III
Gresth Gkae, Commander of Expeditionary Force 93, of the Planet Sthor,was returning homeward with joyful mind. In the lock of his great ship,lay the T-247. In her cargo holds lay various items of machinery, miningsupplies, foods, and records. And in her log books lay the records ofmany readings on the nine larger planets of a highly satisfactoryplanetary system.
Gresth Gkae had spent no less than three ultra-wearing years going fromone sun to another in a definitely mapped out section of space. He hadinvestigated only eleven stars in that time, eleven stars, progressivelyfurther from the titanic red-flaming sun he knew as "the" sun. He knewit as "the" sun, and had several other appellations for it. Mira wasso-named by Earthmen because it was indeed a "wonder" star, in Latin,mirare means "to wonder." Irregularly, and for no apparent reason itwould change its rate of radiation. So far as those inhabitants of Sthorand her sister world Asthor knew, there was no reason. It just did it.Perhaps with malicious intent to be annoying. If so, it wasexceptionally successful. Sthor and Asthor experienced, periodically, ayoung ice age. When Mira decided to take a rest, Sthor and Asthor frozeup, from the poles most of the way to the equators. Then Mira wouldstretch herself a little, move about restlessly and Sthor and Asthorwould become uninhabitably hot, anywhere within twenty degrees of theequator.
Those Sthorian people had evolved in a way that made the conditionsendurable for savage or uncivilized people, but when a scientificcivilization with a well-ordered mode of existence tried to establishitself, Mira was all sorts of a nuisance.
Gresth Gkae was a peculiar individual to human ways of thinking. Hestood some seven feet tall, on his strange, double-kneed legs and hisfour toed feet. His body was covered with little, short feather-likethings that moved now with a volition of their own. They were movingvery slowly and regularly. The space-ship was heated to a comfortabletemperature, and the little fans were helping to cool Gresth Gkae. Hadit been cold, every little feather would have lain down close againstits neighbors, forming an admirable, wind-proof and cold-proof blanket.
Nature, on Sthor, had original ideas of arrangement too. Sthorianspossessed two eyes--one directly above the other, in the center of theirfaces. The face was so long, and narrow, it resembled a blunt hatchet,with the two eyes on the edge. To counter-balance this verticalarrangement of the eyes, the nostrils had been separated some fourinches, with one on each of the sloping cheeks. His ears were littlepink-flesh cups on short, muscular stems. His mouth was narrow, andsmall, but armed with quite solid teeth adapted to his diet, a dietconsisting of almost anything any creature had ever considered edible.Like most successful forms of intelligent life, Gresth Gkae wasomnivorous. An intelligent form of life is necessarily adaptable, andadaptation meant being able to eat what was at hand.
One of his eyes, the upper one, was fully twice the size of the lowerone. This was his telescopic eye. The lower, or microscopic eye wasadapted to work for which a human being would have required a low powermicroscope, the upper eye possessed a more normal power of vision,_plus_ considerable telescopic powers.
Gresth Gkae was using it now to look ahead in the blank of space towhere gigantic Mira appeared. On his screens now, Mira appeared deepviolet, for he was approaching at a speed greater than that of light,and even this projected light of Mira was badly distorted.
"The distance is half a light-year now, sir," reported the navigationofficer.
"Reduce the speed, then, to normal velocity for these ranges. Whatreserve of fuel have we?"
"Less than one thousand pounds. We will barely be able to stop. We weretoo free in the use of our weapons, I fear," replied the ChiefTechnician.
"Well, what would you? We needed those things in our reports. Besides,we could extract fuel from that ore we took on at Planet Nine of Phahlo.It is merely that I wish speed in the return."
"As we all do. How soon do you believe the Council will proceed againstthe new system?"
"It will be fully a year, I fear. They must gather the expeditionstogether, and re-equip the ships. It will be a long time before all willhave come in."
"Could they not send fast ships after them to recall them?"
"Could they have traced us as we wove our way from Thart to Karst toRaloork to Phahlo? It would be impossible."
