[Title here]

by Twin Worlds (epub)

  But this astonishment, though the greatest one to overwhelm the staring Emites, was surpassed by the sight which now greeted the professor as five machine men followed in the wake of Kamunioleten. There should have been nothing so particularly surprising about them had it not been for the striving departure in the shape of their heads, which were not at all conical but were long and cylindrical, rounded on the top and possessing fewer mechanical eyes than the usual number encircling the coned superstructures of the machine men.

  “Where have you been so long, 744U-21?” Professor Jameson queried in open amazement. “And what is the matter with their heads?”

  “I conceived a better plan after the spaceship was less than halfway to Dlasitap,” 744U-21 explained. “I took careful calculations as to where the lost projectile with its five Administrators would be and set out to find it. The search was more difficult than I had expected, but despite the fact that seven of Dlasitap’s years had fled by since the projectile had sped off into space, we finally discovered it. The projectile was still speeding off into space at its last calculated rate of travel when astronomers here on Dlasitap eventually lost sight of it. We found it about forty-six million of your miles distant from Dlasitap, 21MM392, and still on its way toward the outer planet of this system.”

  “And these new machine men are the five Administrators?” the professor asked. “You brought them back to life and placed their brains in machines?”

  “Yes, 21MM392, even as we did for you once,” 744U-21 affirmed. “You will notice that their peculiarly shaped brains required a different cranial structure. This took a good deal of our time.”

  “But what of the crew of three who accompanied the Administrators?” Professor Jameson asked. “What happened to them?”

  One of the new machine men answered this question himself.

  “There was no crew. The crew members were in on the plan to destroy us. As soon as we found ourselves sealed alone inside the projectile and raced prematurely around the wheel we knew that all was not well. We were thrown helplessly into space with all Dlasitap believing that a crew of three accompanied us.”

  The ensuing excitement on Dlasitap can be well imagined. Bemencanla and several of his cohorts disappeared in some strange manner. In the meantime, a worldwide search was made for the three Emites who were to have been the crew of the fateful projectile. One of them was found, and from him was extorted the proof of Bemencan-la’s perfidious plot. They also learned that only a day before Bemencanla and his implicated subordinates had entered a projectile for flight to Selimemigre where Bemencanla was seeking refuge.

  It was the idea of Professor Jameson to overtake them and bring them back to justice, and the suggestion was warmly acclaimed by a wrathful world. The Administrators, even ancient Owmitelverol, boarded the spaceship with the Zoromes, and off they went in search of the escaping Bemencanla. Kamunioleten showed none of his previous qualms toward interplanetary flight aboard the spaceship of Zor. As he remarked to the professor, he felt much safer where he was than where Bemencanla was.

  And well might he have felt more secure, for with the directions they had been given on Dlasitap by their terrified informant, they quickly found the projectile on its way to Selimemigre.

  “We can pick it up with a magnetic attracter,” the professor told the Administrators, “and bring it back to Dlasitap.”

  “Wait!” cried one of the cylindrical-headed men, one of the Administrators who had died a slow, lingering death in the dark, lonely wastes of space. “I have a better way. Why should we not pronounce judgment against him and his conspirators right here and also execute the judgment?”

  “What do you mean?” asked 744U-21, possessing only a slight inkling of the others design.

  “Let us deflect the course of the projectile so that it will be headed into the sun.”

  Scared faces were dimly distinguishable through the thick windows of the projectile as the space ship of Zor rode alongside and gently bumped the projectile, giving it a mighty push and multiplying its speed by a million times or better.

  “What would have taken many years will now be accomplished in a matter of less than a day’s time,” 41C-98 observed to one of the mechanical Administrators.

  Leaving the speeding projectile with its doomed occupants heading rapidly sunward, the spaceship swerved and headed back for Dlasitap.

  Kamunioleten was glad to regain his old prestige and position once more on Dlasitap, yet he declined the offer of the Zoromes to make him like his fellow Administrators.

  “Let them rule always,” he said, “and let my place be filled from time to time.”

  The five machine men of Dlasitap were found better content to live an endless life on their own world than to rove among the stars with the Zoromes.

  After a brief stay on Dlasitap and Selimemigre, the spaceship of the Zoromes once more sped away on its argosy of cosmic adventures, leaving behind two dwindling points of light, one brighter than the other, yet both of which soon disappeared from sight, lost in the distance of interstellar darkness.

  ON THE PLANET FRAGMENT

  Chapter I

  There it lay, slowly gyrating through space, its ponderous and rough-cut, jagged mountain peaks piercing far above the low-lying atmosphere into the endless abyss of space through which the planet plunged. This was the first impression the machine men of Zor had of this strangely shaped world. From afar, they had recognized a departure from the general rotundity characteristic of the major cosmic bodies.

