Part 2

Three hours they waited, but there was no sign from the far-off ship. Silently the men filed out. But day and night that screen was watched. It was late in the evening of the second day that they were at last rewarded for their vigilance. The screen was suddenly shot over with a streak of brilliant red; it glowed green, then went dully gray. A few minutes later it was again illumined, but now the gray field resolved itself into distorted images; men seemed working frantically over the instrument, then the queer chirping sounds of the voices suddenly underwent a change. The screen cleared; then sharp and distinct came the words across the void and the picture of that far-off scene. They were looking from the top of a great rugged cliff of sharp rock such as no living man had ever seen, and the scene beyond was even more strange to their eyes! Great wooded hills rolled off into the distance, and over the carpet of bright green was flung a marvelous canopy of blue, in which there was set a wondrous jewel that flamed blue in majestic splendor. As large as the sun from Mercury it was, but so bright one could not look at it. And in the far distance there rolled a mighty ocean of sparkling water. Such a scene no living eye had ever seen, save in the ancient records, where there were shown the great space flyers hanging over mighty stretches of such water. But in the center of the field was that which riveted the attention of all. There they could see the twisted wreck of the mighty flyer. The great beams were bent and torn apart, the instruments and machinery were wrecked, and to one side there was a great pit that the machinery had blasted in the soil before it was shut off.

The projector now showed the members of the crew of the ship working busily at the makeshift apparatus. They were using hand disintegrators for power supplies. The apparatus was that which they could salvage from the wreck, and faulty. Frequently as they watched they would see the connections arc across, the scene would fade, then come back as quick work repaired the connection. The disintegrator power units were much overloaded and heated so badly that they had to run them in relays. They could not attach more; there was insufficient cable.

"Sir, we were attacked by hundreds of strange beings. They seemed pools of force, living, sentient beings, but the electronic activity indicators indicated a frequency that denotes atomic forces. I believe they are beings living on atomic energy. They have no material body. Heat rays do not affect them in the least. They shed disintegration rays as a repulsor screen does meteorites. They are unaffected by our most powerful explosives. They have tremendous power. One of them took our space ship and threw it violently away with so terrific an acceleration that the neutralizer was damaged overcoming it. We tried to flee from them, but they seem to be able to go with a speed approaching that of light, and easily overtook us. Finally they forced us near this, the sixth of the ten planets, and threw us down. The machine was wrecked, but the neutralizer, crippled as it was, saved us. The matter disintegrator was broken open, and the power ray tore up the ground a bit. The atomic creatures are hunting us, I believe--they are--there they come--they can blanket our power somehow----"

The screen went gray-black. Never again did they hear from that expedition. But that voice across the void had served as a warning to those that followed.

* * * * *

It was scarcely a month later that a second expedition of ten ships was projected, one after the other, across the infinite void. These ships were fully armed, but they had come to investigate, not to fight. The enemy seemed to have some strange weapon that they could control from a distance; it was a weapon not inconceivable to these people, merely one unknown. That the Things were in truth living beings was incredible; it was the terrible shock of the sudden attack that must have made the men engender any such strange belief. But the expedition now on its way would solve the problem, no doubt. Again came that silent meeting in Hal Jus's great domed laboratory. The greatest men of the System had assembled; they were being called in in consultation to examine the weapon of the enemy. Hanlos Tonn, the System's greatest Moleculist, as they called chemists, was there. Tal Nos, the genius of Physics, and Tornok Lor, the great Atomist, and the greatest specialists in every line were present at that conference.

And now before them the great screens glowed mistily. Then slowly they cleared to show in gray outline the interior of the far-off ships. Each ship was represented by a great screen. And now, as the ship gained solidity, the screens cleared, the images became sharp and strong, color filled them out with greater detail. Then slowly the men stirred. They moved with returning consciousness, and took over the control of the ships from the automatic controls. One by one they reported back to headquarters. There was only forty-seven seconds' delay in the time of transmission of signals now, so they maintained two-way communication.

The outside projectors were switched on and the fleet fell into a small cone formation. With the flagship in the lead, they set out to investigate the planets from a distance. The electroscope on the flagship should permit them to make fairly close surface examinations from a safe distance.

Ten planets they found circling the mighty star.

