by Jerry
Seaward dropped the calculations in hand, walked across the control room of the great interstellar explorer, up to the very tip. Kendall stood aside while the doctor applied his eye to the lens.
“It’s there all right, Broster. A little red disk exactly where he called it off; the chart’s wrong.”
Broster ran a hand through his chestnut hair, a puzzled look in his eyes. He glared at the space-chart for a moment, as if loath to believe that that faithful instrument could have gone haywire. Then he picked his way over to the electro-telescope to verify the sighting personally.
A moment later, the three were looking at each other wonderingly. All realized what this might mean: if that space-chart failed them, it might be all over with any possibility ever of returning home. Space-navigating in the bounds of the solar system was one thing; there it didn’t matter whether you ran by chart or by observation. But here in the bounds of cosmic space, thousands of light-years from the sun, where they had to navigate in the blackness of inter-stellar distances, the space-chart was all-important. Bodies out here were dark; there were no stars nearby from which they could reflect light . . .
“That chart will have to be overhauled,” murmured the captain. “If it’s gone wrong . . .”
“What about this planet? It’s the only one around this star,” put in Kendall, jerking a thumb in its general direction.
“Head toward it; we may as well give it the once-over.”
The huge ship pursued its unvarying course toward the approaching star. At a single light-year away, they decelerated, slowed down. Riding the strange eka-gravity waves, the little-known carrier-waves for light and gravity which seemed to travel as fast in relation to light as light in relation to sound, this craft of the Thirtieth Century was able to accomplish what had for centuries been believed unachievable.
They approached until at last the gravital drag clutched the ship, started to draw it in toward that vast, fiery globe spurting forth countless tons of disintegrated matter per second, emanating energy inconceivable. Yet, withal, a small star, smaller than Sol and quite inconspicuous as stars go.
As they drifted, Broster and Seaward examined the space-chart thoroughly. But in vain; nothing could be found out of order: no short circuits, no tubes needing replacement. It was in perfect shape, but . . . it refused to light a white speck in its black field for the near planet.
They watched the planet grow larger, slowly made out surface details. A ruddy world, bathed entirely in red light, although the star around which it circled was white. Crimson clouds floated in masses of carmine seas and necine land-masses. The glow of the red world shone in through the stella-quartzite ports, throwing a weird, bloody glare on everything.
“This is a helluva world,” growled Kendall. “You’d go nuts there after awhile.”
Seaward nodded. “Quite so. Red is a color that acts to irritate those who look at it overlong. I wouldn’t advise staying on this world for more than a few minutes. We could easily go mad were we forced to remain here so much as a day.”
“We’ll land, anyway, and look around. If—” Broster was cut off abruptly as the shrill scream of; the alarm pierced his line of thought. “What the devil is that?”
The sound of running feet from the far back of the ship came to their ears, then the fourth member of the crew streaked into the control room. “Space ships approaching us!” Arundell shouted. “Didn’t you spot them?” Broster wheeled around to the chart. Nothing indicated; according to it, there was no planet ahead of them, no space-ships behind them. He muttered something then hurried across to the side ports, swung out the periscopic plates, stared anxiously to their rear.
There were at least a dozen of the red bodies moving along in their wake. Large, all of them, and near. Ships almost as great as the Astralite, ships that looked dangerous.
“They’re close,” he grated, “too damn close. I don’t like it.”
“Neither did I. I was wondering why you didn’t do something when I saw them in the port,” Arundell exclaimed.
Broster jumped to the controls, pulled the lever that should shunt the ship to one side. But as the nose turned away, and the great mass of her began slowly to describe a long arc in relation to her former course, another exclamation came from Kendall: “They’re spreading out to stop us!”
Broster cursed, reset the course. The planet was dead ahead now.
“Trapped!” he fumed. “The red planet ahead of us, and those ships behind us. What do they want?”
