Part 1

No star's land

By William Morrison

_When cosmic giants wage war man becomes a fly-speck in space. But a single atom can shatter a sun!_

_William Morrison is a past master of the 'mistake' story. We don't mean to imply that Mr. Morrison made a mistake in writing this story--quite the contrary! The 'mistake' story is simply a tale that in relentless documentary fashion shows how foolish people are to confuse size with power, or make the error of underselling the indomitable spirit of man._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe July 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It was ridiculous and incredible. It was against all reason. But it had happened. The ship was marooned in free space.

They had been squabbling again, and this time the arguments on both sides had become as hot as the two blazing stars which hemmed them in on both sides, making them feel like dust motes in a vacuum. Karin, her eyes darting sparks, had summed it up neatly.

"It's hopeless, Jan. Only a divorce can solve it!"

"I can't think of anything I want more," Jan said, his face tight with anger. By the light of the green star, which illuminated his features, he must have made, he realized bitterly, a ghastly picture.

Karin regarded him with distaste. "Fine--splendid! The minute we get back to Earth."

"Why wait that long?" Jan protested. "There's a court on Ganymede. We can get one there."

He was bitterly contemplating the ruin of his honeymoon when he noticed that the ship had lost headway. The differential screen, which depicted the change in the star picture from second to second, was barely illuminated. They were practically stationary with respect to every star in the local galaxy.

In view of the fact that they had been traveling at one-half light speed, and that neither the green nor the yellow star was more than thirty-five million miles away, the result seemed to Jan outrageous. The positions of both stars should have been changing rapidly. His first thought was that the differential screen was no longer working.

Both stars, however, were stationary on the direct view screen as well, glowing with unsurpassed steadiness, and filling the space around them with a flood of radiance. The direct view screen was plainly operating properly. Somehow, the unwilling conclusion forced itself upon him that they had been braked to a stop.

Karin noticed his agitation and demanded, "What's wrong?" And then she stared herself, realizing what had happened. Her lips trembled and she gave a startled exclamation: "But that's impossible!"

"Of course it's impossible," he agreed, the green and yellow beams cascading over his face as he crossed to the other side of the ship. "Not only that we should have decelerated so rapidly, but that we failed to notice what was happening. I remember that it was just a half-hour ago that I checked the screens, and you made that brilliant remark about my ability as a navigator."

His tone made clear all over again how much he had resented her criticism. "We were going full speed, over ninety thousand miles a second on initial drive alone. Thirty minutes later, our velocity is reduced to zero."

The differential screen, he noted, was now completely dark. "We've been subjected on an average to a negative acceleration of fifty miles per second," he went on quickly. "More than seven thousand gravs! It should have torn both us, and the ship apart. But the ship shows no strain, and we haven't felt a thing."

There was a moment's silence. Then Karin said huskily, "Our instruments are all wrong."

"They're not." Jan insisted. "A direct view through the visiplates proves they're not." Karin didn't reply, and he added angrily. "Go ahead and say it again. You're thinking it, anyway. I'm a lousy navigator. I'm the one who insisted on passing _between_ the stars."

"I wasn't thinking that at all," she said slowly. "I was wondering. What could have caused this to happen? Offhand, I couldn't even make a reasonable guess. Shall we try using our power?"

"What would be the use?" Jan said. "Even with the degravitizer on to protect us, we can't get up more than one hundred g's. We can't overcome a reverse acceleration of seven thousand."

"Suppose we reverse direction."

Jan nodded, and said, "We'll try that."

Slowly and carefully he swung the ship around, and began to build up speed. The maneuver claimed his full attention, giving him no time to look at Karin, and wonder whether or not she was frightened.

It was a stupid situation to be caught in, and from beginning to end Jan had no one to blame but himself. It was a few years before that Intergalactic Exploration had started a new practice, thought up apparently by some elderly Romeo in his second childhood. It was a special service for honeymooners.

What did honeymooners, from time immemorial, want for themselves? Privacy, isolation--freedom from intrusion by the outside world. What did Intergalactic have to offer the intrepid volunteers who did its exploration? Just that--complete privacy in space. It was all in the way you looked at it. The isolation most people hated was precisely what the honeymooners sought.

It had seemed like a bright idea to combine a boon to the honeymooners with a favor to Intergalactic. Intergalactic had offered ships--shiny, beautiful ships of the latest exploratory model, capable of a sub-speed of half-light, and for stellar travel with a secondary range up to a hundred light years. Each was completely supplied with food, and furnished with all the gadgets that made shipboard housekeeping a pleasure. And all this was free of charge to properly trained couples possessed of a reasonable mental stability, and a suitably technical background.

There was no salary, of course--after all, the ship itself was reward enough. In return, each couple was given a restricted section of a galaxy to explore. The task was not difficult. Professional explorers could have carried out their assignments in three months. The honeymoon couples were allowed twice that time.

