by Earl
It took a week. The immune men, like beaters driving wild game past hunters, herded the panic-stricken hypno-beasts at will. Whenever they were in the open, York’s neutron gun blasted into their numbers, ripping them to quivering shreds. It was not till Robar’s men had roamed for twenty-four hours without finding a Beast that York nodded in satisfaction.
“There is not a single Beast left in this ten-mile patch of Earth,” he announced.
But at the same moment, a lumbering form charged from a patch of bushes. It was the last of the Beasts. It seemed berserk, coming forward against a thousand rifles and the blasting-gun.
“Wait!” York yelled, as the men took aim with their guns. “Surround him. Bring him here alive.
A dozen men dragged the struggling, bleating creature before York. Hiding his loathing at its blubbery, oily body and snakelike head, York addressed it by telepathy.
“Can you understand me?” he queried. “Will you answer my questions?”
“I understand you,” came back clearly from the hypno-beast, confirming York’s belief in their semi-intelligence. “I will answer questions only if you promise me speedy death. I do not wish to five here, the last of my kind.”
YORK agreed. “Tell me this. Do you know why you are here, under a dome, pitted against Earth people?”
“No.”
“You don’t know why your kind have been put here, in hundreds of domes, pitted against hundreds of life forms?”
“I did not know of the other domes.” The creature was obviously startled. “I wonder—” His thoughts trailed to nothingness. “What is your native world?”
“The planet system of another sun, according to a legend of ours. I was born here, of course. A long time ago, our progenitors were brought here to this dome.”
“And you have no idea why?”
“None. Now give me death.”
York gave the signal and a fusillade of bullets snuffed out the life of the last hypno-beast under that dome. York looked up. Were the dome builders staring down, watching in mockery? His hatred and loathing of the Beasts swiftly transferred to them. Why hadn’t they interfered? It must be against their plans to have the hypno-beasts wiped out under any one dome.
The maddening enigma of it grated York’s nerves. Was he a pawn in their hands? Or would he have the chance yet to do something, before they were quite aware of who he was and what he planned? If he could only get to his ship!
York worked rapidly. He altered the adjustments of his machine so it would radiate sheer energy. The scientific laws of this universe were no longer a mystery to him. He had the machine dragged to one part of the dome wall, and donned his space-suit. It? oxygen unit still held a trickle of the life-giving gas.
He faced the people he had freed of an age-long menace.
“I am leaving the dome. But I will be back soon, to free you and return you to Earth. I Swear it.”
He stepped through a patch of the energy wall, neutralized by his machine’s counterenergy. Like a god he vanished from their sight, as he had so often from the people back on Earth.
BEYOND the dome wall, he crouched for a moment, quietly, warily. Would the dome builders pounce on him now, like a cat on a mouse? But nothing happened.
York left the dome, treading through a pulpy jungle. The Cepheid luminary was just at its periodic maximum, shining as a blue-hot sun. The outer coating of York’s suit, a product of his advanced science, threw off waves of blistering heat.
He reached the ship, not daring to call Vera mentally before that moment. He jerked the lever of the air-lock and rushed in.
“Vera!” he called vocally. “I’m back. Vera—”
There was no answering sound in the cabin. York ran through the storerooms and laboratory before he knew the truth. Vera was not there! At first he felt almost physically sick. Then York’s nerves eased. Perhaps she had merely stepped out to gather pulp food. Guardedly he sent out a mental call, extending its range slowly in a widening circle about the ship. When no answer came, he recklessly swept a circle a hundred miles around.
Still there was no answer. Vera could not possibly be within range without answering—if she were alive.
York’s eyes went bleak. There was only one answer. The dome builders had discovered the ship and captured Vera!
The icy rage that swept through York’s veins at that moment would have made any of his past enemies—the fifty Immortals, Mason Chard, the Three Eternals—tremble in stark fear. No savage Stone Age man, losing his mate of a few years, could match the blazing agony that seared within York. Vera had been his love, his constant companion, for two thousand years.
