The Black Star Passes

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

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"Lieutenant," said Arcot, swiftly, "turn your ray on that hole, and keep
it there, blowing that flame outside with it. You'll find you can't put
the fire out, but if you keep it outside the ship, I believe we'll be
reasonably safe." The Patrolman obeyed instantly, relieving Arcot.

Wade and Morey were already bending over the fallen man.

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do for him," the latter said grimly,
"and every moment here is dangerous. Let's continue our investigation
and carry him back to the ship when we leave." Arcot nodded silently.

Solemnly they turned away from the motionless figure on the floor and
set out on their investigation.

"Arcot," began Morey after a moment, "why is that gas burning like that?
Can't we put it out?"

"Let's get through with this job first," replied Arcot somewhat tersely.
"The discussion comes after."

The bodies of the invaders were gone, so they could not examine them
now. That was a matter for the doctors and biologists, anyway. The
engines were their main interest, huge things which overshadowed
everything about them.

It must have been the concealment afforded by the engines that permitted
three of the enemy to get so close. The only warning the Terrestrians
had was a faint pink haze as they stepped around the corner of an
engine; and a sudden feeling of faintness swept over them. They leaped
back, out of sight, peering around the corner with nerves and muscles
tensed. There was no sign of movement.

As they watched, they saw a pallid hand reaching out with a ray gun; and
Wade swiftly pointed his own weapon. There came a sudden crash of metal,
a groan and quiet. Two other aliens leaped from behind the great engine
just as the Terrestrians dodged further back; as swiftly, they too found
concealment.

Arcot swung his ray up, and was about to pull the trigger that would
send the huge engine toppling over upon them, when he saw that it was
running. He thought of the unknown energies in the machine, the
potential destruction, and he shook his head. Cautiously he looked
around the edge of the towering mass, waiting--his beam flashed out, and
there was a snapping sound as the ray caught a reaching hand and hurled
its owner against a mighty transformer of some sort. For an instant the
huge mass tottered, then was still. In the low concentration of power
that Arcot had used, only a small portion had been touched, and the
molecules of this portion had not been enough to tip over its tremendous
weight.

Only one enemy remained; and Arcot learned swiftly that he was still in
action, for before he could dodge back there came that now-familiar pink
haziness. It touched Arcot's hand, outstretched as it had been when he
fired, and a sudden numbness came over it. His pistol hand seemed to
lose all feeling of warmth or cold. It was there; he could still feel
the weapon's deadened weight. Reflex action hurled him back, his hand
out of range of the ray. In seconds feeling began to return, and in less
than ten his hand was normal again.

He turned to the others with a wry grin. "Whew--that was a narrow
squeak! I must say their ray is a gentlemenly sort of thing. It either
kills you, or doesn't injure you at all. There it goes again!"

A shaft of pink radiance reached the end of the engine, just grazing it,
evidently absorbed by its mass. "Pinning us down," Wade grated. They
certainly couldn't step out into the open space--but they couldn't stay
where they were indefinitely, either. Reinforcements might arrive!

"Look," Wade pointed with his pistol, "he's under that big metal bar--up
there in the roof--see it? I'll pull it down; he may get nervous and
come into sight." Swiftly Arcot sprang forward and caught his arm.

"Lord--don't do that, Wade--there's too much stuff here that we don't
know anything about. Too much chance of your smashing us with him. I'm
going to try to get around to the other side of this machine and see
what I can do, while you fellows keep him occupied."

Arcot disappeared around the black humming giant. Interminably the
others waited for something to happen; then suddenly the beam that had
been playing at irregular intervals across the end of the machine, swung
quickly to the other side; and simultaneously another ray seemed to leap
from the machine itself. They met and crossed. There came a momentary
crashing arc, then both went dead, as the apparatus that generated them
blew out under terrific overload.

The invader evidently carried a spare, for the watchers saw him dart
from concealment, clawing at his pocket pouch. They turned their rays on
him, and just as his projector came free, a ray hurled him violently to
the left. He crashed into a huge motor, and the result was not nice.

The projector had been jerked from his hand and lay off to the side.
Arcot ran to it and picked it up just as they heard the Lieutenant call
an alarmed inquiry.

