Full download ebook at ebookgrade.

com

Introduction to Communication and Artificial

Intelligence David J. Gunkel An David J.
Gunkel

https://ebookgrade.com/product/introduction-to-
communication-and-artificial-intelligence-david-j-
gunkel-an-david-j-gunkel/

Download more ebook from https://ebookgrade.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Attachment in Psychotherapy David J. Wallin David J.

Wallin

https://ebookgrade.com/product/attachment-in-psychotherapy-david-
j-wallin-david-j-wallin/

Introduction to Python for Science and Engineering

David J. Pine

https://ebookgrade.com/product/introduction-to-python-for-
science-and-engineering-david-j-pine/

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence 2th 0009172

https://ebookgrade.com/product/introduction-to-artificial-
intelligence-2th-0009172/

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics David J. Griffiths

& Darrell F. Schroeter

https://ebookgrade.com/product/introduction-to-quantum-mechanics-
david-j-griffiths-darrell-f-schroeter/
Introduction to Christian Worldview An Tawa J. Anderson
& W. Michael Clark & David K. Naugle

https://ebookgrade.com/product/introduction-to-christian-
worldview-an-tawa-j-anderson-w-michael-clark-david-k-naugle/

Artificial Intelligence Introduction B089GJ58WG

https://ebookgrade.com/product/artificial-intelligence-
introduction-b089gj58wg/

Artificial Intelligence Introduction B089GJ58WG

https://ebookgrade.com/product/artificial-intelligence-
introduction-b089gj58wg-2/

Artificial Intelligence A New Synthesis by Nils J.

Nilsson

https://ebookgrade.com/product/artificial-intelligence-a-new-
synthesis-by-nils-j-nilsson/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The star-
stealers
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The star-stealers

Author: Edmond Hamilton

Illustrator: Hugh Rankin

Release date: April 21, 2024 [eBook #73442]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing

