The Black Star Passes

by Jr. John W. Campbell

  VI

  Taj Lamor gazed down at the tremendous field below him. In it lay closepacked a great mass of ships, a concourse of Titans of Space,dreadnoughts that were soon to set out to win--not a nation, not even aworld, but to conquer a solar system, and to win for their owners a vastnew sun, a sun that would light them and heat them for long ages tocome.

  Momentarily Taj Lamor's gaze followed the retreating figure of TordosGar, the Elder; a figure with stooped shoulders and bowed head. Hisquiet yet vibrant parting words still resounded in his ears:

  "Taj Lamor, remember what I tell you. If you win this awful war--youlose. As will our race. Only if you lose will you win."

  With a frown Taj Lamor stared down at the vast metal hulls glisteningsoftly in the dull light of far-off stars, the single brightly beamingstar that was their goal, and the dim artificial lighting system. Fromthe distance came to him the tapping and humming of the working machinesbelow as they strove to put the finishing touches to the great ships.

  He raised his eyes toward the far-off horizon, where a great yellow starflamed brilliantly against the black velvet of space. He thought of thatplanet where the sky had been blue--an atmosphere of such intensity thatit colored the sky!

  Thoughtfully he gazed at the flaming yellow point.

  He had much to consider now. They had met a new race, barbarians insome ways, yet they had not forgotten the lessons they had learned; theywere not decadent. Between his eon-old people and their new home stoodthese strange beings, a race so young that its age could readily becounted in millennia, but withal a strong, intelligent form of life. Andto a race that had not known war for so many untold ages, it was anunthinkable thing that they must kill other living, intelligent beingsin order that they might live.

  They had no need of moving, Tordos Gar and many others had argued; theycould stay where they were forever, and never find any need for leavingtheir planet. This was the voice of decadence, Taj Lamor told himself;and he had grown to hate that voice.

  There were other men, men who had gone to that other solar system, menwho had seen vast oceans of sparkling water, showering from theirruffled surfaces the brilliant light of a great, hot sun. They had seentowering masses of mountains that reached high into the blue sky of anatural atmosphere, their mighty flanks clothed with green growth;natural plants in abundance.

  And best of all, they had fought and seen action, such as no member oftheir race had known in untold ages. They knew Adventure and Excitement,and they had learned things that no member of their ancient race hadknown for millennia. They had learned the meaning of advancement andchange. They had a new ardor, a new strength, a new emotion to drivethem, and those who would have held them back became enthusiaststhemselves. Enthusiasm may be contagious, but the spirit of theirdecadence was rapidly failing before this new urge. Here was their lastchance and they must take it; they would!

  They had lost many men in that battle on the strange world, but theirrace was intelligent; they learned quickly, the small ships had beenvery hard targets, while their big ships were too easy to strike. Theymust have small ships, yet they must have large ships for cargo, and forthe high speed driving apparatus. The small ships were not able toaccelerate to the terrific speed needed. Once their velocity had beenbrought up to the desired value, it was easy to maintain it with theinfinitely small friction of space as the only retarding force; one atomper cubic inch was all they must meet. This would not hold them up, butthe great amount of fuel and the power equipment needed to accelerate tothe desired speed could not be packed into the small ship. Into the vastholds of the huge ships the smaller ones were packed, long shining rowsof little metal projectiles. Tiny they were, but they could dart andtwist and turn as swiftly as could the ships they had met on that otherworld--tiny ships that flashed about with incredible suddenness, atarget that seemed impossible to hit. These ships would be a match forthose flashing motes of the Yellow Sun. Now it might be that their greattransport and battle ships could settle down to those worlds and arrangethem for their own people!

  And they had discovered new weapons, too. One of their mightiest was avery old apparatus, one that had been forgotten for countless ages. Amodel of it was in existence in some forgotten museum on a desertedplanet, and with it long forgotten tomes that told of its principles,and of its consequences. Invisibility was now at their command. It wasan ancient weapon, but might be exceedingly effective!

  And one other. They had developed a new thing! They had not learned ofit in books, it was their invention! They did not doubt that there wereother machines like it in their museums, but the idea was original withthem. It was a beam of electrical oscillatory waves, projected withtremendous energy, and it would be absorbed by any conductor. They couldmelt a ship with this!

  And thus that great field had been filled with Giants of Space! And ineach of these thousand great warships there nestled three thousand tinyone-man ships.

  Here was a sight to inspire any race!

  Taj Lamor watched as the last of the working machines dragged its slowway out of the great ships. They were finished! The men were already inthem, waiting to start, and now there was an enthusiasm and an activitythat had not been before; now the men were anxious to get that longjourney completed and to be there, in that other system!

