by Eando Binder
York smiled suddenly. He had a better idea. Ignore him, would they? His hands moved to the controls. His little globular ship dropped toward a dome. York sprayed down energy neutralizing force and his ship dropped through the dome wall into its interior. The wall reformed back of him. He was within. This was the very first dome he had seen, with its pathetic ape-race dominated by the hypno-beasts.
To the denizens of the dome, it must have seemed like the visitation of a god. The globular ship darted around like an angry wasp. Whenever a hypno-beast appeared, a ray stabbed down, and a puff of black soot replaced the Beast. In an hour, York had cleared the dome of every lurking hypno-beast. At the last, he hung over a crude village of the cowering, trembling ape-people, hurling down a mental message.
"You are free of your enemies! You will be returned to your home world eventually. I, Anton York, say it!"
This last was a challenge to the dome builders. From dome to dome York went. He freed the snowbird people of their hypno-beasts, and the silicon-men, telling both that they would be returned to their home worlds. Then he rocketed to other domes, raying down the hypno-beasts relentlessly. Intelligent they might be, and as deserving of their own existence as any other race. But their connection with the dome builders branded them, in York's mind, as inimical, only deserving extinction.
Dome after dome, and the hunt sang through York's veins lustily. This was the sport of the gods! But suddenly the cold shock of mason doused his mind. Another ship appeared before his, going from one dome to another.
Instantly York became cold, wary.
The dome builders had finally answered the attack he had made against their domes. He put his protective screen up to full power. No matter what weapons they had, he knew his screen would stand at least a few minutes of battering. He could flee, as a last resort, if his own weapon failed. Out in space, he knew a hundred tricks for eluding pursuers. There was no immediate danger.
He had tensed himself for attack, but it did not come. Instead, from the Ione ship, came the clarion voice of telepathy.
"You are Anton York, of Earth?"
"Yes. You have my wife, Vera, in captivity. My first demand is that you release her. Secondly, your dome experiment whatever it is, must be stopped. The various races must be returned to their own worlds."
The psychic voice that came back seemed to be laughing. "Indeed! You have appointed yourself champion of the universe, Anton York?".
"Call it what you want," York shot back. "I only know that those races are suffering. They have been for too long under the dominance of the hypno-beasts. The Beasts must be destroyed to the last one."
The other being seemed to stop laughing and became very sober.
"Exactly. And now we have found the way."
Startled, York almost bit his tongue.
"You mean you have wanted the Beasts destroyed? Your long, elaborate experiment is for that end? But why—"
"I will explain all. Come with me to our main world, the Ninth planet."
"Wait! If this is trickery, I have a powerful weapon."
As answer, a tongue of queer green light suddenly sprang from the alien ship. It licked greedily around York's ship. His electro-screen melted away as though it were cotton. The tip of the green tongue flicked against the hull and gouged out a chunk of meteor-hard metal, with the ease of a whip flicking off a patch of human hide.
York felt it as a tremendous shock that jarred through every inch of the ship, as if a mountain had been hurled down on him. He gasped. His screen, against which great meteors at the speed of light would have cracked to powder, had been pierced as easily by the green ray as a knife going through butter.
Illimitable power! Gigantic might! These the alien must have.
York had to know the full bitter truth. He tripped the lever of his great gamma-sonic weapon, training it dead-center on the other ship. The blast that emerged would have bored a hole ten miles deep in solid steel. It crashed against the alien's screen, threw up a shower of sparks and dissipated. It dissipated like vagrant smoke. York was helpless.
"You see?" came from the alien. "We are supreme scientists. Your puny screen would go down in an instant, if I used any amount of power. But your death is not wished. Up to now we've patrolled space against possible expeditions from any planet. But we no longer have to. Follow me."
York followed. They arose from the planet of domes and arrowed toward the Cepheid sun. Within an hour, at the speed of light they had neared the fifth planet. It was strangely like Earth, blue and cloud-wreathed. But only under the waning rays of the variable sun. Under its maximum rays, it must change to a hell hot purgatory, ten times more trying to life than the fierce humidity of Venus.