Company, 1929

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STAR-

STEALERS ***
 THE STAR-STEALERS

By EDMOND HAMILTON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Weird Tales May, February 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
As I stepped into the narrow bridgeroom the pilot at the controls
there turned toward me, saluting.
"Alpha Centauri dead ahead, sir," he reported.
"Turn thirty degrees outward," I told him, "and throttle down to
eighty light-speeds until we've passed the star."
Instantly the shining levers flicked back under his hands, and as I
stepped over to his side I saw the arrows of the speed-dials creeping
backward with the slowing of our flight. Then, gazing through the
broad windows which formed the room's front side, I watched the
interstellar panorama ahead shifting sidewise with the turning of our
course.
The narrow bridgeroom lay across the very top of our ship's long,
cigar-like hull, and through its windows all the brilliance of the
heavens around us lay revealed. Ahead flamed the great double star
of Alpha Centauri, two mighty blazing suns which dimmed all else in
the heavens, and which crept slowly sidewise as we veered away
from them. Toward our right there stretched along the inky skies the
far-flung powdered fires of the Galaxy's thronging suns, gemmed
with the crimson splendors of Betelgeuse and the clear brilliance of
Canopus and the hot white light of Rigel. And straight ahead, now,
gleaming out beyond the twin suns we were passing, shone the
clear yellow star that was the sun of our own system.
It was the yellow star that I was watching, now, as our ship fled on
toward it at eighty times the speed of light; for more than two years
had passed since our cruiser had left it, to become a part of that
great navy of the Federation of Stars which maintained peace over
all the Galaxy. We had gone far with the fleet, in those two years,
cruising with it the length and breadth of the Milky Way, patrolling
the space-lanes of the Galaxy and helping to crush the occasional
pirate ships which appeared to levy toll on the interstellar commerce.
And now that an order flashed from the authorities of our own solar
system had recalled us home, it was with an unalloyed eagerness
that we looked forward to the moment of our return. The stars we
had touched at, the peoples of their worlds, these had been friendly
enough toward us, as fellow-members of the great Federation, yet
for all their hospitality we had been glad enough to leave them. For
though we had long ago become accustomed to the alien and
unhuman forms of the different stellar races, from the strange brain-
men of Algol to the birdlike people of Sirius, their worlds were not
human worlds, not the familiar eight little planets which swung
around our own sun, and toward which we were speeding
homeward now.
While I mused thus at the window the two circling suns of Alpha
Centauri had dropped behind us, and now, with a swift clicking of
switches, the pilot beside me turned on our full speed. Within a few
minutes our ship was hurtling on at almost a thousand light-speeds,
flung forward by the power of our newly invented de-transforming
generators, which could produce propulsion-vibrations of almost a
thousand times the frequency of the light-vibrations. At this
immense velocity, matched by few other craft in the Galaxy, we were
leaping through millions of miles of space each second, yet the
gleaming yellow star ahead seemed quite unchanged in size.
Abruptly the door behind me clicked open to admit young Dal Nara,
the ship's second-officer, descended from a long line of famous
interstellar pilots, who grinned at me openly as she saluted.
"Twelve more hours, sir, and we'll be there," she said.
I smiled at her eagerness. "You'll not be sorry to get back to our
little sun, will you?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"Not I! It may be just a pin-head beside Canopus and the rest, but
there's no place like it in the Galaxy. I'm wondering, though, what
made them call us back to the fleet so suddenly."
My own face clouded, at that. "I don't know," I said, slowly. "It's
almost unprecedented for any star to call one of its ships back from
the Federation fleet, but there must have been some reason——"
"Well," she said cheerfully, turning toward the door, "it doesn't
matter what the reason is, so long as it means a trip home. The
crew is worse than I am—they're scrapping the generators down in
the engine-room to get another light-speed out of them."
I laughed as the door clicked shut behind her, but as I turned back
to the window the question she had voiced rose again in my mind,
and I gazed thoughtfully toward the yellow star ahead. For as I had
told Dal Nara, it was a well-nigh unheard-of thing for any star to
recall one of its cruisers from the great fleet of the Federation.
Including as it did every peopled star in the Galaxy, the Federation
relied entirely upon the fleet to police the interstellar spaces, and to
that fleet each star contributed its quota of cruisers. Only a last
extremity, I knew, would ever induce any star to recall one of its
ships, yet the message flashed to our ship had ordered us to return
to the solar system at full speed and report at the Bureau of
Astronomical Knowledge, on Neptune. Whatever was behind the
order, I thought, I would learn soon enough, for we were now
speeding over the last lap of our homeward journey; so I strove to
put the matter from my mind for the time being.
With an odd persistence, though, the question continued to trouble
my thoughts in the hours that followed, and when we finally swept
in toward the solar system twelve hours later, it was with a certain
abstractedness that I watched the slow largening of the yellow star
that was our sun. Our velocity had slackened steadily as we
approached that star, and we were moving at a bare one light-speed
when we finally swept down toward its outermost, far-swinging
planet, Neptune, the solar system's point of arrival and departure for
all interstellar commerce. Even this speed we reduced still further as
we sped past Neptune's single circling moon and down through the
crowded shipping-lanes toward the surface of the planet itself.
Fifty miles above its surface all sight of the planet beneath was shut
off by the thousands of great ships which hung in dense masses
above it—that vast tangle of interstellar traffic which makes the
great planet the terror of all inexperienced pilots. From horizon to
horizon, it seemed, the ships crowded upon each other, drawn from
every quarter of the Galaxy. Huge grain-boats from Betelgeuse, vast,
palatial liners from Arcturus and Vega, ship-loads of radium ores
from the worlds that circle giant Antares, long, swift mail-boats from
distant Deneb—all these and myriad others swirled and circled in
one great mass above the planet, dropping down one by one as the
official traffic-directors flashed from their own boats the brilliant
signals which allowed a lucky one to descend. And through
occasional rifts in the crowded mass of ships could be glimpsed the
interplanetary traffic of the lower levels, a swarm of swift little boats
which darted ceaselessly back and forth on their comparatively short
journeys, ferrying crowds of passengers to Jupiter and Venus and
Earth, seeming like little toy-boats beside the mighty bulks of the
great interstellar ships above them.
As our own cruiser drove down toward the mass of traffic, though, it
cleared away from before us instantly; for the symbol of the
Federation on our bows was known from Canopus to Fomalhaut, and
the cruisers of its fleet were respected by all the traffic of the Galaxy.
Arrowing down through this suddenly opened lane we sped smoothly
down toward the planet's surface, hovering for a moment above its
perplexing maze of white buildings and green gardens, and then
slanting down toward the mighty flat-roofed building which housed
the Bureau of Astronomical Knowledge. As we sped down toward its
roof I could not but contrast the warm, sunny green panorama
beneath with the icy desert which the planet had been until two
hundred thousand years before, when the scientists of the solar
system had devised the great heat-transmitters which catch the
sun's heat near its blazing surface and fling it out as high-frequency
vibrations to the receiving-apparatus on Neptune, to be transformed
back into the heat which warms this world. In a moment, though,
we were landing gently upon the broad roof, upon which rested
scores of other shining cruisers whose crews stood outside them
watching our arrival.
Five minutes later I was whirling downward through the building's
interior in one of the automatic little cone-elevators, out of which I
stepped into a long white corridor. An attendant was awaiting me
there, and I followed him down the corridor's length to a high black
door at its end, which he threw open for me, closing it behind me as
I stepped inside.

