The Black Star Passes

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"I'm with Wade in wondering how you knew the plate was magnetic, son,"
commented the elder Arcot. "I can accept your explanation that the stuff
is a kind of matter made of light, but I know you too well to think it
was just a lucky guess. How did you know?"

"It really was pretty much of a guess, Dad, though there was some logic
behind the thought. You ought to be able to trace down the idea! How
about you, Morey?" Arcot smiled at his friend.

"I've kept discreetly quiet," replied Morey, "feeling that in silence I
could not betray my ignorance, but since you ask me, I can guess too. I
seem to recall that light is affected by a powerful magnet, and I can
imagine that that was the basis for your guess. It has been known for
many years, as far back as Clerk Maxwell, that polarized light can be
rotated by a powerful magnet."

"That's it! And now we may as well go over the whole story, and tell Dad
and your father all that happened. Perhaps in the telling, we can
straighten out our own ideas a bit."

For the next hour the three men talked, each telling his story, and
trying to explain the whys and wherefores of what he had seen. In the
end all agreed on one point: if they were to fight this enemy, they
_must_ have ships that could travel though space with speed to match
that of the invaders, ships with a self-contained source of power.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Morey commented rather
sarcastically: "I wonder if Arcot will now kindly explain his famous
invisible light, or the lost star?" He was a bit nettled by his own
failure to remember that a star could go black. "I can't see what
connection this has with their sudden attack. If they were there, they
must have developed when the star was bright, and as a star requires
millions of years to cool down, I can't see how they could suddenly
appear in space."

Before answering, Arcot reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out
an old blackened briar pipe. Methodically he filled it, a thoughtful
frown on his face; then carefully lighting it, he leaned back, puffing
out a thin column of gray smoke.

"Those creatures must have developed on their planets before the sun
cooled." He puffed slowly. "They are, then, a race millions of years
old--or so I believe. I can't give any scientific reason for this
feeling; it's merely a hunch. I just have a feeling that the invaders
are old, older than our very planet! This little globe is just about two
billion years old. I feel that that race is so very ancient they may
well have counted the revolutions of our galaxy as, once every twenty or
thirty million years, it swung about its center.

"When I looked at those great machines, and those comparatively little
beings as they handled their projectors, they seemed out of place. Why?"
He shrugged. "Again, just a hunch, an impression." He paused again, and
the slow smoke drifted upward.

"If I'm granted the premise that a black, dead star is approaching the
Solar System, then my theorizing may seem more logical. You agree?" The
listeners nodded and Arcot continued. "Well--I had an idea--and when I
went downstairs for the handling machine, I called the Lunar
Observatory." He couldn't quite keep a note of triumph out of his voice.
"Gentlemen--some of the planets have been misbehaving! The outermost
planets, and even some of those closer to the sun have not been moving
as they should. A celestial body of appreciable mass _is_ approaching
the System; though thus far nothing has been seen of the visitor!"

A hubbub of excited comment followed this startling revelation. Arcot
quieted them with an upraised hand. "The only reason you and the world
at large haven't heard about this as yet is the fact that the
perturbation of the planets is so very slight that the astronomers
figured they might have made an error in calculation. They're
rechecking now for mistakes.

"To get back to my visualization--It must have been many millions of
years ago that life developed on the planets of the black star, a warm
sun then, for it was much younger. It was probably rather dim as suns go
even its younger days. Remember, our own sun is well above average in
brilliance and heat radiation.

"In those long-gone ages I can imagine a race much like ours developing,
differing chemically, in their atmosphere of hydrogen; but the chemical
body is not what makes the race, it's the thought process. They must
have developed, and then as their science grew, their sun waned. Dimmer
and dimmer it became, until their planets could not maintain life
naturally. Then they had to heat them artificially. There is no question
as to their source of power; they had to use the energy of matter--so
called atomic energy--for no other source would be great enough to do
what had to be done. It is probable that their science had developed
this long before their great need arose.

"With this must also have come the process of transmutation, and the
process they use in driving their interstellar cruisers. I am sure those
machines are driven by material energy.