"You live under domes on your planet?" York queried, before they landed.
"No," came back promptly, politely. "We live in the open."
Our whole evolution has been adjusted to the periodic change. We live in frigidity during the wane, and in superheat when our sun waxes, and it is all the same to us. It is the keynote, Anton York, of the story I will soon have to tell."
York's ship landed, after the alien's, in a wide field surrounded by a gleaming city that took his breath away. York had seen countless civilizations, but none so manifestly magnificent as this. He was aware of various subtle impressions. First, a vague air of sadness hung over the city. But it was an air of sadness that was lifting like mist under a bright sun.
Also, he noticed several ships, in the huge spaceport, hovering as though awaiting their arrival. They dipped. York was not sure, but the ships seemed to be saluting him! The burning mystery of it all, piled pyramid high in York's seething mind. In some way, York, or something he represented, was a hero to these people.
He stepped out in his spacesuit, all thought of personal danger gone. The being from the other ship was like the one he had seen once before—thin, spindly, large-headed. His resplendent dress, of fine-spun metallic cloth, suggested high rank. By the deference of his crew and the others around, he must be of the highest rank.
"Yes, I am Vuldane," the being returned, catching Bork's thought "King of our race, the Korians. Follow me to my palace. Your wife, Vera, is there."
York stepped eventually into a huge, glittering chamber.
He saw only one thing however. Vera stood in a spacesuit ahead.
He crushed her in his arms. He couldn't say or telepath a word, at finding her safe.
"Tony, dear," she said. "I worried for you. But I knew you would be brought here safely."
She was amazingly calm. And behind her calmness was an odd, puzzled look. York looked around carefully. Suddenly he grasped her wrist. With his other hand he jerked a weapon from his belt, a smaller edition of his gamma-sonic force. He pointed it at Vuldane's unprotected chest.
"Vuldane," he snapped mentally. "I came here only to find my wife. Now, unless you want to die, command free departure for us from this planet. I'll talk with you in space, later, if you come in an unarmed ship. I'll give you three seconds."
The king stood rooted in surprise, though not fear. York counted three then began to squeeze the trigger. But something knocked the gun down. It was Vera herself.
"Tony—no! It would do no good. They would hound you down. You must listen to their story first. And when it's done, you will wonder yourself what is right and what is wrong."
York holstered his gun. It had been a mad thing to do. But the past adventures, and the staggering mystery of it, had unbearably tortured his nerves. He whirled on the king, who seemed unperturbed.
"Tell me the story quickly. You are planning to conquer the universe?"
"No. We are too civilized for such paltry ambitions." "All right. But you are propagating the hypno-beasts for some malign purpose. Revenge on another race?"
"No. We want the hypno-beasts killed as I told you. Every last one, if possible."
"But why then the bell jar experiment? There is some threat to my world. I feel it. You want Earth?" "No. We do not wish yo
ur world, Earth!"
"Talk sense!" York groaned.
"Tony, don't ask wild questions and interrupt," Vera admonished. "Let him tell his story. Just listen."
9
VULDANE nodded. "You would not have harmed me with your gun, by the way. This room is in an energyless field.. No weapon works in it. Now listen. This is the story of our race—and our doom!"
"We evolved to intelligence a million of your years ago. Vera and I have compared notes. We did not evolve under this sun, but under the rays of another Cepheid, variable, at almost the other end of this universe. We lived there industriously and happily for a hundred thousand years. Then our astronomers announced that the sun was due soon to explode into a nova, killing all life on its planets. Cepheids are unstable stars.
"We had to migrate. But we had to find another Cepheid. And to make it difficult, we had to find a Cepheid with the exact period of waxing and waning that our original sun had--twenty-two days. Our biology, our metabolism, our very life-spark, is adjusted to that pulse beat, as yours is adjusted to a uniform condition."
