by Earl
In their ship, designed by the superhuman genius of Dr. Hartwell’s ten-brain unit working through Vincent Renolf, the two Earthlings were perfectly comfortable and safe. Dora gazed about the somewhat narrow confines of the Comet’s fore cabin with a supreme happiness. It was all so dear to her. Would be dear to her memory for the rest of her life. The epitome of all honeymoons! Alone—incontestably alone—in a man-made contrivance hurtling in the empty cosmos. And love had made the harsh metallicness seem the tender caress of soft wool, had relegated the soul-awing visions of midnight into blessed dreams of a fairyland, had even muted the constant thunder of the atomic engines into a lullaby for their peaceful sleep.
Four weeks of celestial happiness. But with Saturn looming large, Dora asked the first concrete question that had come to her mind since they had left Earth. “Tell me, Vince, just what do you have in mind? We are almost on Saturn. See there—its rings are already distinguishable as composed of innumerable small bodies.”
The man nodded. “We’ll be within his miniature planetary system in twenty hours. As to what we are doing here: Firstly, we are trying to trace down the mysterious emanations identified in my mind—and in your father’s too when he heard them—as coming from a menace. Secondly, we’re here to find out the mystery of what happens to extra-terrestrial civilization. A sort of two-part purpose.
“Since my best efforts to trace the source of the emanations failed, I don’t know where to look first. Rather odd that the signals burn out any sort of apparatus as delicate as a direction finder, but they do. So we will hope to run across the source—what we call the menace for lack of knowledge about it—in exploring the planets to find out why their rational life has vanished so inexplicably.”
Perplexed, the girl stared at him. “Why is that such a mystery? When a planet ages and loses its water and air, and its inner heat too, so that it is nothing but a lifeless husk, how can you expect the race populating it to survive?”
Renolf agreed in a rather puzzled way. “Yes, that’s logical. Very logical. In fact, that must be the answer. Yet, somehow, before we left Earth, I had other ideas about it. Ideas that made it seem unreasonable for worlds to bury their own cultures. Those other ideas, have I lost them, or——”
Suddenly Vincent arose. He stepped heavily and moved ponderously toward a number of cupboards hung on one wall of the cabin. Their deceleration supplied them with three times normal gravity. In their laterally situated cabin, it acted as a floor attraction. That amount of gravity would have been detrimental in their life on Earth. But here in the space ship, it exercised and put strain upon muscles that might otherwise have begun to atrophy from little use. It made a splendid balance between their actual inactivity and the involuntary use of their muscular system to withstand such a force.
DORA watched him. She saw him rummage for a moment. Then he drew away. In his hand he held a leather band which carried opposite each end two small boxes of metal. In those boxes was an intricacy of miniature apparatus more complicated than that of a seventeen-jewel watch. They were receptors for a new kind of radiation—infinitely sensitive. A product of the super-Renolf’s hyper-human scientific genius. At the other end of the radiation was a buried unit of ten-undying—yet dead—brains—ten masterful brains which worked as one in the mind of the man wearing the headband.
Vincent fumbled with the headband, the triple gravity making his fingers clumsy. Suddenly Dora, who had sat quiet, rose and faced him. “You are going to put it on?”
“Yes, of course. You see, honey, those ideas I had regarding the mystery of lost civilizations came to me while I had the headband on. I must put it on again and find out what they are.”
“But, Vince!” The young wife’s voice held a note of uneasiness. “It hasn’t been for a month now that you’ve had it on. Do you remember our agreement?”
“Of course, vixen,” he bantered. “For eight hours by the chronometer I’m yours. For eight hours I’m his. The rest of the traditional twenty-four hours of a day being for sleep, when I’m nobody’s. How’s that suit her royal highness?”
Then Vincent slipped on the head-band and slipped over the tiny catch switches which opened the receptors. From across the tremendous gulf of frigid space came the superswift radiations from Earth. Carrying the memory sensations of the ten-brain unit, they brought to Renolf an incalculable wisdom.