* * * * *
Steadily the great ship had been boring on her way. Mira had been a discfor nearly two days, gigantic, two-hundred-and-fifty-million-mile Miratook a great deal of dwarfing by distance to lose her disc. Even at theTwin Planets, eight thousand two hundred and fifty millions of milesout, Mira covered half the sky, it seemed, red and angry. Sometimes,though, to the disgust of the Sthorians it was just red-faced and lazy.Then Sthor froze.
"Grih is in a descendant stage," said the navigation officer presently."Sthor will be cold when we arrive."
"It will warm quickly enough with our news!" Gresth laughed. "Asystem--a delightful system--discovered. A system of many close-groupedplanets. Why think--from one side of that system to the other is less ofa distance than from Ansthat, our first planet's orbit, to Insthor'sorbit! That sun, as we know, is steady and warm. All will be well, whenwe have eliminated that rather peculiar race. Odd, that they should, insome ways, be so nearly like us! Nearly Sthorian in build. I would nothave expected it. Though they did have some amazing peculiarities!Imagine--two eyes just alike, and in a horizontal row. And that flatface. They looked as though they had suffered some accident that smashedthe front of the face in. And also the peculiar beak-like projection.Why should a race ever develop so amazing a projection in so peculiarand exposed a position? It sticks out inviting attack and injury. Rightin the middle of the face. And to make it worse, there is theair-channel, and the only air channel. Why, one minor injury to thethroat would be certain to damage that passage beyond repair, and bringdeath. Yet such relatively unimportant things as ears, and eyes aredoubled. Surely you would expect that so important a member as theair-passage would be doubled for safety.
"Those strange, awkward arms and legs were what puzzled me. I have beenattempting to manipulate myself as they must be forced to, and I cannotsee how delicate or accurate manual manipulation would be possible withthose rigid, inflexible arms. In some ways I feel they must have hadclever minds to overcome so great a handicap to constructive work. But Isuppose single joints in the arms become as natural to them as our ownmore mobile two.
"I wonder if life in any intelligent form wouldn't develop somewhatsimilar formations, though. Think, in all parts of Sthor, before menbecame civilized and developed communication, even so much as twentythousand years ago, our records show that seats and chairs were much asthey are today, and much as they are, in all places among all groups.Then too, the eye has developed in many different species, and alwaysreached much the same structure. When a thing is intended and developedto serve a given purpose, no matter who develops it, or where or how, isit not apt to have similar shapes and parts? A chair must have legs, anda seat and arm-rests and a back. You may vary their nature and theirshape, but not widely, and they must be there. An eye must, anywhere,have a sensitive retina, an adjustable lens, and an adjustable devicefor controlling the entrance of light. Similarly there are certainfunctions that the body of an intelligent creature must serve whichnaturally tend to make intelligent creatures similar. He must have atool--the hand--"
"Yes, yes--I see your point. It must be so, for surely these creaturesout there are strange enough in other ways."
"But tell me, have you calculated when we shall land?"
"In twelve hours, thirty-three minutes, sir."
Eleven hours later, the expedition ship had slowed to a normalspace-speed. On her left hung the giant globe of Asthor, rotatingslowly, moving slowly in her orbit. Directly ahead, Sthor loomed evengreater. Tiny Teelan, the thousand-mile diameter moon of the Insthorsystem shone dull red in the reflected light of gigantic Mira. Miraherself was gigantic, red and menacing across eight and a quarterbillions of miles of space.
One hundred thousand miles apart, the twin worlds Sthor and Asthorrotated about their common center of gravity, eternally facing eachother. Ten million miles from their common center of gravity, Teelanrotated in a vast orbit.
Sthor and Asthor were capped at each pole now by gigantic white icecaps.Mira was sulking, and as a consequence the planets were freezing.
The expedition ship sank slowly toward Sthor. A swarm of smaller crafthad flown up at its approach to meet it. A gaily-colored small shipmarked the official greeting-ship. Gresth had withheld his newspurposely. Now suddenly he began broadcasting it from the powerfultransmitter on his ship. As the words came through on a thousand sets,all the little ships began to whirl, dance and break out into glowing,sparkling lights. On Sthor and Asthor even commotions began to bevisible. A new planetary system had been found-- They could move! Theiroverflowing populations could be spread out!
The whole Insthor system went mad with delight as the greatExpeditionary Ship settled downward.
The Ultimate Weapon Page 3