A Scatter of Stardust

by E. C. Tubb

  McCarty twitched his eyebrows.

  “A native brought it,” explained Larman. He had grown used to the other’s signals. “While you were away. How did you make out?”

  “Nothing worth the trouble of hauling. Well?”

  “He came about an hour after you’d gone. I took a chance and gave him a handful of beads for it.” Larman drew a deep breath. This was his moment.

  “A handful of beads!” McCarty almost exploded “For something as valuable as putty!”

  “No. For the Jackpot!”

  *

  Every trader dreamed of the Jackpot. Hard-bitten wanderers woke in their patched-up cans smiling like babies at the thought of it. Burned-out wrecks wept m their liquor and dragged themselves out for one more try at finding it. A few, a very few, found it. The Jackpot! The thing that spelt fortune.

  Glusky had found it on Eridani IV, a weed he had smoked in lieu of tobacco—and found he had stumbled on the secret of doubling the life-span. Hilbrain had, literally, fallen over it on Rigel VII, the ore he had sworn at now lined half the rocket tubes in the galaxy. Bensen, Kildare, a handful of others, all keeping alive the legend. One for ten thousand traders who died broke or simply vanished. It was enough.

  “Are you sure?” McCarty didn’t raise his voice but muscle made ridges along the line of his jaw. It was no time for joking.

  “I’m sure.” Larman reached out and picked up the sphere. He rolled it between his palms then threw it at the other man. “Catch!”

  McCarty caught. He stared down at the pool of utter blackness cradled in his hands, then at Larman, then at the sphere again. When he put it down he was frowning.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know!”

  McCarty was tired. He’d had a hard three days trading with the natives without financial success and his nerves were ragged with the effort of adhering to the complicated ritual governing such operations. His head ached, too, from the weight of the translator and he wanted a shower. With a visible effort he controlled himself.

  “Listen,” he said dangerously. “If you’re playing some kind of stupid game — ”

  “You listen.” Larman could afford to be curt. It was his turn to be dominant. “I told you that I’d tested it. Just in case you’ve forgotten I’m an engineer and a good one. I also know something about physics, chemistry, metallurgy and a few other subjects. I mention this in case you imagine that I’m a fool.”

  McCarty grunted. Larman knew no more than any good explorer-trader had to know but that didn’t automatically absolve him from being an idiot. Who but a fool would continuously chew cud like a cow? Who, if it came to that, would be a trader in the first place if they had all their marbles?

  Captains, of course, were different. McCarty was the captain.

  “I’ve tested it,” repeated Larman hastily. He had recognized McCarty’s expression. “I don’t know what it is but it’s something new to modem science.” Lovingly he picked up the sphere.

  “It’s the Jackpot!

  *

  They tested it. They did everything Larman had already done and a lot more besides. It wouldn’t cut, it couldn’t be drilled, it couldn’t be crushed, cracked or shattered. It resisted acid and alkali, heat and cold, vibration and radiation. It was an enigma and McCarty didn’t like enigmas.

  “It’s light,” he said. “If it’s metal then it has to be hollow.”

  “It isn’t metal.” Larman pushed goggles up on his forehead, the searing blue-white flame of the atomic cutter dying as he flipped the switch. That cutter was designed to shear through inch-thick high temperature alloy. The sphere hadn’t been affected.

  “All right,” snapped McCarty. “So it isn’t metal. So how about you telling me what it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  McCarty grunted. Gingerly he touched the sphere and found it, as usual, the same temperature as before. Said temperature being a few degrees lower than its immediate surroundings — in this case his own hand. The base on which it rested, a block of native wood, showed no sign of the fierce heat of the cutter.

  Larman watched the gesture and pursed his lips.

  “We can speculate,” he said, “but we can’t be sure. Our information, at this stage, is purely negative.”

  “We know what it isn’t,” said McCarty. “We don’t know what it is.” He replaced the sphere on its base, his fingers lingering the ebony surface. “Let’s try an electric arc.”

