by Jerry
Metals, precious to the human race at the time, were found upon the moon. Like a living flood did ancient man pour from Earth to its satellite. He built huge covered cities there, manufacturing from the minerals of Luna his requirements, water and air included. Food he had to bring from Earth. Not yet had he met with much success in producing synthetic foods containing the correct proportion of the then still elusive vitamins.
In their feverish search for the metals they considered precious, men began to explore the endless caverns and clefts that led deep into Luna’s interior. In the larger caverns they came upon ruins of age-old cities. Even the most cursory glance made it obvious they had never been built or inhabited by creatures in any way resembling man.
The builders of those ancient ruins seemed to have used only two kinds of stone: a granite-like rock that was as sharp-cut as the day it left the hands of the bygone masons—some of the blocks still bearing ancient tool marks—and a friable reddish stone that crumbled on touch. Amongst the ruins were found numerous spike-like bars of a heavy white metal. The metal, on analysis, proved to be a natural platinum-palladium alloy. Those two metals were two of the heavier elements that those early explorers would have almost dared the flames of the sun itself to obtain.
RAPIDLY did new bands of explorers push downward. Faint traces of nitrogen and oxygen—air—had been found in the caverns and clefts near the surface of the moon. It became denser as the men went deeper. The men, wearing heavy pressure-suits equipped with compact oxygen-purifying apparatus that made it possible for them to go about even in the complete vacuum of the moon’s outer surface, were able to discard their bulky suits and go about in their warm underclothing.
Then vegetable life began to make its appearance upon the floors and walls of the caverns through which the human adventurers were passing. The vegetable life glowed with a faint phosphorescent light.
Down and down did succeeding bands of explorers go, each group staking out claims in the ruins they found. The deeper the men went the more ruined cities they discovered. They noticed that the ruins were not as ancient as those found near the surface. Soon it became apparent that the further down they penetrated the less and less ancient would the ruins become. They came at last to a city that was not in ruins, that was not deserted!
Man, under his thin veneer of civilization, was primarily a killer. Being, confronted suddenly by a number of Lunarians going peacefully about their affairs, the veneer was completely torn off. The Lunarians who stumbled upon them seemed too paralyzed with fear even to flee. The very first act of those explorers from a different world was to kill.
The inhabitants of that buried city, reasoning beings, had not known warfare in all their historical times, nor had they any lethal weapons. Until the coming of man there had been no need of weapons of any kind. No wild creatures roamed the endless caverns of their world.
Like fiends from some cold and bloodthirsty world did man first appear among those peaceful Lunarians. A handful of men armed with their terrible weapons was enough to beat the inhabitants of that city into submission.
It is best to forget the years that followed. The inhabitants of city after city were enslaved and forced to dig for the heavy white metal. Fortunate were they that those two metals were plentiful in Luna’s depths. Before those precious metals became so common that they were practically worthless, hundreds of thousands of Lunarians were worked to death.
From the moon it was but a step to Venus and Mars, a step that took a heavy toll of life before the vagaries of interplanetary navigation were even partially understood. At that period, imbued with the mania for exploration, man even skirted the asteroids, the numberless fragments of a disrupted planet that once had its orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and explored the frigid moons of the outer planets to see if he could exist there.
The passing of centuries saw the surfaces of various planetary bodies of our Solar System change swiftly. He built cities everywhere, adapting each to the different local conditions. On Venus, Earth’s ocean-covered neighbor, he built huge floating island cities; on Mars he roofed over the deep rifts in the surface of the smaller planet and dwelt in the valleys; on the four larger satellites of Jupiter he built numerous cities covered with air-tight domes of transparent quartz; on Titan and Iapetus, satellites of Saturn, he built similar structures; on the satellites of the three outermost planets harmful radioactive gases, seeping up through the frozen crusts of those worlds, made existence upon them for any length of time harmful to the living tissues, and man resided upon them for scientific purposes only.
So rapidly were the new cities springing up that it was difficult to keep track of them. It seemed as if man was over-reaching himself. His numbers appeared to be the only thing keeping march with his expanding frontiers. Those centuries saw an era of expansion such as mankind would probably never know again.
During that period of intense activity, while every one seemed to have caught the fever of empire-building on distant worlds, scientists and inventors brought forth a host of new things to fill the rising need. The most important of all had been the apparatus that enable matter to be disintegrated and transported between the planets by means of directed radio waves. The theory, of course, had been known for centuries. Matter itself was nothing but vibrations. Many had constructed transmitters that would break matter down and send it out into space on radio waves, some had even succeeded in building receivers that would reconstruct the two simplest elements, hydrogen and helium; yet no one until then had successfully designed a receiver that would reconstruct all elements exactly in the form they were sent. Life was the only thing the matter-transmitting apparatus failed to transmit Man hoped to overcome that failure.