"I think we're okay now," Arcot answered. "I hope there are no more--but
by all means stay where you are, and use as little power as possible in
blowing that flame outside. It uses up the atmosphere of the ship, and
though we don't need it, I think we'd better take things easy. Call us
if anything looks odd to you."

For several minutes the three scientists looked about them in awe-struck
wonder. They were the first men of Earth to see the driving equipment of
one of the tremendous Kaxorian planes, and they felt tiny beside its
great bulk; but now, as they examined this engine room, they realized
that even the huge plane shrank into insignificance beside this
interstellar cruiser.

All about them loomed the great rounded backs of giant electric
motor-generators of some sort. Across the roof ran a network of gigantic
metal bars, apparently conductors, but so large that they suggested
heavy structural members. The machines they ran into loomed fully thirty
feet into the air; they were longer than cylinders, thirty feet in
diameter, and there was a group of four main machines fully a hundred
twenty feet long! There were many smaller mechanisms--yet these smaller
ones would easily have constituted a complete power supply for the
average big city. Along each wall ran a bank of transformers, cast in
the same heroic mold. These seemed connected with the smaller machines,
there being four conductors leading into each of the minor units, two
intake, and two, apparently, output leads, suggesting rotary converters.
The multiple units and the various types and sizes of transformers made
it obvious that many different frequencies were needed. Some of the
transformers had air cores, and led to machines surrounded with a
silvery white metal instead of the usual iron. These, apparently, were
generating current at an extremely high frequency.

"Well," Morey commented, "they ought to have power enough. But do you
notice that those four main units have their leads radiating in
different directions? The one on the left there seems to lead to that
big power board at the front--or better, bow. I think it would be worth
investigating."

Arcot nodded. "I had the same idea. You notice that two of the main
power units are still working, but that those other two have stopped?
Probably the two dead ones have something to do with the motion of the
ship. But there's one point I think is of even greater interest. All the
machines we have seen, all the conspicuous ones, are secondary power
sources. There are no primary sources visible. Notice that those two
main conduits lead over to the right, and toward the bow. Let's check
where they go to."

As they talked they followed the huge conductors back to their point of
convergence. Suddenly they rounded one of the huge main power units, and
saw before them, at the center of square formed by these machines, a low
platform of transparent light-metal. At the exact center of this
platform, which was twenty feet in diameter, there was a table, about
seven feet across and raised about five feet above the level of the
platform on stout light-metal legs. On the table were two huge cubes of
solid silver, and into these cubes ran all the conductors they had seen.

In the space of about six inches left between the blocks of metal, there
was a small box constructed of some strange new material. It was the
most perfect reflecting surface that any of the men had ever imagined.
Indeed, it was so perfect a reflector that they were unable to see it,
but could detect its presence only by the mirror images, and the fact
that it blotted out objects behind it.

Now they noticed that through the huge blocks of metal there were two
small holes, and two thin wires of this same reflecting material led
into those holes. The wires led directly up to the roof, and, suspended
on three-foot hangers of the light-metal, continued on toward the bow.

Could this be the source of power for the entire ship? It seemed
impossible, yet there were many other seeming impossible things here,
among them that strangely reflecting matter.

There was a low railing about the central platform, apparently intended
to keep observers at a safe distance, so they decided against any more
detailed investigation. As they were about to discuss their unusual
find, the Lieutenant called that he heard sounds behind him.

At once the three ran rapidly toward the narrow corridor that had given
them entrance. The flaming gas was still shooting through the hole in
the wall of the ship, and the rush of air through the corridor made it
difficult to hear any sounds there, and exceedingly difficult to walk.

"Turn on more power, Lieutenant, and see if we can't draw out the
enemy," suggested Arcot, while they braced themselves around the tube
exit.

As the Patrolman increased the power of his beam, the moan of the air
through the corridor increased suddenly to a terrific roar, and a
cyclonic gale swept through. But none of the invaders were drawn out.

