Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD - "The American Judiciary"

Rupert Hughes - "We Can't Have Everything"

Israel Abrahams - "The Book of Delight and Other Papers"

William Painter - "The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Black Star Passes

J >> John W Campbell >> The Black Star Passes




The scores of quartz tubes that come down from the floor above joined,
coalesced, and ran down to the great generator, and into it.

They descended to another level. Here were other quartz tubes, but these
led down still further, for this floor contained individual sleeping
bunks, most of them unoccupied, unready for occupancy, though some were
made up.

Down another level; again the bunks, the little individual rooms.

At last they reached the bottom level, and here the great quartz tubes
terminated in a hundred smaller ones, each of these leading into some
strange mechanism. There were sighting devices on it, and there were
ports that opened in the floor. This was evidently the bombing room.

With an occasional hushed word, the Terrestrians walked through what
seemed to be a vast city of the dead, passing sleeping officers, and
crewmen by the hundreds. On the third level they came at last to the
control room. Here were switchboards, control panels, and dozens of
officers, sleeping now, beside their instruments. A sudden dull thudding
sound spun Arcot and Wade around, nerves taut. They relaxed and
exchanged apologetic smiles. An automatic relay had adjusted some
mechanism.

They noted one man stationed apart from the rest. He sat at the very
bow, protected behind eight-inch coronium plates in which were set
masses of fused quartz that were nearly as strong as the metal itself.
These gave him a view in every direction except directly behind him.
Obviously, here was the pilot.

Returning to the top level, they entered the long passages that led out
into the titanic wings. Here, as elsewhere, the ship was brightly
lighted. They came to a small room, another bunk room. There were great
numbers of these down both sides of the long corridor, and along the two
parallel corridors down the wing. In the fourth corridor near the back
edge of the wing, there were bunk rooms on one side, and on the other
were bombing posts.

As they continued walking down the first corridor, they came to a small
room, whence issued the low hum of one of the motors. Entering, they
found the crew sleeping, and the motor idling.

"Good Lord!" Wade exclaimed. "Look at that motor, Arcot! No bigger than
the trunk of a man's body. Yet a battery of these sends the ship along
at a mile a second! What power!"

Slowly they proceeded down the long hall. At each of the fifty engine
mountings they found the same conditions. At the end of the hall there
was an escalator that led one level higher, into the upper wing. Here
they found long rows of the bombing posts and the corresponding quartz
rods.

They returned finally to the control room. Here Arcot spent a long time
looking over the many instruments, the controls, and the piloting
apparatus.

"Wade," he said at last, "I think I can see how this is done. I am going
to stop those engines, start them, then accelerate them till the ship
rolls a bit!" Arcot stepped quickly over to the pilots seat, lifted the
sleeping pilot out, and settled in his place.

"Now, you go over to that board there--that one--and when I ask you to,
please turn on that control--no, the one below--yes--turn it on about
one notch at a time."

Wade shook his head dubiously, a one-sided grin on his face. "All right,
Arcot--just as you say--but when I think of the powers you're playing
with--well, a mistake might be unhealthy!"

"I'm going to stop the motors now," Arcot announced quietly. All the
time they had been on board, they had been aware of the barely inaudible
whine of the motors. Now suddenly, it was gone, and the plane was still
as death!

Arcot's voice sounded unnaturally loud. "I did it without blowing the
ship up after all! Now we're going to try turning the power on!"

Suddenly there was a throaty hum; then quickly it became the low whine;
then, as Arcot turned on the throttle before him, he heard the tens of
thousands of horsepower spring into life--and suddenly the whine was a
low roar--the mighty propellers out there had became a blur--then with
majestic slowness the huge machine moved off across the field!

Arcot shut off the motors and rose with a broad, relieved smile, "Easy!"
he said. They made their way again up through the ship, up through the
room of the tremendous cylinder coil, and then into the power room. Now
the machines were quiet, for the motors were no longer working.

"Arcot, you didn't shut off the biggest machine of all down there. How
come?"

"I couldn't, Wade. It has no shut-off control, and if it did have, I
wouldn't use it. I will tell you why when we get back to the
_Solarite_."

At last they left the mighty machine; walked once more across its broad
metal top. Here and there they now saw the ends of those quartz
cylinders. Once more they entered the _Solarite_, through the air lock,
and took off the cumbersome insulating suits.