Dora turned her face away. She did not care to see again the weird metamorphosis which changed her husband from a common mortal to a creature of inestimable lore. The bliss of their honeymoon was over. From now on they would have to put up with a third party. In her most secret heart, Dora sometimes wished her father had failed or——
Renolf spent a long half hour in moody thought. A process of new thought as far above ordinary thought as the reasoning of a man is above the ruminations of a clever dog. Dora occupied herself with gazing out upon the eerie mystery of the star-spangled void. At first it had been awesome and frightening, horrifying in its brooding depth, terrifying in its aching emptiness. They had seemed to drift enchanted in an endless nightmare of spotted midnight. It gave the impression of life swiftly ebbing away in a titanic cauldron of timelessness and endlessness. Those first few days Dora had not dared to look too long at one time into the awful face of eternity.
Then it had changed. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least callousness. And when the asteroids had swung beneath them—cold, barren rocks fulfilling an ancient destiny—Dora had gazed at them eagerly. Later, when Jupiter had enlarged to an orange, before dwindling again, Dora was a devout neophyte of the space ways. It would have suited her by then to head for the nearest star.
SUDDENLY, Dora started. The super-Renolf’s emotionless, somber voice was ringing in her ears:
“The mystery of the solar system’s lost civilizations! Let me explain. Organic life, as we know it in our chemistry, springs up on a planet when that body is propitious for life. Certain conditions—temperature, atmosphere, amount of received radiation—when coming together, stir the pot of creation. From this crucible of Nature’s laboratory fly the sparks of organic life—the only kind of life possible in our conception, and in this kind of system of planets. Perhaps, on planets circling other, stranger suns, there are other kinds of animate life. But to us they would be utterly alien, subject to a totally different set of conditions.
“In our little Sun system, then, only organic life, as we know it on Earth, can arise. Yet it was possible for it to conceive itself on other bodies besides Earth. In fact, the only limiting conditions are that the body must be large enough to hold a fairly adequate atmosphere, and they must not be too far from the central Sun.
“The asteroids, and most of the planetary satellites, are thus too small to have ever blown a protective and life-giving atmosphere over a budding form of life. Possibly they have sparse and undeveloped forms of vegetable life, but not more.
“The rest of the bodies of the solar system have either been unable to produce life because of certain major deficiencies, or have nurtured an evolution, or will in the future do so. Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and their satellites—and possible trans-Plutonian bodies—are dead, always have been, and always will be. They are too far out in chilling, deathly space, too far from the Sun. For one requisite of organic life is the radiation of the central luminary.
“The moons of Saturn and Jupiter, however, though remote from the Sun, can conceivably have produced organic life. Those two giant planets themselves radiate a tremendous amount of heat and light and ultra-violet radiation—proxy suns, in plain words. Enough to duplicate life-promotive energy forces. They themselves, the parent planets, are in the category of future abodes of life, when they have cooled and become solid.
“Saturn, by its density measurement, is hardly more than a yellow-hot mass of molten liquids. Jupiter is semisolid, but also partially liquid, as is proved by the fact that its equatorial regions rotate faster than its poles.
“But the moons of these two great pl
anets cooled down ages ago. Of Saturn’s ten moons, only three are of sufficient size to warrant considering them as having had an atmosphere. They are Rhea and Iapetus, both smaller than Earth’s Moon, and Titan, larger than our Moon. Of Jupiter’s nine moons, four are of a size capable of sustaining a breathable air envelope: Ganymede, larger than Mercury; Callisto, as large as Mercury; Io, equal to Earth’s Moon; and Europa, somewhat smaller.
“Those seven bodies of the solar system, plus Mars, Earth’s Moon, Venus, and Mercury, make up the list of heavenly orbs on which organic life has been, or still is, possible. Of that group, Venus and Earth are in the most propitious condition at present. Venus should be inhabited, as Earth is. All the other bodies mentioned have passed through the propitious and evolutionary stage ages—eons—ago.