  Taj Lamor entered his little special car and shot swiftly down to thegiant cruisers. He stepped out of his little craft and walked over tothe tube conveyor ready for the trip to the nose of the great vessel.Behind him attendants quickly moved his car to a locked cradle berthbeside long rows of similar vehicles.

  A short while later those who were to remain on the dark planet saw thefirst of the monsters of space rise slowly from the ground and leapswiftly forward; then as methodically as though released by automaticmachinery, the others leaped in swift pursuit, rushing across half aworld to the tremendous space lock that would let them out into thevoid. In a long, swift column they rushed on. Then one at a time theypassed out into the mighty sea of space. In space they quickly formedand set out.

  As though by magic, far to the left of their flight, there suddenlyappeared a similar flight of giant ships, and then to the right, andabove them, another seemed to leap out of nothingness as the ships ofother planets came into sight. Quickly they formed a vast cone abouttheir leader's ship, a protecting screen, yet a powerful offensiveformation.

  Endlessly, it seemed, they sped on through the darkness. Then as theyellow star flamed brighter and brighter before them, they slowed theirships till the small fliers could safely be released into space.

  Like a swarm of insects flying about giant birds of space the littleships circled the mighty masses of the battle cruisers. So huge werethey, that in the combined mass of the fleet there rested sufficientgravitational attraction to force the little fliers to form orbits aboutthem. And so they sped on through the void, the vast conical fleet withits slowly circling belt of little ships. A fleet whose counterpart hadnever entered the Solar System.

  It was well beyond the orbit of Pluto that the first of the Solarianscouts detected the approaching invasion fleet. The tension that hadgripped Earth and Venus and their guardian ships for so long a timesuddenly snapped; and like a great machine set into sudden motion, or ahuge boulder, balanced, given the last push that sends it spinning withdestructive violence down a slope, the fleet went into action.

  It was merely a little scout, a ten-man cruiser, that sent in themessage of attack, and then, upon receiving headquarters' permission,went into action. Some of the tacticians had wanted to try to get theentire fleet into battle range for a surprise attack in power; butothers felt that this could not possibly succeed. Most important, theydecided, was the opportunity of learning if the invaders had any newweapons.

  The Nigrans had no warning, for a ten-man cruiser was invisible to them,though the vast bulk of their own ships stood out plainly, lighted by ablazing sun. No need here to make the sun stand still while the battlewas finished! There was no change out here in all time!
The firstintimation of attack that the Nigrans had was the sudden splitting anddestruction of the leading ship. Then, before they could realize whatwas happening, thirty-five other destructive molecular motion beams weretearing through space to meet them! The little ten-man cruiser and itsflight of speedsters was in action! Twenty-one great ships crumpled andburst noiselessly in the void, their gases belching out into space in agreat shining halo of light as the sun's light struck it.

  Unable to see their tiny enemies, who now were striking as swiftly, asdesperately as possible, knowing that death was practically certain,hoping only to destroy a more equal number of the giants, they playedtheir beams of death about them, taking care to miss their own ships asmuch as possible.

  Another ship silently crumpled, and suddenly one cruiser right in theline of the flight was brought to a sudden halt as all its moleculeswere reversed. The ships behind it, unable to stop so suddenly, piledup on it in chaotic wreckage! A vast halo of shining gas spread outfifty thousand miles about, blinding further the other ships, theradiance about them making it impossible to see their tiny enemies.

  Now other of the Solarian ships were coming swiftly to the attack.Suddenly a combination of three of the ten-man cruisers stopped anotherof the great ships instantaneously. There was another soundless crash,and the giant mass of wreckage that heaped suddenly up glowed dully redfrom the energy of impact.

  But now the little ships of the invaders got into action. They had beendelayed by the desperate attempts of the dreadnaughts to wipe out theirenemies with the death rays, and they could not cover the greatdistances without some delay.

  When a battle spreads itself out through a ten-thousand mile cube ofspace--through a thousand billion cubic miles of space--it is impossibleto cover it instantaneously with any machine.

  Already nearly a hundred and fifty of the giant liners had gone intomaking that colossal mass of junk in space. They must protect theremaining cruisers! And it was that flight of small ships that didprotect them. Many of the Solarians went down to death under their rays.The death rays were exceedingly effective, but the heat rays were notable to get quite as long a range, and they were easily detected by theinvisibility locators, which meant certain destruction, for a molecularmotion ray would be there in moments, once they had been located.