After the Lieutenant had shut off the blast from his pistol at Arcot's
signal, the latter said: "I don't think anything less than a war tank
could stand that pressure. It's probable that we'll be attacked if we
stay here much longer, though--and we may not be able to get out at all.
I think, Lieutenant, I'll ask you to stay here while we go out and get
the ship ready to leave." He paused, grinning. "Be sure to keep that
flame outside. You'll be in the position of Hercules after Atlas left
him holding the skies on his shoulders. You can't shut off the ray for
long or we'll have a first-rate explosion. We'll signal when we're ready
by firing a revolver, and you make it to the ship as fast as you can
travel."

Arcot's expression became solemn. "We'll have to carry Wright back to
the ship. He was a brave man, and he certainly deserves burial in the
soil of his own world. And, Morey, we'll have to look up his family.
Your father's company will have to take care of them if they need help."

Slowly the men forced their way back toward their ship, fighting against
the roaring column of air, their burden hindering them somewhat; but at
last they reached the open tunnel. Even here the air was in violent
motion.

They got into their boat as quickly as possible, and set the controls
for reverse flight. Then Wade fired the signal shot. In moments they saw
Lieutenant Greer bucking against the current of air, continuing under
its own momentum.

By the time he was in the ship an ominous calm had fallen. Swiftly they
sped down the corridor, and had almost reached the open air, when
suddenly there was a dull rumble behind them, and they were caught on a
wave of pressure that hurled them along at terrific speed. In a flash
they sped into the open air, the great tunnel with its thick walls and
flared opening acting like a gigantic blunderbus, with the ship as its
bullet. Arcot made no attempt to slow down the little craft, but pressed
his foot heavily on the vertical accelerator. The ship rocketed up with
terrific speed, and the acceleration pinned the men down to their seats
with tripled weight.

Anxiously they watched the huge invader as they sped away from it. At
Arcot's direction Morey signaled the other groups of scientists to get
out of danger with all speed, warning of the impending blow-up. As the
moments sped by the tension mounted. Arcot stared fixedly into the
screen before him, keeping the giant space ship in focus. As they sped
mile upon miles away from it, he began to relax a bit.

Not a word was spoken as they watched and waited. Actually, very little
time passed before the explosion, but to the watchers the seconds
dragged endlessly. Then at twenty-seven miles, the screen flared into a
sheet of blinding white radiance. There was a timeless instant--then a
tremendous wave of sound, a roaring, stunning concussion smote the ship,
shaking it with unrestrained fury--to cease as abruptly as it came.

Immediately they realized the reason. They were rushing away from the
explosion faster than the sound it made, hence could not hear it. After
the first intolerable flash, details became visible. The great ship
seemed to leap into countless tremendous fragments, each rushing away
from the point of the blow-up. They did not go far; the force was not
sustained long enough, nor was it great enough to overcome the inertia
of so vast a mass for more than moments. Huge masses rained to earth, to
bury themselves in the soil.

There came a momentary lull. Then suddenly, from the mass which
evidently held the wrecked engine room, there shot out a beam of intense
white light that swept around in a wide, erratic arc. Whatever it
touched fused instantly into a brilliantly glowing mass of liquid
incandescence. The field itself, fragments of the wreckage, fused and
mingled under its fury. The beam began to swing, faster and faster, as
the support that was holding it melted; then abruptly it turned upon
itself. There came a sudden blast of brilliance to rival that of the
sun--and the entire region became a molten lake. Eyes streaming,
temporarily blinded, the men turned away from the screen.

"That," said Arcot ruefully, "is that! It seems that our visitors don't
want to leave any of their secrets lying around for us to investigate.
I've an idea that all the other wrecks will go like this one did." He
scowled. "You know, we really didn't learn much. Guess we'd better call
the headquarters ship and ask for further instructions. Will you attend
to it, Lieutenant Greer?"

III

Swiftly Arcot's sleek cruiser sped toward New York and the Arcot
Laboratories. They had halted briefly at the headquarters ship of the
Earth-Venus forces to report on their experience; and alone again, the
three scientists were on their way home.

With their course set, Arcot spoke to the others. "Well, fellows, what
are your opinions on--what we've seen? Wade, you're a chemist--tell us
what you think of the explosion of the ship, and of the strange color of
our molecular ray in their air."

