Part 13

"Encouraging, huh?" Seaton broke in. "If such a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist as you are can permit himself to use such a word as that, we're practically landed on a planet right now!"

"And shows the same types and varieties of stellar spectra," Crane went on, unperturbed. "I have identified with certainty no less than six white dwarf stars, and some forty yellow dwarfs of type G."

"Fine! What did I tell you?" exulted Seaton.

"Now go over that again, in English, so that Peggy and I can feel relieved about it, too," Dorothy directed. "What's a type-G dwarf?"

"A sun like our own old Sol, back home," Seaton explained. "Since we are looking for a planet as much as possible like our own Earth, it is a distinctly cheerful fact to find so many suns so similar to our own. And as for the white dwarfs, I've got to have one fairly close to the planet we land on, because to get in touch with Rovol I've got to have a sixth-order projector; to build which I've first got to have one of the fifth order; for the reconstruction of which I've got to have neutronium; to get which I'll have to be close to a white dwarf star. See?"

"Uh-huh! Clear and lucid to the point of limpidity--not." Dorothy grimaced, then went on: "As for me, I'm certainly glad to see those stars. It seems that we've been out there in absolutely empty space for ages, and I've been scared a pale lavender all the time. Having all these nice stars around us again is the next-best thing to being on solid ground."

* * * * *

At the edge of the strange Galaxy though they were, many days were required to reduce the intergalactic pace of the vessel to a value at which maneuvering was possible, and many more days passed into time before Crane announced the discovery of a sun which not only possessed a family of planets, but was also within the specified distance of a white dwarf star.

To any Earthly astronomer, whose most powerful optical instruments fail to reveal even the closest star as anything save a dimensionless point of light, such a discovery would have been impossible, but Crane was not working with Earthly instruments. For the fourth-order projector, although utterly useless at the intergalactic distances with which Seaton was principally concerned, was vastly more powerful than any conceivable telescope.

Driven by the full power of a disintegrating uranium bar, it could hold a projection so steadily at a distance of twenty light-years that a man could manipulate a welding arc as surely as though it was upon a bench before him--which, in effect, it was--and in cases in which delicacy of control was not an object, such as the present quest for such vast masses as planets, the projector was effective over distances of many hundreds of light-years.

Thus it came about that the search for a planetiferous sun near a white dwarf star was not unduly prolonged, and _Skylark Two_ tore through the empty ether toward it.

Close enough so that the projector could reveal details, Seaton drove projections of all four voyagers down into the atmosphere of the first planet at hand. That atmosphere was heavy and of a pronounced greenish-yellow cast, and through it that fervent sun poured down a flood of livid light upon a peculiarly dead and barren ground--but yet a ground upon which grew isolated clumps of a livid and monstrous vegetation.

"Of course detailed analysis at this distance is impossible, but what do you make of it, Dick?" asked Crane. "In all our travels, this is only the second time we have encountered such an atmosphere."

"Yes; and that's exactly twice too many." Seaton, at the spectroscope, was scowling in thought. "Chlorin, all right, with some fluorin and strong traces of oxides of nitrogen, nitrosyl chloride, and so on--just about like that one we saw in our own Galaxy that time. I thought then and have thought ever since that there was something decidedly fishy about that planet, and I think there's something equally fishy about this one."

"Well, let's not investigate it any further, then," put in Dorothy. "Let's go somewhere else, quick."

"Yes, let's," Margaret agreed, "particularly if, as you said about that other one, it has a form of life on it that would make our grandfather's whiskers curl up into a ball."

"We'll do that little thing; we haven't got _Three's_ equipment now, and without it I'm no keener on smelling around this planet than you are," and he flipped the projection across a few hundred million miles of space to the neighboring planet. Its air, while somewhat murky and smoky, was colorless and apparently normal, its oceans were composed of water, and its vegetation was green. "See, Mart? I told you something was fishy. It's all wrong--a thing like that can't happen even once, let alone twice."

"According to the accepted principles of cosmogony it is of course to be expected that all the planets of the same sun would have atmospheres of somewhat similar composition," Crane conceded, unmoved. "However, since we have observed two cases of this kind, it is quite evident that there are not only many more suns having planets than has been supposed, but also that suns capture planets from each other, at least occasionally."

"Maybe--that would explain it, of course. But let's see what this world looks like--see if we can find a place to sit down on. It'll be nice to live on solid ground while I do my stuff."

He swung the viewpoint slowly across the daylight side of the strange planet, whose surface, like that of Earth, was partially obscured by occasional masses of cloud. Much of that surface was covered by mighty oceans, and what little land there was seemed strangely flat and entirely devoid of topographical features.