“I can picture from imagination a most glorious picture. Move time backward, say a few million years. Earth was but a steaming jungle, starting its evolutionary tableau. Rhea, Iapetus, Titan, Io and our Earth’s Moon, were in the mellow twilight of a long age of sentient life. Mars, Ganymede, and Callisto—perhaps Mercury, on its night side—were perhaps in the period of intelligence’s uprise, as man on Earth is now—simultaneous civilizations, not so far removed in degree. Doubtless they had interplanetary communication. Perhaps they existed together for a time as a great kingdom. No one knows.
“But now the mystery of it. Earth to-day harbors rational life, in a period when only one other body is in its prime—Venus. Yet what happened to those previous races of thinking creatures?”
The question hung in the air of the cabin, an enigma as mysterious as the brooding mysteries of space.
Dora essayed no answer. She felt her words would be futile in the superman’s mentality. But Renolf voiced her opinions for her.
“Their air grew thin. Their water vanished into the parched greediness of space. Their parent worlds grew cold and harsh to warmth-needing life. Such is the apparent answer. But it is no true answer!
“For think once, in the ages of existence left to mankind on Earth before our planet becomes as Mars is, will he not arise to a position supreme above Nature? Should not his science, already creating wonders on Earth, become a mighty thing indeed in another million years? So mighty that it would be laughably easy to produce artificial heat and air and food? And what more does organic life need to exist? Let the parent planet die—man would then be sufficient by his own powers.
“Accordingly, there is one of two answers. Either those planets mentioned still support intelligent life—a result of their evolution—or for some unfathomable reason each civilization died off. The answer”—Renolf pointed to Saturn looming large—“may lie there. We will find it by visiting, in turn, each of the planets which may have sheltered rational life at one time or another. I have picked Saturn first because I wished merely to work from the outermost planet sunward.”
The cabin of the Comet fell to silence. But a silence filled with the brooding of a superbrain. A multiple brain struggling with titanic, age-old secrets. Renolf wanted to wrest from the eternal void its most cherished mysteries. Would the super-Renolf succeed in even scratching at the door to that room of hidden things jealously guarded by hoary time and ageless space? And the mysterious, whispering menace—where was it lurking?
VIII.
SATURN’S largest moon belched out of space like a colossal cannon ball. At the controls, Renolf sent the Comet in a narrowing spiral around it. Then he lowered the craft till it skimmed over mountains worn flat by ceaseless atmospheric erosion. An apparatus, at the flick of his finger, automatically analyzed the outside air for density and constitution. Renolf read the results aloud:
“Density very low, one-half millimeter. Less than one thousandth of Earth’s. Which is to be expected. Countless eons of time have elapsed since cooling. Gas molecules obey no master—they wander into the void. Analysis of what is here shows a preponderance of oxygen. Perhaps five million years ago the pressure was, say, eighty millimeters—one tenth Earth’s.
“Animate creatures, then, with very large lung capacity, or else a correspondingly slower metabolism, perhaps existed. That the atmosphere was at that time mainly oxygen is a foregone conclusion. In fact, every planet’s atmosphere, when the crust has hardened, must be largely, or partly, oxygen.
“In some of my laboratory work on Earth, I found proof more than once that the oxygen atom is one of the most stable of them all. It is natural that the primal balls of blue-hot molten matter, which are the birth forms of planets, produce in their interior under stupendous pressure and heat a great deal of the stable oxygen atom. The bulk of it then combines chemically with solid matter upon cooling. The remainder—and there always is some left—makes up part of the atmosphere.”
Below them the desolate landscape of a dead world drifted by: time-worn mountains, gasping lake and river beds, rolling hollows where once oceans spewed dancing whitecaps, livid rents betokening some great upheaval—such was Titan. And where were the signs of former civilization? Were they already lost in the limbo of racing time?
Suddenly Dora pointed downward with a tremulous cry. Renolf spun the Comet back and around. They stared eagerly. But it was nothing more than a dozen crumbly stone walls, almost level with the ground. Renolf switched on the nonferrous magnetism engine, which, producing diamagnetism, held the ship repulsed above ground. Then, with the gentlest of rear rocket jets, he maneuvered the Comet all around the spot.
