by Jerry
BITTERLY did 4-P-2269-L, Lunarian, member of the so-called inferior race, which from time Immemorial had, until the coming of man, dwelt in the world-deep clefts and vast caverns that honeycombed Luna as free and civilized beings, now a subject race, turn from his human companion who spoke glowingly of what vast strides mankind had made; especially did he harp on the latest of man’s undertakings, an expedition of exploration beyond the bounds of the Solar System in which they both were to participate.
“Come, Lune,” the man said with a slow smile, addressing his companion as he was wont by that half affectionate diminutive instead of his cold official number, “cheer up.”
The Lunarian glared at him. Hate struggled for birth in that gaze. Quickly he turned his head away in an effort to keep that sudden dislike from showing in his eyes. The being from Luna and the man from Earth were the closest of friends. Having been taken from his own kind at birth and assigned to the care of his two-legged companion’s parents to be brought up in the ways of man, that particular human being, Don Stelite, was the only one of the whole human race, the Lunarian could conceive the slightest affection for.
“What has come over you of late?” the man asked. “Everything I say seems to irritate you.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” the Lunarian demanded angrily. “You speak always of the glories and achievements of the human race, but what of my race? We are not brainless beasts.”
“I am sorry.”
“You, a member of your accursed race, sorry!”
“You are not taking the right viewpoint, my Lunarian friend.”
“Not taking the right viewpoint?” the Lunarian repeated incredulously. “You two-legged savages conquered my peaceful old race with your strange and deadly weapons, degraded us to the rank of slavery in your barbaric civilization, treated us at first as you used to treat your patient four-footed beasts of burden, and now you expect us to rejoice because your restless species are about to add to their glory by extending their domain still further!”
“Do not take it that way, Lune. Though my ancestors conquered yours and treated them rather badly, we of this later and more advanced date are trying to make amends. Your race now has every advantage we human beings have.”
“Equality?”
“N-no, that is, not yet.”
“Never!”
“Don’t be so bitter. There has been talk of giving you Lunarians full and equal citizenship in our civilization.”
“Talk, nothing but talk,” the Lunarian was scornful. “Also,” Don Stelite continued, “the withdrawal of all human beings from the subterranean cities of Luna and the right of your species to rule your world again.”
“Man has been promising us for centuries that they would give us back our ancient world. Not being a warlike race, we have waited patiently for that promise to be fulfilled. Lately we have come to realize that, unless we wrest it from your race by force, never will we be rulers of Luna again.”
The Lunarian, fearing that he had said too much, determined to say not another word, at least not until they reached their destination, the nearby opening in the wall that surrounded the local space ship pits. Another five minutes’ walk and they would be there.
“Amongst your own race, Lune,” Don Stelite asked after a few moments’ awkward silence, “you are some kind of a hereditary chief?”
“Were my house still ruling,” the Lunarian said quietly, “Overlord of the Elder City, now only an interstellar pilot for my human masters.”
“But your race still regards you as one of their hereditary rulers?”
The Lunarian nodded grimly. Man had tried to keep his identity from him, but members of his own race had sought him out in secret and taught him the history of his race and lineage.
“In the past, before the coming of man, the lesser cities usually followed the course chosen by the Elder City?”
Again the Lunarian nodded.
“Amongst the chiefs of the Elder City your word still carries weight?”
The Lunarian gazed at his human friend sharply. “There is a rumor that the Chiefs of the Elder City,” Don Stelite hurried on, “are plotting to regain Luna by force.”
The eyes of the Lunarian darted about for an instant like those of a trapped animal. He half turned to flee.
“There is also a rumor,” the man kept on grimly, “that the inhabitants of some of the hidden cities in the deepest caverns of Luna are manufacturing the latest weapons of interplanetary warfare in large quantities.”
The Lunarian said not a word.
“We have been together all our lives, Lune.”
“What of it?”
“I know that you have been secretly meeting your—” One of the Lunarian’s hand-like appendages darted to a prohibited death-dealing tube concealed beneath the voluminous folds of his cloak.
Don Stelite shook his head sadly.
“I would do anything to make my race free again!” the Lunarian cried passionately.
“You have forgotten the Two.”
The hand-like appendage dropped limply away from the hidden lethal tube. He had indeed forgotten the Two, the two through whom mankind in their strange way were beginning to rule themselves.
“Are the Two,” the voice was that of one who had given up all hope, “about to order me to destroy myself?”
“No.”
“I do not understand.”
“This is a warning.”
“Since when have the Two begun to warn?”
“The Two, my Lunarian friend, never warn.”
“I still do not understand, Don.”
“I am warning you. You have been wronged enough. My race has done things to yours that we human beings of today can recall only with shame. We are trying to right that wrong. You must believe that.”
“How can I? With all the advantages you say we have, we from Luna are still nothing but slaves. Because my rather large eyes are sensitive to the weakest light waves, also susceptible to infra-red and ultraviolet radiation, making me valuable as an auxiliary to the automatic electro-magnetic piloting devices aboard your interstellar craft, I am ordered to join the forthcoming exploration expedition to Alpha Centauri, which tonight is leaving the Solar System.”