It was an ivory-walled, high-ceilinged room in which I found myself,

its whole farther side open to the sunlight and breezes of the green
gardens beyond. At a desk across the room was sitting a short-set
man with gray-streaked hair and keen, inquiring eyes, and as I
entered he sprang up and came toward me.
"Ran Rarak!" he exclaimed. "You've come! For two days, now, we've
been expecting you."
"We were delayed off Aldebaran, sir, by generator trouble," I replied,
bowing, for I had recognized the speaker as Hurus Hol, chief of the
Bureau of Astronomical Knowledge. Now, at a motion from him, I
took a chair beside the desk while he resumed his own seat.
A moment he regarded me in silence, and then slowly spoke. "Ran
Rarak," he said, "you must have wondered why your ship was
ordered back here to the solar system. Well, it was ordered back for
a reason which we dared not state in an open message, a reason
which, if made public, would plunge the solar system instantly into a
chaos of unutterable panic!"
He was silent again for a moment, his eyes on mine, and then went
on. "You know, Ran Rarak, that the universe itself is composed of
infinite depths of space in which float great clusters of suns, star-
clusters which are separated from each other by billions of light-
years of space. You know, too, that our own cluster of suns, which
we call the Galaxy, is roughly disklike in shape, and that our own
particular sun is situated at the very edge of this disk. Beyond lie
only those inconceivable leagues of space which separate us from
the neighboring star-clusters, or island-universes, depths of space
never yet crossed by our own cruisers or by anything else of which
we have record.
"But now, at last, something has crossed those abysses, is crossing
them; since over three weeks ago our astronomers discovered that a
gigantic dark star is approaching our Galaxy from the depths of
infinite space—a titanic, dead sun which their instruments showed to
be of a size incredible, since, dark and dead as it is, it is larger than
the mightiest blazing suns in our own Galaxy, larger than Canopus or
Antares or Betelgeuse—a dark, dead star millions of times larger
than our own fiery sun—a gigantic wanderer out of some far realm
of infinite space, racing toward our Galaxy at a velocity
inconceivable!
"The calculations of our scientists showed that this speeding dark
star would not race into our Galaxy but would speed past its edge,
and out into infinite space again, passing no closer to our own sun,
at that edge, than some fifteen billion miles. There was no possibility
of collision or danger from it, therefore; and so though the approach
of the dark star is known to all in the solar system, there is no idea
of any peril connected with it. But there is something else which has
been kept quite secret from the peoples of the solar system,
something known only to a few astronomers and officials. And that
is that during the last few weeks the path of this speeding dark star
has changed from a straight path to a curving one, that it is curving
inward toward the edge of our Galaxy and will now pass our own
sun, in less than twelve weeks, at a distance of less than three
billion miles, instead of fifteen! And when this titanic dead sun
passes that close to our own sun there can be but one result.
Inevitably our own sun will be caught by the powerful gravitational
grip of the giant dark star and carried out with all its planets into the
depths of infinite space, never to return!"
Hurus Hol paused, his face white and set, gazing past me with wide,
unseeing eyes. My brain whirling beneath the stunning revelation, I
sat rigid, silent, and in a moment he went on.
"If this thing were known to all," he said slowly, "there would be an
instant, terrible panic over the solar system, and for that reason only
a handful have been told. Flight is impossible, for there are not
enough ships in the Galaxy to transport the trillions of the solar
system's population to another star in the four weeks that are left to
us. There is but one chance—one blind, slender chance—and that is
to turn aside this onward-thundering dark star from its present
inward-curving path, to cause it to pass our sun and the Galaxy's
edge far enough away to be harmless. And it is for this reason that
we ordered your return.
"For it is my plan to speed out of the Galaxy into the depths of outer
space to meet this approaching dark star, taking all of the scientific
apparatus and equipment which might be used to swerve it aside
from this curving path it is following. During the last week I have
assembled the equipment for the expedition and have gathered
together a force of fifty star-cruisers which are even now resting on
the roof of this building, manned and ready for the trip. These are
only swift mail-cruisers, though, specially equipped for the trip, and
it was advisable to have at least one battle-cruiser for flag-ship of
the force, and so your own was recalled from the Federation fleet.
And although I shall go with the expedition, of course, it was my
plan to have you yourself as its captain.
"I know, however, that you have spent the last two years in the
service of the Federation fleet; so if you desire, another will be
appointed to the post. It is one of danger—greater danger, I think,
than any of us can dream. Yet the command is yours, if you wish to
accept it."
Hurus Hol ceased, intently scanning my face. A moment I sat silent,
then rose and stepped to the great open window at the room's far
side. Outside stretched the greenery of gardens, and beyond them
the white roofs of buildings, gleaming beneath the faint sunlight.
Instinctively my eyes went up to the source of that light, the tiny
sun, small and faint and far, here, but still—the sun. A long moment
I gazed up toward it, and then turned back to Hurus Hol.
"I accept, sir," I said.
He came to his feet, his eyes shining. "I knew that you would," he
said, simply, and then: "All has been ready for days, Ran Rarak. We
start at once."
Ten minutes later we were on the broad roof, and the crews of our
fifty ships were rushing to their posts in answer to the sharp alarm
of a signal-bell. Another five minutes and Hurus Hol, Dal Nara and I
stood in the bridgeroom of my own cruiser, watching the white roof
drop behind and beneath as we slanted up from it. In a moment the
half-hundred cruisers on that roof had risen and were racing up
behind us, arrowing with us toward the zenith, massed in a close,
wedge-shaped formation.
Above, the brilliant signals of the traffic-boats flashed swiftly,
clearing a wide lane for us, and then we had passed through the jam
of traffic and were driving out past the incoming lines of interstellar
ships at swiftly mounting speed, still holding the same formation
with the massed cruisers behind us.
Behind and around us, now, flamed the great panorama of the
Galaxy's blazing stars, but before us lay only darkness—darkness
inconceivable, into which our ships were flashing out at greater and
greater speed. Neptune had vanished, and far behind lay the single
yellow spark that was all visible of our solar system as we fled out
from it. Out—out—out—rocketing, racing on, out past the
boundaries of the great Galaxy itself into the lightless void, out into
the unplumbed depths of infinite space to save our threatened sun.

