Part 2

The others felt it, too. Ivy and Cob drew closer, until all three stood touching each other; as though they could dispel the loneliness of the unnatural environment by the warmth of human, animal contact. Celia came into the bridge softly ... just to be near her friends.

It was only the fact that they could return at will to their own space ... and the danger of the questing Eridans ... that kept one or all from crying out in utter childish fear. Celia Graham whimpered softly and slipped her hand into Cob's. He squeezed it to give her a reassurance he did not feel.

Then Strike broke the spell. The effort was great, but it brushed away the shadows that had risen to plague them from the tortured abyss of racial memory. It brought them back to what they were: highly civilized people, parts of an intricately technological culture. Their ship was a part of that culture. The only part they could cling to. The _Cleopatra_ demanded attention and service, and her demanding saved them.

"Cob," Strike directed with forced briskness, "Take over Damage Control. See what can be done about the second-order drive."

Cob pulled himself together, smiling as all the accustomed pieces of his life began to fit together again. It didn't matter that they were in an unknown cosmos. Damage Control was something he knew and understood. He smiled thankfully and left the bridge.

"Maintain a continuous radar-watch, Celia. We can't tell what we may encounter here."

"Yes, Captain," replied Celia gratefully.

Strykalski reached for the squawk-box and called Bayne.

"Astrogation here," came the shaky reply. In the exposed blisters the agoraphobia must be more acute, reasoned Strike, and Bayne must have been subconsciously stirred up by the disappearance of the familiar stars that were his stock-in-trade.

"Plot us a course to 40 Eridani C, Bayne," Strykalski directed. "On gyro-headings."

"What?" The astrogator sounded as though he thought Strike had lost his mind. "Through _this_ space?"

"Certainly," Strykalski insisted quietly. "You're so proud of your dead-reckoning. Here's a chance for you to do a real job. Get me an orbit."

"I ... all right, Captain," grumbled Bayne.

Strike turned to Ivy Hendricks. "Well, Captain Hendricks, this is some gadget you have dreamed up out of your Project Warp," he breathed shakily. "At least the fat's out of the fire for the time being...."

Ivy looked out of the port and back with a shudder. "I hope so, Strike. I hope so."

They fell silent, seeking comfort in each other's presence.

* * * * *

The second-order drive repaired, Old Aphrodisiac moved out through the alien space toward the spot where 40 Eridani C existed on the other side of the barrier.

The ship's tactical astrophysicist brought in some disturbing reports on the stars that shone brightly all around her. They fitted the accepted classifications in all particulars ... except one. And that one had the scientist tearing his hair. The mass of every observable body except the ship herself was practically non-existent. Even the two planetary systems discovered by the electron telescope flouted their impossible lack of mass.

Ivy suggested that since the _Cleopatra_ and her crew were no part of this alien cosmos, no prime-space instruments could detect the errant mass. Like a microscopic bull in a gargantuan china shop, the Tellurian warship existed under a completely different set of physical laws than did the heavenly bodies of this strange space.

It was pure conjecture, but it seemed well supported by the observable facts. The hull continued to glow with its unnatural witchfire, and soon disturbing reports were coming in from the Damage Control section that the thickness of the outer hull was actually being reduced. The rate was slow, and there was no immediate danger, but it was nevertheless unnerving to realize that Lover-Girl was being dissolved by _something_. Also, the outside Geigs recorded a phenomenal amount of short radiation emanating _from the ship herself_. The insulation kept most of it from penetrating, but tests showed that the strange radiation's source was the glow that clung stubbornly to the spacer's skin.

A tense week passed and then the ship neared the spot where a change over to prime-space could be effected. According to Bayne's calculations, 40 Eridani C would be within 40,000,000 miles of them when the ship emerged from hyper space.

And then the Radar section picked up the planetoids. Millions of them, large and small, lay in a globular cluster dead ahead. They spread out in all directions for more than half a parsec ... dull, rocky little worlds without a gram of detectable mass.