"I think I understand," York said. "By analogy, on Earth, our most vigorous peoples are in the temperate zones, experiencing alternate winter and summer. Our tropical people are backward, and so are our Arctic people. We are adjusted to that variable pulse of life, though to you it would seem absolutely uniform. You, of course, are adjusted to a change from bitter cold to great heat, either of which would kill us."
"Clearly put," acknowledged Vuldane. "We found, after much searching, such a variable, and migrated to its planets. We set up our civilization and had another period of well-being. Then that Cepheid reached the explosion point. Again we had to search for a twenty-two day Cepheid—one with planets, which are rare—and migrate to it. We have migrated a dozen times in the past million years, Anton York. We are nomads of the cosmos, never knowing a true home
York felt the aura of sadness that suddenly radiated from the alien being. Certainly they were to be pitied for having been cursed to live under a temperamental star like a Cepheid, instead of a long-burning, stable sun, like Sol.
"We have been in this Cepheid system fifty thousand years," Vuldane resumed. "Two thousand years ago our astronomers again gave out their sickening omen. This sun would soon explode. Again the packing up, the elimination of all but a comparative few to start the race over, the departure from loved homes, deserted cities, the trials of rebuilding a new civilization. That faces us again."
"But why not migrate to a stable star and live under domes?" York objected. "You can duplicate any environment, as in the experiment domes. Surely you can duplicate your own."
"Live under domes?" The alien shook his head. "It would stultify the race, wither it away. It is not a good life. Would your Earth people like it?"
York thought back to Earth's colonization of the other planets. It was a tough existence. Young people aged rapidly. If Earth were to vanish, the remaining Earth race on other planets, in their sealed habitations, would die off through sheer strangulation.
"No, we must migrate to our type of sun," Vuldane stated. His thought-voice changed. "But this crisis is sharper than all others have been in the past. We have combed our universe from end to end. Only one twenty-two day Cepheid is left, with a family of planets. The Cepheids of adjacent universes, like yours, are out of the question, for your astral laws are different. Our race would wither away as slowly but surely, in an alien universe, as under domes. We do not wish it. Thus that last Cepheid is our remaining hope. That is the last world possible for us! And now I come to that which affects your people—and the hypno-beasts."
He eyed York a moment, as though reluctant to go on.
"That Cepheid has a family of ten planets, all inhabited by the hypno-beasts. Somehow their evolution inhibited them and they never became scientific. But they were endowed with the remarkable power of hypnotism. A kind of hypnotism to which our minds are peculiarly vulnerable. So strong did it seem that we doubted whether any minds could stand against it. But we had to find out.
"Thus we roamed our universe—and yours and others— and transplanted bits of inhabited worlds under the domes. We pitted them against the hypno-beasts. Our sole purpose was to find a race that could learn how to fight the Beasts, while using this universe's scientific laws."
The pieces all clicked into place abruptly, in York's mind, with a stunning impact.
"I see," he murmured. "A colossal search for a race of creatures parasitic to the hypno-beasts! A race able to resist the hypnotism and conquer the Beasts!"
"In broad detail, just that," agreed Vuldane. "But for a long time we despaired of results. Most races succumbed to the hypnosis and became slaves of the hypno-beasts within a century or so. These we cast out as abortive cultures and procured new ones. In all, in the period of our long-range experiment, we have tried out more than ten thousand races, culled from seven universes!"
The staggering sweep of it overwhelmed York. Vera looked at him sympathetically. She had got over the first shock long before.
York looked at Vuldane, king of a driven, nomad race, in a new light. He and his people had the indomitable courage and never-say-die spirit that could only be admired in any race. York's thoughts leaped ahead.
"Earth people," he whispered. "Earth people are the ones!" Vuldane nodded, and somehow there was infinite regret in his manner.