Three of the planets would be directly habitable for man. But on none did they find the great cities they had expected to see. They only saw strange globes of lambent fire darting about. From planet to planet they went, the red glow lighting a great sphere twenty feet in diameter, but for a hundred feet about it the air glowed purple under the ionizing force of some strange radiance. When they moved, they were shooting comets, with brilliantly glowing heads of red and long tails of blue. But they seemed to live on all the planets. Even in the blazing minor star they lived, darting in and coming out of its flames as unconcernedly as a Solarian ship would dart in or out of an atmosphere. Could it be that those men had spoken the truth? It seemed incredible--impossible--but these men had learned millions of years ago that nothing is impossible, and were ready to credit anything if they had reason to believe it so.

For two days those great ships wheeled above the planets, deep in space, undetected. Then one of the glowing Force beings passed close--a scant ten thousand miles away, and through the electroscope, and by means of the electronic activity meters, by spectroscope and pyrometer, by all the complex instruments of their age, they studied him. And the result was conclusive. They were living, sentient beings--Force creatures, conscious pools of titanic energies, forces so great they lived by, that no material body could serve them, and their limbs were the forces that nature had given them. Those forces, which man had spent thousands of years in discovering, a kind nature had given these beings. But in return she seemed to have decided that they needed no brains, for they possess no intelligence. Had man waited another billion years, there might have been intelligence developed in these strange creatures. What an intelligence it would have been--an intelligence based on forces of atomic nature!

But they too had been discovered. In some strange way the creature had sensed them, and sent a call to his friends, for across all the system they could see the strange creatures racing at a velocity that could not be much short of that of light, for while the men were material, and as such could not travel at that speed, the force beings, by their very natures akin to light, could very probably attain to that motion.

* * * * *

The battle was on. At first the force beings hung in a sphere, a three-dimensional cordon, about the ships, then suddenly their lambent red glowed more strongly, and the screens in the far-off laboratory went dark. They had in some way prevented the transmission of further messages. The men at once formed the ships in a great tube, with the one scanner ship in the center, and then one by one they dropped out and were sent across the void--back to the Sun.

Then one of the watching creatures darted forward, toward one of the great ships hanging there in space. As he came within range a disintegration ray flashed out, touched him, and was shed from him in great leaping sparks as the energy was met and opposed. A heat ray leaped forth--the creature paid no attention to that, did not even bother to oppose it--only circled closer. A stream of explosive bullets were launched at it, but they affected it no more than the heat ray. It seemed hopeless. And now the creature hung there, and suddenly he underwent a strange change. In the glowing center of his strange force-pool there suddenly appeared a strange nucleus of glowing violet light, a nucleus that spread throughout the twenty-foot sphere of lambent red force. But it was shot through by strange streamers of waving angry red. Then these strange streamers of fiery red seemed to condense to two main streamers that reached out and out--and touched the great ship. There was a blinding flash of red light--and in place of the great ship there floated a slow cloud of fine, fine dust that glowed softly in the light of the blazing sun. Then the strange streamers seemed to contract, to lessen, and with them the strange purple light from the creature. Slowly, gently he floated away. Of the fleet of ten great ships, and the accompanying matter-sender, six ships returned. The rest floated out there in the interplanetary space around Betelguese.

[Illustration: _Then these strange streamers of fiery red seemed to condense to two main streamers, reached out and out--touched the great ships._]

The men of the system had data to work on, but a great deal of work was yet to be done. They must find some way to destroy these pools of force. Only forces could affect them, and they must find one that was fatal to them. Only ten short years remained to them, so, although no weapon had been developed, a great battle fleet was started, that the ships might be ready when at last the weapon was developed.

And on all the worlds great works were to be done. The records of a civilization ten thousand thousand thousand years old must be collected and prepared for their journey across the void. The exhibits from museums, ages old, must be packed with tenderest care. They had strange exhibits there of the first beginnings of civilization, tools and weapons of savage man, strange things that killed or injured by throwing small bits of metallic matter at the enemy. Strange clumsy vehicles they had, made of metals that corroded so rapidly as to fall to pieces in a brief 1,000 years or so, unless they were preserved in an atmosphere of argon and driven by great clumsy engines tapping the slight energy of molecules with an efficiency of hardly 10 per cent. Other machines that had been intended to drag man through the air, not supported by forces, but held up by air! Then came the first ancient antigravitors; then the swifter machines propelled by the energy of matter.

