,
could do it? We have heat-resistant cruisers, indeed, cruisers that can
resist high temperatures, can dare the glowing nebulæ, but these would
be annihilated instantly in the gigantic sun's terrific temperatures.
Yet down into the heart of Canopus a cruiser must go if the galaxy is
to be saved! And knowing that, the Chief of the Science Bureau has in
the last two days turned all its energies upon the equipment of such a
cruiser, and has succeeded but now in equipping one of the cruisers of
the Interstellar Patrol to enable it to plunge unharmed into the great
sun's boiling fires!
"In that cruiser has been set a mechanism which radiates vibrations
tuned to meet and destroy the vibrations of radiant heat for a
considerable distance around the ship. Great projectors have also
been set in rows along the cruiser's sides and at its stem and stern,
projectors which when turned on will project broad fan-like rays, the
matter-destroying rays used as weapons by the Interstellar Patrol. Now
when this cruiser plunges toward great Canopus it will turn on both the
projectors and the generator of the heat-destroying vibrations, which
will keep any smallest degree of the mighty sun's awful heat from ever
reaching the cruiser. And when the cruiser plunges into the boiling
seas of flaming gases, the matter-destroying rays from the projectors
will keep all those gases from ever touching the cruiser.
"With that vacuum-sheath created by the projectors about it, the
cruiser can plunge into the mighty sun's fires without being ever
touched by its flaming gases. And the terrific, unthinkable heat can
not harm it, can not even reach it, since the vibrations of that
radiant heat will be dampened, nullified, destroyed all around it by
the opposing vibrations from the generator inside the ship. Thus this
cruiser can plunge into Canopus' fires and can, unless it encounters
perils of which we know nothing, make its way to the center of the
great sun, to those regions of atomic force which have formed there
and are apparently loosing these gravity-destroying vibrations outward
upon our universe. With its great matter-destroying rays this cruiser
can, if it finds them, break up and destroy these centers or regions of
atomic force, and so save our galaxy from destruction.
"But one cruiser we have that can do that, and in that cruiser J'han
Jal and Mirk En and I are starting toward the great sun at once.
We three--the Chairman of the Council of Suns, the Chief of the
Interstellar Patrol, and the Chief of the Science Bureau--we three are
going in this great hour of peril to penetrate into great Canopus'
fires and if possible destroy whatever source there is loosing these
vibrations of doom upon us. For unless the attraction of our galaxy's
suns toward each other is restored within twenty hours its outer-most
suns will have moved too far away to be ever pulled backward into its
swarm. So that it is only by finding the source of those vibrations
at the heart of great Canopus and by stopping their radiation outward
that we have any last chance of lifting this doom that even now is
disintegrating our universe!"
2
"Canopus' edge will be before us in minutes!" J'han Jal said, turning
toward me. "Already we are well inside the corona."
I nodded. "Hold straight ahead at the same speed," I told him. "We'll
turn on our protective generator and projectors in a moment."
J'han Jal's talon-hands held the cruiser's controls steady at my
words, keeping it racing straight forward. Though the Chief of the
Interstellar Patrol, he himself had stood at those controls from the
start of our cruiser from the Hall of Suns an hour before, knowing
as we all did what mighty destinies hung upon this single cruiser of
ours. Now, as he stood there gazing ahead through the little control
room's great windows, Mirk En and I stood to right and left of him.
Silent now, in a silence that reigned complete in the control room
save for the never-ceasing throb of the great mechanisms beneath whose
propulsion-vibrations our cruiser flung on through space, and the
strange half-heard voices of the crew busy about those mechanisms, we
three gazed together toward the stupendous and appalling spectacle
before us.
For there before us burned in space the colossal blinding sphere
of mighty Canopus, greatest and most central of all the galaxy's
suns. A huge globe of intensely brilliant white fire, to our stunned
eyes it seemed a gigantic wall of light across all the heavens, its
supernal brilliance beating in upon us dazzlingly despite the great
light-repellent shields which had been fitted over all our cruisers
windows to protect us from that terrific glare. Familiar enough to us
had been the great sun always, but now it was as though we saw it for
the first time in all its stupefying splendor. For never before had
we or any others approached so near to it as now we were, our little
cruiser having moved at cautious speed in toward it from the great
world of the Hall of Suns, and now penetrating into the stupendous
glowing region of the mighty sun's corona.
That corona was like a colossal halo of glowing light that surrounded
all the giant sun and into which our moving little cruiser was
penetrating, seeming no more than some dark, tiny insect in size.
Gazing ahead through the corona's great glow, we could make out
the clearer features of the huge sun's surface before us, our
window-shields allowing us to inspect them though at the expense even
then of dazzled eyes. A tremendous sphere of boiling white fire, of
incandescent white gases of unthinkable heat, the mighty sun loomed
before us. Out from that sphere we could see vast prominences leaping,
titanic uprushing jets of incandescent gas capable each of licking up
hundreds of worlds. And upon the sun's surface, the photosphere, we
could see here and there darker regions, great sun-spots which were
each, we knew, gigantic whirlpools or maelstroms of the incandescent
gases that composed the colossal sun.
"Those gases--and those awful fires----" said J'han Jal. "To penetrate
into them--into a sun--it's something never dreamed of in all the
galaxy before!"
"But we can do it--_must_ do it," I said. "Somewhere inside that sun is
the source of the vibrations that are breaking up the galaxy, and they
must be halted."
"But our protective equipment--our generator and projectors--hadn't we
best turn them on now?" asked Mirk En. "This corona's heat is growing
every moment, Nort Norus."
I nodded, glancing at a dial which recorded the fact that the
temperature about us had become indeed dangerous to our cruiser.
Then I swiftly clicked over the series of switches that controlled
the generator beneath and the projectors about our ship. At once the
peculiar loud throbbing of the generator became audible, radiating
out the vibrations which were meeting and destroying the vibrations
of radiant heat directly about us. And as I glanced now at the dial,
our cruiser still racing onward, it was to see the temperature that it
recorded swiftly decreasing, until in a moment the temperature just
outside our cruiser was the absolute cold of space, even as we raced in
toward the mighty sun!
From our ship's sides came the low hissing of the matter-destroying
rays being shot forth unceasingly in broad fans that sheathed all our
ship. These were not being used, really, since there was no matter in
the great sun's corona, but at every moment we were drawing nearer
toward the boiling white sea of the sun's photosphere. Onward we were
racing, J'han Jal's great talons steady on the controls, Mirk En
and I beside him; and now through our window-shields it seemed that
the colossal sphere was only one tremendous sea of blinding white
thundering flame that walled the firmament before us. Outward, around
and near to us, as we shot on, the mighty prominences of the huge sun
were leaping, and we saw that dead ahead in the giant sun's surface
there spun one of the gigantic maelstroms or whirlpools that are called
sun-spots.
I pointed toward it. "Veer left, J'han Jal," I told the big Sirian. "We
daren't be caught in one of those sun-spot maelstroms--even with our
protective vacuum-sheath it would whirl us about in its great currents
and possibly wreck us."
