by Eando Binder
But how?, York, super-scientist of Earth's Universe, would have tried. But York, scienceless orphan in a new, unknown universe, was practically helpless.
A year passed. York spent most of his time with endless computations. For a blackboard he used a patch of sand and a stick. Again and again he laboriously worked out equations for the new universe's master laws, only to find, by simple tests, that they were wrong. All the while he had the feeling of being watched. And to worry him further, what had become of Vera? Had she run out of food or air supplies? Had she been captured?
One day she seemed near him. He shrugged off the hallucination, but suddenly jumped up. It was her mental voice crying, faint and far away. York followed it like a radio beam and came to a portion of the dome wall where it was strongest.
"Vera!" he telepathed. Most of his mental vibration surged back from the wall, but some leaked through. "Vera, are you there? We're taking a chance, contacting like this." Then he became tenderly eager. "Are you all right, my darling of the ages?"
"Yes, Tony. I can see you. You look thin and haggard. I had to come. I've been distilling the planet air, and eating the pulp of the twenty-two day plants. I'm all right."
York briefly recounted his year of separation from her.
"I'm all right, too, but I have to solve the master laws of this universe."
"Tony, that's why I came. I've been working on computations also. It came to me suddenly. Entropy, Tony— This universe has a lower entropy. Exactly one point one-six four. I measured it."
It struck fire in York's mind,
"That's it, Vera! Good girl. But now, go quickly before the dome people detect you. I'll work out the laws. I'll wipe out the hypno-beasts, and then break out of the dome, one way or another."
"Be careful, dear," with that, Vera's mental voiced moved away.
York returned to the village, his brain buzzing. Entropy, of course! Not only slower light, slower sound and "longer" space, but also a slower entropy—slower dissipation of energy in this universe. It accounted for the relatively high potential energy in slow-burning fuels. This universe had not run down as much as Earth's Universe.
With this vital clue, York's equations began to take life. Formulas dovetailed, and the ubiquitous zero did not always crop up to mock him. In another month, he had calculated the elements of a ray weapon, freed of the clumsiness of propellant guns.
He called Robar and the Congress to session. The men looked at him a little strangely.
"What is it, Anton York?" Rau asked. "We are not sure if you are a madman or not. For a year you have spent your time hunched over a plot of sand, making marks with a stick. What have you been trying to do?"
"Discover science for you."
"Science? We do not even know the word."
York began at the beginning. "After the tune of your forefathers, science arose on the Original World. Machines were made that do all things. Also weapons of war. Weapons, for instance, that blast things to bits. I am going to make one. I will need help and metals. Most of your rifles will have to be melted."
Robar looked dubious. "It will be dangerous partially to disarm ourselves. And how do we know that you are not merely a madman?"
The gods must be laughing at the irony, York thought. But he could not blame them. They knew nothing of him, or even of science. York picked up a little quartzite pebble that he saw on the floor.
"If I make this stone shine in the dark," he demanded, "will you agree?"
They nodded. York went out and returned with the radium capsule of his suit's heating coil. Radium and radioactivity were two things not greatly changed by the new universe's laws. Holding the radium point near the stone, it shone fluorescently, in the dark. The councillors exclaimed in wonder. The project began.
York met and conquered what seemed insuperable difficulties in the next six months. Metals had different melting points in this universe, glass had altered properties, and electricity had new values for its ohm, ampere and volt. But at last he had a workable radium battery that shot its current through a series of interlaced coils behind a convex mirror of polished steel. The whole was mounted on a large-wheeled base.
It was heavy and clumsy, and so crudely worked that even an artisan of the late Stone. Age might have laughed. But it held a giant of power.
At the final test, York clapped together the contact handles of his switch. Electricity pulsed through the coils. A field of strain surrounded a metal bar. Its end, at the focus, became a diamond of incandescence—and atomic disintegration. An energy ray of neutrons hissed from the cathode mirror. It stabbed invisibly for a lone tree which had been picked out as the target. The tree cracked in half, its mid-portion blasted to atoms.
