The Black Star Passes

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"I think we'd better charge up the gas tanks and the batteries as soon
as this is done. Then tonight we'll attack the Kaxorian construction
camp. I've just learned that no spy reports have been coming in, and I'm
afraid they'll spring a surprise."

Somewhat later came the sound of drills, then the whistling roar as the
air sucked into the vacuum, told the men inside that the work was under
way. It soon became uncomfortably hot as, the vacuum destroyed, the heat
came in through all sides. It was more than the little molecular coolers
could handle, and the temperature soon rose to about a hundred and
fifteen. It was not as bad as the Venerian atmosphere, for the air
seemed exceedingly dry, and the men found it possible to get along
without cooling suits, if they did not work. Since there was little they
could do, they simply relaxed.

It was nearly dark before the Lanorians had finished their work, and the
gas tanks had been recharged. All that time Arcot had spent with Tonlos
determining the position of the Kaxorian construction camp. Spy reports
and old maps had helped, but it was impossible to do very accurate work
by these means.

It was finally decided that the Kaxorian construction camp was about
10,500 miles to the southwest. The _Solarite_ was to start an hour after
dark. Travelling westward at their speed, they hoped to reach the camp
just after nightfall.

VIII

The _Solarite_ sped swiftly toward the southwest. The sky slowly grew
lighter as the miles flashed beneath them. They were catching up with
the sun. As they saw the rolling ocean beneath them give way to low
plains, they realized they were over Kaxorian land. The _Solarite_ was
flying very high, and as they showed no lights, and were not using the
invisibility apparatus, they were practically undetectable. Suddenly
they saw the lights of a mighty city looming far off to the east.

"It's Kanor. Pass well to the west of it. That's their capital. We're on
course." Arcot spoke from his position at the projector, telling Wade
the directions to follow on his course to the berth of the giant planes.

The city dropped far behind them in moments, followed by another, and
another. At length, veering southward into the dusk, they entered a
region of low hills, age-old folds in the crust of the planet, rounded
by untold millennia of torrential rains.

"Easy, Wade. We are near now." Mile after mile they flashed ahead at
about a thousand miles an hour--then suddenly they saw far off to the
east a vast glow that reached into the sky, painting itself on the
eternal clouds miles above.

"There it is, Wade. Go high, and take it easy!"

Swiftly the _Solarite_ climbed, hovering at last on the very rim of the
cloud blanket, an invisible mote in a sea of gray mist. Below them they
saw a tremendous field carved, it seemed, out of the ancient hills. From
this height all sense of proportion was lost. It seemed but an ordinary
field, with eighteen ordinary airplanes resting on it. One of these now
was moving, and in a moment it rose into the air! But there seemed to be
no men on all the great field. They were invisibly small from this
height.

Abruptly Arcot gave a great shout. "That's their surprise! They're ready
far ahead of the time we expected! If all that armada gets in the air,
we're done! Down, Wade, to within a few hundred feet of the ground, and
close to the field!"

The _Solarite_ flashed down in a power dive--down with a sickening
lurch. A sudden tremendous weight seemed to crush them as the ship was
brought out of the dive not more than two hundred feet from the ground.
Close to blacking out, Wade nevertheless shot it in as close to the
field as he dared. Anxiously he called to Arcot, who answered with a
brief "Okay!" The planes loomed gigantic now, their true proportions
showing clearly against the brilliant light of the field. A tremendous
wave of sound burst from the loudspeaker as the planes rolled across the
ground to leap gracefully into the air--half a million tons of metal!

From the _Solarite_ there darted a pale beam of ghostly light, faintly
gray, tinged with red and green--the ionized air of the beam. It moved
in a swift half circle. In an instant the whirr of the hundreds,
thousands of giant propellers was drowned in a terrific roar of air.
Great snowflakes fell from the air before them; it was white with the
solidified water vapor. Then came a titanic roar and the planet itself
seemed to shake! A crash, a snapping and rending as a mighty fountain of
soil and rock cascaded skyward, and with it, twisting, turning, hurled
in a dozen directions at once, twelve titanic ships reeled drunkenly
into the air!

For a barely perceptible interval there was an oppressive silence as the
ray was shut off. Then a bedlam of deafening sound burst forth anew, a
mighty deluge of unbearable noise as the millions of tons of pulverized
rock, humus and metal fell back. Some of it had ascended for miles; it
settled amid a howling blizzard--snow that melted as it touched the
madly churned airfield.