As quickly as possible Arcot outlined to the two who had stayed with the
_Solarite_, the things they had seen, and the layout of the great ship.

"I think I can understand the secret of all that power, and it's not so
different from the _Solarite_, at that. It, too, draws its power from
the sun, though in a different way, and it stores it within itself,
which the _Solarite_ does not try to do.

"Light of course, is energy, and therefore, has mass. It exerts
pressure, the impact of its moving units of energy--photons. We have
electrons and protons of matter, and photons of light. Now we know that
the mass of protons and electrons will attract other protons and
electrons, and hold them near--as in a stone, or in a solar system. The
new idea here is that the photons will attract each other ever more and
more powerfully, the closer they get. The Kaxorians have developed a
method of getting them so close together, that they will, for a while at
least, hold themselves there, and with a little 'pressure', will stay
there indefinitely.

"In that huge coil and cylinder we found there we saw the main power
storage tank. That was full of gaseous light-energy held together by its
own attraction, plus a little help of the generator!"

"A little help?" Wade exclaimed. "Quite a little! I'll bet that thing
had a million horsepower in its motor!"

"Yes--but I'll bet they have nearly fifty pounds of light condensed
there--so why worry about a little thing like a million horsepower? They
have plenty more where that comes from.

"I think they go up above the clouds in some way and collect the sun's
energy. Remember that Venus gets twice as much as Earth. They focus it
on those tubes on the roof there, and they, like all quartz tubes,
conduct the light down into the condensers where it is first collected.
Then it is led to the big condenser downstairs, where the final power is
added, and the condensed light is stored.

"Quartz conducts light just as copper conducts electricity--those are
bus bars we saw running around there.

"The bombs we've been meeting recently are, of course, little knots of
this light energy thrown out by that projector mechanism we saw. When
they hit anything, the object absorbs their energy--and is very promptly
volatilized by the heat of the absorption.

"Do you remember that column of hissing radiance we saw shooting out of
the wrecked plane just before it blew up? That was the motor connection,
broken, and discharging free energy. That would ordinarily have
supplied all fifty motors at about full speed. Naturally, when it cut
loose, it was rather violent.

"The main generator had been damaged, no doubt, so it stopped working,
and the gravitational attraction of the photons wasn't enough, without
its influence to hold them bound too long. All those floods of energy
were released instantaneously, of course.

"Look--there come the Lanorians now. I want to go back to Sonor and
think over this problem. Perhaps we can find something that will release
all that energy--though honestly, I doubt it."

Arcot seemed depressed, overawed perhaps, by the sheer magnitude of the
force that lay bound up in the Kaxorian ship. It seemed inconceivable
that the little _Solarite_ could in any way be effective against the
incredible machine.

The Lanorian planes were landing almost like a flock of birds, on the
wings, the fuselage, the ground all about the gigantic ship. Arcot
dropped into a chair, gazing moodily into emptiness, his thoughts on the
mighty giant, stricken now, but only sleeping. In its vast hulk lay such
energies as intelligence had never before controlled; within it he knew
there were locked the powers of the sun itself. What could the
_Solarite_ do against it?

"Oh, I almost forgot to mention it." Arcot spoke slowly, dejectedly. "In
the heat of the attack back there it went practically unnoticed. Our
only weapon beside the gas is useless now. Do you remember how the ship
seemed to lose its invisibility for an instant? I learned why when we
investigated the ship. Those men are physicists of the highest order. We
must realize the terrible forces, both physical and mental that we are
to meet. They've solved the secret of our invisibility, and now they can
neutralize it. They began using it a bit too late this time, but they
had located the radio-produced interference caused by the ship's
invisibility apparatus, and they were sending a beam of interfering
radio energy at us. We are invisible only by reason of the vibration of
the molecules in response to the radio impressed oscillations. The
molecules vibrate in tune, at terrific frequency, and the light can pass
perfectly. What will happen, however, if someone locates the source of
the radio waves? It'll be simple for them to send out a radio beam and
touch our invisible ship with it. The two radio waves impressed on us
now will be out of step and the interference will instantly make us
visible. We can no longer attack them with our atomic hydrogen blast, or
with the gas--both are useless unless we can get close to them, and we
can't come within ten miles of them now. Those bombs of theirs are
effective at that distance."