He swerved the ship to the left of the great sun-spot's maelstrom of
unthinkable fires, a whirlpool of flaming gases that extended far
beneath the surface, we knew, and that could have engulfed countless
worlds. And now there were whirling about us great masses of glowing
vapors, vapors that were themselves of tremendous heat and that
were composed of iron and calcium and sodium and many other metals,
existing in vapor form only, here in the tremendous temperatures of
great Canopus. Through those vapor-masses our cruiser was shooting
on unharmed, though, its protective rays keeping its vacuum always
about it, its generators vibrations repelling and nullifying the
terrible radiant heat from all about it. Onward we shot until I saw
with pounding heart that within minutes we would be plunging into the
terrible fires of the mighty sun itself.
Nearer--nearer--we were racing toward the surface, a titanic upright
sea of boiling white flame, and then Mirk En cried out suddenly,
pointed ahead. From that surface a giant prominence was shooting,
was rushing in an instant all about us. No sound came from it to us
across our vacuum-sheath, but as it caught our cruiser it whirled it
this way and that with wild, terrified power. For though the gases
of that prominence did not touch the cruiser itself by reason of its
vacuum-sheath, their swift rush of tremendous matter-masses exerted a
gravitational attraction upon our little ship and tossed it this way
and that in their grip. I heard hoarse cries from the crew beneath,
glimpsed great J'han Jal holding our ship's stem grimly ahead even
in the grip of that colossal out-rushing prominence, and then it had
receded and we were humming on toward the surface of mighty Canopus.
But now it lay just before us, an awful ocean of dazzling white fire,
the terrible and gigantic sun-spot maelstrom away to our right. And
then our ship had shot into that boiling white sea of flame, was
plunging into Canopus' awful fires toward its heart!
* * * * *
Stunned, blinded, overwhelmed, it was in that moment as though all
about us was only a titanic rushing of colossal masses of fire, a wild
and ceaseless fluxing of awful floods of flame about our cruiser.
Gripped and tossed this way and that by rushing masses of incandescent
gases, I was aware in a moment that J'han Jal had kept the cruiser's
stem still forward, and that we were plunging farther and farther
into those flames, swaying and pitching from side to side but racing
steadily onward! Steady around our ship there hung the vacuum-sheath
that kept from us the destroying fires, and steady beneath throbbed
the generator whose vibrations repelled the terrible heat from all
about us. Were either of those protections to fail suddenly, I knew,
our cruiser and all within it would vanish in a split-second in one
single blast of fire, changed into vapors by the awful heat of the
incandescent masses into which we were plunging!
On--on--still we were plunging toward the great sun's center, Mirk En
and I steadying ourselves beside J'han Jal as our cruiser rushed on
into Canopus' thundering fires. Great feathered Sirian, octopus-like
Vegan, erect earth-man--surely trio strange enough did we make as
we plunged on in that fearful journey the like of which none in the
galaxy had ever made before. On--on--and now it seemed that the wild
rush of awful flame-masses became suddenly swifter, more awful, in
their thunderous rush about us, became even more blinding, even more
unthinkable in heat.
"The photosphere!" cried J'han Jal beside me, "We've passed through the
photosphere!"
"Hold straight on!" I shouted. "We've got to reach the center!"
Now we were reeling on into the wild fires of the interior, whose
temperature all about us now, I knew, was countless thousands of
degrees! On into that interior we were rushing, plunging through
Canopus' titanic inferno with only our immaterial heat-destroying
vibrations and the slender vacuum-sheath about our ship to protect it
from annihilation in those awful fires!
On and on--all things in the universe seemed to have dissolved into
a single mighty flood of rushing flame through which our ship was
endlessly battling. Beside me J'han Jal was braced strongly against
the controls, holding them in a grasp of iron with his great talons,
keeping our cruiser heading onward despite all the rushing currents of
fire that surged about us and made our ship pitch and sway crazily. To
his right Mirk En held with his great octopus-tentacles to the control
standards, gazing ahead steadfastly at the awful seas of fire through
which we rushed; while I, braced beside J'han Jal, watched tensely the
dials before us, with loud in my ears now the steady throbbing of our
generator and the hissing of our rays which were alone preserving us
from a fearful death, and the cries of our crew beneath.
By now, I knew, we were deep beneath the surface, and since our
protective equipment seemed functioning perfectly my hopes that we
might attain the great sun's center grew stronger. But in the very next
moment panic stabbed lightning-like across those hopes; for our cruiser
was suddenly gripped as though by a gigantic hand, was whirled away
blindly through the fires as though by colossal forces, J'han Jal and
Mirk En and myself being flung to the control room's end by that wild
swift reclining of our ship. And as the ship spun crazily in the grasp of
the colossal currents of fire, as the control room's walls and floor
and ceiling seemed revolving lightning-like around us as we clutched in
vain for holds upon it, I heard J'han Jal's deep, despairing cry.
"A sun-spot!" he cried. "We've run into one of the titanic maelstroms
beneath the surface!"
Even in that terrible instant the meaning of the Sirian's cry passed
through my ears to my brain in a revealing flash of terror. A
sun-spot's mighty maelstrom--and we had blundered into it here far
beneath the surface! For we knew that the giant whirlpools of the
great sun-spots did extend far into the sun's interior, and plunging
into those interior fires we had blundered into the terrific whirling
currents of that awful maelstrom of boiling gases. Now, gripped
gravitationally by the titanic currents of the whirling maelstrom, our
cruiser was spun about like a chip spinning in a maelstrom of water,
whirled about by those colossal currents with terrific speed and force.
Flung against the control room's walls by the cruiser's terrible
gyrations, I heard from beneath the wild cries of our crew's dissimilar
members, the hoarse shouts of J'han Jal and Mirk En beside me, the
metallic straining and drawing of the cruiser's walls as they yielded
a little to the terrific forces which were whirling the ship about.
With every moment the cruiser was being whirled at greater and greater
speed, around and downward, and I guessed that it was nearing the
narrowing bottom of the gigantic maelstrom, far beneath the surface.
Not for long could our ship spin thus in the grip of that colossal
maelstrom, I knew, and resist its terrific forces; for though our
generator's heat-destroying vibrations throbbed forth still, though the
hissing rays kept about our ship still its vacuum-sheath, it seemed to
my ears in that wild moment that the generator's throbbing had faltered
a little beneath this wild whirling. Were that generator to halt for
but a fractional instant, I knew, that instant would see us resolved
into vapors. And unless we won free of the terrible sun-spot's whirling
depths the generator could not much longer function, it was clear.
The thought spurred me to wild efforts to reach the controls as we
were tossed about the control room. Twice I gripped them and was torn
from my hold, and then as for the third time I grasped them I reached
back, caught J'han Jal who was rolling beside me, pulled him to me;
and then he caught the levers in his grasp, and with my hands and Mirk
En's great tentacles bracing him, strove to bring our ship to a level
keel in the whirling fires, to win out of the awful whirlpool. Slowly,
foot by foot, we fought those whirling currents, and foot by foot edged
out of them, until at last, with the last of the cruiser's power,
it seemed, we had won clear and were plunging onward again into the
interior of mighty Canopus.
