Part 1

The Voice of the Void

_By_ John W. Campbell, Jr.

_Author of "The Metal Horde," "Piracy Preferred," etc._

Illustrated by WESSO

_The science of astronomy concerns itself with the great and the small. The distances in the stellar world are inconceivable by man--so much so that the astronomer's unit of measurement is the light year. And within the suns of space, the ultimate smallest units of matter figure--the molecule is broken up and the smaller atom is formed, only to be disintegrated into electrons and protons. Energy and mass enter into the strange cycle. Our young author, who has already become a favorite with readers of scientific fiction, has woven a captivating romance out of the world of ultra-physics--captivating in its adventurousness as well as in its science._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories Quarterly Summer 1930. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Perhaps you or I would have hesitated to call him human, this strange small man. He seemed lost in the great dim-lighted observatory. On all sides of the room panels of some polished black material glistened in the ruddy light, and on all their great surfaces were instruments and faintly glowing screens. High above the smooth floor a great transparent roof was flung in a half-glimpsed arch, glasslike it was, but the lack of beams told of a strength and toughness no glass ever knew. Through it came every vibration that struck it, infra-light or ultra-light. Now in its center there glowed a great mass of lambent red flame, the dying sun. To Hal Jus, astronomer, the room was flooded with the light of the noon-day sun. The dull red glow that gave even his pale face a ruddy glow was to him pure white. But then Hal Jus could see heat, and to him blue light was a scientific term for a thing beyond human vision.

Ten billion years had wrought strange changes in the human race. For ten thousand thousand millenniums they had lived on the planets of the solar system, but now the mighty sun was dying. There had been no decadence in this race, through all their history had come a constant fight with a persistent enemy, Nature. But it was a kindly enemy, for the contest had constantly developed man to meet the new emergencies.

Ten thousand years ago the sun had grown too cool to supply heat enough for man; it was no longer possible to live on the frozen planets, and the two greatest of them had been hurled across the system to feed the dying fires. Jupiter and Saturn had been sacrificed. Neptune and Uranus had long since escaped from the weakened clutches of the vanishing sun, and now of the family of original wheeling planets, only four were left: Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury. And now again the fires of the system were dying too low. One and a half million tons of matter must be destroyed every second in that titanic furnace to supply a comfortable amount of heat. In our day three million tons of matter vanish every second, to be poured out as a mighty flood of heat and light that sweeps across the depths of space to us. The inner planets had been drawn far closer to the parent body, but even these heroic measures were failing.

Hal Jus worked at the controls of the electroscope for a moment and on one of the lambently glowing screens an image began to form, grayish at first, then quickly taking form and color. A great sphere swam on the screen; slowly as Hal Jus increased the power the body seemed to come nearer--it grew larger; it filled the screen, then rapidly there came a picture of low, age-old hills, worn low till they scarcely lifted their heads above the surrounding country. A mighty city of glistening metal buildings rising tier on tier a few miles north seemed to dwarf the hills into utter insignificance. Once a hill had lifted its proud head far into the blue of a two-hundred mile thick belt of atmosphere, but now the once mighty Mt. Everest alone remained as a relic of the high-flung mountains that old Earth had once known.

High in the jet black sky, a scant hundred miles from the ground below, a mighty space-freighter was taking off for Venus. The thin belt of atmosphere permitted it to reach a high speed quickly. Already it was in full stride and heading at 1,000 miles a second for Venus.

The scene on the screen blurred, grew gray, and faded out. Hal Jus was shifting the great electroscope tube. Again the screen glowed, and again an image appeared. It cleared quickly, then suddenly leaped into full life and color. The scene showed mighty machines working in a great pit of freshly tumbled soil. It was a land of intense shadow and where the dim red light of the distant sun did not touch, there was intense, utter blackness. There was no atmosphere here. And now, as a great freighter swung low, a machine on the ground below turned on a ray that stabbed out sharp and brilliant; a moment later the freighter tug lifted a half-million-ton piece of the planet on its attractor beams and rapidly gained headway as it shot off toward distant Venus.

The view became wider, the figure of the machines smaller. Then, as Hal Jus increased the observation distance, the entire planet came into view, as much of the planet Mars as was left. The great excavations were extended over all the surface. They were paring it down from all sides lest they disturb the balance of the planet.