Exhibits unutterably ancient they had, and these must be sent across all that void. Invaluable archives they were.

But with them must go their own great machines, mighty mechanisms for producing their foods, for making their ships; the thousand and one things that went to make up the great structure of their age-old civilization. And huge sending stations of inconceivable power had to be erected to transmit them. Titanic projectors capable of sending a machine weighing a quarter of a million tons in one scanning. Other machines were so huge that they must be cut into sections and sent in pieces.

* * * * *

A greater work--a quieter, invisible work--was being done by tireless workers in the laboratories. Fifty-three hours a day they worked in the great government laboratories on Earth. On Venus the shorter day made shorter hours desirable. But steadily the scientists were working on their problem. At last the Minus Energy was developed. They were to try it out before equipping the entire fleet with it. At last ten ships were equipped and sent with a scanner machine to Betelguese.

Now they courted an encounter with the Force Giants. They were soon satisfied, for thousands of them came at terrific speed the moment they attacked one. That first one had floated into range as they threw a searchlight on it; then, as it began to color with the deadly violet and red destruction, a tiny projectile was launched at it. Not more than six inches long by two in diameter it raced at its target at nearly a thousand miles a second. It was carefully followed by the anxious watchers at the ship's electroscopes--it reached the floating Thing, and exploded.

But perhaps you or I would not have termed that action explosive. That little projectile contained several pounds of half-destroyed matter. It had been used as a fuel in an industrial plant, till it had been about half annihilated, and now it was in that curious, borderline condition, when it had a tremendous tendency to absorb energy and become matter again, and an equally tremendous tendency to release its energy and become free energy as light or heat. The conditions determined one or the other, and the new Minus Force shells were used under conditions of space that made them exert a tremendous tendency to become matter. Billions of billions of ergs of energy they could absorb, and would absorb. They drew it from all the surrounding ether so rapidly that it had the effect on all surrounding substance or sources of energy of being in contact with something at a temperature far below absolute zero. The result was obvious. When it was set off, all light, heat, or any other energy within a region of ten miles or so, was instantly drawn to it, until it had been satisfied. It was an energy vacuum shell.

That first Atomic Giant did not last long enough to warn the others. It was an entirely unexpected form of attack, and when the light of the mighty sun could once more be seen through the spot where the Minus Force had been sent, the Atomic Creature was not there, all its great forces had been drained from it. And, being only a pool of force, it vanished.

But now there came from all directions great streams of the Atomic Giants. They seemed to suddenly appear close at hand, apparently coming from nowhere. They traveled as fast as light, therefore they reached them as soon as the light, so that their approach was invisible. Only when they slowed down could they be seen. And now, from each ship came steady streams of these Minus Force shells. Thousands of the energy-absorbing projectiles flew in amongst the massed attackers--and many of them took effect, drawing the energy from the great creatures, destroying them utterly. The weapon was a success! They fired a second volley when others of the creatures came within sighting range--but they did not affect the Atomic Giants this time. Great dark patches appeared, but the creatures that had been there before, were there now, as powerful as ever, quite uninjured! What did it mean?

They did not know. They only knew that the enraged creatures were closing in on them, closer and closer--and now the ships were being sent back to the system as rapidly as possible--one--two--three--four--but more could not get through--the others were cornered, marooned in infinity by the destruction of the sender. The Force Creatures, utterly immune to the Minus Force shells, attacked unchecked, gripped it with strange forces, limbs, hands or gripping force, that tore through the foot-thick alloy like so much tissue paper, metal, which was fifty times as strong as our frail steel, a metal whose molecules had been designed by the scientists of the race millions of years ago, and in all those ages no stronger, more inert metal had ever been found. But now that tough envelope was torn open, for the forces of atoms were greater than the forces of molecules, and the creatures used those forces.

But those marooned ships were lost--destroyed soon by the vengeful giants. And the forces of man on the far-off planets of a far-off sun were worried anew. Their weapon was a failure after all. Some new thing must be developed. But how did it happen that the first attempts were successful? The scientists believed it was due to the fact that the first attempts were utter surprises to the creatures--they were taken before they could prevent the loss of their energy. In some way they were able to build a barrier about themselves that prevented the loss of energy, even as it prevented the penetration of the energy of the disintegration ray.