  They tried an electric arc. They tried two focused burners. They tried X-rays and ice and, from his expression, Larman had the suspicion that McCarty was trying prayer. The sun went down and they were still trying. Later, in the snug confines of the living compartment, Larman summed up what they had learned.

  “It’s indestructible, as far as we know, that is. It seems totally absorbent to all sources of energy. Light, radiation, even the friction-heat generated by attempting to penetrate it, all are absorbed. The thing must be soaking up energy all the time — the temperature differential tells us that.”

  “Like a sponge,” said McCarty. He lay on his bunk, thoughtfully sucking his pipe, the little burbling noises blending with the soft purr of the fan.

  “Exactly!” Larman was triumphant. “A kind of static matrix of stress force capable of soaking up a tremendous amount of energy.”

  “Why tremendous?”

  “Its weight for one thing, its bulk for another and look at the way we’ve poured energy into it without any kind of reaction. Anyway, my guess is that the thing was made to do just that.”

  McCarty nodded. Larman made sense. The sphere was obviously an artifact and yet...

  He thought of the planet on which they had landed, the semi-tropical climate with the semi-tropical vegetation, the entire lack of any sign of civilization. Kaldar II was a primitive world, the natives living a standard, pre-urban existence based on tribal culture, hunting and natural harvesting. They, certainly, hadn’t manufactured the sphere.

  But if they hadn’t, who had?

  And why?

  *

  Larman screwed a jeweler’s glass into one eye, steadied the hair-fine probe in his right hand and stooped over the sphere. Minutely he examined, not for the first time, the area of blackness magnified in his vision. It was like staring into a bottomless pit.

  Irritably he straightened and rubbed his eyes. He was alone in the ship, McCarty had gone down to the village to ask questions about the sphere and, knowing the intricate procedure adhered to by the natives, there was no telling how long he would be. In the meantime Larman was trying to solve a mystery.

  The mystery being the sphere.

  Nothing, he reasoned, and McCarty had agreed with him, was made without a reason. The sphere was an artifact, it had been manufactured, it must serve a purpose. Unless they discovered what that purpose was then the sphere, instead of being the Jackpot, was just a scientific novelty. True, they could take it back and have the scientists drool over it but while that might spell fame it didn’t spell fortune. The cash would go to the bright spark who figured out a way to use it, not to the ones who didn’t recognize its worth.

  Grimly he replaced the glass and probed again at the sphere.

  He was still probing when McCarty returned.

  “Find anything?”

  “No.” Larman eased his aching back. “You?”

  “Nothing that would hurt if you put it in your eye.” McCarty helped himself to water, swallowing three measures before emptying the paper cup over his head. “Those natives!”

  Larman nodded his sympathy. The natives were tall humanoids, blue-skinned and eight-fingered. They spoke a gushing sibilance with occasional grunts, which the translators broke down into a weird kind of broken, disjointed English. They had a system of ritual symbolism, which made the most rigid Earth Court Etiquette seem like a free-for-all at a teenage banquet. And they smelt.

  “So they don’t know where the sphere came from?�
� Larman sighed his disappointment. McCarty surprised him.

  “They know, all right,” he said. “They dug it out of the ground. What it is and who made it is something else.” He helped himself to more water, sat down and stretched. “It isn’t indigenous to this culture that’s for certain.”

  “A previous race?”

  “Perhaps. Or visitors way back. Who can tell?”

  Larman wasn’t surprised. Kaldar II wouldn’t be the first planet that had experienced the rise and fall of many civilizations, nor would it have been the first to have been visited by other races. He wasn’t surprised but he was disappointed. If the sphere was a lone freak then hitting the Jackpot would be that much harder. He said so. McCarty shrugged.

  “If we can’t crack it then what’s the difference?”

  “A lot of difference!” Larman was annoyed. “Maybe they only do whatever they’re supposed to do if paired or in series.” He blinked. “Maybe that’s it?”

  “Maybe that’s what?”