It had obviously been a stone building. Probably as large in extent as an Earthly castle. Lichen-covered, round-edged, the ruins cried aloud their tremendous age. The obliterating hand of inexorable Time had all but puffed it away.
“An antiquity,” commented Renolf as he shot the Comet away, “to which Earth’s recorded history is a mere snap of the fingers.”
They went on in the dismal barrenness. Up above giant Saturn, with his rings turned edgewise, hovered eternally. Titan turned but one face to the parent planet, like Mercury to the Sun. In a bath of lurid yellow, they saw, after that, several more of the stone ruins. Some were extensive, suggesting the former site of a small city.
“These must be the relics of a very early civilization, preserved after the rapid loss of air and water—which are Nature’s destructive tools. And unless something unforseen happened, there should be much newer remains, of a grander, later civilization.”
Dora was first again to see and point. Renolf looked. His eyes sparkled. He brought the ship hovering. Like a great transparent eggshell, a large hemispherical structure squatted incongruously in the desolateness. It was totally out of place—a flower in a desert, a radio in a Neaederthal Man’s cave. It was truly Cyclopean. In diameter it could not have been less than five miles’—and perfectly transparent!
Renolf sucked in his breath. “There we have it! Rational life totally shielded from Nature, absolutely independent of the outside. Air, food, water, heat—all produced within, by an incredible science!”
Dora’s eyes widened. “Could there be people—beings in there now?”
The man shook his head. “No. See—the transparent protective dome is riddled here and there, probably by meteors. At one time they must have had a subsidiary screen or force to demolish meteors, which on a thin-aired planet such as this is a constant menace. No, it is a tomb—a vast coffin. Despite the apparent newness of the thing, it is probably ages old. Just think what a marvelous substance that dome is made of. Eternities have failed to crumble or corrode it!”
SUDDENLY Renolf darted the Comet downward. Dora looked at him in bewilderment. Then she saw what he was up to. They were dropping toward a particularly large hole in the hemisphere. With the magical control of diamagnetism, Renolf slid the ship easily through the meteoric rent. He coasted the Comet slowly over the structures below the huge dome.
What had seemed to be an orderly arrangement of well-kept buildings from outside, now revealed itself as the jumble of a dilapidation. It was a junk heap. Here and there a tower of leaning metal stood fre
akishly upright. The rest was leveled, shattered, crumbled. In places, where walls had fallen away, were mazes of cracked machinery.
“Yet it is a tribute to their advancement,” spoke Renolf, “that even this remains. Here, at least, they had metals and building materials that have withstood the ravages of time, the disintegrator. This represents, without doubt, Titan’s latest and most evolutionized civilization.”
“And the—people?” asked Dora in a hushed voice.
Renolf’s eyes became bleak. “Scattered to dust, to atoms—millenniums ago. But the mystery of it!” His voice stirred from its calm apathy: “The mystery of their tame disappearance. Why did they not live on? What conceivable catastrophe could have killed them off? Even the mightiest of earthquakes, tidal waves, cannot totally extinguish a race as obviously highly advanced as this!”
“Isn’t it possible,” interposed Dora, “that they migrated to another planet?”
“Possible, but not probable,” returned Renolf deprecatingly. “Independent of Nature for substance, they would have no incentive to go through the extreme trouble of migrating to another world. At the time Titan here was at its glory, so were all the other habitable worlds—Jupiter’s four great moons, our Earthly Moon, and Mercury. Why should they move to other dying worlds? And to move to a young one—like Mars, Earth at that time—it would have been more trouble than it was worth.”
Renolf brooded a moment, then continued: “No, all things point to the logical premise that once firmly established on their own native world, free of extraneous conditions, they would remain. Like gods they must have been, defying death to their race, even though their birth planet had long since ceased to give them sustenance. Then—yes, then what? Why had death won at the last?”
With this unanswered query echoing in the cabin, Renolf dabbed at the controls of the Comet. Like a silvery bullet, the ship soared up and away from death-haunted Titan. The glasslike hemisphere remained visible to the last. It shone in the Saturn light like a jewel—a jewel whose heart had bled white ages before.