by Eando Binder
“He will be here in a few moments,” continued the officer. “We have notified him of your arrival.”
A FEW minutes later a gold-tinted aerocar settled down from the skies and from it stepped Marten Crodell. His tall, awkward figure, clothed in black, ambled toward them. His austere face showed lines of anger and worry both. But his eyes lit up with relief as his daughter ran into his arms.
“Thank heaven you’re safe!” he muttered. Then he drew a mask over his features and singled out Fostar for a malevolent glare.
“Rolan Fostar, you and your Dr. Bronzun are not only fanatics preaching a false doom, but you’ve withheld a new invention!” the landowner said frostily. “I’ve been waiting for your return. Finding my daughter gone, a month ago, I came to this place and had it broken into. I found the plans for your new trans-space drive!”
“How did you dare—” choked Fostar.
The landowner went on imperturbedly. “As you know, all new inventions relating to space travel must be turned over to the government immediately—a long-standing law of over three hundred years, instituted against the danger of piracy and private conquest. That is your first crime of omission. Where you went with your new drive, driven by your diseased minds, I don’t know. But I presume”—his voice became heavily sarcastic—“it had some far-fetched connection with your theory of doom. But I didn’t think you would go to such lengths as to kidnap my daughter!”
His voice hissed. “I will indict you for that crime, which is punishable by exile to an asteroid prison!”
“No, father, you can’t!” Alora cried wildly. “I wasn’t kidnaped. I stowed away, of my own free will! What’s more, I love Rolan Fostar!” She stepped to the latter’s side, grasping his aim.
Marten Crodell stared aghast, then shook his head sadly. “What have they done to you, Alora? Alone with three obsessed fools for a month in a space-ship—no wonder your head is turned!”
“Father, you must listen!” the girl interrupted firmly. “I stowed away because I thought you were driving them to a hopeless act. But they’re right—about the doom!”
Crodell was still shaking his head. “And I suppose I’m to warn the world!” he said scornfully. “In other words, Alora, they’ve made you as fanatical as they are!”
Stony-faced, he turned to the white-haired scientist. “I had the Serenity Observatory, on the moon, make a complete check. They report definitely that Earth has a relative velocity toward the heart of the universe. And that’s all that matters, because all motion in space-time is relative. Thus your doom-theory is meaningless!”
For the first time that Fostar could remember, a deep and terrible anger burned in Dr. Bronzun’s patient, kindly face.
“Fools!” he cried, his voice quivering. “They fail to see the truth! Everything in space-time is relative except—the Edge of Space. That is a finite boundary to our universe. All measurements, if based from that reference, become absolute. And the Edge of Space is—appallingly near!”
“Fanatical words!” retorted Marten Crodell dryly. “Without proof!”
“I have proof!”
The words rang sharply from Dr. Bronzun, and Fostar and Angus Macluff looked at each other significantly. The dramatic revelation was due that would around the world. Alora Crodell looked at her father half pityingly, at the shock that would soon be his.
Dr. Bronzun opened the leather case he had brought with him from the ship, and drew out his spectrum charts and photographs.
Marten Crodell looked his skepticism.
The scientist held out the proofs, his eyes shining.
But suddenly he drew them back, and his eyes became bewildered. He shuffled the prints, looking at them closely. They were all streaked smears, blotched beyond recognition. Some were completely blank!
“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Fostar, supporting Dr. Bronzun with one arm as he seemed about to collapse.
“Ruined!” gasped the scientist, in agonized tones. “Every one—obliterated! But how? Good God—how? When I filed them away, they were in perfect condition!” He started. “The mysterious fire we passed through!” he answered himself, in hollow tones. “That electrical phenomenon. It permeated everything in the ship, including this case, and ruined these plates, delicate as they are. God—”
Marten Crodell was smiling cynically. “Just as I thought!” he said mockingly. “Hallucination from beginning to end.” He waved an arm to the police officer at his side. “Arrest these men!”