Again the scene went blank. Now there formed on it a view of the starry heavens with glowing pinpoint stars. Suddenly this began to expand; star after star was forced from the field as the growing picture centered on one that burned bright in the center of the field. Mighty Betelguese glowed in the center of the field. It was a blurred image, like a tiny disc, but tremendous as was the power of the instrument, it could not have enlarged the image to that extent. The disc-like appearance was due to the tremendous brightness of the star spreading a bit on the sensitive vision receiver cell.

Slowly the mighty instrument swept over the field. Here and there a star would leap out of the darkness to form a burning disc, as one of the stars distant less than a dozen light years, swept across the field. Then at last came a star that blazed out as a burning disc an inch and a half across, emitting long tongues of shooting flame. Slowly it crept across the field. The instrument was adjusted for the motion of the Earth and this slow creeping was due to the motion of the star through space. Around it, far off across the field, circled a lone, small planet. Hal Jus watched it a while, then turned with a call of greeting, snapping off the current in the mighty instrument as several men walked in. They were seated now in several rows of chairs before the largest of the screens that were suspended on the walls of the room.

For ages men had known that the sun was dying. In our day men can tell that within the next ten or eleven billion years it will become a closed star--not a cold star but a closed star. The energy of the sun comes from the destruction of the matter of which it is composed, which becomes floods of energy. This change is possible at a temperature of 40,000,000 degrees C., but below that it cannot take place. Thus, at the center of the sun, where this change is taking place, the matter is at that terrific temperature. As the sun grows older, more and more of the matter sinks into the center and reaches the region of awful heat. The atoms are so violently colliding with each other at that temperature, that the atoms themselves are knocked to pieces by the violence of their collision. If the molecules of a substance collide sufficiently violently, they are broken up. Thus, at 5000 degrees, the molecules of water collide so violently that they cannot maintain themselves, and the shocks break them down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. But at 40,000,000 degrees the atoms collide so violently they are decomposed into protons and electrons. At this temperature, a further, subtle change takes place, and the electrons and the protons suddenly are gone, and in their place is an equal mass of energy. For energy in any form has mass, and mass in any form is a measure of the energy content. Thus to say "one gram" is an easier way of saying "nine hundred million million million ergs," but the two mean the same to Nature. Now an atom is something like a porcupine with his quills up; it is much bigger in looks than in fact, only an atom has much longer "quills." An atom has much more empty space than anything else. Suppose our porcupines have quills a mile long. If all those quills are on end we won't be able to pack the animals very closely, but if we can induce them to become more friendly and lay the quills down, then the density of our imaginary population of porcupines will be greatly increased. Similarly the atoms, with the electrons revolving in wide orbits, occupy a much greater space than they really need. In the tremendous heat of the Sun, the atoms are so battered, the electrons are knocked off the nuclear protons, and we can imagine the quills now lying down. The density will be far greater. This is demonstrated by the density of some stars which are now known to have a density of over 1000. This is the result of packing the electrons and protons in the center, which is gradually going on in all stars.

Gravity increases four times if the distance is halved. As the matter inside becomes denser and denser, the star contracts, till finally its density reaches a tremendous figure.

The Sun in Hal Jus's day was becoming a closed star. Long since the X-rays had ceased. Gradually the ultra-light and the blue light had diminished; the red and infra- reds had been accentuated; for the light was changed by the passage through that intense gravitational field. Hal Jus had, less than two thousand years ago, predicted the exact time of the Sun's final decay. After ten more years the Sun would be unable to support its family. The planets they now inhabited--Earth, Venus and Mercury--were supported artificially. The atmospheres of all the planets had long since slowly dissipated into space, and with them had gone the water. These vital things were being replaced constantly by transmutation of the elements of the rocks of the planets. Long ages ago Earth had had a large satellite, which had been used through the ages to supply energy for the factories of man, and to supply the necessary atmosphere. The satellites of Mars had gone as had Saturn with its rings, Jupiter with its satellites, along with the asteroids; but before it escaped, much of Neptune had been freighted to the habitable planets. And now, since Mars had grown too cold, it too, was being sacrificed. Already it was honeycombed with great caverns that had been used as sources of materials and energy. Now it was being split up into small parts, and freighted to the other planets. Already the work was well under way. Mars was furthest from the sun, and smaller than either Venus or Earth.