“I, too, must go where I am ordered.”
“It is your race. You are to command one of the ships.”
DON STELITE’S form stiffened suddenly. His lips moved, but no sound issued forth. The Lunarian, who had witnessed those attacks countless times, knew that his friend was in telepathic communication with another member of his race. His form relaxed and he turned to the Lunarian.
“Lune, a new device somewhat similar to a radio transmitter, but on a different principle and infinitely faster, has been completed and I have been ordered to see it tested. Make no overt move while I am gone; you are being watched.”
The Lunarian thought of the warning as he made his way to the ship he had been assigned to. He had delayed a day too long. Another twenty-four hours and he had planned to leave Earth. A tiny ship hidden near his quarters was ready to carry him deep into the bowels of his ancient world. Once there he believed that he would be safe even from the Two.
The noise and excitement that usually attend the departure of a fleet of interstellar ships drove every thought from the Lunarian’s head. Hardly had he taken his place in the pilot room of the Alpha Centauri when orders came to stay the expedition.
Through a roundabout source he learned that a message was being received from out of the depths of space on a new receiver that human scientists had perfected. Thinking that he would not have long to wait before the command to proceed was given, he elected to stay at his post by the forward telescopic observation window. Had he waited for the command an eternity would have passed, for never was the command to be given.
Man, at the time the signals were first detected, had long been familiar with electro-magnetic phenomenon, which included radio-telephony, television, wireless transmission of energy, and even t
he transportation of matter by directed radio waves. But to him, impatient as ever, even the speed of light at which the radio waves traveled was becoming too slow. He had been experimenting with the possibility of utilizing the almost instantaneous speed of gravitation for the purposes of communication between the far scattered points of the Solar System when the signals were first detected upon the crude experimental apparatus.
At the beginning of the 37th century mankind, with the faculty of thought-transference—telepathy which he had acquired two centuries previously, and the ability of mass-focusing of thought waves upon certain trained individuals, especially the Two, was radically different from his semi-civilized forebears of the 20th century.
The Lunarians had also changed much. From an inoffensive form of intelligent life which had for long eons of time remained at practically a mental standstill, they had become a race of desperate creatures determined to risk even annihilation for freedom.
Fast upon the detection of those signals, they had automatically been recorded, followed by their interpretation. Man could hardly credit the unfolding message, only the fact that it had come from a point in space far beyond the limits of the Solar System in the direction of blue-white Achernar which lay between the constellations of Tucan and Dorado stamped it with some degree of authenticity, while its urgency required it to be given immediate attention.
Beings of extra-Solarian origin, claiming to represent a confederation of solar systems, had sent out into the wide expanse of our island universe the call to arms. They were being subjected to a continual onslaught from a demoniacal form of life who were on an invading expedition from two small neighboring island universes. In the constellations of Tucan and Dorado were the Magellanic Clouds, the nearest of all island universes surrounding our own.
Until recently the forces of the Confederation had managed to hold them off from their own uninhabited worlds, but now they were coming in uncountable numbers. Every form of reasoning life inhabiting the myriad worlds of our island universe was doomed unless the invaders were repelled, destroyed.
On the outskirts of our island universe facing the Magellanic Clouds there were a number of solar systems whose inhabitants had long been banded together for mutual protection and advancement. Like a gigantic shield did those solar systems at the edge of our galaxy stand between the Magellanic Clouds, two tiny island universes almost touching our own, and the countless solar systems behind. Only the formation of that Confederation saved our own galaxy from falling easy prey to our warlike neighbors.
The ancient civilization of the Confederation, as well as every other civilization in our huge galaxy was fated to be wiped out of existence if a means of checking the advancement of the invaders was not found.
Tired, war-worn, about to succumb to the unequal struggle, were the races of the Confederation, unless new and more warlike allies came to their assistance. Only a galaxy presenting an united front could successfully withstand them. A message bearing the call to arms and other information was impinged upon gravitational lines of force and broadcast instantly to the utmost limits of our galaxy.
Mankind debated upon the question—the Lunarians were not permitted to voice their opinions, though if danger threatened they would probably be the first to be sent forward to meet the brunt of the attack—and decided to investigate further. It was understood that the mechanism referred to would be somewhat similar to the matter-transmitting apparatus that man used to transport everything except living creatures.
The crude experimental apparatus upon which the message was first received was strengthened and word sent by it that mankind wished further information on the danger said to threaten our island universe. Those sound vibrations, impinged upon gravitational lines of force, bridged the gap between the transmitter on one side of the universe and the receiver on the other side almost instantly.
A few brief hours passed and then back began coming instructions for the building of a matter-transmitting apparatus. From the parts that man already had on hand, parts belonging to the mechanism he used for the wireless transportation of matter, he quickly constructed the complicated apparatus.
The combination receiver and transmitter was completed. Still mankind delayed putting its intricate mechanism in motion. It might be a ruse for hostile beings to gain a footing upon man’s domain. A warning instinct counseled caution. Fearing treachery, man prepared to repulse and destroy whatever emerged from that interstellar transmitting apparatus if his suspicions were in the least justified.