“It might be well to stop,” Dr. Seaward put in. “They may want to look us over and nothing more. Unless we arouse suspicion by resisting now.”
“And they might steal the ship under our noses, too,” protested Arundell.
Broster shook his head. “There cannot be a question of letting unknown intelligences enter this craft or hold it. We can’t afford to take chances, even if the notion that other world dwellers are necessarily enemies is silly. We’ve got to assume that everything we see is dangerous until proven harmless or friendly. Those are our first orders: do not surrender the ship.”
“Then we run for it?” asked Seaward.
“We do. Our offensive weapons may be better than theirs but it’s another chance we’re not taking. The very fact that we’re outnumbered makes retreat the order of the day.”
“Look there!” exclaimed Arundell. “They’re beaming past us!”
One of the strange oval, multi-ported, oddly-ornamented, crimson craft had just shot a red beam alongside of the Astralite. Not touching it, but passing by, as if to show that, whenever they cared, this fleet could annihilate the intruder. Then, all the other ships surrounding them began to flash beams. Crossing and crisscrossing all about them save in front.
“Look,” exclaimed Kendall. “You can see those beams as if they were in air.”
“Marvellous and impossible,” groaned Seaward. “We’ve run into a swarm of impossibilities today. Some philosopher once remarked that in eternity everything was possible—in fact, everything that could possibly happen has happened. It looks as if we’re running into bits of that now. I should have taken my daughter’s advice and let a younger man come this trip.”
“It may be impossible, but it’s so,” broke in Broster. “And deadly. We’re getting out of here fast.”
He turned to the controls and a moment later the Astralite began to accelerate. There was a limit to the speed they could reach as they would have to shunt again soon to keep from smashing against the red planet. Unless—
“Why not?” asked Arundell, following Broster’s evident thoughts.
“They apparently want us to land on the planet. So we do go for it, then shunt aside at the last minute.”
AT FIRST, it seemed as if the Astralite would leave the others behind, but it was soon apparent that the unknown ships could keep up with her. In fact were closing in.
There was one pursuer behind them that seemed to Kendall, as he watched through the lens, almost to be upon them. It was, he knew, some half-mile away in reality. He could see the curiously pitted nose of the craft, note the weirdly-streamlined mass. He observed, with astonishment, a little piece of wire seemingly flying loose from a bearing on one of the strange ships, which was streaming off behind as if in a stiff breeze. Yet space about them was empty!
“Look out!” called Seaward from the forward scope. “Here’s more of them.”
Coming around the planet from behind, spreading out along the side as if to form a welcoming arch were more of the weird ships.
“That ties it,” exclaimed Broster. “We’ll never be able to pass the planet. It’s either land or crash.”
“Then we crash,” came the response.
“Man the guns!” yelled Broster. “Let’s see how many we can take with us before we go.”
The three others swung in the various weapons and trained them on the surrounding ships. Explosion-torpedo cannon, twin-rays for electric jolting comprised the types of offensive guns. They were
getting very close to the planet, now. And it seemed as if the red ships were expecting the Astralite to slow down, for their beams shot occasionally in front of the earth-ship. The carmine bulk of the planet loomed up over most of the view now. It was too late to shunt aside.
“Fire!”
No sound, no roar of explosions. They watched eagerly for results. But there were none. Not a single torpedo appeared to have hit its mark, not a single twin-ray seemed to bathe the surrounding ovoids. They fired again.
Kendall swore. The course of one torpedo was the stimulus; he watched it, saw its dark mass approach the nose of one of the vessels behind. Then he swears he saw it strike—and disappear.
Firing was useless. These ships were invulnerable to their weapons.
Broster looked up, bracing himself.
“Stand by to crash!”
The four stopped everything, turned to look at each other for a moment in silence. In a few seconds more they would simply cease to exist. No pain, no hours of lingering agony trapped in the wreckage. At the speed they were going, the entire ship would be volatilized, would fuse into a molten, glowing mass.
