Chapter XXI
THE POWER OF "_THE THOUGHT_"
But it seemed, or must have seemed to any infinite being capable ofwatching it as it moved now, that the _Thought_ was a mad thought. Withthe time control opened to the limit, and a touch of the space control,it fled across the Universe at a velocity such as no other thing wascapable of.
One star--it flashed to a disc, loomed enormous--overpowering--thensuddenly they were flashing _through_ it! The enormous coils fed theircurrent into the space-coils and the time field, and the ship seemed totwist and writhe in distorted space as the gravitational field of agiant star, and a giant ship's space field fought for a fraction of timeso short as to be utterly below measurement. Then the ship was gone--andbehind it a star, the center of which had suddenly been hurled intoanother space forever, as the counteracting, gravitational field of theouter layers was removed for a moment, and only its own enormous densityaffected space, writhed and collapsed upon itself, to explode into amighty sea of flames. Planets it formed, we know, by a process such ascan happen when only this man-made accident happens.
But the ship fled on, its great coils partly discharged, but still farmore charged than need be.
It was minutes to Talso where it had been hours with the _AncientMariner_, but now they traveled with the speed of _Thought_!
Talso too was the scene of a battle, and more of a battle than Ortol hadbeen, for here where more powerful defensive forces had been active, theThessians had been more vengeful. All their remaining ships seemedconcentrated here. And the great molecular screen that terrestrianengineers had flung up here had already fallen. Great holes hadopened in it, as two great forts, and a thousand ships, some mightybattleships of the intergalactic spaces, some little scout cruisers,had turned their rays on the struggling defensive machines. It had heldfor hours, thanks to the tremendous tubes that Talso had in theirpower-distribution stations, but in the end had fallen, but not beforemany of their largest cities had been similarly defended, and the peopleof the others had scattered broadcast.
True, wherever they might be, a diffused molecular would find them anddestroy all life save under the few screens, but if the Thessians oncediffused their rays, without entering the atmosphere, the broken screenwould once more be able to hold.
No fleet had kept the Thessian forces out of this atmosphere, but dozensof more adequately powered artificial matter bomb stations had taughtThett respect for Talso. But Talso's own ray screen had stopped theirbombs. They could only send their bombs as high as the screen. They didnot have Arcot's tremendous control power to maintain the matter withoutdifficulty even beyond a screen.
At last the screen had fallen, and the Thessian ships, a hole once made,were able to move, and kept that hole always under them, though if itonce were closed, they would again have the struggle to open it.
Exploding matter bombs had twice caused such spatial strains and ionizedconditions as to come near closing it, but finally the Thessian fleethad arranged a ring of ships about the hole, and opened a cylinder ofrays that reached down to the planet.
Like some gigantic plow the rays tore up mountains, oceans, glaciers andland. Tremendous chasms opened in straight lines as it plowed along.Unprotected cities flashed into fountains of rock and soil and steelthat leaped upwards as the rays touched, and were gone. Protectedcities, their screens blazing briefly under the enormous rayconcentrations as the ships moved on, unheeding, stood safe on islandsof safety amidst the destruction. Here in the lower air, where ionswould be so plentiful, Thett did not try to break down the screens, forthe air would aid the defenders.
Finally, as Thett's forces had planned, they came to one of the ionizedlayer ray-screen stations that was still projecting its cone ofprotective screening to the layer above. Every available ray was turnedon that station, and, designed as it was for protecting part of a world,the station was itself protected, but slowly, slowly as its alreadyheated tubes weakened their electronic emission, the disc of ionsretreated more and more toward the station, as, like some splashingstream, the Thessian rays played upon it forcing it back. A rapidlyaccelerating retreat, faster and faster, as the disc changed from thedull red of normal defense to the higher and bluer quanta of failing,less complete defense, the disc of interference retreated.
Then, with a flash of light, and a roar as the soil below spouted up,the station was gone. It had failed.