"But at last their star was black, a closed star, and their cold, black
planets must circle a hot, black sun forever! They were trapped for
eternity unless they found a way to escape to some other stellar system.
They could not travel as fast as light, and they could escape only if
they found some near-by solar system. Their star was dead--black. Let's
call it Nigra--the Black One--since like every other star it should have
a name. Any objection?"

There was none, so Arcot continued:

"Now we come to an impossibly rare coincidence. That two suns in their
motion should approach each other is beyond the point of logic. That
both suns have a retinue of planets approaches the height of the
ridiculous. Yet that is what is happening right now. And the Nigrans--if
that's the correct term--have every intention of taking advantage of
the coincidence. Since our sun has been visible to them for a long, long
time, and the approaching proximity of the suns evident, they had lots
of time to prepare.

"I believe this expedition was just an exploratory one; and if they can
send such huge machines and so many of them, for mere exploration, I'm
sure they must have quite a fleet to fight with.

"We know little about their weapons. They have that death ray, but it's
not quite as deadly as we might have feared, solely because our ships
could outmaneuver them. Next time, logically, they'll bring with them a
fleet of little ships, carried in the bellies of those giants, and
they'll be a real enemy. We'll have to anticipate their moves and build
to circumvent them.

"As for their ray, I believe I have an idea how it works. You're all
familiar with the catalytic effects of light. Hydrogen and chlorine will
stand very peacefully in the same jar for a long time, but let a strong
light fall on them, and they combine with terrific violence. This is the
catalytic effect of a vibration, a wave motion. Then there is such a
thing as negative catalysis. In a certain reaction, if a third element
or compound is introduced, all reaction is stopped. I believe that's the
principle of the Nigran death ray; it's a catalyst that simply stops the
chemical reactions of a living body, and these are so delicately
balanced that the least resistance will upset them."

Arcot halted, and sat puffing furiously for a moment. During his
discourse the pipe had died to an ember; with vigorous puffing he tried
to restore it. At last he had it going and continued.

"What other weapons they have we cannot say. The secret of invisibility
must be very old to them. But we'll guard against the possibility by
equipping our ships against it. The only reason the patrol ships aren't
equipped already is that invisibility is useless with modern criminals;
they all know the secret and how to fight it."

Morey interrupted with a question.

"Arcot, it's obvious that we have to get out into space to meet the
enemy--and we'll have to have freedom of movement there. How are we
going to do it? I was wondering if we could use Wade's system of storing
the atomic hydrogen in solution. That yields about 100,000 calories for
every two grams, and since this is a method of storing heat energy, and
your molecular motion director is a method of converting heat into
mechanical work with 100 per cent efficiency, why not use that? All we
need, really, is a method of storing heat energy for use while we're in
space."

Arcot exhaled slowly before answering, watching the column of smoke
vanish into the air.

"I thought of that, and I've been trying to think of other, and if
possible, better, cheaper, and quicker ways of getting the necessary
power.

"Let's eliminate the known sources one by one. The usual ones, the ones
men have been using for centuries, go out at once. The atomic hydrogen
reaction stores more energy per gram than any other chemical reaction
known. Such things as the storage battery, the electro-static condenser,
the induction coil, or plain heat storage, are worthless to us. The only
other method of storing energy we know of is the method used by the
Kaxorians in driving their huge planes.

"They use condensed light-energy. This is efficient to the ultimate
maximum, something no other method can hope to attain. Yet they need
huge reservoirs to store it. The result is still ineffective for our
purpose; we want something we can put in a small space; we want to
condense the light still further. That will be the ideal form of energy
storage, for then we will be able to release it directly as a heat ray,
and so use it with utmost efficiency. I think we can absorb the released
energy in the usual cavity radiator."

A queer little smile appeared on Arcot's face. "Remember--what we want
is light in a more condensed form, a form that is naturally stable, and
that does not need to be held in a bound state, but actually requires
urging to bring about the release of energy. For example--"

A shout from Wade interrupted him. "That's really rare! _Whoo_--I have
to hand it to you! That takes all the prizes!" He laughed delightedly.
In puzzled wonder Morey and the two older men looked at him, and at
Arcot who was grinning broadly now.