High above there were ten planes flying about uncertainly. Suddenly one
of these turned, heading for the ground far below, its wings screaming
their protest as the motors roared, ever faster, with the gravity of the
planet aiding them. There was a rending, crackling crash as the wings
suddenly bent back along the sides. An instant later the fuselage tore
free, rocketing downward; the wings followed more slowly--twisting,
turning, dipping in mile-long swoops.

The _Solarite_ shot away from the spot at maximum speed--away and up,
with a force that nailed the occupants to the floor. Before they could
turn, behind them flared a mighty gout of light that struck to the very
clouds above, and all the landscape, for miles about, was visible in the
glare of the released energy.

As they turned, they saw on the plain, below a tremendous crater, in
its center a spot that glowed white and bubbled like the top of a huge
cauldron.

Nine great planes were circling in the air; then in an instant they were
gone, invisible. As swiftly the _Solarite_ darted away with a speed that
defied the aim of any machine.

High above the planes they went, for with his radar Arcot could trace
them. They were circling, searching for the _Solarite_.

The tiny machine was invisible in the darkness, but its invisibility was
not revealed by the Kaxorian's radio detectors. In the momentary lull,
Fuller asked a question.

"Wade, how is it that those ships can be invisible when they are driven
by light, and have the light stored in them? They're perfectly
transparent. Why can't we see the light?"

"They are storing the light. It's bound--it can't escape. You can't see
light unless it literally hits you in the eye. Their stored light can't
reach you, for it is held by its own attraction and by the special field
of the big generators."

They seemed to be above one of the Kaxorian planes now. Arcot caught the
roar of the invisible propellers.

"To the left, Wade--faster--hold it--left--ah!" Arcot pushed a button.

Down from the _Solarite_ there dropped a little canister, one of the
bombs that Arcot had prepared the night before. To hit an invisible
target is ordinarily difficult, but when that target is far larger than
the proverbial side of a barn, it is not very difficult, at that. But
now Arcot's companions watched for the crash of the explosion, the flash
of light. What sort of bomb was it that Arcot hoped would penetrate that
tremendous armor?

Suddenly they saw a great spot of light, a spot that spread with
startling rapidity, a patch of light that ran, and moved. It flew
through the air at terrific speed. It was a pallid light, green and wan
and ghostly, that seemed to flow and ebb.

For an instant Morey and the others stared in utter surprise. Then
suddenly Morey burst out laughing.

"Ho--you win, Arcot. That was one they didn't think of, I'll bet!
Luminous paint--and by the hundred gallon! Radium paint, I suppose, and
no man has ever found how to stop the glow of radium. That plane sticks
out like a sore thumb!"

Indeed, the great luminous splotch made the gigantic plane clearly
evident against the gray clouds. Visible or not, that plane was marked.

Quickly Arcot tried to maneuver the _Solarite_ over another of the great
ships, for now the danger was only from those he could not see. Suddenly
he had an idea.

"Morey--go back to the power room and change the adjustment on the
meteorite avoider to half a mile!" At once Morey understood his plan,
and hastened to put it into effect.

The illuminated plane was diving, twisting wildly now. The _Solarite_
flashed toward it with sickening speed, then suddenly the gigantic bulk
of the plane loomed off to the right of the tiny ship, the great metal
hull, visible now, rising in awesome might. They were too near; they
shot away to a greater distance--then again that ghostly beam reached
out--and for just a fraction of a second it touched the giant plane.

The titanic engine of destruction seemed suddenly to be in the grip of
some vastly greater Colossus--a clutching hand that closed! The plane
jumped back with an appalling crash, a roar of rending metal. For an
instant there came the sound like a mighty buzz-saw as the giant
propellers of one wing cut into the body of the careening plane. In that
instant, the great power storage tank split open with an impact like the
bursting of a world. The _Solarite_ was hurled back by an explosion that
seemed to rend the very atoms of the air, and all about them was a
torrid blaze of heat and light that seemed to sear their faces and hands
with its intensity.

Then in a time so brief that it seemed never to have happened, it was
gone, and only the distant drone of the other ships' propellers came to
them. There was no luminous spot. The radium paint had been destroyed
in the only possible way--it was volatilized through all the atmosphere!

