The Stone From the Green Star

by Jack Williamson

  The Lord of the Dark Star turned to hiss an order to the scrawny Pelug.

  At the instant, Dick’s eye caught a movement from Midos Ken. The old scientist, with one single motion, snatched from his pocket in his dark-green garment a long, slender vial or tube, which he held hidden under his hand. In the glimpse Dick had of it, it seemed utterly black, seemed to absorb all light that struck it. The motion had been cautious, not even the soldiers, listening to the words of Garo Nark, had noted it.

  “You wonder, perhaps, how I come here, from the planet I rule?” the Lord of the Dark Star addressed Midos Ken. “Before I turn you to a cloud of steam, I shall have you know that you are not the only scientist in the Galaxy. Our new war fliers are equipped with K-ray rockets that will drive them through the distance in a month, even if we cannot ride the ray from planet to planet.

  “Oh, we have science upon the Dark Star! Your passing, unfortunate as it is, will not wholly blot the light of learning from the universe! And how did we slip through the Patrol, you wonder? Our new fliers can make circles about the clumsy vessels of the Union! In fact, they did not even see us! My scientists have developed a new substance that reflects no light at all. Our ships are armored with that. It made them invisible, in the darkness of space!

  “Something more that you did not discover, Midos Ken! And a wonderful thing. Even a man, with his garments and his body painted with it, would be almost invisible, in the proper surroundings. So you are not the only scientist!”

  Garo Nark was standing forward boldly, flanked by his men, their El Ray tubes raised to execute his threats. Thon Ahrora still held Dick’s arm, as if to hold him from unwise violence.

  Midos Ken still stood beside his couch, erect and motionless. He had not moved or spoken. His calm, blind face had shown no feeling, under either the threats or the taunts of the pirate emperor. The black tube he had so unobtrusively snatched from his pocket was hidden in the hand hanging still at his side.

  But Dick heard suddenly a tinkle of shattering glass. He knew that the old scientist had dropped the little vial upon the floor.

  “Fire!” Garo Nark shouted at the same instant to his men.

  Then blackness came suddenly around Dick. Absolute darkness, complete, indescribable. It pressed upon him in a wall of rayless obscurity. Stunned, bewildered, terrified, he clapped a hand to his eyes. It made no change—there was no faintest ray of light for his hand to stop.

  A clatter reached his ears through the pall of utter midnight. A soldier must have dropped his weapon in surprise. Shouts of confusion and fear came from the men.

  “Fire!” Garo Nark shouted again, apparently undismayed.

  “Come!” Thon uttered a voiceless whisper in Dick’s ear. Tugging at his arm, she led him swiftly to the side of the room. “Quietly!” she added. “Father is used to the dark. He can find the way alone!”

  A low laugh came from behind them, from Midos Ken. “No good to fire, Nark,” he said, speaking for the first time. “I have exhausted the ether about us. No electromagnetic radiation can reach through an inch of this darkness! And who is the scientist now?”

  Garo Nark was urging his men forward. There were shouts, sounds of motions. Men were running against each other, seizing one another, stumbling over furniture.

  Then Thon and Dick had reached a sort of trap-door in the corner of the room. Hidden as it was, Dick had not learned of it before. It sprang open to the girl’s touch. She guided Dick through. He dropped to a floor ten feet beneath, caught the girl in his arms as she fell after him.

  Another instant, and Midos Ken, to whom the darkness made no difference, had dropped cat-like and silent beside them. They hurried off down a long, sloping passage. A hundred feet, or more, they had gone, before they stepped from a solid wall of dense blackness into the soft green light that fell from the luminous walls of the narrow corridor.

  They reached a tiny, windowless chamber at the end of the passage, unfurnished save for a bench along one wall, and a television device built into the other. Midos Ken put the latter into operation; spoke loudly into it.

  “I’ve called the Union Patrol,” he said, turning. “My little cloud of darkness will last five minutes. The fliers will be here in ten. Garo Nark will have no time to look for the hidden door that leads here—he may think we have vanished with some scientific trick.”