"Yes, so it has proved. As with the many other races, we installed a thousand of your race in a dome, and pitted them against a control group of the hypno-beasts. One other remarkable, or damnable, attribute the hypno-beasts have. They are almost infinitely adaptable to any environment. They do not breathe oxygen. They absorb life energy from blood, any blood, and no extremes of temperature can stop them.
'We watched your race with avid interest for those two thousand years. We could not leap to conclusions. We used the true scientific method of thorough waiting. We watched as generation by generation your people developed immunity to the hypnotism. At the time you arrived, we had just about decided they were the ones. More, your rapid killing off of the hypno-beasts convinced us completely. Another race has developed immunity, but they do not have the scientific capabilities of yours."
York knew he was grinning in a ghastly, mirthless way. "You mean," he gasped, "that my coming decided you on my race, rather than the other? But I'm a special case. I'm an immortal among our race, and a super-scientist only because of that. You are overestimating—"
Vuldane smiled. "I cannot blame you for pleading in that way, trying to throw us off our decision. We know you are a special case. But you are still a sample of your race. The important thing is your race's capacity for science. We will furnish all the science necessary to destroy the hypno-beasts."
York pondered.
"You are supreme scientists. Why not simply ray down the beasts, with long-range beams from space, on their planets?"
"Do you think we haven't tried everything possible?" responded the alien. "We did that long ago. We rayed down all their centers and cities. We tried to cover every square inch of their planets. When we thought we had reduced their numbers to a safe minimum, we built fortresses. The inevitable happened The Beasts rebred rapidly. They surrounded the fortresses in massed numbers, throwing their combined hypnosis within. Our people fell under the spell, were killed. The Beasts reigned again.
"You do not realize, Anton York, the tremendous power of their hypnosis in quantity. No minds in the universe can withstand it, except two. Those of your race and the non-scientific races"
"No diseases sowed among them could kill them off?"
York queried. "No insect plagues them? Often it's the little things that conquer the big."
Again he got a withering smile.
"Before we used cultures of races, we gathered cultures of germs, worms, insects, crustaceans, plants. More than a million varieties of them, We sowed them among their planets. The hypno-beasts survived everything—everything. They are perhaps the most
tenacious form of life in all the universe. Don't forget we have been trying for twenty centuries. No, Anton York, only intelligence, immune to their hypnotism, will ever wipe them out."
York shrugged. "I must admit a certain degree of sympathy in your problem. I appoint myself emissary to my world, to tell them of your need for help. How many Earth people do you think you need?"
York saw the stricken look in Vera's eyes and prepared to hear a gigantic number.
"All of your people!" responded Vuldane softly.
York was past shock. He could only stare, as if turned to stone.
"All of your people," repeated the alien. "It will not be a simple task, even with Earth people immunity, and our science given to them. The time is short now, before our sun explodes. We must move all your people to the Beasts' planets, setting them up in fortresses which we will build. Many, perhaps most, of your people will succumb at first, till the following generations develop immunity. Finally they will wax strong, sweep out and conquer the Beasts completely. Then we will sow some disease among your people to kill them, and our new home will be ready for our occupancy."
York's psychic voice was a deadly hiss.
"By what right do you consider it your privilege to destroy my race to save yours?"
"By what right," returned Vuldane, "do you consider your race more worthy of continuation than mine? We were civilized long before yours. If you think we are merciless in sacrificing an alien race for our benefit, what of your own race? To this day it fights among itself at times. We haven't had internecine war for half a million years. Tell me, Anton York. Outside of your own personal prejudice, who is to judge whether we are wrong or right, except as necessity drives us?"
York could think of no answer. He knew now what Vera had meant before. It was the old story of Cro-Magnon man killing off Neanderthal. White men destroying the redmen of America. Earth people expanding into interplanetary space and the flower people of Ganymede dying out. On a grander scale, this was the same thing. A vigorous, highly civilized, powerful race was grimly holding onto its place in the sun. Could they be blamed?