* * * * *
We drew great breaths as we won out of that perilous maelstrom, and
I found myself trembling from the reaction. But now, as we plunged
still on and on, I estimated that we were already far in great
Canopus' interior. It was from somewhere at the center, we knew, from
whatever strange regions of atomic force might lie there, that there
were radiating the vibrations that were breaking up our galaxy, and
now J'han Jal and Mirk En and I began to watch for the appearance of
such regions. Set up before me were three of those directional-ray
instruments with which our scientists had determined the origin of
the great vibrations, and I saw now from those instruments that the
point of origin lay not far ahead, that we must be already almost in
toward Canopus' center. The mighty sun-spot maelstrom had whirled us
far in, I knew, and so we watched excitedly as we plunged through
the rushing fires, Mirk En keeping his gaze upon the radio-active
recording-instruments which would register the nearness of any such
atomic force regions as those for which we searched.
Upon those instruments, though, showed no sign of the existence of
such regions, yet my own instruments showed unmistakably that with
every moment we were approaching the strange vibration's origin. The
thing was inexplicable, and as we shot on and on, already almost to
the center of the mighty sun, as I guessed, it became even stranger to
us, for still there were no indications of atomic force regions ahead.
Had our terrible journey into Canopus' central fires been in vain? It
could not be, I tried to reassure myself, since my dials showed the
vibration's origin close ahead. And suddenly a still stranger thing
obtruded itself upon our attention, and that was the fact that around
us the fires were becoming denser, slower-moving, our temperature dials
showing them to be growing also somewhat cooler. Those fires around us
were like the surface-layer or photosphere of Canopus into which we had
first plunged!
A photosphere here at the great sun's heart! Even as we stared
stupefiedly at those fires through which we rushed, I saw from the
direction dials that the origin of the vibrations that we sought was
directly ahead now. Tensely I gazed forward as we shot through the
white fires, hoping to glimpse the atomic regions from which those
vibrations came. Then suddenly, breath-takingly, our ship had rushed
out of its white fires and into _space_--a great space that stretched
before us, a tremendous white-lit space encircled on all sides by the
rushing fires of colossal Canopus around it!
A tremendous space here at Canopus' center! But even as we stared in
stupefaction we saw a thing more stunning, saw that within this space
there revolved a great ring of a score of spherical worlds! That ring
of worlds moved almost at the edge of the mighty globular space, almost
touching, it seemed, the encircling white fires of Canopus. And as I
saw that now the direction-arrows of the dials pointed toward those
worlds, I uttered a great cry of sudden understanding.
"These worlds!" I cried. "These worlds at Canopus' center! It's from
_them_ that the gravitation-destroying vibrations are radiating--the
vibrations that are breaking up our universe!"
3
"These worlds the source of the great vibrations?" cried J'han Jal.
"But how can this great space--these worlds--exist here at Canopus'
center?"
"And what upon those worlds is radiating those vibrations?" exclaimed
Mirk En. "Here at the heart of Canopus, it seems, are space, and
worlds, and--peoples of those worlds?"
We stared toward the Vegan, startled by that suggestion, and then I
motioned toward the nearest of the great ring of worlds. "There is but
one thing to do--to reconnoiter them. Whatever is upon them, it is
certain that they are the origin of the vibrations."
J'han Jal swerved over the controls, sending our ship humming toward
the nearest of that great ring of circling planets. Those worlds, we
saw, moved around always in that same ring-formation inside this hollow
space, very close to the mighty walls of white fire that encircled
them, so close indeed that they seemed almost on the point of plunging
inside those fires. All of the score of worlds seemed of the same
approximate size, and it was toward the whole ring of them, and not any
one, that the direction-dials pointed, which thus indicated all of them
as the source of the vibrations that were breaking up our whole galaxy.
As we hummed through the white-lit space toward that nearest world I
was gazing about, and could see that this tremendous hollow at Canopus'
heart, while of great size and able to hold hundreds of worlds like
those that moved within it, was yet not large when compared to the
fiery mass of the great sun about it. Down through that titanic mass
of fires we had penetrated to this hollow with our cruiser, the first
in all the galaxy ever to dream of its existence here at the great
sun's heart. And now I reached forth and turned off the generator and
the hissing ray-sheath, turning then to the mouthpiece before me and
briefly apprising the crew beneath to keep watchfully to their stations
at the cruiser's propulsion-mechanisms and ray-tubes.
By that time the world toward which we were heading was looming large
before us, a great sphere gleaming oddly in the light of the encircling
white fires beside it, moving along just inside those rushing fires,
it seemed, with the great ring of its fellow worlds. High above it we
soared, circled once or twice, and then were dropping smoothly down in
watchful, broad spirals. J'han Jal and Mirk En and I gazed watchfully
toward its surface, and then suddenly the big Sirian uttered a low
exclamation and his talons upon the controls brought our cruiser
abruptly to a halt. At the same moment as he, Mirk En and I had
glimpsed clearly the features of the gleaming world's surface, a few
thousand feet below, and as we gazed down now with him Mirk En's voice
was echoing our thoughts.
"A peopled world, as I suspected!" the great Vegan exclaimed. "A
peopled world--here at Canopus' heart!"
A peopled world it was, indeed, that lay beneath us, a world whose
surface gleamed so oddly because almost every square yard of it was
paved with white metal, that reflected back brightly the intense
brilliance of the white fires that encircled these worlds. And here and
there rose structures of the same white metal, great white-gleaming
cubes of giant dimensions. Not crowded together, but set here and there
at regular intervals over this world's surface with great open spaces
between them were those white-gleaming cubes. Here and there through
the air--for air it was now into which our cruiser had dropped--there
moved from building to building what seemed square platforms of the
same white metal, flitting smoothly above this world. And upon those
squares, and upon the metal paving beneath, we could glimpse the race
that peopled this world.
And that race, those creatures, were themselves cube-creatures! Each
of them was a great cube of white flesh the height of a tall man, a
cube supported by four powerful flesh-limbs, one at each corner of its
cube-like body! From the four upper corners, in the same way, there
branched four powerful arms, while in each of the four sides of the
cube-like body was set a single eye, and in one of those sides also
a small mouth-opening! Cube-creatures! I saw, even as we stared in
amazement at them, that it must have been because of the cube-shape of
their own bodies that these creatures had constructed their buildings
and almost all else upon their world in the same shape, unconsciously
following the design of their own strange bodies. And in ceaseless
streams and groups, they were moving there beneath our hovering cruiser!
"But that square of green force!" cried Mirk En, pointing across the
strange world's gleaming metal surface. "You see it--that square of
green light there?"
"Green force!" I exclaimed, gazing toward where he pointed. "And it's
toward that square, and toward the other worlds, that our direction
dials point! That green force it is, then, that is radiating the
vibrations out into our galaxy!"
For there, far across that world's surface from us, there was set
flush into the metal paving between the great cube-buildings a giant
square of glowing green light. Unceasingly it glowed, a deep strange
glow that even to our eyes seemed more force than light, and we saw
that it faced out toward and through the encircling fires, that the
gravitation-destroying vibrations were thus penetrating through the
fires of colossal Canopus all about these worlds and destroying the
attraction of all the galaxy's suns for each other! It was the strange
cube-creatures of these worlds at Canopus' heart, therefore, and not
any regions of atomic force, that were sending out the vibrations that
already were wrecking our galaxy!
But why? I think that was the question that throbbed most intensely
through our brains as we stared appalled down toward that significant
square of glowing green force. Why should these cube-creatures, here at
the center of Canopus and separated forever by its fires from the outer
galaxy, never even dreamed of by the peoples of the galaxy--why should
they want to break up the galaxy around Canopus? What strange, dark
plan had caused them to send forth the vibrations that were causing
the suns to leave our universe, to break up that swarm forever as they
moved into outer space? The thing was incomprehensible, and J'han Jal
was turning toward me as perplexed as myself.
