Part 1

THE STARBUSTERS

By ALFRED COPPEL, JR.

A bunch of kids in bright new uniforms, transiting the constellations in a disreputable old bucket of a space-ship--why should the leathery-tentacled, chlorine-breathing Eridans take them seriously?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

HQ TELWING CSN 30 JAN 27 TO CMDR DAVID FARRAGUT STRYKALSKI VII CO TRS CLEOPATRA FLEET BASE CANALOPOLIS MARS STOP SUBJECT ORDERS STOP ROUTE LUNA PHOBOS SYRTIS MAJOR TRANSSENDERS PRIORITY AAA STOP MESSAGE FOLLOWS STOP TRS CLEOPATRA AND ALL ATTACHED AND OR ASSIGNED PERSONNEL HEREBY RELIEVED ASSIGNMENT AND DUTY INNER PLANET PATROL GROUP STOP ASSIGNED TEMP DUTY BUREAU RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STOP SUBJECT VESSEL WILL PROCEED WITHOUT DELAY FLEET EXPERIMENTAL SUBSTATION PROVING GROUNDS TETHYS SATURNIAN GROUP STOP CO WILL REPORT UPON ARRIVAL TO CAPT IVY HENDRICKS ENGINEERING OFFICER PROJECT WARP STOP SIGNED H. GORMAN SPACE ADMIRAL COMMANDING STOP END MESSAGE END MESSAGE END MESSAGE.

"Amen! Amen! Amen! Stop." Commander Strykalski smoothed out the wrinkled flimsy by spreading it carefully on the wet bar.

Coburn Whitley, the T.R.S. _Cleopatra's_ Executive, set down his Martini and leaned over very slowly to give the paper a microscopic examination in the mellow light.

"Maybe," he began hopefully, "It could be a forgery?"

Strike shook his head.

Lieutenant Whitley looked crestfallen. "Then perhaps old Brass-bottom Gorman means some other guy named Strykalski?" To Cob, eight Martinis made anything possible.

"Could there be two Strykalskis?" demanded the owner of the name under discussion.

"No." Whitley sighed unhappily. "And there's only one Tellurian Rocket Ship _Cleopatra_ in the Combined Solarian Navies, bless her little iron rump! Gorman means us. And I think we've been had, that's what I think!"

"Tethys isn't so bad," protested Strike.

Cob raised a hand to his eyes as though to blot out the sight of that distant moonlet. "Not so bad, he says! All you care about is seeing Ivy Hendricks again, I know you! Tethys!"

Strike made a passing effort to look stern and failed. "You mean _Captain_ Hendricks, don't you, Mister Whitley? Captain Hendricks of Project Warp?"

Cob made a sour face. "Project Warp, yet! Sounds like a dog barking!" He growled deep in his throat and barked once or twice experimentally. The officer's club was silent, and a silver-braided Commodore sitting nearby scowled at Whitley. The Lieutenant subsided with a final small, "Warp!"

An imported Venusian quartet began to play softly. Strike ordered another round of drinks from the red-skinned Martian tending bar and turned on his stool to survey the small dance floor. The music and the subdued lights made him think of Ivy Hendricks. He really wanted to see her again. It had been a long time since that memorable flight when they had worked together to pull Admiral Gorman's flagship _Atropos_ out of a tight spot on a perihelion run. Ivy was good to work with ... good to be around.

But there was apparently more to this transfer than just Ivy pulling wires to see him again. Things were tense in the System since Probe Fleet skeeterboats had discovered a race of group-minded, non-human intelligences on the planets of 40 Eridani C. They lived in frozen worlds that were untenable for humans. And they were apparently all parts of a single entity that never left the home globe ... a thing no human had seen. The group-mind. They were rabidly isolationist and they had refused any commerce with the Solar Combine.

Only CSN Intelligence knew that the Eridans were warlike ... and that they were strongly suspected of having interstellar flight....

So, reflected Strike, the transfer of the _Cleopatra_ to Tethys for work under the Bureau of Research and Development meant innovations and tests. And Commander Strykalski was concerned. The beloved Old Aphrodisiac didn't take kindly to innovations. At least she never had before, and Strike could see no reason to suppose the cantankerous monitor would have changed her disposition.

"There's Celia!" Cob Whitley was waving toward the dance floor.

