Unconscious of what he was doing, the plant-hunter kept his arm around the girl’s waist—held her close. He slammed the door, and turning, looked into her eyes. In them he read gratitude—and something more that thrilled him immeasurably. With that brief look went the heart of Lotan. He was drawing her nearer, crushing her to him, unresisting, while the ship hurtled forward, when he remembered that she was of the nobility, and he only a botanist. The jewels that glittered on her garments would have ransomed a rogo*. And he was a poor man. He released her.
“You are of Tyrhana?” he asked.
“I am Mirim, daughter of Zand, Romojak** of the Fleets of Tyrhana,” he replied. “And you, my brave rescuer?”
“Lotan, plant hunter for His Imperial Majesty, Zinlo of Olba,” he replied. “My navigating instruments are out of commission, but when we strike the shore line, which we are sure to do by proceeding westward, I can find the way to Tyrhana and take you home.”
“Home,” she said, and there was a sob in her voice. “I have no home, now. My mother died when I was born. My father went down with his ship in the great storm that cast me on that terrible island. Now I return to the loneliness of a great castle filled with slaves.” Burying her face in her hands, she burst into tears.
His arm encircled her grief-shaken body, and his hand stroked her soft, golden hair.
“Mirim, I—” he began, then stopped resolutely. The gulf between them was too great. Now if he had but found the kadkor and won the reward, he would be her equal—could ask her hand in marriage. He gasped, as that which had been in the back of his mind, endeavoring to fight its way into his objective consciousness, suddenly occurred to him. He had seen the kadkor. It had been a kadkor that Mirim had climbed to escape from the hahoes. But in the excitement of the moment his mind had only registered the fact subjectively. Back there on that tiny islet, now several hundred kants away, was the object of his quest. But he did not know its bearings, and had not even a compass to guide him. He might search a lifetime and not find that islet again.
Presently the girl ceased her sobbing, sat up and began to adjust her disheveled garments. She detached her belt pouch and handed it to him.
“Will you empty this for me, please?” she asked. “It came open and got filled with some horrid gray spores.”
Lotan looked at the spores, and his heart gave a great leap of joy, for they were the spores of the kadkor, scraped from the gills of the fungus by her open belt pouch as the girl had been dragged aloft.
“I’ll keep these, if you don’t mind,” he said, “for to me they are worth the purple, and a thousand kantols of land. Moreover, they give me the courage to say that which has lain in my heart since first I looked into your eyes. I love you, Mirim. Will you be my wife?”
“Take me, Lotan,” was all she said, but her lips against his told him all.
* King.
** Admiral.
KALDAR, WORLD OF ANTARES
by Edmond Hamilton
I : THE START
“YOU WILL find yourself, if you accept, on another world!” Stuart Merrick half rose from his chair in amazement at the statement, but the nine men who faced him across the long table did not move. He searched their faces as though to discover some sign that they were joking, but found none. All were men of middle age or over, of serious, scholastic type, and the one who had spoken was an elderly man with iron-gray hair and eyes like swordpoints.
They were all watching Merrick intently. He was perhaps half their average age, a rather shabbily dressed dark-haired young man whose deceptively lean figure held muscles that only the broad shoulders hinted. His dark eyes were the eyes of a dreamer, but in the tanned face and set of the cleft chin strength was evident.
“On another world,” the speaker repeated. “If that statement frightens you, say so now and save our time.”
“It doesn’t,” Merrick answered evenly, “but it interests me a great deal.”
“Very well,” the other said crisply. “You possess the qualifications which our advertisement mentioned?”
“I think I do,” Merrick answered. “Adventurous disposition, education, lack of family connections, indigence—yes, you have them all in me, especially the indigence.”
“So much the better,” the other calmly told him. “It is unnecessary that you learn our names, but I may say that we nine are probably the nine greatest astronomers and astrophysicists now living. Our advertisement was inserted because we need the help of some younger and more adventurous person to aid us in an investigation we have planned for some years. That is nothing less than the personal exploration of a world of one of the fixed stars!
“That may possibly seem to you an insane statement. It is not. Five years ago we nine determined upon it. Astronomers know almost all there is to know about the planets of our own sun, our own solar system. We know their temperatures, have mapped their surfaces, have charted their orbits. But what of the other suns, the unthinkably distant fixed stars? Around them too revolve great worlds, more calculated to be the abode of life than our own neighbor-planets.
“The telescope and spectroscope can show us but little of the distant stars, save that they exist. The only way in which we will ever gain knowledge concerning any of these worlds is for a man to visit it. Of course no rocket or projectile that we could devise could ever cross the gulf to the nearest of the stars. But we have worked for five years on the problem and have found a way of bridging that gulf, of sending a living man across the void to one of the stars and of bringing him back.
“Briefly, our way is to split up the body of the chosen man into the electrons that compose it, and of using a terrific vibratory beam to drive those electrons together out toward the star or world decided on. An electron, a mere tiny particle of electricity, can travel faster than anything in the universe, with sufficient force behind it. Our projector’s force-beam drives the dissembled electrons of that man out to the world of any star in moments only. On reaching that world, the projector’s force halting, the electrons will combine instantly again into the living man.