Then, during the century before the last, came telepathy. Although television and other means of wireless communication on the surfaces of the various worlds virtually became obsolete with the newly acquired ability of individuals to transfer their thoughts, it was found, naturally, that it took a terrific amount of mental concentration to send one’s thoughts from Earth to Luna, while to bridge the gap between the planets was found impossible for any except men of the mental caliber of the Two.
It was while experimenting for a more rapid means of communication between the various planetary bodies of our solar system than by radio that man first detected the signals coming from the edge of our island universe. There then followed in rapid succession the events that brought the representative of the Supreme Council of the Confederation to pass upon man’s eligibility to join the Confederation of Solar Systems, and to instruct him if he was.
Never had mankind seen or even imagined life in the form of the being which moved out of the globe like a black shadow. Each human mind was momentarily steeped in the depths of utter loathing for the monstrosity that had come from the other side of the universe in the guise of a fellow reasoning form of life. Mankind saw only the alienness of its form, not the kinship of its intelligence.
The emotion that mankind entertained for it, the creature seemed to return in kind. It appeared as if man was just as repugnant to its sensibilities as it was to the human species. Its instinctive reaction also was to destroy.
The angry streamers from the Two and the soft glow from the alien monstrosity struggled a moment for mastery. Titanic forces were they.
The soft glow swept forward, smothering the darting streamers in its folds. Back recoiled the Two. Sharp clicks were heard all around and in the air above as they moved back. Metal fingers touched sensitive triggers and were beginning to press.
The streamers from the Two increased in fury and power as they drew on their reserve force, dashed against the soft glow, whipped it into feathery wisps, drove it back. Forward moved the Two, a crushing juggernaut of power going before them.
BY a mighty effort of will the representative of the Supreme Council, recalling its mission, appeared to overcome its momentary instinctive abhorrence at the sight of man. It moved back. The soft glow that flowed from its
black shapeless form, whipped and torn until it seemed no more than ribbons of barely visible luminescence, became a placating force.
The Two sensed the change. They paused and held their place. The angry streamers that had lashed out so viciously, the united will-power of mankind, recoiled and wrapped themselves about the Two like a protecting mantle.
Back, also, was drawn the soft glow that enveloped the alien being. In that soft glow terrific power, akin to the streamers enveloping the Two, could be faintly discerned a multitude of sources.
Words and similar means of communication were superfluous between it and the Two. Representing the essence of utterly different civilizations and forms of life, each gauged the strength of the other and found it a thing to be respected. As to an equal, it addressed itself to the Two. From it there poured forth a flood of thought-images that it had been sent across the abyss of space to impart, the Two questioning and answering to queries at intervals. Whatever passed between them must need be so. There could be no fabrication.
Mankind, as a whole, beheld through the eyes of the Two the sorry plight of the inhabitants of the Confederated Solar Systems. Those allied solar systems were many and strong, still against the irresistible waves of Magellanians, agile metal-encased figures bearing a faint resemblances to the human form, who were sweeping everything before them, they could do nothing.
Quick sympathy for those harrassed races sprang up in the hearts of man. In the fate of the Confederation the human race was quick to see its own doom. Quibbling over guarantees, treaties, rewards—these were things man of the 20th century might have delighted in, but solar systems were falling before the invading Magellanians and their chance of survival was growing slim. The forces of each species of intelligent life in our island universe were desperately needed out there.
Full and equal membership was offered to mankind. All the knowledge in the various fields of science that the races of the Confederation had laboriously gathered throughout the long ages would be open to each new member. That deep well of knowledge would place man on a par with the most advanced races of the universe.
Too momentous was the question even for the Two to decide offhand. The decision, once made, would be irrevocable. The billions of adult human beings scattered throughout the solar system have to decide for themselves.
Mankind, being in mental rapport with the Two, accepted.
The Lunarians were ignored. Though they did not know it then, two members of a far more aggressive form of life would soon appear in their midst, a form of life somewhat resembling man in physical shape, who would not ignore them.
The representative of the Supreme Council began to impart through the Two certain knowledge that mankind needed to send his representative to the solar system which was the headquarters of the Confederation to take his place as a member of the Supreme Council. Each species was allowed but one member in that great governing body. There was also imparted the plans for the building of a titanic transportation apparatus, through which man could hurl his forces wherever needed at a speed much greater than that of light.
Experts in their various fields received and recorded the information.
There was no need of that being to stay any longer. He re-entered the globe, the hum of the mechanism rose to a shrill whine, died down again to a smooth hum, and he was gone.
Slowly the Two turned and began to move from the globe. Its mechanism still hummed. From out of the heavens two swift ships dropped downward like plummets. Mankind was beginning to withdraw its concentrated will-power from the Two. Human minds were needed elsewhere. Preparations for one of the greatest and strangest struggles the human race ever dreamed of taking part in would have to begin at once. Suddenly the hum of the mechanism within the globe changed to a shrill whine again.
The Two, thinking that the representative of the Supreme Council had returned for some reason or other, turned and made their way back to the globe.