All that waited for the _Cleopatra_ in her own cosmos was a hot reception at the hands of the defenders of 40 Eridani C II, while here was mystery at close range. Mystery that was not cosmic in scope ... just a swarm of innocuous seeming planetoids ... the first explorable worlds that they had neared in this universe. Strike decided to heave to and examine their find. Ivy wanted samples and though no one said it in so many words ... no one was anxious for another encounter with the rapacious Eridans. With typically human adaptiveness they had sublimated their fear of the unknown space in which they found themselves. Curiosity took the place of fear and here was something close at hand to probe. Anthropoid inquisitiveness prevailed.

* * * * *

The _Cleopatra_ slowed, stopped. Strike and Cob Whitley suited up and armed themselves with spring-guns. In their clumsy space armor they dropped through Lover-Girl's ventral valve into the void. The monitor's glowing bulk retreated as they jetted toward the swarm of tiny worlds. Their space suits, too, glowed with the witchfire, outlining them against the eternal night.

Back in the monitor's Communications shack, Ivy Hendricks and Celia Graham stood with Bayne and the other officers around the two way communicator that linked the two explorers with the ship.

Out in space, Strike and Cob bound themselves together with a length of thin cable. They dropped down under power toward the planetoid they had selected to explore.

"What's it like?" Ivy's voice crackled in their headsets.

"Can't tell from this distance. We're still a good five miles away," replied Strykalski.

"Looks like any other planetoid to me," averred Whitley.

"Maybe you'd better fire a shot into the surface before you try landing, Strike," Ivy suggested.

"Why?"

"Just a hunch." Her voice sounded worried.

"Okay, Ivy," Strike replied. "Cob, take a pot shot at it will you. You should be able to hit it from here ... it's twenty miles wide."

Cob was disgusted. "And me the best shot in my class back at the Academy!" He drew his spring-gun and snapped a solid steel slug at the looming worldlet....

What happened next, they never knew exactly. On the dark surface of the planetoid a blazing bubble of white incandescence appeared, expanding within split seconds to all but obscure the whole bulk of the disk. It churned and whirled and flashed, mushrooming out in a hellish coruscation of destruction. The blaze of light outlined the two men and the ship and the planetoids within a fifty mile circle and the expanding shock wave fanned out. It struck the two space armored men to send them spinning wildly. The glowing bulk of the monitor reeled and bucked. Strike felt himself whipping up and down at the end of the cable that bound him to Cob Whitley. He felt himself being buffeted and burned by the dazzling flare of atomic fire. The merciful blackness spread itself like a curtain over his tortured eyes....

* * * * *

Strykalski opened his eyes and stretched his battered body. His head was bandaged, and he could feel the familiar tingle of paratannic salve on his burns. Pain still throbbed in little red needles behind his dazzled eyes. He drew a long rasping breath and looked around him. He was in the _Cleopatra's_ infirmary. A Medic was standing near the bulkhead. Cob lay on a bunk nearby. Ivy and Celia Graham were leaning over him.

"Great Space!" he muttered, "What happened?"

"The shot Cob fired ... it ... it blew up," Celia said.

"That's putting it rather mildly. But why? And how did we get back here?"

"Celia found you on the Radar," said Ivy, "And Bayne took a skeeterboat out and picked you up after we got Lover-Girl back right side up."

"Cob?"

As though in answer to Strykalski's question, a low moan came from the bandaged form of the Executive. "Ohhh.... Ye gods and ... little catfish! I wish I ... had a Martini...."

Strike smiled through cut lips. Cob was all right. He looked up at Ivy again. "But what happened?"

"Listen!" Ivy was saying excitedly, "I've got it! The answer! All the answers, I think! The glowing of the ship ... the lack of mass for everything native to this space ... the solid shot exploding!"

Things were becoming clear to Strykalski now. Of course! He sat up painfully. It was really simple enough when one thought it through. In negative space....

Ivy went on. "Strike, the ship glows because there is matter everywhere ... even in interstellar space. Not much, but enough to bombard the hull with tiny particles. The radiation the Geigs picked up is caused by atomic _disintegration_! We've had fission and fusion for two hundred years now ... but this is the complete transmutation of matter to energy! The complete utilization of atomic energy! And the thing that causes it is the reaction between our kind of matter and...."

