The Black Star Passes

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

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Fuller stirred uneasily in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The
effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned--stretched, and
blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him
in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes--with a sudden start sat
upright--then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath,
he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His
eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been--he
called lustily in alarm--then suddenly he was flying up--and crashed
heavily against the invisible ceiling! His face was a picture of utter
astonishment as he fell lightly to the floor--then slowly it changed,
and took on a chagrined smile--he understood!

He spun around as loud cries suddenly resounded from Wade's room across
the hall--then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the
weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone,
like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud
laughter--and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw
the four strong walls about them.

Wade sighed heavily and shook his head.

They were approaching the planet visibly now. In the twelve hours that
had passed they had covered a million miles, for now they were falling
toward the planet under its attraction. It glowed before them now in
wonderous splendour, a mighty disc of molten silver.

For the last twenty-four hours they had been reducing their speed
relative to Venus, to insure their forming an orbit about the planet,
rather than shoot around it and back into space. Their velocity had been
over a hundred miles a second part of the way, but now it had been
reduced to ten. The gravity of the planet was urging them forward at
ever increasing speed, and their problem became more acute moment by
moment.

"We'll never make it on the power units alone, out here in space," said
Arcot seriously. "We'll just shoot around the planet. I'll tell you how
we can do it, though. We'll circle around it, entering its atmosphere on
the daylight side, and shoot into the upper limits of its atmosphere.
There the power units can find some heat to work on, and we can really
slow down. But we'll have to use the rocket tubes to get the
acceleration we'll need to drive the ship into the air."

There was a sudden clanging of a bell, and everyone dived for a hold,
and held on tightly. An instant later there was a terrific wrench as the
rocket jets threw the plane out of the way of a meteor.

"We're getting near a planet. This is the third meteor we've met since
we were more than a million miles from Earth. Venus and Earth and all
the planets act like giant vacuum cleaners of space, pulling into
themselves all the space debris and meteors within millions of miles by
their gravitational attraction."

Swiftly the planet expanded below them--growing vaster with each passing
moment. It had changed from a disc to a globe, and now, as the molten
silver of its surface seemed swiftly clouding, it turned grey; then they
saw its true appearance, a vast field of rolling, billowing clouds!

The _Solarite_ was shooting around the planet now at ten miles a second,
far more than enough to carry them away from the planet again, out into
space once more if their speed was not checked.

"Hold on everybody," Arcot called. "We're going to turn toward the
planet now!" He depressed a small lever--there was a sudden shock, and
all the space about them seemed to burst into huge, deep-red atomic
hydrogen flames.

The _Solarite_ reeled under the sudden pressure, but the heavy
gyroscopic stabilizers caught it, held it, and the ship remained on an
even keel. Then suddenly there came to the ears of the men a long drawn
whine, faint--almost inaudible--and the ship began slowing down. The
_Solarite_ had entered the atmosphere of Venus--the first man-made
machine to thus penetrate the air of another world!

Quickly Arcot snapped open the control that had kept the rockets
flaming, turning the ship to the planet--driving it into the atmosphere.
Now they could get their power from the air that each instant grew more
dense about them.

"Wade--in the power room--emergency control post--Morey--control board
there--hang on, for we'll have to use some husky accelerations."

Instantly the two men sprang for their posts--literally diving, for they
were still almost weightless.

Arcot pulled another lever--there was a dull snap as a relay in the
power room responded--the lights wavered--dimmed--then the generator was
once more humming smoothly--working on the atmosphere of Venus! In a
moment the power units were again operating, and now as they sucked a
plentitude of power from the surrounding air, they produced a force that
made the men cling to their holds with almost frantic force. Around them
the rapidly increasing density of the air made the whine grow to a roar;
the temperature within the ship rose slowly, warmed by friction with
the air, despite the extreme cold at this altitude, more than
seventy-five miles above the surface of the planet.

They began dropping rapidly now--their radio-speedometer had fallen from
ten to nine--then slowly, but faster and faster as more heat could be
extracted from the air, it had fallen 8--7--6--5--4. Now they were well
below orbital speed, falling under the influence of the planet. The
struggle was over--the men relaxed. The ship ran quietly now, the smooth
hum of the air rushing over the great power units coming softly through
the speaker to their ears, a humming melody--the song of a new world.

