The Black Star Passes

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"Oh," laughed Arcot junior, "these aren't intended for constant
watching. They're merely helps in a lot of tests I want to make. I want
to use this as a flying laboratory so I can determine the necessary
powers and the lowest factor of safety to use in building other
machines. The machine is very nearly completed now. All we need is the
seats--they are to be special air-inflated gyroscopically controlled
seats, to make it impossible for a sudden twist of the ship to put the
strain in the wrong direction. Of course the main gyroscopes will
balance the ship laterally, horizontally, and vertically, but each chair
will have a separate gyroscopic mounting for safety."

"When do you expect to start after the Pirate?" Fuller asked.

"I plan to practice the manipulation of the machine for at least four
days," Arcot replied, "before I try to chase the Pirate. I'd ordinarily
recommend the greatest haste, but the man has stolen close to ten
million already, and he's still at it. That would not be done by anyone
in his right mind. I suppose you've heard, the War Department considers
his new gas so important that they've obtained a pardon for him on
condition they be permitted to have the secret of it. They demand the
return of the money, and I have no doubt he has it. I am firmly
convinced that he is a kleptomaniac. I doubt greatly if he will stop
taking money before he is caught. Therefore it will be safe to wait
until we can be sure of our ability to operate the machine smoothly. Any
other course would be suicidal. Also, I am having some of those
tool-makers make up a special type of molecular motion machine for use
as a machine gun. The bullets are steel, about three inches long, and as
thick as my thumb. They will be perfectly streamlined, except for a
little stabilizer at the tail, to guide 'em. They won't spin as a rifle
bullet does, and so there will be no gyroscopic effect to hold them nose
on, but the streamlining and the stabilizer will keep them on their
course. I expect them to be able to zip right through many inches of
armour plate, since they will have a velocity of over four miles a
second.

"They'll be fed in at the rate of about two hundred a minute--faster if
I wish, and started by a small spring. They will instantly come into the
field of a powerful molecular motion director, and will be shot out
with terrific speed. It will be the first rifle ever made that could
shoot bullets absolutely parallel to the ground.

"But that is all we can do today. The guns will be mounted outside, and
controlled electrically, and the charts will be installed tomorrow. By
the day after tomorrow at eight A.M. I plan to take off!"

The work the next day was rushed to completion far earlier than Arcot
had dared to hope. All the men had been kept isolated at the farm, lest
they accidentally spread the news of the new machine. It was with
excited interest that they helped the machine to completion. The guns
had not been mounted as yet, but that could wait. Mid-afternoon found
the machine resting in the great construction shed, completely equipped
and ready to fly!

"Dick," said Morey as he strode up to him after testing the last of the
gyroscopic seats, "she's ready! I certainly want to get her going--it's
only three-thirty, and we can go around to the sunlight part of the
world when it gets dark at the speeds we can travel. Let's test her
now!"

"I'm just as anxious to start as you are, Bob. I've sent for a U.S. Air
Inspector. As soon as he comes we can start. I'll have to put an 'X'
license indication on her now. He'll go with us to test it--I hope.
There will be room for three other people aboard, and I think you and
Dad and I will be the logical passengers."

He pointed excitedly. "Look, there's a government helicopter coming.
Tell the men to get the blocks from under her and tow her out. Two power
trucks should do it. Get her at least ten feet beyond the end of the
hangar. We'll start straight up, and climb to at least a five mile
height, where we can make mistakes safely. While you're tending to that,
I'll see if I can induce the Air Inspector to take a trip with us."

Half an hour later the machine had been rolled entirely out of the shed,
on the new concrete runway.

The great craft was a thing of beauty shimmering in the bright sunlight
The four men who were to ride in it on its maiden voyage stood off to
one side gazing at the great gleaming metal hull. The long sweeping
lines of the sides told a story of perfect streamlining, and implied
high speed, even at rest. The bright, slightly iridescent steel hull
shone in silvery contrast to the gleaming copper of the power units'
heat-absorption fins. The great clear windows in the nose and the low,
streamlined air intake for the generator seemed only to accentuate the
graceful lines of the machine.

"Lord, she's a beauty, isn't she, Dick!" exclaimed Morey, a broad smile
of pleasure on his face.