“In the same way, if the projector’s force were reversed, and if the man were to stay in the same spot on that distant world, the beam would reach across the gulf and in an instant decompose his body into electrons, draw those electrons back through the void to earth in a moment, and there recompose them instantly into the man again. Thus our projector can send a man without harm out to the farthest star and can reach out to bring him back again.
“We have chosen a world of the great red star Antares to investigate first. Antares is technically a red giant among stars, a huge sun of great age. Around it revolves at least one great world our telescopes and spectroscopes have glimpsed, and it is of that world that we want first to learn, whether it is habitable and whether it holds intelligent life.
“We are all too old and unfitted for such a venture as this, however, and the death of any of us would be, all modesty aside, a loss to science. You, however, are young and adventurous and seem to answer all requirements. We will project you out to this world of Antares in the way that I have described, and when we draw you back to earth if you can give any information on conditions there we will pay you one hundred thousand dollars. The risks of it are self-evident. Do you accept?”
Merrick drew a long breath. “Another world—another star! But where on that world would I find myself when your projector sent me there?”
“There is no way of knowing,” was the calm answer. “You might find yourself in the center of an ocean or in the pit of a volcano or even on an airless world where you would be instantly asphyxiated. It is a great gamble, for we know nothing more about that world than that it exists. It is to know more that we want to send someone to it.”
“And when would I return?”
“In three days. If you survived on reaching this world you would note the exact spot where you found yourself and in three days at the same hour would take that position. Our projector, stabbing its beam
across the gulf to that spot with reversed force, would draw you back as dissembled electrons to the earth.”
Merrick considered silently. The room was still, the ticking of a clock unnaturally loud. A faint murmur of noise came from the night activities of the city outside.
Suddenly Merrick rose to his feet. “I accept,” he said quickly. “But with one condition.”
“And that is?” asked the other anxiously.
“That I start tonight—now!”
The nine scientists showed their astonishment. “Now?”
There was a grin on Merrick’s tanned face. “Now or never. If I sit around thinking this thing over it’s a thousand to one I’ll back out on it. You can send me out tonight?”
“We can, yes,” the spokesman of the nine answered, “though we hadn’t expected to do so. The condensers have been charging for weeks and all is ready. But you’ll want to take equipment with you—that will take time to gather.”
Merrick shook his head. “Nothing but an automatic, enough food for the week, and different clothes than these. Other equipment would be useless; for if I couldn’t live on that world three days without it, it’s ten to one I couldn’t live there with it either.”
“He is right,” one of the scientists interjected.
“Then we can have the things you mention ready at once,” the spokesman of the nine said.
He turned, gave quick orders, and in a moment the nine had snapped into activity, disappearing into the rear and lower parts of the building, hurrying excitedly.
Merrick heard the clash and rumble of great objects being moved, caught the whine of dynamos or motors from somewhere beneath. The building that had been so silent was suddenly alive, a buzz of excited voices and rush of hurrying steps echoing through it.
Merrick heard other heavy objects being shifted, voices calling directions. A moment later the elderly spokesman of the scientists brought in to him a suit of rough khaki clothing, a heavy automatic, and a small knapsack that held concentrated foods. Merrick donned these quickly. He felt his spirits rising as he did so, the feel of the weapon and rough clothing familiar to him. A synchronized watch completed the outfit.
When he had them on, Merrick stepped with a sudden whim to one of the room’s windows and raised a blind. Outside and beneath in the darkness lay a city street, its curb-lights a double lane of white luminescence through which rolled a golden stream of auto headlamps. Crowds of evening pleasure-seekers jammed the walks. Merrick stared thoughtfully.
The hand of the scientists’ leader on his shoulder brought him around.
“All is ready,” the other said. “You start at two exactly.”
Merrick nodded and followed him through a door into the rear portion of the building. It was a long white-lit laboratory whose roof had been slid aside in some way; only the black night sky was overhead. Masses of unfamiliar apparatus were in the room, but most prominent was the object at its center, a low square platform of metal resting on squat concrete piers. From its sides led heavy, black-cased cables.
These wound through bewildering tangles of wiring to the massed apparatus. One whole wall was occupied by huge condensers resting in a metal rack. There was other apparatus beyond Merrick’s recognition, coils and enigmatic cases. Guarding rails of black insulation circled the apparatus everywhere, protecting from its terrific electrical force. On one wall was a large switch-panel.
His guide touched a switch and the lights in the room died. As darkness engulfed them, Merrick saw for the first time that the black sky overhead was gemmed with countless burning stars. Some were calm green and others golden-yellow, others still with the blue of living sapphires. But southwestward from the zenith swung one that was fiery red, a great crimson eye winking and twinkling across the void.
“Antares,” said the other quietly. “In moments, if all goes well, you will be upon its world.”
Merrick gazed. “What’s waiting up there for me—I wonder—”
The other motioned to the platform. “The projector,” he said simply. “It is almost two.”
