“Foolish of them,” Valno murmured, switching off. “They will have no need. In any case, I doubt if they could save themselves. They are a remarkably childlike lot. So far, I understand, they have only penetrated about five miles into their world, and that only after vast and primitive labour. Five miles down would certainly not afford them much protection if Genesis did attack them. But it will not.”
He turned and locked into the screens, at the dazzling point of the invader. It had lost the blue tinge of its earlier visitation: it was yellow now. Much of its vast heat has dissipated in its long journey through the depths of space. To its left far smaller, far nearer to Ixonia as yet, Pluto was slowly moving amidst the backdrop of stars, still held in the electromagnetic beam.
“Another hour, Valno, then the contraction process can begin,” Jus commented.
Valno turned aside to the communicator and summoned his intellectuals to the power laboratory. Then with Jus by his side he made his way to it, took up his customary position at the switchboard with its triple screens, disconnected the robot guiding machinery, and prepared himself.
“Everything in readiness?” he asked Jus, without turning.
“Everything. At Pluto’s present distance of seventy million miles you may increase his gravitational field without it having any determinable effect on this planet—certainly not on the other third world System. The only difference will be that instead of pursuing a five-hundred-year orbit round the existing sun, we shall form into a new one around trapped Genesis, and of course receive the benefit of light and warmth. Again the vast distances separating Genesis and the other sun will be amply sufficient to prevent any interplay of gravitational fields. A double-sun System is manifestly inimical to intelligent life because of the erratic orbits of the planets it possesses. Strange too that nearly all the galactic Systems are infested with double suns.”
“Is it?” Valno asked quietly. “If we assume that there have been other wandering stars like this, does it not seem likely that at some time or other a preponderant sun would trap the invader, turn him into a white dwarf, and thereafter the gaseous sun and immensely heavy former wanderer would gravitate round one another? I do not believe that Genesis is the only wanderer: he is the first to be tamed, that’s all—”
“It is nearly time!” Jus interrupted.
Valno turned his attention back to the controls, fingering them swiftly under. Jus’s directions. The beating rhythm of the engines changed suddenly as the shell of energy cast round Pluto began to narrow down, tightened itself into an inconceivably tough globe of power through which nothing material could ever break.
No form of matter could withstand that cramping, crushing power, steadily increasing, a vice made of elemental forces that squeezed the dead hulk of Pluto inwards and inwards upon its own core, forcing the uncounted myriads of electron orbits in its atoms to come nearer and nearer to their nuclei.
The engines whined under the increasing strain. With every yard that Pluto compressed, the effort of pressure proportionately increased. But there was an infinity of power—the power of an entire planet whirling against the ether of space-time.
Pluto became visibly smaller. The telescopic lenses were changed to hold it in visible range. It shrank again; once more the lenses were changed. Then at last Jus gave a cry.
“That’s the limit, Valno! Decreased to fifteen hundred miles from three thousand. You have a densely heavy world retaining all its original weight, but only an approximate third of its original size.”
Valno nodded complacently. “That’s what I wanted. Now for the increase of weight. The balance-graphs are ready?”
Jus waved his hand to the delicate needles swinging in their vacuum flasks. Operating from cosmic vibrations they were capable of deducing the weight of any given stellar body. At the moment the Pluto-needle was quarter of the way round the graded dial, whilst that of Genesis quivered at the exact centre, giving an approximate weight of four thousand quadrillion tons, nearly balancing that of the distant sun.
Working with infinite care, Valno began to remove the force beam, weakening it by imperceptible degrees, and as he had calculated contracted Pluto continued on his way by natural momentum through the non-resisting emptiness, nonetheless slightly altering his former course to drift more surely and steadily towards approaching Genesis.
“The converters! Neutrons!” Valno ordered.
A new group of engines started into life, adding their droning to those of the still-operating electro-magnetic beam. The huge laboratory became a hell of sound as the converters grappled with the task of supplying a beam of pure neutrons. No eye saw what was going on in those complex engines of destruction; no eye dared to behold the assault of man-tamed forces on the basic laws of matter, the tearing out of neutrons from energy streams, which were in turn hurled on to the projector’s electro-magnetic beam.
In untold millions they flung across the gulf from the magnetic pole, slamming into tiny drifting Pluto in a battering ram. Others, drifting in space in invisible swarms, joined company and piled their incredibly heavy masses upon the contracted world. Weight equalling that of sixty million tons to the cubic inch passed clean through Pluto and went down into his core. His weight began to increase by leaps and bounds as his core became filled with ever-increasing matter possessing no atomic space whatever.
Genesis, now no more than five million miles distant from the snarer—not far as cosmic distances go—was already beginning to feel the gravitational fields reaching out towards him. His speed was slowing slightly: he was moving a little to one side towards advancing Pluto.
Another hour passed. Pluto’s weight was three-quarters that of Genesis. Not a human sound was heard in the laboratory. It was a matter of waiting and watching for the consummation of this audacious effort to tame rampart Nature.
“In another hour and a half they will come into collision,” Jus said finally. “When that happens there will either be a double sun, with Genesis going around Pluto, or else Pluto will become the core of Genesis by reason of his immensely dense material being absorbed by him.”