  The main fleet of the Solar System was already on its way, and everymoment drew closer to this running battle, for the great ships of theNigrans had, although they were entering the system cautiously, beengoing at a very high speed, as interplanetary speeds are measured. Theentire battle had been a running encounter between the two forces. TheSolarian force, invisible because of its small size, was certainlygetting the better of the encounter thus far, but now that the odds werechanging, now that the small ships had come into the fray, engagingthem at close range, they were not having so easy time of it.

  It would be many hours before the full strength of the Solarian fleetcould be brought to bear on the enemy. They were not able to retire andawait their arrival, for they _must_ delay the Nigran fleet. If even oneof those great ships should safely reach the two planets behind them--!

  But within a half hour of the original signal, the Rocket Squad hadthrown itself into the battle with a fervor and abandon that has giventhat famous division a name that will last forever.

  The small fliers of the Nigrans were beginning to take an appalling tollin the thinning ranks of the Solarians. The coming of the Rocket Squadwas welcome indeed! They were able to maneuver as swiftly as the enemy;the speedsters were harder to spot than the Solarian ten-man andthirty-man boats. The Solarian speedsters were even smaller than thecomparable Nigran craft, and some of these did a tremendous amount ofdamage. The heat ray was quite ineffective against the ten-man ships,even when working at full capacity, when produced by the smallgenerators of the Nigran one-man boats. The cruisers could absorb theheat and turn it into power faster than the enemy could supply it. Beamsfrom the monster interstellar liners were another matter, of course.

  But the one-man speedsters had a truly deadly plan of attack against theliners. The plan was officially frowned upon because of the great risksthe pilots must take. They directed their boats at one of the monsterships, all the power units on at full drive. As close to target aspossible the man jumped from his ship, clothed, of course, in analtitude suit equipped with a radio transmitter and receiver.

  Death rays could not stop the speedsters, and with their momentum, theinvaders could not make it less deadly with their heat beam, for,molten, it was still effective. A projectile weighing twenty-two tons,moving a hundred miles a second, can destroy anything man can lift off aplanet! Their very speed made it impossible to dodge them, and usuallythey found their mark. As for the risk, if the Solarian forces werevictorious, the pilots could be picked up later, provided too long atime had not elapsed!

  In the midst of the battle, the Solarians began to wonder why the Nigranfleet was decreasing so rapidly--certainly they had not caused all thatdamage! Then suddenly they found the answer. One of their ships--thenanother--and another fell victim to a pale red ray that showed up like aghostly pillar of luminosity coming from nowhere and going nowhere! Theanswer? The invaders' ships were becoming invisible! The invisibilitydetectors were being overloaded now, and the hunt was hard, while theNigrans were slipping past them and silently destroying Solarian ships!The molecular motion rays were quite effective on an invisibleship--once it had been found. They were destroying the Nigrans asrapidly as they were being destroyed, but they were letting some of themslip past! The luminous paint bombs and bullets were now called intoplay. All enemy ships were shot at with these missiles, and invisibilitywas forestalled.

  At long last the dark bulk of the main fleet approached, a scarcelyvisible cloud of tiny darting metal ships. The battle so far had been apreliminary engagement. The huge ships of the Nigrans were forced tostop their attack, and releasing the last of the fliers, to retire to adistance, protected by a screen of small ships, for they were helplessagainst the Solarian speedsters. Invisibility fell into disfavor, too,now that there were plenty of Solarian ships, for the Nigrans were moreconspicuous when invisible than when visible. The radio detector couldpick them out at once.

  The entire Nigran fleet was beginning to reveal the disorder anduncertainty that arose from desperation, for they were cornered in themost undesirable position possible. They were outside the Solarianfleet, and their ships were lighted by the glare of the sun. Thedefenders, on the other hand, were in such a position that the enemycould see only the "night" side of them--the shadowed side--and, asthere was no air to diffuse the light, they were exceedingly hard tofind. In the bargain, the radium paint was making life for the Nigrans abrief and flitting thing!

  The invaders began to pay an awful toll in this their first realengagement. They lacked the necessary power to cover the entire Solarianfleet with their death rays, and their heat weapons were of little help.The power of the small ships did not count for much--and the big linerscould not use their weapons effectively for their small fliers must bebetween them and their adversary. Despite this, however, the Nigrans sogreatly outnumbered the Earth-Venus forces that it looked as though along and costly war lay ahead.

  At last the Solarian generals tried a ruse, a ruse they hoped would workon these beings; but they who never before had to plan a war in space,were not sure that their opponents had not had experience in the art.True, the Nigrans hadn't revealed any especially strikinggeneralship--had, in fact, committed some inexcusable blunders--but theycouldn't be sure. Though they didn't know it, the Solarians had theadvantage of thousands of years of planetary warfare to rely on. Thisstood them in good stead now.