But when men were assured that there was no hope of life in the solar system for more than half a lifetime, they began an even more frantic search for still another way to overcome this last crushing blow of Nature.

But at last a thing was announced that switched the endeavor of the scientists to a new line. The impossible was done. Einstein had said that it was impossible to signal faster than light. But it had at last been done. A scientist had signaled the seventy-five million miles from Earth to Venus in so short a time that the carefully prepared cathode ray oscillograph could not detect it. The signal was sent by radio and by the new method exactly simultaneously, and when they reached the station on Venus, the difference in time was just long enough for the radio to make the trip. It was a modification of something that we know in our day, a modification possible only to these descendants of ten billion years of science. Phase velocity we know. When X-Rays pass through certain materials, the index of refraction is less than one, and this can only be true if the velocity in those materials is greater than the velocity of light. The true velocity of the rays is not, but there is a second velocity, the phase velocity, that under those circumstances is greater than the velocity of light.

Phase velocity is due to a wave traveling along the wave chain. A man can go faster than the train he is riding on by walking toward the engine, but practically speaking he cannot reach the station before the train. Similarly, the phase velocity cannot reach the station before the light or X-Rays do. But for countless ages the light has poured forth from the sun, and a message sent down that long train would be able to go many, many trillions of miles at a speed far greater than that of light. That was the new hope of life. For man must escape from the dying sun or perish with it. And now the experiments were pushed forward with new hope.

Then a brilliant young physicist, scarcely through the seventy-year course in one of the great technical institutes, devised a new machine that brought the idea considerably closer to complete success. Television had been invented many years ago and constantly improved. Long since had they gotten away from the scanning apparatus, and the principle was well nigh forgotten, but in some dusty, neglected volume Morus Tol discovered the diagrams. And, with a simple arrangement of known machines, he made a wonderful mechanism that had been worked on for many, many ages. He made a scanning machine that worked in the fourth dimension, thereby being enabled to scan all the other three simultaneously. His first experiments led to amazing images, which, thrown on a fourth dimensional screen, could be seen to pick up solid bodies. The work of lifting them was done by the motor driving the fourth dimensional projector. The drag of the body's weight tended to throw the image out of adjustment, but by making a very powerful motor, they could show the image of a man lifting thousands of pounds! The images were absolutely solid. The man did no work.

And then came new developments. The experiments were safer now. Wherever danger was incurred, the scientist merely made his image do the actual experiment! But Morus Tol still led the field. It was he who finally developed the apparatus that could project the images and have them come into three dimensions, being without the aid of a projector at the receiving end. Already the machines had been used in connection with the phase-velocity signaling system.

* * * * *

It was while he was working on the development of his apparatus that the fatal accident occurred and killed him. Luckily he had kept a careful record of all his experiments, and men were able to duplicate them with the aid of the remnants of his apparatus. He had been working on the actual making of the images; he wanted to be able to keep them real without the machine; in other words, he wanted to give them actual existence; he wanted to reconstruct, atom for atom, the object under his fourth dimensional scanner.

He had been trying to find some ray that would respond to the individual characteristics of the atoms under consideration. He had found it, but finding it he had met his death. The ray had attacked him somehow. It does not seem likely that he experimented on himself without trying it on some inanimate body first. But perhaps he did. At any rate, it did what he hoped, it scanned him, and recognized each individual atom, and each separate molecule, and as far as it went, it was successful. But in scanning him the ray released all the energy in the atoms of his body. He was killed instantly and most of his apparatus was utterly ruined. However, enough was saved to make a beginning possible for the others. And on this basis they built.

As the ray scanned and recognized an atom it drew out its energy, to leave it free. This had fused the apparatus, stopped the ray, and killed the scientist. Knowing the danger, others experimented. By draining the energy away safely they scanned a small object, and sent the signals to another station where, by feeding the necessary energy into the machine, they were able to reconstruct it. The first step had been taken.

But it required many years to develop this apparatus. Now came the greatest problem of all. They must find some means to send the material image to a predestined terminal without having a station there to receive it. This could be done with a three-dimensional shadow image. Could they do it with the solid bodies?

The ten thousand years had dwindled steadily--five thousand had passed before the development of the fourth dimensional scanning. Morus Tol was still a young man when he was killed, but with four thousand two hundred years yet to go, they met their hardest problem, and they were without a genius to solve it.