IV

Suddenly the blazing sun was gone and they were floating in a vast world
of rolling mists--mists that brushed the car with tiny clicks, which,
with the millions of particles that struck simultaneously, merged into a
steady roar.

"Ice--ice clouds!" Morey exclaimed.

Arcot nodded. "We'll drop below the clouds; they're probably miles deep.
Look, already they're changing--snow now--in a moment it will be
water--then it'll clear away and we'll actually see Venus!"

For ten miles--an endless distance it seemed--they dropped through
clouds utterly impenetrable to the eye. Then gradually the clouds
thinned; there appeared brief clear spots, spots into which they could
see short distances--then here and there they caught glimpses of green
below. Was it water--or land?

With a suddenness that startled them, they were out of the clouds,
shooting smoothly and swiftly above a broad plain. It seemed to stretch
for endless miles across the globe, to be lost in the far distance to
east and west; but to the north they saw a low range of hills that rose
blue and misty in the distance.

"Venus! We made it!" Morey cried jubilantly. "The first men ever to
leave Earth--I'm going to start the old sender and radio back home!
Man--look at that stretch of plain!" He jumped to his feet and started
across the control room. "Lord--I feel like of ton of lead now--I sure
am out of condition for walking after all that time just floating!"

Arcot raised a restraining hand. "Whoa--wait a minute there, Morey--you
won't get anything through to them now. The Earth is on the other side
of Venus--it's on the night side, remember--and we're on the day side.
In about twelve hours we'll be able to send a message. In the meantime,
take the controls while I make a test of the air here, will you?"

Relieved of the controls, Arcot rose and walked down the corridor to the
power room where the chemical laboratory had been set up. Wade had
already collected a dozen samples of air, and was working on them.

"How is it--what have you tested for so far?" asked Arcot.

"Oxygen and CO_{2}. The oxygen is about twenty-two per cent, or
considering the slightly lower air pressure here, we will have just
about the right amount of oxygen. The CO_{2} is about one-tenth of one
per cent. The atmosphere is O.K. for terrestrial life apparently; that
mouse there is living quite happily. Whatever the other seventy-five per
cent or so of diluting gas is, I don't know, but it isn't nitrogen."

Briefly Arcot and Wade discussed the unusual atmosphere, finally
deciding that the inert gas was argon.

"No great amount of nitrogen," Arcot concluded. "That means that life
will have a sweet time extracting it from the air--but wherever there is
life, it finds a way to do the impossible. Test it more accurately, will
you--you try for nitrogen and I'll try the component inert gasses."

They ran the analyses rapidly, and in a very short time--less than an
hour--their results stood at 23 per cent oxygen, .1 per cent carbon
dioxide, 68 per cent argon, 6 per cent nitrogen, 2 per cent helium, 5
per cent neon, .05 per cent hydrogen, and the rest krypton and xenon
apparently. The analyses of these inert gasses had to be done rather
roughly in this short time, but it was sufficient to balance fairly
accurately.

The two chemists reported back to the control cabin.

"Well, we'll be able to breathe the atmosphere of Venus with ease. I
believe we can go on now. I have been surprised to see no water in
sight, but I think I see my mistake now. You know the Mississippi has
its mouth further from the center of the Earth than its source; it flows
up hill! The answer is, of course, that the centrifugal force of the
Earth's spin impels it to flow that way. Similarly, I am sure now that
we will find that Venus has a vast belt of water about the middle, and
to the north and south there will be two great caps of dry land. We are
on the northern cap.

"We have the microphone turned way down. Let's step up the power a bit
and see if there are any sounds outside," said Arcot and walked over to
the power control switch. An instant later a low hum came from the
loudspeaker. There was a light breeze blowing. In the distance, forming
a dull background for the hum, there came a low rumbling that seemed
punctuated now and then by a greater sound.

"Must be a long way off," said Arcot, a puzzled frown on his face.
"Swing the ship around so we can see in what direction the sound is
loudest," he suggested.

Slowly Morey swung the ship around on its vertical axis. Without a
doubt, something off in the direction of the hills was making a
considerable noise.

"Arcot, if that's a fight between two animals--two of those giant
animals that you said might be here--I don't care to get near them!"
Fuller's narrowed eyes strove to penetrate the haze that screened the
low hills in the blue distance.