Twenty-four hours after our start I stood again in the bridgeroom,

alone except for the silent, imperturbable figure of my ever-watchful
wheelman, Nal Jak, staring out with him into the black gulf that lay
before us. Many an hour we had stood side by side thus, scanning
the interstellar spaces from our cruiser's bridgeroom, but never yet
had my eyes been confronted by such a lightless void as lay before
me now.
Our ship, indeed, seemed to be racing through a region where light
was all but non-existent, a darkness inconceivable to anyone who
had never experienced it. Behind lay the Galaxy we had left, a great
swarm of shining points of light, contracting slowly as we sped away
from it. Toward our right, too, several misty little patches of light
glowed faintly in the darkness, hardly to be seen; though these, I
knew, were other galaxies or star-clusters like our own—titanic
conglomerations of thronging suns dimmed to those tiny flickers of
light by the inconceivable depths of space which separated them
from ourselves.
Except for these, though, we fled on through a cosmic gloom that
was soul-shaking in its deepness and extent, an infinite darkness
and stillness in which our ship seemed the only moving thing. Behind
us, I knew, the formation of our fifty ships was following close on
our track, each ship separated from the next by a five hundred mile
interval and each flashing on at exactly the same speed as
ourselves. But though we knew they followed, our fifty cruisers were
naturally quite invisible to us, and as I gazed now into the tenebrous
void ahead the loneliness of our position was overpowering.
Abruptly the door behind me snapped open, and I half turned
toward it as Hurus Hol entered. He glanced at our speed-dials, and
his brows arched in surprize.
"Good enough," he commented. "If the rest of our ships can hold
this pace it will bring us to the dark star in six days."
I nodded, gazing thoughtfully ahead. "Perhaps sooner," I estimated.
"The dark star is coming toward us at a tremendous velocity,
remember. You will notice on the telechart——"
Together we stepped over to the big telechart, a great rectangular
plate of smoothly burnished silvery metal which hung at the
bridgeroom's end-wall, the one indispensable aid to interstellar
navigation. Upon it were accurately reproduced, by means of
projected and reflected rays, the positions and progress of all
heavenly bodies near the ship. Intently we contemplated it now. At
the rectangle's lower edge there gleamed on the smooth metal a
score or more of little circles of glowing light, of varying sizes,
representing the suns at the edge of the Galaxy behind us.
Outermost of these glowed the light-disk that was our own sun, and
around this Hurus Hol had drawn a shining line or circle lying more
than four billion miles from our sun, on the chart. He had computed
that if the approaching dark star came closer than that to our sun its
mighty gravitational attraction would inevitably draw the latter out
with it into space; so the shining line represented, for us, the
danger-line. And creeping down toward that line and toward our
sun, farther up on the blank metal of the great chart, there moved a
single giant circle of deepest black, an ebon disk a hundred times
the diameter of our glowing little sun-circle, which was sweeping
down toward the Galaxy's edge in a great curve.
Hurus Hol gazed thoughtfully at the sinister dark disk, and then
shook his head. "There's something very strange about that dark
star," he said, slowly. "That curving path it's moving in is contrary to
all the laws of celestial mechanics. I wonder if——"
Before he could finish, the words were broken off in his mouth. For
at that moment there came a terrific shock, our ship dipped and
reeled crazily, and then was whirling blindly about as though caught
and shaken by a giant hand. Dal Nara, the pilot, Hurus Hol and I
were slammed violently down toward the bridgeroom's end with the
first crash, and then I clung desperately to the edge of a switch-
board as we spun dizzily about. I had a flashing glimpse, through
the windows, of our fifty cruisers whirling blindly about like wind-
tossed straws, and in another glimpse saw two of them caught and
slammed together, both ships smashing like egg-shells beneath the
terrific impact, their crews instantly annihilated. Then, as our own
ship dipped crazily downward again, I saw Hurus Hol creeping across
the floor toward the controls, and in a moment I had slid down
beside him. Another instant and we had our hands on the levers,
and were slowly pulling them back into position.
Caught and buffeted still by the terrific forces outside, our cruiser
slowly steadied to an even keel and then leapt suddenly forward
again, the forces that held us seeming to lessen swiftly as we
flashed on. There came a harsh, grating sound that brought my
heart to my throat as one of the cruisers was hurled past us, grazing
us, and then abruptly the mighty grip that held us had suddenly
disappeared and we were humming on through the same stillness
and silence as before.
I slowed our flight, then, until we hung motionless, and then we
gazed wildly at each other, bruised and panting. Before we could
give utterance to the exclamations on our lips, though, the door
snapped open and Dal Nara burst into the bridgeroom, bleeding
from a cut on her forehead.
"What was that?" she cried, raising a trembling hand to her head. "It
caught us there like toys—and the other ships——"
Before any of us could answer her a bell beside me rang sharply and
from the diaphragm beneath it came the voice of our message-
operator.
"Ships 37, 12, 19 and 44 reported destroyed by collisions, sir," he
