Beyond the Worlds We Know

1. A Call for Help

The dusky purple sky of Mars was suddenly split asunder by an arc of dazzling white fire, which split the dark firmament from zenith to nadir. This streak of atomic flame sped towards a range of low, worn, incredibly ancient mountains in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, and the trim little speedster whose rocket drive was the cause of that fiery wake settled down to rest on the top of one of these eminences—Mount Mern, in the Ygnarth region of the Drylands of Cotaspar.

The airlock slid open and two men in protective suits, their faces shielded by airmasks, emerged into view. One was obviously an Earthling, tall, rangy, long-legged, with a fiery thatch of red hair and mischievous green eyes that sparkled with irrepressible humor in a handsome, tanned, clean-shaved face. The other was a Venusian, from his lithe and limber, almost boneless grace of movement, bald hairless pate, slanted albino-pink eyes, and dead-white skin.

The two trudged across the plateau, space-boots squealing and crunching in the thin layer of rock dust that overlay the age-old stone, flogged on by icy gusts of gaspingly thin but breathable air. They approached a domelike structure of dark, gloomy basalt. It was ages older than the Great Pyramid of Cheops, that massive dome; aeons more ancient than the very cornerstone of Babylon. For Mars was ... old ... and the lurking remnants of her once-glorious civilization which she still nurtured at her shrivelled breast had origins so anterior in time as to dwell in the shadowlands of myth ...

The bitterly cold, desiccated wind drove a swirl of talcum-fine rock dust rattling against the faceplate of his airmask, and Phath, the Venusian, started irritably and muttered a curse to his Swamp Country god. He was used to the dank climate of his muddy world, with its fetid bogs and clinging mists and bubbling fens, and this bone-dry, withered old dustball of a world ran against his grain.

"Cursed if I can see why we had to travel all the way to this miserable excuse for a planet, when the old crackpot could have told us what his trouble was on the televisor," grumbled Phath, wiping his faceplate clear.

His redheaded companion shrugged carelessly. "Dr. Zoar will have his own reasons, and they’ll be good ones," observed the space-adventurer known only as 'Star Pirate.' "Just be patient, and we’ll soon know. Besides, if we hadn’t come, we'd be missing out on the swell Martian brandy the Doc usually serves us, not to mention those fried canal-mushroom filets—"

Phath muttered something disparaging on the question of Martian cuisine, but then the great door loomed up before them. The massive slab of wood wherefrom it had been anciently fabricated was so old that it had become petrified into stone over the ages, and it bore the bronze sigil of twin interlaced crescents that denoted the structure as a monastery dedicated to the Moon Gods. That had been long ago, and within the memory of living men the old edifice had served the reclusive savant and master-scientist, Zoar, as his hermitage and laboratory.

It was Zoar himself, and not one of his robot servitors, who answered the door. He was squat, diminutive, little more than a dwarf, with a bald, wrinkled skull and an ugly, froglike face, which wore a scowl that seemed permanently grafted upon his leathery, green-skinned face. It amused his warped sense of humor to assume the dusty dark-red robes and scuffing sandals of the long-extinct Moon Priests who had once haunted the drafty, echoing halls of what was now his sanctuary.

"Ah, it’s you at last, my boy!" he croaked, peering up into Star’s grinning face. Then his tones turned surly and his expression sour as he spied Phath lurking in the background.

"Brought your web-footed flunky along with you, eh?" he demanded with a sneer. "I thought the air rather savored of swamp-slime when I opened the door—"

Phath flushed—as much as his chalk-white skin could flush—and his pink eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, one hand fondling the worn butt of his proton-needle in its leathern holster slung at his lean hip. "Why, you lice-ridden old sand-rat, I’ve half a mind to feed you a pint or two of your own desert-dust—!"

"If you actually had half a mind," snarled the savant with a savage smirk, "then you’d only be a cretin, not the perambulating two-legged amoeba you are now!"

"Is that so, you crawling sandlizard," Phath spat venomously. "Well, scuttle into your nearest sewer-hole, ’cause I’ve a needler here just aching to broil one more slithering bit of Martian vermin!"

"Boys, boys!" sighed Star, but he knew it was no use. The two had a feud going for many years, and both obviously enjoyed it too much to be mollified by any words of his. Philosophically, he sat down on a stone bench to wait out the exchange of vituperation.

No Martian does any sort of business until after the guest-feast, but in the case of Dr. Zoar, a bachelor who tended for himself, the custom was observed only cursorily.

