Crashing Suns

III

I think that in the minute after the crash no one in the conning-tower made a movement. The blinding ray outside had vanished at the moment of our crash, and we were now lying sprawled on the little room's floor, where the shock of the collision had thrown us. In a moment, though, I reached for a support and scrambled to my feet. As I did so there came shouts from the hull beneath us, and then a loud clang as one of the cruiser's lower doors swung open. I sprang to the window, just in time to see our six engineers pour out of the hull beneath me, emerging onto the platform on which our ship rested, and gazing about them with startled eyes.

I ripped open the little door in the conning-tower's side, to shout to them to come back, and even as I did so saw one of the men run back into the cruiser as though in fear. The others were staring fixedly across the broad platform, and in that moment, before I could voice the warning on my lips, their doom struck. There was a quick sigh of wind, and from across the platform there sprang toward them a tiny ball of rose-colored fire, a ball that touched one of the men and instantly expanded into a whirlwind of raging flame. A single moment it blazed there, then vanished. And where the five men had stood was-nothing.

Stunned, stupefied, my eyes traveled slowly across the surface of the great platform. Strange, huge machines stood close-grouped upon it, great shining structures utterly unfamiliar in appearance. At the center of this group of mechanisms stood the largest of them, a great tube of metal fully a hundred feet in length, which was mounted on a strong pedestal which pointed up into the sky like a great telescope. It was none of these things, though, that held my attention in that first horror-stricken moment of inspection. It was the dozen or more grotesque and terrible shapes which stood grouped at the platform's farther edge, returning my gaze.

They were globes, globes of pink, unhealthy-looking flesh more than a yard in diameter, each upheld by six slender, insect like legs, not more than twelve inches long, and each possessing two similar short, thin limbs which served them as arms and which projected at opposite points from their pink, globular bodies. And between those arms, set directly in the side of the round body itself, were the only features-two round black eyes of large size, browless and pupilless, and a circle of pale skin which beat quickly in and out with their breathing.

Motionless they stood, regarding me with their unhuman eyes, and now I saw that one, a little in advance of the others, was holding extended toward me a thin disk of metal, from which, I divined instantly, the destroying fire had sprung. Yet still I made no movement, staring across the platform with sick horror in my soul.

I heard a thick exclamation from Hal Kur, behind me, as he and Sarto Sen came to my side and gazed out with me. And now the grouped creatures opposite were giving utterance to sounds-speech-sounds with which they seemed to converse-low, deep, thrumming tones which came apparently from their breathing-membranes. They moved toward us, the fire-disk still trained upon us, and then one stopped and motioned from us to the platform on which he stood. He repeated the gesture, and its meaning was unmistakable. Slowly we stepped out of the conning-tower and descended by the ladder in the cruiser's side to the platform itself.

Our captors seemed to pause for a moment, now, and I had opportunity for a quick inspection of our ship. Sucked down as it had been by the attractive ray of those strange creatures, it had yet fallen on a clear space on the platform and seemed to have suffered no serious injury, for it was stoutly built and our fall had been short. The lower door in its side was still open, I saw, and now a half-dozen of the globe-creatures entered this, scurrying forward like quick insects on their six short legs. They disappeared from view inside the cruiser's hull, returning in a moment with their fire disks trained upon the single engineer who had run back into the ship and escaped the doom of his fellows. This man, Nar Lon by name, had been the chief of the six engineers, and as his guards herded him to our side his face was white with terror. Finding us still alive, though, he seemed to take courage a little.

Now the thrumming conversation of the creatures about us broke off, and one turned to the edge of the platform, touching a stud in the floor there. At once a circular section of the metal floor, some ten feet across, slid aside, revealing a round dark well of the same diameter, which apparently extended down into one of the great tower's four supporting columns. At the top of this shaft hung a small, square metal cage, or elevator, and into this we were shepherded at once, two of our captors entering the cage with us and keeping their fire-disks trained still upon us. There was the click of a switch, then a sudden roar of wind, and instantly the cage was shooting downward with tremendous speed. Only a moment we flashed down through the roaring darkness, and then the cage came to rest and a section of wall beside it slid aside, admitting a flood of dusky, crimson light. At once we stepped out, followed by our two guards.

