“As I saw it, what we were primarily interested in was this: Are all the planets of this galaxy jungle-ized, or aren’t they? The mathematics involved—”
He saw that the men were staring at him. “Good heavens,” somebody said, “if you can prove that—”
Triumph was sweet, but it had a strong drink quality, too. It put a tremor into Grosvenor’s voice, as he interrupted:
“It is proved, sir. The three-star systems we have just visited were selected by Nexial mathematics. When examination verified that their habitable planets were jungle worlds, it followed automatically that every habitable globe in this entire vast galaxy was a land of jungle and beasts.”
He had them now; there was no doubt of that. Men stirred, and looked at each other. Finally, the great Smith said:
“But, Grosvenor, what about the intelligences that rule this galaxy? We’ve opened the multiscreen several times; and the roar of myriad thoughts remains. There are colossal minds out there. They can’t possibly be living on monster-inhabited jungle planets.”
Grosvenor said quietly: “Mr. Smith, this whole problem is solved. The intelligence out there is a single entity. We know what it is. If you will have a moment of patience—”
“Gentlemen”—it was Morton, smiling but grim—“what you are hearing is no fantastic theory. These are the facts. You are listening to the recount of the most brilliant one-man show that has ever been staged. Go on, Grosvenor.”
There was dead silence, then, except for the pattern that Grosvenor’s voice made against the quiet vastness of the control room.
He told them the thoughts that had led up to the finale, his attempts to fit in what Gourlay had said about hyper-space, the need for a gas environment, and possibly for some nearby directive to control the aim of the transmitter.
“I went down finally to the engine room to check the graph of power discharge of automatic C-9,” Grosvenor smiled almost apologetically. “We have so many automatic devices aboard this ship, that some of them never receive any attention except mechanical checkups. This is particularly true of our automatic screens against the presence of tenuous matter in space.
“Suffice to say that C-9 had been on from the moment we heard the space whisperings until we slapped on the multiple screen, the complicated energy structure of which, of course, assumed C-9’s duties.”
Grosvenor went on: “With Commander Morton’s permission I then had the multiple screen briefly cut off, sent out a G-ship and obtained a representative sample of the space around us. I tested this myself, then for verification took it to Mr. Kent who—”
“What’s that?” Kent was on his feet; there was a wild look in his eyes. “Was that gas you brought me a sample of surrounding space? Why, it’s a hydrogen carbon compound, stabilized by a three-tie juncture with the brain cell element that—”
He broke off: “Good heavens, man, it’s life. It’s—”
“But why does it jungle-ize planets?” a man cried.
Grosvenor silenced the gathering clamor by raising his hand. “I can answer that, too. The problem actually was, what did it feed on? I tried various methods of stimulation and—”
The Anabis lay in an immense, suffused, formless form, spread through all the space of the second galaxy. It writhed a little, feebly, in a billion portions of its body, shrinking with automatic adjustment away from the destroying fury of two billion blazing suns, but pressing down tight against the myriad planets, sucking with a feverish, insatiable hunger around the quadrillion tingling points where were dying the creatures that gave it life.
It wasn’t enough. Through all the countless, tenuous cells of its titanic structure, that dread knowledge of an imminent starvation seeped to the farthest reaches of its weakened body-gigantic.
Not enough food, the dreary message pulsed on and on through its imponderable elements, not enough, not enough —its mass was too big. It had made a fatal mistake in growing with such vast abandon during the early days.
In those years the future had seemed limitless, the Galactic space where its form could wax ever huger had seemed of endless- extent; and it had expanded with all the vaunting, joyous egoism of a lowborn grown conscious of stupendous destiny.
It was lowborn. In the dim beginning was only gas oozing from a mistcovered swamp. Odorless, tasteless, colorless gas, yet somehow, someway, a dynamic combination was struck; and there was life.
At first it was nothing but a puff of invisible mist ardently darting hither and thither over the muggy, muddy waters that had spawned it, darting, twisting, diving, pursuing, incessantly and with a gathering alertness, a gathering need, striving to be present while something— anything—-was being killed.
For the death of others was its life.
What a terrible joy it was to swoop over two insects buzzing in a furious death struggle, envelope them, and wait, trembling in every gassy atom, for the life force of the defeated to spray with tingling effect against its own insubstantial elements.
There was a timeless period then when its life was only that aimless search for food; and its world was a narrow swamp, a gray, nubiferous environment where it lived its contented, active, idyllic, almost mindless existence.
But even in that world of suffused sunlight it grew bigger imperceptibly. It needed more food, more than any haphazard search for dying insects could bring it.
And so it developed cunnings, special little knowledges that fitted the dank swamp. It learned which were the insects that preyed and which the prey. It learned the hunting hours of every species, and where the tiny non-flying monsters lay in wait—the flying ones were harder to keep track of. It learned to use its eviscerated shape like a breeze to sweep unsuspecting victims to their fate.
Its food supply became adequate, then more than adequate. It grew and once more it hungered.
