Invaders from the Infinite Page 6

  Chapter VI

  THE SECOND MOVE

  "What happened to him, though?" asked Wade, bewildered. "I haven't yetfigured it out. He went down in a heap, and he didn't have any power. Ofcourse, if he had his power he could have pulled out again. He couldjust melt and burn all the excess rock off, and he would be all set. Buthis rays all went dead. And why the explosion?"

  "The magnetic beam is the answer. In our boat we have everythingmagnetically shielded, because of the enormous magnetic flux set up bythe current flowing from the storage coils to the main coil. But--withso many wires heavily charged with current, what would have happened ifthey had not been shielded?

  "If a current cuts across a magnetic field, a side thrust is developed.What do you suppose happened when the terrific magnetic field of thebeam and the currents in the wires of their power-board were mutuallyopposed?"

  "Lord, it must have ripped away everything in the ship. It'd tear looseeven the lighting wires!" gasped Wade in amazement.

  "But if all the power of the ship was destroyed in this way, how was itthat one of their rays was operating as they fell?" asked Zezdon Afthen.

  "Each ray is a power plant in itself," explained Arcot, "and so it wasable to function. I do not know the cause of the explosion, though itmight well have been that they had light-bombs such as the Kaxorians ofVenus have," he added, thoughtfully.

  They landed, at Zezdon's advice, in the city that their arrival had beenable to save. This was Ortol's largest city, and their industrialcapital. Here, too, was the University at which Afthen taught.

  They landed, and Arcot, Morey and Wade, with the aid of Zezdon Afthenand Zezdon Fentes worked steadily for two of their days of fifty hourseach, teaching men how to make and use the molecular ships, and the raysand screens, heat beams, and relux. But Arcot promised that when hereturned he would have some weapon that would bring them certain andeasy salvation. In the meantime other terrestrians would follow him.

  They left the morning of their third day on the planet. A huge crowd hadcome to cheer them on their way as they left, but it was the "silentcheer" of Ortol, a telepathic well-wishing.

  "Now," said Arcot as their ship left the planet behind, "we will have tomake the next move. It certainly looks as though that next move would beto the still-unknown race that lives on world 3769-37, 478, 326, 894-6.Evidently we will have to have some weapon they haven't, and I thinkthat I know what it will be. Thanks to our trip out to the Islands ofSpace."

  "Shall we go?"

  "I think it would be wise," agreed Morey.

  "And I," said Wade. The Ortolians agreed, and so, with the aid of thephotographic copies of the Thessian charts that Arcot had made, theystarted for world 3769-37, 478, 326, 894-6.

  "It will take approximately twenty-two hours, and as we have beenputting off our sleep with drugs, I think that we had better catch up.Wade, I wish you'd take the ship again, while Morey and I do a littleconcentrated sleeping. We have by no means finished that calculation,and I'd very much like to. We'll relieve you in five hours."

  Wade took the ship, and following the course Arcot laid out, they spedthrough the void at the greatest safe speed. Wade had only to watch theview-screen carefully, and if a star showed as growing rapidly, it wasproof that they were near, and nearing rapidly. If large, a touch of aswitch, and they dodged to one side, if small, they were suddenlyplunged into an instant of unbelievable radiation as they swept throughit, in a different space, yet linked to it by radiation, not light, thatwere permitted in.

  Zezdon Afthen had elected to stay with him, which gave him anopportunity he had been waiting for. "If it's none of my business, justsay so," he began. "But that first city we saw the Thessians destroy--itwas Zezdon Fentes' home, wasn't it? Did he have a family?"

  The words seemed blunt as he said them, but there was no way out, oncehe had started. And Zezdon Afthen took the question with complete calm.

  "Fentes had both wives and children," he said quietly. "His loss wasgreat."

  Wade concentrated on the screen for a moment, trying to absorb theshock. Then, fearing Zezdon Afthen might misinterpret his silence, heplunged on. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize you werepolygamous--most people on Earth aren't, but some groups are. It'sprobably a good way to improve the race. But ... Blast it, what bothersme is that Zezdon Fentes seemed to recover from the blow so quickly!From a canine race, I'd expect more affection, more loyalty, more...."

  He stopped in dismay. But Zezdon Afthen remained unperturbed. "Moreunconcealed emotion?" he asked. "No. Affection and loyalty we have--they_are_ characteristic of our race. But affection and loyalty should notbe uselessly applied. To _forget_ dead wives and children--that would beinsulting to their memory. But to mourn them with senseless loss ofhealth and balance would also be insulting--not only to their memory,but to the entire race.

  "No, we have a better way. Fentes, my very good friend, has notforgotten, no more than you have forgotten the death of your mother,whom you loved. But you no longer mourn her death with a fear and horrorof that natural thing, the Eternal Sleep. Time has softened the pain.

  "If we can do the same in five minutes instead of five years, is it notbetter? That is why Fentes has _forgotten_".

  "Then you have aged his memory of that event?" asked Wade in surprise.

  "That is one way of stating it," replied Zezdon Afthen seriously.

  Wade was silent for a while, absorbing this. But he could not containhis curiosity completely. _Well, to hell with it_, he decided._Conventional manners and tact don't have much meaning between twodifferent races_. "Are you--married?" he asked.