So swallowing their impatience to discover what had impelled him to call for their help, Star and the Venusian sat down to a repast of pale gold Drylands wine, succulent native fruits which savored of cinnamon, a pungent native cheese, broiled sandcat sausages, and that delight of gourmets the System over which Star had mentioned earlier, juicy slices of canal-pod mushrooms sizzled in small coppery skillets, ripe with spicy sauce.

Over a mellow, ancient Martian brandy with a heart of liquid golden fire, they talked, the meal concluded.

"You called for our help, but nothing seems to be wrong here on Mount Mern—"

"Your assistance, rather than help," the old scientist corrected him sharply. "I have an undertaking in mind, an expedition, for which I require the strength, agility, courage and fighting skills of yourself and—urn!—this mud-dweller you call your sidekick."

Then, before Phath could rise to the bait and begin to spar once more with words, the old Martian savant unfolded before the two adventurers an astounding tale.

2. A Brand New World

"You recall when you were on your way to Mercury a while back, on that nasty Fire Troll business," said Zoar, "I told you of my observations with the gravitometer—my own small invention," he added with a self-deprecating little cough which fooled no one. "I believe I told you then that I had discovered the cause of those mysterious perturbations in the orbit of the planet Pluto which have baffled every astronomer since the immortal Tombaugh discovered the ninth world from the sun . . . and that my calculations proved the long-suspected existence of a tenth world from the sun, that elusive will-o’-the-wisp, the legendary planet 'Persephone.' "

"Why, sure, Doc, I remember you said something—"

"Since then," continued Dr. Zoar, serenely riding over Star Pirate's interjection as if he had not even heard it, "since then, I have completed my calculations to a nicety. Once I had managed to pinpoint the periodicity of the perturbations in the orbit of Pluto (no mean feat in itself, I assure you, lad!), I had to prove it with hard mathematics. I employed three droneships, widely spaced, to take further readings and thus obtained a fix on the mystery planet. Once I had taken the parallax, it was child's play to feed the computer with the math and derive the precise location of this new world in space. As soon as the computer has finished its purely routine calculations, we will have the entire orbit of the tenth world—Persephone, if you will—charted to a degree of exactitude that should satisfy those jealous scoffers"—here the Martian savant was apparently referring to his fellow scientists— "but one last proof is needed, before I will be completely satisfied ."

Star was impressed, and said as much. "Terrific job, Doc! It'll put you right up there next to Herschel and Tombaugh and the rest, but ..."

"But what do we have to do with all this?" muttered Phath, virtually stealing the very words from Star's mouth.

"Tut, isn't it obvious?" purred the green dwarf in self-satisfied tones. "Having discovered the tenth planet, do you dare to dream I would leave the glory of actually exploring it to someone else? I need your help, lad, in getting to Persephone in your little craft, the Jolly Roger!"

They looked at each other blankly, then turned to regard the little savant, who sat there smiling a smug little smile and sipping his mellow brandy contentedly.

"But, Doc, the Roger's no expeditionary craft—just a scout—a speedster! We—" began Star Pirate, but then his Venusian comrade interrupted with an ejaculation.

"Yakdar's tungsten tonsils! Just how far away is this-here Persephone, anyway?"

Still smiling smugly, Dr. Zoar named a distance so staggering that it made them gasp.

"B-but, Doc," said Star Pirate helplessly, "that's nearly as far from Pluto as Pluto itself is from the sun! The Jolly Roger would take many many weeks—months—why, even if we reprocessed every atom of air, every molecule of water through the purifiers, we still couldn’t possibly carry enough food for the three of us to last for a voyage as long as the one you contemplate. We'd starve to death before we even got there!"

"Not if you flew fast enough," said Zoar cunningly.

Once again the two adventurers exchanged a blank look, one with the other.

"Listen, Mars-man," snapped Phath huffily. "The Roger's just about the fastest thing in space as it is—how could we make ’er any faster than she is?"

"There are, ah, certain techniques," chuckled Zoar. He was in a rare good humor, and it was obvious that he hugged some secret to his bosom. "Now," Zoar said, "let me put a question to you. To both of you—if there were a way by which your little craft could attain to a velocity enormously superior to that which she can now attain—to a velocity still, of course, below light speed, but only fractionally so—which would mean that your voyage to Persephone would take not a year or so, not even months, but days or merely a couple of weeks—which is well within your ship's capacity to carry food supplies—would you make the trip?"

The challenge hung there in the dim air of the huge, dusty stone room. A chemical fire crawled and crackled on the grate. Huge shadows slithered overhead to the serpentine writhings of the eerie green flames. Phath methodically downed the last scrap of sandcat sausage and bit into one of the queer, spicy Dryland fruits that stood in a bowl of polished stone on the tabouret.