Instantly the ring of ships expanded as the great screen was weakened bythe withdrawal of this support. Wider was the path of destruction now asthe forces moved on.
But high, high in the sky, far out of sight of the naked eye, was a tinyspot that was in reality a giant ship. It was flashing forward, and inmoments it was visible. Then, as another deserted city vanished, it wasabove the Thessian fleet.
Their rays were directed downward through a hole that was even larger. Asecond station had gone with that city. But, as by magic, the holeclosed up, and chopped their rays off with a decisiveness that startledthem. The interference was so sharp now that not even the dullest ofreds showed where their beams touched. The close interference was givingoff only radio! In amazement they looked for this new station of suchenormous power that their combined rays did not noticeably affect it. Aworld had been fighting their rays unsuccessfully. What single stationcould do this, if the many stations of the world could not? There wasbut one they knew of, and they turned now to search for the ship theyknew must be there.
"No horrors this time; just clean, burning energy," muttered Arcot.
It was clean, and it was burning. In an instant one of the forts was amass of opalescence that shifted so swiftly it was purest white, thenrocketed away, lifeless, and no longer relux.
The other fort had its screen up, though its power, designed towithstand the attack of a fleet of enormous intergalactic,matter-driven, fighting ships lasted but an instant under the drivingpower of half a million million suns, concentrated in one enormous rayof energy. The sheer energy of the ray itself, molecular ray though itwas, heated the material it struck to blinding incandescence even as ithurled it at a velocity close to that of light into outer space. Withlittle sparkling flashes battleships of the void after giant cruisersflashed into lux, and vanished under the ray.
A tremendous combined ray of magnetism and cosmic ray energy replacedthe molecular, and the ships exploded into a dust as fine as theprimeval gas from which came all matter.
Sweeping energy, so enormous that the defenses of the ships did not evenoperate against it, shattered ship after ship, till the few thatremained turned, and, faster than the pursuing energies could racethrough space, faster than light, headed for their base.
"That was fair fight; energy against energy," said Arcot delightedly,for his new toy, which made playthings of suns and fed on the cosmicenergy of a universe, was behaving nicely, "and as I said, Stel FelsoTheu, at the beginning of this war, the greater Power wins, always. Andin our island here, I have five hundred thousand million separate powerplants, each generating at the rate of decillions of ergs a second,backing this ship.
"Your world will be safe now, and we will head for our last embattledally, Sirius." The titanic ship turned, and disappeared from the view ofthe madly rejoicing billions of Talso below, as it sped, far faster thanlight, across a universe to relieve another sorely tried civilization.
Knowing their cause was lost, hopeless in the knowledge that nothingknown to them could battle that enormous force concentrated in one ship,the _Thought_, the Thessians had but one aim now, to do all the damagein their power before leaving.
Already their tremendous, unarmed and unarmored transports weredeparting with their hundreds of thousands from that base system for thefar-off Island of Space from which they had come. Their battlefleetswere engaged in destroying all the cities of the allies, and those otherhelpless races of our system that they could. Those other inhabitedworlds, many of which were completely wiped out because Arcot had noknowledge of them, were relieved only when the general call for retreatto pr
otect the mother planet was sent out.
But Sirius was looming enormous before them. And its planets, heavilydefended now by the combined Sirian, Terrestrial and Venerian fleets andgreat ray screens as well as a few matter-bomb stations, were sufferinglosses none the less. For the old Sixth of Negra, the Third here, hadfallen. Slipping in on the night side of the planet, all power off, andso sending forth no warning impulses till it actually fell through theray screen, a small fleet of scouts had entered. Falling still undersimple gravity, they had been missed by the rays till they had fallen toso small a distance, that no humans or men of our allied systems couldhave stopped, but only their enormous iron boned strength permitted themto resist the acceleration they used to avert collision with the planet.Then scattering swiftly, they had blasted the great protective screenstations by attacking on the sides, where the ray screen projectors werenot mounted. Designed to protect above, they had no side armor, and theSixth was opened to attack.