"Well, she did shape up nicely on paper, too, didn't she. Oh, Fuller,
congratulations on your masterpiece. It's even better looking than we
thought, now the copper has added color to it. Doesn't she look fast? I
wish we didn't need physicists so badly on this trip, so you could go on
the first ride with us."

"Oh, that's all right, Dick, I know the number of instruments in there,
and I realize they will mean a lot of work this trip. I wish you all
luck. The honor of having designed the first ship like that, the first
heavier-than-air ship that ever flew without wings, jets, or props--that
is something to remember. And I think it's one of the most beautiful
that ever flew, too."

"Well, Dick," said his father quietly, "let's get under way. It should
fly--but we don't really know that it will!"

The four men entered the ship and strapped themselves in the gyroscopic
seats. One by one they reported ready.

"Captain Mason," Arcot explained to the Air Inspector, "these seats may
seem to be a bit more active than one generally expects a seat to be,
but in this experimental machine, I have provided all the safety devices
I could think of. The ship itself won't fall, of that I am sure, but the
power is so great it might well prove fatal to us if we are not in a
position to resist the forces. You know all too well the effect of sharp
turns at high speed and the results of the centrifugal force. This
machine can develop such tremendous power that I have to make provision
for it.

"You notice that my controls and the instruments are mounted on the arm
of the chair really; that permits me to maintain complete control of the
ship at all times, and still permits my chair to remain perpendicular to
the forces. The gyroscopes in the base here cause the entire chair to
remain stable if the ship rolls, but the chair can continue to revolve
about this bearing here so that we will not be forced out of our seats.
I'm confident that you'll find the machine safe enough for a license.
Shall we start?"

"All right, Dr. Arcot," replied the Air Inspector. "If you and your
father are willing to try it, I am."

"Ready, Engineer?" asked Arcot.

"Ready, Pilot!" replied Morey.

"All right--just keep your eye on the meters, Dad, as I turn on the
system. If the instruments back there don't take care of everything, and
you see one flash over the red mark--yank open the main circuit. I'll
call out what to watch as I turn them on."

"Ready son."

"Main gyroscopes!" There was a low snap, a clicking of relays in the
rear compartment, and then a low hum that quickly ran up the scale.
"Main generators!" Again the clicking switch, and the relays thudding
into action, again the rising hum. "Seat-gyroscopes." The low click was
succeeded by a quick shrilling sound that rose in moments above the
range of hearing as the separate seat-gyroscopes took up their work.
"Main power tube bank!" The low hum of the generator changed to a
momentary roar as the relays threw on full load. In a moment the
automatic controls had brought it up to speed.

"Everything is working perfectly so far. Are we ready to start now,
son?"

"Main vertical power units!" The great ship trembled throughout its
length as the lift of the power units started. A special instrument had
been set up on the floor beside Arcot, that he might be able to judge
the lift of his power units; it registered the apparent weight of the
ship. It had read two hundred tons. Now all eyes were fixed on it, as
the pointer dropped quickly to 150-100-75-50-40-20-10--there was a
click and the instrument flopped back to 300--it was registering in
pounds now! Then the needle moved to zero, and the mighty structure
floated into the air, slowly moving down the field as a breeze carried
it along the ground.

The men outside saw it rise swiftly into the sky, straight toward the
blue vault of heaven. In two or three minutes it was disappearing. The
glistening ship shrank to a tiny point of light; then it was gone! It
must have been rising at fully three hundred miles an hour!

To the men in the car there had been a tremendous increase in weight
that had forced them into the air cushions like leaden masses. Then the
ground fell away with a speed that made them look in amazement. The
house, the construction shed, the lake, all seemed contracting beneath
them. So quickly were they rising that they had not time to adjust their
mental attitude. To them all the world seemed shrinking about them.

Now they were at a tremendous height; over twenty miles they had risen
into the atmosphere; the air about them was so thin that the sky seemed
black, the stars blazed out in cold, unwinking glory, while the great
fires of the sun seemed reaching out into space like mighty arms seeking
to draw back to the parent body the masses of the wheeling planets.
About it, in far flung streamers of cold fire shone the mighty zodiacal
light, an Aurora on a titanic scale. For a moment they hung there, while
they made readings of the meters.