Celia Graham, trim in her Ensign's greys, was making her way through the crowd of dancers. Celia was the _Cleopatra's_ Radar Officer, and like all the rest, bound with chains of affection to the cranky old warship. The _Cleopatra's_ crew was a unit ... a team in the true sense of the word. They served in her because they wanted to ... would serve in no other. That's the way Strike ran his crew, and that's the way the crew ran Lover-Girl. Old Aphrodisiac's family was a select community.

There was a handsome Martian Naval Lieutenant with Celia, but when she saw the thoughtful expression on her Captain's face, she dismissed him peremptorily. Here was something, apparently, of a family matter.

"Well, I can't see anything to worry about, Skipper," she said when he had explained. "I should think you'd be glad of a chance to see Ivy again."

Cob Whitley leaned precariously forward on his bar-stool to wag a finger under Celia's pretty nose. "But he doesn't know what Captain Hendricks has cooked up for Lover-Girl, and you know the old carp likes to be treated with respect." He affected a very knowing expression. "Besides, we shouldn't be gallivanting around testing Ivy's electronic eyelash-curlers when the Eridans are likely to be swooshing around old Sol any day!"

"Cob, you're drunk!" snapped Celia.

"I am at that," mused Whitley with a foolish grin. "And I'd better enjoy it. There'll be no Martinis on Tethys, that's for sure! This cruise is going to interfere with my research on ancient twentieth century potables..."

Strike heaved his lanky frame upright. "Well, I suppose we'd better call the crew in." He turned to Cob. "Who is Officer of the Deck tonight?"

"Bayne."

"Celia, you'd better go relieve him. He'll have to work all night to get us an orbit plotted."

"Will do, Skipper," Celia Graham left.

"Cob, you'd better turn in. Get some sleep. But have the NPs round up the crew. If any of them are in the brig, let me know. I'll be on the bridge."

"What time do you want to lift ship?"

"0900 hours."

"Right." Cob took a last loving look around the comfortable officer's club and heaved a heavy sigh. "Tethys, here comes Lover-Girl. It's going to be a long, long cruise, Captain."

How long, he couldn't have known ... then.

* * * * *

The flight out was uneventful. Uneventful, that is for the T.R.S. _Cleopatra_. Only one tube-liner burned through, and only six hours wasted in nauseous free-fall.

Lover-Girl wormed her way through the asteroid belt, passed within a million miles of Jupiter and settled comfortably down on the airless field next to the glass-steel dome of the Experimental Substation on Tethys. But her satisfied repose was interrupted almost before it was begun. Swarms of techmen seemed to burst from the dome and take her over. Welders and physicists, naval architects and shipfitters, all armed with voluminous blueprints and atomic torches set to work on her even before her tubes had cooled. Power lines were crossed and re-crossed, shunted and spliced. Weird screen-like appendages were welded to her bow and stern. Workmen and engineers stomped through her companionways, bawling incomprehensible orders. And her crew watched in mute dismay. They had nothing to say about it...

* * * * *

Ivy Hendricks rose from her desk as Strike came into her Engineering Office. There was a smile on her face as she extended her hand.

"It's good to see you again, Strike."

Strykalski studied her. Yes, she hadn't changed. She was still the Ivy Hendricks he remembered. She was still calm, still lovely, and still very, very competent.

"I've missed you, Ivy." Strike wasn't just being polite, either. Then he grinned. "Lover-Girl's missed you, too. There never has been an Engineering Officer that could get the performance out of her cranky hulk the way you used to!"

"It's a good thing," returned Ivy, still smiling, "that I'll be back at my old job for a while, then."

Strykalski raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Before Ivy could explain, Cob and Celia Graham burst noisily into the room and the greetings began again. Ivy, as a former member of the _Cleopatra's_ crew, was one of the family.

"Now, what I would like to know," Cob demanded when the small talk had been disposed of, "is what's with this 'Project Warp'? What are you planning for Lover-Girl? Your techmen are tearing into her like she was a twenty-day leave!"

"And why was the _Cleopatra_ chosen?" added Celia curiously.

"Well, I'll make it short," Ivy said. "We're going to make a hyper-ship out of her."

"Hyper-ship?" Cob was perplexed.

Ivy Hendricks nodded. "We've stumbled on a laboratory effect that warps space. We plan to reproduce it in portable form on the _Cleopatra_ ... king size. She'll be able to take us through the hyper-spatial barrier."