As the man who had suggested the idea observed, their scientific interests were likely to be somewhat impaired for a short period, and they might be expected to waste many hours in non-productive pursuits.

If they hadn't been so much in love with each other, Jan and Karin wouldn't have been such fools as to take on a double assignment. They had accepted a sector of twice the usual size, and they had explored it well, but in leisurely fashion. A year had passed, and in that year they had learned to know each other _too_ well.

It was too long to be together, isolated from the rest of the human race. Even for honeymooners, far too long. Jan was aware of every one of Karin's weaknesses--and he realized only too well that she was aware of his.

They had, moreover, developed new weaknesses they had never before exhibited. Stubbornness, impatience, a tendency to find incessant fault--these were the beginning of a process of falling out of love.

In Karin's eyes, he knew he was no longer the tall self-reliant man in whose slightly ugly face she had found the good looks that appealed to her. And to Jan, Karin was no longer the warm-hearted pretty girl who, he had been so pleasantly surprised to learn, was so ready to understand him.

During the past month they had become bored with each other. During the past week they had been in an almost continuous state of open hostility.

It was the desire to keep their trip from dragging out even more intolerably that had induced Jan to take a short cut. The most direct path home lay between the yellow and green stars, bright twins which were separated from each other by a distance of forty million miles.

Each star was of the same approximate sun-mass, and the radiation was strong. But their radiation shield was effective. Their possible acceleration, along with the momentum they had already acquired, should have been sufficient to keep them from falling victim to either star.

All that was needed was a steady hand at the controls. With careful navigation they should have been able to pass midway between the two massive bodies without suffering any ill effects.

Karin, whether from caution or from a mere feeling of opposition to everything that Jan suggested, had vigorously opposed the idea. She preferred to swing wide of both stars, even though it meant a serious time loss--not so much because of the added mileage, but because of the need for transverse acceleration, followed by careful maneuvering to get back to their course again. But her opposition hadn't been quite vigorous enough, and Jan had succeeded in winning her over.

They had never expected what happened next. Their path had neatly bisected the line joining the two stars, and they had begun to put both glowing masses behind them. Unexpectedly, as if they had reached the end of a great rubber band to which they had been attached, they had stopped dead in space. The rubber had stretched as much as it was ever going to stretch.

Then, as Jan reversed direction, it seemed as if the band were contracting once more. They picked up speed, and the differential screen glowed green and yellow while their position with respect to the twin stars underwent a change. But the glow quickly dimmed and vanished. Once more they had come to a full stop.

"Road blocked at both ends," said Jan, with grim finality.

"Suppose we cut off at right angles," suggested Karin.

"Naturally," he agreed. "We can't afford to miss a bet."

But the road was blocked above and below as well. Jan said, "I'm afraid, darling, that our divorce is going to be held up."

"Indefinitely."

She looked a little pale and frightened. Even the ghastly lighting could not conceal the beauty in her face, and at that moment he loved her again. He said, "Go ahead and say it. Tell me I should have listened to you. It's true, you know."

"I'm not reproaching you, Jan," she said quietly. "Don't joke about it. It's too serious."

"We're unharmed. We should be thankful for that, I guess."

"How long will we be safe? We can't move."

"Strictly speaking," he said, "we can. We can't get away, but we can wriggle around a bit. Apparently we can travel a few million miles in any direction perpendicular to the line joining the stars. We could probably also travel directly toward either star, although I'd hate to get any closer to them. Unfortunately, the stars won't _let_ us get away."

"Are you sure it's the stars? There might be planets with intelligent living creatures on them."

"That's out!" said Jan firmly. "Take a look at some of the three-dimensional views I snapped, both as we approached, and as we were wriggling around. Taking all the pictures into consideration, I must have covered all the space for at least a billion miles from either star. There are no planets."

Together they stared at the photographs. Karin suggested: "There might be small ones, little bigger than asteroids. Let's put the pictures under the analyzer."

* * * * *

They did. The analyzer showed an asteroid belt four hundred million miles out from the center of the double star system. But none of the asteroids was apparently more than five miles in diameter.

"No planets," Jan reiterated. "And if there are any living creatures on those asteroids, I doubt whether they'd be close enough to affect us. It's pretty obvious that the forces holding us together come from the stars themselves."

"Then you think the forces are natural? I've never heard of anything of the kind before."

"The forces would _have_ to be natural."

"How about living things on the stars themselves?" asked Karin.

"I don't believe it. Not for a moment. I know there's been talk about flame creatures living at temperatures of millions of degrees centigrade. But nobody has ever met them."

"Jan, what do we do?"

"You tell me. We have an excellent radiation shield system. But we can't keep it going indefinitely. And sooner or later, our food concentrates will run out."