The villagers cried aloud in fear and wonder, and their faces plainly said, "Witchcraft!" York wondered what they would say if they knew he had once, in his own Universe, moved the planet Mercury. Yet York himself was stirred by the simple blasting of the tree. It marked the first step in his conquest of the new universe's laws of science and power. Back in his ship's lab, if he could get there, he would be in a position to wield powerful forces—defy the dome builders!
But first, the hypno-beasts....
7
M-DAY reigned in the village. Every able-bodied male flocked to the banner. This was not to be a war, but a crusade against the hated Beasts. Once and for all under this dome, they would be exterminated. As York led his two thousand grim, determined men, he had the curious thought that in any earthly war they would be worth ten thousand other fighters. For in their breasts beat the tidal wave of hate nurtured for twenty centuries.
They crossed the river, most of them swimming, holding their rifles high. York's machine was pulled across on a raft. On the opposite shore, in enemy territory, sentry-line retreated till reinforcement came. In a matched battle, York's yelling men smashed through. They took prisoners wherever possible. For when the Beasts were gone, these poor mental slaves would again be free, normal humans.
The army marched on the Beast village. It was a sprawling, filthy mass of hovels, but suitably protected by a high wooden wall manned by riflemen. His approach was an open field. York's men could employ no strategy except to scatter and crawl forward from clump to clump of grass. Bullets whined, picking them off.
York gave his instructions to Darrill, Leela's young man, who was commander.
"Get your men as close to the wall as you can, without too much loss of life. Give me time to set up my machine and aim. Then rush in and mop up. Kill all the Beasts you can."
Darrill nodded and his men crawled forward, like the plainsmen of old stalking the wily Indian. York went over his machine's parts carefully, then aimed it for the nearest part of the city wall. He pressed the contact switch. His first blast went high, thundering harmlessly against the dome wall beyond.
His second struck. A ten-foot portion of the stockade burst into flying splinters. Two men, slaves of the Beasts, went with it as mere splinters of flesh. Again and again York knifed his switch, hurling detonations of neutrons, raking the village wall. It became a saw-edged ruin.
The village beyond was exposed to attack!
Now Robar's forces arose and charged. The Beasts, in their quasi-human cunning, rallied their slave-men to the breaches. They poured a withering-fire at the attackers. York hated to do it, but he swept his super machine-gun across the defenders' ranks. Slave-men and Beasts fell in bloody tangles.
Robar's forces reached the village, stormed in, and began mopping up. Since most of them were at least partially immune to the hypnosis, by heredity, they promised to make it short work.
York stood tensely. Why hadn't the dome builders interfered? He had half expected it. He was prepared to swing the snout of his super-gun up, if they appeared, and blast venomously at them. If they, had some weapon ready at the dome's peak, and fired down, York would blast down the dome even if that meant a choking death.
It was a grim moment, for that was York's first challenge to the
dome builders. But not a sign came from the mysterious watchers.
The Beasts in the village did not accept extermination so easily, however. York had not noticed what went on at the back of the village, where a stretch, of concealing forest grew to the wall edge. He was suddenly aware of danger to himself. A force of hypno-beasts and about fifty slave-men were creeping up at his side.
Alone with his machine, York was surrounded. The men, at their masters' commands, raised their rifles. A fusillade of bullets would riddle York and shatter his machine. Whatever the outcome of the village battle, York would meet his end.
Death and Anton York stood face to face.
Was this the way in which the dome-scientists were retaliating? Were they controlling the Beasts as they controlled the Slave-men, giving them the mental command to kill York?
York first darted his hand for the switch. At least he would take with him some of the enemy. A second thought clutched him. He had easily snapped, at first try, the hypnotic-power of the hypno-beasts he had once met. Suppose he hurled the full power of his mentality at them now?