Again he fell silent, thinking--hoping for an idea that would once more
give them a chance to combat the Kaxorians. His three companions,
equally depressed and without a workable idea, remained silent. Abruptly
Arcot stood up.

"I'm going to speak with the Commander-in-Field here. Then we can start
back for Sonor--and maybe we had better head for home. It looks as
though there is little we can do here."

Briefly he spoke to the young Venerian officer, and told him what he had
learned about the ship. Perhaps they could fly it to Sonor; or it could
be left there undestroyed if he would open a certain control just before
he left. Arcot showed him which one--it would drain out the power of the
great storage tank, throwing it harmlessly against the clouds above. The
Kaxorians might destroy the machine if they wanted to--Arcot felt that
they would not wish to. They would hope, with reason, they might
recapture it! It would be impossible to move that tremendous machine
without the power that its "tank" was intended to hold.




VII


Slowly they cruised back to Sonor, Arcot still engrossed in thought.
Would it be that Venus would fall before the attack of the mighty
planes, that they would sweep out across space, to Earth--to Mars--to
other worlds, a cosmic menace? Would the mighty machines soon be
circling Earth? Guided missiles with atomic warheads could combat them,
perhaps, as could the molecular motion machines. Perhaps these could be
armored with twenty-inch steel walls, and driven into the great
propellers, or at miles a second, into the ship itself! But these ships
would require long hours, days, even weeks to build, and in that time
the Kaxorian fleet would be ready. It would attack Earth within six days
now! What hope was there to avert incalculable destruction--if not
outright defeat?

In despair Arcot turned and strode quickly down the long hallway of the
_Solarite_. Above him he could hear the smooth, even hum of the sweetly
functioning generator, but it only reminded him of the vastly greater
energies he had seen controlled that night. The thudding relays in the
power room, as Wade maneuvered the ship, seemed some diminutive mockery
of the giant relays he had seen in the power room of the Kaxorian plane.

He sat down in the power room, looking at the stacked apparatus, neatly
arranged, as it must be, to get all this apparatus in this small space.
Then at last he began to think more calmly. He concentrated on the
greatest forces known to man--and there were only two that even occurred
to him as great! One was the vast energies he had that very night
learned of; the other was the force of the molecules, the force that
drove his ship.

He had had no time to work out the mathematics of the light compression,
mathematics that he now knew would give results. There remained only the
molecular motion. What could he do with it that he had not done?

He drew out a small black notebook. In it were symbols, formulas, and
page after page of the intricate calculus that had ended finally in the
harnessing of this great force that was even now carrying him smoothly
along.

Half an hour later he was still busy--covering page after page with
swiftly written formulas. Before him was a great table of multiple
integers, the only one like it known to exist in the System, for the
multiple calculus was an invention of Arcot's. At last he found the
expression he wanted, and carefully he checked his work, excitedly
though now, with an expression of eager hope--it seemed logical--it
seemed correct--

"Morey--oh, Morey," he called, holding his enthusiasm in check, "if you
can come here--I want you to check some math for me. I've done it--and I
want to see if you get the same result independently!" Morey was a more
careful mathematician than he, and it was to him Arcot turned for
verification of any new discovery.

Following the general directions Arcot gave him, Morey went through the
long series of calculations--and arrived at the same results. Slowly he
looked up from the brief expression with which he had ended.

It was not the formula that astonished him--it was its physical
significance.

"Arcot--do you think we can make it?"

There was a new expression in Arcot's eyes, a tightness about his mouth.

"I hope so, Morey. If we don't, Lanor is lost beyond a doubt--and
probably Earth is, too. Wade--come here a minute, will you? Let Fuller
take the controls, and tell him to push it. We have to get to work on
this."

Rapidly Arcot explained their calculations--and the proof he had gotten.

"Our beam of molecular motion-controlling energy directs all molecular
motion to go at right angles to it. The mechanism so far has been a
field inside a coil really, but if these figures are right, it means
that we can project that field to a considerable distance even in air.
It'll be a beam of power that will cause all molecules in its path to
move at right angles to it, and in the direction we choose, by reversing
the power in the projector. That means that no matter how big the thing
is, we can tear it to pieces; we'll use its own powers, its own
energies, to rip it, or crush it.

