Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  The Rothel stared in wonder at the phenomenon, their fingers tightening on the burnished weapons they carried. Many of them must have expected sudden death, yet they did not cringe; fear had been bred out of them centuries ago.

  “Do not be too concerned,” Fai Torran advised. “Those devices, which you have just seen leaving the Earth, shall not return for three years. There is no immediate danger from the globes. Nor was their departure a very inspiring spectacle. They weigh less than two kilograms a piece.”

  The Caucasian's lips curved with saturnine humor.

  A rising growl came from the multitude of Rothel, presaging an attack. They felt relieved, and they were impatient to finish their grim task.

  FAI TORRAN held up his hand. “Wait!” he commanded. “There is more to tell. By all the signs the next three years shall be peaceful and prosperous to you. But there is one thing for you to remember through this period of prosperity: The very ancient story of the farmer who, thinking he had made a great bargain, contracted to pay a man he had hired one grain of wheat on the first day he worked, two grains on the second day, four grains on the third day, eight grains on the fourth, and so on. Needless to remark, the farmer was soon dispossessed of all he owned, and was heavily in debt. Perhaps what I speak of seems a meaningless jargon, but its significance shall become clear in three years. Doubtless many of you shall live to witness the events to which I refer.”

  The Caucasian savant paused. Secure in his knowledge of coming events, he surveyed the multitude with a calm that bordered on indifference. Nareth, proud and grim as some genie of a forgotten lore, stood near by, arms folded across his breast.

  Delay galled the Rothel, masters now of an entire planet. Thin streams of incandescence flashed from their weapons, and with spattering bursts of flame, bit into the hidden barriers of the laboratory.

  The little Caucasian moved a switch. “That is all I have to say,” he stated casually; but his voice, amplified a thousandfold, still thundered dominantly above the roar of the multitude. “That is all I have to say except this: In a minute my workshop, and much that is in its vicinity, shall be torn apart by an atomic explosion. Those of you who can had best depart at once.”

  Thus Fai Torran and Nareth ceased to exist as men. And though the disciplined Rothel host retreated with calm efficiency, fully half their number perished in the blast. Emphasized thus, if was a night not easy to forget.

  However, the Rothel did forget, as far as they were able. Perhaps it is in the nature of every strong people to discredit promises of danger which they do not understand, and against which they have no defense. In the background of Rothel thoughts, tweaking uncertainties still lingered, to be dismissed with a shrug.

  Peace came, for there were no other nations left with which to war. There was time now to plan and to build and to dream. Cities arose, commerce thrived, luxury was reborn. Scientists returned their attentions to such impractical subjects as the stars.

  It had been long since the Rothel had last built an astronomer’s telescope. It had been ages since, in the ups and downs of their unpredictable career, humans had last launched a full-size space ship into the void. The nation to which Fai Torran and Nareth had belonged had possessed the necessary knowledge, but that nation had been exterminated. In the normal course of events it might require half a millennium to regain what had been lost.

  However, urged on by the eternal fascination of a mystery, the Rothel went to work with their new telescopes. During the first and second year they found the solar system almost unchanged from its ancient self, as mapped and described in the few musty records that archaeologists were able to unearth. Jupiter had a new moon, and its great red spot was missing. There had been minute shiftings in the orbits of several planets—nothing more. The stars across the interstellar vastness had moved a trifle, in some cases forming new constellations; but that was to be expected.

  Then came the first warnings. On the asteroid, Ceres, reddish spots, like masses of hot gas, appeared. The spots spread swiftly; benea3th them gigantic chasms became visible. The tiny planet took on a pitted, diseased aspect. Like a fruit from which large chunks have been gouged, Ceres began to shrink. A murky atmosphere surrounded it now, where there had been no atmosphere at all before. Just what was taking place the Rothel had no means of discovering, even though their telescopes were considerably better than those used in the remote twentieth century.

