The Last Spaceship

by Murray Leinster

  The flier came down, black and seemingly ungainly, with spinning rotors that guided and controlled its descent, rather than sustaining it against the planet's gravity. The extraordinarily flexible vegetation of Terranova bent away from the hovering object. It landed and the rotors ceased to spin. Figures got out.

  “I'm here,” said Kim Rendell into the darkness.

  Two men came across the matted lawn to the terrace. One was the colony organizer for Terranova and the other was the definitely rough-and-ready mayor of Steadheim, a small settlement on Ades back in the First Galaxy.

  “I am honored,” said Kim in the stock phrase of greeting.

  The two figures came heavily up on the terrace. Dona went indoors and came back with refreshments, according to the custom of Ades and Terranova. The visitors accepted the glasses, in which ice tinkled musically.

  “You seem depressed,” said Kim politely, another stock phrase. It was a way of getting immediately to business.

  “There's trouble,” growled the Mayor of Steadheim. “Bad trouble. It couldn't be worse. It looks like Ades is going to be wiped out. For lack of spaceships and fuel."

  “Lack of spaceships and fuel?” protested Kim. “But you're making them!"

  “We thought we were,” growled the Mayor. “We've stopped. We're stuck. We're finished—and the ships aren't. The same with the fuel. There's not a drop for you and things look bad! But we can't make ships, and we couldn't make fuel for them if we could! That's why we've come to you. We've got to have those ships!"

  “But why not?” demanded Kim. “What's preventing it? You've got the record-reels from the Starshine! They tell you everything, from the first steps in making a ship to the last least item of its outfitting! You know how to make fuel!"

  “Space!” exploded the Mayor of Steadheim. “Of course we know how! We know all about it! There are fifty useless hulks in a neat row outside my city—every one unfinished. We're short of metal on Ades and we had to melt down tools to make them, but we did—as far as we could go. Now we're stuck and we're apt to be wiped out because of it!"

  The Mayor of Steadheim wore a bearskin cap and his costume was appropriate to that part of Ades in which his municipality lay. He was dressed for a sub-arctic climate, not for the balmy warmth of Terranova, where Kim Rendell had made his homestead. He sweated as he gulped at his drink.

  “Tell me the trouble,” said Kim. “Maybe—"

  “Hafnium!” barked the mayor. “There's no hafnium on Ades! The ships are done, all but the fuel-catalyzers. The fuel is ready—all but the first cantalization that prepares it to be put in a ship's tanks. We have to have hafnium to make catalyzers for the ships. We have to have hafnium to make the fuel!

  “We haven't got it. There's not an atom of it on the planet! We're so short of heavy elements, anyhow, that we make hammers out of magnesium alloy and put stones in ‘em to give them weight so they'll strike a real blow! We haven't got an atom of hafnium and we can't make ships or run them either without it!"

  Kim blinked at the Colony Organizer for Terranova.

  “Here—"

  “No hafnium here either,” said the Colony Organizer gloomily. “We analyzed a huge sample of ocean salts. If there were any on the planet there'd be a trace in the ocean. Naturally! So what do we do?"

  Kim spoke unhappily.

  “I wouldn't know. I'm a matter-transmitter technician. I can do things with power, and, of course, I understand the Starshine's engines. But there's no record of the early, primitive types that went before it—types that might work on another fuel. Maybe in some library on one of the older planets—But at that, the fuel of the Starshine used was so perfect that it would be recorded thousands of years back."

  “Take a year to find it,” said the Mayor of Steadheim bitterly. “If we could search! And it might be no good then! We haven't got a year. Probably we haven't got a month!"

  “We're beaten,” mourned the Colony Organizer. “All we can do is get as many through the Transmitter from Ades as possible and go on half rations. But we'll starve."

  “We're not beaten!” roared the Mayor of Steadheim. “We'll get hafnium and have a fighting fleet and fuel to power it! There's plenty of the blasted stuff somewhere in the Galaxy! Kim Rendell, if I find out where it is, will you go get it?"

