Islands of Space Read online

  V

  Arcot, at the controls of the _Ancient Mariner_, increased theacceleration as the ship speared up toward interplanetary space. Soon,the deep blue of the sky had given way to an intense violet, and thisfaded to the utter black of space as the ship drew away from the planetthat was its home.

  "That lump of dust there is going to look mighty little when we getback," said Wade softly.

  "But," Arcot reminded him, "that little lump of dust is going to pull usacross a distance that our imaginations can't conceive of. And we'll bedarned happy to see that pale globe swinging in space when we getback--provided, of course, that we do get back."

  The ship was straining forward now under the pull of its molecularmotion power units, accelerating at a steady rate, rapidly increasingthe distance between the ship and Earth.

  The cosmic ray power generators were still charging the coils,preventing the use of the space strain drive. Indeed, it would be a goodmany hours before they would be far enough from the sun to throw theship into hyperspace.

  In the meantime, Morey was methodically checking every control as Arcotcalled out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working toperfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far.But the real test was yet to come.

  They were well beyond the orbit of Pluto when they decided they would besafe in using the space strain drive and throwing the ship intohyperspace.

  Morey was in the hyperspace control room, watching the instrumentsthere. They were ready!

  "Hold on!" called Arcot. "Here we go--if at all!" He reached out to thecontrol panel before him and touched the green switch that controlledthe molecular motion machines. The big power tubes cut off, and theiracceleration ceased. His fingers pushed a brilliant red switch--therewas a dull, muffled thud as a huge relay snapped shut.

  Suddenly, a strange tingling feeling of power ran through them--spacearound them was suddenly black. The lights dimmed for an instant as thetitanic current that flowed through the gigantic conductors set up aterrific magnetic field, reacting with the absorption plates. The powerseemed to climb rapidly to a maximum--then, quite suddenly, it wasgone.

  The ship was quiet. No one spoke. The meters, which had flashed over totheir limits, had dropped back to zero once more, except those whichindicated the power stored in the giant coil. The stars that had shonebrilliantly around them in a myriad of colors were gone. The spacearound them glowed strangely, and there was a vast cloud of strange,violet or pale green stars before them. Directly ahead was one greenstar that glowed big and brilliant, then it faded rapidly and shrank toa tiny dot--a distant star. There was a strange tenseness about the men;they seemed held in an odd, compelled silence.

  Arcot reached forward again. "Cutting off power, Morey!" The red tumblersnapped back. Again space seemed to be charged with a vast surplus ofenergy that rushed in from all around, coursing through their bodies,producing a tingling feeling. Then space rocked in a gray cloud aboutthem; the stars leaped out at them in blazing glory again.

  "Well, it worked once!" breathed Arcot with a sigh of relief. "Lord, Imade some errors in calculation, though! I hope I didn't make any more!Morey--how was it? I only used one-sixteenth power."

  "Well, don't use any more, then," said Morey. "We sure traveled! Thethings worked perfectly. By the way, it's a good thing we had all therelays magnetically shielded; the magnetic field down here was so strongthat my pocket kit tried to start running circles around it.

  "According to your magnetic drag meter, the conductors were carryingover fifty billion amperes. The small coils worked perfectly. They'recharged again; the power went back into them from the big coil with onlya five percent loss of power--about twenty thousand megawatts."

  "Hey, Arcot," Wade said. "I thought you said we wouldn't be able to seethe stars."

  Arcot spread his hands. "I did say that, and all my apologies for it.But we're not seeing them by light. The stars all haveprojections--shadows--in this space because of their intensegravitational fields. There are probably slight fluctuations in thefield, perhaps one every minute or so. Since we were approaching them attwenty thousand times the speed of light, the Doppler effect gives uswhat looks like violet light.

  "We saw the stars in front of us as violet points. The green ones wereactually behind us, and the green light was tremendously reduced infrequency. It certainly can't be anything less than gamma rays andprobably even of greater frequency.

  "Did you notice there were no stars off to the side? We weren'tapproaching them, so they didn't give either effect."

  "How did you know which was which?" asked Fuller skeptically.

  "Did you see that green star directly ahead of us?" Arcot asked. "Theone that dwindled so rapidly? That could only have been the sun, sincethe sun was the only star close enough to show up as a disc. Since itwas green and I knew it was behind us, I decided that all the green oneswere behind us. It isn't proof, but it's a good indication."

  "You win, as usual," admitted Fuller.

  "Well, where are we?" asked Wade. "I think that's more important."

  "I haven't the least idea," confessed Arcot. "Let's see if we can findout. I've got the robot pilot on, so we can leave the ship to itself.Let's take a look at Old Sol from a distance that no man ever reachedbefore!"

  They started for the observatory. Morey joined them and Arcot put theview of Sol and his family on the telectroscope screen. He increased themagnification to maximum, and the four men looked eagerly at the system.The sun glowed brilliantly, and the planets showed plainly.

  "Now, if we wanted to take the trouble, we could calculate when theplanets were in that position and determine the distance we have come.However, I notice that Pluto is still in place, so that means we areseeing the Solar System as it was before the passing of the Black Star.We're at least two light years away."