The immaterial conveyance dropped straight down upon the largest visible mass of land, down through a towering jungle of fernlike and bamboolike plants, halting only a few feet above the ground. Solid ground it certainly was not, nor did it resemble the watery muck of our Earthly swamps. The huge stems of the vegetation rose starkly from a black and seething field of viscous mud--mud unrelieved by any accumulation of humus or of débris--and in that mud there swam, crawled, and slithered teeming hordes of animals.

"What perfectly darn funny-looking mud puppies!" Dorothy exclaimed. "And isn't that the thickest, dirtiest, gooiest mud you ever saw?"

"Just about," Seaton agreed, intensely interested. "But those things seem perfectly adapted to it. Flat, beaver tails; short, strong legs with webbed feet; long, narrow heads with rooting noses, like pigs; and heavy, sharp incisor teeth. But they live on those ferns and stuff--that's why there's no underbrush or dead stuff. Look at that bunch working on the roots of that big bamboo over there. They'll have it down in a minute--there she goes!"

* * * * *

The great trunk fell with a crash as he spoke, and was almost instantly forced beneath the repellant surface by the weight of the massed "mud puppies" who flung themselves upon it.

"Ah, I thought so!" Crane remarked. "Their molar teeth do not match their incisors, being quite Titanotheric in type. Probably they can assimilate lignin and cellulose instead of requiring our usual nutrient carbohydrates. However, this terrain does not seem to be at all suitable for our purpose."

"I'll say it doesn't. I'll scout around and see if we can't find some high land somewhere, but I've got a hunch that we won't care for that, either. This murky air and the strong absorption lines of SO2 seem to whisper in my ear that we'll find some plenty hot and plenty sulphurous volcanoes when we find the mountains."

A few large islands or small continents of high and solid land were found at last, but they were without exception volcanic. And those volcanoes were not quiescent. Each was in constant and furious eruption.

"Well, I don't see any place around here either fit to live in or solid enough to anchor an observatory onto," Seaton concluded, after he had surveyed the entire surface of the globe. "I think we'd better flit across to the next one, don't you, folks?"

Suiting action to word, he shot the beam to the next nearest planet, which chanced to be the one whose orbit was nearest the blazing sun, and a mere glance showed that it would not serve the purposes of the Terrestrials. Small it was, and barren: waterless, practically airless, lifeless; a cratered, jagged, burned-out ember of what might once have been a fertile little world.

The viewpoint then leaped past the flaming inferno of the luminary and came to rest in the upper layers of an atmosphere.

"Aha!" Seaton exulted, after he had studied his instruments briefly. "This looks like home, sweet home to me. Nitrogen, oxygen, some CO2, a little water vapor, and traces of the old familiar rare gases. And see the oceans, the clouds, and the hills? Hot dog!"

As the projection dropped toward the new world's surface, however, making possible a detailed study, it became evident that there was something abnormal about it. The mountains were cratered and torn; many of the valleys were simply desolate expanses of weathered lava, tuff, and breccia; and, while it seemed that climatic conditions were eminently suitable, of animal life there was none.

And it was not only the world itself that had been outraged. Near a great inland lake there spread the ruins of what had once been a great city; ruins so crumbled and razed as to be almost unrecognizable. What had been stone was dust, what had been metal was rust; and dust and rust alike were now almost completely overgrown by vegetation.

"Hm-m-m!" Seaton mused, subdued. "There _was_ a near-collision of planet-bearing suns, Mart; and that chlorin planet was captured. This world was ruined by the strains set up--but surely they must have been scientific enough to have seen it coming? Surely they must have made plans so that _some_ of them could have lived through it?"

He fell silent, driving the viewpoint hither and thither, like a hound in quest of a scent. "I thought so!" Another ruined city lay beneath them; a city whose buildings, works, and streets had been fused together into one vast agglomerate of glaringly glassy slag, through which could be seen unmelted fragments of strangely designed structural members. "Those ruins are fresh--that was done with a heat ray, Mart. But who did it, and why? I've got a hunch--wonder if we're too late--if they've killed them all off already?"

Hard-faced now and grim, Seaton combed the continent, finding at last what he sought.

"Ah, I thought so!" he exclaimed, his voice low but deadly. "I'll bet my shirt that the chlorins are wiping out the civilization of that planet--probably people more or less like us. What d'you say, folks--do we declare ourselves in on this, or not?"

"I'll tell the cockeyed world--I believe that we should--By all means--" came simultaneously from Dorothy, Margaret, and Crane.

"I knew you'd back me up. Humanity _über alles_--_homo sapiens_ against all the vermin of the universe! Let's go, _Two_--do your stuff!"