“That is what I anticipate,” Valno acknowledged. “Unfortunately the Computing-Room is useless, so we do not know in advance what will transpire. But figures cannot lie,” he finished confidently. “They are bound to give the correct result.”
“But sometimes even the result has far-reaching aftereffects,” Jus commented, frowning. “For some reason I am uneasy.”
Valno shrugged and glanced across at the Pluto balance-graph. It balanced. The weight of Pluto and Genesis was equal. He gave the order for the neutronic stream to be cut off. The energy beam returned, again holding Pluto in its grip, guiding it inevitably so there could not be the least chance of it missing Genesis.
Jus watched the screens, brooding. He studied the viciously bright disc of Genesis as he swung far out of his appointed course towards the smaller, faintly gleaming mass of Pluto.
“Even if there were some mistake,” he muttered, “even if the impact were insufficient to halt Genesis and he went onwards into space, he would not again cross our path. His orbit has been forever changed. Pluto has pulled him to one side.”
“There will be no mistake,” Valno stated without turning. “There can be no mistake. Genesis will be our sun: that is the purpose of this entire struggle. That and to save the childish third-worlders from absolute disaster.”
Silence fell again, save for the droning engines. In the screens it was possible now to behold vast streaming tides of gaseous matter rising from the Plutonian side of Genesis. The attractive field was tearing savagely at his photosphere.
Valno frowned. “Strange!” he whispered. “Can it be—another Solar System? I had reckoned that the speed of approach would prevent such an occurrence—”
He stopped, staring blankly. Jus joined him. A titanic arm of incandescent flame spouted from Genesis, broke close the surface and went whirling off in globes of superheate
d gas.
“More worlds to come!” Jus cried. “For all your calculations creation has repeated itself, Valno. Before Genesis has been able to strike Pluto, a System has been born—a System which may—”
He gripped the ruler’s arm tightly. Pluto and Genesis were almost in coincidence. The distance between them shrank to zero. They collided—and with that collision something happened.
Genesis did not close around Pluto! It did not turn it into an unthinkably heavy core of flaming, dense material. Instead, the wandering interloper exploded into a myriad blinding pieces which hurled themselves to all sides of the Infinite.
Valno leapt to his feet in alarm.
“Shattered!” he cried hoarsely. “Our intended sun blown into fragments—fragments to become dead hulks of the future! Oh, why did this have to happen? Why did I not foresee that the hurling of Pluto into that body would cause such an uprush of interior matter as to stop Genesis holding together? The speed—the sudden change in temperature as ice-cold Pluto plunged—”
He fell silent, staring bleakly around him, listening to the now uselessly-humming engines of the electro-magnetic beam. In those few seconds all the strength seemed to have gone out of him.
“I failed,” he whispered. “I failed!”
“Not entirely,” Jus said quietly. “Your calculating was superb. You worked everything out right up to the moment of impact. Beyond that you couldn’t go. Only the Computing-Room machinery could have done that, and without it—”
Valno made an effort. “Well, at least we saved that other System from disaster. We’ve destroyed the interloper forever, but we have not given ourselves a sun and surface life. All we can do is go on living below. Those shattered fragments will become innumerable asteroids. That other System born of Genesis will never contain life: it is too far from any source of warmth.”
He turned wearily from the control board and surveyed the despondent faces about him. Then suddenly he looked up sharply at an intrusive note clearly audible above the engines—the sound of a mighty, thunderous roaring from somewhere overhead.
He swung round in surprise; then Jus shouted—”Look! Look!” He jabbed a finger towards the screens. They were glaring—eye-searing with brilliant fire. The projector tower had utterly vanished. In its place was a roaring fountain of staggering flame.
The thundering increased. The laboratory began to quake. Shouts of panic dinned above it.
“What’s—what’s happened?” Jus demanded helplessly.
Valno stared straight in front of him. “It is the basic material of our oceans and atmosphere! The oxygen and hydrogen, frozen up there on the surface. No trace of other gases as yet: that was to come later. The vibrations of heat from that awful explosion in space have somehow passed down our electro-magnetic beam, ignited the oxygen and hydrogen, helped by the water vapour from our outlet ventilation shafts. Our planet is on fire!” he finished desperately. “Biting down through the rocks, down the shafts, down here—to us!”
He could no longer make himself heard. The laboratory was a jammed mass of struggling figures. Science, dignity, years of defeating fear—these attributes had gone to the winds. The whole planet was in the grip of devouring flame.
Jus twirled round from the panic-stricken, stampeding mob and clutched his ruler by the arm. “Valno, listen to me! Do something! There must be some way out of this. There must—”
“There is none,” Valno answered him. “In a few minutes the remaining traces of oxygen and hydrogen, frozen into innumerable sub-surface cracks and crevices, will ignite. Then—”
He stopped talking and wheeled about as a fountain of fire roared from the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. A split second, then they spewed outwards in a deluge of shattered metal. Flame spouted into the laboratory, transforming it into an inferno, seizing on the countless inflammable chemicals in their containers.
“So it ends!” Valno clenched his fists. “I can imagine those childish third-worlders jumping for joy because they are saved. I can imagine them wondering what has brought a new star into being, wondering even more when it flickers out. I can imagine them trying to discover whither went Pluto—”
He turned, that he might not see the flames racing towards him.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 63