His weird pink eyes swivelled sideways to fix on Star's bronzed face. The adventurer's expression was rapt, his eyes filled with hazy dreams.

"Well, chief?" drawled the Venusian around another mouthful of the Martian fruit. "What do you say?"

"A brand new world," Star Pirate whispered, caught in a net of dreams. "To go where no other man has ever set foot before you ... a whole world of wonders unguessed at, marvels unknown ..."

No further words were needed. Phath sighed, shook his head philosophically, and poured another slug of the superb old Martian brandy into a small goblet hewn from rock-crystal .

Zoar smiled his wrinkled, froggish smile, hooded cold black eyes unblinking.

Star Pirate dreamed ... the same dream that once stirred the hearts of the Vikings, of Marco Polo, of Columbus, Scott, Amundsen, and Neil Armstrong.

A brand new world ...

3. "Into the Unknown—!"

Deep in that whirling wilderness choked with shattered moonlets and meteors known as the Asteroid Belt, lies a hidden little world that serves Star Pirate and his Venusian comrade as their secret hideout. Haven they call it, and a safer haven would be hard to imagine. While its core of heavy metals provides mass enough to afford a gravity field strong enough to hold breathable atmosphere and moisture to the surface of the miniature world, it is protected from chance discovery or the invasion of enemies by its peculiar location. For it lies at the heart of a swirling vortex of meteor swarms which would be swift and sudden death to any ship of space ignorant of the secret of safe passage through the storm of frozen, flying stone—a passage Star has charted and which he and Phath alone can follow.

The odd-shaped, lopsided little worldlet lies warm and humid, bathed in faint ochre Jupiter-light, dim and filled with shadows. Great shelves of stone lift against the glittering stars, mantled with strange pale tree-like growths, their rock surfaces sheathed with satiny moss. Small beetle-like creatures scuttle between the crumbling ruins of a time-lost people—the enigmatic monuments of Aster, the planet-culture destroyed when the Lost Planet itself was torn asunder in time's dawn as the last act of an ancient tug-of-war between the gravitational fields of the sun and the giant planet Jupiter. Which resultant destruction of the lost planet, Aster, gave birth to the scattered fragments and moonlets which comprise the Asteroid Belt ... or so went the theory current in Star Pirate's day.

Here rose the low, shallow dome of transparent metal that was house and home, laboratory and workshop, to Star and his Venusian sidekick. Their home was one vast, dome-roofed room, with folding screens and draw-curtains affording privacy. Galley and pantry and stores were here; bath facilities over there; Star's bunk and bureau to the side; the laboratory beyond the living area, where (anachronism of all anachronisms!) a fireplace built of rugged fieldstone towered, with a wood-fire roaring on the grate, and thick, overstuffed chairs drawn up before the hearth.

"An expensive luxury," murmured Zoar, craning his neck and trying to see how Star and Phath got rid of the smoke.

"Never mind that, right now," said the redheaded adventurer, grimly, "you said you needed our robot workshop facilities to install this new super-drive of yours in our ship, so let me show you what we've got."

"That was why you couldn't tell us all this stuff over the televisor, right?" guessed Phath shrewdly. "Even our multiwave set could be tapped, right? You didn't want others to know about this superdrive of yours, because the military types, the governments, the fanatical political groups, revolutionaries—?"

Zoar eyed the Venusian with a strange respect in his eyes. It was there for only a flicker of time, then veiled behind a forced sneer—but while it had lasted, it had been sincere enough.

"A lucky guess, mud-eater," he growled in his hoarse, bullfrog voice. "But there is something to what you say, yes. The political, economic and military implications of my super-drive (as you persist in calling it) are indeed such as to make it worth our while keeping it undercover. And, as your swamp-lizard friend says, lad, any communication system can be cracked, any code deciphered. And while nobody very much cares about the discovery of a new trans-Plutonian planet (what's one more ball of methane ice, after all, washed by sluggish seas of half-gelid ammonia and whipped by merciless hurricanes of hydrogen-snow?), a spacedrive that is only a fraction from the velocity of light is very interesting, no? Now, I’d like to see this robot workshop of yours."

Later, after one of Phath's finest culinary efforts (he had deliberately concocted a dinner from the haute cuisine of his native world, by way of politely thumbing his nose at their Martian guest—a meal which began with swamp-cucumber soup, toasted ground-nuts, mud-lizard chopped liver pate, topped with flank of tree-dwelling snake in snail sauce) , they dawdled over coffee and liqueurs before the roaring hearth of Star's determinedly anachronistic fireplace, studying the plans of the super-drive.