  “The Starshine,” said Kim grimly, “barely made it to port here. There's less than six hours’ fuel left."

  “And who'd sell us hafnium?” demanded the Colony Organizer bitterly. “We're the men of Ades—the rebels, the outlaws! We were sent to Ades to keep us from contaminating the sheep who live under governments with Disciplinary Circuits and think they're men! We'd be killed on sight for breaking our exile on any planet in the First Galaxy! Who'd sell us hafnium?

  “Who spoke of buying?” roared the mayor. “I was sent to Ades for murder! I'm not above killing again for the things I believe in! I've a wife on Ades, where there are ten men for every woman. I've four tall sons! D'you think I won't kill for them?"

  “You speak of piracy,” said the Colony Organizer, distastefully.

  “Piracy! Murder! What's the difference? When my sons are in danger—"

  “What's this danger?” Kim said sharply. “It's bad enough to be grounded, as we seem to be. But you said just now—"

  “Sinab Two!” snorted the Mayor of Steadheim. “That's the danger! We know! When a man becomes a criminal anywhere he's sent to us. In the First Galaxy a man with brains usually becomes a criminal. A free man always does! So we've known for a long while there were empires in the making. You heard that, Kim Rendell!"

  “Yes, I've heard that,” agreed Kim.

  So he had, but only vaguely. His own home planet, Alphin Three, was ostensibly a technarchy, ruled by men chosen for their aptitude for public affairs by psychological tests and given power after long training.

  Actually it was a tyranny, ruled by members of the Prime Council. Other planets were despotisms or oligarchies and many were kingdoms, these days. Every possible form of government was represented in the three hundred million inhabited planets in the First Galaxy.

  But every planet was independent and in all—by virtue of the Disciplinary Circuit—the government was absolute and hence tyrannical. Empires, however, were something new. On Ades, Kim barely heard the three were in process of formation.

  “One's the Empire of Greater Sinab,” snorted the mayor, “and we've just heard how it grows!"

  “Surprise attacks, no doubt,” said Kim, “through matter-transmitters."

  “We'd not worry if that were all!” snapped the mayor. “It's vastly worse! You know the fighting-beams?"

  “I know them!” said Kim grimly.

  * * *

  2

  THE DEADLY BEAMS

  He did. They were the most terrible weapons ever created by men. They had ended war by making all battles mass suicide for both sides. They were beams of the same neuronic frequencies utilized in the Disciplinary Circuits which kept men enslaved.

  But where the Disciplinary Circuits were used in place of police and prisons and merely tortured the individual citizen to whom they were tuned—wherever he might be upon a planet—the fighting-beams killed indiscriminately. They induced monstrous, murderous currents in any living tissue containing the amino-chains normally a part of human flesh.

  They were death-rays. They killed men and women and children alike in instants of shrieking agony. But no planet could be attacked from space if it was defended by such beams. It was two thousand years since the last attempt at attack from space had been made.

  That fleet had been detected far out and swept with fighting beams and every living thing in the attacking ships died instantly. So planets were independent of each other. But when spaceships ceased to be used the fighting-beams were needless and ultimately were scrapped or put into museums.

  “Somebody,” the mayor said wrathfully, “has changed those beams! They're not tuned to animal tissue in general any more! They're tuned to male
tissue. To blood containing male hormones, perhaps. And Sinab Two is building an empire with ‘em! We found out only two weeks ago!

  “There's a planet near Ades—Thom Four. Four years ago its matter-transmitter ceased to operate. The Galaxy's going to pot anyhow. Nothing new about that! But we just learned the real reason. The real reason was that four years ago the fighting-beams killed men and left women unharmed.

  “Every man on Thom Four died as the planet rotated. The beams came from space. Every man and every boy and every male baby died! There were only girls and women left.” He added curtly, “There were half a billion people on Thom Four!"

  Kim stiffened. Dona, beside him, drew closer.

  “Every man killed!” said Kim. “What—"

  The Mayor of Steadheim swore angrily.

  “Half the population! On Ades we're nine-tenths men! Women don't run to revolt or crime. There'd not be much left on Ades if those beams swept us! But I'm talking about Thom Four. The men died. All of them. So many that the women couldn't bury them all.