Two and one-half billion people lost their lives painlessly andinstantaneously as tremendous diffused moleculars played on therevolving planet.
Arcot arrived soon after this catastrophe. The Thessians left almostimmediately, after the loss of three hundred or more ships. One hundredand fifty wrecks were found. The rest were so blasted by the forceswhich attacked them, that no traces could be found, and no count made.
But as those ships fled back to their base, Arcot, with the wonderfullydelicate mental control of his ship, was able to watch them, and followthem; for, invisible under normal conditions, by twisting space in thesame manner that they did he was able to see them flee, and follow.
Light year after light year they raced toward the distant base. Theyreached it in two hours, and Arcot saw them from a distance sink to thevarious worlds. There were twelve gigantic worlds, each far larger thanJupiter of Sol, and larger than Stwall of Talso's sun, Renl.
"I think," said Arcot as he stopped the ship at a third of a light year,"that we had best destroy those planets. We may kill many men, andinnocent non-combatants, but they have killed many of our races, and itis necessary. There are, no doubt, other worlds of this Universe herethat we do not know of that have felt the vengeance of Thett, and if wecan cause such trouble to them by destroying these worlds, and puttingthe fear of our attacking their mother world into them, they will calloff those other fleets. I could have been invisible to Thett's ships aswe followed them here, and for the greater part of the way I was, for Iwas sufficiently out of their time-rate, so that they were visible onlyby the short ultra-violet, which would have put in their infra-red, and,no photo-electric cell will work on quanta of such low energy. When atlast I was sure of the sun for which they were heading, I let them seeus, and they know we are aware of their base, and that we can followthem.
"I will destroy one of these worlds, and follow a fleet as it starts fortheir home nebula. Gradually, as they run, I will fade intoinvisibility, and they will not know that I have dropped back here tocomplete the work, but will think I am still following. Probably theywill run to some other nebula in an effort to throw me off, but theywill most certainly send back a ship to call the fleets here to thedefense of Thett.
"I think that is the best plan. Do you agree?"
"Arcot," asked Morey slowly, "if this race attempts to settle anotherUniverse, what would that indicate of their own?"
"Hmmm--that it was either populated by their own race or that anotherrace held the parts they did not, and that the other race was stronger,"replied Arcot. "The thought idea in their minds has always been a singleworld, single solar system as their home, however."
"And single solar systems cannot originate in this Space," repliedMorey, referring to the fact that in the primeval gas from which allmatter in this Universe and all others came, no condensation of massless than thousands of millions of times that of a sun could form andcontinue.
"We can only investigate--and hope that they do not inhabit the wholesystem, for I am determined that, unpleasant as the idea may be, thereis one race that we cannot afford to have visiting us, and it is goingto be permanently restrained in one way or another. I will first have aconference with their leaders and if they will not be peaceful--the_Thought_ can destroy or make a Universe! But I think that a second raceholds part of that Universe, for several times we have read in theirminds the thought of the 'Mighty Warless Ones of Venone.'"
"And how do you plan to destroy so large a planet as these are?" askedMorey, indicating the telectroscope screen.
"Watch and see!" said Arcot.
They shot suddenly toward the distant sun, and as it expanded, planetscame into view. Moving ever slower on the time control, Arcot drove theship toward a gigantic planet at a distance of approximately 300,000,000miles from its primary, the sun of this system.
Arcot fell into step with the planet as it moved about in its orbit, andwatched the speed indicator carefully.
"What's the orbital speed, Morey?" asked Arcot.
"About twelve and a half miles per second," replied the somewhatmystified Morey.
"Excellent, my dear Watson," replied Arcot. "And now does my dear friendknow the average molecular velocity of ordinary air?"
"Why, about one-third of a mile a second, average."
"And if that planet as a whole should stop moving, and the individualmolecules be given the entire energy, what would their average velocitybe? And what temperature would that represent?" asked Arcot.