"That great square of green force it is that is releasing part of the
vibrations out upon our galaxy!" he said. "But then there must be more
of them--on the others of these worlds, Nort Norus!"
I nodded swiftly. "There must be," I said, "a great square of glowing
force upon each world, possibly, though I see no control for them. But
the next world--we'll go on to it and see----"
In a moment our cruiser had shot up again and was rocketing out from
the atmosphere of that world toward the next, through the space that
separated them. Swiftly that next world in the ring was looming in
view as we hummed toward it, seeming as its gleaming surface largened
before us to be exactly like the first. The great white-gleaming
cube-buildings, the squares moving to and fro from building to
building, the strange cube-creatures that moved here and there on
squares and on the metal paving--all were the same as on the first
world. The same too was the great square of glowing green force set
in the metal paving, and we saw that this green force-square, by
reason of its world's altered position in the great ring, pointed out
through Canopus' fires in a slightly different direction, releasing its
vibrations out over the galaxy at a different angle.
Stupefied, almost unbelieving, we stared, and then were moving on
toward the third world in the great ring, spiraling down through its
atmosphere toward it in the same way. At first glance all seemed the
same there as on the first two worlds, cube-creatures and buildings and
flying squares and giant square of green force appearing a replica of
the others. But as we gazed down from our cruiser's control room Mirk
En pointed suddenly toward something beside the great square of green
force, something small and gleaming which we could but vaguely glimpse.
At once J'han Jal was sending the cruiser lower toward it, lower with
our eyes riveted upon it until we had halted but a few hundred feet
above the flying squares below. And from that height we saw that it
was a small white-metal cube-structure beside the giant inset square
of green force. A small gleaming cube-structure raised on four slender
metal limbs above the level of the force-square, and filled, we could
see through its open door, with panel upon panel of strange-appearing
instruments and switches among which moved a half-dozen watching
cube-creatures!
"The central control!" I cried. "It can only be the central switch-box
of the great squares of radiating green force on all this ring of
worlds--the switches that control the radiation outward through the
galaxy of the great gravitation-destroying wave!"
"_But look beneath, Nort Norus! The squares--the
cube-creatures--they've seen us, they're coming up toward us!_"
* * * * *
J'han Jal's cry drove through my brain like a stiletto of sound, and
as I glanced away from the central switch I saw that beneath us the
swarming squares were swiftly rising, the eyes of their cube-creature
occupants turned up toward us! From far away over the gleaming surface
those squares were leaping up through the air, in scores and hundreds!
And as they sped upward, from the foremost of them, from bulges near
the edges of those metal squares, there shot toward us slender beams
of green light, that seemed the same as those great glowing squares of
green force which radiated the gravitation-destroying vibrations.
"Up, J'han Jal!" I cried. "They're coming from the side too--they're
trying to get above us!"
For even as J'han Jal flung open the controls and sent our cruiser
whirling steeply upward I saw that the squares rushing toward us from
the sides were whirling up in a sharp slant in an effort to cut off our
escape, to catch us between themselves and the uprushing squares from
below. Up we flashed, and then from the squares beneath that had leaped
to within striking distance there stabbed toward us a score or more of
the glowing green beams. But at that moment J'han Jal jerked our ship
over in a wild reel sidewise through the air, and the green beams drove
by us to strike the squares rushing above us.
As they struck we saw those squares crumble as though compressed
suddenly from all around by a gigantic grasp, and fall suddenly to the
surface of the world below. Even in that wild instant as our cruiser
reeled away I realized what had happened, realized that those green
beams were of the same gravitation-destroying power as the great green
squares of force that were disintegrating all our galaxy. Striking
those squares above us, they had instantly cut off from them all
gravitational forces from about them, and since those squares, like
all other things in this world and in any world, had been constructed
to meet the gravitational pull of the world beneath it, the sudden
complete removal of that pull so affected them as to make them collapse
and crumple merely from their own interior stresses.
Now, though, as our cruiser shot sidewise and upward, the green
beams of the squares beneath were leaping up again. And as we dodged
them again by jerking to one side, I shouted a swift order into the
mouthpiece before me. The next moment there stabbed down from our
cruiser's ray-tubes the deadly crimson rays of the Interstellar Patrol,
those terrific rays which wipe from existence all matter they touch by
changing it from a matter-vibration in the ether to a light-vibration.
They shot down like stabbing swords of crimson light among the swarms
of upwhirling squares beneath us, and as there broke and burst across
those swarms flare upon flare of fountaining red brilliance, dozens of
those squares were flashed into annihilation. I heard the hoarse shouts
of J'han Jal and Mirk En beside me, at that, and the high-pitched cries
of our ray-crews beneath, but swiftly the uprushing squares, despite
our lightning-leaping crimson rays, were coming up after us, overtaking
us.
"Straight up!" I cried to J'han Jal. "We're almost out of this world's
atmosphere and they can't leave it on those squares!"
Already we were shooting up through the last of that atmosphere, and
now as we flashed up into empty space, the thundering wall of white
flame of great Canopus encircling us, ahead and above us, we saw the
pursuing hordes of squares slowing, halting beneath. But even as we
seemed safe from pursuit the cube-creatures upon those squares were
swiftly donning gleaming metallic and flexible suits. In another moment
the cube-creatures were rushing up once more after us, rushing up from
their world's atmosphere into the emptiness of space.
"They've put on metal suits that protect them from the cold and
airlessness of space!" exclaimed Mirk En. "They're coming after us!"
"On into Canopus' fires, then!" I cried. "It's the one way to escape
them!"
And with its utmost speed our cruiser shot onward toward those roaring
white encircling flames from which an hour ago we had emerged into
this great space. Close behind us were the pursuing squares once more,
now, and again their green-glowing beams and our crimson rays were
crossing and clashing as they shot up after us. Pursuit and flight of
inexpressible strangeness was that, pursuit by strange cube-creatures
who were wrecking our galaxy, and flight on our part into the awful
fires of the mighty sun. Already I had turned on our generator of
heat-nullifying vibrations, our ray-projectors that kept the vacuum
sheath about our ship, but now, though those white fires were close
ahead, the pursuing squares were closer behind. A last burst of speed,
a last blast of green beams loosed from just behind us, and then we had
plunged once more into great Canopus' rushing fires.
"We'll wait here inside the sun until they've given up the pursuit," I
told the others as our ship plunged on. "Then we can make our way back
to that world--to the central switch-cube!"
So, bringing the cruiser to a halt, we hung motionless in the swirling
seas of fire, our generator and vacuum-sheath protecting us perfectly
from the awful heat and flame. For minute after long minute we hung
there, knowing that if we emerged too soon the cube-creatures' squares
would still be awaiting us. Time was precious to us, we knew, for
already had passed almost half of the twenty hours that had remained to
us before the galaxy's outmost suns would have passed outside its swarm
forever, and we must destroy that great vibration which was loosing
those suns before the twentieth hour ended if the galaxy's break-up was
to be halted.
J'han Jal remained grimly silent at the controls, Mirk En and I
going down now through the cruiser's ray-rooms and motor-rooms,
inspecting the propulsion-mechanisms and especially the generator
and ray-projectors that kept us from annihilation in the fires that
thundered about us. At last we returned to the control room, and having
hung for two hours inside the sun's fires, began to move in again
toward the central great space.