"Golly!" Celia Graham was wide-eyed. "I always thought of hyperspace as a ... well, sort of an abstraction."

"That's been the view up to now. We all shared it here, too, until we set up this screen system and things began to disappear when they got into the warped field. Then we rigged a remote control and set up telecameras in the warp...." Ivy's face sobered. "We got plates of star-fields ... star-fields that were utterly different and ... and _alien_. It seems that there's at least one other space interlocked and co-existent with ours. When we realized that we decided to send a ship through. I sent a UV teletype to Admiral Gorman at Luna Base ... and here you are."

"Why us?" Cob asked thoughtfully.

"I'll answer that," offered Strike, "Lover-Girl's a surge circuit monitor, and it's a safe bet this operation takes plenty of power." He looked over to Ivy. "Am I right?"

"Right on the nose, Strike," she returned. Then she broke into a wide smile. "Besides, I wouldn't want to enter an alien cosmos with anyone but Lover-Girl's family. It wouldn't be right."

"Golly!" said Celia Graham again. "Alien cosmos ... it sounds so creepy when you say it that way."

"You could call it other things, if you should happen to prefer them," Ivy Hendricks said, "Subspace ... another plane of existence. I...."

She never finished her sentence. The door burst open and a Communications yeoman came breathlessly into the office. From the ante-room came the sound of an Ultra Wave teletype clattering imperiously ... almost frantically.

"Captain Hendricks!" cried the man excitedly, "A message is coming through from the Proxima transsender ... they're under attack!"

Strykalski was on his feet. "Attack!"

"The nonhumans from Eridanus have launched a major invasion of the solar Combine! All the colonies in Centaurus are being invaded!"

Strike felt the bottom dropping out of his stomach, and he knew that all the others felt the same. If this was a war, they were the ones who would have to fight it. And the Eridans! Awful leathery creatures with tentacles ... chlorine breathers! They would make a formidable enemy, welded as they were into one fighting unit by the functioning of the group-mind....

He heard himself saying sharply into Ivy's communicator: "See to it that my ship is fueled and armed for space within three hours!"

"Hold on, Strike!" Ivy Hendricks intervened, "What about the tests?"

"I'm temporarily under Research and Development command, Ivy, but Regulations say that fighting ships cannot be held inactive during wartime! The _Cleopatra's_ a warship and there's a war on now. If you can have your gear jerry-rigged in three hours, you can come along and test it when we have the chance. Otherwise the hell with it!" Strykalski's face was dead set. "I mean it, Ivy."

"All right, Strike. I'll be ready," Ivy Hendricks said coolly.

* * * * *

Exactly three hours and five minutes later, the newly created hyper-ship that was still Old Aphrodisiac lifted from the ramp outside the Substation dome. She rose slowly at first, the radioactive flame from her tubes splashing with sun-bright coruscations over the loading pits and revetments. For a fleeting instant she was outlined against the swollen orb of Saturn that filled a quarter of Tethys' sky, and then she was gone into the galactic night.

Aboard, all hands stood at GQ. On the flying bridge Strykalski and Coburn Whitley worked steadily to set the ship into the proper position in response to the steady flood of equations that streamed into their station from Bayne in the dorsal astrogation blister.

An hour after blasting free of Tethys was pointed at the snaking river of stars below Orion that formed the constellation of Eridanus.

When Cob asked why, Strike replied that knowing Gorman, they could expect orders from Luna Base ordering them either to attack or reconnoiter the 40 Eridani C system of five planets. Strykalski added rather dryly that it was likely to be the former, since Space Admiral Gorman had no great affection for either the _Cleopatra_ or her crew.

Ivy Hendricks joined them after stowing her gear, and when Whitley asked her opinion, she agreed with Strike. Her experiences with Gorman had been as unfortunate as any of the others.

"I was afraid you'd say that," grumbled Cob, "I was just hoping you wouldn't."

The interphone flashed. Strike flipped the switch.

"Bridge."

"Communications here. Message from Luna Base, Captain."

"Here it is," Strykalski told Cob. "Right on time."

"Speak of the devil," muttered the Executive.

"From the Admiral, sir," the voice in the interphone said, "Shall I read it?"

"Just give me the dope," ordered Strike.

"The Admiral orders us to quote make a diversionary attack on the planet of 40 Eridani C II unquote," said the squawk-box flatly.