  For a dozen minutes, they waited in tense, anxious silence. Thon was staring intently at the dark television screen on the wall opposite from where she sat. Midos Ken was listening intently. He seemed to be able to tell the movements of the pirates by the sounds they made, though Dick could hear nothing. His hearing seemed preternaturally acute; Dick wondered if he had a sort of microphone concealed about his person.

  “The darkness is gone,” the blind man whispered. “Garo Nark is telling his. hellions to search for us.” For minutes he was silent. “They are carrying out the chests of diamond tokens,” he said again. Then he cried out, almost in alarm, “A man is near the hidden door!”

  A SOFT cry escaped Thon Ahrora. The television screen had brightened. Upon it was the bust of a man, in a curious uniform. Behind him was the complicated apparatus of the bridge of a space cruiser.

  “We are above Bardon,” the officer said briskly. “Was the call a mistake? Or have the pirates gone.”

  “They are still here!” Midos Ken cried. “I hear them!”

  “Their ship is covered with a substance that makes it almost invisible,” Dick spoke up, remembering the leering boasts of the Lord of the Dark Star.

  “Their lookouts must have seen the cruiser,” Midos Ken spoke quickly. “I hear them rushing from the room. Make haste!”

  The man on the screen turned, spoke orders to unseen assistants, spun wheels and dials on the apparatus that filled his bridge. It was minutes before he turned back.

  “My detectors picked up the etheric disturbances from their generators,” he said. “So I know they got past us. But we could see nothing. And they got quickly beyond the range of the detectors.”

  “It is Garo Nark, Lord of the Dark Star!” Midos Ken cried. “Something must be done! Is that prince of pirates to rule the Galaxy?”

  “Word will be passed to the Union Patrol captains,” the officer said, “that he is cruising in this part of the Galaxy. But if his ship is invisible and as speedy as it seemed to be when he shot out past us a moment ago—well, I see little hope!”

  A few minutes later the three had climbed back through the hidden door. The apartment was empty, deserted. Dick and Thon ran to the room where the diamond tokens had been. They were gone! Only a glittering handful remained, scattered across the floor, which the pirates had spilled and had had no time to pick up.

  “No hope now, for a cruise through the universe, to find the catalyst!” Midos Ken groaned.

  “Why?” asked Dick. “I thought you said that Thon could build our space ship cut of nothing.”

  “Not out of nothing,” said the girl. “Out of energy. And we can’t have the energy without the tokens to pay for it!”

  Three days later a stranger entered the apartment and walked up to Midos Ken. Each placed his right hand on the other’s shoulder, in salutation. Dick liked the newcomer at a glance.

  Tall he was, and powerfully built. His skin was bronzed by the rays of a thousand suns and the storms of a thousand savage planets. Dauntless courage and ironic humor gleamed in his wide-set brown eyes. His hair, long, jet-black, glistening, fell to his shoulders. It was held from his face by a broad band of vividly blue, velvet-like stuff, fastened about his forehead.

  His sleeveless garment, fastened over the left shoulder and falling to the knees, in the universal fashion, was of some soft, buff-colored material resembling buckskin—it was, Dick supposed, the carefully dressed hide of some creature of a far-off planet. Little round blue shells, resembling the sapphire tokens of exchange, were sewn upon it in curious patterns, for ornament. And a wide, crimson sash was bound about the middle, holding it to his
waist. In this belt was stuck the small, blackish rod of a miniature El Ray, and another sheathed instrument that Dick did not recognize.

  This slight, scanty leathern garment revealed the tanned limbs, mighty but supple, and the broad, powerful shoulders of the stranger. Dick admired him at once for his evident strength, and for the air of confident resource and capability that he carried, and he liked him for the glow of courage and humor in his eyes.

  The stranger turned from her father to Thon Ahrora, greeting the lovely girl with evident admiration, so ardent, simple and sincere, that Dick felt jealous and sympathetic at the same time.

  “This is Don Galeen,” she presented him to Dick. “An old friend of ours. An adventurer. A scout of space. He is one of those whom father sent to search the far planets for the marvelous catalyst—the last to return! All the others have failed.”

  As she spoke, the bronzed giant stepped forward, and placed his hardened, mighty hand upon Dick’s shoulder. Dick returned the salutation, marveling at the iron muscles that rippled beneath his fingers.