On we plunged and then broke out into that space again, its great
ring of worlds before us. No cube-creatures on their squares were in
sight before us, though, and J'han Jal and Mirk En and I breathed with
heartfelt relief at the sight. But abruptly, at that moment, something
hissed and swung around our cruiser from behind! We whirled about.
Behind us had crept upon us three great squares, close to the wall of
fires, one of which had thrown around our ship a great band of flexible
metal that pinioned our cruiser to that square, while from right and
left the other two great squares, crowded with cube-creatures, were
rushing upon us!
4
"Captured!" I cried wildly. "They've lain in wait for us--have captured
us and our cruiser!"
"Not yet!" shouted J'han Jal. "Those other two squares--look!"
For at the very moment that we became first aware of the rush of those
two squares from either side upon us, there had come a swift hissing
from beneath and then out from our cruiser's sides there had driven
to right and left a half-dozen brilliant crimson beams, the rays of
our ray-crews beneath who were not to be taken unawares even by such a
surprize as this! In the next moment those onrushing squares were mere
bursting flares of crimson light. But the square that held us by the
great flexible metal band had drawn us against itself, and we dared not
loose our rays upon it, for they would have annihilated our own ship.
And as we realized that fact there came upon our ship's side, upon the
space-door in its hull, a terrific hammering and clanging.
"The cube-creatures on that square!" yelled Mirk En. "They're trying to
break inside--to board us!"
"Try to break loose from them, J'han Jal!" I cried. "Try to break the
band that holds us to them!"
But already the great Sirian had flung open the controls to their
utmost, had sent our ship leaping forward with all the forte of its
throbbing mechanisms. But it could not break thus from the hold of
the great square beside us, the thick broad metal band that it had
flung around us holding our cruiser to it as though in the grip of a
giant. And out on that square, massed against the space-door of our
cruiser, were crowding the cube-creatures in their strange metal suits,
hammering with metal tools upon our space-door, striving with all their
power to break or pry it open, to pour in upon us. They dared not use
their green beams any more than we dared use our crimson rays, but once
inside the cruiser they meant to sweep us from existence, it was clear.
A moment more and they would have battered through the great door--and
then I shouted into the mouthpiece to my two friends.
"To the hull space-door, quick," I shouted. "We'll use our own
space-suits to hold them out--to fight it out with them!"
And with Mirk En and J'han Jal racing beside me, the big Sirian
laughing a little from sheer joy of battle, we were rushing down from
the control room into the ray-room from which the big space-door
opened. The clangor inside that room from the creatures beating against
it outside was terrific, but in that moment we paid it but small
attention, all our crew rushing into the room and throwing themselves
into the space-suits which were in every cruiser of the Interstellar
Patrol. For each of our dissimilar forms a specially shaped space-suit
was provided, and instantly we were donning those suits. They were
of flexible metal, much like those used by the cube-creatures, but
having transparent-metal vision-plates near the head of each, each suit
providing a perfect insulation against the cold and airlessness of
space. Another moment and we were almost all in our suits, great Mirk
En struggling last of all into his big nine-tentacled suit, and then
I flung suddenly open the great space-door against which the things
outside hammered. As the air of the ray-room rushed out into space
our scores of followers, with J'han Jal and Mirk En and me at their
head, were rushing out upon the hordes of cube-creatures on the square
fastened to our cruiser.
The next instant we were whirling across that square with those
creatures in the wildest hand-to-hand battle that I have ever
experienced. Cube-creatures in scores, and scores of dissimilar beings
drawn from every peopled star in the galaxy, almost, we struggled in
mad combat on the slippery metal surface of the great square, hanging
there in empty space. Away to the right there spun the nearest of the
great ring of worlds, and to our left and all about us flamed the awful
barrier of flame that was the giant sun itself. And we creatures there
on the square's surface, each in his space-suit, were engaged in a wild
battle whose intensity was such as to make us forget utterly in that
moment the cosmic and awful panorama about us.
Gripped on first rushing forth by two of the cube-creatures, I felt
their eight great arms swiftly grasping me as I endeavored with wild
blows to thrust them back. Beneath those blows their cube-like bodies
flinched, but as we whirled they gripped me tighter, and I saw that
_they were trying to tear open the space-suit I wore_--were trying to
annihilate me instantly by allowing the air generated automatically
inside it to rush out into space, causing me to perish instantly. But
even as they grasped it I had gripped a metal tool that was knocking
about on the square's surface beneath me in the wild mêlée of combat
that surrounded us, and brought that sharp-edged tool down upon their
own flexible metal suits in two swift great blows. As its sharp end
pierced through those suits, I felt their grasp on me relax, vanish,
saw them crumple to the square's surface dead, slain instantly by the
cold of space as their suits were penetrated!
But about me now were rushing a half-dozen more of the cube-creatures,
three of whom had grasped me again, and as I struggled fiercely against
those in turn I saw that all about me was still raging furiously this
strange and fearful battle. Great J'han Jal, I saw, was towering erect
in his metal suit at the center of a half-dozen of the cube-creatures,
sending them reeling back from him with swift raking blows of his great
taloned arms. But most terrible of all in that grim combat was Mirk
En. The great octopus-like Vegan had gripped the square's edge firmly
with two of his mighty tentacles, and now with the other seven of those
tentacle-arms was gripping cube-creature after cube-creature in the
scores that whirled about him, was slamming them down upon the square's
surface with terrific force, his mighty arms cutting paths of death
through the throngs that swirled about him.
[Illustration: "The great octopus-like Vegan had gripped the square's
edge firmly with his mighty tentacles."]
And over all the surface of the square the scores of our crew,
out-numbered almost two to one as they were, were battling furiously
with the great cube-creatures. The strange, unlike forms of our
crew's members in their metal space-suits, the masses of great
cube-creatures--these whirled around me in a mad mêlée in which the
only things clear to me were the three great monsters with whom I
was battling, and who had borne me down now to my knees as I struck
furiously at them with fast-waning strength. One of them crumpled
and dropped dead as my metal tool-weapon pierced through his suit,
but the other two had gripped me firmly about the body now, and for
minutes--minutes in which I was conscious only of the wild roar of
combat about us, the swaying to and fro of battling forms around me--I
struggled with those two great creatures. They gradually bore me down,
and then both, gripping my body, were endeavoring with all their
strength to tear the round head-case loose from my space-suit.
I felt the metal of that suit giving, knew that another moment would
see instant death for me as the suit was torn open, and then there was
a rush of movement beyond the two things and they were gripped abruptly
by swift-coiling metal-clad tentacles that raised them high and slammed
them down upon the square with terrible force, where they lay broken
and dead. I staggered to my feet, then, and saw that it was Mirk En who
had saved me. And I saw, too, that about us on the square the combat
with the cube-creatures was almost over, nearly all of them having been
killed, while but half of our crew was left around us.