  "More than that," said Morey. He pointed at the screen. "See here, howMars is placed in relation to Venus and Earth? The planets were in thatconfiguration seven years ago. We're seven light years from Earth."

  "Good enough!" Arcot grinned. "That means we're within two light yearsof Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the shipso we can take a look at it with the telectroscope."

  Since the power had been cut off, the ship was in free fall, and the menwere weightless. Arcot didn't try to walk toward the control room; hesimply pushed against the wall with his feet and made a long, slow divefor his destination.

  The others reached for the handgrips in the walls while Arcot swung theship gently around so that its stern was pointed toward Sirius. Becauseof its brilliance and relative proximity to Sol, Sirius is the brighteststar in the heavens, as seen from Earth. At this much lesser distance,it shone as a brilliant point of light that blazed wonderfully. Theyturned the telectroscope toward it, but there was little they could seethat was not visible from the big observatory on the Moon.

  "I think we may as well go nearer," suggested Morey, "and see what wefind on close range observation. Meanwhile, turn the ship back aroundand I'll take some pictures of the sun and its surrounding star fieldfrom this distance. Our only way of getting back is going to be thisseries of pictures, so I think we had best make it complete. For thefirst light century, we ought to take a picture every ten light years,and after that one each light century until we reach a point where weare only getting diminishing pictures of the local star cluster. Afterthat, we can wait until we reach the edge of the Galaxy."

  "Sounds all right to me," agreed Arcot. "After all, you're theastronomer, I'm not. To tell you the truth, I'd have to search a whileto find Old Sol again. I can't see just where he is. Of course, I couldlocate him by means of the gyroscope settings, but I'm afraid I wouldn'tfind him so easily visually."

  "Say! You sure are a fine one to pilot an expedition in space!" criedWade in mock horror. "I think we ought to demote him for that! Imagine!He plans a trip of a thousand million light years, and then gets us outseven light years and says he doesn't know where he
is! Doesn't evenknow where home is! I'm glad we have a cautious man like Morey along."He shook his head sadly.

  They took a series of six plates of the sun, using differentmagnifications.

  "These plates will help prove our story, too," said Morey as he lookedat the finished plates. "We might have gone only a little way intospace, up from the plane of the ecliptic and taken plates through a wideangle camera. But we'd have had to go at least seven years into the pastto get a picture like this."

  The new self-developing short-exposure plates, while not in perfectcolor balance, were more desirable for this work, since they took lesstime on exposure.

  Morey and the others joined Arcot in the control room and strappedthemselves into the cushioned seats. Since the space strain mechanismhad proved itself in the first test, they felt they needed no moreobservations than they could make from the control room meters.

  Arcot gazed out at the spot that was their immediate goal and saidslowly: "How much bigger than Sol is that star, Morey?"

  "It all depends on how you measure size," Morey replied. "It is two anda half times as heavy, has four times the volume, and radiatestwenty-five times as much light. In other words, one hundred milliontons of matter disappear each second in that star.

  "That's for Sirius A, of course. Sirius B, its companion, is a differentmatter; it's a white dwarf. It has only oneone-hundred-twenty-five-thousandths the volume of Sirius A, but itweighs _one third_ as much. It radiates more per square inch than oursun, but, due to its tiny size, it is very faint. That star, thoughalmost as massive as the sun, is only about the size of Earth."

  "You sure have those statistics down pat!" said Fuller, laughing. "ButI must say they're interesting. What's that star made of, anyway? Solidlux metal?"

  "Hardly!" Morey replied. "Lux metal has a density of around 103, whilethis star has a density so high that one cubic inch of its matter wouldweigh a ton on Earth."

  "Wow!" Wade ejaculated. "I'd hate to drop a baseball on my toe on thatstar!"

  "It wouldn't hurt you," Arcot said, smiling. "If you could lift thedarned thing, you ought to be tough enough to stand dropping it on yourtoe. Remember, it would weigh about two hundred tons! Think you couldhandle it?"

  "At any rate, here we go. When we get there, you can get out and tryit."

  Again came the shock of the start. The heavens seemed to reel aboutthem; the bright spot of Sirius was a brilliant violet point thatswelled like an expanding balloon, spreading out until it filled a largeangle.

  Then again the heavens reeled, and they were still. The control room wasfilled with a dazzling splendor of brilliant blue-white light, and anintense heat beat in upon them.

  "Brother! Feel that heat," said Arcot in awe. "We'd better watchourselves; that thing is giving off plenty of ultraviolet. We could endup with third-degree sunburns if we're not careful." Suddenly he stoppedand looked around in surprise. "Hey! Morey! I thought you said this wasa double star! Look over there! That's no white dwarf--_it's a planet_!"

  "Ridiculous!" snapped Morey. "It's impossible for a planet to be inequilibrium about a double star! But--" He paused, bewildered. "But itis a planet! But--but it can't be! We've made too many measurements onthis star to make it possible!"