The Terrestrians had known what to expect; had known what would happen;
and they had not looked at the great ship in that last instant. But the
Kaxorians had naturally been looking at it. They had never seen the sun
directly, and now they had been looking at a radiance almost as
brilliant. They were temporarily blinded; they could only fly a straight
course in response to the quick order of their squadron commander.

And in that brief moment that they were unable to watch him, Arcot
dropped two more bombs in quick succession. Two bright spots formed in
the black night. No longer did these planes feel themselves
invulnerable, able to meet any foe! In an instant they had put on every
last trace of power, and at their top speed they were racing west, away
from their tiny opponent--in the only direction that was open to them.

But it was useless. The _Solarite_ could pick up speed in half the time
they could, and in an instant Arcot again trained his beam on the mighty
splotch of light that was a fleeing plane.

Out of the darkness came a ghostly beam, for an instant of time so short
that before the explosive shells of the other could be trained on it,
the _Solarite_ had moved. Under that touch the mighty plane began
crumbling, then it splintered beneath the driving blow of the great
wing, as it shot toward the main body of the plane at several miles a
second--driving into and through it! The giant plane twisted and turned
as it fell swiftly downward into the darkness--and, again there came
that world-rocking explosion, and the mighty column of light.

Again and yet again the _Solarite_ found and destroyed Kaxorian
super-planes, protected in the uneven conflict by their diminutive size
and the speed of their elusive maneuvering.

But to remind the men of the _Solarite_ that they were not alone, there
came a sudden report just behind them, and they turned to see that one
of the energy bombs had barely fallen short! In an instant the
comparative midget shot up at top speed, out of danger. It looped and
turned, hunting, feeling with its every detector for that other ship.
The great planes were spread out now. In every direction they could be
located--and all were leaving the scene of the battle. But one by one
the _Solarite_ shot after them, and always the speed of the little ship
was greater.

Two escaped. They turned off their useless invisibility apparatus and
vanished into the night.

The _Solarite_, supported by her vertical lift units, coasted toward a
stop. The drone of the fleeing super-planes diminished and was gone, and
for a time the thrum of the generator and the tap-dance of relays
adjusting circuits was the only sound aboard.

Wade sighed finally. "Well, gentlemen, now we've got it, what do we do
with it?"

"What do you mean?" Morey asked.

"Victory. The Jack-pot. Having the devices we just demonstrated, we are
now the sole owners, by right of conquest, of one highly disturbed
nation of several million people. With that gadget there, we can pick it
up and throw it away.

"Personally, I have a feeling that we've just won the largest white
elephant in history. We don't just walk off and leave it, you know. We
don't want it. But we've got it.

"Our friends in Sonor are not going to want the problem either; they
just wanted the Kaxorians combed out of their hair.

"As I say--we've got it, now--but what do we do with it?"

"It's basically their problem, isn't it?" protested Fuller. Morey looked
somewhat stricken, and thoroughly bewildered. "I hadn't considered that
aspect very fully; I've been too darned busy trying to stay alive."

Wade shook his head. "Look, Fuller-it was their problem before, too,
wasn't it? How'd they handle it? If you just let them alone, what do
you suppose they'll do with the problem this time?"

"The same thing they did before," Arcot groaned. "I'm tired. Let's get
some sleep first, anyway."

"Sure; that makes good sense," Wade agreed. "Sleep on it, yes. But go to
sleep on it--well, that's what the not-so-bright Sonorans tried doing.

"And off-hand, I'd say we were elected. The Kaxorians undoubtedly have a
nice, two thousand year old hatred for the Sonorans who so snobbishly
ignored them, isolated them, and considered them unfit for association.
The Sonorans, on the other hand, are now thoroughly scared, and will be
feeling correspondingly vindictive. They won this time by a fluke--our
coming. I can just see those two peoples getting together and settling
any kind of sensible, long-term treaty of mutual cooperation!"

Arcot and Morey both nodded wearily. "That is so annoyingly correct,"
Morey agreed. "And you know blasted well none of us is going to sleep
until we have some line of attack on this white elephant disposal
problem. Anybody any ideas?"

Fuller looked at the other three. "You know, in design when two
incompatible materials must be structurally united, we tie each to a
third material that is compatible with both.

"Sonor didn't win this fight. Kaxor didn't win it. Earth--in the
_persona_ of the _Solarite_--did. Earth isn't mad at anybody, hasn't
been damaged by anybody, and hasn't been knowingly ignoring anybody.

