by Eando Binder
Both knew without saying that there were other dangers. Already their stored air and food supplies were running low. In their own Universe, York would have laughed and transmuted oxygen and protein from sheer metal, bending the atoms to his will. But here, in a maddening universe with new set of laws and measurements, he had less command over circumstances than a Neanderthal Man in some 20th century city.
"That Sun, Tony," Vera whispered. "It's far past first magnitude now. We're drifting straight toward it. Another year—"
She left the appalling thought unfinished. In another year, unless they achieved ‘a workable motor, they would fall into the huge, blazing sun. For a year it had grown steadily brighter athwart their drifting course. But they might starve first, or be caught by the patrol ship.
They had three ways to die, in this strange, mad universe, none of them pleasant.
The alien sun grew until it was the size of Sol from the distance of Pluto. They began to feel the slight acceleration, as its tentacles of gravity clutched at their ship. It was a strange, huge star, red as Antares.
Periodically, every twenty-two days, it increased in brightness. At its maximum it was almost blue-hot. Then it declined to the red state again. On and on the cycle went, with the precise regularity of a delicately made clock.
"A Cepheid variable," York said "Like the Cepheids of our universe, it obeys some mysterious law of waxing and waning atomic-disintegration in its interior. And similarly, if the balance slips at some time, it will explode into a flaming nova. These are very unstable stars. If there are planets—"
He searched with his telescope.. It was small, but through a principle of television magnification, had a resolving power ten times greater than a 00 inch reflector. He swept all the regions around the pulsing sun.
"Yes, it has planets, thirteen of them," he announced finally. "We're drifting toward the tenth outermost. We won't fall into the sun after all, Vera. We'll crash on that planet!"
He was grimly humorous.
"Radio." Vera clutched at straws. "An SOS signal might bring rescue."
"Or that patrol ship." York shook his head. "But I don't think their race is here at all. This Cepheid sun sheds an extremely variable radiation. Any planet here must have a range of temperature that shoots Sun frigidity to super-tropical heat every twenty-two days. Evolution must have balked at trying to adjust creatures to such rapid changes.' He laughed gratingly. "And in the first place, I can't signal an SOS. There's a new radio principle here, too."
He faced around haggardly.
"Only one chance, Vera. If I can get one little rocket working, we can land safely on that planet."
While the world enlarged to a dull slate orb in the next month, York laboured without sleep. He took drugs that would have killed a normal man, and phosphate foods that went directly to his brain without feeding his body. He trusted his tremendous vitality and the cosmic-fed radiogens to keep him alive.
A week before the deadline, a tiny clue came to him—for the first time. the basic laws of the new universe dimly formed in his striving brain. Earth scientists, thousands upon thousands of them, had taken several centuries to piece out the natural laws of Earth's Universe. Alone, in two years, York began to note down the first fundamental rules in a totally new and strange universe where even light-waves slowed down.
"Newton's Third Law, the one applied to rockets, has a clause here! The higher the energy, the slower the reaction. It's almost backward. That means a slow-burning fuel will do the trick where an explosive one won't. Now I'm getting somewhere."
"Hurry, Tony!"
The planet loomed now like a giant blue moon.
Hastily York constructed a wide rocket tube at the stern. Loaded with slow-burning phosphorus, it belched forth - clouds of smoky vapour. It would be useless as a rocket in Earth's Universe. But here it propelled the ship forward with amazing power.
York skilfully maneuvered the ship into a spiral course around the planet barely in time to stop a stone like plunge. It lowered screamingly into the atmosphere. The globular craft landed, just before consuming the last of their phosphorus supplies. York and Vera were thrown violently against the wall.
Vera crawled to her husband, weeping in mixed joy and fright.
"Tony, we're safe! The ship held. Tony!"
Groggily he opened his eyes, stilling her alarm that he might have been killed.
