The Comet Drivers

I

"Passing Rigel on our left, sir," reported the Canopan pilot standing in the control room beside me.

I nodded. "We'll sight the Patrol's cruisers soon, then," I told him. "I ordered them to mass beyond Rigel, just outside the galaxy's edge."

Together we strained our eyes into the impenetrable blackness of space that lay before us. To the left, in that blackness, there burned the great white sun of Rigel, like a brilliant ball of diamond fire, while to our right and behind us there flamed at a greater distance red Betelgeuse, and blue-white Vega, and Castor's twin golden suns, all the galaxy's gathered suns stretching in a great mass there at our backs. Even then, though, our cruiser was flashing out over the edge of the galaxy's great disk-like swarm of stars, and as white Rigel dropped behind us to the left there lay before us only the vast, uncharted deeps of outer space.

Gazing forward into those black depths our eyes could make out, faint and inconceivably far, the few little patches of misty light that we knew were remote galaxies of suns like the one behind us, unthinkably distant universes like our own. In the blackness before us, too, there shone a single great point of crimson light, burning through the blackness of the outer void like a great red eye. It was toward this crimson point that I and the great-headed, bodiless Canopan pilot beside me were grazing, somberly and silently, as our cruiser hummed on. Then as he shifted his gaze there came from him a low exclamation, and I turned to see that a great swarm of gleaming points had appeared in the blackness close before us, resolving as we flashed on toward them into a far-flung, motionless swarm of long, gleaming cruisers like our own.

Swiftly our cruiser rushed into that hanging swarm of ships, which made way quickly before us as there flashed from our bows the signal that marked my cruiser as that of the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol. Then as we too slowed and hung motionless at the head of the swarm I saw three cruisers among them flashing toward us, slanting up and hovering just beneath our craft. There came the sharp rattle of metal as their space-gangways rose up and connected with our cruiser, and then the clang of our space-doors opening. A moment more and the door of the control room was snapped suddenly aside and three strange and dissimilar figures stepped inside, coming swiftly to attention and saluting me.

"Gor Han! Jurt Tul! Najus Nar!" I greeted them. "You've massed a thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here as I ordered?"

Gor Han bowed in the affirmative. A great Betelgeuse, his big fur-covered shape was typical of the races of that big sun's cold world: a huge barrel-like torso supported by four thick stocky limbs, with four similar upper arms; his dark eyes and other features being set directly into the upper part of that furry torso, which was headless. Jurt Tul, beside him, was as strange a figure, patently of the amphibious peoples of Aldebaran's watery worlds, his great green bulk of shapeless body and powerful flipper-limbs almost hiding the bulbous head with its round and lidless eyes. And Najus Nar, who completed the strange trio, was as dissimilar from them as from myself. One of the powerful insect-men of Procyon, his flat, upright body, as tall almost as my own, was dark and hard and shiny in back and of soft white flesh in front, with a half-dozen pairs of short limbs branching from it from bottom to top, and with a blank, faceless head from the sides of which projected the short, flexible stalks that held in their ends his four keen eyes. Strange enough were these three Sub-Chiefs of the great Patrol, yet to me these three lieutenants of mine were so familiar, in appearance, that as they faced me now their strange and dissimilar forms made no impression on my mind.

"Your order was urgent, sir," Gor Han was saying, "that we mass a thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the galaxy's edge, and await your coming."

"Urgent, yes," I repeated somberly, my eyes turning from them to the great point of crimson light that shone in the black depths beyond; "urgent because it is out from the galaxy's edge that we are going with these cruisers, toward that point of red light there in the void that has puzzled all the galaxy since its appearance days ago-out toward that point of crimson light which our astronomers now have discovered to be a gigantic comet that is racing at speed incredible straight toward our galaxy from the depths of outer space!"

The three gazed at me, stunned, silent, and in that moment the only sound in the control room was the low humming of the generators beneath, which sustained our ship in space. Then, gazing out again into the black depths ahead toward that blood-like point, I was speaking on.

"Comets there are in our galaxy, as you know, comets that revolve in irregular orbits about various of our stars, and which have been familiar to us always. A comet, as you know, consists of the coma or head, the nucleus, and the tail. The coma is simply a great globe of electrical energy, with a hollow space at its center. The nucleus is all the comet's solid matter, a mass of meteoric and other material hanging in the hollow at the coma's center. The great coma blows from its own electrical energy, and is driven through space by the release of some of that energy backward, through the vast tail, which is simply released energy from the coma. It is the great coma that makes a comet deadly to approach, since any matter that enters its terrific sea of electrical energy is converted instantly into electrical energy likewise, changed from matter-vibrations to electrical vibrations, annihilated. Our interstellar navigators have for that reason avoided the comets of our galaxy, while never has it been dreamed that a comet might exist in empty space outside our galaxy.