"I just don’t see what makes it work!" confessed Phath in bewilderment. "Where does all that power come from?"

In rare good humor, despite the sordidly Venusian (and therefore swampy) meal, Zoar could not help chortling.

"That is the idea, friend Phath," he chuckled. "Where does a ray of light go, when it has gone past you?"

The Venusian shrugged. "To the ends of the universe, I guess."

"Ah! But the universe has no ends; space is curved; a ray of light bends back upon the space it has already traversed—and does so endlessly," said the savant.

"So?"

"So every cubic foot of space is, at every split-second of time, filled with a flux of radiant energy that has been traveling through curved space from the Big Bang until now. It only has to be tapped to be used ... and the energy thus tapped is truly infinite," Zoar said.

"Which implies that, with a truly infinite source of energy upon which to draw, you can construct a spacedrive that will give you enough thrust to—almost—achieve the speed of light," said Star Pirate.

"Precisely," chuckled Zoar. "The only barrier to speed is enough energy to achieve it. With my super-drive (abominable term, but I fear we’re stuck with it!) we have the energy. And will have all the speed we need. Trust me, boy ... and, by the way, that deduction was very clever of you. Whoever was your teacher?"

Star grinned, white teeth flashing in his space-tanned face.

"You were, you old fraud!"

"Why, bless my soul, so I was!" snickered Zoar, enjoying himself immensely. He wriggled bare toes in his sandals, where his feet were propped up and toasting before the fire, and took another sip of Star's best brandy. It wasn't quite as fine as his Dustlands Golden, but it would do in a pinch, he thought to himself.

Phath was staring moodily into the depths of the blaze, pink eyes veiled and brooding. "Any problem?" inquired Star, noticing his sidekick's gloomy mood.

Phath roused himself with a shudder and a bit of a shiver. "No, chief, nothing—really! It's just . . . you say the robot workshop will take about a week to outfit the Roger with Zoar's new drive, and then we'll be ready to go ... into the unknown—!"

"That's right," nodded Star, unconcernedly. But the words reverberated in his mind long after he had bade his friends goodnight and had gone off to seek his bunk. Over and over they echoed through his dreams that night, and for nights thereafter.

"Into the unknown—!"

4. The Space-Storm

The Jolly Roger climbed skyward on a pillar of atomic fire. Far below, the twilit surface of Haven dwindled and was lost amidst the whirling storm of meteors which surrounded the little moonlet like some protective moat. Star switched to the computer pilot, and let the trim little speedster steer herself through the barrier of spinning chunks of frozen rock, guided by the coded radio signals broadcast from beacons planted amidst the swarm.

For two weeks the robot workshops underneath the dome-dwelling had toiled around the clock, as automata refitted the little scoutcraft with the outsized rocket-tubes of Dr. Zoar's design. Now the speedster looked clumsy and unbalanced with the heavy cluster of tubes at its stern, but Star was more than willing to trade aesthetics for a drive that would carry them to Pluto—and beyond—at the colossal speeds the diminutive Martian savant had promised.

The little craft dipped far below the plane of the ecliptic, so as to be in clear space, uncluttered by asteroid fragments and wandering meteorites, and before very long they had traveled on conventional drive far enough for Zoar to cut in his super-drive.

The moment was a tense one: within seconds, weeks of labor might prove to have been wasted on a flawed theory, a faulty plan. Zoar wrinkled his brow in a hideous scowl, as if daring the new engines to fail to fire. Star looked serious, concerned, but, as for the Venusian, he maintained the skepticism he had evinced ever since first hearing of the newfangled system of propulsion.

"Bet you my new gunbelt and holsters the gadget blows a fuse," Phath hissed to the redhead—just loud enough for the Martian scientist to hear. Zoar scowled even more ferociously, and thumbed the activator. A deep-throated resonance entered into the drumming song of the roaring rockets, but there was no other change. Beyond the televisor screens, stars glittered against the ebon backdrop of space like sequins sewn upon the velvet curtains of some enormous theatre.

"I told you—!" chortled Phath; even Star looked puzzled and dubious; but, as for Zoar, he only smirked and indicated the fancy new velocitometer attached to the control board. The two adventurers bent to study the dial ... and saw that already the ship’s speed had gone off the conventional velocitometer and they were traveling at speeds hitherto undreamed of.

"Yaklar’s ... tungsten ... tonsils!" gasped the Venusian, his pink eyes widening. Such speeds were phenomenal. "Why don’t we—feel the difference in speed?" he blurted, mystified.