In his two thousand years of life, York had come to learn something of the limitless depths of power within the mind. He had at times used hypnosis himself, and telekinesis. He rang out a call now to the cosmic fed radiogens of his brain. A field of force radiated from him. His mental force met and challenged the combined mental force of the five hypno-beasts.
A strange, silent battle was being fought there....
One lone man stood rigid, surrounded by five repulsive, rigid Beasts. No physical movement betrayed the fact that between them had sprung mental forces of tremendous magnitude. The slave-men cowered, mere brawling pawns in this psychic war. Whichever won, York or the Beasts, would command the slave-men to kill the other.
Perhaps a second passed, perhaps ten minutes. York felt the growing strain. Sweat ran down his face. His brain seemed to be burning alive as his immortality radiogens poured their energy into the field of mental force. He could not stand it much longer. His brain would burn out like an overloaded generator.
The ending was curiously undramatic. One of the Beasts seemed to sigh suddenly. It toppled over, head drooping on its serpentine neck, Medusa eyes closing. It was through, burned out! Another followed, then two more.
The last held out. Its eyes locked with York's. York, reeling, called forth one more surge of mind energy.
The last beast toppled. With a snap, the spell broke. "Shoot the Beasts," York commanded mentally.
Obediently the slave-men poured bullets into the fallen bodies. They jerked convulsively and died. York slipped to the ground, drained of energy, and fell into a state that was more of a coma than sleep.
When he came to, young Darrill was splashing water in his face.
"Anton York!" he cried joyfully. "The village is ours! We killed many of the Beasts. But about half escaped, running to the woods."
York pulled himself together.
"No time to lose," he said. "Organize a Beast-hunt. String your immune ones in a wide line and drive the Beasts into the open, past my machine. Every last one must be exterminated."
It took a week. The immune men, like beaters driving wild game past hunters, herded the panic-stricken hypno-beasts at will. Whenever they were in the open, York's neutron gun blasted into their numbers, ripping them to quiver bag shreds. It was not till Robar's men had roamed for twenty-four hours without finding a Beast that York nodded in satisfaction.
"There is not a single Beast left in this ten-mile patch of Earth," he announced.
But at the same moment, a lumbering form charged from a patch of bushes. It was the last of the Beasts. It seemed berserk, coming forward against a thousand rifles and the blasting-gun.
"Wait!" York yelled, as the men took aim with their guns. "Surround him. Bring him here alive."
A dozen men dragged the struggling, bleating creature before York. Hiding his loathing at its blubbery, oily body and snakelike head, York addressed it by telepathy.
"Can you understand me?" he queried. "Will you answer my questions?'
"I understand you," came back clearly from the hypno-beasts, confirming York's belief in their semi-intelligence. "I will answer questions only if you promise me speedy death. I do not wish to live here, the last of my kind."
York agreed. "Tell me this. Do you know why you are here, under a dome, pitted against Earth people?'
"No."
"You don't know why your kind have been put here, in hundreds of domes, pitted against hundreds of life forms?"
"I did not know of the other domes." The creature was obviously startled. "I wonder—" His thoughts trailed to nothingness.
"What is your native world?"
"The planet system of another sun, according to a legend of ours. I was born here, of course. A long time ago, our progenitors were brought here to this dome."
"And you have no idea why?"
"None. Now give me death."
York gave the signal and a fusillade of bullets snuffed out the life of the last hypno-beast under that dome. York looked up. Were the dome builders staring down, watching in mockery? His hatred and loathing of the Beasts swiftly transferred to them. Why hadn't they interfered? It must be against their plans to have the hypno-beasts wiped out under any one dome.
The maddening enigma of it grated York's nerves. Was he a pawn in their hands? Or would he have the chance yet to do something, before they were quite aware of who he was and what he planned? If he could only get to his ship!
York worked rapidly. He altered the adjustments of his machine so it would radiate sheer energy. The scientific laws of this universe were no longer a mystery to him. He had the machine dragged to one part of the dome wall, and donned his space-suit. Its oxygen unit still held a trickle of the life-giving gas.