The microphone was shut off while the _Solarite_ shot swiftly forward
toward the source of the sound. Quickly the hills grew, the blue
mistiness disappearing, and the jagged mounds revealing themselves as
bleak harsh rock. As they drew nearer they saw beyond the hills,
intermittent flashes of brilliant light, heard shattering blasts of
sound.

"A thunderstorm!" Wade began, but Arcot interrupted.

"Not so fast, Wade--Fuller's animal _is_ there--the only animal in all
creation that can make a noise like that! Look through the
telescope--see those dots wheeling about there above the flashing
lights? The only animal that can make that racket is man! There are men
over there--and they aren't in a playful mood! Turn on the invisibility
while we can, Morey--and let's get nearer!"

"Look out--here we go!" Morey began to close a tiny switch set in one
side of the instrument panel--then, before the relay below could move,
he had flipped it back.

"Here, you take it, Arcot--you always think about two steps ahead of
me--you're quicker and know the machine better anyway."

Quickly the two men exchanged places.

"I don't know about that, Morey," said a voice from vacancy, for Arcot
had at once thrown the ship into invisibility. "The longer we're here,
the more mistakes I see we made in our calculations. I see what put me
off so badly on my estimate of the intelligence of life found here! The
sun gives it a double dose of heat--but also a double dose of other
radiations--some of which evidently speed up evolution. Anyway, we may
be able to find friends here more quickly if we aid one side or the
other in the very lively battle going on there. Before we go any
further, what's our decision?"

"I think it is a fine idea," said Fuller. "But which side are we to
aid--and what are the sides? We haven't even seen them yet. Let's go
nearer and take a good look."

"Yes--but are we going to join either side after looking?"

"Oh, that's unanimous!" said Wade, excitedly.

The invisible ship darted forward. They sped past the barrier of low
hills, and were again high above a broad plain. With a startled gasp,
Arcot cut their speed. There, floating high in the air, above a
magnificent city, was a machine such as no man had ever before seen! It
was a titanic airplane--monstrous, gargantuan, and every other word that
denoted immensity. Fully three-quarters of a mile the huge metal wings
stretched out in the dull light of the cloudy Venerian day; a machine
that seemed to dwarf even the vast city beneath it. The roar of its
mighty propellers was a rumbling thunder to the men in the _Solarite_.
From it came the flashing bursts of flame.

On closer inspection, the watchers saw what seemed to be a swarm of tiny
gnats flying about the mighty plane. They appeared to be attacking the
giant as vainly as gnats might attack an eagle, for they could not
damage the giant machine. The flashing bombs burst in blasts of yellow
flame as harmlessly as so many firecrackers.

All that mighty plane was covered with heavy metal plates, fully ten
inches thick, and of metal so tough that when the powerful bombs hit it
they made no impression, though they blasted tremendous craters in the
soil below. From it poured a steady stream of bombs that burst with a
great flash of heat and light, and in an instant the tiny planes they
struck streaked down as incandescent masses of metal.

Yet the giant seemed unable to approach the city--or was it defending
it? No, for it was from the city that the vainly courageous little ships
poured out. But certainly it was not these ships that kept the titanic
battleship of the air at bay!

Tensely the men watched the uneven conflict. The rain of bombs
continued, though all fell short of the city. But slowly around the
metropolis there appeared an area of flaring, molten lava, and steadily
this moved toward the beautiful buildings. Suddenly the battleship
turned toward the city and made a short dash inward on its circling
path. As though awaiting this maneuver, a battery of hissing, flaming
swords of white light flashed upward, a few hundred feet from the ring
of molten rock. As the titanic plane rolled, side-slipped out of the
way, they passed, harmlessly, barely missing a monstrous wing.

"Which?" Arcot demanded. "I say the city. No one should destroy anything
so magnificent."

Not a dissenting voice was raised, so Arcot sent the _Solarite_ nearer.

"But what in the world can we do to that huge thing?" Fuller's voice
came eerily out of the emptiness. "It has perfect invulnerability
through size alone."