  “The answer.” Larman was excited. “Look at it in a logical way. We have something that soaks up energy, right?”

  “So?”

  “So maybe that’s just what it is. A means of strong power. A battery!”

  “Batteries are usually carried around,” reminded McCarty. Larman waved aside the objection.

  “What do you do with your dead flashlight cells? Toss them aside, that’s what. Well perhaps whoever dumped this thing simply replaced it with another just as you do with your flashlight cells.”

  McCarty thought about it for a moment.

  “But if it could be recharged?”

  “Perhaps he was in a hurry, or careless, or simply didn’t care. Perhaps anything.” Larman screwed the glass back into his eye. “Shut up, now, and let me work!”

  *

  He didn’t find what he was looking for but, as he pointed out, it didn’t really matter.

  “I was hoping to find a couple of minute openings,” Larman explained. “Connections, sort of, but that would be silly. Whoever used it wanted to connect it up fast so they wouldn’t have used tiny openings.”

  What would they have used?” McCarty had caught some of Larman’s enthusiasm.

  “I don’t know. An electronic field, perhaps, or a negative material to the sphere itself.” For a moment Larman looked worried, then he cheered up. “It isn’t important.”

  “How do you make that out?” It was hot inside the ship and McCarty was sweating even though he, like Larman, had stripped to the waist. Larman grinned.

  “Simple. No matter how effective this thing is it must have a critical point. I mean, there must be a time when we just can’t force any more energy into it. A full-charge point if you like.”

  “So?”

  “So my guess is that something will happen then. They must have built in a device to indicate the amount of charge the thing has or something to tell when it is fully charged. When that happens we may learn something.”

  He gestured to the rig he had assembled around the sphere.

  “I’m going to feed it energy and, at the same time, check continuously for any signs of electro-magnetic variation, radiation, the works. I’ve even mounted it on a scale to check the weight and rigged a couple of microphones set for ultrasonic.”

  McCarty sucked at his pipe and frowned.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “What don’t you like?”

  “All this,” McCarty gestured towards the equipment.

  “Suppose something should go wrong?”

  “Such as?” Larman was contemptuous. McCarty’s frown deepened.

  “I don’t know. Anything.” He tried to think of something to explain his fears. Larman didn’t give him time.

  “Nothing can go wrong,” he said with lordly superiority. “I know that. Everything is under full control.” He waved an admonishing finger. “After the way we tested the sphere outside I’m surprised that you should even consider it dangerous. Anyway,” he added the final point, “I can’t run this control outside unless we dismantle half the ship.”

  That, as he knew it would, silenced the captain.

  But nothing could shut down McCarty’s thoughts.

  *

  Greed for the Jackpot struggled with concern for his ship as he watched Larman set to work. He winced as twin beams of heat impinged against the sphere, the blue-white jets swallowed into the blackness. Desperately he tried to imagine what contrivances the aliens had used to warrant such batteries.

  He couldn’t. Each time he tried to visualize something he boggled at the amount of power a fully charged sphere must contain. Even his pipe gave him no comfort and he paced the compartment like a trapped lion much to Larman’s annoyance.

  “If you can’t sit still,” he yapped, “then go outside. You’re ruining my concentration.”

  “You — ”

  McCarty didn’t finish what he was about to say. Instead he stiffened, his teeth clamping his pipe so hard that they cut through the stem. Larman stared at him then followed the direction of his gaze.

  He swallowed.

  The sphere had changed.

  It was no longer a ball of utter blackness. Now it had a silver sheen, a mirror effect of unbelievable beauty, like an iridescent mother-of-pearl, shining and wonderful as it sat, bathed in the twin flames from the focused burners.

  “It’s charged!” Larman switched off the burners. “McCarty! It’s charged!”

  “It’s changing!”

  It was true. The glowing mother-of-pearl took on a bluish tinge and a wave of heat struck the two men. The silvery blue became brighter, brighter and the air in the compartment was suddenly stifling in its oven temperature.

  “Get out of here!”