* * * * *
It was Mirk En's great fighting-power that more than aught else had
turned the scale for us against the great odds we had faced, and now
with Mirk En and J'han Jal I was leaping with our crew's remaining
members upon the dozen remaining cube-creatures. Fiercely they
fought us still, but we gave them no quarter, and in a few moments
all of them but one had been slain by us, Mirk En raising that one
cube-creature upward to whirl him down to death also. As he did so,
though, a sudden idea flashed across my mind and I grasped the great
Vegan's tentacle-arm, motioned to him to take the cube-creature into
our cruiser. He paused, then did so, J'han Jal and I and the remaining
members of our crew, still in our space-suits, following him into the
cruiser. The square was littered now with the tumbled dead of our crew
and of the cube-creatures alike, all still in their metal suits.
As we entered our cruiser, slamming shut the space-door and turning on
the air-control that filled the ray-room again with air, we swiftly
doffed our heavy space-suits, and I spoke swiftly to J'han Jal and Mirk
En. "This captured cube-creature!" I told them. "From him we can learn,
maybe, how best to halt this vibration his race is loosing outward
through the galaxy."
Mirk En nodded, glancing at the cube-creature, whose own metal suit had
been ripped off and who stood guarded now beside us. "We should be able
to communicate with him with the thought-speech machine, Nort Norus,"
he said. "At least we'll try it."
The great Vegan Science Chief uttered an order and in a moment one
of our crew had brought from another of the cruiser's rooms the
thought-speech machine, a compact metal cabinet from which five flat
metal bands led, ending in shining little clips. It was this mechanism
that had been used always among the galaxy's races for communication
with those races who were without audible speech, since this mechanism
was one that mechanically converted thought into clear speech in our
own language, by catching and amplifying the brain's thought-currents
and causing them to actuate a corresponding series of word-speakers.
Whether it would work with a creature so alien to us as the
cube-creature we did not know, but there was a chance that it might;
and so Mirk En swiftly attached the mechanism's bands to the creature's
body, making five small incisions in that body after some study of it,
and attaching the clips of the bands to the nerve-centers inside. Then,
reversing the machine's control so that speech into it was reproduced
in the creature's brain as thought, I spoke clearly into the cabinet's
opening.
"You are captured and have but one chance for life," I said,
"and that is to tell us your race's purpose in loosing those
gravitation-destroying vibrations, and to tell us how best they can be
turned off."
The cube-creature's strange dark eyes, one in each side of him, widened
as I spoke thus, and I knew from that that the machine had reproduced
my speech as thought in his brain. I reversed the mechanism's control,
and in a moment the answer came in the clear metallic tones of the
mechanism, the cube-creature's thought translated by the mechanism into
our speech.
"You will spare me if I tell you that?" he asked, and quickly I replied
in the affirmative. Then for a moment the cube-creature surveyed us
with his inscrutable, strange eyes, while Mirk En and J'han Jal and
I watched him, and then he was speaking, or rather the mechanism
connected to him was speaking to us his thoughts. And as from time to
time that mechanism went silent for a brief instant we knew it was
because certain thoughts of this alien creature had no equivalent in
our speech.
"It is to ward off doom from ourselves," the metallic voice was
saying, "that we have loosed doom upon your galaxy. For during all
the ages that you peoples of the outer universe have existed on the
worlds around your stars, the stars around this mighty central sun,
we cube-creatures, we sun-peoples, have existed here inside it. This
mighty sun of Canopus"--the thought-speech machine so rendered his
own name for the great sun--"this great sun of Canopus has always had
this tremendous hollow here at its heart. It was when the mighty sun
formed first out of the condensing nebulæ that this hollow at its heart
formed, because the light-pressure inward of the colossal sun around it
would allow it to condense no further. And so this great hollow here, a
small one compared to the colossal sun's mass but large in itself, has
existed always unknown to you of the outer universe.
"In this hollow there swirled at first the chance fragments of great
incandescent gases that had broken into it from the condensing sun
around it, and these gases because of their comparatively small
quantity soon cooled, hardened into molten masses of matter, which in
turn were drawn by their own gravitational attraction for each other
into worlds, into a score of worlds turning in a compact ring at the
very center of this hollow.
"These inner planets of Canopus being of the same physical constitution
as its outer ones, it is not surprizing that at last upon them even as
upon the outer ones there arose life. For even as the outer planets,
these inner worlds had air and water. And though they received great
heat from Canopus' terrible fires all around them, that heat was not
too great. For you know that a photosphere will form over a great
sun's surface, a denser layer that impedes somewhat the interior light
and heat from radiating outward; and in the same way a photosphere
layer had formed at Canopus' inner surface, around the great hollow
it enclosed. This kept the heat radiated into that hollow from being
so great as to scorch life from its worlds, and so life flourished
and came at last to its culminating species in us cube-creatures. We
races, with our greater knowledge and science came at last to hold
unchallenged all the score of Canopus' inner worlds.
"We built our great metal cube-buildings, paving even the surface of
our worlds between those buildings with metal. We devised the squares
on which we can fly through air or space, and the metal suits that
protect us in moving through space and that allow us to move easily
from one of our worlds to another. Through the colossal fires about
us we could not pierce, but we did find a way to send a light-ray
unbent and unchanged through the great sun's terrific light and heat
and force. And by means of that way we were able to look out upon the
galaxy of suns that was gathered about our own. We saw the inhabitants
of those suns rising in civilization, saw their great interstellar wars
giving way to a confederation of all their peoples, saw them fighting
back the vast perils that crowded from time to time upon them. But
never, we saw, did they ever dream of the existence of our worlds and
races here at the center of their greatest sun, and never did we desire
to leave our home here where we were safe, we thought, from all dangers.
"But at last we cube-creatures realized that there was one danger from
which we were not safe, a danger that had crept gradually upon us for
eons. As I told you, when our inner worlds had first formed here at
Canopus' heart they had moved in a small ring at the very center of
this hollow space. But though they would have moved there always, their
centrifugal force of motion just balancing the outward pull of Canopus
around them, there was another force acting upon them. That was the
additional pull of all the thousands of mighty suns that had formed
also around Canopus, whose distant gravitational attraction, acting
upon us through the encircling fires, was enough to cause our ring of
worlds to expand, so that as time went on the ring was moving just
inside the encircling fires. And very soon, we realized, the unceasing
pull of the galaxy's many suns would cause our ring of worlds to spread
into the encircling fires, our worlds plunging to death inside those
fires.
"It was a mighty danger indeed that confronted us, and we gathered
all our power and craft to meet it. We could not leave this space at
Canopus' center and migrate outward in all our hordes, yet death faced
our worlds swiftly here. So we made at last our great decision to
meet that danger by radiating outward a great gravitation-destroying
vibration that would nullify the attraction of all the galaxy's suns.
That would halt their pull upon us and save our worlds from death, but
at the same time it would break up the whole galaxy! That, however,
was of but small import to us, for we were determined to save our own
worlds, even though in doing so we destroyed your universe.
5
"So we set to work upon the apparatus that was to radiate that
gravitation-destroying vibration outward. In each of our worlds was
placed a great square mechanism whose top alone showed, set flush in
each world's surface, and which glowed with green force as it radiated
those tremendous vibrations. Each green force-square was pointed out in
a different direction, by reason of the ring-formation of our worlds,
and so their vibrations would reach through all the galaxy. And upon my
own world was placed the central control, its super-intricate switches
and recorders being located in a small upheld cube-building just beside
the force-square of that world.