"_Contraterrene matter!_" he exclaimed. "That's it, isn't it Ivy?"

The girl nodded. "The charges of the atomic components are reversed in this space! You would have made yourself into a ... a _bomb_ if you had touched that planetoid out there!" Her face paled. "Oh, Strike! You almost killed yourself!"

Thoughts were boiling around in Strykalski's head now. An idea ... a crazy, audacious idea was taking shape.

He swung his legs over the side of the bunk. "Listen, Ivy ... in this space, _we_ are the unnatural form of matter, and here we are sort of walking bombs. Right?"

She nodded, puzzled.

"Well, what if we should transport some contraterrene matter back into prime-space ... a planetoid for example ... what then?"

The girl's face showed comprehension. "It would be the most devastating bomb ever dreamed of. It would release every erg in its component atoms the minute it came into contact with anything terrene!" She stopped short, her eyes wide. "Strike!"

"Would it work, Ivy?" he pursued.

"Yes!" she gasped, "Yes, I think it would!"

"Can we do it?"

"I ... I think so. Lover-Girl has power to burn. And we could set up the screens on two skeeterboats so that ... yes! By heaven, it will work! All we have to do is make and set up the equipment!"

Cob sat up on his bunk and gave a low whistle. "Ye gods! No one can ever accuse you two of having small ideas, that's for sure!"

"It will work!" Ivy insisted. Her eyes narrowed. She was all the engineer now, working out a problem. "The explosion that almost killed you and set Lover-Girl on her beam ends came from the annihilation of one tiny slug of steel at a distance of five miles. Just think what the destruction of a twenty mile planetoid will do when we...."

"How long will it take?" Strike interrupted.

"Give me six hours."

"Start now," he ordered, "And somebody hand Cob and me our pants. We've got work to do!"

* * * * *

The next hours were a nightmare of feverish activity aboard the T.R.S. _Cleopatra_. Two of her six skeeterboats were fitted with hyper screens that were made in the machine shop under Ivy Hendricks' close supervision. Power was shunted from the surge circuit generators and run out through automatic spools to the screen bearing skeeterboats to form the two poles of the hyper warp. Ivy was everywhere at once, giving orders, overseeing construction. Strike and Cob co-ordinated the efforts of the crew and workmen.

"We'll pick out our planetoid," Strike explained to them, "And line up our skeeters on an arbitrary north-south axis. The spools will pay out the power lines as the boats travel. When everything is aligned, we turn on the juice and hope for the best."

"Then," interjected Bayne, "as the planetoid takes its place in prime space without orbital velocity ... and only some 4,000,000 miles from 40 Eridani C ... we clear out. Fast. 40 Eridani C is an M6 star ... surface temperature only about 3,000 Centigrade. It's small ... smaller than Sol, because it has shrunk. But under its semi-solid crust there are trillions of tons of matter that will burst free as soon as anything cracks the surface tension. Our bomb should act as a fuse to light one of the biggest fire-crackers ever imagined."

"One thing," said Ivy to Strike, "whoever pilots the skeeters ... and I presume you intend to handle one yourself ... will have to be extremely careful. As soon as our planetoid exists in prime-space it will have a planetoid's mass and gravity. Don't be caught with your jets cold. I'd miss you, Strike."

Celia Graham interrupted the conference to tell them that the equipment was ready, and the ship in position. Strike looked around at the suddenly tense faces of his companions. He didn't like to think what failure might mean to them ... to Terra and the whole Solar Combine. He rose to his feet purposefully.

"Let's go," he said.

The skeeterboat dove out of the valve trailing its cable. Strike glanced back through the rear port to see the second shark-like shape close behind. Even banged up as he was, Cob would let no one take the second boat but himself. Strike's smile was broad. Good man to have around, that Coburn Whitley.

Ahead lay the tiny world that had been selected for annihilation. It was a black blot on the star-spangled darkness of space. A thirty mile sphere, it floated serenely along its orbit ... an innocuous chunk of matter that _here_ was just that ... and elsewhere would be the most fearful bomb ever guided by the hand of man.