FOSTAR’S thoughts writhed “Listen to reason, Marten Crodell!” he pleaded. “The doom lies out there, for you or anybody to see. Every minute counts. A new planet or system of planets must be found. Earth people must migrate to them. Cities must be built, civilization founded, on new worlds. It is a gigantic task, and the time is so short. In a few years Earth will meet thinning spacetime and chaos! And—”
But the landowner turned a deaf ear and waved the police on. Fostar envisioned days and months of court trials, bickerings, and all the claptrap of petty law agencies—and finally, perhaps, isolated imprisonment on a lonely asteroid, for years—
Fostar’s muscles tightened. This was not the time to submit tamely!
His next move was so surprising that the police captain was caught unawares. Fostar’s hard fist thudded against his chin with a sharp crack, and the officer toppled backward. The following uniformed man lunged forward, but Fostar ducked and crashed his fist against the side of his head.
Shouts broke out and all the policemen surged forward to grapple with him. But now Angus Macluff leaped beside Fostar with a sort of joyous bray, and his gnarled fists cracked on yielding flesh.
“Run for the ship, Dr. Bronzun!” yelled Fostar. “Quickly!”
The white-haired scientist, divining the desperate plan, hastily moved for the ship. When he was well on his way, the two battling men turned from their antagonists and leaped after him.
“Hope we make it,” panted Angus Macluff, “before they pull their guns—”
“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” came the command from behind them when they had run only half the distance to the ship.
Fostar kept running, the engineer with him. By a hopeless miracle, they might not get hit. But no shots rang out.
Instead, they heard Marten Crodell’s frantic shriek, “Don’t fire! You’ll hit my daughter l”
Fostar looked over his shoulder to find Alora Crodell running after, between them and the police! In a moment they had gained the lock and were safe.
“Alora, you brave little fool—” gasped Fostar.
But the girl interrupted, shoving him into the cabin. “Don’t waste time—get the ship up. Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you!”
“Your engine, Angus!” barked Fostar, leaping for the controls. In a moment the take-off roar of the rockets burst out volcanically and the ship that had so recently returned from the depths of space once again catapulted up from Earth. They negotiated the atmosphere and drummed out into open space.
With the initial excitement over, Dr. Bronzun shook his head dubiously. “This is foolish, in a way. We’ve escaped Marten Crodell, but he’ll have the Space Guard after us—”
“And there they are!” pointed Angus Macluff. “Gentlemen, we can’t escape. We’ll be full of holes in a minute!”
“We’ll escape them!” promised Fostar grimly. “Dr. Bronzun, switch on the trans-space drive!”
They watched as five Space Guard ships arrowed down from their usual position high above Yorkopolis. Obviously, they had already been notified by radio to watch for the fleeing ship. They were long, sleek craft, bristling with guns, watchdogs against illicit space traffic, smugglers, and pirates who now and then attempted daring raids.
One of the foremost ship’s gun-nozzles flared redly and a rocket shell burst across their bow—the signal to stop. Following shots would be aimed directly for them, till the ship was crippled.
Fostar used the full acceleration of his engine, but the guard ships rele
ntlessly crawled closer, driven by superpowerful motors. He bit his lips, but at last Dr. Bronzun’s voice called in warning. The scientist manipulated his dials and the strange supermagnetic force rotated them dizzily out of normal space-time. At the same moment, the first three shots puffed from the pursuers—atomic blasts that whooshed uncomfortably close. They would have the range in a second!
Fostar smiled grimly. “Now let them catch us!” He rammed power into his engine.
Their ship surged forward like a frightened thing. A barrage of blasts from the Space Guard’s guns sparkled far behind. Looking back, Fostar saw the lights of the five ships dwindle and dim, and finally wink out, lost in the void.
“Can you imagine their faces?” chuckled Fostar. “When they saw our ship crawl away from them like they were drydocked!”
The tense nerves of the four in the ship eased as the danger was over. Alora released her breath in a long sigh. “It’s all happened so quickly!” she murmured. “And here we are—back in space!”