"Well, I suppose it must be funny," Morey began, then hesitated. "Oh--I
see--say, that _is_ good!" He turned to his father. "I see now what he's
been driving at. It's been right here under our noses all the time.

"The light-matter windows we found in the wrecked enemy ships contain
enough bound light-energy to run all the planes we could make in the
next ten years! We're going to have the enemy supply us with power we
can't get in any other way. I can't decide, Arcot, whether you deserve a
prize for ingenuity, or whether we should receive booby-prizes for our
stupidity."

Arcot Senior smiled at first, then looked dubiously at his son.

"There's definitely plenty of the right kind of energy stored there--but
as you suggested, the energy will need encouragement to break free. Any
ideas?"

"A couple. I don't know how they'll work, of course; but we can try."
Arcot puffed at his pipe, serious now as he thought of the problems
ahead.

Wade interposed a question. "How do you suppose they condense that light
energy in the first place, and, their sun being dead, whence all the
light? Back to the atom, I suppose."

"You know as much as I do, of course, but I'm sure they must break up
matter for its energy. As for the condensation problem, I think I have a
possible solution of that too--it's the key to the problem of release.
There's a lot we don't know now--but we'll have a bigger store of
knowledge before this war is over--if we have anything at all!" he added
grimly. "It's possible that man may lose knowledge, life, his planets
and sun--but there's still plenty of hope. We're not finished yet."

"How do you think they got their energy loose?" asked

Wade. "Do you think those big blocks of what appeared to be silver were
involved in the energy release?"

"Yes, I do. Those blocks were probably designed to carry away the power
once it was released. How the release was accomplished, though, I don't
know. They couldn't use material apparatus to start their release of
material energy; the material of the apparatus might 'catch fire' too.
They had to have the disintegrating matter held apart from all other
matter. This was quite impossible, if you are going to get the energy
away by any method other than by the use of fields of force. I don't
think that is the method. My guess is that a terrific current of
electricity would accomplish it if anything would.

"How then are we going to get the current to it? The wires will be
subject to the same currents. Whatever they do to the matter involved,
the currents will do to the apparatus--except in one case. If that
apparatus is made of _some other kind of matter_, then it wouldn't be
affected. The solution is obvious. Use some of the light-matter. What
will destroy light-matter, won't destroy electricity-matter, and what
will destroy electricity-matter, won't disturb light-matter.

"Do you remember the platform of light-metal, clear as crystal? It must
have been an insulating platform. What we started as our assumptions in
the case of the light-metal, we can now carry further. We said that
electricity-metals carried electricity, so light-metals would carry or
conduct light. Now we know that there is no substance which is
transparent to light, that will carry electricity by metallic
conduction. I mean, of course, that there is no substance transparent to
light, and at the same time capable of carrying electricity by
electronic transmission. True, we have things like NaCl solutions in
ordinary H_{2}O which will carry electricity, but here it's ionic
conduction. Even glass will carry electricity very well when hot; when
red hot, glass will carry enough electricity to melt it very quickly.
But again, glass is not a solid, but a viscous liquid, and it is again
carried by ionic conduction. Iron, copper, sodium, silver, lead--all
metals carry the current by means of electron drift through the solid
material. In such cases we can see that no transparent substance
conducts electricity.

"Similarly, the reverse is true. No substance capable of carrying
electricity by metallic conduction is transparent. All are opaque, if in
any thickness. Of course, gold is transparent when in leaf form--but
when it's that thin it won't conduct very much! The peculiar condition
we reach in the case of the invisible ship is different. There the
effects are brought about by the high frequency impressed. But you get
my point.

"Do you remember those wires that we saw leading to that little box of
the reflecting material? So perfectly reflecting it was that we didn't
see it. We only saw where it must be; we saw the light it reflected.
That was no doubt light-matter, a non-metal, and as such, non-conductive
to light. Like sulphur, an electric non-metal, it reflected the base of
which it was formed. Sulphur reflects the base of which it was formed.
Sulphur reflects electricity and--in the crystalline form--passes light.
This light-non-metal did the same sort of thing; it reflected light and
passed electricity. It was a conductor.