  Meanwhile, in swift succession, the numerous other asteroids were similarly affected, as though a plague were devouring them—a plague whose spread mounted with incredible momentum. The planet Mars fell prey to it, then the moons of Jupiter, huge Jupiter itself, Saturn and its satellites, Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto!

  For some reason—which the Rothel were inclined to associate with Fai Torran and his slave, Nareth—the Earth still remained untouched. But the savants of the Rothel knew that the disease would soon strike their home world.

  That it would be fatal was evident. Spectroscopic observations told that the murk around the diseased planets were composed of highly poisonous radio-active gases, produced as a by-product of the transmutation of elements and atomic disintegration. Deadly in the minutest quantities, it could not be filtered out of the air effectively. And there was every reason to suppose that other fatal circumstances would arise.

  Through space, nebulous, rose-tinted clouds shifted, traveling from world to world.

  NOT EVEN the Sun itself was immune to the pestilence. Perceptibly its radiations waned, as if shields of opaque vapor had been thrown over its incandescent photosphere to protect from the heat whatever was absorbing its substance.

  The Earth and the Moon were the last to be attacked. The Rothel saw then what the catastrophe was; they understood Fai Torran’s prophecy.

  It began like a deluge of meteors flaming against the stars on the night hemisphere of the planet, for from that direction came the onslaught. There were sounds of solid objects rushing through air, and the quaking thuds of their landing.

  Things of metal, cast in myriad forms, equipped with minds with which to think, and tools with which to put their thoughts and impulses into action. Some had propulsive mechanisms of their own, with which they had flown through space; others had been carried to Earth on vast flying platforms. And their numbers were already inconceivable.

  They had but one urge now. That was to reproduce their kind, to expand, to multiply. They needed materials with which to gratify this lust; the Earth was here, ready to supply these materials.

  Quickly they went to work, setting up their equipment. Gigantic excavators scooped the soil of the planet into transmutation furnaces. Any substance would serve their purpose; for the electrons and protons of its atomic structure could be rearranged to form any of the numerous elements they needed, in the necessary amounts.

  The Rothel saw the holocaust begin. They watched, as in a matter of hours, vast gaps appeared in the crust of the planet they had thought was their own. They saw clouds of red-hot vapor rise skyward, polluting the atmosphere. They heard the roar and the throb and the hiss of machines, hurtling over their heads in an endless stream.

  And since it was in their nature, the Rothel fought to stem the tide. They destroyed perhaps a hundred millions of the invaders, but it was nothing. The numbers of the metal things around them, doubled and redoubled with ever-increasing speed as the ranks of the workers grew. The machines seemed almost indifferent to the presence of the Rothel; and except to defend themselves, they made no direct effort to destroy their human enemies.

  Hot winds, polluted with poison, raged over the planet; still the cataclysmic toil of the conquerors went on unchecked. The crust of the world was already gouged away in spots, exposing the molten core in ragged, ulcerous patches.

  Those few Rothel who had managed to evade the poison and still lived, muttered that this was the vengeance of Fai Torran and Nareth.

  But out of the hell around them, metallic voices spoke in denial:

&n
bsp; “Not revenge; progress. We are stronger than men; we have fewer limitations. We are nearer the ultimate goal. Not revenge; progress.”

  So, amid thunder and earthquake, mankind perished. The forces which had terminated their dominance, continued to expand. Earth was stripped of its shell; but the machines, working now on immense raftlike constructions which floated on the molten interior, went on with their task which could terminate only when all available materials had been exhausted.

  ONE BY ONE the various bodies of the solar system ceased to exist. The asteroids were first, then Mars, then the satellites of Jupiter. They dissolved like garments eaten by moths, and the hordes which had been created out of their substance proceeded to the nearest source of more material. Scarcely a meteor within the orbit of Pluto was missed in the methodical quest for supplies.