"Acknowledge," ordered Strykalski.

"Wilco. Communications out."

Strike made an I-told-you-so gesture to his Executive. Then he turned toward the enlisted man at the helm. "Quarter-master?"

The man looked up from his auto-pilot check. "Sir."

"Steady as she goes."

"Yes, sir."

"And that," shrugged Ivy Hendricks, "Is that."

* * * * *

Three weeks passed in the timeless limbo of second-order flight. Blast tubes silent, the _Cleopatra_ rode the curvature of space toward Eridanus. At eight and a half light years from Sol, the second-order was cut so that Bayne could get a star sight. As the lights of the celestial globe slowly retreated from their unnatural grouping ahead and astern, brilliant Sirius and its dwarf companion showed definite disks in the starboard ports. At a distance of 90,000,000 miles from the Dog Star, its fourteen heavy-gravity planets were plainly visible through the electron telescope.

Strykalski and Ivy Hendricks stood beside Bayne in the dorsal blister while the astrogator sighted Altair through his polytant. His long, horse face bore a look of complete self-approbation when he had completed his last shot.

"A perfect check with the plotted course! How's that for fancy dead reckoning?" he exclaimed.

He was destined never to know the accolade, for at that moment the communicator began to flash angrily over the chart table. Bayne cut it in with an expression of disgust.

"Is the Captain there?" demanded Celia Graham's voice excitedly.

Strike took over the squawk-box. "Right here, Celia. What is it?"

"Radar contact, sir! The screen is crazy with blips!"

"Could it be window?"

"No, sir. The density index indicates spacecraft. High value in the chlorine lines...."

"Eridans!" cried Ivy.

"What's the range, Celia?" demanded Strike. "And how many of them are there?"

The sound of the calculator came through the grill. Then Celia replied: "Range 170,000 miles, and there are more than fifty and less than two hundred. That's the best I can do from this far away. They seem to have some sort of radiation net out and they are moving into spread formation."

Strike cursed. "They've spotted us and they want to scoop us in with that force net! Damn that group-mind of theirs ... it makes for uncanny co-ordination!" He turned back to the communicator. "Cob! Are you on?"

"Right here, Captain," came Cob Whitley's voice from the bridge.

"Shift into second-order! We'll have to try and run their net!"

"Yes, sir," Whitley snapped.

"Communications!" called Strike.

"Communications here."

"Notify Luna Base we have made contact. Give their numbers, course, and speed!"

Ivy could feel her heart pounding under her blouse. Her face was deadly pale, mouth pinched and drawn. This was the first time in battle for any of them ... and she dug her fingernails into her palms trying not to be afraid.

Strykalski was rapping out his orders with machine-gun rapidity, making ready to fight his ship if need be ... and against lop-sided odds. But years of training were guiding him now.

"Gun deck!"

A feminine voice replied.

"Check your accumulators. We may have to fight. Have the gun-pointers get the plots from Radar. And load fish into all tubes."

"Yes, sir!" the woman rapped out.

"Radar!"

"Right here, Skipper!"

"We're going into second-order, Celia. Use UV Radar and keep tabs on them."

"Yes, Captain."

Strike turned to Ivy Hendricks. "Let's get back to the bridge, Ivy. It's going to be a hell of a rough half hour!"

As they turned to go, all the pin-points of light that were the stars vanished, only to reappear in distorted groups ahead and behind the ship. They were in second-order flight again, and traveling above light speed. Within seconds, contact would be made with the advance units of the alien fleet.

Old Aphrodisiac readied herself for war.

* * * * *

Like a maddened bull terrier, the old monitor charged at the Eridan horde. Within the black hulls strange, tentacled creatures watched her in scanners that were activated by infrared light. The chlorine atmosphere grew tense as the Tellurian warship drove full at the pulsating net of interlocked force lines. Parsecs away, on a frozen world were a dull red shrunken sun shone dimly through fetid air, the thing that was the group-mind of the Eridans guided the thousand leathery tentacles that controlled the hundred and fifty black spaceships. The soft quivering bulk of it throbbed with excitement as it prepared to kill the tiny Tellurian thing that dared to threaten its right to conquest.