We were standing at the foot of a mighty column down which we had come, standing on the floor of a great, circular, flat-roofed room, in and out of which were moving scores of the globe-creatures. From the very center of the room, behind us, rose the fifty-foot thickness of the huge pillar, soaring up obliquely and disappearing through the building's roof, two hundred feet above. Except for the pillar and the hurrying figures around us the great room was quite bare and empty, lit only by high, narrow slits in its walls which admitted long, shafting bars of the crimson sunlight. I heard Hal Kur muttering his astonishment at the titanic scale on which all things in this strange world seemed planned, and then there came a thrumming order from our guards, who gestured pointedly toward a high doorway set in the room's wall opposite us. Obediently we started across the floor toward it.

Passing through it, we found ourselves in a long, narrow corridor, apparently a connecting passage between another building and the one we had just left. There were windows on its sides, circular openings in the walls, and as we passed down the hall I glimpsed through these the city that lay around us, a vista of black streets and crimson gardens through which thronged other masses of the globe-creatures.

Then, before I could see more, the corridor ended and we passed into a large anteroom occupied by a half-dozen of the globe-men, all armed with fire-disks which they trained instantly upon us.

There ensued a brief conversation between our guards and these, and then they stood aside, allowing us to pass through a narrow doorway into a smaller room beyond. Its sides were lined with shelves holding what seemed to be models of machines, all quite unfamiliar in appearance. At the far end of the room stood a low, desklike structure whose surface was covered with other models and with white sheets of stiff cloth or paper covered with drawings and designs, and behind this sat another of the globe-men, a little larger than any we had yet seen. As we halted before him he inspected us for a moment with his large, unwinking eyes, then spoke in deep, thrumming inflections to our two guards. The latter answered him at length, and again he considered us.

During the moments that we stood there I had noted that Sarto Sen, beside me, seemed intensely interested in the models and design-covered sheets which lay on the desk before us. Now, as the creature behind the desk seemed to pause, my friend moved forward and picked up one of the sheets, and a metal pencil which lay beside it. In a moment he was drawing on the sheet some design which I could not see, and this done he handed it to the monster behind the desk. The latter reached for it, inspected it closely, and then raised his eyes to Sarto Sen with something of surprise apparent even on his unhuman features. He uttered a short command, then, and instantly one of the two guards motioned Sarto Sen aside, while the other herded Hal Kur, Nar Lon and me again toward the door. As we passed out of the room I glanced back and saw Sarto Sen, still under the watchful eyes of his guard, bending over the desk, intensely interested, sketching another design.

Again we were in the anteroom, in which there lounged still the guard of armed globe-men. Instead of returning to the corridor through which we had come, though, we were conducted through a door on the room's opposite side, and passed down a similar long hall, halted at last by our guard before a low door in its side. This he flung open, motioning us to enter, and as the death-dealing disk in his grasp was trained full upon us we had no choice but to obey, and passed into a square, solid-walled little room which was but half-lit by a few loopholes in one of its sides. Behind us the door slammed shut, its strong bolts closing with a loud grating of metal. We were prisoners-prisoners on the planet of a distant star.

And now, looking back, it seems to me that the days of imprisonment which followed were the most terrible I have ever known. Action, no matter of what sort, gives surcease at least from mental agony, and it was agony which we suffered there in our little cell. For with the passing of every day, every hour, the crimson sun above was drawing nearer toward our own by millions of miles. And we, who alone had power to find the cause of the red sun's deflection- we lay imprisoned there in the city of the globe-men, watching doom creep upon our universe.

Hour followed hour and day followed day, remorselessly, while we lay there, hours and days which we could measure only by the steady circling of the sunlight that slanted through our tiny windows. With each night came cold, a bitter cold that penetrated to our bones, and for all the red splendor of the dying sun above, the days were far from warm. Twice each day the door opened and a guard cautiously thrust in our food, which consisted of a mushy mixture of cooked vegetables and a bottle of red-tinged, mineral-tasting water.