"Now we have the things we need, the matter to disintegrate, and the
matter to hold the disintegrating material in. We have two different
types of matter. The rest is obvious--but decidedly not easy. They have
done it, though; and after the war is over, there should be many of
their machines drifting about in space waiting to give up their
secrets."

Arcot Senior clapped his son on the back. "A fair foundation on which to
start, anyway. But I think it's time now that you got working on your
problem; and since I'm officially retired, I'm going downstairs. You
know I'm working in my lab on a method to increase the range and power
of your projector for the molecular motion field. Young Norris is
helping me, and he really has ideas. I'll show you our math later."

The party broke up, the three younger men staying in their own labs, the
older men leaving.

IV

The three immediately set to work. At Arcot's suggestion, Wade and Morey
attacked the plate of crystal in an attempt to tear off a small piece,
on which they might work. Arcot himself went into the televisophone room
and put through a second call to the Tychos Observatory, the great
observatory that had so recently been established on the frigid surface
of the Moon. The huge mirror, twenty feet in diameter, allowed an
immense magnification, and stellar observations were greatly
facilitated, for no one bothered them, and the "seeing" was always
perfect.

However, the great distance was rather a handicap to the ordinary
televisophone stations, and all calls put through to the astronomers had
to be made through the powerful sending station in St. Louis, where all
interplanetary messages were sent and received, while that side of the
Earth was facing the station; and from Constantinople, when that city
faced the satellite. These stations could bridge the distance readily
and clearly.

For several minutes Arcot waited while connections were being made with
the Moon; then for many more minutes he talked earnestly with the
observer in this distant station, and at last satisfied, he hung up.

He had outlined his ideas concerning the black star, based upon the
perturbation of the planets; then he had asked them to investigate the
possibilities, and see if they could find any blotting out of stars by a
lightless mass.

Finally he returned to Morey and Wade who had been working on the
crystal plate. Wade had an expression of exasperation on his face, and
Morey was grinning broadly.

"Hello, Arcot--you missed all the fun! You should have seen Wade's
struggle with that plate!" The plate, during his absence, had been
twisted and bent, showing that it had undergone some terrific stresses.
Now Wade began to make a series of highly forceful comments about the
properties of the plate in language that was not exactly scientific. It
had value, though, in that it seemed to relieve his pent-up wrath.

"Why, Wade, you don't seem to like that stuff. Maybe the difficulty lies
in your treatment, rather than in the material itself. What have you
tried?"

"Everything! I took a coronium hack saw that will eat through molybdenum
steel like so much cheese, and it just wore its teeth off. I tried some
of those diamond rotary saws you have, attached to an electric motor,
and it wore out the diamonds. That got my goat, so I tried using a
little force. I put it in the tension testing machine, and clamped
it--the clamp was good for 10,000,000 pounds--but it began to bend, so I
had to quit. Then Morey held it with a molecular beam, and I tried
twisting it. Believe me, it gave me real pleasure to see that thing
yield under the pressure. But it's not brittle; it merely bends.

"And I can't cut it, or even get some shavings off the darned thing. You
said you wanted to make a Jolly balance determination of the specific
gravity, but the stuff is so dense you'd need only a tiny scrap--and I
can't break it loose!" Wade looked at the plate in thorough disgust.

Arcot smiled sympathetically; he could understand his feelings, for the
stuff certainly was stubborn. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you fellows about
what you'd run into, but I was so anxious to get that call through to
the Moon that I forgot to tell you how I expected to make it workable.
Now, Wade, if you'll get another of those diamond-tooth rotary saws,
I'll get something that may help. Put the saw on the air motor. Use the
one made of coronium."

Wade looked after the rapidly disappearing Arcot with raised eyebrows,
then, scratching his head, he turned and did as Arcot had asked.

Arcot returned in about five minutes with a small handling machine, and
a huge magnet. It must have weighed nearly half a ton. This he quickly
connected to the heavy duty power lines of the lab. Now, running the
handling machine into position, he quickly hoisted the bent and twisted
plate to the poles of the magnet, with the aid of the derrick. Then
backing the handling machine out of the way, he returned briskly to his
waiting associates.

