The Starless Realm

by Perry Rhodan

  There was no radio equipment on board... no controls. They sat there like prisoners in an almost completely transparent nose capsule, propelled and guided by forces which would have to remain a mystery even for Rhodan.

  "Look at that!" cried Sengu suddenly and pointed ahead. "What do you make of it, sir? Those stars...!"

  Laterally from the corners of his eyes, Rhodan had already became aware of the movement. The stars themselves were moving! "The speed of light—we've passed it," he said with suppressed excitement. "This is the first time I've ever experienced this in my life. The other time when I visited the Barkonides I also flew beyond the speed of light but the Immortal was with me and it was more like a dream. But this time..."

  "If the stars show visible motion, we must be going many times speol," Sengu surmised reflectively. "Do you think there'll be side effects? Like a time displacement? Infinite mass...?"

  "I don't think we have to worry about those factors. You see, this ship—No, that's not the proper expression. I think on the contrary that we are sitting in the materialized thought concept of the Immortal and that it is also propelled by thought. It's an unimaginable phenomenon if you try to analyze it scientifically. But instead of racking our brains over it we should be enjoying the spectacle. Only it's too had we don't have some kind of speedometer on board. It would be interesting to see how fast we're traveling."

  During their short conversation the stars had visibly increased their apparent motion. Even as they looked they could see entire constellations becoming distorted. They changed into strange new configurations of stars which no one had ever seen before. At the same time the two men noted that space ahead of them was emptying itself of stars. Sternward, on the other hand, the myriad suns seemed to move closer together, soon coalescing into a shimmering white cloud of light which was broken by a random scattering of dark spots.

  "It's really beyond belief!" chirped Pucky in a shrill voice as he returned to the control room. But he was not referring to the grand spectacle that had so deeply gripped the silent watchers. "It has even thought of carrots for me!"

  Rhodan turned around. Pucky stood on the threshold of the entrance. In one hand he held what appeared to be a bunch of fresh-picked carrots while in the other he held a package containing several cans. His incisor gleamed with pleasure.

  "Here's meat for you—and a drink for me!"

  Rhodan looked at Sengu. "Did you think of a beverage?" he asked, amused. "When?"

  "Just now, sir. When we were talking about food supplies."

  Rhodan nodded. "I figured as much! So that means we're not as alone as we thought we were. It is here, even though It isn't communicating."

  This discovery brought Rhodan a certain sense of reassurance. He had to confess that the thought of being completely relegated to the winds of chance had not been particularly pleasant.

  "Here's your drink," said Pucky as he handed the beverage to the Japanese.

  With a side-glance at the couch where Pucky had tossed the other canned goods, Rhodan was able to determine that they were of Earthly origin—or seemed to be. They were the same products which were available in any store in Terrania and which were a staple stock on board Terranian spaceships.

  "Wow!" gasped Pucky suddenly. He was so startled that he made a slight jump backwards, dropping the bunch of carrots in the process. "What the heck is wrong with the stars? Are we on a merry-go-round?"

  The spectacle outside was indeed astonishing.

  In the past few minutes their velocity must have increased to the point where even light years were of no consequence. They were probably traveling as fast as a light-year per second. In terms of normal technology this would of course have been impossible but where their present ship was concerned, normal technology had been left far behind.

  To the right and left of them the stars had become mere passing streaks of light. But with each minute the streaks became more sparsely distributed. Directly ahead on their course was an irregular formation of stars that seemed to hang motionlessly in the depths of the universe. This was because they were flying directly towards it. The more laterally placed the stars were, the faster was their apparent motion, and those to their right and left were merely lines of light.

  Out there in the middle of nothing was the stellar nebula. Rhodan recognized it.

  "Andromeda!"

  They had now come to the edge of their own galaxy. With an unimaginable velocity they were nearing that colossal abyss which separated the two neighboring galaxies.

  "We are not on a merry-go-round, Pucky," Rhodan explained to the mouse-beaver. "On the contrary, we are traveling in a very straight line, something like a ray of light but much faster. In fact,very much faster. A light beam would be left behind us as though it were crawling. Radio waves, as well."

  "Maybe the linear space-drive works like this."

  "You might say that, more or less. But surrounding space and the stars are still visible to our eyes and we haven't entered hyperspace. I don't know, though, if we could go this fast even with the linear space drive. We'll only find out when the first experimental ship is ready—but that could be several decades from now."

  Pucky had since forgotten all about his couch and his carrots. Small and shaken by the aspect of Eternity, he stood next to Rhodan's chair and observed the marvelous spectacle of the streaking stars.

  "When I visited Barkon the first time said Rhodan, "it was almost exactly like this but then I had a small, actual ship. But this one here... it's probably some kind of energy bubble."

  "Now there are hardly any more stars," murmured Pucky plaintively. "They keep getting scarcer. What happens when the last of them out there are behind us?"

  "Then we will be in intergalactic space, little one. We'll be a mere dust mote in the vastness between the island universes, just a tiny drop in the cosmic ocean. There's actually nothing to compare it with."