"Because of my new stasis field, of course, simpleton!" snarled Zoar. "Its field of force cradles each sub-atomic particle in a cushioning web of force ... otherwise, our velocity would wreck the ship’s internal structure, and we would be plastered all over the walls."

"Well, I’ll be a—a—” stammered the Venusian, for once at a lack for words. Zoar grinned malignantly, preening.

"If you need an appropriate epithet, friend Phath," he growled in his bass tones, "I believe I can supply a few—?"

A brief exchange of insults ensued, as usual. Sighing, Star Pirate left the control room in Phath’s charge and went into his cabin to store away his luggage. It seemed the little argument soon fizzled out, for the next time he passed the entrance to the control room, Phath was stretched out in the big chair, plucking on his Venusian guitar and singing an old space-chanty in his soft, sibilant voice:

and in the next instant, Phath choked off his song with a squawk of dismay as the Jolly Roger shuddered underfoot and the alarms began to clamor.

"A space-storm, chief!" yelled the Venusian. "And we’re hulled by a meteorite—"

5. Adrift in Space

Star snapped a curse to every space god he knew, and sprang to the emergency override controls. Already, the craft was losing air in an ear-splitting shriek through the punctured hull, and it was becoming swiftly more and more difficult to draw breath. Star spun a wheel and slammed a lever home; air-tight emergency compartment doors slid out of the walls to seal off the danger area. Fortunately, it was back in the tail compartment where the store rooms were located.

"How in the name of thirty spacedevils did we run into a meteor storm here, below the ecliptic?" demanded Phath, switching the controls to manual and sending the Jolly Roger arching through the void in a steep curve designed to carry the trim little craft out of the path of the storm of hurtling rock and ice.

"More to the point, why didn’t our repellor fields stop the meteorite before it hulled us?" said Star flatly, scanning the dials. Fortunately for their mission, remarkably little damage had been done, although they were not yet out of the path of danger.

"I think I can answer that one, my boy," said Dr. Zoar, waddling into the control room. He had been lying down in his bunk catching a well-deserved nap, until the clangor of the alarms had roused him from his rest. "It’s the new drive—we’re traveling so fast, the meteor went right through the repellor fields before they had time to deflect it."

He scratched his chin reflectively. "If travel by my super-drive should ever become common, we shall have to do something to beef up the standard repellor field generators ... a pretty little problem, by the Twin Moons! I suppose we could use an overlapping, heterodyning electromagnetic barrier with ..." His voice trailed off into an indistinguishable mumble as he became lost between equations.

"Yeah?" queried Phath in startled tones. "Well, we're not goin' so fast now, you Martian hop-toad! In fact, we're losing velocity rapidly. That new thingummy of yours has blown a fuse or something—"

Star sprang to the control board to study the new velocitometer. With a sinking heart he saw that Phath spoke the truth—the superdrive was no longer functioning, and the impact of being hulled had slowed the craft until she was virtually adrift. He jiggled the controls, but could not spark the new rocket-tubes into roaring life—neither did the conventional drive work.

"Looks like that blasted meteor did more than just cost us a little air, chief," muttered the Venusian. Star looked grim.

"It must have severed some of the wiring that runs through the hollow hull," he said tensely. "We can't get at the conduits from inside; break out the suits, Phath. We'll have to go outside to repair the damage—where are we exactly, Doc?"

Zoar scrutinized the dials. "Just passing Jupiter's orbit," said the little scientist. "Luckily, we're too low on the ecliptic to have a chance of getting pulled in by Jupiter's gravitational field. Or Saturn's either, for that matter."

Once they had suited up and snapped shut their faceplates, the two adventurers went through the tail airlock and clambered out on the hull, tethered to the safety of the ship by their space-lines and gripping the outer hull with their magnetic space-boots. They left the navigation to the tender mercies of Dr. Zoar; while the green-skinned dwarf was no space-pilot—and certainly not in a class with Star Pirate or his Venusian sidekick—the little scientist could operate the controls of a space rocket if necessary .

Time crawled past, slow minute by minute, as the tall redhead and his pale-skinned comrad toiled at repairing the control circuits, which had been severed by the meteorite. Within the cabin, Zoar watched as the ship—now helplessly adrift in space and unable to control her flight—floated past the orbit of Jupiter and began to approach that of the other giant planet, Saturn. The ringed planet loomed dead ahead, or so it seemed in the screens, and the diminutive scientist began to find the odd difference in perspective alarming.

Finally, he called Star Pirate and Phath on the ship-to-suit intercom circuit.

