03 Now To The Stars

by Captain W E Johns

  Although Vargo used the word spacesuits there was no actual equivalent in his own language, the term in Minoan, literally translated, being air-holding tube. The word for space was hardly ever used. Travel automatically meant space travel, this method of transporation being as normal as sea travel on Earth.

  The Professor said he would like to see as many planetoids as possible, large or small, and Vargo passed on the information to Borron - although he, and the entire crew for that matter - by reason of their high intelligence were already able to speak English well enough to keep pace with ordinary conversation.

  'One thing has been puzzling me for some time,' the Professor told Vargo.

  'This area of space seems to be entirely free from meteors and comets.'

  Vargo appeared to be slightly surprised by this observation. It is not entirely free. Some come in from outer space, but not often; and we rely on the Watch Squadron to give us warning of the likelihood of such visitations anywhere and at any time. For the rest, Borron knows the areas where such things occur commonly and takes care to avoid them.

  Ships are sometimes lost, nevertheless, either from collisions with meteors on a course normally free from them, or from an error of calculation on the part of the navigator. Watch how our position is checked and cross-checked constantly with the stars. Borron knows exactly where he is. He must, otherwise we might easily become lost and spend the rest of our lives trying to find our way home to Mino. That once happened to a ship of the Remote Survey Fleet. It lost its bearings in a cloud of meteoric dust and hope for the crew had long been given up when it returned. They had some strange adventures those men, for running out of even the emergency rations they had to land for food and water on unknown worlds. Only three of the original crew of seven survived.'

  Rex wished the Professor had not raised this disturbing subject. 'It wouldn't be easy to lose your way?' he suggested.

  It can happen very easily,' declared Vargo. 'I doubt if you, alone, would ever find your way back to Earth, now that it is one of a million stars, dwarfed by bodies that are nearer to us.'

  Rex said no more. He felt it was better not to know too much about these things.

  Anyway, at this juncture Borron pointed out to him such a world as he never expected to see. There was nothing but water. The globe was completely inundated. Rex found that a world of water was almost beyond comprehension, never mind imagination. Nowhere, he thought, could there be a more graphic illustration of that incomprehensible power, gravity.

  Even allowing for the fact that water was merely a mixture of gases its weight was such that it must always run down any incline. On this small planetoid the slope was plain to see, yet the water did not run off.

  Gravity, obviously, slight though it must be on such a small body, was still sufficient to hold the water in place.

  Yet, pondered Rex, if it did run off, where would it run? Looked at like that the whole thing became ridiculous. The same argument could be applied to the great oceans of the Earth, of course, where water could be seen bending over the horizon, so to speak. It did not run off; nor did it flood the land on the lower side of the globe. But in that case, reasoned Rex, the pull of gravity was proportionate to the size of the globe. No wonder the ancients refused to accept the theory that the world was round, saying that if it were the water would run off.

  The planetoid was not a solid ball of water although it looked like it, Vargo said. The water was probably shallow, although as landing was impossible the depth was not known. Their old records said that there had once been land - points of rock. These must have sunk out of sight. They had not been washed away, for without an atmosphere there could be no wind, and as they could see for themselves the water lay like a sheet of glass, without a ripple. There never could be a ripple - unless the little planet one day managed to collect some air, which was not impossible.

  Rex wondered if there were any fish in the waters of this watery world.

  No one knew, and without some sort of landing device no one ever would know. For the same reason it had been impossible to take a sample of the water in order to ascertain its chemical contents.

  As they stood gazing down on what appeared to be an endless sheet of burnished steel the Professor reminded them that on Earth the lost continent of Atlantis had sunk beneath the waves; and a rise in the present water level of a mere fifty feet would leave only the tops of mountains, and a few high plateaux, showing.

  The ship went on its way. There was another long silence, broken at last by Vargo, who said they were now approaching Jax, the world of grass.

  `Do you mean nothing else grows except grass?' asked Rex.

  'Yes. It grows everywhere except where the rock comes through the ground.'

  'Is there no other form of life?' inquired the Professor.

  'There may be. Borron does not know. To explore is not possible, so tall and strong and thick is the grass. I have not been to the place myself,'

  explained Vargo, 'but Borron says the edges of the grass are so sharp that they cut like knives.'

  Sounds like some sort of cactus,' opined Tiger.

  Soon you will see, for Borron is looking for a landing ground,' replied Vargo.

  Through his window Rex looked down upon a globe of emerald green, broken only here and there by ridges of rock and an occasional plateau, towards one of which the Tauma was sinking. The surface looked safe enough for a landing anywhere, but his aviation experience told him that from an altitude an apparently inviting surface could be a death trap. A field of tall green corn has often overturned a pilot who took it for a well-grazed meadow.