"The Sonorans want to be let alone; it won't work, but they can learn
that. I think if we run the United Nations in on this thing, we may be
able to get them to accept our white elephant for us.

"They'll be making the same mistake Sonor did if they don't--knowingly
ignoring the existence of a highly intelligent and competent race. It
doesn't seem to work, judging from history both at home and here."

The four looked at each other, and found agreement.

"That's something more than a problem to sleep on," Morey said. "I'll
get in touch with Sonor and tell 'em the shooting is over, so they can
get some sleep too.

"It's obvious a bunch of high-power research teams are going to be
needed in both countries. Earth has every reason to respect Sonoran
mental sciences as well as Kaxorian light-engineering. And Earth--as we
just thoroughly demonstrated--has some science of her own. Obviously,
the interaction of the three is to the maximum advantage of each--and
will lead to a healing of the breach that now exists."

Arcot looked up and yawned. "I'm putting this on autopilot at twenty
miles up, and going to sleep. We can kick this around for a month
anyway--and this is not the night to start."

"The decision is unanimous," Wade grinned.

BOOK THREE

THE BLACK STAR PASSES

PROLOGUE

Taj Lamor gazed steadily down at the vast dim bulk of the ancient city
spread out beneath him. In the feeble light of the stars its mighty
masses of up-flung metal buildings loomed strangely, like the shells of
some vast race of crustacea, long extinct. Slowly he turned, gazing now
out across the great plaza, where rested long rows of slender, yet
mighty ships. Thoughtfully he stared at their dim, half-seen shapes.

Taj Lamor was not human. Though he was humanoid, Earth had never seen
creatures just like him. His seven foot high figure seemed a bit
ungainly by Terrestrial standards, and his strangely white, hairless
flesh, suggesting unbaked dough, somehow gave the impression of
near-transparency. His eyes were disproportionately large, and the black
disc of pupil in the white corneas was intensified by contrast. Yet
perhaps his race better deserved the designation _homo sapiens_ than
Terrestrians do, for it was wise with the accumulated wisdom of
uncounted eons.

He turned to the other man in the high, cylindrical, dimly lit tower
room overlooking the dark metropolis, a man far older than Taj Lamor,
his narrow shoulders bent, and his features grayed with his years. His
single short, tight-fitting garment of black plastic marked him as one
of the Elders. The voice of Taj Lamor was vibrant with feeling:

"Tordos Gar, at last we are ready to seek a new sun. Life for our race!"

A quiet, patient, imperturbable smile appeared on the Elder's face and
the heavy lids closed over his great eyes.

"Yes," he said sadly, "but at what cost in tranquility! The discord, the
unrest, the awakening of unnatural ambitions--a dreadful price to pay
for a questionable gain. Too great a price, I think." His eyes opened,
and he raised a thin hand to check the younger man's protest. "I know--I
know--in this we do not see as one. Yet perhaps some day you will learn
even as I have that to rest is better than to engage in an endless
struggle. Suns and planets die. Why should races seek to escape the
inevitable?" Tordos Gar turned slowly away and gazed fixedly into the
night sky.

Taj Lamor checked an impatient retort and sighed resignedly. It was this
attitude that had made his task so difficult. Decadence. A race on an
ages-long decline from vast heights of philosophical and scientific
learning. Their last external enemy had been defeated millennia in the
past; and through easy forgetfulness and lack of strife, ambition had
died. Adventure had become a meaningless word.

Strangely, during the last century a few men had felt the stirrings of
long-buried emotion, of ambition, of a craving for adventure. These were
throwbacks to those ancestors of the race whose science had built their
world. These men, a comparative handful, had been drawn to each other by
the unnatural ferment within them; and Taj Lamor had become their
leader. They had begun a mighty struggle against the inertia of ages of
slow decay, had begun a search for the lost secrets of a
hundred-million-year-old science.

Taj Lamor raised his eyes to the horizon. Through the leaping curve of
the crystal clear roof of their world glowed a blazing spot of yellow
fire. A star--the brightest object in a sky whose sun had lost its
light. A point of radiance that held the last hopes of an incredibly
ancient race.

The quiet voice of Tordos Gar came through the semidarkness of the
room, a pensive, dreamlike quality in its tones.