"What’s up, Doc?" inquired the redhead. Zoar groused and grumbled, then admitted—

"We’re drifting above our former position, lad, and reentering the plane of the ecliptic again. I have no doubt that this is the result of the gravitational fields of the nine moons of Saturn."

"In other words, we’re drifting into danger, you think?" asked Star Pirate.

"Well ... it is possible," said Zoar. "We still have a very long way to go before we are in any immediate and genuine danger, but still ... how are you two lads coming with the repairs on the severed control circuits?"

Star Pirate's voice was heavy and grim. "Did you ever try to do any delicate repair-work, while wearing clumsy space-mittens, Doc?" he asked.

"Fortunately, no, never ..."

"Well, then, all I can say is—we’re working as fast as we can, but it’s a tough job. Keep on the screens, and give us plenty of warning when we are really drifting into danger."

Zoar agreed, switched off the communicator, and returned to his post before the control board. And the minutes crawled by, and the hours. From time to time, worn out and in need of food and drink and rest, Star or the Venusian clambered back into the Jolly Roger for a breather, but not for long. There was a job to do—a job that must be done—and there were only the two of them to do it.

And in the forefront of Star Pirate's mind was a danger of which neither Phath nor Dr. Zoar had apparently recollected, as yet. He hoped it would not be needful to speak of it, but only time would tell.

It was some two days later, and all three of the adventurers were at the end of their endurance, to say nothing of their patience. The repairs were still advancing, but slower than Star could have wished ... when the danger he had feared struck suddenly and without the slightest warning.

The redheaded adventurer and his Venusian sidekick were on- the outside of the hull, relaying the damaged circuits with fresh lines, when the ship-to-suit intercom crackled into life.

"Lad! Lad! We're in the grip of some sort of turbulence—no idea just what—but the craft is being sucked into a mid-region between Saturn and Jupiter, where there seems to be a stationary meteor-swarm, or what appears to be that, at least in the ’scopes," came Zoar's voice, crackling with excitement.

Star stiffened: what he had been dreading was about to come true. He looked up to see the puzzled expression on the white-skinned face of his Venusian friend.

" 'Turbulence,' chief? What sort of turbulence could there be in space?" murmured Phath bewilderedly.

Star tightened his lean jaw tensely.

"You've forgotten the Vortex," he said tonelessly.

Phath’s pink eyes blinked—then widened. They were shadowed with a faint and ominous premonition.

"Swamp-devils of Venus! You're right, chief! Yaklar help us all—the Vortex!"

6. Vortex of Doom

Both men had forgotten that their suit radios were still switched on, and that Dr. Zoar could hear every word they spoke to each other. His puzzled voice came rasping through the crackle of cosmic-ray static.

"Vortex? What Vortex, my boy? Unless you mean that old space legend ... the Sargasso of Space ... the graveyard of lost ships ... but surely—"

"It’s no legend, Doc, believe me," grated Star Pirate in ringing tones. "I’ve not only seen the swarm of lost rockets drifting forever at the heart of the Vortex, but I almost got caught up in the gravity tides on the edge of the Vortex once, years ago."

Phath stared at him blankly, and Star Pirate forced a mirthless chuckle to his lips.

"That was before you joined forces with me," he remarked. "And how I could have used you at my side that day!" His memory hearkened back to days and nights of ceaseless toil, without sleep, food and water and even his supplies of air running low, as he had battled the remorseless suction of the gravity tides that had been pulling the Jolly Roger deeper and deeper into the tangle of dead, long-deserted and abandoned space vessels at the Vortex’s mysterious heart.

"But, lad—!" protested the Martian. Star swiftly shrugged off his dreamful mood of recollection of those desperate days and nights when he had labored to repair his wrecked rocket engines in time to break free of the whirlpool of gravity.

"It’s midway between the two giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, Doc," he said swiftly. "Gravity plays strange tricks out there, where two massive gravity-fields interlock and battle in a ceaseless tug of war, complicated by the ever-changing gravity flux of the many moons of the two huge worlds. A sort of vortex of gravitation that traps unwary ships and pulls them in to the center, where they can never break free. I saw ships in there near the center that belonged to museums—stuff I’d only seen in the history books—but we’ve got to get finished with repairing the control circuits, without delay. You keep watch over the meters and give me the readings every quarter hour, so I'll know how fast we’re drifting into the Vortex. I'll keep working out here as long as I can still stand up and stay awake—"

And the tall redhead bent to his work again, striving to drive every thought from his mind except that of the task before him.