Strike looked back at the glowing shape of Old Aphrodisiac. She lured him like a familiar scene, a friendly voice. In all this alien vastness, only his beloved ship was safety.

He looked around for Cob's skeeter. It was barely visible now, some twenty miles away as it fanned out to take up its position at the south pole of the planetoid.

The tiny world drew near, and Strike veered to find his own station. Jockeying the skeeterboat carefully, he found the proper spot marked by the beacons that fanned out from the _Cleopatra's_ prow and stern.

Cob signalled from the opposite pole that he, too, was ready. This, as they said in the flicks, was _it_.

He called Ivy on the radiophone.

"All right, Strike," her voice came back, "We'll all go through together. Ten seconds."

"Check."

"Remember to be ready to blast away from that chunk of rock, you two. As soon as it hits prime-space it will have plenty of gravity."

"Right, Ivy," Cob's voice came metallically.

"Six seconds....

"Five seconds....

"Four seconds ... three ... two ... NOW!"

Strike was dazzled by the sudden shift of lighting. The planetoid was aglow with the dancing, swirling witchfire! The skeeterboat sank toward the bright surface with a sickening lurch. Strike shoved the throttle forward and looked fearfully for a flare of fire at the south pole. There was none. Cob had gotten clear, too. The power cable snapped, but it didn't matter now. Its work was done.

The _Cleopatra_ lay ahead now, the fire gone from her hull. Behind her blazed the familiar beacon of Achernar. Off to the right Sirius A and B dominated the sky. And near at hand below, the turbulent, smoky red surface of 40 Eridani C smouldered against the familiar backdrop of the Milky Way. Already the contraterrene planetoid was plunging toward that sullen sphere. There wasn't much time to get clear.

Strike flung his skeeter through the open hatch close on the exhaust of Cob's boat. Valves hissed shut and Lover-Girl flashed away--homeward.

* * * * *

One week later, and just off Sirius B, Old Aphrodisiac met the Eridan fleet again, but with a difference....

This time the black ships made no move to stop her. Their actions were incoherent, insane. They milled about in a swirling cluster, colliding with their fellows or careening off into the void.

They floundered erratically, their co-ordination shattered. Even any evidence of intelligent guidance was missing.

The _Cleopatra_ flashed by, not even deigning to fire a shot at them.

Strike shuddered as he watched them in the scanners. In his mind he could see the senseless, churning masses of flesh that lived mindlessly within the black hulls. His thoughts flew far afield to an icy world that had turned suddenly into an uninhabitable desert with temperatures soaring past the melting point of lead. He saw a dull red sun pulsating in cosmic agony, blossoming out into a menacing ball of white flame as its internal fires leaped to freedom through its shattered crust. He saw a star spending its failing substance prodigally in one bright carnival of destruction. And he saw its planets writhing as the sudden blast of heat speeded molecular velocities to the speed of escape and sent great clouds of superheated chlorine hissing into the void.

But best of all, he imagined the horrible death of a _thing_ that was the sole co-ordinator and reasoning agent for a race of ugly tentacled creatures. Strykalski saw the death of the Eridan group-mind....

Old Aphrodisiac settled herself wearily onto the ramp of the Hamilton Field Spaceport. Her valves opened with a sighing sound. It was as though the ship herself had given voice to her contentment. She was home.

The lights of the Administration building glittered against the dark backdrop of the California hills, and the field lights flamed against the stillness of the night.

Strike and Ivy stood near the open port. "It's all over, Ivy," he said, "We're safe now."

Ivy raised her eyes to the sky where the stars flecked the night. Below Orion hung the jewelled thread of Eridanus.

The girl drew a shuddering breath. "It's a terrible thing to ... to murder a star."

Strike remained silent. There was nothing to say.

It would take tardy light more than fifteen years to bring news of the sudden flare of reckless life in that small star ... an orgy that would sap its last reserves of strength and leave it a dark and frigid ember in the lonely void.