  The Nigrans were rallying rapidly. To their surprise, the forces of theSolarians were dwindling, and no matter how desperately this remnantfought, they could not hold back the entire force of the Nigran fliers.At last it appeared certain that the small ships could completely engagethe Solarian fleet!

  Quickly the giant cruisers for
med a great dense cone of attack, and at agiven signal, the fliers cleared a hole for them through the greatdisc-shaped shield of the defenders. And with all their rays fanned outin a 100% overlap ahead of them, the Nigran fleet plunged through thedisc of ships at close to four hundred miles per second. They brokethrough--were on their way to the unprotected planets!

  The Solarian ships closed the gap behind them, and eighteen of the giantships burst into wreckage as powerful beams found them, but for the mostpart the remnant of the defending forces were far too busy with thefliers to attack the large ships. Now, as the monster engines ofdestruction raced on toward the planets still approximately two billionmiles away, they knew that, far behind them, their fliers were engagingthe Solarians. They had left their guard--but the guard was keeping theenemy occupied while they were free to drive in!

  Then from nowhere came the counterattack! Nearly five thousandthirty-man ships of Earth and Venus, invisible in the darkness of space,suddenly leaped into action as the dreadnoughts sped past. Theirdestroying rays played over the nigh-helpless giants, and the huge shipswere crumbling into colossal derelicts. With the last of their guardstripped from them, they fell easy prey to the attackers. Faster thanthey could keep count they were losing their warships of space!

  The ruse had worked perfectly! Nearly all of the ten-man and one-manships had been left behind them in the original disc, while all thethirty-man light cruisers, and a few hundred each of the ten-man andone-man crafts sped away to form a great ring twenty thousand milesfarther back. The Nigran fleet had flown blindly into the ambush.

  There was only one thing left for them to do. They were defeated. Theymust return to their far-off black star and leave the Solarians inpossession of their worlds. For all battle purposes their great forcewas nearly wiped out, only the fliers remained in force; and these couldno longer be carried in the remnant of the great liners. Swiftly theyfell back, passing again through the disc, losing thirty more vessels,then raced swiftly away from the fleet of their enemies.

  The Solarians, however, were not content. Their ships were forming in agiant hollow cylinder, and as the sphere of the Nigrans retreated, theirbeams playing behind them, the cylinder moved forward until itsurrounded them, and they raced together toward the distant lightlesssun. The Solar end of the cylinder swiftly closed, blocked by a group ofhuge ships which had taken no visible part in the battle. The Nigranshad stopped using their rays; and the Solarians followed in armedreadiness, not molesting as long as they were not molested.

  Many days this strange flight lasted, till at last the great yellow sun,Sol, had faded in the distance to an unusually brilliant star. Then,suddenly visible out of the darkness, a strange black world loomedahead, and the Nigran ships settled swiftly toward it. Through theairlocks the great liners settled to their planet. No action was takenso long as the Solarian ships were not menaced, but for eight longmonths the darting ships hung above the four englobed worlds of Nigra.

  Then at last the astronomers of Earth and Venus sent through thebillions of miles of ether their message of safety. The guard couldreturn home, for the sun they had been guarding would soon be too farfrom Earth or Venus to make any attack logical. Despite this, for yearsto come the fleet would guard the rim of the System, just to be sure;but it appeared that the suns had passed, never again to meet.

  A strange thing had happened during the passing of the stars. Pluto nolonger circled Sol; it had been captured by Nigra! The great fleetreturned to a changed Solar system. Sol was still at its center, butthere were now ten planets, including two new ones that the sun hadcaptured from Nigra in return for Pluto; and all the planets had shifteda bit in their orbits.

  What the ultimate effect on the planets will be, we cannot say as yet.The change thus far is certainly not very great, though a somewhatwarmer climate exists now on Earth, and it is a bit cooler on Venus. Thelong-range difference, however, will be exceedingly interesting.

  The Solar System has just passed through an experience which is probablyunique in all the history of the mighty nebula of which our sun is aninfinitesimal part. The chances that one star, surrounded by a system ofplanets, should pass within a hundred billion miles of another star,similarly accompanied, was one in billions of billions. That bothsystems should have been inhabited by intelligent races--

  It is easy to understand why the scientists could not believe Arcot'stheory of attack from another sun until they had actually seen thoseother worlds.

  In that war between two solar systems we learned much and lost much.Yet, in all probability we gained more than we lost, for those twonew-old planets will mean tremendous things to us. Already scientistsare at work in the vast museums and ancient laboratories that are onthem, and every day new things are being discovered. We lost many men,but we saved our worlds, and we learned many invaluable secrets from theinvaders. In addition, we have but scratched the surface of a sciencethat is at least a thousand million years old!