"Good--Why, they would have to have the same kinetic energy asindividuals as they now have as a whole, and that would be an averagemolecular velocity in random motion of 12.5 miles a second--givingabout--about--about--twelve thousand degrees centigrade!" exclaimedMorey in surprise. "That would put it in the far blue-white region!"
"Perfect. Now watch." Arcot donned the headpiece he had removed, andonce more took charge. He was very far from the planet, as distances go,and they could not see his ship. But he wanted to be seen. So he movedcloser, and hung off to the sunward side of the planet, then moved tothe night side, but stayed in the light. In seconds, a battlefleet wasout attempting to destroy him.
Surrounding the ship with a wall of artificial matter, lest they annoyhim, he set to work.
Directly in the orbit of the planet, a faint mistiness appeared, andrapidly solidified to a titanic cup, directly in the path of the planet.
Arcot was pouring energy into the making of that matter at such a ratethat space was twisted now about them. The meter before them, which hadnot registered previously, was registering now, and had moved over tothree. Three sols--and was still climbing. It stopped when ten werereached. Ten times the energy of our sun was pouring into thatcondensation, and it solidified quickly.
The Thessians had seen the danger now. It was less than ten minutes awayfrom their planet, and now great numbers of ships of all sorts startedup from the planet, swarming out like rats from a sinking vessel.
Majestically the great world moved on in its orbit toward the thin wallof infinite strength and infinite toughness. Already Thessianbattleships were tearing at that wall with rays of all types, and thewall sputtered back little gouts of light, and remained. The meters onthe _Thought_ were no longer registering. The wall was built, and nowArcot had all the giant power of the ship holding it there. Any attemptto move it or destroy it, and all the energy of the Universe would rushto its defense!
The atmosphere of the planet reached the wall. Instantly, as thepressure of that enormous mass of air touched it, the wall fought, andburst into a blaze of energy. It was fighting now, and the meter thatmeasured sun-powers ran steadily, swiftly up the scale. But the men werenot watching the meter; they were watching the awesome sight of Manstopping a world in its course! Turning a world from its path!
But the meter climbed suddenly, and the world was suddenly a tremendousblaze of light. The solid rock had struck the giant cup, 110,000 milesin diameter. It was silent, as a world pitted its enormous kineticenergy against the combined forces of a universe. Soundless--and ashop
eless. Its strength was nothing, its energy pitted unnoticed againstthe energy of five hundred thousand million suns--as vain as thosefutile attempts of the Thessian battleships on the invulnerable walls ofthe _Thought_.
What use is there to attempt description of that scene as2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of rock and metal and mattercrashed against a wall of energy, immovable and inconceivable. Theplanet crumpled, and split wide. A thousand pieces, and suddenly therewas a further mistiness about it, and the whole enormous mass, seemingbut a toy, as it was from this distance in space, and as it was in thisship, was enclosed in that same, immovable, unalterable wall of energy.
The ship was as quiet and noiseless, as without indication of strain aswhen it hummed its way through empty space. But the planet crumpled andtwirled, and great seas of energy flashed about it.
The world, seeming tiny, was dashed helpless against a wall that stoppedit, but the wall flared into equal and opposite energy, so that matterwas raised not to the twelve thousand Morey had estimated but nearertwenty-four thousand degrees. It was over in less than half an hour, anda broken, misshapen mass of blue incandescence floated in space. Itwould fall now, toward the sun, and it would, because it was motionlessand the sun moved, take an eccentric orbit about that sun. Eventually,perhaps, it would wipe out the four inferior planets, or perhaps itwould be broken as it came within the Roches limit of that sun. But theplanet was now a miniature sun, and not so very small, at that.
And from every planet of the system was pouring an assorted stream ofships, great and small, and they all set panic-stricken across the voidin the same direction. They had seen the power of the _Thought_, and didnot contest any longer its right to this system.
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