Arcot was the first to speak and there was awe in his voice. "I never
began to let out the power of this thing! What a ship! When these are
made commercially, we'll have to use about one horsepower generators in
them, or people will kill themselves trying to see how fast they can
go."

Methodically the machine was tried out at this height, testing various
settings of the instruments. It was definitely proven that the values
that Arcot and Morey had assigned from purely theoretical calculations
were correct to within one-tenth of one percent. The power absorbed by
the machine they knew and had calculated, but the terrific power of the
driving units was far beyond their expectations.

"Well, now we're off for some horizontal maneuvers," Arcot announced.
"I'm sure we agree the machine can climb and can hold itself in the air.
The air pressure controls seem to be working perfectly. Now we'll test
her speed."

Suddenly the seats swung beneath them; then as the ship shot forward
with ever greater speed, ever greater acceleration, it seemed that it
turned and headed upward, although they knew that the main stabilizing
gyroscopes were holding it level. In a moment the ship was headed out
over the Atlantic at a speed no rifle bullet had ever known. The radio
speedometer needle pushed farther and farther over as the speed
increased to unheard of values. Before they left the North American
shoreline they were traveling faster than a mile a second. They were in
the middle of the Atlantic before Arcot gradually shut off the
acceleration, letting the seats drop back into position.

A hubbub of excited comments rose from the four men. Momentarily, with
the full realization of the historical importance of this flight, no one
paid any attention to anyone else. Finally a question of the Air
Inspector reached Arcot's ears.

"What speed did we attain, Dr. Arcot? Look--there's the coast of Europe!
How fast are we going now?"

"We were traveling at the rate of three miles a second at the peak."
Arcot answered. "Now it has fallen to two and a half."

Again Arcot turned his attention to his controls. "I'm going to try to
see what the ultimate ceiling of this machine is. It must have a
ceiling, since it depends on the operation of the generator to operate
the power-units. This, in turn, depends on the heat of the air, helped
somewhat by the sun's rays. Up we go!"

The ship was put into a vertical climb, and steadily the great machine
rose. Soon, however, the generator began to slow down. The readings of
the instruments were dropping rapidly. The temperature of the
exceedingly tenuous air outside was so close to absolute zero that it
provided very little energy.

"Get up some forward speed," Morey suggested, "so that you'll have the
aid of the air scoop to force the air in faster."

"Right, Morey." Arcot slowly applied the power to the forward propulsion
units. As they took hold, the ship began to move forward. The increase
in power was apparent at once. The machine started rising again. But at
last, at a height of fifty-one miles, her ceiling had been reached.

The cold of the cabin became unbearable, for every kilowatt of power
that the generator could get from the air outside was needed to run the
power units. The air, too, became foul and heavy, for the pumps could
not replace it with a fresh supply from the near-vacuum outside. Oxygen
tanks had not been carried on this trip. As the power of the generator
was being used to warm the cabin once more, they began to fall. Though
the machine was held stable by the gyroscopes, she was dropping freely;
but they had fifty miles to fall, and as the resistance of the denser
air mounted, they could begin to feel the sense of weight return.

"You've passed, but for the maneuvers, Dr. Arcot!" The Air Inspector was
decidedly impressed. "The required altitude was passed so long ago--why
we are still some miles above it, I guess! How fast are we falling?"

"I can't tell unless I point the nose of the ship down, for the
apparatus works only in the direction in which the ship is pointed. Hold
on, everyone, I am going to start using some power to stop us."

It was night when they returned to the little field in Vermont. They had
established a new record in every form of aeronautical achievement
except endurance! The altitude record, the speed record, the speed of
climb, the acceleration record--all that Arcot could think of had been
passed. Now the ship was coming to dock for the night. In the morning it
would be out again. But now Arcot was sufficiently expert with the
controls to maneuver the ship safely on the ground. They finally solved
the wind difficulty by decreasing the weight of the ship to about fifty
pounds, thus enabling the three men to carry it into the hanger!

* * * * *

The next two days were devoted to careful tests of the power factors of
the machine, the best operating frequency, the most efficient altitude
of operation, and as many other tests as they had time for. Each of the
three younger men took turns operating, but so great were the strains of
the sudden acceleration, that Arcot senior decided it would be wisest
for him to stay on the ground and watch.