Wade shook his head doubtfully. "I've been trying to figure it out, and
I can't quite believe my results. Still, I can't see any other
explanation. That reddish glow looked like hydrogen ions in the air. The
atmosphere was certainly combustible when it met ours, which makes it
impossible for me to believe that their air contained any noticeable
amount of oxygen, for anything above twenty per cent oxygen and the rest
hydrogen would be violently explosive. Apparently the gas had to mix
liberally with our air to reach that proportion. That it didn't explode
when ionized, showed the absence of hydro-oxygen mixture.

"All the observed facts except one seem to point to an atmosphere
composed largely of hydrogen. That one--there are beings living in it! I
can understand how the Venerians might adapt to a different climate, but
I can't see how anything approaching human life can live in an
atmosphere like that."

Arcot nodded. "I have come to similar conclusions. But I don't see too
much objection to the thought of beings living in an atmosphere of
hydrogen. It's all a question of organic chemistry. Remember that our
bodies are just chemical furnaces. We take in fuel and oxidize it, using
the heat as our source of power. The invaders live in an atmosphere of
hydrogen. They eat oxidizing fuels, and breathe a reducing atmosphere;
they have the two fuel components together again, but in a way different
from our method. Evidently, it's just as effective. I'm sure that's the
secret of the whole thing."

"Sounds fairly logical." Wade agreed. "But now I have a question for
you. Where under the sun did these beings come from?"

Arcot's reply came slowly. "I've been wondering the same thing. And the
more I wonder, the less I believe they did come from--under our sun.
Let's eliminate all the solar planets--we can do that at one fell swoop.
It's perfectly obvious that those ships are by no means the first crude
attempts of this race to fly through space. We're dealing with an
advanced technology. If they have had those ships even as far away as
Pluto, we should certainly have heard from them by now.

"Hence, we've got to go out into interstellar space. You'll probably
want to ram some of my arguments down my throat--I know there is no star
near enough for the journey to be made in anything less than a couple of
generations by all that's logical; and they'd freeze in the interstellar
cold doing it. There is no _known_ star close enough--but how about
unknowns?"

"What have they been doing with the star?" Morey snorted. "Hiding it
behind a sun-shade?"

Arcot grinned. "Yes. A shade of old age. You know a sun can't radiate
forever; eventually they die. And a dead sun would be quite black, I'm
sure."

"And the planets that circle about them are apt to become a wee bit cool
too, you know."

"Agreed," said Arcot, "and we wouldn't be able to do much about it. But
give these beings credit for a little higher order of intelligence. We
saw machines in that space ship that certainly are beyond us! They are
undoubtedly heating their planets with the same source of energy with
which they are running their ships.

"I believe I have confirmation of that statement in two things. They are
absolutely colorless; they don't even have an opaque white skin. Any
living creature exposed to the rays of a sun, which is certain to emit
some chemical rays, is subject to coloration as a protection against
those rays. The whites, who have always lived where sunlight is weakest,
have developed a skin only slightly opaque. The Orientals, who live in
more tropical countries, where less clothes and more sun is the motto,
have slightly darker skins. In the extreme tropics Nature has found it
necessary to use a regular blanket of color to stop the rays. Now
extrapolating the other way, were there no such rays, the people would
become a pigmentless race. Since most proteins are rather translucent,
at least when wet, they would appear much as these beings do. Remember,
there are very few colored proteins. Hemoglobin, such as in our blood,
and hemocyanin, like that in the blue blood of the Venerians, are
practically unique in that respect. For hydrogen absorption, I imagine
the blood of these creatures contains a fair proportion of some highly
saturated compound, which readily takes on the element, and gives it up
later.

"But we can kick this around some more in the lab."

Before starting for New York, Arcot had convinced the officer in charge
that it would be wise to destroy the more complete of the invaders'
ships at once, lest one of them manage to escape. The fact that none of
them had any rays in operation was easily explained; they would have
been destroyed by the Patrol if they had made any show of weapons. But
they might be getting some ready, to be used in possible escape
attempts. The scientists were through with their preliminary
investigations. And the dismembered sections would remain for study,
anyway.

The ships had finally been rayed apart, and when the three had left,
their burning atmosphere had been sending mighty tongues of flame a mile
or more into the air. The light gas of the alien atmosphere tended to
rise in a great globular cloud, a ball that quickly burned itself out.
It had not taken long for the last of the machines to disintegrate under
the rays. There would be no more trouble from them, at any rate!