  It might have resembled an elongated cube, had not one end been imperfect and receding, so nearly square were the angles of this strange world. Professor Jameson estimated the length of the immense body to vary in the neighborhood of twenty-three thousand miles. As the spaceship sped closer, and the planet turned upon an axis yet to be defined, the cubic illusion grew less, for the planet appeared more like a mighty stone slab, fourteen thousand miles across and four thousand miles thick. Not until the planet had turned slowly around were these figures available. Distantly, the great world had gleamed as an oblate spheroid, but up closer the softening curves induced by reflected sunlight yielded to squarer cut reality.

  To have said that it was a flat world would have been voicing no deviation from actual proportions. It was a fiat world, its edges four thousand miles thick. The atmosphere appeared unequally divided over the faceted surface. More air apparently enveloped the flat surfaces than covered the sides and ends, especially the ends, which possessed but a thin, scanty layer. The imperfect end tapered gradually into two of the sides, the atmosphere following the surface in ever widening strata as it left the heavier gravity of the receding end. The machine men were of the opinion that gravity and density were the deciding factors concerning the atmosphere. In quantity, the air was more or less equally divided.

  “How might such a queer-shaped world ever come to be?” 454ZQ2 ventured. “It is incredible that such a large, cosmic body should be found in this semblance.”

  “A reason for it exists somewhere,” 744U-21 offered. “There are four other worlds to the system, and none of them are like this. All are spherical. And there is another mismated atmosphere.”

  “It would seem that this world we are approaching is foreign to the system,” 6W-438 observed. “It may have come wandering through space ages ago and was captured by this star.”

  “The solution appears plausible,” the professor agreed. “Yet even if we take for granted that it possessed an atmosphere when it reached this system, why does it possess such a queer shape?”

  “A cosmic explosion somewhere far off in the universe may have sent it upon its journey,” 41C-98 theorized. “The cause we may never know. At least, we can guess at it. As for atmosphere, we have found before that transformed worlds often generate their own during a passing phase of development or reconstruction. A new sun accounts for much.”

  The conjectures among the machine men were many.

  “Two stars passing close to each ot
her may have become wrenched asunder. This great fragment, perhaps, is one of the pieces.”

  “But the rotating, molten mass would assume a spherical shape.”

  “Not if the stars, or at least one of them, were cooled and dying.”

  “A giant planet may have exploded.”

  “A collision of worlds.”

  “The fragment cannot be originally from this system. It came from no one knows how far and brought its atmospheric constituents along.”

  “It seems the only planet of this group on which we might expect to find organisms.”

  The spaceship described a semi-arc about the huge fragment, and another startling discovery was made. There was a moon, a rough, jagged specimen fifty-five thousand miles distant. The professor estimated its diameter to be less than nine hundred of his Earthly units of measurement. Here again was the departure from the conventional, spherical form, yet strange as it might seem this little satellite conformed more to the shape of a globe than did its mighty companion. But the rough surface with its jagged spires and upfiung escarpments was synonomous with the general appearance of its huge contemporary, though it lacked the elongated contour.

  As the spaceship sped downward to less than ten thousand miles over the sunlit surface, the Zoromes marveled at the gigantic mountain ranges which reached up out of the atmosphere and into space. They were easily ten to fifteen times as high as any mountains Professor Jameson could recollect on his planet Earth. Near their bases, yet miles above the planet’s general surface, the mountains were ringed with snow and ice, or at least what the machine men took for such.

  Where the sunlight struck their sides in the realm of the atmosphere, the mountains were weathered and slightly softened in contour, in contrast to the higher portions far above where unveiled sunlight struck dazzling and unsuffused, the shadows sharply etched and as black as the surrounding space.

  “If creatures of any kind do live there, how do they ever get across those mountains?” 119M-5 soliloquized moodily.

  “They don’t,” stated 12W-62 positively, “unless they possess spaceships.”

  “Spaceships is right,” said 744U-21. “Airships would do no good there.”

  “Perhaps they do have spaceships,” 141L-14 suggested.

  “Raise your anticipations as high as you will,” 6W-438 broke in, “But we are scarcely close enough to discover if there are creatures upon this planet, not to mention creatures of the intelligence you have conjured.”

  “It will be interesting,” Professor Jameson stated, “to walk off the edge of the flat world and down its side.”

  Twice the spaceship circled the huge fragment. They finally cruised low over one of the more sharply defined edges where massive mountains towered a few miles from the world’s edge, planning to land here at least temporarily. But if the world’s edge proved a lure, what they saw on closer inspection proved even more so. Midway between the mountains and the rim lay a city.

  “It is inhabited!” cried 47X-09 from his position at a telescope.

  Strange things moved about below them. It was a city, a vast assemblage of rambling, single-storied huts both large and small. Toward the center of the city there rose several more elaborate pieces of architecture.

  “The city is walled about!” 6W-438 discovered. “A very high wall surrounds it!”

  20R-645 brought the ship rapidly downward, selecting an open spot not far from the central buildings as a landing place. The spaceship came to rest, but where there had been a teeming city now rested silence and apparent desertion. Every one of the inhabitants had scurried out of sight. A vague mental unrest manifested itself to the keen perceptions of the Zoromes.