  “And Dick Smith,” she introduced him, “a man father brought from the far past——”

  “But tell me, Don!” Midos Ken broke in eagerly. “What of your quest? Did you, too, come back with empty hands?”

  Don Galeen looked at him, spoke slowly. “No, I brought nothing back. But perhaps I was not wholly unsuccessful. It is a long story. And I am tired. For two days I have ridden the K-ray. Two hundred thousand light-years! And I came right over on the subway from the space-port. I could do with something to eat and drink while I speak.”

  “You have found it!” the aged man cried, in excitement.

  “I did, though I did not see it,” Don said. “At least, the indicator that you gave me showed that I was near it. But it is in the hands of beings who are not eager to lose it. I could not get to see it. In fact, I was lucky to get away myself!”

  Some vision of horror seemed to flash searingly across his mind. His face twitched with the pain of some memory; his mighty hands clenched till his corded muscles cracked, and knuckles whitened under his tan.

  With a word to Don to take one of the reclining couches, Thon stepped toward the side of the high, green-walled room, and voiced a series of the melodious notes, with which the people of futurity controlled their mechanical servants. A concealed panel opened, and a long table on casters rolled out to the center of the room. The crystal dishes, which loaded it, were piled high with the amazing variety of delicious synthetic foods. Tall flagons held several kinds of delightful drinks.

  The reclining couches moved automatically to places at the sides of the table. Don Galeen gulped down a huge goblet of violet-colored wine, and began his story:

  “I was to explore the outer regions of the Galaxy, in Perseus, you know. The first day I rode the K-ray to Qunaro, in the midst of the vast stellar empire of the double star cluster we can see from earth. There I had to Wait another day for a K-ray car to Zulon, a small sun on the very rim of the watch-shaped spiral of the Galaxy.

  “There, on the twelfth planet of Zulon, I had a one-man space flier built according to the plans you had given me. I paid for it with the tokens you gave me.”

  “You went alone!” Thon cried, compassion in her voice. “It must be terrible to be alone in the void! No woods or seas or mountains! No sound! Only the tiny, cramped machine. And the vast darkness of space, with the suns gleaming in it, cold and far away!”

  “A bit lonely, perhaps,” Don admitted. “But I am used to it. Once I took a partner. We were looking for a space liner that had been lost off Canopus. Her guiding apparatus had failed, and she had run out of the K-ray beam that drove her. We were out together nine months before we found the ship, with all dead upon her. And the partner and I were at each other’s throats before we got back. You know, I smoke the turn—years ago I was on the hot, jungle-ridden inner planet of Sirius, driving the huge monsters they use for beasts of burden there; and like the other drivers, I was forced to use the drug, to escape the fearful dangers of those steaming jungles. And my partner couldn’t stand the fumes of the drug, in the narrow compartments of the ship—and I couldn’t do without it. Since, I have always gone alone.”

  He paused to swallow another full goblet of fragrant drink.

  “But tell me of your trip! Where did you find the catalyst?” Midos Ken urged him.

  Don Galeen grinned. “All right, I’ll try to stick to the subject,” he continued. “Two years ago I flew out from the twelfth planet of Zulon in the little flier. The Galaxy behind me was a broad band of light—for I saw its disk edge-wise. Before me space was dark, except for the tiny pin-points of the few, far-scattered suns I was to explore.

  “After two weeks under full power, I came to the first, a small red star, far older than our sun. It had no planets, so I was unable to land. But it was a beautiful thing. Rings about it, like Saturn’s. Three of them, blue as sapphire. A wonderful sight! The dull red ball of the dying sun was like a huge, round ruby. And the three blue rings were spinning around it.”

  ONE of the broad windows had swung open a moment before, as if moved by a breath of wind. Dick had noted it idly, thinking how wonderful was this climate that permitted windows to be so huge, and to be kept open except during the rains, which came at periodic intervals, fixed in advance by the directors of the weather-control machines. Now, as Don paused, he fancied he heard a step behind him. He turned nervously, remembering the unexpected pirate raid. But the vast, green-walled room seemed empty of strangers.