Now Morey asked Arcot if he thought that they had learned all they could
from the ships; would it not have been wiser to save them, and
investigate more fully later, taking a chance on stopping any sudden
attack by surviving marauders by keeping a patrol of Air Guards there.

To which Arcot replied, "I thought quite a bit before I suggested their
destruction, and I conferred for a few moments with Forsyth, who's just
about tops in biology and bacteriology. He said that they had by no
means learned as much as they wished to, but they'd been forced to leave
in any event. Remember that pure hydrogen, the atmosphere we were
actually living in while on the ship, is quite as inert as pure
oxygen--when alone. But the two get very rough when mixed together. The
longer those ships lay there the more dangerously explosive they became.
If we hadn't destroyed them, they would have wrecked themselves. I still
think we followed the only logical course.

"Dr. Forsyth mentioned the danger of disease. There's a remote
possibility that we might be susceptible to their germs. I don't believe
we would be, for our chemical constitution is so vastly different. For
instance, the Venerians and Terrestrians can visit each other with
perfect freedom. The Venerians have diseases, and so do we, of course;
but there are things in the blood of Venerians that are absolutely
deadly to any Terrestrian organism. We have a similar deadly effect on
Venerian germs. It isn't immunity--it's simply that our respective
constitutions are so different that we don't need immunity. Similarly,
Forsyth thinks we would be completely resistant to all diseases brought
by the invaders. However, it's safer to remove the danger, if any,
first, and check afterward."

The three men sped rapidly back to New York, flying nearly sixty miles
above the surface of the Earth, where there would be no interfering
traffic, till at length they were above the big city, and dropping
swiftly in a vertical traffic lane.

Shortly thereafter they settled lightly in the landing cradle at the
Arcot Laboratories. Arcot's father, and Morey's, were there, anxiously
awaiting their return. The elder Arcot had for many years held the
reputation of being the nation's greatest physicist, but recently he had
lost it--to his son. Morey Senior was the president and chief
stockholder in the Transcontinental Air Lines. The Arcots, father and
son, had turned all their inventions over to their close friends, the
Moreys. For many years the success of the great air lines had been
dependent in large part on the inventions of the Arcots; these new
discoveries enabled them to keep one step ahead of competition, and as
they also made the huge transport machines for other companies, they
drew tremendous profits from these mechanisms. The mutual interest,
which had begun as a purely financial relationship, had long since
become a close personal friendship.

As Arcot stepped from his speedster, he called immediately to his
father, telling of their find, the light-matter plate.

"I'll need a handling machine to move it. I'll be right back." He ran to
the elevator and dropped quickly to the heavy machinery lab on the lower
floor. In a short time he returned with a tractor-like machine equipped
with a small derrick, designed to get its power from the electric mains.
He ran the machine over to the ship. The others looked up as they heard
the rumble and hum of its powerful motor. From the crane dangled a
strong electro-magnet.

"What's that for?" asked Wade, pointing to the magnet. "You don't expect
this to be magnetic, do you?"

"Wait and see!" laughed Arcot, maneuvering the handling machine into
position. One of the others made contact with the power line, and the
crane reached into the ship, lowering the magnet to the plate of
crystal. Then Arcot turned the power into the lifting motor. The hum
rose swiftly in volume and pitch till the full load began to strain the
cables. The motor whined with full power, the cables vibrating under the
tension. The machine pulled steadily, until, to Arcot's surprise, the
rear end of the machine rose abruptly from the floor, tipping forward.

"Well--it _was_ magnetic, but how did you know?" asked the surprised
Wade. Since the ship was made of the Venerian metal, coronium, which was
only slightly magnetic, the plate was obviously the magnet's only load.

"Never mind. I'll tell you later. Get an I-beam, say about twenty feet
long, and see if you can't help lift that crazy mass. I think we ought
to manage it that way."

And so it proved. With two of them straddling the I-beam, the leverage
was great enough to pull the plate out. Running it over to the elevator,
they lowered the heavy mass, disconnected the cable, and rode down to
Arcot's laboratory. Again the I-beam and handling machine were brought
into play, and the plate was unloaded from the car. The five men
gathered around the amazing souvenir from another world.

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