Part 25 (1/2)
The _Thought_ moved on, on to other suns. They must find one that was inhabited.
They stopped at last near a great orange giant, and examined it. It had indeed planets, and as Arcot watched, he saw in the telectroscope a line of gigantic freighters rise from the world, and whisk off to nothingness as they exceeded the speed of light! Instantly he started the _Thought_ searching in time fields for the freighters. He found them, and followed them as they raced across the void. He knew he was visible to them, and as he suspected, they soon stopped, slowing down and signaling to him.
”Morey--take the _Thought_. I'm going to visit them in the _Banderlog_ as I think we shall name the tender,” called Arcot, stripping off the headset, and leaving the control seat. The other fleet of s.h.i.+ps was now less than a hundred thousand miles away, clearly visible in the telectroscope. They were still signaling, and Arcot had set an automatic signaling device flas.h.i.+ng an enormously powerful searchlight toward them in a succession of dots and dashes, an obvious signal, though also, obviously unintelligible to those others.
”Is it safe, Arcot?” asked Torlos anxiously. To approach those enormous s.h.i.+ps in the relatively tiny _Banderlog_ seemed unwise.
”Far safer than they'll believe. Remember, only the _Thought_ could stand up against such weapons as even the _Banderlog_ carries, run as they are by cosmic energy,” replied Arcot, diving down toward the little tender.
In a moment it was out through the lock, and sped away from them like a bullet, reaching the distant stranger fleet in less than ten seconds.
”They are communicating by thought!” announced Zezdon Afthen presently.
”But I cannot understand them, for the impulses are too weak to be intelligently received.”
For nearly an hour the _Banderlog_ hung beside the fleet, then it turned about, and raced once more to the _Thought_. Inside the lock, and a moment later Arcot appeared again on the threshold of the door. He looked immensely relieved.
”Well, I have some good news,” he said and smiled, sitting down. ”Follow that bunch, Morey, and I'll tell you about it. Set it and she'll hold nicely. We have a long way to go, and those are slow freighters, accompanied by one Cruiser.
”Those men,” he began, ”are men of Venone. You remember Thett's records said something of the Mighty Warless Ones of Venone? Those are they.
They inhabit most of this universe, leaving the Thessians but four planets of a minor sun, way off in one corner. It seems the Thessians are their undesirable exiles, those who have, from generation to generation, been either forced to go there, or who wanted to go there.
”They did not like the easier and more effective method of disposing of undesirables, the instantaneous death chamber they now use. Thett was their prison world. No one ever returned and his family could go with him if they desired, but if they did not, they were carefully watched for outcroppings of undesirable traits--murder, crime of any sort, any habitual tendency to injustice.
”About six hundred years ago of our time, Thett revolted. There were scientists there, and their scientists had discovered a thing that they had been seeking for generations--the Twin-ray. I don't know what it is, and the Venonians don't either. It is the ray that destroys relux and lux, however, and can be carried only on a machine the size of their forts, due to some limitations. Just what those limitations are the Venonians don't know. Other than that ray they had no new weapons.
”But it was enough. Their guard s.h.i.+ps which had circled the worlds of the prison system, Antseck, were suddenly destroyed, so suddenly that Venone received no word of it till a consignment s.h.i.+p, bringing prisoners, discovered their absence. The consignment s.h.i.+p returned without landing. Thett was now independent. But they were bound to their system, for although they had the molecular s.h.i.+ps, they had never been permitted to have time apparatus, nor to see it, nor was any one who knew its principles ever consigned there. The result was that they were as isolated as ever.
”This was for two centuries. Two centuries later it was worked out by one of their scientists, and the Warless Ones had a War of defense.
Their small fleet of cruisers, designed for rescue work and for clearing s.p.a.ce lanes of wrecks and asteroids, was destroyed instantly, their world was protected only by the ray screen, which the Thessians did not have, and by the fact that they could build more cruisers. In less than a year Thett was defeated, and beaten back to her world, though Venone could not overcome Thett, now, for around their planets they had so many forts projecting the deadly rays, that no s.h.i.+p could approach.
”Then Thett learned how to make the screen, and came again. Venone had planetoid stations, that projected molecular rays of an intensity I wonder at, with their system of projecting. It seems these people have force-power feeds that operate through s.p.a.ce, by which an entire solar system can tie in for power, and they fed these stations in that way.
Lord only knows what tubes they had, but the Thessians couldn't get the power to fight.
”They've been let alone since then, they did not know why. I told them what their dear friends had been doing in that time, and the Venonians were immensely surprised, and very evidently sorry. They begged my pardon for letting loose such a menace, quite sincerely feeling that it was their fault. They offered any help they could give, and I told them that a chart of this system would be of the greatest use. They are going now to Venone, and we are to go with them, and see what they have to offer. Also, they want a demonstration of this 'remarkable s.h.i.+p that can defeat whole fleets of Thessians, and destroy or make planets at will,'”
concluded Arcot.
”I do not in the least blame them for wanting to see this s.h.i.+p in operation, Arcot, but they are, very evidently, a much older race than yours,” said Torlos, his thoughts coming clear and sharp, as those of a man who has thought over what he says carefully. ”Are you not running danger that their minds may be more powerful than yours, that this story they have told you is but a ruse to get this s.h.i.+p on their world where thousand, millions can concentrate their will against you and capture the s.h.i.+p by mind where they cannot capture it by force?”
”That,” agreed Arcot, ”is where 'the rub' comes in as an ancient poet of Earth put it. I don't know and I did not have a chance to see. Wherefore I am about to do some work. Let me have the controls, Morey, will you?”
Arcot made a new s.h.i.+p. It was made entirely, perforce, of cosmium, lux and relux, for those were the only forms of matter he could create in s.p.a.ce permanently from energy. It was equipped with gravity drive, and time distortion speed apparatus, and his far better trained mind finished this smaller s.h.i.+p with his t.i.tanic tools in less than the two days that it took them to reach Venone. In the meantime, the Venonian cruiser had drawn close, and watched in amazement as the s.h.i.+p was fas.h.i.+oned from the energy of s.p.a.ce, became a thing of glistening matter, materializing from the absolute void of s.p.a.ce, and forming under t.i.tanic tools such as the commander could not visualize.
Now, this move was partly the reason for this construction, for while the Venonian was busy, absorbed in watching the miraculous construction, his mind was not s.h.i.+elded, and it was open for observation of two such wonderfully trained minds as those of Zezdon Afthen and Zezdon Inthel.
With their instruments and wonderfully developed mind-science, aided at times by Morey's less skillful, but more powerful mind of his older race, and powerful too, both because of long concentration and training, and because of his individual inheritance, they examined the minds of many of the officers of the s.h.i.+p without their awareness.
As a final test, Arcot, having finished the s.h.i.+p, suggested that the Venonian officer and one of the men of his s.h.i.+p have a trial of mental powers.
Zezdon Afthen tried first, and between the two s.h.i.+ps, racing along side by side at a speed unthinkable, the two men struggled with those forces of will.