  Larman wasn’t a small man but McCarty picked him up as if he had been a baby. He lunged towards the door, driven on by his own, nameless fears, the glowing ball of the sphere spurring his efforts. He fell through the door, reached the outer lock and tossed Larman outside. It was fifteen feet to the ground but McCarty didn’t hesitate. He jumped as he felt the skin of his naked back blister from the heat pouring from the sphere. He hit, rolled in the thick grass and dragged Larman to his feet. Together they raced from the ship.

  They had covered maybe two hundred yards before the blast picked them up and hurled them like dolls.

  “We were lucky,” said Larman shakily. He felt himself again, hardly believing that, aside from bruises, they were unharmed. The thick grass had saved them, of course, that and incredible luck. McCarty snorted.

  “Luck?” He snorted again.

  Looking at the still-glowing crater where the ship had been Larman could appreciate his feelings.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said McCarty bitterly. “It’s as safe as houses. I’ve everything under perfect control.” He glared at the other man. “You fool! Where were you when they dished out brains?”

  Larman tried to defend himself. McCarty didn’t listen.

  “A battery,” he raved. “A simple thing like a flashlight cell. Man, did you have any idea of the power that thing soaked up?”

  “I — ”

  “The Jackpot!” McCarty groaned at the thought of it. He groaned again as he stared at the hole where the ship had stood.

  “Stranded,” he said bitterly. “And for why? Because the fool I carried with me didn’t have the imagination of a louse. He couldn’t even make a guess at what he’d found.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Larman smarted under the injustice of it. “Could you?”

  “I can now,” said McCarty. “I half-guessed before but you seemed so certain. A bomb, that’s what it was. A dirty, sly, underhanded time-bomb!”

  “But the natives?!”

  “Not the natives. I don’t know who made it or when but that’s what it was. Maybe the natives recognized the danger once, I don’t know, but I’ll bet it was buried for a reason. What else could you do with a thing like that?”

  Nothing, except perh
aps freeze it in ice or dump it in space. While it could receive energy it was a potential danger and nothing could stop it receiving energy. Deep in the ground the absorption-rate would be slowed and, when it finally blew, the damage wouldn’t be so bad.

  Looking at the crater Larman marveled at the power of the sphere. Most of the force had been confined by the ship but even so it had been considerable. And he had been the one to feed it that little bit of extra energy it had needed to reach critical point.

  McCarty was right, of course, he could see that now. The sphere had been a war-weapon, scattered by a race at war with Kaldar and, the more he thought of it, the more diabolical a weapon it appeared. Small, indestructible, a thing that simply sat and soaked up the energy from the sun until, all at once, wham!

  And he had thought he’d found the Jackpot.

  McCarty grunted and he climbed to his feet beside the other man. A file of natives approached them from the edge of the jungle. The wind blew from them and Larman’s stomach protested at the scent. It protested still more when he remembered that, if he wanted to eat, it would have to be in their village.

  He forgot his stomach as he saw what they carried.

  Each native wore a smile and held out his left hand in readiness for beads, to them wealth unimagined.

  The other hand carried, in the full glare of the brilliant sun, a two-inch ball of utter blackness.

  They had found their Jackpot.

  Thirty-Seven Times

  The funeral was much the same as any other funeral. The day just an ordinary spring day. The cemetery was patterned after ten thousand other similar resting places and the casket which held the mortal remains of Professor Gregor Wantage just an expensive box of polished wood. To Sam Howard it seemed all wrong. There should have been terrible storms and portentous happening, earthquakes and reeling stars, sickness and bleak despair. Instead of which the world continued on its even way while Gregor made his final onslaught against the unknown.

  Sam mentioned it to Armsworth on the way home.

  “It depends on the point of view,” said Jeff indifferently. Now that the professor was dead he had his own, personal worries.

  “To you, Gregor was father, mother, employer and friend. To others he was just another man, to me just the boss. When he managed to get himself killed he did more than prove his pet experiment a flop, he eliminated my only visible means of support.”