In the meantime reports of the Pirate became fewer and fewer as less and
less money was shipped by air.

Arcot spent four days practicing the manipulation of the machine, for
though it handled far more readily than any other craft he had ever
controlled, there was always the danger of turning on too much power
under the stress of sudden excitement.

The night before, Arcot had sailed the ship down and alighted on the
roof of Morey senior's apartment, leaving enough power on to reduce the
weight to but ten tons, lest it fall through the roof, while he went
down to see the President of the Lines about some "bait" for the Pirate.

"Send some cash along," said Arcot, when he saw Morey senior, "say a
quarter of a million. Make it more or less public knowledge, and talk it
up so that the Pirate may think there's a real haul on board. I am going
to accompany the plane at a height of about a quarter of a mile above. I
will try to locate him from there by means of radar, and if I have my
apparatus on, I naturally can't locate him. I hope he won't be scared
away--but I rather believe he won't. At any rate, you won't lose on the
try!"

IV

Again Morey and Arcot were looking at the great Jersey aerodrome, out on
the fields that had been broad marshes centuries before. Now they had
been filled in, and stretched for miles, a great landing field, close to
the great city across the river.

The men in the car above were watching the field, hanging inert, a point
of glistening metal, high in the deep velvet of the purple sky, for
fifteen miles of air separated them from the Transcontinental machine
below. Now they saw through their field glasses that the great plane was
lumbering slowly across the field, gaining momentum as it headed
westward into the breeze. Then it seemed to be barely clearing the great
skyscrapers that towered twenty-four hundred feet into the air, arching
over four or five city blocks. From this height they were toys made of
colored paper, soft colors glistening in the hot noon sunlight, and
around and about them wove lines of flashing, moving helicopters, the
individual lost in the mass of the million or so swiftly moving
machines. Only the higher, steadily moving levels of traffic were
visible to them.

"Just look at that traffic! Thousands and thousands coming back into the
city after going home to lunch--and every day the number of helicopters
is increasing! If it hadn't been for your invention of this machine,
conditions would soon be impossible. The airblast in the cities is
unbearable now, and getting worse all the time. Many machines can't get
enough power to hold themselves up at the middle levels; there is a down
current over one hundred miles an hour at the 400-foot level in downtown
New York. It takes a racer to climb fast there!

"If it were not for gyroscopic stabilizers, they could never live in
that huge airpocket. I have to drive in through there. I'm always afraid
that somebody with an old worn-out bus will have stabilizer failure and
will really smash things." Morey was a skillful pilot, and realized, as
few others did, the dangers of that downward airblast that the countless
whirring blades maintained in a constant roar of air. The office
buildings now had double walls, with thick layers of sound absorbing
materials, to stop the roar of the cyclonic blast that continued almost
unabated twelve hours a day.

"Oh, I don't know about that, Morey," replied Arcot. "This thing has
some drawbacks. Remember that if we had about ten million of these
machines hung in the air of New York City, there would be a noticeable
drop in the temperature. We'd probably have an Arctic climate year in
and year out. You know, though, how unbearably hot it gets in the city
by noon, even on the coldest winter days, due to the heating effect of
the air friction of all those thousands of blades. I have known the
temperature of the air to go up fifty degrees. There probably will have
to be a sort of balance between the two types of machines. It will be a
terrific economic problem, but at the same time it will solve the
difficulties of the great companies who have been fermenting grain
residues for alcohol. The castor bean growers are also going to bring
down their prices a lot when this machine kills the market. They will
also be more anxious to extract the carbon from the cornstalks for
reducing ores of iron and of other metals."

As the ship flew high above the Transcontinental plane, the men
discussed the economic values of the different applications of Arcot's
discoveries from the huge power stations they could make, to the cooling
and ventilating of houses.

"Dick, you mentioned the cooling effect on New York City; with the
millions on millions of these machines that there will be, with huge
power plants, with a thousand other different applications in use, won't
the terrific drain of energy from the air cause the whole world to
become a little cooler?" asked Fuller.