announced, his own voice tremulous. "The others report that they
are again taking up formation behind us."
"Very well," I replied. "Order them to start again in three minutes,
on Number One speed-scale."
As I turned back from the instrument I drew a deep breath. "Four
ships destroyed in less than a minute," I said. "And by what?"
"By a whirlpool of ether-currents, undoubtedly," said Hurus Hol. We
stared at him blankly, and he threw out a hand in quick explanation.
"You know that there are currents in the ether—that was discovered
ages ago—and that those currents are responsible for light-drift and
similar phenomena. All such currents in the Galaxy have always been
found to be comparatively slow and sluggish, but out here in empty
space there must be currents of gigantic size and speed, and
apparently we stumbled directly into a great whirlpool or maelstrom
of them. We were fortunate to lose but four ships," he added
soberly.
I shook my head. "I've sailed from Sirius to Rigel," I said, "and I
never met anything like that. And if we meet another——"
The strangeness of our experience, in fact, had unnerved me, for
even after we had tended to our bruises and were again racing on
through the void, it was with a new fearfulness that I gazed ahead.
At any moment, I knew, we might plunge directly into some similar
or even larger maelstrom of ether-currents, yet there was no way by
which we could avoid the danger. We must drive blindly ahead at full
speed and trust to luck to bring us through, and now I began to
understand what perils lay between us and our destination.
As hour followed hour, though, my fearfulness gradually lessened,
for we encountered no more of the dread maelstroms in our onward
flight. Yet as we hummed on and on and on, a new anxiety came to
trouble me, for with the passing of each day we were putting behind
us billions of miles of space, and were flashing nearer and nearer
toward the mighty dark star that was our goal. And even as we fled
on we could see, on the great telechart, the dark disk creeping down
to meet us, thundering on toward the Galaxy from which, unless we
succeeded, it would steal a star.
Unless we succeeded! But could we succeed? Was there any force in
the universe that could turn aside this oncoming dark giant in time
to prevent the theft of our sun? More and more, as we sped on,
there grew in my mind doubt as to our chance of success. We had
gone forth on a blind, desperate venture, on a last slender chance,
and now at last I began to see how slender indeed was that chance.
Dal Nara felt it, too, and even Hurus Hol, I think, but we spoke no
word to each other of our thoughts, standing for hours on end in the
bridgeroom together, and gazing silently and broodingly out into the
darkness where lay our goal.
On the sixth day of our flight we computed, by means of our
telechart and flight-log, that we were within less than a billion miles
of the great dark star ahead, and had slackened our speed until we
were barely creeping forward, attempting to locate our goal in the
dense, unchanged darkness ahead.
Straining against the windows, we three gazed eagerly forward,
while beside me Nal Jak, the wheelman, silently regulated the ship's
speed to my orders. Minutes passed while we sped on, and still
there lay before us only the deep darkness. Could it be that we had
missed our way, that our calculations had been wrong? Could it be—
and then the wild speculations that had begun to rise in my mind
were cut short by a low exclamation from Dal Nara, beside me.
Mutely she pointed ahead.
At first I could see nothing, and then slowly became aware of a
feeble glow of light in the heavens ahead, an area of strange,
subdued light which stretched across the whole sky, it seemed, yet
which was so dim as to be hardly visible to our straining eyes. But
swiftly, as we watched it, it intensified, strengthened, taking shape
as a mighty circle of pale luminescence which filled almost all the
heavens ahead. I gave a low-voiced order to the pilot which reduced
our speed still further, but even so the light grew visibly stronger as
we sped on.
"Light!" whispered Hurus Hol. "Light on a dark star! It's impossible—
and yet——"
And now, in obedience to another order, our ship began to slant
sharply up toward the mighty circle's upper limb, followed by the
half-hundred ships behind us. And as we lifted higher and higher the
circle changed before our eyes into a sphere—a tremendous, faintly
glowing sphere of size inconceivable, filling the heavens with its vast
bulk, feebly luminous like the ghost of some mighty sun, rushing
through space to meet us as we sped up and over it. And now at
last we were over it, sweeping above it with our little fleet at a
height of a half-million miles, contemplating in awed silence the
titanic dimensions of the faint-glowing sphere beneath us.
For in spite of our great height above it, the vast globe stretched
from horizon to horizon beneath us, a single smooth, vastly curving
surface, shining with the dim, unfamiliar light whose source we could
not guess. It was not the light of fire, or glowing gases, for the sun
below was truly a dead one, vast in size as it was. It was a cold
light, a faint but steady phosphorescence like no other light I had
ever seen, a feeble white glow which stretched from horizon to
horizon of the mighty world beneath. Dumfoundedly we stared down
toward it, and then, at a signal to the pilot, our ship began to drop
smoothly downward, trailed by our forty-odd followers behind.
Down, down, we sped, slower and slower, until we suddenly started
as there came from outside the ship a high-pitched hissing shriek.
 "The vast globe stretched from horizon to horizon beneath
them."