"Yes, made it," he mumbled. "New universe can't beat us. Now let me sleep awhile—"
He slept for three days. When he awoke, he devoured the enormous quantity of hot foods Vera had held ready. York relaxed with a sigh. Then he reverted to normal after an ordeal that might have shattered the mind and health of an Earthly mortal. He relaxed only for a moment. Then he was at his instruments, testing outside conditions.
"Air unbreathable, mainly hydrocarbons. Temperature minus one hundred twenty, but rising. The Cepheid sun is building up to its maximum."
They looked out over the alien world. It was fiat, barren, blanketed with white, frozen gases. BM these were dissipating slowly, swirling up into the atmosphere.
In a week's time all the white gas-snow was gone. The previously barren loam stirred with life. Weird, saw-edged plant life burst forth and grew amazingly, at a visible rate. As the Cepheid luminary rose to its maximum, it poured down a flood of hot blue rays. Almost abruptly the environment became tropical. Pseudo-palms and ferns reached for the sky.
"Life, after all," marvelled York. "But probably only plant forms, enjoying a brief "summer' of less than two weeks before the Cepheid's decline to 'winter' radiation."
He made a sudden exclamation.
"No. I'm wrong again. See those scuttling little forms among the grasses, like rabbits and weasels? Animal life! Nature is more persistent than I thought. Well anyway, I'm almost sure rational beings could not have arisen."
"I think you're wrong again, Tony." Vera smiled. "Look there, just over the horizon. I saw it before you awoke. In the telescope it looks like the top of a transparent dome. It may be a city." She gasped suddenly, in remembrance. "Tony, suppose it's the city of the patrol ship!"
York started, but spoke calmly.
"Suppose it isn't. I'll take a look at that dome. I've been trying for ten days to adjust our gravity engine, without result. If there are intelligent beings, and if they're friendly, I can get the data from them. Or at least a few pointers about this crazy universe's laws."
Vera looked worried when he turned to leave.
"You're unarmed, Tony, and on a strange world. Please be careful."
"I won't take any chances," he promised. "Well keep in telepathic rapport all the time I'm away."
Clad in his spacesuit, equipped with oxygen and temperature, control, Anton York moved off into what had become semi jungle. As he suspected, the life around him was unstable. The trees were so pulpy that they fell apart at a push. A little spidery-legged creature with feathers ran against his boot. The soft blow killed t. It’s body withered away on the spot. In its place, transparent grass shot up six inches in a minute and then crumbled in a gust of wind.
Swift life and swift decay was the rule here.
York plodded on He felt like some wanderer in a ghost forest, or a jungle-man treading primeval wastes. All the science, weapons, command of natural forces that he had wielded in his own universe were nothing here. He was unarmed, helpless. In direct ratio to his distance from the ship, he grew more worried. What if that dome actually did hold the ruthless aliens who had annihilated the Three Eternals without a second's hesitation?
For the first time in 2,000 years, York felt insecure. Before, visiting hundreds of worlds, he had felt himself at least the equal of any other beings.
He resolved to use extreme caution when he reached the dome.
"That's right, Tony," came Vera's clear telepathic voice. Slumberingly-is thoughts. "At the slightest sign of danger, race back."
York came upon the dome suddenly. It was fringed about by rampant life blo
oming under the maximum rays of the Cepheid sun. He gasped. Of clear transparent material, its arc of curvature indicated that it must be at least ten miles in diameter and a thousand feet high at the peak. Only intelligence could have built, the structure—first-class intelligence!
A second shock came when he looked in. He had expected a city, a mass of buildings, dwellings, busy crowds performing their daily tasks, bustling civilization, protected under the dome from the constantly changing environment outside. Such should be the logical explanation for this mighty, arcing shell.
But instead—attack.
The scene inside was that of another world. Not a city, it was simply a stretch of rocky greenish ground, with patches of red vegetation. Here and there tall, red-needled trees, like weird pines, blocked the view. The atmosphere around was misty. The whole scene was in stark contrast to that outside the dome.
Did the intelligent race prefer to live in such a back-to nature setting? Why should a titanic dome, the product of super-science, enclose a queer bit of pastoral scenery? Was it a park perhaps, or some sort of a playground?