By purest necessity it became aware of a world beyond the swamp. And, oh, what a day it was when it ventured forth, and came upon two gigantic armored beasts at the bloody climax of a death struggle. The sustained thrill of the defeated monster’s life force streaming through its vitals, the stupendous quantity of force provided ecstasy greater than that experienced during all its previous life put together.
In one brief hour, while the victor devoured the writhing vanquished, the Anabis grew by ten thousand times ten thousand.
During the single day and night period that followed, the steaming jungle world was enveloped. The Anabis over-flowed every ocean, every continent, and spread up into the brighter reaches of the atmosphere, where the sun shone on it directly for the first time. - Explosive result! Later, in the days of its intelligence, it learned that sunlight provided a necessary reaction on its elements, provided mass and weight.
But in that first minute there was only the effect, the dynamic expansion. On the second day it reached the first, adjoining planet. It reached the limits of the galaxy in a measurable time, stretched out instinctively for the shining stuff of other star systems and met defeat in distances that seemed to yield nothing to its groping, tenuous matter.
The days of its power seemed but a moment. Jungle worlds, with their prolific life-and-death cycles chilled; the supply of life force diminished notably. It hungered and once more grew in cunning.
It discovered that by concentrating its elements it could make holes in space, go through, and come out at a distant point. It learned to transport matter in this fashion. It began to jungle-ize planets long before it discovered that some of them were inhabited by curious, intelligent things.
It believed—and there was no one to dispute—that primeval worlds provided the most life force. It transported great slices of other jungle worlds through hyper-space. It knocked cold planets nearer their suns.
And it wasn’t enough.
The coming of the ship brought hope. It would follow the ship to wherever it had come from; and, after that, no more wild, mindless, greedy growth—
Pain! The ship after darting aimlessly about, landed on a barre
n planet, and was sending forth incredible agony.
Darkness made no difference. The Space Beagle crouched on a vast plain of jagged metal, every porthole shedding light, great searchlights pouring down their flood of illumination on the row on row of engines that were tearing enormous holes into the hard, all-iron world.
There was no attempt to make steel, simply the creating of unstable iron torpedoes that were launched into space at the rate of one a second. That was the beginning.
By midnight the manufacturing machine itself began to be manufactured; and each one in turn created those slim, dark torpedoes that soared into the surrounding night scattering their substance a quarter of a light year to every side. Thirty thousand years those torpedoes would shed their destroying atoms; and they were designed to remain within the gravitational field of their galaxy, but never to fall on a planet or into a sun.
As the slow, red-dawn crept toward fruition, Engineer Pennons reported hoarsely to Morton:
“We’re now turning out nine thousand a second; and I think we can safely leave the machines to finish the job. I’ve put a partial screen around the planet to prevent interference. Three more iron worlds properly located; and I think our bulky friend will begin to have a hollow feeling in his vital parts. But what comes after that?”
Morton smiled grimly: “N. G. C. fifty thousand three hundred forty seven.”
Pennons whistled. “Nine hundred million light years! Do you think it will follow?”
“It’s got to. The alternative is to be destroyed by our torpedoes, or a blind stab at another galaxy of its own choosing. But we’ll see—”
Through telescopes they watched the faint fuzz of a gas stream out behind them and follow.
Morton turned finally from the eye-piece. “We’ll go on for about a year,” he said, “then go invisible and turn aside.”
As he was going out of the door a few minutes later, he came upon Zeller and Grosvenor. The metallurgist was saying:
“Er, Grosvenor, I have a little problem in metal chemistry that I think needs tying up with an energy function. Do you think Nexialism could—”
Grosvenor said: “Why, I think so, Mr. Zeller. What—”
Morton passed on, smiling.
THE END.
Carrying a little ball of human civilization, the expeditionary ship Space Beagle sped at an ever increasing velocity through a night that had no end . . .
This is the story of the strangest voyage of exploration ever made.
Man had reached the outer planets and continued to press on, searching out the secrets of the limitless universe. Countless light-years from home, the Space Beagle and its crew of skilled specialists suddenly found themselves no longer detached observers, engaged in desperate struggles for survival.
Far out among the stars, they faced alien life forms that surpassed any earthly nightmare: the tentacled, cat-like monster that fed on the energy of living beings; a weird, bird-like race with deep hypnotic powers; a malignant creature that could pass through solid matter—and, marooned in space, sought to make their ship its home.
In their bizarre battles with such foes, the explorers found strange, basic flaws in their earthly sciences. One man knew the answers. But in seeking to use his vital new knowledge, he discovered the human antagonisms and desire for power persisted even among this isolated and hard-press band—discovered again that man can be his own most dangerous enemy.
A.E. van Vogt has long been noted as a master of the intricate combination of action, suspense, and imagination that produces the best of science fiction. THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE is an original that derives from two of his most popular short stories. “Discord in Scarlet” and “The Black Destroyer” first told of some of the Beagle’s adventures. Now the author has woven in the full story of this unprecedented journey and the men who made it, creating one of the most absorbing and exciting of his many science fiction tales.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION
IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM
COPYRIGHT, 1939, 1943, 1950, BY A.E. VAN VOGT
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 1230 SIXTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 20, N.Y.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY KINGSPORT PRESS, INC., KINGSPORT, TENN.