"Air!" I cried. "This dark star has an atmosphere! And that light upon
it—see!" And I flung a pointing hand toward the surface of the giant
world below. For as we dropped swiftly down toward that world we
saw at last that the faint light which illuminated it was not artificial
light, or reflected light, but light inherent in itself, since all the
surface of the mighty sphere glowed with the same phosphorescent
light, its plains and hills and valleys alike feebly luminous, with the
soft, dim luminosity of radio-active minerals. A shining world, a world
glowing eternally with cold white light, a luminous, titanic sphere
that rushed through the darkness of infinite space like some pale,
gigantic moon. And upon the surface of the glowing plains beneath
us rose dense and twisted masses of dark, leafless vegetation,
distorted tree-growths and tangles of low shrubs that were all of
deepest black in color, springing out of that glowing soil and twisting
blackly and grotesquely above its feeble light, stretching away over
plain and hill and valley like the monstrous landscape of some
undreamed-of hell!
And now, as our ship slanted down across the surface of the glowing
sphere, there gleamed ahead a deepening of that glow, a
concentration of that feeble light which grew stronger as we raced
on toward it. And it was a city! A city whose mighty buildings were
each a truncated pyramid in shape, towering into the air for
thousands upon thousands of feet, a city whose every building and
street and square glowed with the same faint white light as the
ground upon which they stood, a metropolis out of nightmare, the
darkness of which was dispelled only by the light of its own great
glowing structures and streets. Far away stretched the mass of those
structures, a luminous mass which covered square mile upon square
mile of the surface of this glowing world, and far beyond them there
lifted into the dusky air the shining towers and pyramids of still other
cities.
We straightened, trembling, turning toward each other with white
faces. And then, before any could speak, Dal Nara had whirled to the
window and uttered a hoarse shout. "Look!" she cried, and pointed
down and outward toward the titanic, glowing buildings of the city
ahead; for from their truncated summits were rising suddenly a
swarm of long black shapes, a horde of long black cones which were
racing straight up toward us.
I shouted an order to the pilot, and instantly our ship was turning
and slanting sharply upward, while around us our cruisers sped up
with us. Then, from beneath, there sped up toward us a shining little
cylinder of metal which struck a cruiser racing beside our own. It
exploded instantly into a great flare of blinding light, enveloping the
cruiser it had struck, and then the light had vanished, while with it
had vanished the ship it had enveloped. And from the cones beneath
and beyond there leapt toward us other of the metal cylinders,
striking our ships now by the dozens, flaring and vanishing with
them in great, silent explosions of light.
"Etheric bombs!" I cried. "And our ship is the only battle-cruiser—the
rest have no weapons!"
I turned, cried another order, and in obedience to it our own cruiser
halted suddenly and then dipped downward, racing straight into the
ascending swarm of attacking cones. Down we flashed, down, down,
and toward us sprang a score of the metal cylinders, grazing along
our sides. And then, from the sides of our own downward-swooping
ship there sprang out brilliant shafts of green light, the deadly de-
cohesion ray of the ships of the Federation Fleet. It struck a score of
the cones beneath and they flamed with green light for an instant
and then flew into pieces, spilling downward in a great shower of
tiny fragments as the cohesion of their particles was destroyed by
the deadly ray. And now our cruiser had crashed down through the
swarm of them and was driving down toward the luminous plain
below, then turning and racing sharply upward again while from all
the air around us the black cones swarmed to the attack.
Up, up, we sped, and now I saw that our blow had been struck in
vain, for the last of our ships above were vanishing beneath the
flares of the etheric bombs. One only of our cruisers remained,
racing up toward the zenith in headlong flight with a score of the
great cones in hot pursuit. A moment only I glimpsed this, and then
we had turned once more and were again diving down upon the
attacking cones, while all around us the etheric bombs filled the air
with the silent, exploding flares. Again as we swooped downward
our green rays cut paths of annihilation across the swarming cones
beneath; and then I heard a cry from Hurus Hol, whirled to the
window and glimpsed above us a single great cone that was diving
headlong down toward us in a resistless, ramming swoop. I shouted
to the pilot, sprang to the controls, but was too late to ward off that
deadly blow. There was a great crash at the rear of our cruiser; it
spun dizzily for a moment in midair, and then was tumbling crazily
downward like a falling stone toward the glowing plain a score of
miles below.