  "I don't give a hang whether it can or not," Wade said coolly, "the factremains that it is. Looks as if that shoots a whole flock of holes inthat bedtime story you were telling us about a superdense star."

  "I make a motion we look more closely first," said Fuller, quitelogically.

  But at first the telectroscope only served to confuse them more. It wasmost certainly a planet, and they had a strange, vague feeling of havingseen it before.

  Arcot mentioned this, and Wade launched into a long, pedantic discussionof how the left and right hemispheres of the brain get out of step attimes, causing a sensation of having seen a thing before when it wasimpossible to have seen it previously.

  Arcot gave Wade a long, withering stare and then pushed himself into thelibrary without saying a word. A moment later, he was back with a largevolume entitled: "_The Astronomy of the Nigran Invasion_," by _D. K.Harkness_. He opened the volume to a full-page photograph of the thirdplanet of the Black Star as taken from a space cruiser circling theplanet. Silently, he pointed to it and to the image swimming on thescreen of the telectroscope.

  "Good Lord!" said Wade in astonished surprise. "It's impossible! We camehere faster than light, and that planet got here first!"

  "As you so brilliantly remarked a moment ago," Arcot pointed out, "Idon't give a hang whether it can or not--it is. How they did it, I don'tknow, but it does clear up a number of things. According to the recordswe found, the ancient Nigrans had a force ray that could move planetsfrom their orbits. I wonder if it couldn't be used to break up a doublestar? Also, we know their scientists were looking for a method of movingfaster than light; if we can do it, so could they. They just moved theirwhole system of planets over here after getting rid of the upsettinginfluence of the white dwarf."

  "Perfect!" exclaimed Morey enthusiastically. "It explains everything."

  "Except that we saw that companion star when we stopped back there, halfan hour ago," said Fuller.

  "Not half an hour ago," Arcot contradicted. "Two years ago. We saw thelight that left the companion before it was moved. It's rather liketraveling in time."

  "If that's so," asked Fuller, suddenly worried, "what is our time inrelation to Earth?"

  "If we moved by the space-strain drive at all times," Arcot explained,"we would return at exactly the same time we left. Time is passingnormally on Earth as it is with us right now, but whenever we use thespace-strain, we move instantaneously from one point to another as faras Earth and the rest of the universe is concerned. It seems to taketime to us because we are within the influence of the field.

  "Suppose we were to take a trip that required a week. In other words,three days traveling in space-strain, a day to look at the destination,and three more days coming back. When we returned to Earth, they wouldinsist we had only been gone one day, the time we spent out of thedrive. See?"

  "I catch," said Fuller. "By the way, shouldn't we take some photographsof this system? Otherwise, Earth won't get the news for several yearsyet."

  "Right," agreed Morey. "And we might as well look for the other planetsof the Black Star, too."

  They made several plates, continuing their observations until all theplanets had been located, even old Pluto, where crews of Nigrantechnicians were obviously at work, building giant structures of luxmetal. The great cities of the Nigrans were beginning to bloom on theonce bleak plains of the planet. The mighty blaze of Sirius had warmedPluto, vaporizing its atmosphere and thawing its seas. The planet thatthe Black Star had stolen from the Solar System was warmer than it hadbeen for two billion years.

  "Well, that's it," said Arcot when they had finished taking thenecessary photographs. "We can prove we went faster than light easily,now. The astronomers can take up the work of classifying the planets andgetting details of the orbits when we get back.

  "Since the Nigrans now have a sun of their own, there should be noreason for hostility between our race and theirs. Perhaps we can startcommercial trade with them. Imagine! Commerce over quintillions of milesof space!"

  "And," interrupted Wade, "they can make the trip to this system in lesstime than it takes to get to Venus!"

  "Meanwhile," said Morey, "let's get on with our own exploration."

  They strapped themselves into the control seats once more and Arcotthrew in the molecular drive to take them away from the sun toward whichthey had been falling.

  When the great, hot disc of Sirius had once more diminished to a tinywhite pinhead of light, Arcot turned the ship until old Sol once moreshowed plainly on the cross-hairs of the aiming telescope in the rearof the vessel.

  "Hold on," Arcot cautioned, "here we go again!"

  Again he threw the little red tumbler that threw a flood of energy intothe coils. The space about them seemed to shive
r and grow dim.

  Arcot had thrown more power into the coils this time, so the stars aheadof them instead of appearing violet were almost invisible; they wereradiating in the ultra-violet now. And the stars behind them, instead ofappearing to be green, had subsided to a dull red glow.

  Arcot watched the dull red spark of Sirius become increasingly dimmer.Then, quite suddenly, a pale violet disc in front of them ballooned outof nowhere and slid off to one side.

  The spaceship reeled, perking the men around in the control seats. Heavysafety relays thudded dully; the instruments flickered under a suddenlyrising surge of power--then they were calm again. Arcot had snapped overthe power switch.

  "That," he said quietly, "is not so good."

  "Threw the gyroscopes, didn't it?" asked Morey, his voice equally asquiet.

  "It did--and I have no idea how far. We're off course and we don't knowwhich direction we're headed."