The Cosmic Cloud
( Insterstellar Patrol - 7 )
Edmond Hamilton
Poor galactic visibility? Won't worry a blind alien attack fleet.
Edmond Hamilton
The Cosmic Cloud
We three stared at the Chief across the metal desk for a moment before I broke the silence.
"But it's incredible!" I exclaimed. "You must be mistaken, sir-nothing in the galaxy could cause a thing like that!"
Jhul Din and Korus Kan nodded in agreement beside me, but the Chief of the Interstellar Patrol shook his head.
"Yet something in the galaxy is causing it, Dur Nal," he said. "I tell you that this thing has taken thousands of interstellar ships in the last few days without giving us any clue to its cause!"
Slowly I shook my head. "I don't doubt what you say, sir," I told him, "but it seems impossible."
The four of us were sitting in a small metal-walled room through whose window came the red light of mighty Betelgeuse, the sun upon one of whose planets we were. The room was part of the Betelgeuse headquarters of the Interstellar Patrol, and to it but hours before from the great central headquarters at Canopus had come Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol. His first act had been to summon our cruiser, which had been patrolling off Betelgeuse, and he sat considering us now, a great plant-man of Capella whose strange green fibrous body was tense and whose green-pupiled eyes were unmoving as he faced us.
Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I sat across the desk from him. Jhul Din was of Spica, a big powerful crustacean-man, his strong body armored in black shell, his quick eyes protruding. Korus Kan, of Antares, was typical of that star's races, his upright man-like body being of metal, with lens-like eyes, a tireless body-machine in which his living brain was cased. I, Earth-man, completed the trio, and though the members of the Interstellar Patrol are from every peopled sun no stranger three in appearance could have been found in it.
Lacq Larus had been looking thoughtfully out of the window across the teeming world of Betelgeusans outside, but turned and again faced us. "I will explain to you the whole situation," he said, "for it's imperative that you three understand it.
"As you know, our galaxy is a great swarm of suns floating in the vast gulf of space, each with its own worlds and peoples. All. of course, are ruled by the Federation of Suns, and all are policed by our own Interstellar Patrol. Back and forth between these suns has gone the galaxy's interstellar commerce for ages, countless thousands of great space-ships plying from sun to sun without hindrance. But now at last this great commerce of the galaxy is threatened with disaster!
"That threat lies in what we have always known as the cosmic cloud, a vast cloud of utter darkness that lies, as you know, near the galaxy's center. It has always lain there, a tremendous area of utter blackness billions of miles in extent, and of it our scientists have been able to say with certainty only that it is a tremendous region where the light-vibrations are simply non-existent.
"More than that none could say, for no ship can venture into that region without plunging into absolute lightlessness, so that none knows what may lie inside. It is true that some years ago one of the galaxy's scientists, Zat Zanat by name, ventured into the cloud to explore it in a ship with some assistants, having some new theory concerning it which he wished to test. But this scientist, one of the scientists of the sun of Deneb, never emerged from it and without doubt met death in it as many luckless ships in the past have done.
"None other has ever desired to penetrate into the great cloud and the galaxy's interstellar ships have always routed their course far around it, to escape the danger. But suddenly, a few days ago, hundreds of ships passing near the great cloud in space were drawn abruptly into it by some titanic and irresistible force. Their calls for help came to our distance-phones and a score of cruisers of the Patrol were rushed to the cloud's edge to investigate. But they found that the unfortunate swarms of ships had vanished inside it by then, their calls ceasing soon after, and there was no trace of what force had whirled them in!
"Instantly warnings were broadcast to all interstellar ships to avoid the neighborhood of the cloud. The cruisers of the Patrol then reconnoitered completely around it for more than a day, finding nothing unusual. At last we were convinced that it was some great ether-disturbance that had whirled the luckless ships inside, and orders were given that the space-lanes around the cloud were again safe. Yet the interstellar traffic had been streaming around it for no more than a few hours when the thing was repeated, and more than a thousand other great ships were drawn with terrific power and swiftness into the great blackness.
"Again all traffic around the cloud was suspended and again a squadron of Interstellar Patrol cruisers flashed to the scene. But they found nothing more this time, no sign of what had caused the great disaster. For two days we waited, though, but the cruisers there reported all as usual. So with some misgivings we yielded to the clamor from the galaxy's suns and allowed the ships again to route their course around the great blackness. A day passed without mishap and we began to breathe easier. And then the thing struck again, and again, but hours ago, more than a thousand ships with all inside them were whirled into the great cloud's darkness.
"This third disaster has caused something like a panic across the galaxy. All realize now that interstellar traffic around the cloud must be suspended until the thing is cleared up, and since the cloud lies almost at the galaxy's center that means the crippling of our interstellar commerce. Always, in time of great peril, the galaxy's peoples have turned to the Interstellar Patrol to save them. They are turning to us now to bring an end to this great threat, and we of the Patrol must not fail them."
Lacq Larus halted for a moment and as he did so the three of us were on our feet.
"When do we start for the cloud, sir?" asked Jhul Din quietly.