"Now, however, our astronomers have found that this crimson spot of light that has appeared in the outer void and has puzzled us for days is in reality a giant crimson comet of size and speed unthinkable, which is racing straight toward our galaxy and will reach it within a few more weeks. And when it does reach it, it means the galaxy's doom! For this gigantic comet, greater by far than any of the galaxy's greatest suns, will crash through the galaxy's swarm of stars like a meteor through a swarm of fireflies, annihilating those in its path by absorbing them and their worlds into the terrific electrical energy of its mighty coma; disrupting all the finely balanced celestial mechanism of our universe and sucking its whirling stars into its deadly self as it smashes on; engulfing our suns and worlds in electrical annihilation, and then racing on into the void, leaving behind it but the drifting fragments of our wrecked and riven universe!

"Onward toward our universe this mighty comet is thundering, and but one chance remains for us to turn it aside. The center of this comet, of any comet, is the nucleus at the heart of its coma, which is the only solid matter in it. If we could penetrate through the coma to the great hollow inside it, could turn upon that nucleus the powerful force-beams used by our Patrol cruisers to sweep up meteor-swarms, we could possibly push it aside enough to change its course, to send it past our galaxy's edge instead of through it. But that must be done soon! Our astronomers have calculated that within twelve more days the comet will have reached a point so near the galaxy that it will be too late for anything ever to turn it aside. When the Council of Suns informed me of this I flashed word immediately for you three Sub-Chiefs to mass swiftly a thousand of the Patrol's cruisers here outside the galaxy's edge. And with these thousand ships we are starting at once toward the comet!

"Behind us the Patrol will be massing another five thousand cruisers to send out after us, but these can hardly reach the comet before it is too late. It is on us, and on our thousand cruisers, that the galaxy's fate now hangs. If we can reach the great oncoming comet, can penetrate through its deadly coma to the solid nucleus at its center, can deflect that nucleus with our force-beams before the twelfth day ends, we will have turned the great comet aside, will have saved the galaxy itself from death. If we can not, the galaxy perishes and we perish with it. For we of the Interstellar Patrol, who have defended and guarded the ways of that galaxy for thousands upon tens of thousands of years, go out to the oncoming comet now not to return unless we can turn that comet aside and save our universe from doom!"

Again in the control room was silence when I had finished, a silence that seemed intensified, as the three strange Sub-Chiefs before me held my eyes. Then, without speaking, they calmly saluted once more, eyes alight. Impulsively I reached hands out toward them, grasped their own. Then they had turned, were striding swiftly out of the control room and through the closed space-gangways to their own three cruisers. As our space-doors clanged shut once more, the gangways of those cruisers folded down upon them, and then the three craft had smoothly moved back to take up a position just behind my own.

I turned to the round opening of the speech-instrument beside me, spoke a brief order into it, and in answer to that order the thousand cruisers behind us smoothly and quickly massed into space-squadron formation, a long slender wedge with my own cruiser at the apex and those of the three Sub-Chiefs just behind me. Another brief order and the Canopan pilot beside me was opening the controls, our cruiser and the great triangle of massed cruisers behind us moving smoothly forward toward the crimson-gleaming point in the blackness ahead, our generators throbbing louder and louder as we slipped forward at swiftly mounting speed. We were on our way toward the great comet, and our struggle for the life of our universe had begun!

The voice of Gor Han came clearly from the speech-instrument as I stepped into the control room, days later. "Comet dead ahead, sir," he announced.

But my own eyes were already on the scene ahead. "Yes," I told him, "another hour will bring us to the coma's edge."

For before us now, bulking crimson and mighty and monstrous in the heavens ahead, glowed the giant comet toward which for the last nine days our thousand ships had been flashing. On and on we had rushed toward it at unnumbered light-speeds, through the vast ether-currents that raged here in space outside the galaxy, past regions of strange and deadly force which we but glimpsed and which we gave a wide berth, on into the endless outer void until our galaxy had shrunk to a small swarm of blinking light-points in the darkness behind us. Almost, in those days, we had forgotten the existence of that galaxy, so centered was our attention upon the sinister crimson glory of the comet ahead. Through these days it had largened swiftly to our eyes, from a light-point to a small red disk, and then to a larger disk, and finally to the gigantic circle of crimson-glowing light that loomed before us now, and toward which I and the three Sub-Chiefs in the cruisers just behind my own now gazed.

Tremendous as it was, the great comet's light was not dazzling to our eyes, being a deep crimson, a dusky, lurid red, and gazing forward I could make out its general features. The spherical coma was what lay full before us, a gigantic ball of crimson-glowing electrical energy that I knew, as in all comets, was hollow, holding in the space inside it the solid matter of the nucleus. Behind it, too, I could glimpse the vast faint-glowing tail streaming outward behind the onrushing coma. The light of that tail, I knew, was but faint electrical energy shot back from the terrific coma and propelling that coma forward through space like a great rocket streaming fire behind it. The small comets of our own galaxy, I knew, moved in fixed though irregular orbits about our stars, and thus would often move about a star or sun in the opposite direction to that in which their tail was pushing them, simply because even the impetus of the tail could not make them leave their fixed orbits. This giant comet of outer space, though, I knew, moved in no orbit whatever through the empty immensities of the outer void, and so would always race through space in a direction opposite to that of its tail, the energy of the mighty coma shot forth in the tail like the powder of a great rocket, propelling it irresistibly forward with terrific momentum and force.