"Our work was finished, but only just in time! For while we had been
toiling upon it, our ring of worlds had been spread still farther, and
they now were so close inside the encircling fires of Canopus that
minutes more of that pull of the galaxy's suns would drag us into those
fires! Like mad beings we had worked toward the last, so that it was
but a few moments before our worlds were to take their final plunge to
doom in the fires about them that we could turn on the vibrations. At
once, though, those vibrations halted our plunge, since they instantly
annihilated the pull of all the galaxy's suns upon our worlds and upon
each other!
"With that pull destroyed, our ring of worlds halted at the very edge
of doom. Were the pull of those suns restored, they would jerk us into
those fires at once we knew, but we know too that with their attraction
upon each other nullified the galaxy's suns were already separating and
moving out of its great swarm. Even now, indeed, the outer-most of your
galaxy's suns are almost out of their fellows' grip forever, and soon
all the stars of your universe will have separated for all time, each
plunging out into space alone, with great Canopus alone remaining here.
So you see how useless, how amusing even, it is to ask me how to turn
off the vibration that is disintegrating your galaxy. Your single ship
could never get near the central control of the vibrations, through
the swarms of squares and of my cube-creature races that have answered
the alarm by now, that guard it. And even at this moment those great
vibrations are breaking up your universe, forever!"
The mechanical, metallic voice from the cabinet ceased, and the
cube-creature whose thoughts it had spoken contemplated us with cool
contempt and amusement flickering in his alien eyes. J'han Jal, Mirk
En, myself and all our crew-members about us were silent for the
moment. Then J'han Jal pointed slowly toward the time-dial on the wall.
"Those vibrations that we can't halt--and it's the twentieth hour!" he
said. "Less than an hour left now before the galaxy's suns start to
pass forever out of the reach of its swarm. The twentieth hour--and
never can we reach the cube of controls through the swarms of squares
that guard it! We've failed!"
"Not failed!" I cried. "There's a chance yet to halt those
vibrations--a chance to get down through those guarding squares, with
this square of the cube-creatures bound to our cruiser----"
Swiftly I explained to J'han Jal and Mirk En the plan that had
suggested itself to me, and their eyes gleamed with sudden hope. Our
crew rushing to its stations, Mirk En and I guarding for the moment
the cube-creature, J'han Jal raced up to the control room and sent our
cruiser and the square bound to it humming back toward the world from
which we had fled. Just inside its atmosphere we halted, and though we
could see great swarms of squares crowded with cube-creatures, they did
not glimpse us high above them. And then Mirk En and I with the crew's
help swiftly made ready for our wild feat. Opening the space-door, we
gathered the dead of our own crew on the square beside our cruiser
and brought them inside the ship. The cube-creature dead we stripped
of their space-suits, and arranged them in natural positions here and
there on the surface of the square. When we had finished, it seemed to
all appearances that the square beside our ship was crowded with living
cube-creatures like those below, since they had died for the most part
by the piercing of their space-suits and bore but few marks of battle.
They seemed crouching there on the square's surface as when living.
And now Mirk En and I with the captured little cube-creature walked out
onto the surface of the square, toward the bulge that held its simple
button-controls. I held a thick metal bar sharpened at one end and Mirk
En held in his tentacles four of the same bars. We had shown these
bars to the cube-creature before leaving the cruiser, and through the
thought-speech machine had told him that if he followed our orders his
life would be spared, but that if he attempted to discover to the other
squares and cube-creatures our stratagem, instant death would be his.
Then, crouching before that bulge's buttons, the cube-creature seemed
to all eyes the operator of the great square, the dozens of posed dead
creatures behind him his fellows, and Mirk En and I our bars hidden,
two captives!
The great band of metal that secured our cruiser to the square we
left in place, but beside us was the device by which a thrown lever
would release that band instantly. So now, with J'han Jal making
a final gesture toward us from the cruiser's transparent-walled
control room, we started downward, our propulsion-mechanisms silent
now, the cube-creature beside us operating the great square's
propulsion-mechanism and sending it smoothly downward. With our cruiser
attached to it, with Mirk En and me apparently captives among the
dozens of cube-men on the square, it seemed that our cruiser had been
captured by the square and its cube-creatures, and that they were
returning with their prize! It was upon that appearance, at least, that
we were depending to prevent the break-up of the galaxy, to turn off
the great vibrations before the last minutes of the twentieth hour had
passed.
Downward toward the surface of the gleaming world we shot, the cruiser
pulled down with the sinking square, none inside that cruiser showing,
its space-door open. With pounding heart I crouched there, gazing
across the metal-burnished surface of the world beneath, across the
giant cube-buildings and the great masses of squares loaded with
cube-creatures that came and went still above them. Those squares,
we saw, had collected in great swirling masses above and around
the green-glowing square of force and the cube of controls beside
that glowing square. Could we penetrate down through them to that
control-cube? Already scores of those squares were rushing up toward
us, and I turned to Mirk En as the cube-creature beside us sent square
and cruiser dropping still lower.
"Kill him instantly if he tries to signal to the cube-creatures on
these squares!" I muttered to the Vegan, and he nodded.
"Now's the moment!" he breathed. "If we can pass these squares we'll
have a chance; if not----"
But now those uprushing squares were flashing all around us, their
cube-creature occupants gazing intently toward us as they saw square
and cruiser come down thus toward their world together. For a moment
I held my breath, a moment in which they gazed down and across our
square, its dead cube-creatures posed behind us, its cube-creature
operator and Mirk En and I crouching as though helpless beside him--and
in that moment a single eye that discovered our deception would send
a blast of green crumpling force toward us, I knew. But no green beam
came. Deceived by the life-like appearance of the dead things behind
us, by the lifeless and captured appearance of our cruiser, they never
doubted apparently that their fellow-square had captured our ship. We
sank swiftly among them, and they dropped down in great swarms all
about us.
* * * * *
Down--down--for tense seconds we shot through their great masses of
flying squares, down toward the green force-square and the cube of
controls, above which swarmed still greater masses of guarding squares.
Moments more and we would be within striking distance of that cube, I
knew; moments more and the crimson rays of our cruiser would whiff it
from existence. From the time-dial on my arm I saw that the last few
minutes of our last hour were fleeting now, but even those minutes
would be enough, I knew, if we were not discovered. And still we were
dropping lower through the swarms of squares that swirled as though
in exultation at our capture about and beneath us. I saw the hope
in my own eyes reflected in Mirk En's, and at that moment came the
catastrophe. One of the squares about us brushed close for a moment to
the edge of our own, and as it did so, the cube-creature between Mirk
En and me leaped upward and uttered a strange, throaty cry.
Even as that cry left the cube-creature's mouth-aperture Mirk En's
metal bars had crashed down through its body, and he whirled toward me.
"It's all up, Nort Norus!" he yelled. "The thing's given us away!"
But in that same instant, as the cube-creatures on the squares all
about us gazed stupefiedly toward us, I flung loose the great band that
held our cruiser to the square, and then with my hands on that square's
buttons I sent it whirling downward. "The cube-control!" I cried.
"We'll fight our way down to it or die trying!"
In that moment our square was crashing through the swarming squares
about it, whose cubic-creatures seemed stunned by the sudden revelation
of our stratagem, but in the next moment a hundred green beams were
cleaving toward our square and toward the cruiser a little above. With
a wild sidewise swoop of the square I sought to avoid those beams
in that crazy moment, and at the same time saw Mirk En's tentacles
flashing over the little levers beside me, and from our own square's
bulges similar green deadly shafts were stabbing back in answer.