There was sudden silence among the Terrestrials as one of the tiny
planes darted forward and dove at full speed directly toward one of the
giant's propellers. There were fifty of these strung along each great
wing. If enough of them could be destroyed, the plane must crash. There
came a terrific crash--a flare of light--and splintered fragments of
flaming wreckage plummeted down. Yet the mighty blades continued
whirling as smoothly as ever!

What could the _Solarite_ do against the giant monoplane? Evidently
Arcot had a plan. Under his touch their machine darted high into the sky
above the great plane. There was a full mile between them when he
released the sustaining force of the _Solarite_ and let it drop,
straight toward the source of the battle--falling freely, ever more and
more rapidly. They were rushing at the mighty plane below at a pace that
made their hearts seem to pause--then suddenly Arcot cried out, "Hold
on--here we stop!"

They seemed a scant hundred feet from the broad metal wings of the
unsuspecting plane, when suddenly there was a tremendous jerk, and each
man felt himself pressed to the floor beneath a terrific weight that
made their backs crack with the load. Doggedly they fought to retain
their senses; the blackness receded.

Below them they saw only a mighty sea of roaring red flames--a hell of
blazing gas that roared like a score of bombs set off at once. The
_Solarite_ was sitting down on her rocket jets! All six of the rocket
tubes in the base of the ship had been opened wide, and streaming from
them in a furious blast of incandescent gas, the atomic hydrogen shot
out in a mighty column of gas at 3500 degrees centigrade. Where the gas
touched it, the great plane flared to incandescence; and in an
immeasurable interval the fall of the _Solarite_ ended, and it rebounded
high into the air. Arcot, struggling against the weight of six
gravities, pulled shut the little control that had sent those mighty
torches blasting out. An instant later they sped away lest the plane
shoot toward the gas columns.

From a safe distance they looked back at their work. No longer was the
mighty plane unscathed, invulnerable, for now in its top gaped six great
craters of incandescent metal that almost touched and coalesced. The
great plane itself reeled, staggering, plunging downward; but long
before it reached the hard soil below, it was brought into level flight,
and despite many dead engines, it circled and fled toward the south. The
horde of small planes followed, dropping a rain of bombs into the
glowing pits in the ship, releasing their fury in its interior. In
moments the beings manning the marauder had to a large extent recovered
from the shock of the attack and were fighting back. In a moment--just
before the ship passed over the horizon and out of sight--the
Terrestrians saw the great props that had been idle, suddenly leap into
motion, and in an instant the giant had left its attackers
behind--fleeing from its invisible foe.

Under Arcot's guidance the ship from Earth, still invisible, returned to
the approximate spot where they had destroyed the invulnerability of the
Giant. Then suddenly, out of nothing, the _Solarite_ appeared. In an
instant a dozen of the tiny two-man planes darted toward it. Just that
they might recognize it, Arcot shot it up a bit higher with the aid of
the keel rockets at one-third power. The typical reddish flame of atomic
hydrogen, he knew, would be instantaneously recognizable.

Little these planes were, but shaped like darts, and swifter than any
plane of Earth. They shot along at 1000 miles an hour readily, as Arcot
soon found out. It was not a minute before they had formed a long line
that circled the _Solarite_ at minimum speed, then started off in the
direction of the city. On impulse Arcot followed after them, and
instantly the planes increased their velocity, swiftly reaching 1000
miles per hour.

The city they were approaching was an inspiring sight. Mighty towers
swept graceful lines a half mile in the air, their brightly colored
walls gleaming in rainbow hues, giving the entire city the aspect of a
gigantic jewel--a single architectural unit. Here was symmetry and
order, with every unit in the city built around the gigantic central
edifice that rose, a tremendous tower of black and gold, a full half
mile in the air.

The outer parts of the city were evidently the residential districts,
the low buildings and the wide streets with the little green lawns
showing the care of the individual owner. Then came the apartment houses
and the small stores; these rose in gentle slopes, higher and higher,
merging at last with the mighty central pinnacle of beauty. The city was
designed as a whole, not in a multitude of individually beautiful, but
inharmonious units, like some wild mixture of melodies, each in itself
beautiful, but mutually discordant.

V

The Terrestrians followed their escort high above these great buildings,
heading toward the great central tower. In a moment they were above it,
and in perfect order the ships of the Venerians shot down to land
smoothly, but at high speed. On the roof of the building they slowed
with startling rapidity, held back by electromagnets under the top
dressing of the roof landing, as Arcot learned later.