"You, Taj Lamor, and those young men who have joined you in this futile
expedition do not think deeply enough. Your vision is too narrow. You
lack perspective. In your youth you cannot think on a cosmic scale." He
paused as though in thought, and when he continued, it seemed almost as
though he were speaking to himself.

"In the far, dim past fifteen planets circled about a small, red sun.
They were dead worlds--or rather, worlds that had not yet lived. Perhaps
a million years passed before there moved about on three of them the
beginnings of life. Then a hundred million years passed, and those
first, crawling protoplasmic masses had become animals, and plants, and
intermediate growths. And they fought endlessly for survival. Then more
millions of years passed, and there appeared a creature which slowly
gained ascendancy over the other struggling life forms that fought for
the warmth of rays of the hot, red sun.

"That sun had been old, even as the age of a star is counted, before its
planets had been born, and many, many millions of years had passed
before those planets cooled, and then more eons sped by before life
appeared. Now, as life slowly forced its way upward, that sun was nearly
burned out. The animals fought, and bathed in the luxury of its rays,
for many millennia were required to produce any noticeable change in its
life-giving radiations.

"At last one animal gained the ascendancy. Our race. But though one
species now ruled, there was no peace. Age followed age while
semi-barbaric peoples fought among themselves. But even as they fought,
they learned.

"They moved from caves into structures of wood and stone--and
engineering had its beginning. With the buildings came little chemical
engines to destroy them; warfare was developing. Then came the first
crude flying-machines, using clumsy, inefficient engines. Chemical
engines! Engines so crude that one could watch the flow of their fuel!
One part in one hundred thousand million of the energy of their
propellents they released to run the engines, and they carried fuel in
such vast quantities that they staggered under its load as they left the
ground! And warfare became world-wide. After flight came other machines
and other ages. Other scientists began to have visions of the realms
beyond, and they sought to tap the vast reservoirs of Nature's energies,
the energies of matter.

"Other ages saw it done--a few thousand years later there passed out
into space a machine that forced its way across the void to another
planet! And the races of the three living worlds became as one--but
there was no peace.

"Swiftly now, science grew upon itself, building with ever faster steps,
like a crystal which, once started, forms with incalculable speed.

"And while that science grew swiftly greater, other changes took place,
changes in our universe itself. Ten million years passed before the
first of those changes became important. But slowly, steadily our
atmosphere was drifting into space. Through ages this gradually became
apparent. Our worlds were losing their air and their water. One planet,
less favored than another, fought for its life, and space itself was
ablaze with the struggles of wars for survival.

"Again science helped us. Thousands of years before, men had learned how
to change the mass of matter into energy, but now at last the process
was reversed, and those ancestors of ours could change energy into
matter, any kind of matter they wished. Rock they took, and changed it
to energy, then that energy they transmuted to air, to water, to the
necessary metals. Their planets took a new lease of life!

"But even this could not continue forever. They must stop that loss of
air. The process they had developed for reformation of matter admitted
of a new use. Creation! They were now able to make new elements,
elements that had never existed in nature! They designed atoms as, long
before, their fathers had designed molecules. At last their problem was
solved. They made a new form of matter that was clearer than any
crystal, and yet stronger and tougher than any metal known. Since it
held out none of the sun's radiations, they could roof their worlds with
it and keep their air within!

"This was a task that could not be done in a year, nor a decade, but all
time stretched out unending before them. One by one the three planets
became tremendous, roofed-in cities. Only their vast powers, their
mighty machines made the task possible, but it was done."

The droning voice of Tordos Gar ceased. Taj Lamor, who had listened with
a mixture of amusement and impatience to the recital of a history he
knew as well as the aged, garrulous narrator, waited out of the inborn
respect which every man held for the Elders. At length he exclaimed: "I
see no point--"

"But you will when I finish--or, at least, I hope you will." Tordos
Gar's words and tone were gently reproving. He continued quietly:

"Slowly the ages drifted on, each marked by greater and greater triumphs
of science. But again and again there were wars. Some there were in
which the population of a world was halved, and all space for a billion
miles about was a vast cauldron of incandescent energy in which
tremendous fleets of space ships swirled and fused like ingredients in
some cosmic brew. Forces were loosed on the three planets that sent even
their mighty masses reeling drunkenly out of their orbits, and space
itself seemed to be torn by the awful play of energies.

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