Old Lover-Girl tried gallantly to pierce the strange trap. She failed. The alien weapons were too strange, too different from anything her builders could have imagined or prepared her to face. The net sucked the life from her second-order generators, and she slowed, like the victim of a nightmare. Now rays of heat reached out for her, grazing her flanks as she turned and twisted. One touched her atmospheric fins and melted them into slowly congealing globes of steel glowing with a white heat. She fought back with whorls of atomic fire that sped from her rifles to wreak havoc among her attackers.

Being non-entities in themselves, and only limbs of the single mentality that rested secure on its home world, the Eridans lacked the vicious will to live that drove the Tellurian warship and her crew. But their numbers wore her down, cutting her strength with each blow that chanced to connect.

Torpedoes from the tubes that circled her beam found marks out in space and leathery aliens died, their black ships burst asunder by the violence of new atoms being created from old.

But there were too many. They hemmed her in, heat rays ever slashing, wounding her. Strykalski fought her controls, cursing her, coaxing her. Damage reports were flowing into the flying bridge from every point in the monitor's body. Lover-Girl was being hurt ... hurt badly. The second-order drive was damaged, not beyond repair, but out of commission for at least six hours. And they couldn't last six hours. They couldn't last another ten minutes. It was only the practiced hands of her Captain and crew that kept the _Cleopatra_ alive....

"We're caught, Ivy!" Strike shouted to the girl over the noises of battle. "She can't stand much more of this!"

Cob was screaming at the gun-pointers through the open communicator circuit, his blood heated by the turbulent cacophony of crackling rays and exploding torpedoes. "Hit 'em! Damn it! Damn it, hit 'em now! Dead ahead! Hit 'em again!..."

Ivy stumbled across the throbbing deck to stand at Strykalski's side. "The hyper drive!" she yelled, "The hyper drive!"

It was a chance. It was the _only_ chance ... for Lover-Girl and Ivy and Cob and Celia ... for all of them. He had to chance it. "Ivy!" he called over his shoulder, "Check with Engineering! See if the thing's hooked into the surge circuit!"

She struggled out of the flying bridge and down the ramp toward the engine deck. Strike and Cob stayed and sweated and cursed and fought. It seemed that she would never report.

At last the communicator began to flash red. Strike opened the circuit with his free hand. "All right?" he demanded with his heart in his throat.

"_Try it!_" Ivy shouted back.

Strykalski lurched from his chair as another ray caught the ship for an instant and heated a spot on the wall to a cherry red. Gods! he prayed fervently. Let it work!

A movement of the ship threw him to the deck. He struggled to his feet and across to the jerry-rigged switchboard that controlled the hyper drive's warp field. With a prayer on his lips, he slapped at the switches with wild abandon....

* * * * *

The sudden silence was like a physical blow. Strike staggered to the port and looked out. No alien ships filled the void with crisscrossing rays. No torpedoes flashed. The _Cleopatra_ was alone, floating in star-flecked emptiness.

There were no familiar constellations. The stars were spread evenly across the ebony bowl of the sky, and they looked back at him with an alien, icy disdain.

The realization that he stood with a tiny shell, an infinitesimal human island lost in the vastness of a completely foreign cosmos broke with an almost mind-shattering intensity over his brain!

He was conscious of Cob standing beside him, looking out into this unknown universe and whispering in awe: "_We're_ the aliens here...."

Ivy Hendricks came into the bridge then, a haggard look around her eyes. "I came up through the ventral blister," she said, "Bayne is down there and he's having fits. There isn't a star in sight he recognizes and the whole hull of the ship is _glowing_!"

Cob and Strykalski rushed back to the port, straining to see the back-curving plates of the hull. Ivy was right. The metal, and to a lesser extent, even the leaded glassteel of the port was covered with a dim, dancing witchfire. It was as though the ship were being bombarded by a continuous shower of microscopic fire bombs.

Whitley found refuge in his favorite expression. "Ye gods and little catfish!"

Strike turned to Ivy. "What do you think it is?"

"I ... I don't know. Matter itself might be different ... here."

Strykalski found himself at the port again, looking out into the vast stretch of alien void. Terror was seeping like dampness through him, stretching cold fingers into his heart and mind. He realized that everyone on board must feel the same way. It was the old human devil rising from the pit of the primeval past. Fear of the unknown, of the strange. And there was loneliness. From the dark corners of his mind, the terrible loneliness came stealing forth. Never had a group of human beings been so frighteningly _apart_ from their kind. He felt rejected, scorned and lost.