York found no answer as he trudged halfway around the dome. It was all the same inside, and apparently untenanted. That was most puzzling of all. But suddenly he saw movement. He strained his eyes through the distortions of the transparent medium.
Two furry creatures were slinking among a group of trees, within a half-mile of York's position. He could barely make them out as apelike, walking erect on two legs. Their beads were remarkably large, denoting intelligence. Hand in hand, male and female apparently, they stumbled along. They glanced back at times, as though being stalked.
Abruptly another form lunged from behind a patch of red-berried bushes. It was a monstrous form, blubbery of body, revoltingly naked. Little stumpy legs moved it forward lumberingly- It had no claws. Its small head, bearing two saucer eyes, was perched on a long serpentine neck, giving it a periscopic view in all directions.
It looked, somehow, like a cross between a snake and walrus. It was repulsively ugly, but not formidable.
York watched as the two ape beings caught sight of the monster and ran with obvious fear. The beast lumbered after them clumsily. York, unconsciously loyal to the two beings more like himself, breathed in relief for them. They could easily outrun the horror.
But strangely their steps faltered. As though they had run into an invisible lake of syrup, they slowed down, their bodies straining futilely. At last the ape-man faced about, flinging the woman creature behind him. He awaited the attack of the monster.
"The ape-man will win," York told Vera by telepathy, having transmitted the episode. "The monster, though large, has no claws, or biting jaws, or any air of strength. The ape-man should have faced it in the first place. One twist of his powerful hands on that long, thin neck and he can tear the beast's ridiculous head, off. The beast is the one who should run."
The ape-man, as though under York's orders, leaped forward to grasp the thin neck with his gorilla like hands. But again something dogged his efforts. His arms fell helpless. He stood rigid. He made no move to escape as the beast whipped out a rubbery tentacle, wrapped it around his neck, and choked him lifeless. Then the tentacle's end probed into the corpse like a proboscis, and drained the dead ape-man to a bloodless husk.
3
ANTON YORK tried to break his gaze from the revolting scene. He saw the woman-creature stalk forward like a robot and submit herself to the choking tentacle and draining of blood.
With a final effort, York wrenched his eyes away. In the act, he knew why it was so hard.
"Hypnosis!” he breathed. "That horrible monster fascinates his prey as a snake does a bird, and the victim is doomed."
"But why do the builders of the dome, who must be higher life-forms than the ape-creatures, allow that to go on?" Vera's telepathic tone was shocked, unbelieving.
"I don't know," returned York. "There's some amazing mystery behind this. The dome-builders might be those same aliens of the patrol ship. I just glimpsed another dome, Vera, a few miles away. I'm going to that one and find out what I can."
"Tony, I'm worried. There is a terrible menace in all this. Please come back!"
But Vera knew that her husband wouldn't. Quite aside from his own problems and danger, York's scientific curiosity had been aroused. He had never, in all their travels among strange worlds, left a mystery unsolved.
The second dome, when York arrived, was exactly like the first in size and shape, enclosing a space about ten miles in diameter.
But the scene inside was vastly different. The ground was sandy and speckled with clumps of oddly shaped cacti life. The air seemed thin and clear, with heat ripples streaming down from the peak of the dome, where a huge gleaming apparatus hung suspended.
York quickly discovered mangy, lean creatures similar to Earthly wolves. They loped after and caught smaller animals, in this cross-section of an alien desert.
Suddenly, from behind a towering rock formation, stabbed a hissing- ray. It struck a wolf creature, electrocuting it. York stared as the wielder of the electric gun ran from concealment.
At first glance, York understood why its movements were stiff and awkward, why its skin glinted metallically. York knew it be a silicon being, one with silicon atoms replacing those of carbon. Intelligence reposed in the flint-scaled face, though it was dead of expression.