"Imagine what would happen if we directed this against the side of a
mountain--the entire mass of rock would at once fly off at unimaginable
speed, crashing ahead with terrific power, as all the molecules suddenly
moved in the same direction. Nothing in all the Universe could hold
together against it! It's a disintegration ray of a sort--a ray that
will tear, or crush, for we can either make one half move away from the
other--or we can reverse the power, and make one half drive toward the
other with all the terrific power of its molecules! It is
omnipotent--hmmm--" Arcot paused, narrowing his eyes in thought.

"It has one limitation. Will it reach far in the air? In vacuum it
should have an infinite range--in the atmosphere all the molecules of
the air will be affected, and it will cause a terrific blast of icy
wind, a gale at temperatures far below zero! This will be even more
effective here on Venus!

"But we must start designing the thing at once! Take some of the
Immorpho and give me some, and we can let the sleep accumulate till we
have more time! Look--we're in Sonor already! Land us, Fuller--right
where we were, and then come back here. We're going to need you!"

The gorgeous display of a Venerian dawn was already coloring the east as
the great buildings seemed to rise silently about them. The sky, which
had been a dull luminous gray, a gray that rapidly grew brighter and
brighter, was now like molten silver, through which were filtering the
early rays of the intense sun. As the sun rose above the horizon, though
invisible for clouds, it still was traceable by the wondrous shell pink
that began to suffuse the ten mile layer of vapor. The tiny droplets
were, however, breaking the clear light into a million rainbows, and all
about the swiftly deepening pink were forming concentric circles of
blue, of green, orange, and all the colors of the rainbow, repeated time
after time--a wondrous halo of glowing color, which only the doubly
intense sun could create.

"It's almost worth missing the sun all day to see their sunrises and
sunsets," Fuller commented. The men were watching it, despite their
need for haste. It was a sight the like of which no Earthman had ever
before seen.

Immediately, then, they plunged into the extremely complex calculation
of the electrical apparatus to produce the necessary fields. To get the
effect they wanted, they must have two separate fields of the director
ray, and a third field of a slightly different nature, which would cause
the director ray to move in one direction only. It would be
disconcerting, to say the least, if the director ray, by some mistake,
should turn upon them!

The work went on more swiftly than they had considered possible, but
there was still much to be done on the theoretical end of the job alone
when the streets about them began to fill. They noticed that a large
crowd was assembling, and shortly after they had finished, after some of
these people had stood there for more than an hour and a half, the crowd
had grown to great size.

"From the looks of that collection, I should say we are about to become
the principals in some kind of a celebration that we know nothing about.
Well, we're here, and in case they want us, we're ready to come."

The guard that always surrounded the _Solarite_ had been doubled, and
was maintaining a fairly large clear area about the ship.

Shortly thereafter they saw one of the high officials of Lanor come down
the walk from the governmental building, walking toward the _Solarite_.

"Time for us to appear--and it may as well be all of us this time. I'll
tell you what they say afterward, Wade. They've evidently gone to
considerable trouble to get up this meeting, so let's cooperate. I hate
to slow up the work, but we'll try to make it short."

The four Terrestrians got into their cooling suits, and stepped outside
the ship. The Lanorian dignitary left his guard, walked up to the
quartet from Earth with measured tread, and halted before them.

"Earthmen," he began in a deep, clear voice, "we have gathered here this
morning to greet you and thank you for the tremendous service you have
done us. Across the awful void of empty space you have journeyed forty
million miles to visit us, only to discover that Venerians were making
ready to attack your world. Twice your intervention has saved our city.

"There is, of course, no adequate reward for this service; we can in no
way repay you, but in a measure we may show our appreciation. We have
learned from the greatest psychologist of our nation, Tonlos, that in
your world aluminum is plentiful, but gold and platinum are rare, and
that morlus is unknown. I have had a small token made for you, and your
friends. It is a little plaque, a disc of morlus, and on it there is a
small map of the Solar System. On the reverse side there is a globe of
Venus, with one of Earth beside it, as well as our men could copy the
small globe you have given us. The northern hemisphere of each is
depicted--America, your nation, and Lanor, ours, thus being shown. We
want you, and each of your friends, to accept these. They are symbols of
your wonderful flight across space!" The Venerians turned to each of the
Terrestrians and presented each with a small metal disc.