* * * * *

As _Two_ hurtled toward the unfortunate planet with her every iota of driving power, Seaton settled down to observe the strife and to see what he could do. That which lay beneath the viewpoint had not been a city, in the strict sense of the word. It had been an immense system of concentric fortifications, of which the outer circles had long since gone down under the irresistible attack of the two huge structures of metal which hung poised in the air above. Where those outer rings had been there was now an annular lake of boiling, seething lava. Lava from which arose gouts and slender pillars of smoke and fume; lava being volatilized by the terrific heat of the offensive beams and being hurled away in flaming cascades by the almost constant detonations of high-explosive shells; lava into which from time to time another portion of the immense fortress slagged down--put out of action, riddled, and finally fused by the awful forces of the invaders.

Even as the four Terrestrials stared in speechless awe, an intolerable blast of flame burst out above one of the flying forts and down it plunged into the raging pool, throwing molten slag far and wide as it disappeared beneath the raging surface.

"Hurray!" shrieked Dorothy, who had instinctively taken sides with the defenders. "One down, anyway!"

But her jubilation was premature. The squat and monstrous fabrication burst upward through that flaming surface and, white-hot lava streaming from it in incandescent torrents, it was again in action, apparently uninjured.

"All fourth-order stuff, Mart," Seaton, who had been frantically busy at his keyboard and instruments, reported to Crane. "Can't find a trace of anything on the fifth or sixth, and that gives us a break. I don't know what we can do yet, but we'll do something, believe me!"

"Fourth order? Are you sure?" Crane doubted. "A fourth-order screen would be a zone of force, opaque and impervious to gravitation, whereas those screens are transparent and are not affecting gravity."

"Yeah, but they're doing something that we never tried, since we never used fourth-order stuff in fighting. They've both left the gravity band open--it's probably too narrow for them to work through, at least with anything very heavy--and that gives us the edge."

"Why? Do you know more about it than they do?" queried Dorothy.

"Who and what are they, Dick?" asked Margaret.

"Sure I know more about it than they do. I understand the fifth and sixth orders, and you can't get the full benefit of any order until you know all about the next one. Just like mathematics--nobody can really handle trigonometry until after he has had calculus. And as to who they are, the folks in that fort are of course natives of the planet, and they may well be people more or less like us. It's dollars to doughnuts, though, that those vessels are manned by the inhabitants of that interloping planet--that form of life I was telling you about--and it's up to us to pull their corks if we can. There, I'm ready to go, I think. We'll visit the ship first."

The visible projection disappeared and, their images now invisible patterns of force, they stood inside the control room of one of the invaders. The air bore the faint, greenish-yellow tinge of chlorin; the walls were banked and tiered with controlling dials, meters, and tubes; and sprawling, lying, standing, or hanging before those controls were denizens of the chlorin planet. No two of them were alike in form. If one of them was using eyes he had eyes everywhere; if hands, hands by the dozen, all differently fingered, sprouted from one, two, or a dozen supple and snaky arms.

But the inspection was only momentary. Scarcely had the unseen visitors glanced about the interior when the visibeam was cut off sharply. The peculiar beings had snapped on a full-coverage screen and their vessel, now surrounded by the opaque spherical mirror of a zone of force, was darting upward and away--unaffected by gravity, unable to use any of her weapons, but impervious to any form of matter or to any ether-borne wave.

"Huh! 'We didn't come over here to get peeked at,' says they." Seaton snorted. "Amœbic! Must be handy, though, at that, to sprout eyes, arms, ears, and so on whenever and wherever you want to--and when you want to rest, to pull in all such impedimenta and subside into a senseless green blob. Well, we've seen the attackers, now let's see what the natives look like. They can't cut us off without sending their whole works sky-hooting off into space."

The visibeam sped down into the deepest sanctum of the fortress without hindrance, revealing a long, narrow control table at which were seated men--men not exactly like the humanity of Earth, of Norlamin, of Osnome, or of any other planet, but undoubtedly men, of the genus _homo_.

"You were right, Dick." Crane the anthropologist now spoke. "It seems that on planets similar to Earth in mass, atmosphere, and temperature, wherever situated, man develops. The ultimate genes must permeate universal space itself."

"Maybe--sounds reasonable. But did you see that red light flash on when we came in? They've got detectors set on the gravity band--look at the expression on their faces."

* * * * *

Each of the seated men had ceased his activity and was slumped down into his chair. Resignation, hopeless yet bitter, sat upon lofty, domed brows and stared out of large and kindly eyes.

"Oh, I get it!" Seaton exclaimed. "They think the chlorins are watching them--as they probably do most of the time--and they can't do anything about it. Should think they could do the same--or could broadcast an interference--I could help them on that if I could talk to them--wish they had an educator, but I haven't seen any--" He paused, brow knitted in concentration. "I'm going to make myself visible to try a stunt. Don't talk to me; I'll need all the brain power I've got to pull this off."

As Seaton's image thickened into substance its effect upon the strangers was startling indeed. First they shrank back in consternation, supposing that their enemies had at last succeeded in working a full materialization through the narrow gravity band. Then, as they perceived that Seaton's figure was human, and of a humanity different from their own, they sprang to surround him, shouting words meaningless to the Terrestrials.