"I doubt it, Bob," said Arcot slowly. "I've thought of that myself.
Remember that most of the energy we use eventually ends up as heat
anyway. And just remember the decillions of ergs of energy that the sun
is giving off! True, we only get an infinitesimal portion of that
energy--but what we do get is more than enough for us. Power houses can
be established very conveniently in the tropics, where they will cool
the air, and the energy can be used to refine metals. That means that
the surplus heat of the tropics will find a use. Weather control will
also be possible by the direction-control of great winds. We could set
huge director tubes on the tops of mountains, and blow the winds in
whatever direction best suited us. Not the blown wind itself, but the
vast volume of air it carried with it, would be able to cool the
temperate zones in the summer from the cold of the poles, and warm it in
winter with the heat of the tropics."

After a thoughtful silence, Arcot continued, "And there is another thing
it may make possible in the future--a thing that may be hard to accept
as a commercial proposition. We have a practically inexhaustible source
of energy now, but we have no sources of minerals that will last
indefinitely. Copper is becoming more and more rare. Had it not been for
the discoveries of the great copper fields of the Sahara and in Alaska,
we wouldn't have any now. Platinum is exhausted, and even iron is
becoming more and more valuable. We are facing a shortage of metals. Do
you realize that within the next two centuries we will be unable to
maintain this civilization unless we get new sources of certain basic
raw materials?

"But we have one other chance now. The solution is--there are nine
planets in this solar system! Neptune and Uranus are each far vaster
than Earth; they are utterly impossible for life as we know it, but a
small colony might be established there to refine metals for the distant
Earth. We might be able to build domed and sealed cities. But first we
could try the nearer planets--Mars, Venus, or some satellites such as
our Moon. I certainly hope that this machine will make it possible."

For some time they sat in silence as they sped along, high above the
green plains of Indiana. Chicago lay like some tremendous jewel far off
on the horizon to the right and ahead. Five miles below them the huge
bulk of the Transcontinental plane seemed a toy as it swung slowly
across the fields--actually traveling over six hundred miles an hour.
At last Morey spoke.

"You're right, Arcot. We'll have to think of the interplanetary aspects
of this some day. Oh, there's Chicago! We'd better start the vacuum gas
protector. And the radar. We may soon see some action."

The three men immediately forgot the somewhat distant danger of the
metal shortage. There were a number of adjustments to be made, and these
were quickly completed, while the machine forged evenly, steadily ahead.
The generator was adjusted to maximum efficiency, and the various tubes
were tested separately, for though they were all new, and each good for
twenty-five thousand hours, it would be inconvenient, to say the least,
if one failed while they were in action. Each tested perfect; and they
knew from the smooth functioning of the various relays that governed the
generator, as the loads on it varied, that it must be working perfectly,
at something less than one-half maximum rating.

Steadily they flew on, waiting tensely for the first sign of a glow from
the tiny neon tube indicator on the panel before Morey.

"This looks familiar, Dick," said Morey, looking about at the fields and
the low line of the blue mountains far off on the western horizon. "I
think it was about here that we took our little nap in the 'Flying Wheel
chair', as the papers called it. It would be about here th-- LOOK! It is
about here! Get ready for action, Fuller. You're taking the machine gun,
I'll work the invisibility disrupter, and Arcot will run the ship. Let's
go!"

On the board before him the tiny neon tube flickered dully, glowed
briefly like a piece of red-hot iron, then went out. In a moment it was
glowing again, and then quickly its brilliance mounted till it was a
line of crimson. Morey snapped the switch from the general radar to the
beam receiver, that he might locate the machine exactly. It was fully a
minute before the neon tube flashed into life once more. The pirate was
flying just ahead of the big plane, very likely gassing them. All
around him were the Air Guardsmen, unaware that the enemy was so near.
As the disrupter beam could be projected only about a mile, they would
have to dive down on the enemy at once; an instant later the great plane
beneath them seemed to be rushing upward at a terrific speed.

The two radar beams were kept focused constantly on the Pirate's craft.
When they were about two miles from the two planes, the neon tube blazed
brilliantly with a clash of opposing energy. The Pirate was trying to
maintain his invisibility, while the rapidly growing strength of the
machine above strove to batter it down. In moments the ammeter connected
with the disrupter beam began to rise so rapidly that Morey watched it
with some concern. Despite the ten-kilowatt set being used to project
the beam, the resistance of the apparatus on board the pirate ship was
amazing.

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