They turned again to the plates to look for a last time at the universe around them.
For six years they had traveled away from earth, far, far beyond any point man had ever dreamed of reaching. They were almost to the point where the order to turn back would have been given. Much had been learned; now it would be lost.
Broster gave her full acceleration.
They saw the planet seemingly leap toward them, saw cloudbanks flick past them. A great flat plain of ruddy rock, a dread expanse of barren granite. This in the veriest fragment of a second, then—
A momentary shock, as if each man had received an electrical jolt; a sudden flash of intolerable red. Darkness.
THE earthmen blinked their eyes.
They were in the ship, unharmed. They stood at their posts in the same position as before. And about them the black of far space and the shining points of the star-studded Milky Way.
Kendall gazed into the lens of the rear port, beckoned to the others. The red planet was already a small, crimson disk behind them, passing into oblivion as they accelerated onward, outward.
Broster laughed. “It’s all clear now. Why the space-chart seemingly did not function, why our weapons were useless.”
“And why we were not killed, and why their beams could be seen in space,” added Seaward.
“Because they weren’t in space; they were in air. In the air of another universe.”
“It was all an illusion,” explained Seaward. “The ships, the planet, everything. That is why none of these things registered on the space chart; there were no gravity waves emanating from them because they were not there.”
Broster leaned back in his chair. “We’ve all known that there are many universes beside ours, separated from us by the fourth-dimensional space-time sheet. That was demonstrated by Marilus centuries ago. Laboratory experiments have produced images of other planets. All this was just such an image.
“The space-time envelope must have been a little warped at this point. Enough so as to let part of the waves emanating from the atoms of that section to pass through to our universe—and permit waves emanating from the atoms of our universe to pass through to them. We were able to see the red rays of their spectrum, nothing else. They saw us as a violet ship. But that was all.”
“Then,” put in Kendall, “that’s why they seemed to be shooting rays at us.”
“Right. We appeared to them, in their world, as suddenly as they appeared to us in space; it was a double mirage. At one end of the warp, they and their planet suddenly appear in what the instruments show to be empty space; at the other end, we appear out of nowhere, a strange ship headed for their planet. And, it must have seemed to them, that we went right through their planet, too. That planet of theirs, by the way, must be a tremendous one. Many times the mass and density of Jupiter. It’s probably what causes the space-warp.”
“What!” exclaimed Kendall. “You mean that thing’s a permanent institution in space?”
“Certainly.”
“Then let’s go back and have a good look.”
“Check,” agreed Broster.
“We’ll give their fleet and their planet the jitters again,” laughed Seaward as he prepared the plates for special photos.
STAR OF BLUE
Milton Kaltesky
Marsha!! Hughes, leader of Earth’s fighting men, finds himself faced with surrender to the heartless ruler of Mars—until he looks into the heavens where the fate of his world rests upon the identification of a color—
“AND so, my dear marshal, you have no choice but to surrender unconditionally.” Generalissimo Ankeen, commander-in-chief of the battle forces of Mars, paused to note the effect of this declaration on his prisoner of war, Marshal Hughes, leader of Barth’s fighting men.
The Earthman’s look of cold contempt did not change. Over his pale, lined features, his bushy gray eyebrows rose a little as he returned the Martian’s stare. But he said nothing.
Ankeen scowled. “I repeat, Hughes, in the eight days since we captured you, your battle fleets have been largely ruined. Oh, your men fought bravely and did us a lot of damage, I admit, but without you to lead them—” the Martian bowed derisively—“my forces smashed your chief fleets, and now Earth lies helpless before me!”
A triumphant leer passed across the Martian’s green face. Marshal Hughes’ impassive features showed no change, and still he said nothing. Ankeen looked annoyed.
“This bravado of yours will do you no good,” he told Hughes in his thin, piping voice, “just as the courage of Earth’s defenders will do them no good either. If you do not order them to surrender, they will go on fighting and I’ll be compelled to destroy them utterly. It means the death of millions and the responsibility for this bloodshed will lie directly on you.”