"We can't land on that--this thing weighs too much--we'd probably sink
right through it! The street looks wide enough for us to land there."
Arcot maneuvered the _Solarite_ over the edge of the roof, and dropped
it swiftly down the half mile to the ground below. Just above the
street, he leveled off, and descended slowly, giving the hurrying crowds
plenty of time to get from beneath it.

Landing finally, he looked curiously at the mass of Venerians who had
gathered in the busy street, coming out of buildings where they
evidently had sought shelter during the raid. The crowd grew rapidly as
the Terrestrians watched them--people of a new world.

"Why," exclaimed Fuller in startled surprise, "they look almost like
us!"

"Why not?" laughed Arcot. "Is there any particular reason why they
shouldn't look like us? Venus and Earth are very nearly the same size,
and are planets of the same parent sun. Physical conditions here appear
to be very similar to conditions back home, and if there's anything to
Svend Arrehenius' theory of life spores being sent from world to world
by sunlight, there's no reason why humanoid races cannot be found
throughout the universe. On worlds, that is, suitable for the
development of such life forms."

"Look at the size of 'em," Fuller commented.

Their size was certainly worth noting, for in all that crowd only the
obviously young were less than six feet tall. The average seemed to be
seven feet--well-built men and women with unusually large chests, who
would have seemed very human indeed, but for a ghastly, death-like blue
tinge to their skin. Even their lips were as bright a blue as man's lips
are red. The teeth seemed to be as white as any human's, but their
mouths were blue.

"They look as if they'd all been eating blueberries!" laughed Wade. "I
wonder what makes their blood blue? I've heard of blue-blooded families,
but these are the first I've ever seen!"

"I think I can answer that," said Morey slowly. "It seems odd to us--but
those people evidently have their blood based on hemocyanin. In us, the
oxygen is carried to the tissues, and the carbon dioxide carried away by
an iron compound, hemoglobin, but in many animals of Earth, the same
function is performed by a copper compound, hemocyanin, which is an
intense blue. I am sure that that is the explanation for these strange
people. By the way, did you notice their hands?"

"Yes, I had. They strike me as having one too many fingers--look
there--that fellow is pointing--why--his hand hasn't too many fingers,
but too many thumbs! He has one on each side of his palm! Say, that
would be handy in placing nuts and bolts, and such fine work, wouldn't
it?"

Suddenly a lane opened in the crowd, and from the great black and gold
building there came a file of men in tight-fitting green uniforms; a
file of seven-foot giants. Obviously they were soldiers of some
particular branch, for in the crowd there were a number of men dressed
in similar uniforms of deep blue.

"I think they want one or more of us to accompany them," Arcot said.
"Let's flip a coin to decide who goes--two better stay here, and two go.
If we don't come back inside of a reasonable period of time, one of you
might start making inquiries; the other can send a message to Earth, and
get out of harm's way till help can come. I imagine these people are
friendly now, however--else I wouldn't go."

The leader of the troop stepped up to the door of the _Solarite_, and
coming to what was obviously a position of attention, put his left hand
over his right breast in an equally obvious salute, and waited.

The coin was flipped with due ceremony--it would decide which of them
were to have the distinction of being the first Terrestrians to set foot
on Venus. Arcot and Morey won, and they quickly put on the loose-fitting
ventilated cooling suits that they might live comfortably in the hot air
outside--for the thermometer registered 150 deg.!

The two men quickly walked over to the airlock, entered, closed it
behind them, and opened the outer door. There was a slight rush of air,
as the pressure outside was a bit lower than that inside. There was a
singing in their ears, and they had to swallow several times to equalize
the pressure.

The guards at once fell into a double row on either side of them, and
the young officer strode ahead. He himself had curbed his curiosity
after the single startled glance he had given these strange men. Only
their hands were visible, for the cooling suits covered them almost
completely, but the strange pink color must indeed have been startling
to the eyes; also their dwarf stature, and the strange suits they wore.
The men of his little troop, however, as well as the people in the crowd
about them, were not so disinterested. They were looking in eager
amazement at these men who had just saved their city, these strange
small men with their queer pink skin. And most surprising of all,
perhaps, the inner thumb was missing from each hand!

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