I think now that our cruiser's mad downward plunge must have
lasted for minutes, at least, yet at the time it seemed over in a single
instant. I have a confused memory of the bridgeroom spinning about
us as we whirled down, of myself throwing back the controls with a
last, instinctive action, and then there came a ripping, rending crash,
a violent shock, and I was flung into a corner of the room with
terrific force.
Dazed by the swift action of the last few minutes I lay there
motionless for a space of seconds, then scrambled to my feet. Hurus
Hol and Dal Nara were staggering up likewise, the latter hastening at
once down into the cruiser's hull, but Nal Jak, the wheelman, lay
motionless against the wall, stunned by the shock. Our first act was
to bring him back to consciousness by a few rough first-aid
measures, and then we straightened and gazed about us.
Apparently our cruiser's keel was resting upon the ground, but was
tilted over at a sharp angle, as the slant of the room's floor attested.
Through the broad windows we could see that around our prostrate
ship lay a thick, screening grove of black tree-growths which we had
glimpsed from above, and into which we had crashed in our mad
plunge downward. As I was later to learn, it was only the shock-
absorbing qualities of the vegetation into which we had fallen, and
my own last-minute rush to the controls, which had slowed our fall
enough to save us from annihilation.
There was a buzz of excited voices from the crew in the hull beneath
us, and then I turned at a sudden exclamation from Hurus Hol, to
find him pointing up through the observation-windows in the
bridgeroom's ceiling. I glanced up, then shrank back. For high above
were circling a score or more of the long black cones which had
attacked us, and which were apparently surveying the landscape for
some clue to our fate. I gave a sharp catch of indrawn breath as
they dropped lower toward us, and we crouched with pounding
hearts while they dropped nearer. Then we uttered simultaneous
sighs of relief as the long shapes above suddenly drove back up
toward the zenith, apparently certain of our annihilation, massing
and wheeling and then speeding back toward the glowing city from
which they had risen to attack us.
We rose to our feet again, and as we did so the door clicked open to
admit Dal Nara. She was a bruised, disheveled figure, like the rest of
us, but there was something like a grin on her face.
"That cone that rammed us shattered two of our rear vibration-
projectors," she announced, "but that was all the damage. And
outside of one man with a broken shoulder the crew is all right."
"Good!" I exclaimed. "It won't take long to replace the broken
projectors."
She nodded. "I ordered them to put in two of the spares," she
explained. "But what then?"
I considered for a moment. "None of our other cruisers escaped, did
they?" I asked.
Dal Nara slowly shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "Nearly
all of them were destroyed in the first few minutes. I saw Ship 16
racing up in an effort to escape, heading back toward the Galaxy,
but there were cones hot after it and it couldn't have got away."
The quiet voice of Hurus Hol broke in upon us. "Then we alone can
take back word to the Federation of what is happening here," he
said. His eyes suddenly flamed. "Two things we know," he
exclaimed. "We know that this dark star's curving path through
space, which will bring it so fatally near to our own sun in passing, is
a path contrary to all the laws of astronomical science. And we know
now, too, that upon this dark-star world, in those glowing cities
yonder, live beings of some sort who possess, apparently, immense
intelligence and power."
My eyes met his. "You mean——" I began, but he interrupted swiftly.
"I mean that in my belief the answer to this riddle lies in that
glowing city yonder, and that it is there we must go to find that
answer."
"But how?" I asked. "If we take the cruiser near it they'll sight us
and annihilate us."
"There is another way," said Hurus Hol. "We can leave the cruiser
and its crew hidden here, and approach the city on foot—get as near
to it as possible—learn what we can about it."
I think that we all gasped at that suggestion, but as I quickly
revolved it in my mind I saw that it was, in reality, our only chance
to secure any information of value to take back to the Federation. So
we adopted the idea without further discussion and swiftly laid our
plans for the venture. At first it was our plan for only us three to go,
but at Dal Nara's insistence we included the pilot in our party, the
more quickly because I knew her to be resourceful and quick-witted.