Marshal Hughes smiled thinly.
“Typical Martian logic,” he remarked quietly. “You’ll murder millions of Earthmen who want only peace and then you’ll blame me for it.”
Generalissimo Ankeen glared at Hughes. “This is war! Nothing can stop Mars from conquering the entire solar system, and I’m going to do it!”
His voice rose fanatically, then it dropped suddenly and took on an almost pleading note.
“Hughes, you’re absolute dictator of Earth during this war and your people will obey you. Save them from destruction! Order them to surrender!”
The Earthman answered with quiet pride. “Yes, they will obey me. And I have given them only one order: ‘Fight on!’ ”
Ankeen sneered a sarcastic reply. “Very, very dramatic, my dear marshal, but very very foolish. The day of such heroism on the part of generals is long over. No longer do leaders of armies and fleets fight with their men as you do. That’s why you were captured, Hughes, while I sat safely on Mars.
“In fact,” Ankeen continued, “I have never been off this planet, yet every move my men make, every action they carry out, is planned and directed solely by me. Alone, I am the guiding mind of Mars!”
He paused, enjoying the sound of his own voice boasting of his power.
“Right from this room here on Mars I directed the conquest of Venus and of Jupiter’s moons. Earth is next!”
Hughes answered noncommittally, “Perhaps.”
The Martian’s face grew dark with anger. He leaned forward across the table between them to shake his threefingered fist at Marshal Hughes.
“You doubt me? Then listen to this: At this very moment, my bombing space-ships are over the largest cities of Earth, blasting them into nothingness, smashing them to powder, wiping out their inhabitants. I’ve called on them to surrender and save their lives and property, but until they hear from you, they intend to fight on, at any cost.
“Do you hear, Hughes? I’m destroying New York, London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Tokio, Berlin and Rio de Janeiro right now!”
THE Martian
sank back in his seat, panting with excitement.
Marshal Hughes stared into his enemy’s eyes and spoke calmly. “You lie interestingly but unconvincingly, Ankeen.”
Ankeen stood up, his eight feet of height curved over the Earthman. With a wide mocking grin, he hissed, “Then watch this, my dear marshal.”
He turned to the curtain-draped wall behind him. Tugging at a cord, he drew the curtain aside, revealing a great television screen covering the entire wall. He snapped a switch to darken the room and turned on the television receiver.
“By my order,” he said, “some of the ships attacking Earth are televising the battle and are transmitting by beam to Mars. You will now see for yourself how helpless Earth is.”
On the huge screen, blurred patches of light were resolving themselves into a clear picture. There on the screen, in full natural color, appeared a night view of London from the air.
High over the sprawling, blacked-out metropolis, lighted only by the moon, the spherical Martian war vessels whirled and zoomed, dropping showers of small but deadly atomite bombs that blasted great craters out of the close-packed buildings.
From the ground below, beams of explosive light flashed upwards, seeking the attackers. Once, twice, and again the beams found their marks and Martian ships blasted apart in vast blinding flashes of light. But there were hundreds of Martian ships, and the defense batteries on the ground were rapidly going out of action as bombs fell on or near them.
Ankeen twisted a dial and abruptly the scene shifted to New York. Hughes felt a spasm of homesickness as he recognized the familiar towers of Manhattan, reaching skywards a mile and more over the slender island.
Here, too, clouds of Martian ships floated over the city, scattering destruction. A few squadrons of Earth’s battle fleet tore wildly back and forth in a futile counter-attack. Greatly outnumbered, they would all soon be ripped to fragments.
THOUGH the marshal sat rigidly still, within him his heart was pounding fiercely as he watched the uneven battle, his men, his brave men, fighting with such courage, when courage alone was not enough. They needed ships, and had so few. Ankeen was right; he had to order them to surrender. This slaughter was unnecessary and futile.