The opening darkened. Something moved swiftly inside. The interior was lit for an instant by a bright purplish light. A metal-clad form, small and active, leaped out. Whip-like tentacles held high a thick metal cylinder from which poured forth an intense beam of violet light. The ray swept over a section of the massed rows of man’s most destructive ordnance and metal robots that manned them, twinkled for a moment between violet and ultra-violet, and they were no more. A deep depression in the ground was where they had been.
Behind the first metal-clad figure there was another and another and another. Steadily they poured forth, circling the sphere, taking up defensive positions around it. Before one could think there were scores of those swift-moving invaders about the sphere. Some carried thick metal cylinders such as the first held aloft; others dragged parts of complicated machines which they began to put together with lightning rapidity. Their movements were swift and certain.
The downward dropping ships, which were to carry the Two away almost reached the ground. The violet ray from the thick metal cylinder carried high by the tentacles of the first metal-clad figure touched the nearest one, twinkling for a moment in and out of visibility. The ship dissolved into nothingness as the beam glided over it. It reached toward the second.
A porthole in the side of the second ship snapped open and a human head was thrust out. Taking in the situation at a glance, the head withdrew for a fraction of an instant, then reappeared with a large lethal tube beside it, from which a sheet of livid flame darted toward the metal-clad being who was wielding the violet beam with such deadly effect, destroying him instantly. The lethal tube was next turned toward a knot of metal-encased beings who were working swiftly around one of the machines they were trying to assemble, destroying fully half of them, before a violet beam in the tentacles of another of those beings wiped the second ship out of existence.
Momentarily nonplussed appeared the Two. From them went forth an imperious call to mankind to focus their minds upon them once more. Back began flooding the power. They paused in their stride toward the globe, enveloping themselves in bands of encircling streamers as they did so.
Those metal-clad beings must be Magellanians. Their description fitted with the thought-images which the Confederation’s representative had poured forth. They must be confined to the region and exterminated. Confident were the Two they could do it without harming the sphere.
The agile invaders pouring out of the sphere seemed to become aware of the two standing there for the first time. Those holding the cylinders from which poured forth the violet beams of disintegration turned them full upon the two hesitant human beings. The beams touched the streamers, twinkled for an instant between violet and ultra-violet, but could not pass.
The Magellanians acted as if they were surprised that those two bipeds facing them did not vanish instantly under their concentrated beams. It could not have been anything new in their experience; for the members of the Confederated Solar Systems had a power that was akin to the concentrated will-power of mankind, though not so powerful if it was to be judged by the soft glow with which the representative had sought to defend himself against the streamers from the Two.
THEY tried again, the beams seeming to stab viciously toward where the Two stood. Intense grew the beams, blindingly so. Again the streamers proved an impenetrable barrier to those violet beams.
From violet the beams changed to an oddly twinkling blue, shot with tiny darting streaks of white, hovering there as if seeking an opening in the armor of those encircling streamers, changed to a golden yellow, to red, finally disappeared in the region of infra-red—heat.
Around those two lone human beings the air began to shimmer as the vegetation just outside of the streamers burst into flame, then the ground itself began glowing. When it became apparent that heat could not pass, the glow swiftly died down. Just as it was beginning to seem that there would be no further demonstration of their power, everything grew deathly still, then powerful currents of electricity crackled thunderously against the streamers. Yet for all the
ir noisy bluster they beat harmlessly against those protecting barriers. The beams became visible as violet light again.
Up to now the Two had made no hostile move. They stood close together and watched the invaders, while around them the encircling bands of streamers grew in size and power. Their immunity to the invaders’ most destructive weapon—was it their most destructive weapon?—must have caused some trepidation in the ranks of the Magellanians.
The Two waited, protected by the growing streamers, until mankind was once more wholly attuned to them, then one of the streamers unwound from about their forms and darted lightning-like toward one of those beings who had just come from the globe and who, by his mien, was obviously in command; wrapped itself about his metal-clad form and tore him from the midst of his companions to a spot a few feet outside of the encircling streamers.
Into the creature’s mind probed the Two. The knowledge it contained was laid bare. Amongst other things they learned that a fleet of invading Magellanian space ships had just been repulsed from the solar system of Alpha Centauri by its fierce inhabitants, who had recently joined the confederation, and who had but just completed a huge interstellar transmission apparatus similar to the mechanism enclosed within the sphere. The Magellanians, using the transportation facilities found upon the worlds they had already captured on the outskirts of our island universe, were not faring so well within the universe’s interior.
The invaders, pouring out of that newly constructed apparatus in their large ships, were met by waiting fleets of Alpha Centaurians, who gave them no chance to form into battle formation. Bearing down upon them from every direction, they tore the Magellanian ships to pieces by their ferocity. A remnant of the invading fleet turned tail and sought to escape by the way they had come. Just after the first few ships disappeared into the mouth of the mighty mechanism, it stopped. Two or three ships might have escaped.