“Just what did you have in mind, Rolan?” queried Dr. Bronzun, half dispiritedly. “Going back out to the Beyond, for proof?”
Fostar shook his head thoughtfully.
“No,” he explained. “Listen to me, all of you. Now that Marten Crodell and the world have the plans for the trans-space drive, someone will eventually make that trip and bring back proof. But the doom crawls ever nearer!—and mankind has no new world to migrate to! That is by far the most important thing.”
He looked around at them, eyes alight. “We’ll go out and start the search for our new world!”
“I’m with you!” said Alora instantly. Her eyes were somber. “At least in some degree, I’ll be making up for—my father!”
Fostar squeezed her hand. “Don’t feel too bad about him,” he murmured gently. “After all, we didn’t have proof.”
Dr. Bronzun’s tired face had lighted up. “Though the record is destroyed, I still remember some of the data of the nearer star groups. The search wouldn’t be blind!”
“But gentlemen!” protested Angus Macluff gloomily. “It is out of the question. We need food, air and fuel supplies, more than we had before, for such a long cruise—and a larger ship to hold them. All that takes money—much money!”
“I have unlimited credit accounts in my own name, on every planet!” said Alora Crodell quickly. “More than I could spend in ten lifetimes!”
“But the instant we land on any planet, in the first place,” pursued the engineer, “we’ll be apprehended. Marten Crodell has by now sent such a message to every city and outpost!” Quick depression weighed their spirits. But Fostar suddenly laughed. The others looked at him queerly, as he hastily ran his eyes over the Solar System chart of planetary positions.
“We can go faster than light,” he reminded them evenly. “Faster than radio waves, too! We’ll go to Ganymede first. The message will take 67 minutes, at the present distance between Earth and Jupiter. We’ll be there in five! During the remaining hour, Alora can draw all the funds we need. Then, we’ll skip to Titan, beating the message again. Thus, we can land without suspicion, register at some hotel under fictitious names, and quietly buy what we need. No one will know we ever landed on Titan, though they will know we did on Ganymede, and then left again. Perfect, isn’t it?”
Angus Macluff lapsed into a defeated grumble, for the plan seemed foolproof.
CHAPTER VII
SEARCH AND CHASE
IT WORKED, though they had some tense moments. In thriving Jove City, on Ganymede, for lack of landing papers, they paid a fine. Alora presented herself at the city’s largest bank, submitted to fingerprinting for identification, and asked for a million dollars, in gilt-edged interplanetary certificates. The remonstrating officials gave in before her stormy threats to have her father sue them to ruination, if they didn’t hurry.
They departed from Ganymede just as the Earth message must have come in, for a Space Guard ship gave chase. Fostar left it behind with a quiet chuckle, and proceeded to Saturn at a speed, under the trans-space drive, that left radio signals far behind.
Here they had just time enough to land and have their ship slipped into a private hangar for “repairs.” Under assumed names, busy days followed. They bought a ship whose trim lines gladdened Fostar’s critical eyes. Three days of intensive work resulted in the transfer of the trans-space drive apparatus to the new ship’s engine. Then supplies were crammed aboard the roomier craft, enough for several months, including weapons and ammunition.
Ten days after they had left Earth, they embarked from Titan and the Solar System, heading out into open space. Their great search had begun—the search for a new world among the enigmatic stars! Alora sent a message to her father, via public radiogram service, when they were safely away and could no longer be stopped.
“We are in a large, fully stocked ship, and are going out to other suns, to look for a new Earth! The doom is real, though you do not believe it yet. One day, we will know true forgiveness for one another, when we stand together on the new world, wherever it may be!”
She was weeping softly after Fostar had sent the message. “I still love him,” she said sadly, “though he has driven me away from him by what he’s done!”
Fostar comforted her. “Poor darling,” he said sympathetically, “you’ve sacrificed a lot to be aboard this ship.” He was remembering the last night they had spent on Titan. They had dared to attend a gala dance, for a brief moment of fun and gaiety in their grim venture. The girl had known much of such carefree pleasure, all her life. Now she had thrust it all behind her.