"Holy space-devils, chief, the Sargasso of Space!" whispered Phath, his sibilant tones touched with awe. "I thought it was just another old space-legend myself ... and now we're caught up in it and every minute, every hour, being drawn deeper and deeper into the graveyard of lost ships ..."

"Less talk and more work," grated Star Pirate harshly.

Phath nodded, and the two of them bent to their toil under the cold and mocking gaze of the uncaring stars.

Like a chip of wood caught in a whirlpool, the Jolly Roger was drawn by the inexorable gravity tides deeper and deeper in the Vortex—into that weird region of space known as 'the Sargasso of Space.'

Around and around the outer perimeter of the Vortex drifted the trim little speedster, helpless to break the tangible but unseen bonds of force that drew her ever nearer to the center of the mysterious Sargasso, where old, antiquated ships clung together, inhabited only by their ancient dead.

It was an eerie scene, and aroused uncanny emotions in the breast of Dr. Zoar as he stood by the controls of the little scout craft, monitoring her driftage deeper and deeper into the toils of the deadly Vortex. As the 'scope centered upon the tangle of broken, lost rocket ships at the core of the whirlpool of invisible force, a grim shudder ran over the diminutive frame of the old Martian savant, and a grim, bleak light shone in his cold black eyes.

For one question lacerated his heart and haunted his unresting brain—could the little scout, even augmented enormously in power by the addition of the super-drive, break free of the insidious grip of the Vortex?

It was a question to which even Dr. Zoar did not possess an answer ...

Suddenly, the etherphone crackled with an incoming message from outside the hull. It was Star Pirate’s voice—raw with strain, hoarse with fatigue, but ringing with jubilance.

"Got 'er patched up at last, Doc! Hold the fort—Phath and I are coming inside for a bit of a rest. Got any hot soup, some biscuits and cheese? I haven't eaten for so long, my belly thinks my mouth's sewn up—"

Zoar uttered his rasping chuckle, and scurried into the cramped little galley of the Jolly Roger. It hadn't been very much of a jest, heaven knew, but it did the little scientist good to learn that the tall redheaded adventurer could still make a joke, bone-weary as he must be.

Moments later the airlock door wheezed open and magnetic spaceboots clanked on the metal flooring. Their faces puffy and pale, eyes red-rimmed and bleary, Star Pirate and his Venusian sidekick unscrewed their space helmets and clambered out of the suits. The two did not need any invitation to dive into the hot, tasty little meal which Dr. Zoar had set out on the table which folded out from the wall. While they gobbled hungrily, the Martian set out a fat bottle of good strong wine and two goblets.

Pushing back his plate at last, Star Pirate heaved a sigh of repletion. "Gods of space, Doc, but that tasted good! What about it, Phath?" The Venusian burped, and patted his lips with his fingertips by way of apology.

"Any time you want to throw over this science game and become the Jolly Roger's short order cook, well, you've got me backin' your space-ticket," said Phath. Zoar stared at him, blinking with surprise. It was the closest thing to a compliment—or even a friendly remark—which the Venusian had ever made concerning Zoar, or, at least, within his hearing. The Martian felt mildly astonished—but then he wrote it off to the action of fatigue-poisons upon the mind.

"Before you two decide on dessert and coffee," said the Martian sharply, "hadn't we better test the drive, to see if the circuits are repaired and workable after all?"

"Guess so," grunted Phath. Star Pirate looked grim, then gave a reluctant nod. They trooped into the control room and took their stations, while Phath assumed the controls.

At the first touch, the superdrive rocket-tubes coughed—then burst with a roar into blazing life!

Star Pirate yelled; Zoar broke into a grotesque, capering dance of joy; the Venusian laughed, cursed by his Swampland gods, and almost burst into tears.

Gradually, moment by moment, minute by minute, the trim little speedster began to fight her way out of the whirlpool of gravitational forces, bucking the current doggedly, battling the drag of electromagnetic attraction for the limitless freedom of open space.

Her powerful new drive-tubes proved—but by only a narrow margin! —stronger than the swirling tide of forces which had till then held her entrapped.

Within less than an hour the Jolly Roger was free of the Vortex and back on her original flight-plan, bound for the edge of the solar system, and whatever marvels and mysteries might lie beyond.

And the uncanny Sargasso of Space dwindled behind her as the little scout-craft hurtled for the edge of the unknown. But only Dr. Zoar was aware of this—both Star Pirate and his Venusian comrade were stretched out in their bunks, blissfully enjoying the first decent sleep either of them had known for days.