  "Only three times," Zezdon Afthen told him blandly. "And to forestallyour next question--no, our system does not create problems. At least,not those you're thinking of. I know my wives have never had the jealousquarrels I see in your mind pictures."

  "It isn't safe thinking things around you," laughed Wade. "Just thesame, all of this has made me even more interested in the 'AncientMasters' you keep mentioning. Who were they?"

  "The Ancient Ones," began Zezdon Afthen slowly, "were men such as youare. They descended from a primeval omnivorous mammal very closelyrelated to your race. Evidently the tendency of evolution on any planetis approximately the same with given conditions.

  "The race existed as a distinct branch for approximately 1,500,000 ofyour years before any noticeable culture was developed. Then it existedfor a total of 1,525,000 years before extinction. With culture andlearning they developed such marvelous means of killing themselves thatin twenty-five thousand years they succeeded perfectly. Ten thousandyears of barbaric culture--I need not relate it to you, five thousandyears of the medieval culture, then five thousand years of developedscience culture.

  "They learned to fly through space and nearly populated three worlds;two were fully populated, one was still under colonization when thegreat war broke out. An interplanetary war is not a long drawn outstruggle. The science of any people so far advanced as to haveinterplanetary lines is too far developed to permit any long duration ofwar. Selto declared war, and made the first move. They attacked anddestroyed the largest city of Ortol of that time. Ortolian ships drovethem off, and in turn attacked Selto's largest city. Twenty millionintelligences, twenty million lives, each with its aims, its hopes, itsloves and its strivings--gone in four days.

  "The war continued to get more and more hateful, till it became evidentthat neither side would be pacified till the other was totallysubjugated. So each laid his plans, and laid them to wipe out the entireworld of the other.

  "Ortol developed a ray of light that made things not happen," explainedZezdon Afthen, his confused thoughts clearly indicating his ownuncertainty.

  "'A ray of light that made things not happen,'" repeated Wade curiously."A ray, which prevented things, which caused processes to stop--_TheNegrian Death Ray_!" he exclaimed as he suddenly recognized, in thiscrude and garbled description of its powers, the Negrian ray ofanti-catalysis, a ray which tended to stop the processes o
f life'schemistry and bring instant, painless death.

  "Ah, you know it, too?" asked the Ortolian eagerly. "Then you willunderstand what happened. The ray was turned first on Selto, and as thewhirling planet spun under it, every square foot of it was wiped cleanof every living thing, from gigantic Welsthan to microscopic Ascoptel,and every man, woman and child was killed, painlessly, but instantly.

  "Then Thenten spun under it, and all were killed, but many who had fledthe planets were still safe--many?--a few thousand.

  "The day that Thenten spun under that ray, men of Ortol began tocomplain of disease--men by the thousands, hundreds of thousands. Everyman, every woman, every child was afflicted in some way. The diseasesdid not seem all the same. Some seemingly died of a disease of thelungs, some went insane, some were paralyzed, and lay helplesslyinactive. But most of them were afflicted, for it was exceedinglyvirulent, and the normal serums were helpless. Before any quantity ofnew serum was made, all but a slender remnant had died, either ofstarvation through paralysis, none being left to care for them, or fromthe disease itself, while thousands who had gone mad were painlesslykilled.

  "The Seltonians came to Ortol, and the remaining Ortolians, with theiraid, tried to rebuild the civilization. But what a sorry thing! Thecities were gigantic, stinking, plague-ridden morgues. And the plaguebroke among those few remaining people. The Ortolians had doneeverything in their power with the serums--but too late. The Seltonianshad been protected with it on landing--but even that was not enough.Again the wild fires of that loathsome disease broke out.

  "Since first those men had developed from their hairy forebears, theyhad found their eternal friends were the dogs, and to them they turnedin their last extremity, breeding them for intelligence, hairlessness,and resemblance to themselves. The Deathless ones alone remained afterthree generations of my people, but with the aid of certain rays, therays capable of penetrating lead for a short distance, and most othersubstances for considerable distances." X-rays, thought Wade. "Greatchanges had been wrought. Already they had developed startlingintelligence, and were able to understand the scheme of their Masters.Their feet and hands were being modified rapidly, and their vocalapparatus was changing. Their jaws shortened, their chins developed, thenose retreated.

  "Generation after generation the process went on, while the DeathlessAncient Ones worked with their helpers, for soon my race was a realhelping organization.

  "But it was done. The successful arousing of true love-emotion followed,and the unhappy days were gone. Quickly development followed. In fivethousand years the new race had outstripped the Ancient Masters, andthey passed, voluntarily, willingly joining in oblivion the millions whohad died before.

  "Since then our own race has risen, it has been but a short thousandyears, a thousand years of work, and hope, and continuous improvementfor us, continual accomplishment on which we can look, and a living hopeto which we could look with raised heads, and smiling faces.

  "Then our hope died, as this menace came. Do you see what you and yourworld was meant to us, Man of Earth?" Zezdon Afthen raised his dark eyesto the terrestrian with a look in their depths that made Wadeinvoluntarily resolve that Thet and all Thessians should be promptlyconsigned to that limbo of forgotten things where they belonged.