  “They fear us,” said 744U-21. “Be ready to act in case of a hostile demonstration.”

  “They do not seem to be far enough advanced to represent a menace to us,” observed 8L-404.

  “Not scientifically, perhaps,” 744U-21 countered, “yet remember the ohbs―and then on the previous expedition the Emkls of the blue dimension on the planet of the double sun took frightful toll of our ranks. It has been clearly proved to us that various forms of animation possess natural offensives to which we are not wholly invulnerable.”

  “It might be best,” the professor advised, “to preserve as friendly an attitude as possible until they overcome their fear. We must impress upon them mentally that we mean them no harm.”

  “What a high wall,” marveled 41C-98. “It is easily sixty feet high.”

  “And probably half as thick,” added 29G-75. “Why do you suppose they built it?”

  “A wall is usually meant to keep something inside or else outside. Being around a city, I should say that it is to keep something out.”

  “The something must be a colossus to require a wall as large as that one.”

  “Not necessarily. It may require special height to keep out a type of creature whose natural facilities enable it to jump high.”

  “Or the menace may carry means of climbing or otherwise elevating itself,” 6W-438 reminded them. “744U-21’s allusion to the Emkls on the planet of the double sun just put me in mind of the fuzzy stilt walkers.”

  The professor’s attention became riveted upon the surrounding buildings. The houses, or huts, were crude in design, low and rambling. They were made of something resembling cement, and nowhere did they possess a corner, edge or sharp protuberance. Their general appearance was either oblong, spherical or mushroom, and none of them rose to more than twenty feet in height. The apertures were strangest of all. They were oblate, running horizontally in haphazard order. Each domicile possessed three or more of these means of entrance. The average uniformity of these openings was three feet by one foot wide, giving the machine men a rough perception as to the size of the inhabitants.

  Many of the apertures were covered on the inside with shutters. Several of them were open, and from time to time the professor caught furtive glances turned momentarily in the direction of the spaceship. The larger buildings were more massive and seemed built of a varying grade of cement, different in shade and texture than that of the more humble habitations clustered below and stretching away on every side to meet the towering walls. Professor Jameson saw that these larger buildings were more perfectly done, and the weathering on their rough sides suggested that they were much older than the lesser buildings about their base. They were more inclined to square proportions, too, although here the corners and sides were rounded and there was the usual lack of spires or other points. The openings were placed in orderly rows and were more uniform in size though of the same oblate shape as in the smaller houses.

  Most of the machine men came out of their spaceship and wandered about in the nearby vicinity but were never out of sight of the ship and their comrades, nor did they attempt seeking out the hidden inhabitants of the strange city. The mountains rose out of sight to one side of the city, their base fringed with vegetation, snow taking its place further up, while into space they towered gaunt and bare. To the other side of the city a verdured plain swept away for several miles to end at what looked like the shores of a calm, placid ocean. And indeed it was an ocean, but not of water: an ocean of atmosphere dropped away to a depth of four thousand miles. Looking straight away or overhead, the machine men knew that not more than thirty miles of air kept the massive fragment from being a lifeless world.

  The machine men wondered about the city’s inhabitants. Professor Jameson wondered moreover what it would be like to walk to the edge of the world and look off into the abyss beyond.

  “Night will soon be upon us,” said 744U-21, pointing up to the sunlit peaks and then waving a tentacle at the amber sun upon the horizon. “Tomorrow we may know more about the city and its inhabitants. If they do not overcome their fears by then, we shall have to make overtures of friendship to them. It is probable that when morning comes, their timidity shall have been dispersed by our having made no hostile moves during the night. It is clear that they have cause to fear something, for th
e great wall testifies to that.”

  The sim disappeared beyond the world’s rim, and the unusually long duration of dusk surprised the machine men, for absolute night did not come until the sun had gone beyond the next rim and its rays no longer shone crosswise up into the square angle strata of atmosphere adjacent to the walled city. The long, drawn-out dusk finally yielded reluctantly to the night, and in the blackness occasional sounds appraised the cosmic wanderers that the city’s inhabitants were prowling about under cover of darkness. In the clear, fiery starlight, the machine men now and then saw one of their dim, skulking forms. They never came close. A few times, queer, excited cries were uttered.

  The night had grown long when a weird, wailing bedlam arose from a distant quarter of the city. Dim, ghastly lights bobbed uncertainly around the city in the direction of the tumult. The machine men saw globes of light sailing and darting about over the huts. The wailing lamentation grew in volume. In the yells, the Zoromes detected warning, fear, bewilderment and despair.

  “Something is going on over there not in accordance with the usual city routine,” said 6W-438. “We had better investigate.”

  The suggestion was acted upon, and a party of Zoromes left immediately for the area of tumult and pale brilliance. Running in the direction of the light, they turned down a twisting, irregular avenue between groups of the small huts, breaking suddenly into direct view of the pulsing, changing radiance. The light emanated from the illuminated globes which floated above the huts and darted against the apertures, most of these being closed.