We spoke but little among ourselves, except to wonder as to the whereabouts of Sarto Sen. We had heard nothing of him since we had left him and could not know even whether our friend was alive or dead. What our own fate was to be we could not guess, nor, in fact, was even that of much interest to us. A few months longer and we would meet death with all on this planet, when Alto and our own sun crashed together. Whether or not we lived until then was hardly a great matter.

Then, ten days after our capture, there came the first break in the monotony of our imprisonment. There was a rattle of bolts at our door; it swung open, and Sarto Sen stepped inside. As the guards outside closed the door my friend sprang toward me, his face eager.

"You're all right, Jan Tor?" he exclaimed quickly. "They told me you were unharmed, but I worried-"

A phrase in his speech struck me. "They told you?" I repeated. "They?"

He nodded, his eyes holding mine. "The globe-men," he said simply.

We stared at him, and he stepped swiftly to the door, tried it and found it fast, then came back and sat down beside us.

"The globe-men," he repeated solemnly, "those children of Alto, those creatures of hell, who have turned their parent sun from its course to send it crashing into our own, to wipe out our universe."

At our exclamations of stunned surprise he was silent, musing, his eyes seeming to gaze out through somber vistas of horror invisible to us. When he spoke again it was slowly, broodingly, as though he had forgotten our presence.

"I have found what we came here to learn," he was saying; "have discovered the reason for the deflection of this star. Yet even before, I guessed… If a star had planets and those planets inhabitants-inhabitants of supreme science, supreme power-would they not use that science and that power to save themselves from death, even though it means death for another universe? And that is what they have done, and what I suspected before.

"It was that suspicion that stood me in good stead when we were examined there by the chief of the globe-men. I had glimpsed on his desk sheets with astronomical designs on them, and so I took a sheet myself and drew on it a simple design which he understood immediately, a design which represented two suns colliding. It convinced him of my knowledge, my intelligence, so that when he sent the rest of you to this cell he retained me for questioning. And for hours afterward I drew other sketches, other designs, while with gestures he interrogated me concerning them. It was slow, fumbling communication, but it was communication, and gradually we perfected a system of signs and drawings by which we were able to exchange ideas. And through the succeeding days our sign-communication continued.

"I informed him, in this way, that we were visitors from another star, but I was too cautious to let him know that we were children of the sun into which Alto was soon to crash. Instead I named Sirius as our native star, explaining that we had come from there in our vibration-cruiser for purposes of exploration. It was the cruiser which interested him most, evidently. The scientists of the globe-people had been examining it, he told me, and he now asked me innumerable questions concerning its design and operation. For though the globemen have gravity-screen ships, like our own old-fashioned ones, in which they can travel from planet to planet, they have no such star-cruisers as this one of ours. Hence his questions, which I evaded as well as I could, turning the subject to the coming collision of the two suns, which I stated had been foreseen by the astronomers of my own universe. And as I had expected, my news of the coming collision was no surprise to him. For, as he casually explained, that collision was being engineered in fact by his own people, the globe-men, for their own purposes.

"For ages, it seems these globe-men have dwelt on the planets of Alto. First they had inhabited the outermost planet, billions of miles from Alto itself, but which was yet warm enough for existence because of their sun's titanic size and immense heat. There they had risen to greatness, had built up their science and civilization to undreamed-of heights. But as the ages passed, that outermost world of theirs was growing colder and colder, since Alto, like all other suns, was slowly but steadily cooling, shrinking and dying, radiating less and less heat. At last there came a time when the planet of the globe-men was fast becoming too cold for existence there, and then their scientists stirred themselves to find a way out. Spurred on by necessity, they hit upon the invention of the gravity screen and with it constructed their first interplanetary space-ships. These they made in vast numbers, and in them the globe-people moved en masse to the next innermost planet, which still received enough heat from Alto to support life. There they settled, and there their civilization endured for further ages.