7. The Rim of the Unknown

Day after day went by; hurtling at a velocity heretofore never achieved by a manned spacecraft, the trim little speedster edged past the orbit of giant Saturn, and past Uranus, and beyond Neptune. Ahead floated the ghostly pale globe of Pluto, for centuries thought to be the outermost planet of all the System.

Beyond lay the Unknown, into which the three men aboard the Jolly Roger would be the first to penetrate. It was a sobering thought.

Phath, however, seemed unmoved by it. By now well rested, and well fed, the Venusian lolled back in the capacious embrace of the pilot's chair, against the pneumatic cushions, and plucked with lazy fingers the twangling wires of his Venusian guitar.

Before long, he burst into not-particularly-melodious song. While Phath was a good man to have at your side in a back-alley brawl, or to man the guns in a space-battle, or to juggle the pots and pans in the galley, it must be admitted that singing was not among the several endeavors in which he excelled. In fact, quite the contrary.

Hearing his albino partner raise his voice in song, Star Pirate winced a little and headed aft to the engine room for a little peace and quiet among the drumming cyclotrons. Oblivious, Phath sang on—continuing the same space-chanty he had been carelessly yodelling only moments before they had been caught in the unexpected space-storm, and were hulled by the micro-meteorite.

Star let the compartment door slide shut behind him, and sighed with heartfelt relief as the thunder of the atomic engines succeeded in drowning out the sound of Phath's tuneless space-chanty from the other end of the trim little speedster.

A small alarm trilled in Star Pirate's ear. The redheaded space adventurer gave a jaw-cracking yawn, stretched out his long, rangy legs, and blinked at the small illuminated chrono-dial sunk into the bulkhead wall at his eye-level. He had exactly twenty-four minutes before it was his turn to relieve Phath, who was on watch in the control room.

Generally speaking, Star and his Venusian sidekick never bothered to keep live watch over the ship's progress, leaving that to the robot pilot, whose super-keen electronic senses could easily and swiftly detect the approach or the presence of danger in plenty of time to awake the two. But here, at the very edge of the System, no one could guess what mysteries and perils lurked, and to keep live watch—although an irksome chore—seemed wise.

Star rose, splashed his face with stingingly cold water to rinse away the last clinging vestiges of sleep, slid his long legs into his drab gray zipper-suit, pulled on his boots, clasped his gunbelt around his lean hips, and sauntered forward.

He was not due to relieve his Venusian comrade for several minutes yet, but the redheaded space adventurer had set the alarm some several minutes ahead deliberately. Avoiding the door which led into the control room, Star went up a steel ladder to the observation deck, where he found, much to his surprise, that he was not alone.

A hunched, diminutive, squat little figure stood before the huge circular porthole, staring out at the restless fire of the glittering stars, and at the wan and ghostly gray luminance that was the orb of frozen, lonely Pluto, here at the very edge of known space.

Dull Pluto-light glimmered on the wrinkled scalp of the bald head of the old Martian savant, who glanced up quizzically as Star came sauntering out of the shadows.

"You, too, eh lad?" muttered the scientist, edging to one side so as to make room at the huge circular window for the Earthling. "Come to say a last farewell to the inner worlds?"

Star shrugged, and gave a halfhearted grin.

"Something or other like that, Doc, I guess," the Earthling murmured. He stared out to where the huge globe of ghostly gray light that was Pluto floated beneath their soaring keel, accompanied by its twin moons, Oberon and Titania. He watched the blurred, featureless sphere drift by beneath them. No one lived down there on the surface of bleak, inhospitable Pluto, as he well knew. The continents of frozen methane drifted aimlessly over seas of liquid hydrogen in a frigid hell where even the toughest steel became so brittle a child could snap it between his fingers.

Only on the little astronomical observatory satellite, called Tombaugh Station, did a crew of dedicated scientists and officers and men of the Space Patrol maintain the hegemony of human civilization, here at the very edge of known space.

Even as that thought was passing through Star Pirate’s mind, he became aware that the trim little speedster had passed beyond the orbit of Pluto—

Now that they had crossed over the Rim of the Unknown, they flew in trackless, unexplored space.

The Jolly Roger now blazed a trail where no other ship had ever gone before, in all the vast immensity of time ...

As Star went down the steel ladder again, to relieve Phath on watch in the control room, the Venusian’s voice was raised in careless and unmelodious song—

A slight, rueful smile touched the bronzed lips of the tall space adventurer as he strolled into the control cabin to relieve his albino comrade.

And he reflected, with just a touch of self-mockery in his thoughts, that while some men have at least a spark of poetry in their souls, others have a song on their lips.

It was quite a Universe!