Outward they drove from us in blind destruction through the masses
of squares about and beneath us. As those squares crumpled and fell
in scores, as a mighty waxing roar of alarm went over the surface of
the world beneath, I glimpsed our cruiser above with J'han Jal at its
controls stabbing out lightning-like to right and left with its crimson
rays as it plunged down above us.
Down through the wildly whirling masses of squares, laden with
cube-creatures, our own square shot as I pressed upon the buttons that
controlled it, as Mirk En sent its green beams driving outward. My only
memory of the next moments is of a wild confusion of tossing, rushing
squares, a sea of metal shapes covered with crowding cube-creatures,
of other squares rushing from far away as the great alarm went forth.
It seemed incredible to me even in that moment of awful action that
we could escape the beams that drove thick about us, but it was the
very numbers of the squares about us that saved us from annihilation.
Impeded as they were by the rushing numbers behind them, the squares on
all sides of us could hardly in that wild moment distinguish between
our own square and those about us; so that for the moment it seemed
almost that all the rushing squares about us were loosing their beams
at each other in a wild panic of confusion.
_Crash!--crash!--crash!_--down through the mass of squares I drove,
crashing into and through them like a mighty battering-ram of metal,
down toward the cube of controls that loomed close now beneath us, the
great green force of the square glowing beside it! Through the opening
in the side of that upraised cube I could glimpse the myriad intricate
switches and instruments inside it, the half-dozen cube-creatures in
it. And then as Mirk En sent our beams smashing through the squares
beneath us, I drove down through the opening the beams had made for us,
until we hung for a split-second beside the cube of controls.
A hundred green rays darted down toward our square as we hung there,
but in the instant before they reached us Mirk En and I had leaped,
great bars in our grasp, into the cube beside us. And as the square
from which we leaped crumpled and fell, as the cube-creatures on the
ground ran madly toward the ladder that led up to the raised cube, not
daring to loose their rays upon their great control, the half-dozen
creatures inside leapt toward us. But as they did so there towered
before them the terrific spectacle of Mirk En, the fighting Vegan's
great octopus-tentacles upraised in air, and then his bars and my own
crashed down upon those creatures and left them dead. Up the ladder
were springing other creatures, but Mirk En beat them down with
terrific blows of his great arms, while our cruiser above fought and
whirled still with the down-rushing squares, and I turned toward the
switches about me.
Scores upon scores in numbers those switches were, unthinkably
intricate combinations of levers and buttons and dials, and for the
moment I gazed at them in despair, then raising my great bar sent it
smashing through them. Blow after blow I let fall upon them, wrecking
the cube-control's interior, but still the green force of the great
square was glowing, and now in despair at sight of what I was doing
the swarming cube-creatures on the ladder were pressing Mirk En back
upward, had jerked the bars from two of his tentacles and were pouring
in upon us. But as they did so I sent a final great blow smashing
through the last of the intricate switches, and the green force in the
great square abruptly vanished. And at sight of that the cube-creatures
on the ladder, those on the crowding squares above, over all this
world, seemed to stop, stunned, stupefied!
The great vibration that had been disintegrating our galaxy was halted,
at last!
In that instant, down through the motionless, stupefied creatures on
the squares above, our cruiser was rushing, down beside the opening of
our cube for a second, and in that second Mirk En and I flung ourselves
through the cruiser's open space-door, and it was stabbing upward! Was
flashing away from that world's surface through the hordes of stunned
cube-creatures, as they stared motionless toward the cube whose glowing
force had been so suddenly snapped out! Were staring uncomprehendingly
as now, at last, the gravitational attraction of the galaxy's suns was
restored to them; as those suns exerted again their pull upon each
other and upon this ring of worlds inside Canopus; as they pulled back
into the galaxy's swarm those outer-most moving suns that but now had
hovered on the verge in space; as they exerted again their pull upon
this ring of worlds within Canopus, _and as that ring began to spread
still farther toward Canopus' encircling fires_!
For as our cruiser shot up, the great ring of worlds was spreading! One
by one, slowly, majestically, the great worlds of that ring were moving
off from its circle in a tangent toward the fires of Canopus, and one
by one as we watched we saw them go to that stunning, stupefying doom
that had gripped them once more with the halting of the vibration, saw
them vanishing with all their cube-creatures and squares and works in
great bursts of flaming vapor as they passed into the mighty encircling
fires! And in the great hollow at Canopus' center our cruiser was left
alone!
Stunned ourselves in that moment, J'han Jal and Mirk En and I there
in the cruiser stared out incredulously into that tremendous space
at Canopus' center that lay empty now forever, empty of those inner
planets whose cube-creatures had been annihilated before our eyes.
We could not speak, could not move, in that moment, swaying there in
the control room, until at last J'han Jal sent our ship racing toward
those fires in turn, until my hands opened again the control of its
heat-nullifying generators, of its protective ray-sheath. And then we
were rushing again into great Canopus' colossal mass of white flame,
even as there sounded beside us the twentieth hour's ending; were
rushing outward through those fires with all the cruiser's power in
that hour that was to have been the cube-creatures' highest hour of
triumph, and that had been instead for them their hour of death.
6
"Nort Norus, Chairman of the Council of Suns!"
Once again that cry was ringing forth from the attendants on the
great dais, and once again, with J'han Jal and Mirk En behind me,
I was stepping up onto that dais, facing the thousands of members
of the Council about us. But now it was not with silence that those
members greeted us but with a wild roar of cheers that reverberated
thunderously through the great hall, and that seemed echoed by the
distant cheers that came to us from the rejoicing crowds in the cities
outside. Earthman, Sirian and Vegan, we three stood there facing those
shouting thousands of dissimilar forms, and then slowly and reluctantly
their wild cheers died as I raised a hand for silence.
"Members of the Council of Suns," I spoke to them, "again we gather
here, not this time to consider a doom hanging over us, but to
celebrate a doom lifted from us. There at the center of Canopus,
J'han Jal and Mirk En and I, with our cruiser and its crew, found the
cube-creatures who had loosed that doom upon our galaxy, who were
even then breaking up our galaxy with their great vibrations. And we
were able at the last to thrust back that doom, to pull back into the
galaxy its farthest out-wandering suns, even as a more terrible doom
was loosed upon the cube-creatures themselves. This we were able to do,
and for it you give us your cheers and gratitude now. Yet it is not
to us that you should give them, but to those who, ages ago, laid the
foundations of our great Federation of Suns.
"For it is through our Federation of Suns alone that we have thrust
back this doom, and every doom that has menaced our universe. Around
this galaxy of ours, which our ancestors of the far past thought
so mighty and which we know to be so small, there stretch all the
mysteries of space, and out of those mysteries there have come upon us
once and again terrors of which we dreamed nothing, great dooms that
have taken all our power and our wisdom to withstand. But we _have_
withstood them always, and though none can doubt that out of the
eternal vastnesses of the void in which we move there will come other
dooms as mighty, other horrors as terrible, by massing their power and
knowledge our galaxy's unlike races shall meet and withstand those
also. For if our races but hold to that great compact sworn by them
ages ago, if our mighty Federation of Suns but continues to reign, we
shall hold against all comers till the end of time this, our universe!"
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