  "A universe without stars—what a sight that will be!" Wuriu Sengu did not conceal his inner fears. "We'll see a starless sky. A completely dark firmament without any light at all."

  Rhodan looked into the depths ahead of them and smiled faintly. "Oh yes, Sengu, there will be light. The light of billions of stars, all compressed into a tiny, pale fleck—a far distant gleaming spark. An alien island universe, another Milky Way. And we won't be seeing just one of them but many hundreds of galaxies. Their light will have come to us across millions of light-years of distance. The abyss separating us from them is unimaginable, even into the billions of light-years. And yet they are conglomerations of stars which are like our own galaxy and Milky Way. And there, too, must be intelligent life forms who turn their instruments toward us and only see our galaxy as a remote fleck of light, although it contains in its turn the billions of stars that we know are illuminating thousands of inhabited worlds."

  "The overall universe is vast," said Sengu, deeply moved.

  Rhodan nodded in agreement. "It's too bad that we only have this word. It falls far short of saying what we intend to express. A planet is also referred to as big, or even vast. It's the same with a star. And all we can say of the entire Cosmos is that it’s big, nothing more. But what is it actually?"

  They stared outside in silence. The last of the local stars were moving past ever more swiftly. They dwindled away behind the ship into the milky ocean of the galactic cloud of light. Only the distant nebula of Andromeda remained. It hung there unmoved and unchanged in the center of the pit of blackness which now comprised more than three-fourths of their entire field of vision. Upon closer scrutiny, the distant island universe presented an elliptical shape which was somewhat thicker in its center. But in spite of their incredible speed the disc of light did not increase in size.

  "Glord!" whispered Sengu suddenly. He had just turned to look back. "That is our own galaxy!"

  Rhodan also turned to look. The giant white cloud of stars was swiftly shrinking in size. it was as though the whole conglomeration of millions of suns was dropping away i
nto a bottomless abyss. It grew smaller as they watched.

  "More than one light-year per second," muttered Rhodan. His voice shook almost imperceptibly. His right hand rested on the mouse-beaver’s shoulder. Pucky seldom remained rooted to the spot like this, so shaken by the view that he could not speak a word. Rhodan had never seen his small friend in such a state as this.

  "We must be dreaming," said Sengu, as softly as before. "This can't be reality!"

  "The thing we're experiencing lies on the border between dream and reality," replied Rhodan somewhat tensely. "Later we won't be able to say just which part was the dream and which was real. But one thing's certain: we are physically here and we're flying through the Cosmos. We are seeing with our eyes what is actually happening. So what we are going through is not what you'd normally call a dream. Yet on the other hand..."

  His words ended in a sigh. Then he was silent. He did not know what else there was to say.

  • • •

  Three hours passed, according to their watches.

  Their own galaxy had receded to the point where it seemed to be a hazy white spot with frayed edges.

  Its spiral arms were clearly visible, appearing to be reaching into the blackness of empty space for support. Somewhere within it was the small sun of Terra.

  Andromeda had hardly shown any change. It seemed to have come slightly closer but without apparent motion. Otherwise, with the exception of small, barely visible remote star nebulas, the outer universe was empty. It was dark, lonely and dead.

  For the two men and the mouse-beaver, it was like a vision in some eerie nightmare.

  "Three hours!" Rhodan remarked once. "We must have increased our speed many times more than a light-year per second. I'd guess that by now we've covered a distance that would require light 100,000 years to traverse."

  Nobody answered him. Although three hours had been sufficient to reduce the known galaxy to a nebulous spot in the emptiness it had not been long enough for Sengu and Pucky to let the shock of the experience subside within them. The minutes dragged slowly. They seemed to drop sluggishly, one by one, into the ocean of time which appeared to have lost its meaning.

  Suddenly Rhodan thought he detected a slight shudder that ran through the small ship. The distant light-blob of Andromeda moved to their right and became motionless again. There was a second small shudder, then nothing more.

  "The ship has changed its course," said Sengu.

  Rhodan nodded without comment. Apparently the special instruments mentioned by the Immortal had just now come into action. Within the past few seconds the search instruments must have detected the location of the vagabond planet Barkon. It was a world whose central star had strayed out of the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years ago, thus taking it along with it. Its mysterious inhabitants, the Barkonides, had undertaken a daring experiment. Converting the planet into a great ark of space, they had departed from their sun in an attempt to return to the galaxy.

  That had been more than 60 years ago by Earth reckoning. Since then the slowly journeying planet could not have come far 10 or 20 light-years... who could know?

  And how far away was it now from their own position? Rhodan had no way of knowing even that, no more than he could determine with any exactitude how fast their small spacecraft was hurtling through the starless void.

  It was remarkable that they had no sense of fatigue although they had not slept for some time. Meanwhile Sengu had finished his beverage and he and Rhodan had consumed a meal. Pucky's bundle of carrots had become noticeably smaller.

  Another half-hour passed. The aspect of the void remained the same and they were unable to detect any further change of course. It was as though they were floating motionlessly in nothingness.

  Then Sengu cried out suddenly: "There's something ahead...!"

  Rhodan strained to see what it was.