To
Ford McCormack
CHAPTER ONE
On and on Coeurl prowled. The black, moonless, almost starless night yielded reluctantly before a grim reddish dawn that crept up from his left. It was a vague light that gave no sense of approaching warmth. It slowly revealed a nightmare landscape.
Jagged black rock and a black, lifeless plain took form around him. A pale red sun peered above the grotesque horizon. Fingers of light probed among the shadows. And still there was no sign of the family of id creatures that he had been trailing now for nearly a hundred days.
He stopped finally, chilled by the reality. His great forelegs twitched with a shuddering movement that arched every razor-sharp claw. The thick tentacles that grew from his shoulders undulated tautly. He twisted his great cat head from side to side, while the hair-like tendrils that formed each ear vibrated frantically, testing every vagrant breeze, every throb in the ether.
There was no response. He felt no swift tingling along his intricate nervous system. There was no suggestion anywhere of the presence of the id creatures, his only source of food on this desolate planet. Hopelessly, Coeurl crouched, an enormous catlike figure silhouetted against the dim, reddish sky line, like a distorted etching of a black tiger in a shadow world. What dismayed him was the fact that he had lost touch. He possessed sensory equipment that could normally detect organic id miles away. He recognized that he was no longer normal. His overnight failure to maintain contact indicated a physical breakdown. This was the deadly sickness he had heard about. Seven times in the past century he had found coeurls, too weak to move, their otherwise immortal bodies emaciated and doomed for lack of food. Eagerly, then, he had smashed their unresisting bodies, and taken what little id was still keeping them alive.
Coeurl shivered with excitement, remembering those meals. Then he snarled audibly, a defiant sound that quavered on the air, echoed and re-echoed among the rocks, and shuddered back along his nerves. It was an instinctive expression of his will to live.
And then, abruptly, he stiffened.
High above the distant horizon he saw a tiny glowing spot. It came nearer. It grew rapidly, enormously, into a metal ball. It became a vast, round ship. The great globe, shining like polished silver, hissed by above Coeurl, slowing visibly. It receded over a black line of hills to the right, hovered almost motionless for a second, then sank down out of sight.
Coeurl exploded from his startled immobility. With tigerish speed, he raced down among the rocks. His round, black eyes burned with agonized desire. His ear tendrils, despite their diminished powers, vibrated a message of id in such quantities that his body felt sick with the pangs of his hunger.
The distant sun, pinkish now, was high in the purple and black sky when he crept up behind a mass of rock and gazed from its shadows at the ruins of the city that sprawled below him. The silvery ship, in spite of its size, looked small against the great spread of the deserted, crumbling city. Yet about the ship was leashed aliveness, a dynamic quiescence that, after a moment, made it stand out, dominating the foreground. It rested in a cradle made by its own weight in the rocky, resisting plain which began abruptly at the outskirts of the dead metropolis.
Coeurl gazed at the two-legged beings who had come from inside the ship. They stood in little groups near the bottom of an escalator that had been lowered from a brilliantly lighted opening a hundred feet above the ground. His throat thickened with the immediacy of his need. His brain grew dark with the impulse to charge out and smash these flimsy-looking creatures whose bodies emitted the id vibrations.
Mists of memory stopped that impulse when it was still onl
y electricity surging through his muscles. It was a memory of the distant past of his own race, of machines that could destroy, of energies potent beyond all the powers of his own body. The remembrance poisoned the reservoirs of his strength. He had time to see that the beings wore something over their real bodies, a shimmering transparent material that glittered and flashed in the rays of the sun.
Cunning came, understanding of the presence of these creatures. This, Coeurl reasoned for the first time, was a scientific expedition from another star. Scientists would investigate, and not destroy. Scientists would refrain from killing him if he did not attack. Scientists in their way were fools.
Bold with his hunger, he emerged into the open. He saw the creatures become aware of him. They turned and stared. The three nearest him moved slowly back toward larger groups. One individual, the smallest of his group, detached a dull metal rod from a sheath at his side, and held it casually in one hand.
Coeurl was alarmed by the action, but he loped on. It was too late to turn back.
Elliott Grosvenor remained where he was, well in the rear, near the gangplank. He was becoming accustomed to being in the background. As the only Nexialist aboard the Space Beagle, he had been ignored for months by specialists who did not clearly understand what a Nexialist was, and who cared very little anyway. Grosvenor had plans to rectify that. So far, the opportunity to do so had not occurred.
The communicator in the headpiece of his space suit came abruptly to life. A man laughed softly, and then said. “Personally, I’m taking no chances with anything as large as that.”
As the other spoke, Grosvenor recognized the voice of Gregory Kent, head of the chemistry department. A small man physically, Kent had a big personality. He had numerous friends and supporters aboard the ship, and had already announced his candidacy for the directorship of the expedition in the forthcoming election. Of all the men facing the approaching monster, Kent was the only one who had drawn a weapon. He stood now, fingering the spindly metalite instrument.
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