“But I’m not sorry!” she whispered to him. “That past life of mine has no meaning now—not when the whole human race is faced with extinction!”
A message came back to them from Marten Crodell’s private superstation, before Fostar had accelerated beyond the speed of light.
“Rolan Fostar, you have violated interplanetary law in your escape, and you have earned my final and complete enmity!” came the landowner’s voice, quivering with rage. “I hold you responsible for my daughter’s mental condition, which is on the verge of an insanity equal to yours, and Dr. Bronzun’s.” Threat crept into the voice, deep and deadly. “I have nearly completed a transspace drive. If I can find you, I will destroy you!”
Alora caught her breath. “He means every word of it!” she gasped. “He’s a man of strong, unshakable prejudices. Rolan—he’s coming after us!” Her amber eyes reflected alarm.
“Let him try to find us!” said Fostar shortly. He grasped the power controls and hurtled the ship from the Solar System, under the transspace drive. The sun and planets vanished behind them as they attained astronomical velocity.
Their course, previously laid out by Dr. Bronzun, took them in the direction exactly opposite the Edge of Space. Before them lay the entire universe of stars and nebulae, stretching for unnumbered light-years. Space seemed crammed with deceptively near stars, but most were far beyond the reach of even their transspace drive.
“We are heading for a group of stars—a globular cluster—that lies within 30 light-years of Earth,” explained the scientist. “We will then find some 500 stars within 10 light-years of a common point. We will have to hope that some have systems of planets.”
“One chance in thousands!” Angus Macluff deprecated, with a hopeless gesture. “We might spend our lives searching, without finding any.”
“Not necessarily,” returned the scientist calmly. “It used to be thought that planetary stars were rare. But in a crowded cluster, the chances of the star-collisions that create planets are much higher. Furthermore, more than half the stars are binaries, and these are likely to have planets, because of tidal forces they mutually exert. Our problem will be to find the right type of sun and a livable type of planet.”
Fostar looked at him thoughtfully. “What if such a world,” he asked slowly, “were already inhabited by intelligent life?”
Dr. Bronzun started. “I haven’t dared thi
nk of that,” he confessed, with a nervous gesture. “Well, that is a problem to be reckoned with when and if it arises.”
With the trans-space drive functioning smoothly, Fostar exceeded the acceleration he had achieved on their trip to the Beyond. He silenced the powerful atomic-motor only when they had reached the fantastic velocity of 500 times that of light! Each second saw 93 million miles reeled off—the distance between Earth and sun! A light-year of space was crossed every 18 hours!
In three weeks, they had hurdled 30 light-years!
During that time, the four adventurers found opportunity to recover from the recent excitement and strain. The trip to the Beyond, with its trying experiences, had been grueling. The final shuddery revelation of Earth’s doom, starkly clear, had left them with frayed nerves. The escape from Earth, and Marten Crodell, had also been a tense episode.
Fostar, in retrospection, tried to understand Marten Crodell, but failed. The mind of man, at times, could be an inexplicable thing. It resisted instinctively any new revolutionary thought. There had been Galileo, forced by law to deny that the Earth revolved around the sun. And this new concept, involving as it did the annihilation of all Man had known for thousands of years, was not easy to digest. Cranks there had always been, too, who had prophecied the end of Earth, in dozens of holocaustic ways. One could not expect another such doom theory to be instantly accepted—without proof.
In a way, that explained Marten Crodell’s opposition, though much more of the personal was involved. A wealthy, fawned-upon figure, he had been defied, balked, his daughter taken from him, his authority flouted—and men had pride, even in the face of infinity.
But one thing more Fostar wondered about Marten Crodell. With the trans-space drive, would he really pursue them, like a Nemisis? Would he be so blind to the more vital issue of Earth’s fate as to seek—revenge?
TO THEIR eyes, as they rapidly neared the globular cluster, the usual firmament had given place to one blazing with hundreds of first-magnitude stars. It was a patch of space not nearly so sparsely dotted with stars as in Earth’s immediate vicinity.