  The planet moved into their course from one side. Since it was not illuminated by a sun, it was difficult to make out. It was dark like its background—but not completely black. A faint grey twilight seemed to make its outlines barely visible and a shock of realization came to Rhodan that this must be due to snow and ice. It was only this highly reflective surface that made Barkon visible to the human eye.

  The planet approached swiftly as the spacecraft slowed its movement. It headed straight for Barkon at only a few km per second. Their eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the twilight below, which was actually the reflection of distant galaxies, and especially their own, which was still glowing brightly directly at their stern.

  "We're landing!" Pucky cried out in a shrill voice as the ship described a long arc and sank toward the surface of Barkon. "It's all grey down there—what is that?"

  "Snow, Pucky. The synthetic heat dispensers they use in place of their lost sun must not have been as effective as expected. The Barkonides have retreated beneath the surface. That much was planned. But the snow...?"

  He fell silent. He knew that this quantity of snow and ice had not been foreseen.

  The ship landed in the region of the equator which no longer had any relationship to the sun or to heat. Here the snow was the same as at the poles, and perhaps—due to rotation—even thicker. They landed gently. Nothing else happened.

  Rhodan stared out at the dim white landscape that lay before him, lonely and without a sign of life. The white wasteland stretched to the horizon under a black and starless firmament. The milky flecks of the far nebulas or galaxies were somewhat less discernible now, probably due to the atmosphere.

  Atmosphere...?

  There were no instruments on board with which to determine the presence of an atmosphere. Barkon had possessed a breathable atmosphere, that much was certain. Rhodan peered up at the heavens again. In his opinion, Andromeda should not have appeared as clear to the eye as it actually was.

  Was it possible...?

  No, that was improbable. And why? The Barkonides had developed the technology necessary for taking their world out of their sun's gravitational field and starting it off on its journey back to the galaxy. Certainly they must have been able to keep their atmosphere from dwindling away. Perhaps the sheer cold outside was the deceptive factor. The air was clearer here than people would have been used to on Earth.

  "I'm afraid we must go outside into the cold," said Rhodan.

  Sengu shuddered at the prospect.

  Pucky clapped his plastic helmet down over his head and mumbled hollowly: "Then I'm going to turn on my heater. It's a good thing we brought these spacesuits."

  Sengu followed Pucky's example. Rhodan was also pleased that they could avoid the effects of the cold but he still hesitated.

  "Let's pack the rest of the provisions. Here is a backpack. How did that get here in the first place?"

  No one could say for sure. They placed their meager rations inside it and Sengu put it on. Rhodan reached into the pocket of his suit and took out a small needle-beam raygun. He checked its charge magazine; Pucky and the Japanese also carried energy weapons.

  "Let's go," said Rhodan, closing his helmet. The air generating system immediately went into operation. Temperature inside the suit could be regulated by hand.

  They had hardly stepped into the airlock before the inner hatch closed behind them. Almost simultaneously the outer door opened. Pucky was standing closest to the exit and the suction almost pulled him outside.

  Barkon did not possess an atmosphere!

  It was then that Rhodan knew definitely that something terrible must have happened.

  3/ INVISIBLE INVADERS

  Sengu was the last to leave the ship and as he jumped to the surface of Barkon he sank into the snow up to his ankles. They were all immediately aware of the coldness and had to regulate the inside temperature of their suits.

  Rhodan looked over the surrounding terrain very cautiously. The endless desert of snow stretched away as far as he could see. It stretched to the distant horizon without contour or change. The line where the planet's surface met the
firmament was almost indiscernible.

  Their home galaxy hung close to the horizon. If one were to consider it as the sun it would be possible to say that here it was late afternoon. Its spiral arms appeared to be slowly turning but of course that was merely an illusion. The other island universes were cold, dim light flecks of not much apparent significance. Barkon was a planet without light and now it was also apparently a world without hope.

  Rhodan looked down at the ground.

  Somewhere below the Barkonides must be residing if they still lived. He had witnessed their preparations for burrowing into the planet. It had appeared to them to be the only way of surviving the long journey through emptiness.

  "The ship!"

  Pucky's frightened voice was the only sound they had heard in their helmets since they had stepped onto Barkon. Rhodan whirled about. What he saw filled him with amazement—or rather it was what he failed to see.

  The ship had vanished.

  Fortunately he remembered the words of the Immortal. At any time he wished to he could call it back, but of course it could only happen just once. Then they would have to get on board and leave Barkon.

  He told himself that this would not be allowed to happen, under any circumstances, until he could be certain of the fate of the Barkonides.

  "Don't worry, Pucky. We can call the ship back if we need it. So besides that, do you detect anything?"

  "Nothing, Perry—no thought impulses. If you ask me, nobody lives on this block of ice!"

  "Not even beneath its surface?"

  Pucky observed the snow at his feet. "Down there? No thoughts from there, either."

  For Rhodan it went entirely against the grain to accept the idea of the whole planetary population being dead when he had not received any positive proof of it. Was it possible that the planet's crust was too thick to allow thought impulses to penetrate Pucky's sensitive brain?

  "And you, Sengu? What do you see?"