  The ship went on down and presently scratched its landing feet on a small island of what looked like limestone in an ocean of vivid green. In the absence of an atmosphere there could be no wind, and as there was no wind the sea of grass remained as motionless as a picture. So closely packed grew the grass that it was possible only to see the tops, and for that reason the depth of the sea, otherwise the height of the grass, could not be ascertained. There was not a movement anywhere.

  Rex would have said there was no point in getting out of the ship; they could see everything there was to see from where they were. Apparently the Professor thought otherwise, for with his usual enthusiasm he started to get into his spacesuit. The others followed his example, and after the usual delay they went through the airlock to stand, somewhat unsteadily, for their weight was negligible, on the surface of the planetoid Jax.

  After a thoughtful survey of the monotonous panorama the Professor, swaying slightly, made his way cautiously down the nearest slope with the obvious intention of examining the grass from close quarters. Rex went with him, while the others, presumably thinking that the reward was not likely to be worth the trouble, remained where they were, watching. Not that there appeared to be the slightest risk of danger.

  It was soon evident to Rex that the grass was in fact a sort of bamboo which grew even more tightly packed than wheat in a cornfield. He imagined it would be difficult, if not impossible, to force a passage through it. But what amazed him more than anything was the height of the stuff in comparison with the thickness of the stalk. The growth was not less than

  twenty feet high, yet the stalk was no thicker than a knitting needle.

  Such a phenomenon would be impossible on Earth where wind or rain, or both, would lay the crop flat. But here, apparently, there was neither wind nor rain, so all the stems had to support was its slender leaves, and, near the top, a white ball that was, Rex assumed, the blossom or the fruit. In this, however, he was mistaken, as he was soon to learn.

  As he stood still, wondering whence came the water to keep the growth alive, he became aware of a faint humming noise, like the twang of a banjo string; but the curious thing was, instead of dying away, or being sustained, it seemed to increase slowly in volume.

  Where the sound came from, or what caused it, he could not work out. Not that he paid any great attention to it. He saw the Professor take one of
the thin leaves between his fingers and press as if to bend it, but it snapped as if made of glass.

  An instant later he was confronted by another mystery when, from an outer stalk, one of the objects he had taken to be seed pods broke off and floated at an angle towards the Professor. How could it do that, he wondered, if there was no atmosphere? In such conditions, no matter how light it might be, surely it should drop directly to the ground?

  The buzzing noise grew louder, but still no thought of danger entered his head. What was there to be afraid of in a world of grass and a few balls of fluff?

  Only when more and more broke off without apparent cause or reason did he become uneasy; but it was not until one of them, landing near the Professor's feet, burst open to discharge a mass of ant-like insects, that the truth hit him and fear seized him by the throat.

  'Look out, Professor,' he cried shrilly, and turning, began to scramble back up the rocky slope. Halfway he looked to see if the Professor was following, and at the sight that met his gaze he let out a strangled cry of horror. The air was full of the white fluffy balls and the ground was a crawling carpet of insects. Leading the attacking army were some extra large ones, a good two inches long. Before them fled the Professor, making prodigious leaps in the nearly weightless conditions.

  Above, Tiger was beckoning frantically - not that Rex needed any urging.

  He reached the spacecraft first and scrambled inside. The others followed, and the door was slammed just as the black tide reached it.

  Not until the ship was in motion and spacesuits removed did anyone speak.

  Then the Professor said: I ought to be ashamed of myself for breaking my own rule of taking nothing for granted. Those spiders may or may not have been venomous, but had we got them on our persons it's hard to see how we could have avoided bringing them into the ship with us. I really must be more careful.'

  The whole place was a death-trap,' declared Tiger. 'A ship landing anywhere but on the rock would have a thin time on Spider Island.'

  The spiders certainly ruled the roost,' remarked Toby.

  'I doubt if they had anything to rule - except themselves,' opined the Professor drily.

  Their strength lay in their numbers and organization. One finds the same thing to a lesser extent on earth, in Africa and South America, so there's nothing particularly astonishing about it. Let us not forget the lesson.'

  The ship sped on to its next objective, which was understood to be Pallio, the world that had been upset by its population and was now a mass of blue ice.

  A number of very small planetoids were seen on the way, but the ship did not stop, Vargo saying that they were merely barren rocks. These tiny bodies were much too small to be observed from Earth, for which reason, as the Professor observed, the total number of planetoids had been greatly underestimated by the astronomers. Instead of the three thousand or so that had been given names or numbers it began to look as if there might be thirty thousand, or even fifty thousand, large or small. That being so, there could be no question of exploring all of them.