"Now we'll see what we will see!" With a confident smile Arcot switched
on the current of the big magnet. At once a terrific magnetic flux was
set up through the light-metal. He took the little compressed-air saw,
and applied it to the crystal plate. The smooth hiss of the air deepened
to a harsh whine as the load came on it, then the saw made contact with
the refractory plate.

Unbelievingly Wade saw the little diamond-edge saw bite its way slowly
but steadily into the plate. In a moment it had cut off a little corner
of the light-matter, and this fell with a heavy thud to the magnet pole,
drawn down by the attraction of the magnet and by gravity.

Shutting off the magnet, Arcot picked up a pair of pliers and gripped
the little fragment.

"Whew--light-metal certainly isn't light metal! I'll bet this little
scrap weights ten pounds! We'll have to reduce it considerably before we
can use it. But that shouldn't be too difficult."

By using the magnet and several large diamond faceplates they were able
to work the tough material down to a thin sheet; then with a heavy
press, they cut some very small fragments, and with these, determined
the specific gravity.

"Arcot," Wade asked finally, "just how does the magnet make that stuff
tractable? I'm not physicist enough to figure out what takes place
inside the material."

"Magnetism worked as it did," Arcot explained, "because in this
light-matter every photon is affected by the magnetism, and every photon
is given a new motion. That stuff can be made to go with the speed of
light, you know. It's the only solid that could be so affected. This
stuff should be able, with the aid of a molecular motion beam, which
will make all the photons move in parallel paths, to move at the full
speed of each photon--186,000 miles a second. The tremendous speed of
these individual photons is what makes the material so hard. Their
kinetic impulse is rather considerable! It's the kinetic blow that the
molecules of a metal give that keeps other metal from penetrating it.
This simply gives such powerful impulse that even diamonds wouldn't cut
it.

"You know that an iron saw will cut platinum readily, yet if both are
heated to say, 1600 degrees, the iron is a liquid, and the platinum very
soft--but now the platinum cuts through the iron!

"Heat probably won't have any effect on this stuff, but the action of
the magnet on the individual photons corresponds to the effect of the
heat on the individual atoms and molecules. The mass is softened, and we
can work it. At least, that's the way I figure it out.

"But now, Wade, I wish you'd see if you can determine the density of the
stuff. You're more used to those determinations and that type of
manipulation than we are. When you get through, we may be able to show
you some interesting results ourselves!"

Wade picked up a tiny chip of the light-metal and headed for his own
laboratory. Here he set up his Jolly balance, and began to work on the
fragment. His results were so amazing that he checked and rechecked his
work, but always with the same answer. Finally he returned to the main
lab where Arcot and Morey were busy at the construction of a large and
complicated electro-static apparatus.

"What did you find?" called out Arcot, as he saw Wade reenter the room.
"Hold your report a second and give us a hand here, will you? I have a
laboratory scale apparatus of the type the Kaxorians used in the storage
of light. They've known, ever since they began working with them, that
their machines would release the energy with more than normal violence,
if certain changes were made in them. That is, the light condenser, the
device that stored the photons so close to each other, would also serve
to urge them apart. I've made the necessary changes, and now I'm trying
to set up the apparatus to work on solid light-matter. It was developed
for gaseous material, and it's a rather tricky thing to change it over.
But I think we've almost got it.

"Wade, will you connect that to the high frequency oscillator
there--no--through that counterbalanced condenser. We may have to change
the oscillator frequency quite a bit, but a variable condenser will do
that.

"Now, what results did you get?"

Wade shook his head doubtfully. "We all know it's amazing stuff--and of
course, it must be heavy--but still--well, anyway, I got a density of
103.5!"

"Whewww--103.5! Lord! That's almost five times as heavy as the heaviest
metal hitherto known. There's about half a cubic foot of the material;
that would mean about 4000 pounds for the whole mass, or two tons. No
wonder we couldn't lift the plate!"

They stopped their work on the Kaxorian apparatus to discuss the amazing
results of the density test, but now they fell to again, rapidly
assembling the device, for each was a trained experimenter. With all but
the final details completed, Arcot stood back and surveyed their
handiwork.

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