York made a vow, in a cold, deadly voice. “No matter what or who you are, dome builders, I’ll search you out. And if you’ve touched a hair of her head—”
He could find no threat that was adequate.
CHAPTER VIII
The Aliens Appear
ANTON YORK labored for a month. He feared detection at any moment. Why didn’t the dome builders come back for him? Why hadn’t the ship been guarded? The sheer strangeness of it utterly baffled him. Vera, of course, would never betray him. But by adding two and two, they must know of York. Were they so all-powerful that they feared nothing?
In that month, York accomplished miracles. He worked at his gravity engine, a protective screen against weapons, and his own weapons. Before, the ship had landed almost a derelict. Now it was again a floating fortress of might, as it had been in his own Universe.
It was not miraculous. It was simply that York had finally solved the new universe’s master laws. It took only minor adjustments to fit his instruments and energy coils to work under those new principles. And by virtue of lower entropy—higher available energy—York’s ship was now a more formidable fighting craft than it had been in Earth’s Universe.
Seated at his controls, he raised the ship one day. Lightly as a feather it darted up. His energy coils drew power from the planet’s gravity field, like a sponge sucking up water. As a test, he shot into space and rammed his ship forward at the speed of light. He braked with his inertialess field to zero in three seconds, without feeling the slightest jar. The engines hummed smoothly, like a snoring giant.
As a test of his protective screen, he chased down a meteor and cracked into it at twice the speed of light. His screen shattered the huge stone instantaneously. His hull was untouched.
He chased down another meteor and turned his gamma-sonic weapon on it. The livid beam whiffed fifty millions tons of matter away in twenty-five seconds. He was amazed himself. In his own Universe, where lower energies reigned, it would have taken at least twice that time.
Satisfied, he dropped back to the planet, hovering over the domes. He saw their full extent now. There were more than a thousand in all, occupying a good portion of the otherwise barren wastes.
York drew a deep breath. He felt better now, better than he had for the three years he had been in this universe. He was no longer a marooned, helpless being. At his fingertips again was super-power.
HE pondered. What was he to do? How could he find the dome builders? And Vera? They seemed bent on ignoring him. He speculated the thought of searching the other twelve planets of the Cepheid sun. This one seemed to be merely an experiment station. Find their center and confront them—
York smiled suddenly. He had a better idea. Ignore him, would they? His hands moved to the controls. His little globular ship dropped toward a dome. York sprayed down energy neutralizing force and his ship dropped through the dome wall into its interior. The wall reformed back of him. He was within. This was the very first dome he had seen, with its pathetic ape-race dominated by the hypno-beasts.
To the denizens of the dome, it must have seemed like the visitation of a god. The globular ship darted around like an angry wasp. Whenever a hypno-beast appeared, a ray stabbed down, and a puff of black soot replaced the Beast. In an hour, York had cleared the dome of every lurking hypno-beast. At the last, he hung over a crude v
illage of the cowering, trembling ape-people, hurling down a mental message.
“You are free of your enemies! You will be returned to your home world eventually. I, Anton York, say it!”
This last was a challenge to the dome builders. From dome to dome York went.
He freed the snowbird people of their hypno-beasts, and the silicon-men, telling both that they would be returned to their home worlds. Then he rocketed to other domes, raying down the hypno-beasts relentlessly. Intelligent they might be, and as deserving of their own existence as any other race. But their connection with the dome builders branded them, in York’s mind, as inimical, only deserving extinction.
Dome after dome, and the hunt sang through York’s veins lustily. This was the sport of the gods! But suddenly the cold shock of reason doused his mind. Another ship appeared before his, going from one dome to another.
Instantly York became cold, wary.