"But slowly, surely, their sun continued to cool and die, and with the terrible, machinelike inevitability of natural laws there came a day when again their world had grown too cold for their existence. This time, though, they had the remedy for their situation at hand, and again there took place a great migration from their cold planet to a warmer inner one. And so, as the ages passed, they escaped extinction by migrating from planet to planet, moving ever sunward as their sun waned in size and splendor, creeping closer and closer toward its dying fires.

"At last, though, after long ages, there drew down toward them the doom which they had averted for so long. Alto was still shrinking, cooling, and now they were settled upon its warmest, inmost planet, and had no warmer world to which to flee. But a short time longer, as they measured time, and their planet would become a frozen, lifeless world, for their sun would inevitably cool still further until it was one of the countless dark stars, dead and burned-out suns, which throng the heavens. It seemed, indeed, that this time there was to be no escape.

"But now there came forward a party among them which advanced a proposal of colossal proportions. They pointed out that Alto was moving steadily toward another sun, one much the same size as their own but flaming with heat and life, which it would pass closely within a short time. But if, instead of passing each other, the two suns should meet, should crash into each other, what then would be the result? It would be, of course, that the collision would form one new sun instead of the former two-one titanic, flaming sun whose heat would be sufficient to support life on any planet for countless ages. The inmost planets of Alto's system, and virtually all the planets of the other sun's system, would be annihilated by the collision, of course, would perish in that flaming shock of suns. But the outermost planets of Alto, which lay in orbits billions of miles from it, would be safe enough and would take up their orbits around this great new sun in place of Alto. And on these planets the globe-people could exist for eons, supported by the heat of the great new sun. It was a perfect plan, and required only that their own sun, Alto, be swerved from its path just enough to make it crash into the other sun instead of passing it.

"To accomplish this, to swerve their star from its course, the globemen made use of a simple physical principle. You know that a round, spinning body, moving across or through any medium, changes its direction if the rate of its spinning is changed. A ball that rolls across a smooth table without spinning at all will move in a straight line. But if the ball spins as it rolls it will move in a curved line, the amount and direction of curve depending upon the amount and direction of spin. Now their sun, which had rotated at the same rate for ages, had rolled through the ether for ages on the same great course, never swerving. And so, they reasoned, if their sun's rate of spin or rotation could be increased a little it would curve aside a little from its accustomed course.

"The problem, then, was to increase their sun's rate of spin, and to accomplish this they gathered all their science. A mighty tower was erected over their city, on whose great top-platform were placed machines which could generate an etheric ray or vibration of inconceivable power, a ray which could be directed at will through the great telescopelike projector which they had provided for it.

"This done, they waited until the moment calculated by their astronomers, then aimed the great projector-tube at the edge of their sun that was rotating away from them, and turned on the ray. This was the crucial point of their scheme, for now they were risking their very universe. It was necessary for them to increase their sun's rate of spin just enough to make it swerve aside, but if the rate of spin were increased just a little too much it would mean disaster, since when a sun spins too fast it breaks up like a great flywheel, splits into a double star. It is that process, the process of fission, which has formed the countless double stars and bursted suns in the heavens around us, since each was only a single star or sun which broke up because of its too-great speed of rotation, or spin. And the globe-men knew that it would require but very little increase in their own sun's rate of spin to make it, too, split asunder. So they watched with infinite care while their brilliant ray stabbed up toward the sun's edge, and when, under the terrific power of that pushing ray, the star began to spin faster, they at once turned off the ray, which was used for a short time only. But it had been effective; for now, as their sun spun faster, it began to swerve a little from its usual course, and they knew that now it would crash into the other approaching sun instead of passing it. So their end was achieved, and so they began their preparations for their great migration out to Alto's outermost planets, a migration which would take place just before the collision. And then-we came.

"We came, and now we have discovered that for which we came, the reason for Alto's change in course. For it was the science and will of the globe-men that turned their sun aside, that threatens now the annihilation of the Eight Worlds. Doom presses upon them, and to escape that doom they are destroying our sun, our planets, our very universe!"