The long years had dwindled to less than two centuries before there came a man who solved the problem of a refinement of the vibration control. It is as impossible for me to describe the machines of that day as it would be for a blind man to describe red to another. It is a thing inconceivable to each. But it was done--only to find that the shock of the journey killed all living creatures. And then, ten short years before the sun at last faded forever, the last bridge was crossed. A man in a space ship was projected from a laboratory on Earth to a point near Venus. All the System watched that demonstration through the news machines.

Long since they had decided where they would go. Now that they could travel with almost infinite speed, they chose a goal that would be safe to life for aeons to come. BETELGUESE! It was their goal now.

And now out in space the great sending station was constructed. The ship to be sent was put in position before it; the scanner viewed it; and the signal for each atom and each molecule followed each other in swift flight on the train of light waves that was their wire. One billion miles from Betelguese the ship would be re-integrated from the energy sent along the beam of the phase-velocity sender.

And now, in the observatory of Hal Jus, the greatest men of the system had gathered to watch those men far out in space. With them had been sent another machine to be operated by one man, a miniature phase-velocity sender that could, if necessary, send the ship back. This was to be stationed in space, going in an orbit about the mighty star.

Now, above the soft whirr of the news-casters focussed on the great screen, there came an audible sigh of excitement, as there flickered on the great screen a dim gray image, blurred and indistinct. Well it might be. Sent on the phase-velocity projector across the universe, it was bringing them the scene within the recreated ship--suddenly the great screen was filled with a brightly lighted scene, and through the sound pick-up came a subdued hum of the mighty engines in the power room. Through the windows of the ship they could see a brilliant shaft of bluish light pouring over the floor. Out through the main pilot's window they saw the blazing field of stars--and there they saw one dim red one, barely discernible. Probably if they had been there they could not have seen it. Only the super-sensitiveness of the machine made it visible--their sun as it looked millenniums ago! For the light had been traveling slowly for thousands of years to reach the distance their machine had reached in less than an hour.

The men had been anesthetized before the process began, and now they lay in deep sleep. The automatic controls were running the ship, taking complete charge of it.

Strange those men would seem to us. They were under four feet in height, with great barrel chests, long arms and short legs. The dying planets had scant atmosphere, and economy advised a low pressure of the precious gases, lest too much diffusion take place; and Mercury, the smallest planet, put a distinct limit to the pressure. They journeyed from one planet to the other so frequently that an equal pressure on each was almost a requisite. The long arms ended in slender, delicate fingers that were the most perfect tools ever developed. And the toes, too, had become highly prehensile. The many machines that man had built had required all his directing powers. The feet had at first been used only to push pedals, but gradually there came other purposes. Those members could be so useful!

The head was not much larger than ours, but the high, straight forehead seemed much larger on the small man. The brain was deeply creased, the convolutions so complex that, without increasing the size greatly, the surface had been multiplied many times. And it is the surface area that counts. Their large eyes seemed to hold a gentle benignity that would so transcend us as to leave us contented to watch only; still, there was in them a fire of ambition, of hope and of adventure. But we can no more hope to understand their personality than a child of a few days can understand us.

But now the men in the car out in space were stirring; consciousness was returning. The Commander approached the view plate now.

"Sir, I wish to report a successful trip. Betelguese is within one billion miles. One man has died, but the ship's doctor will have him around shortly, as his body temperature is still above 95. We will head for the nearest planet, connecting you now with the outside view plate."

The screen went dark a moment later; the gray surface showed thousands of gleaming points, distant stars, and here and there were a few tiny discs. These, then, must be planets of this mighty sun. Rapidly one of them was growing, expanding. Soon it was an inch across; then it grew rapidly till the shining disc covered all the glowing screen. They had been approaching at 2000 miles a second, but they slowed down to the more moderate pace of 100 miles per second.

Now they saw a strangely glowing light coming up from the planet below. It seemed to approach quickly--then the screen went blank, to be lighted a moment later by the scene within the ship. There was a rapid but efficient scene of action. The commander stepped up to the view plate. Just as he began to speak, the screen went gray, the image blurred, then cleared for a moment; there was an expression of sudden astonishment and surprise on the face of the young commander--then again the screen was dark.