For some time Seaton tried to make his meaning clear by signs, but the thoughts he was attempting to convey were far too complex for that simple medium. Communication was impossible and the time was altogether too short to permit of a laborious learning of language. Therefore streamers of visible force shot from Seaton's imaged eyes, sinking deeply into the eyes of the figure at the head of the table.

"Look at me!" he commanded, and his fists clenched and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead as he threw all the power of his brain into that probing, hypnotic beam.

The native resisted with all his strength, but not for nothing had Seaton had superimposed upon his already-powerful mind a large portion of the phenomenal brain of Drasnik, the First of Psychology of Norlamin. Resistance was useless. The victim soon sat relaxed and passive, his mind completely subservient to Seaton's, and as though in a trance he spoke to his fellows.

"This apparition is the force-image of one of a group of men from a distant Solar System," he intoned in his own language. "They are friendly and intend to help us. Their space ship is approaching us under full power, but it cannot get here for many days. They can, however, help us materially before they arrive in person. To that end, he directs that we cause to be brought into this room a full assortment of all our fields of force, transmitting tubes, controllers, force-converters--in short, the equipment of a laboratory of radiation--No, that would take too long. He suggests that one of us escort him to such a laboratory."

XVI.

As Seaton assumed, the near-collision of suns which had affected so disastrously the planet Valeron did not come unheralded to overwhelm a world unwarned, since for many hundreds of years her civilization had been of a high order indeed.

With all their resources of knowledge and of power, however, it was pitifully little that the people of Valeron could do; for of what avail are the puny energies of man compared to the practically infinite forces of cosmic phenomena? Any attempt of the humanity of the doomed planet to swerve from their courses the incomprehensible masses of those two hurtling suns was as surely doomed to failure as would be the attempt of an ant to thrust from its rails an onrushing locomotive.

But what little could be done was done; done scientifically and logically; done, if not altogether without fear, at least inasmuch as was humanly possible without favor. With mathematical certainty were plotted the areas of least strain, and in those areas were constructed shelters. Shelters buried deeply enough to be unaffected by the coming upheavals of the world's crust; shelters of unbreakable metal, so designed, so latticed and braced as to withstand the seismic disturbances to which they were inevitably to be subjected.

Having determined the number of such shelters that could be built, equipped, and supplied with the necessities of life in the time allowed, the board of selection began its cold-blooded and heartless task. Scarcely one in a thousand of Valeron's teeming millions was to be given a chance for continued life, and they were to be chosen only from the children who would be in the prime of young adulthood at the time of the catastrophe.

These children were the pick of the planet: flawless in mind, body, and heredity. They were assembled in special schools near their assigned refuges, where they were instructed intensively in everything that they would have to know in order that civilization should not disappear utterly from the universe.

Such a thing could not be kept a secret long, and it is best to touch as lightly as possible upon the scenes which ensued after the certainty of doom became public knowledge.

Characters already strong were strengthened, but those already weak went to pieces entirely in orgies to a normal mind unthinkable. Almost overnight a peaceful and law-abiding world went mad--became an insane hotbed of crime, rapine, and pillage unspeakable. Martial law was declared at once, and after a few thousand maniacs had been ruthlessly shot down, the soberer inhabitants were allowed to choose between two alternatives. They could either die then and there before a firing squad, or they could wait and take whatever slight chance there might be of living through what was to come--but devoting their every effort meanwhile to the end that through those selected few the civilization of Valeron should endure.

Many chose death and were executed summarily and without formality, without regard to wealth or station. The rest worked.

* * * * *

Since the human mind cannot be kept indefinitely at high tension, the new condition of things came in time to be regarded almost as normal, and as months lengthened into years the routine was scarcely broken.

But always there were the sly--the self-seekers, the bribers, the corruptionists--willing to go to any lengths whatever to avoid their doom. Not openly did they carry on their machinations, but like loathsome worms eating at the heart of an outwardly fair fruit. But the scientists, almost to a man, were loyal. Trained to think, they thought clearly and logically, and surrounded themselves with soldiers and guards of the same stripe.

Time went on. The shelters were finished. Into them were taken stores, libraries, tools and equipment of every sort necessary for the rebuilding of a fully civilized world. Finally the "children," now in the full prime of young manhood and young womanhood, were carefully checked in. Once inside those massive portals of metal they were of a world apart.

They were completely informed and completely educated; they had for long governed themselves with neither aid nor interference; they knew precisely what they must face; they knew exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. Behind them the mighty, multi-ply seals were welded into place and broken rock by the cubic mile was blasted down upon their refuges.

Day by day the heat grew more and more intense. The tides waxed ever higher. Cyclonic storms raged ever fiercer, accompanied by an incessant blaze of lightning and a deafeningly continuous roar of thunder.