  “A week later,” Don went on, “I arrived at a double star—two huge suns, spinning about their common center of gravity. They, too, were beautiful. One was a bright green. Another was a rich flame-orange. But double systems, you know, rarely have planets. I went on.

  “Three months I spent in a voyage to a huge blue star, a young, flaming giant of a sun. It had a score of planets. I explored them one by one, watching the little red needle of the indicator you had given me. The outer planets were frozen. One of them had queer life upon it—moving things that looked like glittering crystals of ice, yards across. I left them hastily.

  “On an inner planet I found traces of a civilized life. There were the gaunt ruins of colossal, time-worn buildings—the wrecks of huge machines, eroded beyond recognition and enormous mounds and ditches that must have been part of an irrigation system to conserve the last water of the planet. For it was a desert world. Endless wastes of white sand were drifted upon the ruins of the cities. Water was gone; even the atmosphere had mostly vanished into space.”

  “Traces of civilized life had been found upon nearly a hundred planets,” Thon put in, for Dick’s benefit. “Fairly intelligent creatures, still living, were discovered on a dozen. But none had progressed so far as man. Not being able to leave their dying planets, they had always expired with them. In fact, if the beings of another world had been able to conquer space before men were, they would probably have spread through the Galaxy, and nipped human development in the bud.”

  “Please let him get on with the story, daughter,” Midos Ken implored.

  “Life still existed upon planets closer to the huge blue sun,” Don continued. “They were worlds of weird jungle, with huge and monstrous creatures crashing across them; worlds where the sun was hot and water and atmosphere abundant; where life was a broad, swift stream, plunging fast over the brink of death. Incredible how fast things grew there—by eating other things.

  “The planets with orbits within these were burned by the rays of the sun, until life could not exist upon them—barren, burned worlds, and the inmost was yet glowing, with red, intense light. It was almost a second sun.

  “But upon all these worlds, which I visited one by one, I found no trace of the substance I sought. The red needle of the detector was undisturbed.

  “After venturing as near the innermost planet as I dared, I went on toward a quadruple star—two binaries spinning about each other. One pair red and blue, the other orange an
d white, my telescope showed them. But I never reached them.

  “For I came upon the Green Star.

  “It is but an accident that I came upon it, there in the inconceivable vastness of extra-galactic space. Its feeble gleam was visible hardly half a light-year, in my best instrument. I approached it cautiously, wondering. Never had I seen such a star.

  “It is really merely a planet, drifting alone in space. Without a sun. It is bitterly, bleakly cold, and it is dark. But not at the absolute zero, and not completely dark. For the surface of it glows with a green luminosity. Its barren rocks and snow-covered wastes gleam with cold green fire. Even its thin, chill air is filled with the frozen light. The sky glows with feeble emerald radiance.

  “The light is due to a radioactivity within that strange planet. For when I came near it, the parts of the machine glowed with green. And even my body, and my hands and arms shone with green fire.

  “That radioactivity is not good for human life, I know. I will not tell you now of what it did to me—it is not pleasant to talk about.”

  “But the catalyst!” Midos Ken broke in. “Did you find it?”

  “The red needle of the indicator moved before I landed on those green, glowing wastes of snow,” Don said. “I followed the needle. And it led me into a hellish place.

  “I can’t describe it!

  “The human mind cannot conceive of anything beyond its own experience. We can describe things only by telling how they are like other things. I can give you no idea of the world I stumbled upon.

  “Beings of another kind!

  “They are so unlike anything we know that I can give you no idea of them. But they are intelligent in a way—perhaps nearly as much so as man. They rule a part of the Green Star. And the catalyst is in one of their—well, cities is the best word I can find. They guard it well. My attempt to reach it nearly cost me my life. It must be something they treasure.

  “But I must try to give you a better idea of those beings. Can you imagine slender green worms, yards long, covered with scales that glitter like flakes of emerald? They have faces, with lidless eyes that are bright and gleaming—and red, crimson, glowing like rubies. And they have wings, long and frail and glistening with iridescent color. And tentacles, that grow near the eyes, on what I called a face, that they use for hands.