Two hours we spent in sleep, at the suggestion of Hurus Hol, then

ate a hasty meal and looked to our weapons, small projectors of the
de-cohesion ray similar to the great ray-tubes of the cruiser. Already
the ship's two shattered vibration-projectors had been replaced by
spares, and our last order was for the crew and under-officers to
await our return without moving beyond the ship in any event. Then
the cruiser's hull-door snapped open and we four stepped outside,
ready for our venture.
The sandy ground upon which we stood glowed with the feeble
white light which seemed to emanate from all rock and soil on this
strange world, a weird light which beat upward upon us instead of
down. And in this light the twisted, alien forms of the leafless trees
around us writhed upward into the dusky air, their smooth black
branches tangling and intertwining far above our heads. As we
paused there Hurus Hol reached down for a glowing pebble, which
he examined intently for a moment.
"Radio-active," he commented. "All this glowing rock and soil." Then
he straightened, glanced around, and led the way unhesitatingly
through the thicket of black forest into which our ship had fallen.
Silently we followed him, in single file, across the shining soil and
beneath the distorted arches of the twisted trees, until at last we
emerged from the thicket and found ourselves upon the open
expanse of the glowing plain. It was a weird landscape which met
our eyes, a landscape of glowing plains and shallow valleys patched
here and there with the sprawling thickets of black forest, a pale,
luminous world whose faint light beat feebly upward into the dusky,
twilight skies above. In the distance, perhaps two miles ahead, a
glow of deeper light flung up against the hovering dusk from the
massed buildings of the luminous city, and toward this we tramped
steadily onward, over the shining plains and gullies and once over a
swift little brook whose waters glowed as they raced like torrents of
rushing light. Within an hour we had drawn to within a distance of
five hundred feet from the outermost of the city's pyramidal
buildings, and crouched in a little clump of dark tree-growths, gazing
fascinatedly toward it.
 "It was a weird landscape that met their eyes."

The scene before us was one of unequaled interest and activity.

Over the masses of huge, shining buildings were flitting great
swarms of the long black cones, moving from roof to roof, while in
the shining streets below them moved other hordes of active figures,
the people of the city. And as our eyes took in these latter I think
that we all felt something of horror, in spite of all the alien forms
which we were familiar with in the thronging worlds of the Galaxy.
For in these creatures was no single point of resemblance to
anything human, nothing which the appalled intelligence could seize
upon as familiar. Imagine an upright cone of black flesh, several feet
in diameter and three or more in height, supported by a dozen or
more smooth long tentacles which branched from its lower end—
supple, boneless octopus-arms which held the cone-body upright
and which served both as arms and legs. And near the top of that
cone trunk were the only features, the twin tiny orifices which were
the ears and a single round and red-rimmed white eye, set between
them. Thus were these beings in appearance, black tentacle-
creatures, moving in unending swirling throngs through streets and
squares and buildings of their glowing city.
Helplessly we stared upon them, from our place of concealment. To
venture into sight, I knew, would be to court swift death. I turned to
Hurus Hol, then started as there came from the city ahead a low,
waxing sound-note, a deep, powerful tone of immense volume which
sounded out over the city like the blast of a deep-pitched horn.
Another note joined it, and another, until it seemed that a score of
mighty horns were calling across the city, and then they died away.
But as we looked now we saw that the shining streets were
emptying, suddenly, that the moving swarms of black tentacle-
creatures were passing into the pyramidal buildings, that the cones
above were slanting down toward the roofs and coming to rest.
Within a space of minutes the streets seemed entirely empty and
deserted, and the only sign of activity over all the city was the
hovering of a few cones that still moved restlessly above it.
Astounded, we watched, and then the explanation came suddenly to
me.
"It's their sleep-period!" I cried. "Their night! These things must rest,
must sleep, like any living thing, and as there's no night on this
glowing world those horn-notes must signal the beginning of their
sleep-period."
Hurus Hol was on his feet, his eyes suddenly kindling. "It's a chance
in a thousand to get inside the city!" he exclaimed.
The next moment we were out of the shelter of our concealing trees
and were racing across the stretch of ground which separated us
from the city. And five minutes later we were standing in the empty,
glowing streets, hugging closely the mighty sloping walls of the huge
buildings along it.
At once Hurus Hol led the way directly down the street toward the
heart of the city, and as we hastened on beside him he answered to
my question, "We must get to the city's center. There's something
there which I glimpsed from our ship, and if it's what I think——"
He had broken into a run, now, and as we raced together down the
bare length of the great, shining avenue, I, for one, had an
unreassuring presentiment of what would happen should the huge
buildings around us disgorge their occupants before we could get
out of the city. Then Hurus Hol had suddenly stopped short, and at a
motion from him we shrank swiftly behind the corner of a pyramid's
slanting walls. Across the street ahead of us were passing a half-
dozen of the tentacle-creatures, gliding smoothly toward the open
door of one of the great pyramids. A moment we crouched, holding
our breath, and then the things had passed inside the building and
the door had slid shut behind them. At once we leapt out and
hastened on.
We were approaching the heart of the city, I judged, and ahead the
broad, shining street we followed seemed to end in a great open
space of some sort. As we sped toward it, between the towering
luminous lines of buildings, a faint droning sound came to our ears
from ahead, waxing louder as we hastened on. The clear space
ahead was looming larger, nearer, now, and then as we raced past
the last great building on the street's length we burst suddenly into
view of the opening ahead and stepped, staring dumfoundedly
toward it.
It was no open plaza or square, but a pit—a shallow, circular pit not
more than a hundred feet in depth but all of a mile in diameter, and
we stood at the rim or edge of it. The floor was smooth and flat, and
upon that floor there lay a grouped mass of hundreds of half-globes
or hemispheres, each fifty feet in diameter, which were resting upon
their flat bases with their curving sides uppermost. Each of these