The Chief smiled. "You have guessed it," he said. "I have summoned you here to Betelgeuse, have come here from Canopus to meet you because it is on you three that I now rely. You, Dur Nal and Korus Kan and Jhul Din, saved all this galaxy once, when you dared outside our universe to other universes to thwart those who would have loosed death on us.
"I am asking you, therefore, to dare again for the galaxy, to endeavor to find what force it is that has whirled those thousands of ships into the blackness of the cosmic cloud. I dare not send a number of cruisers there, for all may be lost like the others. I do not even give you an order to go, for it means certain death if that force manifests itself again and draws you into the cloud. But if you can explore around its edges you may be able with your recording-instruments to find out what great ether-disturbance or unknown force it is that has caused these terrible calamities, may save the galaxy from greater ones. I say again though that it is not an order. If you, Dur Nal and your two lieutenants wish to go in your cruiser it is well, but if you do not wish to you need not. What say you?"
He was looking at me fixedly, but my eyes were on the time-dial on my wrist.
"We should reach the cloud's edge within ten hours," was all I said.
* * *
Minutes later our cruiser was slanting up at mounting speed from that swarming world of Betelgeusans, our crew rushing about its throbbing generators and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and I in its pilot room. With Korus Kan at the wheel the long ship rose through the glare of the great crimson sun and threaded through the masses of interstellar shipping until it was speeding through the black gloom of space, with all about us the shining hosts of the galaxy's suns.
Far ahead there stood out against the farther stars what seemed a small black spot in the galaxy's star-swarm. It was, we knew, the colossal cosmic cloud of darkness absolute into which thousands of ships had been drawn to some strange
fate, and whose secret, if secret there were, we must discover. With the cruiser's hull quivering slightly and with the generators beneath talking louder we hurtled at thousands of light-speeds across the galaxy toward that lightless region.
Hour upon hour our cruiser flew like a thing of thought through the vast spaces toward the cloud. At the highest speed safe to use inside the galaxy we were traveling, and as we drew nearer the cloud's edge our space-chart showed that no other ships were in space about us now, all avoiding the cloud's strange menace. But our own craft hurtled steadily on, and steadily the vast region of blackness grew greater in the firmament before us.
In the cruiser's instrument room Jhul Din and I prepared the intricate recording-instruments on which the success of our venture depended. These were mechanisms connected to various indicators outside the hull, which recorded all ether-currents and drifts and disturbances around the ship, all electrical or radioactive or other forces, and all conditions of temperature and pressure.
If it was really some unheard-of and recurring force or some tremendous ether-disturbance that had swept the luckless ships into the cloud, we should be able to determine its nature and source with these aids.
From the instrument room's window Jhul Din and I watched the great cloud largen as we neared it. It seemed soon like a colossal black curtain across the universe, blotting half the galaxy's suns from sight, stretching across billions of miles. What mysteries did that vast and enigmatic region of lightlessness contain?
At last Korus Kan's voice came down through the order-phone from the pilot room. "We're within two million miles of the cloud's edge," he reported. "What orders?"
"Turn right and coast at a hundred light-speeds along its edge," I told him. "Jhul Din and I will start our observations, and I'll let you know when to change course or speed."
He assented briefly, and in the next moment we saw through the window that the gigantic black curtain of the cloud was sliding sidewise as our cruiser turned in space to coast along its edge. At once Jhul Din and I began our work. Bending over the dials of the recording-instruments, the Spican and I made quick readings as the ship moved on.
All ether-conditions outside the cruiser seemed normal, however, with no strong currents or maelstroms anywhere near us. Nor were our other instruments more enlightening, for none registered any unusual force. For more than an hour, while Korus Kan held the cruiser in a steady course along the cloud's edge, we kept to our watch of the dials, but with no greater result.
I turned from the instruments to the window, shaking my head. "I'm afraid it's useless, Jhul Din," I said. "It never was but a slender chance that we might find anything this way, and I'm afraid it has failed."
He looked thoughtfully with me toward the vast black wall of darkness. "Yet it's our one chance to learn anything," he said. "It may be that on the cloud's other side we could discover something."
"We'll have to try it, but I don't place much faith in it," I told him. "Whatever it is about the cloud has caused those-"
With stunning force I was hurled slantwise across the instrument room to strike in one of its corners, Jhul Din flung with me. The next instant saw the room's walls spinning madly around us and rattling us inside them like peas in a box. There were hoarse cries from the generator rooms and a wild uproar through all the cruiser as with awful speed and force it was whirled over and over.
Bruised and half dazed, I retained enough presence of mind to clutch at the rail of the pilot room stair as I was thrown against it, and as Jhul Din was flung past me a moment later I grasped and held his arm. Together we struggled up into the pilot room, where we glimpsed Korus Kan clinging to the wheel-standard as the room gyrated about him.
"The cloud!" he cried. "It's the force they told us of-it's drawing us into the cloud!"
"Into the cloud!"