But man must develop some new, some stronger weapon. The time was getting too short for more failures. For Hal Jus had announced a discovery that made men even more anxious to abandon their age-old home. The Sun was to become a nova. These flaming stars had been known and studied for ages. Dim, old stars they were that suddenly flared up for a brief period of intense activity, then quickly faded back even lower than before. It behooved man to move quickly. A mighty people that for ten billion years had slowly built up the mighty structure of their science had to move.

Many weapons were tried, many expeditions of two or three ships made the trip, and attempted to destroy the creatures. Some succeeded moderately well, others met with ghastly failure.

Two brief years now remained to them. Expeditions to many of the younger stars within range of their great projectors were made, but always they brought back bad news. Here they found no habitable planets; there the sun had not yet developed planets, and there was no time to stop to make and cool off a planet. That would require a century, even for one as small as Mercury. They must migrate to Betelguese. But Toralk, the mighty sun without planets, was kept in mind. If necessary, they could make the planet, and while it cooled, float in space, living in their mighty ships, making air and food and all their needs from matter torn from the sun. The great battle fleet of thirty thousand ships was ready. Each ship, two thousand one hundred feet long and three hundred feet beam, was ready to start. They merely awaited the hoped-for weapon.

At last it was discovered. Another of the test trips was made. Three small ships went, and one sender, that they might return.

In the depths of space they were re-integrated, and now they slowly proceeded to the blazing star before them, then hovered near one of the circling planets. In a moment they were discovered, and literally thousands of the glowing creatures darted up from the green, brightly lighted world below. These creatures had learned that these ships were hostile and as they drew near, they were already changing to that fatal violet, streaked with red. Great flaming streamers of force reached out to the ships, but in that instant the ships suddenly seemed to shimmer, as an object seen through heated air, and around them there was a strange, pale radiance, a radiance that seemed to have substance. It seemed to flow, to move, yet always remained as a strange, half-visible, milky shroud, that surrounded the ships. And then the streamers of glowing death reached out--touched it--and disappeared! The creature leaped back, as though in pain, writhing away. The usual color of the creature was suffused by a pale, but growing green--then as the red was more and more overcome by the rising green, the glowing shape grew misty--then like a puff of vapor before a breeze it was gone--the great Atomic Giant had been mortally wounded and before their eyes, had died. Instantaneous dissolution had taken place.

The others held back in fear. There was something new to combat and they went cautiously. Now there leapt out from the nose of the ship a long beam of the milky, glowing ray--it touched one of the great creatures--there was a slight flash of light--and it was gone. Then the glowing ray swept around and erased those forms there in space, erased them as one might wipe the image from the screen with the flick of the switch. And then, precipitately they fled. They were beaten; they could not attack this new ship.

* * * * *

Across the void it was sent, while the few men left in the ray machine awaited the coming of the mighty battle fleet that would soon be ready. Around them glowed a pale, scarcely visible field of light. Defenseless they seemed as they lived and slept in the car swinging in its orbit about the blazing sun, but many of the Atomic Giants found the mighty strength that lay hidden in that thin wall of scarcely visible vibration. And constantly the men were observing the planets and communicating the data to the leaders on Earth and Venus.

And in the System wild activity was going on. The entire force of the machines of all the planets was concentrated on the production of the great generators of this new force. It was simple in principle. The Atomic Giants lived by using as their "fuel" the energy of the atoms. We live by burning the carbon and hydrogen of our foods with the oxygen of the air. If the supply of either oxygen or food were cut off, the incombustibility results and we die. If oxygen is cut off, we die because the carbon compounds will no longer burn. If food is cut off, we die because there is nothing to consume the oxygen with.

The Atomic Giants needed no oxygen or carbon--any element would do. But they needed elements that they could decompose for their energy. Any atom under normal conditions would do, but if that atom was made incombustible they too died. This new force that was so deadly to them, was a force created by the energy of matter. The electrons of matter were altered by the application of terrific spatial strains, and they would no longer react in the same way and would not decompose as did the normal electron. They merely prevented the use of atomic energy wherever they were. Thus the "fuel" of the Atomic Giants was made incombustible and they died.

But there was a tremendous amount of work to be done before they could be ready for the great offensive to be carried across space. The great ships were rapidly being equipped with the electron projectors and assembled in long rows outside the great transmitting stations, awaiting the final start.