"So we're stuck here. Hopelessly marooned."

"Right. Too bad we're so bored with each other."

Karin said nothing, and once more Jan turned to the controls, hoping against hope. But no matter in which direction he made his attempt, the ship was quickly brought up short. The rubber band had not weakened.

The hours passed, while the two stars continued to blaze at them, watchful and unwinking. Jan adjusted the radiation controls, permitting some of the heat that escaped direct reflection from the polished sides to get past the shielding screen, and warm the ship.

On the whole, as it took some of the load from the screen and lengthened the system's useful life, it was a wise move. But it did make the ship uncomfortable. Karin, he noted, was bearing up well. There were no complaints from her, and it was she who suggested that they put themselves on emergency rations.

It was at the end of thirty hours of their strange imprisonment that they began to be aware of dangers other than those from radiation and hunger. Both the green star and the yellow, as Jan had observed, possessed fairly small coronas. Quite unexpectedly, the green star flared up, and tongues of garish flame licked out for a distance of several million miles. Its action set off a silent uproar in space.

The yellow star answered with flame of its own, and Jan was forced to get into the act, and turn on his radiation shields at full capacity. A half-hour later, both coronas subsided to normal, and he cut down his shield capacity once more.

"It's damnably disturbing," said Jan. "If only natural forces are involved, why should one star reply to the other in such deliberate fashion?"

"Perhaps the green star set the other one off, like a neutron from an exploding atom setting off the next atom," Karin suggested.

"Or perhaps there are living creatures on them," Jan muttered.

Karin said, "It's beginning to seem possible. And I'm afraid that if we stay here long enough, we'll find out."

"I'm afraid so too," Jan conceded. "We both wanted living companions--but not unknown shapes of fire."

Seventeen hours after the end of the corona explosions, they noticed activity on the yellow star. What took place resembled the formation of sunspots, but the eruptions were like none they had ever seen. As they grew, they darkened, and began to rotate with increasing speed, so that soon the surface of the yellow star was covered with black, whirling specks. The specks drew together, and then shot out abruptly toward the green star.

Once more Jan acted. As the black objects raced toward him, he sent the ship full speed ahead to get out of their way, and as he did so the now elongated spheres of spinning blackness sailed straight past the ports. They were in the vacuum of space, but even so Jan noted that the ship rocked as if battered by the waves of an ocean.

From the green star came answering black objects, which grew like sinister soap bubbles. The bubbles caught the attacking spheres, and wherever defenders and attackers made contact, a blinding flash of light was followed by a quick burst of high-energy radiation.

"Rule out natural forces," said Jan decisively.

Karin nodded. "Each star is either alive, or has living things on it. They're fighting a war." She repeated the word. "A _war_. It seems incredible--terrifying."

"I'm afraid you've forgotten our own past. Haven't you studied your history? We had wars once too."

"But so long ago, Jan! It seems impossible to believe that half the human race ever tried to destroy the other half."

"Well, they didn't succeed. There's no use moralizing. Now, at least, we have something pretty definite to go on. When the creatures of one star launched a force field, those of the other star defended themselves with a force field of their own. Directly between the stars, the fields balance pretty well, permitting us to move. But toward the rim of the region where they collide, the forces work in the same direction, and keep us from breaking free."

"Now that we know that--what can we do?"

"Nothing, I'm afraid," admitted Jan. "Neither star will relax its field for fear of falling victim to the other. That leaves us in the middle, exactly as before."

He said thoughtfully, "Karin, did I ever tell you of that ancient history book I once saw? It actually depicted our barbaric ancestors on a battlefield? There were long rows of trenches on either side, apparently as a protection from the primitive missiles they were capable of launching. And sitting on the blackened limb of a tree that had been shot almost to bits, in what was called 'No Man's Land', sat a bird.

"Well, we're that bird, Karin--on a battlefield we never made. We're right in the middle, in no star's land. And sooner or later, some of the weapons being used are going to finish us off, precisely as one of those ancient shells was sure eventually to destroy the bird."

"I didn't realize I had married a philosopher," said Karin sharply. "If the bird had any brains, it would have flown away. And if _we_ have any brains, we'd find a way to move the ship."

"We seem to lack the necessary mental equipment," said Jan tartly. "What would you suggest?"

"That we go over the entire ship, make an inventory of all our instruments, and resources, and see if we can use them to get us out of here. Once we're headed for home we can philosophize as much as we please."

"You're right, of course," said Jan. "I don't see what we can possibly do on an effective scale. But, let's go!"

They put on a great show of activity, cataloguing the different varieties of storage products, instruments, and fuel. The list, Jan pointed out, was not impressive.

"We could, if we had the proper equipment, convert all our atomic fuel into a bomb," he said. "What effect that would have on a star that can radiate a billion times as much energy as we could throw at it, I don't know. I do know that it would leave us without fuel."