No chances were to be taken. The apparatus first of all was housed in a thick globular shell of metal with but one opening and suspended in a powerful field of force that held it immovable a few feet above the ground.
Man then ringed that sphere with rows of his most destructive ordnance, the least of which would blast the metal globe and all it contained instantly out of existence, while high in the air hung ships ready to drop atomic bombs that would make of the region a raging inferno.
Metal robots, not human beings, manned each and every weapon, also the ships that hung poised high above the sphere.
THERE was yet another means of defense that could also be used as a weapon of offense, a far more dread means such as mankind had never needed to call upon before. It was the will, the human will. Singly the human will was a trifling force, but when one million human beings abandoned every mental activity to will with the full force of their minds to achieve a certain end—will that a specially trained individual should act in the nature of a reservoir to the incoming thought waves and have the power to release the flood at an appropriate moment—it was a powerful force that transcended the laws of gravitation and all electric and electro-magnetic phenomenon; when more than ten billion mature human beings united their will-power and concentrated it upon two specially bred human beings, it became an incredible force—the most powerful force the human species ever possessed.
Soon would the mechanism within the metal globe be put in motion. From high above two swift ships swooped downward through the air. The ships landed near the metal globe, resting upon the ground only long enough to discharge their passengers, two lightly clad human beings of slender build with high and bulging foreheads, and were off. The two human beings—they were the Two—moved swiftly toward the globe. From them there radiated a terrific flow of power.
Their coming was a signal. The mechanism within the sphere began to hum. For a while it hummed smoothly, then suddenly the tone changed to a shrill whine.
Moments passed, tense moments. The shrill whine had died down as abruptly as it had arisen. At the opening of the globe there was a blur. Something seemed to move sluggishly within. The Two, the only human beings in that wide region, sped more swiftly toward the opening. A peculiar radiance now began to flow from them. The radiance split into many darting streamers that swirled about them.
Darker grew the opening in the globe. An indistinct form filled it, emerged. Mankind, seeing through the eyes of the Two toward which it was focusing its massed will, recoiled in horror at the sight of the thing which had slowly emerged, and the thing itself could be seen to half draw back as if in repugnance or fear at the sight of the two slim biped beings that faced it.
Angry streamers darted from the Two toward the being at the globe’s opening. Those streamers, power incarnate, were met in mid-distance by a soft glow that swept from that alien being straight for the Two.
During the past eighteen centuries the human race had changed much. Long ago, with the disappearance of all political frontiers at the creation of a world-wide state, his various racial differences swiftly merged. His domain widened until it included all the habitable planets and larger satellites of our Solar System.
It was near the end of the 19th century that man first dreamed vaguely of reaching the nearest of all heavenly bodies, Luna. His dreams took on a more concrete form when in the year 1946 or 1947 a misguided youth, following the dreams of one who had long preceded him, secretly built for himse
lf a vehicle in the form of a projectile—numerous were the safety appliances said to be incorporated within it—which was to receive its initial impulse from outside, and had himself shot to the moon.
He never reached Earth’s satellite. His projectile was destroyed even before it had left the atmospheric ocean surrounding Earth. A few years later two more youths tried at intervals of a month or so apart. They employed the reaction motor to propel their craft—the rocket principle. Those dare-devil adventurers, carrying their motive power with them and not depending upon one single external impulse, succeeded in going beyond the farthest limits of the atmosphere, but were destroyed by meteors rushing through space at velocities many times greater than the muzzle velocity of man’s greatest cannon.
In the years that followed, others, in their thousands, tried. The loss of life was terrific. To the younger generation of that period it became truly a monomania to see who would be the first to reach Earth’s scarred and pitted satellite. The government tried to stop the seemingly useless waste of life, but against the wild enthusiasm of its youth it was powerless. Life was cheap and the prize proportionately great. The first to reach Luna would in more than one way have Earth literally at his feet.
Meanwhile, inventive geniuses attacked the problem from different angles. Their queer, weird vessels flashed upon one after the other and were forced down or destroyed. It was not until the middle of the 21st century that one, a hitherto unknown youth, invented an apparatus that could deflect the tiny meteors rushing through space or swerve the ship in the case of too close approach of larger ones. The mechanism would function in the case of larger meteors only if the ship was traveling above a certain minimum speed.
The first vessel to be equipped with that apparatus reached Luna, but the brave youth who piloted the craft was never to know popular acclaim. Apparently misjudging the nearness of the moon’s broken surface, he crashed against a steep mountain wall, which seemed suddenly to rise in front of him as he was about to land. Though he succumbed shortly after from injuries received in the crash, hastened by the lowering of air-pressure in the doubly-sealed pilot chamber, numerous were the cracks in the walls through which the air escaped, he was able to send back by means of his radio transmitter the success of the invention and other valuable information. With the aid of that newly invented apparatus another followed and gained his objective and another. Soon after that a base was established upon the moon.