The cold of outside space seemed about us in the fear that for a moment held us, for as we looked from the windows of the whirling pilot room we saw instantly that the Antarian was right. Our cruiser was hurtling at tremendous speed straight toward the vast region of darkness we had been coasting.
"Turn on full power!" I cried. "Try to bring the ship out of this, Korus Kan!"
"I can't!" he shouted back. "I've got every generator on full but the cruiser doesn't obey its wheel! It's some colossal magnet or magnetic force inside the cloud that's drawing us!"
With every instant the tremendous wall of blackness, as sharply defined as though material, was looming closer before our whirling ship. While Korus Kan worked frantically with the controls, and while the cries of our astounded crew came up to us from beneath, I seized the distance-phone, in the hope of flashing word at least to others in the galaxy of the nature of the force that had seized us. But the distance-phone was going dead, affected by the magnetic force that was drawing us to doom!
By then the great cloud was an appalling sight ahead of us, a vast maw of darkness into which our cruiser was racing at tremendous velocity. The ship's whirling had subsided somewhat and I yelled to Korus Kan to make a last trial of its power. He strained the generators to the breaking-point in the next moment, but it was useless, for nothing could escape the relentless grip of the power that was drawing us on.
Another moment and the blackness was walling the firmament directly before our plunging ship. Something made me turn round at that moment to glance back toward the galaxy's shining suns as though for a last look, and then even as I turned round again we were plunged into a darkness to which the darkest night would have been as noonday, an utter blackness in which no faintest ray of light existed!
I groped in the darkness for the switch of the cruiser's inside lights but though it clicked beneath my fingers there came no answering illumination. Light could not exist in this terrible region! And the quivering of the cruiser about us told us that still at immense speed we were being drawn in toward the cosmic cloud's heart.
On and on we rushed through that shrouding night, Jhul Din and Korus Kan and I bracing ourselves in the pilot room with our hands upon each other's shoulders, facing ahead as though to look through this utter blackness which no eye could pierce. I think now that in those terrible moments the three of us were but waiting in tacit silence for the end. Even were the cruiser to free itself of the deadly force that gripped it we could never now win out of this lightless region in which we would wander blindly.
Still on toward the mighty cloud's heart raced the ship, and to me it seemed that we must be very near its center. A tense expectation of the end held all of us now. But abruptly we cried out together as there came a mounting, hissing sound from outside the cruiser. Our craft was rushing now through air, through an atmosphere!
At the same moment we were aware that it was slowing its tremendous speed, that the mighty magnetic force that had drawn us inward appeared to have vanished. The stunning wonder of the two things occupied us for the moment to the exclusion of all else. Was there a world then here at the cosmic cloud's heart, through whose atmosphere our ship was now moving?
Suddenly my heart stood still as there came a slight jar against our cruiser's side, followed by a succession of flopping sounds upon the ship's top. There was silence for a brief instant while we listened tensely in the utter darkness of the pilot room, and then came a clang of metal against the cruiser's top, and the hiss of some strange force.
"It's some other ship outside!" I cried. "And they're trying to get in-they're boarding us!"
"The top space-door!" Jhul Din shouted. "They're getting in there!" For the clang of the door opening came to our ears at that moment and a flood of cold air from outside rushed through the cruiser.
"Up to the space-door, then!" I yelled. "Hold it against them, whoever they are!"
As we cried out we were bursting out of the pilot room, bumping against walls and doors in the unrelieved darkness, rushing toward the corridor into which that upper space-door opened. I heard the shouts of the crew as they too blindly hastened upward, and then as I burst into
the corridor I sought I collided squarely in the darkness with something. Something that was tall and bulky and that felt like cold flesh to my touch. Instantly two great flap-like limbs or arms from it were grasping me.
I struck out in the dark with sudden frenzied horror, but as I knocked the unearthly thing from me others were about me, pouring down into the corridor from the space-door above, from outside the ship. They were all about us, in groups, scores, gripping me and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and all our crew, while we struck out blindly against them.
* * *
I have fought the dread serpent-creatures in the hall of the living dead, and I have had a part in the tremendous combat of three universes, but never yet did I take part in a more terrible struggle than that one. For it was a struggle in a darkness so absolute that we could have no slightest glimpse of the creatures we fought, knowing by touch only that they were things such as we had never come into contact with before.
They were calling in flute-like tones to one another as their powerful flap-arms caught and held us, tones oddly incongruous with the wild uproar of the battle. They seemed to move as easily in the utter darkness as we might do in light, and this fact gave them a tremendous advantage over us. Because of that our wild struggle had in moments been quelled, and as I was held tightly by two of the things I heard the calls of my friends to me and realized that all of us had been overpowered. These creatures of darkness had captured our ship!
Still holding us, they herded us toward one end of the corridor, and then released us. Amazed, I took a step through the darkness toward one of the corridor's doors. But in an instant I had halted, for through the darkness a buzzing sound came to me and at the same time fiery, tearing pain ran through every nerve in my body. I staggered back, and the buzzing ceasing, the pain ended. Jhul Din and Korus Kan, who had thought to escape also in the darkness, had experienced the same thing, staggering back with me.
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