"And the creatures themselves--if there are any. How about them? Would they be destroyed?"

"They're used to tremendous gravity, incredible pressures and temperatures way up in the millions," Jan said. "Maybe the only way to harm them would be to _lower_ those high values. That overgrown corona we saw might have been a pressure reducer. The black things were probably heat absorbers."

"Our radiation shield--" suggested Karin eagerly.

"Something like that _might_ do the trick--if it were a trillion times as large. It would absorb the energy they need and scatter it as low frequency radiation. But a small shield system like this one wouldn't amount to more than a single drop of water thrown on a fire. We're too small, Karin. On this battlefield, we're _out-classed_."

"Then all we can do is wait to be picked off?"

"I'm sorry, Karin. If I have to go, this isn't the way I'd like it to end. I dreamed of sacrificing my life for you, so that you'd always remember me as a man of courage and integrity. As it is--" he shrugged.

"Don't be silly," said Karin, moved in spite of herself. "I have no desire to outlive you."

They were reduced to waiting again. Jan wondered whether, in all the time they had hovered between the opposing battle lines, the star-dwellers had been conscious of their existence. Even whether they had spared the time to note the bird so hopelessly trapped on their battlefield. Each side, if it was alert to its enemy's moves, must have recorded the ship's presence, and possibly speculated on what it was doing in this section of space.

When the surface of the green star began to heave, Jan returned to his controls again, ready to maneuver out of the way of whatever weapon might be used. But this time, apparently, the change on the green star presaged no attack. A section of the surface moved slowly out, and then broke up into wriggling fragments that exhibited a peculiar order. Curiously, the figures reminded him of some of the primitive alphabets of early human civilization.

"Sky writing!" exclaimed Karin.

"Space writing," he corrected. "Intended for us, or for the enemy?"

"Not for us. They must realize that we can't read it."

"That's right. But if it's for them--it may be a suggestion for a truce!"

"Whatever it is, the yellow star's not answering," said Karin anxiously.

"Give them time, Karin. They have to make up their minds."

An hour later, the light from the yellow star died slowly away, and its size shrank. Then the star blazed up again, and expanded to twice its previous diameter.

As the yellow star swept through the phases of its powerful pulsation, Jan felt as if every bone and muscle of his body was in the grip of a giant hand, being twisted and wrenched without mercy. Karin's body stiffened, and he heard her cry out. The next moment, her body crumpled, and she sagged to the deck in a dead faint.

Jan started to crawl toward her, felt the giant hand close on his own brain, and blacked out.

When Jan awoke again, both stars seemed normal once more, blazing as steadily as when he had first seen them. Karin was awake too--sitting up with her hands pressed to her temples.

"Truce rejected," Jan said bitterly. "They don't care what happens to the bird on the battlefield, apparently."

"Perhaps we should edge closer to the one that wanted the truce," Karin whispered shakily.

Jan shook his head. "Let's not give either side the idea that we have any sympathies at all. Taking sides in a fight too big for us is a sure way to commit suicide."

His lips tightened. "We'd better get as far away as we can from both of them without using up too much of our fuel fighting their force fields. That at least will spare our radiation shield from too much strain."

"I still think we should get closer to the green one. At least its creatures aren't as bloodthirsty as the others appear to be."

"Neither one is bloodthirsty. Just _flamethirsty_," said Jan grimly. "And personally, I wouldn't trust the green sun as far as I could throw it."

The uneasy silence of space surrounded them again. Green star and yellow star shone quietly, their coronas as thin and bright as supernatural haloes. Small sunspots whirled on their surfaces--as they did on the surface of every well-behaved star of reasonably large mass. And within the ship, Jan and Karin waited with dread impatience for the next move in the unearthly war.

Jan tried to occupy himself by arranging the data of the systems they had surveyed, but most of the work had been done long before. There were several thousand tiny spool books, part of the ship's standard supply, which neither of them had as yet touched. But unfortunately he wasn't interested in reading.

If there had been something important to discuss, they would have spoken to each other. But they had long since passed the stage where small talk was possible. Even their meals, which on Earth might have dragged out pleasantly for an hour or two, were here of little value in killing time. Synthetics took only a few seconds to prepare, and no more than a few minutes to eat. Besides, they were on short rations.

They had long used up the small supply of alcoholic drinks with which a thoughtful Intergalactic supplied its vessels in order to ease the strain that might be expected at first between two comparative strangers thrown into such close intimacy for the first time in their lives. There was nothing for it but to remain sober.

All the same, there came a time when Jan began to wonder if he might not be drunk after all, his mind thrown hideously off balance, by the strange forces to which they had been subjected. The things he saw had a nightmare aspect which chilled him to the core of his being.