  The Sun resisted the onslaught longest. Its huge bulk, heated at its core to a temperature measured in millions of degrees, offered obstacles that were awesome even to minds of metal. Yet the obstacles were surmounted; the shields of opaque vapor were thickened over the photosphere. The destroying radiations were subdued, and the white-hot gases of the Sun were drawn by reversed gravity into the workshops of the invaders, suspended in space. There they were cooled, transmuted, and wrought into shape.

  Finally nothing remained of the solar system but a phosphorescent mist, tenuous as the vapors of a comet’s tail. An end had been reached. Except for this residual trace, all matter in this part of the universe had been used to build the metal horde.

  It had grown now until its weight equaled the mass of a minor sun and its retinue. Split into many parts, it dispersed, hurtling at tremendous velocity toward fresh sources of expansion.

  Everywhere in the spherical firmament, stars gleamed.

  One detachment moved toward red Antares. Lost in the incalculable host were two tiny spheres, battered and worn now, but active as any of the varied forms around them.

  They had parented this colossal transformation. On the asteroid, Ceres, toiling alone, plying simple tools with the tactile arms with which they were equipped, they had mined materials and had fabricated the first of their companion machines, who, in turn, had helped them to build others. For three years they had been rulers of the metal host. But now as they had anticipated, it had grown too huge to be controlled.

  They coursed along side by side, and by means of delicate etheric impulses, they conversed:

  “We should be glad, master,” one said. “It is a time of great triumph.”

  “I did not expect to be glad, Nareth,” the other responded. “But perhaps I am. I do not know.”

  “Our work shall expand until it reaches the farthest star, the remotest galaxy, master—until it touches the ultimate limit where space curves back upon itself!” said the mechanical duplicate of the dead Nareth.

  “Perhaps,” replied Fai Torran’s double. “We shall see.”

  “It is inevitable, master! What else do you expect?” Nareth demanded.

  Fai Torran considered for a long moment. Many things passed through the channels of his mind. Was this that he and Nareth had done the final milestone of progress? He thought of the theories he had once entertained; of the disembodied intellects he had envisioned, detached from both flesh and metal; of interdimensional forces beyond imagining; of life, of love, of death; of strange, unfathomable yearnings. And he, who had always been so self-assured, felt small and lost and inadequate. After all, this achievement which he had done so much to bring about was a tiny thing compared to the endless wonders of the universe. The stars, burning with such steady calm, seemed deifically wise and inscrutable, promising the unknown. Obstacles, conflicts, destruction, fear, tolerance, mercy, the pattern of the universe—what did they all mean? What did anything mean? Or was his mind too small to grasp the meaning? Within him he thought he glimpsed a shadow, dim and grand; but he was not sure.

  Fai Torran was bewildered. He did not know whether to rejoice because of his part in the creation of this ruthless metal horde, or to feel remorse. And the future? That he could no longer foresee. There were too many circumstances, too many causes, too many purposes, that were beyond his understanding.

  “What do I expect, Nareth?” he questioned humbly. “I do not know.”

  They were borne on with the avalanche.

  The End

  ******************************

  Terror out of the Past,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Amazing Stories March 1940

  Novelette - 14590 words

  Perry Wilcox descends into the earth to solve

  the secret of an incredibly ancient civilization

  Chapter I

  “Rod!” Perry Wilcox shouted above the sound of bracewires singing in the slipstream: “In the name of Mathuselah! Look! There!”

  Doctor Roderick Murgatroyd’s shrewd old eyes probed swiftly along the line of Perry’s pointing arm. For a moment he couldn’t get it at all—couldn’t see what hundreds of airmen, flying over this place during the past three or four decades, had missed entirely. But then, as Perry circled the plane around in a steep bank, it came over the old adventurer-scientist gradually.

  There was a humping configuration of those hills down there—faint in outline as an old footprint in a rainwashed garden. It couldn’t have been noticed from the ground in a million years, and even from this altitude it was as vague in outline as the memory of a dream.