  Pallio appeared as a glittering blue-white star in a coal-black sky, sometimes to be briefly extinguished as one of the smaller planetoids passed between it and the sun. The sun, it should be said, was still obviously master of the System, but on account of distance was, in comparison with Earthly observation, reduced in size.

  The objective became larger and more brilliant as Borron made his usual cautious approach, although at the finish there was no need to seek a landing ground, for the surface appeared to be as smooth as a marble.

  'You may not be aware of it,' said the Professor thoughtfully, 'but what has happened here could happen on Earth should our own world tilt farther on its axis and move to a greater distance from the sun. There is enough snow and ice at the Poles to inundate the present dry land except for the highest mountains, which would then become islands in one vast ocean of water. Should that water freeze, Earth would appear as what you see before you - on a much larger scale, of course.'

  'Could an explosion cause Earth to tilt?' asked Rex.

  'Of course, if of sufficient force,' answered the Professor. 'After all, that is what happened here. A large comet, or a planetoid, passing close, would have the same effect.'

  Rex did not pursue the subject. Over him again crept that awful feeling of insecurity in the immensity of the Universe.

  The ship settled on the frozen globe as lightly as a thistle seed.

  Spacesuits were donned.

  The doors were opened and they stepped out on to hard blue ice. Not a mark broke its surface. The ice ran on and on in every direction to a clean-cut curving horizon.

  It was Borron who, by pointing, reminded them of what they had come to see. He pointed down. Rex looked, and for the first time in his life found himself gazing, without being airborne, at a landscape under his feet. The effect was much the same as if he had looked down from a low-flying aircraft on a misty day; but here there wag no movement.

  The water - or rather, ice - was not as deep as he had thought it would be, and he could see everything distinctly - trees, fields and houses.

  Preserved in ice, all remained exactly as they were when they were overwhelmed, and would remain, presumably, until the end of time, unless another move caused the ice to melt. Pallio was, in fact, nothing but a vast refrigerator.

  Again conscious of a feeling of unreality he walked a little way, staring below as a diver might look down into the deep water under him. He saw an animal, a creature like a small cow. Near it, a man, arms outflung, looked up at him.

  That was as much as he wanted to see of the nightmarish place, and as he walked back to the ship the Professor's voice came over the radio.

  'Excavation here, if it were possible, should yield some startling results.'

  Rex agreed, but had no wish to be present at such a project.

  They did not stay long. Back in the ship, as they divested themselves of their suits, Vargo remarked, quietly: 'They did that to themselves. Many worlds have been destroyed by the inhabitants.'

  'You mean by the scientists,' said Rex coldly.

  He was thinking of what some of the scientists on Earth were doing.

  6 The peculiar people of

  Norro

  As the Tavona continued its tour Rex sank into a reverie that was not entirely happy. He, like most boys of his age, had wanted adventure. He had found it, beyond all reasonable expectation. He had, he felt, found too much. That was the trouble. He was out of his depth. The awful immensity of space, of the Universe, made his brain reel. Such words as eternity and infinity were really beyond human understanding, he told himself. Time and distance no longer meant anying. A million years, a million miles - what were they?

  They could not even be imagined, let alone appreciated.

  It was one thing to sit at home and consider the stars but a different thing altogether to be among them. The Solar System that had seemed so vast he now knew to be but a grain of sand in the Sahara of the mighty heavens: a dot in the Milky Way: and the Milky Way, with its millions of stars, was but one constellation, one galaxy, in yet more millions.

  Yes, it was too much. He began to wish he had stayed at home.

  Not so the Professor, engaged in enthusiastic argument with Tiger and Toby over what they had seen. What conditions, asked the Professor, had produced the various forms of life, animal and vegetable? Was it an unequal distribution of the elements of which the Universe was composed?

  What part did gravity play? Light? Temperature?

  Rex didn't know, and at this juncture he didn't particularly care. What perhaps depressed him more than anything were the terrifying things that could happen to a world. He had seen some of them. Would his own fair Earth one day become a ball of ice, or glass, or perhaps disappear completely in a wisp of smoke? The thought that if this did not happen in a celestial accident it might be caused by inquisitive scientists living on the planet made his blood boil. To the deuce with them and their mon
strous explosions. Why couldn't they leave things alone?

  These morbid thoughts were interrupted when Vargo stepped into the conversation. They were, he said, on the way to Norro, but Borron had doubts about landing there. It was a strange place and he would prefer to leave the decision to them. It was years since Borron had been there, but one of the crew, who had served in the Remote Survey Fleet, and had been there recently, held that it was not safe.

  'Is anywhere safe?' asked the Professor drily.

  Vargo took the question seriously. He said there were safe places, but reminded the Professor that he had expressed a wish to see the unusual places, and it was with that object that the intinerary had been arranged.