The glowing coma seemed countless millions of miles across, the still vaster tail behind appearing to extend limitlessly backward into the void. Gazing toward it, with something of awe, I was silent for a time, then turned to the speech-instrument. "We'll slant our ships up over the coma," I ordered, "and reconnoiter it for an opening."

Our massed cruisers shot steeply upward at the order, but as they did so the voice of Jurt Tul came doubtfully from the opening before me. "You think we can find an opening through which we can penetrate inside the coma?" he asked.

"We'll have to," I told him. "We've only a few score hours left to get inside and bring our force-beams to bear on the nucleus."

The Aldebaranian's voice came slowly in answer. "That coma," he said; "it seems impossible that we can ever get inside it-"

There was silence as I gazed ahead toward the great comet, whose coma was now indeed a terrific spectacle. An immense lurid sea of crimson light, it seemed to fill all the universe, shifting slowly downward and beneath us as our thousand cruisers hummed up at a steep slant over it. We were racing toward it at a full million miles above its level, the rim of the huge sphere of crimson light creeping across the black void beneath us as comet and cruisers rushed closer to each other. Gazing down toward the great coma, its lurid crimson light drenching all in the control room, I heard startled exclamations beneath as even the imperturbable members of my cruiser's cosmopolitan crew were awed by the comet's magnitude and terror. Then, when the titanic crimson sphere of the coma seemed squarely beneath our rushing ships, I uttered a word into the instrument before me, and immediately our cruiser and the thousand behind it had halted, had turned squarely about, and then at reduced speed were racing along at the same speed as the comet, hanging above it and accompanying it on its mad rush through the void toward our galaxy.

Below us now lay the giant red-glowing globe of the coma, racing on toward the far swarm of light-points that was our galaxy. And now, gazing intently down into its far-flung glowing mass, I strained my eyes for sight of some opening, some crevice in that mighty body of glowing electrical energy that would permit us to penetrate to the space inside it. Yet no such opening could be seen, no tiniest break in the coma's lurid sphere. A single, unbroken and gigantic globe of crimson luminescence, it hung beneath us, as we rushed through the void, the vast fan-tail of faintest crimson light streaming out behind. Through all our days of tense flight outward toward the comet I had hoped against hope that in its coma would be some break or opening, however small, that would permit us to penetrate inside, but now my last hope, and the galaxy's last hope, was shattered by the glowing, unbroken mass of this gigantic comet's coma. With sinking heart I gazed down toward it as our triangle of ships sped on above it.

Gor Han's deep voice sounded from the instrument before me. "There seems no opening in the coma at all, Khel Ken," he said. "And it is instant annihilation for anything to venture into that coma's electrical energy!"

"We'll have to drop lower and cruise about the coma's surface," I told the Betelgeusan. "We must get inside."

With the words our cruiser began to sink smoothly downward, still holding its forward flight above the comet, the massed ships behind following steadily in our course. Down-down-by thousands of miles a moment we sank, down until the giant coma beneath seemed the only thing in all the universe, glowing from horizon to horizon like an awful aurora of crimson death. An inconceivably colossal sea of lurid electrical energy, a giant deadly sphere of glowing force which it were annihilation for anything to touch, it stretched beneath us, broadening still as we came closer toward it. Down-down-

A cry from Najus Nar sounded beside me. "Those cubes!" the insectman was shouting. "Racing ahead of the comet there!"

Swiftly I gazed down toward the foremost rim of the great, onrushing coma, and saw what he had seen. Racing along a few thousand miles in front of the comet, separated from each other by spaces, there sped score upon score of mighty metal cubes, glinting in the coma's lurid light! Distant as they were, I could glimpse them clearly through our telescopic windows, extending in a great chain or line around the comet's head, and rushing before it through the deeps of space. And there were openings in the sides of these speeding cubes, transparent openings from which gushed pure white light! For they were ships! Colossal cube-ships flashing on with the great comet on its thundering rush toward our universe!

"Cube-ships!" It was Gor Han's shout that echoed my thought.

"Cube-ships!" Najus Nar too was crying. "Scouting before the comet!"

"And that means that these cubeships are from the comet's heart!" I cried excitedly; "from its-"

My exclamation had been cut short by simultaneous sharp cries from Gor Han and Jurt Tul.

"The cubes have seen us!" they shouted. "They're coming up toward us!"

For there, far below us, the great chain of mighty cube-ships had suddenly condensed, shortened, and they had all, a hundred or more in number, massed swiftly together as though in answer to some sudden alarm and were driving up toward us! At velocity incredible they shot up toward us, while we gazed stunned; then as they flashed nearer there flashed up from the foremost of them a long, slender shaft of crimson light like that of the comet below, a terrific bolt of electrical energy like that of the coma beneath, which struck one of our cruisers squarely and instantly annihilated it. And as we gazed stupefied toward it in that dazing moment, from the upleaping cubes beneath score upon score of other crimson deadly bolts were stabbing up toward us!