  The hills below looked like a gigantic Indian Mound, a mile in extent, and perfectly though dimly triangular. Regularly placed along its straight sides, were humps—foggy nodules—suggesting somehow the ruins of massive turrets, lying buried beneath layer on layer of repeated glacial silt.

  Rod Murgatroyd began to cuss, half to relieve his feelings and half as though to drive away the possibility that he and Perry were mistaken.

  “By the nine gods!” he roared back through the propstream. “It’s a fortress, Perry! You can almost see the battlements! But who in the name of the Cyclops could have built it? And when? And what in heck are we gonna do about it, Perry?…” Murgatroyd’s voice was almost a whine of eagerness at the end.

  Perry Wilcox was grinning broadly. “Do?” he returned, knowing that Rod had already passed the obvious answer and was planning far ahead. “What are you asking me that for? It ain’t much of a riddle, is it?” He swung the plane into the wind, and began the glide toward Schroeder’s hayfield.

  Forty-eight hours afterwards, behind a high board fence, erected for secrecy—that is, as much secrecy as they could hope to achieve in surroundings that knew them well—the small crew they had assembled was busy. A heavy diesel motor pounded steadily, driving a rotary drill that was digging deep into the side of a low knoll.

  For weeks the work went on. Five separate shafts were sunk into the ground, the first four of them reaching down to the solid stratum of fire rock, below the lowest and oldest fossil levels. From the depths of those first four shafts the drill brought up pieces of stone, some of which had angular corners, like carven blocks. And there were great lumps of rust too, that might have been reinforcing bars of steel. Thus the mystery deepened, taking on qualities of nervous unrest and expectancy.

  And then, far down in the fifth shaft, the spinning diamond points of the drill snarled into a new medium. An hour later, in the summer dusk, Roderick Murgatroyd stood shifting a few ounces of muck, brought up from the excavation, back and forth between his palms. Most of it was grey volcanic stuff, but mingled with it were long shreds of metal, scored out by the drill points. The metal was as soft and pliable as lead, but it possessed a very considerable tensile strength. Tests had already proved that it was lead, alloyed with certain rare-earth elements, probably to increase its toughness, and to render it immune to the ravages of time.

  “It’s true, Perry,” Murgatroyd said very quietly to the younger man beside him. “Truer than we could have quite understood before. Metal down there shows that. A carefully prepared alloy, such as only
a very well developed metallurgical science could have produced. A layer, or a shell. Or maybe just a block. We don’t know yet.

  “Yes, we’re on the right trail, Perry, even if it does look like a wild trail! Only yesterday the drill brought up fossils of an undisturbed stratum belonging to the Jurassic Period, the Age of Reptiles many millions of years ago! That means, Perry—” and the old Scotch-American’s voice was still more vibrant and tense—“that means that this lead alloy was made and put into place before—long before—the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, if we are to judge from the stratum immediately surrounding the metal, it is contemporary with the Carboniferous Era or Coal Period. That’s the point, Perry. There weren’t any men on this planet at that time. And there weren’t going to be any men for ages and ages. At least not Earth men…”

  Perry Wilcox nodded, controlling his own taut nerves. They were right at the edge of a staggering discovery, he was sure. It might break any minute now, or any hour. The drill machinery still vibrated, boring into that mass of metal deep in the ground. The pumps, sucking seepage water out of the excavation, still throbbed. The two men’s ears were tuned to the sound of the machinery. Any shift or change in the regular beat of the drill would have a story to tell. Thus they waited, as night began to fall, slowly but surely.

  * * *

  They hadn’t heard the soft purr of an expensive automobile on the roadway beyond the fence, at the foot of the slope. But now the sounds of a brief, angry argument at the gate, some hundred yards away, drew their startled, nervous attention. With so much that was unknown and unhintable pending, this was hardly the time to receive visitors of any kind, certainly not hostile visitors with ideas of their own.