  “One instant, the planet was going about its business as usual. The next, every man was dead, his heart burst and blood running from his nostrils. Lying in the streets, toppled in the baths and eating-halls, crumbled beside the machines.

  “Boys in the schools dropped at their desks. Babes in arms, with their mothers shrieking at the sights! Only women left. A world of women! Cities and continents filled with dead men and women going mad with grief!"

  Kim felt Dona's hand fumbling for his. She held it fast.

  “Go on!” said Kim.

  “When they thought to go to the matter-transmitter and ask for help from other planets the matter-transmitter was smashed. They didn't go at first. They couldn't believe it. They called from city to city before they realized theirs was a manless world. Then, when they'd have told the men of another planet what had happened—they couldn't.

  “For four years there was not one man or boy on the planet Thom Four. Only women. The old ones grew older. The girls grew up. Some couldn't remember ever seeing a man. No communication with other worlds. Then, one day, there was a new matter-transmitter in the place of the smashed one. Men came out of it. The women crowded about them.

  “The men were very friendly. They were from Sinab Two. Their employer had sent them to colonize. There were a thousand women to every man—ten thousand! Some of the women realized what had been done. They'd have killed the newcomers. But some women fell in love with them, of course!

  “In a matter of days every man had women ready to fight all other women who would harm him. Their own men were dead four years. What else could they do? More and more men colonists came. Presently things settled down. The men were happy enough. They'd no need to work with all the women about.

  “They established polygamy, naturally. Presently it was understood that Thom Four was part of the empire of Greater Sinab. So it was. What else? In a generation there'll be a new population, all its citizens descended from loyal subjects of the emperor.

  “And why shouldn't they be loyal? A million colonists inherited the possessions of the women of a planet! It was developed. Everything was built. Every man was rich and with a harem. A darned clever way to build an empire! Who'd want to revolt—and who could?"

  He stopped. The two moons of Terranova floated tranquilly, higher in the sky. The soft sweet unfamiliar smells of a Terranovan night came to the small group on the terrace of Kim Rendell's house.

  “That's what's ahead on Ades!” raged the Mayor of Steadheim. “And I've four sons! A woman of Thom Four smashed the lock on the new matter-transmitter, which set it to send only to Sinab, and traveled to Khiv Five to warn them. But they laughed at her and when she begged to be sent to a distant planet they grinned—and sent her to Ades!"

  He paused.

  “No long after, a criminal from Khiv Five—he'd struck a minor noble for spitting on him—came to Ades. There'd been inquiry for that woman. Spies, doubtless, from Thom Four, trying to trace her. It was clear enough she'd told the truth."

  “So,” said Kim slowly, “you think Ades will be next."

  “I know it!” said the Mayor of Steadheim. “We've checked the planets that have cut communication in our star-cluster. Twenty-one inhabited planets have ceased to communicate in the past few years—the twenty planets nearest to Sinab. We figured Khiv Five would be next. Then we'd be in line for it.

  “Khiv Five cut communications four days ago! Every man on Khiv Five is dead! We've had exiles from a dozen nearby planets. All know Khiv Five is cut off. It's inhabited only by women, going mad with grief!

  “In a few years, when they grieve no longer, but despair instead, new colonists from Sinab will come out of a new matter-transmitter to let the women fall in love with them—and to breed new subjects for the Empire of Sinab! So we've got to have spaceships, man! We've got to!"

  Kim was silent. His face was hard and grim.

  “Twenty planets those so-and-so's have taken over!” roared the mayor. “They've murdered not less than four billion men already, and the weasels have taken a hundred wives apiece and the riches of generations for rewards! D'you think I'll let that happen to Ades, with my four sons there? Space, no! I want ships to fight with!"

  The two small moons rose higher. Strange sweet smells floated in the air. Dona pressed close to Kim. On Terranova, across the gulf between island universes, Kim was surely safe, but any woman can feel fear for her man on any excuse.