Arcot spoke for the Terrestrians.

"On behalf of myself and my friends here, two of whom have not had an
opportunity to learn your language, I wish to thank you for your great
help when we most needed it. You, perhaps, have saved more than a
city--you may have made it possible to save a world--our Earth. But the
battle here has only begun.

"There are now in the Kaxorian camp eighteen great ships. They have been
badly defeated in the three encounters they have had with the _Solarite_
so far. But no longer will they be vulnerable to our earlier methods of
attack. Your spies report that the first plane, the plane which was
first attacked by the _Solarite_, is still undergoing repairs. These
will be completed within two days, and then, when they can leave a base
guard of two ships, they will attack once more. Furthermore, they will
attack with a new weapon. They have destroyed the usefulness of our
weapon, invisibility, and in turn, now have it to use against us! We
must seek out some new weapon. I hope we are on the right track now, but
every moment is precious, and we must get back to the work. This address
must be short. Later, when we have completed our preliminary work, we
will have to give plans to your workmen, which you will be able to turn
into metal, for we lack the materials. With this help we may succeed,
despite our handicap."

The address was terminated at once. The Lanorians were probably
disappointed, but they fully realized the necessity for haste.

"I wish Terrestrian orators spoke like that," remarked Morey as they
returned to the ship. "He said all there was to say, but he didn't run
miles of speech doing it. He was a very forceful speaker, too!"

"People who speak briefly and to the point generally are," Arcot said.

It was nearly noon that day before the theoretical discussion had been
reduced to practical terms. They were ready to start work at once, but
they had reason to work cheerfully now. Even through air they had found
their ray would be able to reach thirty-five miles! They would be well
out of the danger zone while attacking the gigantic planes of Kaxor.

Morey, Wade and Arcot at once set to work constructing the electrical
plant that was to give them the necessary power. It was lucky indeed
that they had brought the great mass of spare apparatus! They had more
than enough to make all the electrical machinery. The tubes, the coils,
the condensers, all were there. The generator would easily supply the
power, for the terrific forces that were to destroy the Kaxorian ships
were to be generated in the plane itself. It was to destroy itself; the
_Solarite_ would merely be the detonator to set it off!

* * * * *

While the physicists were busy on this, Fuller was designing the
mechanical details of the projector. It must be able to turn through a
spherical angle of 180 degrees, and was necessarily controlled
electrically from the inside. The details of the projector were worked
out by six that evening, and the numerous castings and machined pieces
that were to be used were to be made in the Venerian machine shops.

One difficulty after another arose and was overcome. Night came on, and
still they continued work. The Venerian workmen had promised to have the
apparatus for them by ten o'clock the next morning--or what corresponded
to ten o'clock.

Shortly after three o'clock that morning they had finished the
apparatus, had connected all the controls, and had placed the last of
the projector directors. Except for the projector they were ready, and
Morey, Wade and Fuller turned in to get what sleep they could. But
Arcot, telling them there was something he wished to get, took another
dose of Immorpho and stepped out into the steaming rain.

A few minutes after ten the next morning Arcot came back, followed by
half a dozen Venerians, each carrying a large metal cylinder in a
cradle. These were attached to the landing gear of the _Solarite_ in
such fashion that the fusing of one piece of wire would permit the
entire thing to drop free.

"So _that's_ what you hatched out, eh? What is it?" asked Wade as he
entered the ship.

"Just a thing I want to try out--and I'm going to keep it a deep, dark
secret for a while. I think you'll get quite a surprise when you see
those bombs in action! They're arranged to be released by turning
current into the landing lights. We'll have to forgo lights for the
present, but I needed the bombs more.

"The mechanics have finished working on your projector parts, Fuller,
and they'll be over here in a short time. Here comes the little gang I
asked to help us. You can direct them." Arcot paused and scowled with
annoyance. "Hang it all--when they drill into the outer wall, we'll lose
the vacuum between the two walls, and all that hot air will come in.
This place will be roasting in a short time. We have the molecular
motion coolers, but I'm afraid they won't be much good. Can't use the
generator--it's cut off from the main room by vacuum wall.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.