The silicon-man took out a sharp knife and began slicing the carcass. With a flint he struck fire, feeding it with twigs of dried cactus. He rolled a strip of flesh in the sand, then toasted it over the fire, finally gobbling it down with relish. Within his stomach, York surmised, some strange chemistry of digestion replaced the carbon atoms in the flesh-food with silicon atoms from the sand 'salt."
As the silicon-man began a second strip, there was an interruption. A large form ambled from behind the rocks. York had to look twice, for it was the same repulsive type of beast that had killed the two ape-creatures in the other dome!
It came forward confidently. The silicon-man heard its approach. He whirled about, drew his ray gun.
"Give it to him!" York found himself urging the silicon-man. "Shoot the beast down."
The crystal-man seemed to make every effort. His gun pointed and his body trembled, but no shot was fired. Eyes fastened on the beast's saucer orbs, he stood as rigidly as a statue. Hypnosis again! The beast seemed to give a silent signal. With what might have been a curse, the silicon-man picked up his knife, holstered his gun, and trotted away. He looked back once, shaking his fist in a manlike gesture, but with an air of helplessness.
The hypno-beast promptly inserted its sucking organ into the wolf creature's corpse and drained it dry of blood. It could not use the silicon-men as food. But it still had the demoniacal power of chasing them away from prey they had killed.
What was the answer to this amazing riddle? The hypno-beast in two domes, in two different environments, lorded it over .other life forms. Why had the builders-done this? They could be neither the ape-men, the silicon-men, nor the hypno-beast. For all had obvious shortcomings as beings of great intelligence.
Who were they? Where were they? Why had they built these domes? Were they the ones who also patrolled space?
Driven by the mystery, and suspecting a. third dome, York scanned the horizon and spied not one, but two more. He struck out for the nearest. So impatient that he sidestepped for nothing, he bowled over pulpy trees and fragile ferns with his swinging arms. He left behind him a trail of trampled vegetation that was already regrowing behind him.
The third dome was identical with the others. He would have been startled if it weren't. And the scene within, as he expected, was totally different from the other two domes, and also from this planet's indigenous environment.
It was a cold setting, in the third dome. White snow lay over all, sprayed down at times from an apparatus suspended under the dome's peak. Hardy vegetation existed here that had the peculiar power of motivation, like animal life. Stubby rootl
ets slowly inched forward the low trees and bushes, seeking a nutritious spot in which to sink the feeding roots. Shaggy white forms, almost invisible against the white background, sneaked among the moving vegetation. It must be bitterly cold in there, far colder than any spot on Earth, perhaps duplicating the frozen wastes of Uranus' moons.'
York stared, startled by something.
"Vera, listen as I describe—" When he had finished, he asked: "Does it remind you of anything?"
After a moment her psychic voice came back excitedly.
"Yes. It does sound exactly like the fifth planet of 61- Cygni, which we visited over a thousand years ago. But Tony, that was in our Universe! How could that exact setting be here?"
York made no answer. He was watching a scene within the dome. It had a larger scope than he had at first realized. A small city stood under one part of the shell overhang. Solid ice blocks and snow cement composed the square buildings, decorated artistically with shaped icicles and patterned snow crystals. York had seen the same structures on 61- Cygni, unless imagination had filled the gaps of memory after a thousand years. Water was the staple budding material, with temperatures ranging far below zero at all times.
Such was the city. The inhabitants were squat quadrupeds, their four, feet flattened smooth so they could glide over snow and ice on these natural skis. All other surfaces of their bodies were covered with fluffy, warm feathers. They were warm-blooded creatures. Their beaked heads held large, intelligent eyes.
At the moment, excitement reigned in the village of snowbird people. The males had collected on the flat roof tops, swinging around catapults of leather and wood. They knew nothing of smelting or metals in their low-temperature environment. The boiling point of water was to them the blast heat of a high temperature furnace.
The attack they prepared for came. York's snow-blinded eyes hadn't even noticed the body of white forms rushing across the open stretch before the village. They were of the same race. York cursed, as he had always cursed over the civil wars of the human race.