The dome builders had finally answered the attack he had made against their domes. He put his protective screen up to full power. No matter what weapons they had, he knew his screen would stand at least a few minutes of battering. He could flee, as a last resort, if his own weapon failed. Out in space he knew a hundred tricks for eluding pursuers. There was no immediate danger.
He had tensed himself for attack, but it did not come. Instead, from the lone ship, came the clarion voice of telepathy.
“You are Anton York, of Earth?”
“Yes. You have my wife, Vera, in captivity. My first demand is that you release her. Secondly, your dome experiment, whatever it is, must be stopped. The various races must be returned to their own worlds.”
THE psychic voice that came back seemed to be laughing.
“Indeed! You have appointed yourself champion of the universe, Anton York?”
“Call it what you want,” York shot back. “I only know that those races are suffering. They have been for too long under the dominance of the hypno-beasts. The Beasts must be destroyed to the last one.”
The other being seemed to stop laughing and became very sober.
“Exactly. And now we have found the way.”
Startled, York almost bit his tongue. “You mean you have wanted the Beasts destroyed? Your long, elaborate experiment is for that end? But why—”
It was all confusion, suddenly.
“I will explain all. Come with me to our main world, the fifth planet.”
“Wait! If this is trickery, I have a powerful weapon.”
As answer, a tongue of queer green light suddenly sprang from the alien ship. It licked greedily around York’s ship. His electro-screen melted away as though it were cotton. The tip of the green tongue flicked against the hull and gouged out a chunk of meteor-hard metal, with the ease of a whip flicking off a patch of human hide.
York felt it as a tremendous shock that jarred through every inch of the ship, as if a mountain had been hurled down on him. He gasped. His screen, against which great meteors at the speed of light would have cracked to powder, had been pierced as easily by the green ray as a knife going through butter.
Illimitable power! Gigantic might! These the alien must have.
York had to know the full bitter truth. He tripped the lever of his great gamma-sonic weapon, training it dead-center on the other ship. The blast that emerged would have bored a bole ten miles deep in solid steel, it crashed against the alien’s screen, threw up a shower of sparks—and dissipated. It dissipated tike vagrant smoke. York was helpless.
“You see?” came from the alien. “We are supreme scientists. Your puny screen would go down in an instant, if I used any amount of power. But your death is not wished. Up to now we’ve patrolled space against possible expeditions from any planet. But we no longer have to. Follow me.”
YORK followed. They arose from the planet of domes and arrowed toward the Cepheid sun. Within an hour, at the speed of light they had neared the fifth planet. It was strangely like Earth, blue and cloud-wreathed. But only under the waning rays of the variable sun. Under its maximum rays, it must change to a hell-hot purgatory, ten times more trying to life than the fierce humidity of Venus.
“You live under domes, on your planet?” York queried, before they landed.
“No,” came back promptly, politely. “We live in the open. Our whole evolution has been adjusted to the periodic change. We live in frigidity during the wane, and in superheat when our sun waxes, and it is all the same to us. It is the keynote, Anton York, of the story I will soon have to tell.”
York’s ship landed, after the alien’s, in a wide field surrounded by a gleaming city that took his breath away. York had seen countless civilizations, but none so manifestly magnificent as this. He was aware of various subtle impressions. First, a vague air of sadness bung over the city. But it was an air of sadness that was lifting, like mist under a bright sun.
Also, he noticed several ships, in the huge spaceport, hovering as though awaiting their arrival. They dipped. York was not sure, but the ships seemed to be saluting him! The burning mystery of it all piled pyramid high in York’s seething mind. In some way, York, or something he represented, was a hero to these people.
He stepped out in his space-suit, all thought of personal danger gone. The being from the other ship was like the one he had seen once before—thin, spindly, large-headed. His resplendent dress, of fine-spun metallic cloth, suggested high rank. By the deference of his crew and the others around, he must be of the highest rank.
“Yes, I am Vuldane,” the being returned, catching York’s thought. “King of our race, the Korians. Follow me to my palace. Your wife, Vera, is there.”