  “It's a hard problem,” said Kim evenly. “We barely made Terranova on the Starshine, and there's just about enough fuel let to take off with. Of course, on transmitter-drive she could go anywhere, but I doubt that we've fuel enough to land her.

  “Here on Terranova we need supplies from Ades to live. If fighting-beams play on Ades we'll starve. And, even if we had fuel the Starshine isn't armed and they'll have a fleet prepared to fight anything."

  Dona murmured in his ear.

  “We're beaten, then,” said the Colony Organizer bitterly. “Ades will be wiped out, we'll starve and the Sinabians will go through the First Galaxy, killing off the men on planet after planet and then moving in to take over."

  Dona murmured again in Kim's ear. The Mayor of Steadheim growled profanely, furiously. Dona laughed softly. The two visitors stared at her suspiciously.

  “What do we do, Kim Rendell?"

  “I suppose,” said Kim wryly, “we'll have to fight. We've no fuel and no weapons—but that ought to surprise them."

  “Eh?"

  “They'll be prepared,” Kim explained, “to defend themselves against any conceivable resistance by any conceivable weapon. And a warship a fairly intelligent planet could build should be able to wipe out ten thousand Starshines. So when we attack them without any weapons at all they won't quite know what to do."

  The two visitors simply stared at him.

  “You've got to get hafnium! You've got to get fuel! You can't face a battleship!"

  “But,” said Kim, “battleships have fuel on board and they'll have hafnium too. It'll be risky—but convenient...."

  * * *

  3

  CONTACT!

  Actually there was less than a quart of fuel in the Starshine's tanks. Kim knew it ruefully well. It would run the little ship at interplanetary speed for perhaps six hours. On normal overdrive—two hundred light-speeds—it would send her just about one-seventh of a light-year, and the star-systems averaged eight light-years apart in both the First and Second Galaxies.

  Of course, on transmitter-drive—the practically infinite speed the Starshine alone in history had attained—the ship might circumnavigate the cosmos on a quart of fuel. But merely rising from Terranova would consume one-third of it, and landing on any other planet would take another third.

  Actually the little ship was in the position of being able to go almost anywhere, but of having no hope at all of being able to come back.

  It rose from Terranova though, just three days after the emergency was made
clear. There were a few small gadgets on board—hastily made in the intervening seventy-two hours—but nothing deadly—nothing that could really be termed a weapon.

  The Starshine climbed beyond the atmosphere of the Second Galaxy planet. It went on overdrive—at two hundred light-speeds—to a safe distance from Terranova's planetary system. Then it stopped in normal space, not stressed to allow for extra speed.

  Kim jockeyed it with infinite care until it was aimed straight at the tiny wisp of nebulous light which was the First Galaxy, unthinkable thousands of light-years away. At long last he was satisfied. He pressed the transmitter-field button—and all space seemed to reel about the ship.

  At the moment the transmitter-field went on, the Starshine had a velocity of twenty miles per second and a mass of perhaps two hundred tons. The kinetic energy it possessed was fixed by those two facts.

  But, when the transmitter-field enveloped it, its mass dropped—divided by a factor approaching infinity. And its speed necessarily increased in exact proportion because its kinetic energy was undiminished. It was enclosed in a stressed space in which an infinite speed was possible. It approached that infinite speed on its original course.

  Instantly, it seemed, alarm-gongs rang and the cosmos reeled again. Suddenly there was a glaring light pouring in the forward vision-ports. There were uncountable millions of stars all about and, almost straight ahead, a monstrous, palpitating Cepheid sun swam angrily in emptiness.

  The Starshine had leaped the gulf between galaxies in a time to be measured in heartbeats and the transmitter-field was throwing off when the total quantity of radiation impinging upon a sensitive plate before her had reached a certain total.

  Dona watched absorbedly as Kim made his observations and approximately fixed his position. The Mayor of Steadheim looked on suspiciously.

  “What's this?"

  “Locating ourselves,” Kim explained. “From the Second Galaxy the best we could hope for was to hit somewhere in the First. We did pretty well, at that. We're about sixty light-centuries from Ades."