He faced the people he had freed of an age-long menace. "I am leaving the dome. But I will be back soon, to free you and return you to Earth. I swear it."
He stepped through a patch of the energy wall, neutralized by his machine's counter energy. Like a god he vanished from their sight, as he had so often from the people back on Earth.
Beyond the dome wall, he crouched for a moment, quietly, warily. Would the dome builders pounce on him now, like a cat on a mouse? But nothing happened.
York left the dome, treading through a pulpy jungle. The Cepheid luminary was just at its periodic maximum, shining as a blue-hot sun. The outer coating of York's suit, a product of his advanced science, threw off waves of blistering heat.
He reached the ship, not daring to call Vera mentally before that moment. He jerked the lever of the air-lock and rushed in.
"Vera!" he called vocally. "I’m back. Vera—"
There was no answering sound in the cabin. York ran through the storerooms and laboratory before he knew the truth. Vera was not there! At first he felt almost physically sick. Then York's nerves eased. Perhaps she had merely stepped out to gather pulp food. Guardedly he sent out a mental call, extending its range slowly in a widening circle about the ship. When no answer came, he recklessly swept a circle a hundred miles around.
Still there was no answer. Vera could not possibly be within range without answering—if she were alive.
York's eyes went bleak. There was only one answer. The dome, builders had discovered the ship and captured Vera!
The icy rage that swept through York's veins at that moment would have made any of his past enemies—the fifty Immortals, Mason Chard, the Three Eternals—tremble in stark fear. No savage Stone Age man, losing his mate of a few years, could match the blazing agony that seared within York. Vera had been his love, his constant companion, for two thousand years.
York made a vow, in a cold, deadly voice.
"No matter what or who you are, dome builders, I will search you out. And if you've touched a hair of her head—" He could find no threat that was adequate.
8
ANTON YORK laboured for a month. He feared detection at any mome
nt. Why didn't the dome builders come back for him? Why hadn't the ship been guarded? The sheer strangeness of it utterly baffled him. Vera, of course, would never betray him. But by adding two and two, they must know of York. Were they so all-powerful that they feared nothing?
In that month, York accomplished miracles. He worked at his gravity engine, a protective screen against weapons, and his own weapons. Before, the ship had landed almost a derelict. Now it was again a floating fortress of might, as it had been in his own Universe.
It was not miraculous. It was simply that York had finally solved the new universe's master laws. It took only minor adjustments to fit his instruments and energy coils to work under those new principles. And by virtue of lower entropy —higher available energy—York's ship was now a more formidable fighting craft than it had been in Earth's Universe.
Seated at his controls, he raised the ship one day. Lightly as a feather it darted up. His energy coils drew power from the planet's gravity field, like a sponge sucking up water. As a test, he shot into space and rammed his ship forward at the speed of light. He braked with his inertialess field to zero in three seconds, without feeling the slightest jar. The engines hummed smoothly, like a snoring giant.
As the test of his protective screen, he chased down a meteor and cracked into it at twice the speed of light. His screen shattered the huge stone instantaneously. His hull was untouched.
He chased down another meteor and turned his gamma-sonic weapon on it. The livid beam whiffed fifty millions of tons of matter away in twenty-five seconds. He was amazed himself. In his own Universe, where lower energies reigned, it would have taken at least twice that time.
Satisfied, he dropped back to the planet, hovering over the domes. He saw their full extent now. There was more than a thousand in all, occupying a good portion of the otherwise barren wastes.
York drew a deep breath. He felt better now, better than he had for the three years he had been in this universe. He was no longer a marooned, helpless being. At his fingertips again was super-power.
He pondered. What was he to do? How could he find the dome builders? And Vera? They seemed bent on ignoring him. He speculated the thought of searching the other twelve planets of the Cepheid sun. This one seemed to be merely an experiment station. Find their center and confront them—