York stepped eventually into a huge, glittering chamber. He saw only one thing, however. Vera stood in a space-suit ahead.
HE crushed her in his arms. He couldn’t say or telepath a word, at finding her safe.
“Tony, dear,” she said. “I worried for you. But I knew you would be brought here safely.”
She was amazingly calm. And behind her calmness was an odd, puzzled look. York looked around carefully. Suddenly he grasped her wrist. With his other hand he jerked a weapon from his belt, a smaller edition of his gamma-sonic force. He pointed it at Vuldane’s unprotected chest.
“Vuldane,” he snapped mentally. “I came here only to find my wife. Now, unless you want to die, command free departure for us from this planet. I’ll talk with you in space, later, if you come in an unarmed ship. I’ll give you three seconds.”
The king stood rooted in surprise, though not fear. York counted three, then began to squeeze the trigger. But something knocked the gun down. It was Vera herself.
“Tony—no! It would do no good. They would hound you down. You must listen to their story first. And when it’s done, you will wonder yourself what is right and what is wrong.”
York holstered his gun. It had been a mad thing to do. But the past adventures, and the staggering mystery of it, had unbearably tortured his nerves. He whirled on the king, Who seemed unperturbed.
“Tell me the story quickly. You are planning to conquer the universe?”
“No. We are too civilized for such paltry ambitions.”
“All right. But you are propagating the hypno-beasts for some malign purpose. Revenge on another race?”
“No. We want the hypno-beasts killed as I told you. Every last one, if possible.”
“But why then the bell jar experiment? There is some threat to my world. I feel it. You want Earth?”
“No. We do not wish your world, Earth!”
“Talk sense!” York groaned.
“Tony, don’t ask wild questions and interrupt,” Vera admonished. “Let him tell his story. Just listen.”
CHAPTER IX
Tale of Doom
VULDANE nodded. “You would not have harmed me with your gun, by the way. This room is in an energyless field. No weapon works in it. Now listen. This is the story of our race—and our doom!
“We evolved to intelligence a million of your years ago. V
era and I have compared notes. We did not evolve under this sun, but under the rays of another Cepheid variable, at almost the other end of this universe. We lived there industriously and happily for a hundred thousand years. Then our astronomers announced that the sun was due soon to explode into a nova, killing all life on its planets. Cepheids are unstable stars.
“We had to migrate. But we had to find another Cepheid. And to make it difficult, we had to find a Cepheid with the exact period of waxing and waning that our original sun had—twenty-two days. Our biology, our metabolism, our very life-spark, is adjusted to that pulse beat, as yours is adjusted to a uniform condition.”
“I think I understand,” York said. By analogy, on Earth, our most vigorous peoples are in the temperate zones, experiencing alternate winter and summer. Our tropical people are backward, and so are our Arctic people. We are adjusted to that variable pulse of life, though to you it would seem absolutely uniform. You, of course, are adjusted to a change from bitter cold to great heat, either of which would kill us.”
“Clearly put,” acknowledged Vuldane. “We found, after much searching, such a variable, and migrated to its planets. We set up our civilization and had another period of well being. Then that Cepheid reached the explosion point. Again we had to search for a twenty-two day Cepheid—one with planets, which are rare—and migrate to it. We have migrated a dozen times in the past million years, Anton York. We are nomads of the cosmos, never knowing a true home!”
York felt the aura of sadness that suddenly radiated from the alien being. Certainly they were to be pitied for having been cursed to live under a temperamental star like a Cepheid, instead of a long-burning, stable sun, like Sol.
“We have been in this Cepheid system fifty thousand years,” Vuldane resumed. “Two thousand years ago our astronomers again gave out their sickening omen. This sun would soon explode. Again the packing up, the elimination of all but a comparative few to start the race over, the departure from loved homes, deserted cities, the trials of rebuilding a new civilization. That faces us again.”