“I just stand on the platform?” Merrick inquired, and the other nodded.
“Yes, and at exactly two the force-beam will project you outward. You ought to find yourself almost instantly on that world of Antares. Three days from now at two exactly you must be again at the same spot there, so that the projector’s beam can draw you back across the void. Good-bye, and good luck.”
Merrick shook the hand extended, then turned and stepped onto the low platform. Through the room’s darkness he could see the other’s dark figure at the switchpanel, could hear him calling directions to the others as they changed connections quickly. The throb of the dynamos had become terrific and Merrick, his thoughts kaleidoscopic, wondered if they were not audible in the street outside.
His eyes were on the dark figure at the switch-panel. Merrick saw him jerk over three switches in quick succession, then shift a rheostat arm. He was just turning to look upward when another switch clicked at the panel. As it did so Merrick felt incredible forces flooding through him, shaking him in every atom, and with a thunder in his ears the dark laboratory passed from around him and he was hurled into blackness.
II : KALDAR, WORLD OF ANTARES
THROUGH that black unconsciousness Merrick seemed to flash but for instants before out of the blackness there sprang again light. There was a sharp shock that jarred him through, the thunder in his ears receded, and then, staggering, he was looking about him in stupefaction.
From above a blaze of light and heat beat upon him and as he raised his eyes he could have cried out. For in the sky above there burned such a sun as Merrick never had imagined, not the familiar golden sun of earth but a colossal crimson sun whose arc filled a third of the heavens and whose dazzling brilliance half blinded him! Antares, that mighty sun, and he was upon its world!
He lowered his eyes, looked about him. His brain reeled.
Around him there stretched the looming buildings of a mighty city. Giant pyramids of black metal they were, sky-storming structures with terraced sides. Far around him lay the mighty city’s mass, broken by wide black streets and a single great circular plaza. At the plaza’s center rose a small round dais of black metal and on it Merrick was standing. And crowded in the plaza around the dais were thousands on thousands of awe-struck, silent people!
They were people such as Merrick had never seen before. They were tall and dark of hair and white of skin, though with a ruddy tint that the red sunlight explained. Each of them, men and women alike, wore a short flexible garment of black metal woven like chainmail, reaching from shoulders to knees. Each of the men wore in a belt around this a sheathed sword of long, rapier-like design and a short metal tube with a bulging handle or stock.
Merrick stared stupefiedly at them from the central dais on which he alone stood, and for a moment utter silence held the vast throng. Then from them there burst suddenly a tremendous shout.
They were pointing up to him in the wildest excitement and crying to each other. Merrick, half stunned by his transition to this strange world and strange city, caught of their cries the one word “Chan! Chan!” repeated over and over. The place was a wild bedlam of maddest excitement. Merrick, dazed by the wild uproar his sudden appearance on this world had created, was hardly aware of more than that he had reached his goal.
Out of the madly shouting throng there sprang toward the dais a single man, great and black-bearded, fury on his face. He jerked from his sheath a long, slender sword of metal as he leaped, and the sword shone with white light all along its blade the moment after he drew it. With the shining sword in hand he was charging toward the dais when others caught him and held him back. Merrick’s automatic was in his hand by then and he remained on the dais despite the incomprehensible uproar.
Suddenly out of the throng another figure pushed close to the dais, a single one that he saw was a girl. Tall almost as himself she was, her slim figure sheathed from shoulders to knees by the
black metal garment. Her piled hair was as black as the metal, and beneath it her dark eyes were wide with amazement as she stared up at Merrick. She turned from him then, flung up a hand, and the huge throng quickly quieted.
She spoke quickly, to the throng. The black-bearded man interrupted, pointing to Merrick and seeming to urge something, but the girl shook her head decisively and haughtily. Merrick saw her pointing up to him on the dais and repeating the word “Chan.” When she ended he was stunned, for there flashed up into the air thousands of shining swords and these rolled toward him a shattering shout of “Chan!”
Merrick waited tensely for developments. He saw by now that he had been flung into some strange situation among these people of Antares’ world. A double file of sword-armed men approached the dais and he stiffened.
The girl seemed to comprehend his doubt. She came forward, extended a hand as though motioning him down beside her. Merrick met her eyes, then stepped unhesitatingly down to her side. She said something to him in her low, musical voice, but seeing that he still did not understand, pointed simply toward one of the great pyramids at the plaza’s edge, one that seemed greatest of all in the city.
They started toward it, the double file of armed men on either side. Merrick’s eyes clashed with those of the black-bearded man for a moment as they passed. The guards pushed a way through the wildly shouting throng that surged on all sides about them. The whole thing seemed still an unconnected sequence of unreal events to the astounded Merrick.
As they neared the high portal of the great black pyramid, Merrick looked in awe about him. Far along the city’s streets he could glimpse hastening throngs, and overhead flying-craft of some kind came and went. It was all incredible, unreal—this city of looming, terraced black pyramids beneath the huge red sun. But they were passing into the great structure that was their goal.
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