Part 6 (1/2)

”Since first those men had developed from their hairy forebears, they had found their eternal friends were the dogs, and to them they turned in their last extremity, breeding them for intelligence, hairlessness, and resemblance to themselves. The Deathless ones alone remained after three generations of my people, but with the aid of certain rays, the rays capable of penetrating lead for a short distance, and most other substances for considerable distances.” X-rays, thought Wade. ”Great changes had been wrought. Already they had developed startling intelligence, and were able to understand the scheme of their Masters.

Their feet and hands were being modified rapidly, and their vocal apparatus was changing. Their jaws shortened, their chins developed, the nose retreated.

”Generation after generation the process went on, while the Deathless Ancient Ones worked with their helpers, for soon my race was a real helping organization.

”But it was done. The successful arousing of true love-emotion followed, and the unhappy days were gone. Quickly development followed. In five thousand years the new race had outstripped the Ancient Masters, and they pa.s.sed, voluntarily, willingly joining in oblivion the millions who had died before.

”Since then our own race has risen, it has been but a short thousand years, a thousand years of work, and hope, and continuous improvement for us, continual accomplishment on which we can look, and a living hope to which we could look with raised heads, and smiling faces.

”Then our hope died, as this menace came. Do you see what you and your world was meant to us, Man of Earth?” Zezdon Afthen raised his dark eyes to the terrestrian with a look in their depths that made Wade involuntarily resolve that Thet and all Thessians should be promptly consigned to that limbo of forgotten things where they belonged.

Chapter VII

WORLD 3769-37,478,326,894,6, TALSO

Wade sat staring moodily at the screen for some time, while Zezdon Afthen, sunk in his own reveries, continued.

”Our race was too highly psychic, and too little mechanically curious.

We learned too little of the world about, and too much of our own processes. We are a peaceful race, for, while you and the Ancient Masters learned the rule of existence in a world of strife, where only the fittest, the best fighters survived, we learned life in a carefully tended world, where the Ancient Masters taught us to live, where the one whose social instincts were best developed, where he who would most help the others, and the race, was permitted to live. Is it not natural that our race will not fight among themselves? We are careful to suppress tendencies toward criminality and struggle. The criminal and the maniac, or those who are permanently incurable as determined by careful examination, are 'removed' as the Leaders put it. Lethal gas.

”At any rate, we know so pitiably little of natural science. We were hopelessly helpless against an attacking science.”

”I promise you, Afthen, that if Earth survives, Ortol shall survive, for we have given you all the weapons we know of and we will give your people all the weapons we shall learn of.” Morey spoke from the doorway.

Arcot was directly behind him.

They talked for a short while, then Wade retired for some needed sleep, while Morey and Arcot started further work on the time fields.

Hour after hour the s.h.i.+p sped on through the dark of s.p.a.ce, weirdly distorted, glowing spots of light before them, wheeling suns that moved and flashed as their awesome speed whirled them on.

They had to move slower soon, as the changing stars showed them near the s.p.a.ce-marks of certain locating suns. Finally, still moving close to fifteen thousand miles per second, they saw the sun they knew was sun 3769-37,478,-326,894, twice as large as Sol, two and a half times as ma.s.sive and twenty-six times as brilliant.

Thirteen major planets they counted as they searched the system with their powerful telectroscope, the outermost more than ten billion miles from the parent sun, while planet six, the one indicated by the world number, was at a distance of five hundred million miles, nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter is from ours, yet the giant sun, giving more than twenty-five times as much heat and light in the blue-white range, heated the planet to approximately the same temperature Earth enjoys.

Spectroscopy showed that the atmosphere was well supplied with oxygen, and so the inhabitants were evidently oxygen-breathing men, unlike those of the Negrian people who live in an atmosphere of hydrogen.

Arcot threw the s.h.i.+p toward the planet, and as it loomed swiftly larger, he shut off the s.p.a.ce-control, and set the coils for full charge, while the s.h.i.+p entered the planet's atmosphere in a screaming dive, still at a speed of better than a hundred miles a second. But this speed was quickly damped as the s.h.i.+p shot high over broad oceans to the dull green of land ahead in the daylit zone. Observations made from various distances by means of the s.p.a.ce-control, thus going back in time, show that the planet had a day of approximately forty hours, the diameter was nearly nine thousand miles, which would probably mean an inconveniently high gravity for the terrestrians and a distressingly high gravity for the Ortolians, used to their world even smaller than Earth, with scarcely 80 percent of Earth's gravity.

Wade made some volumetric a.n.a.lysis of the atmosphere, and with the aid of a mouse, p.r.o.nounced it ”Q.A.R.” (quite all right) for human beings.

It had not killed the mouse, so probably humans would find it quite all right.

”We'll land at the first city that comes into view,” suggested Arcot.

”Afthen, you be the spokesman; you have a very considerable ability with the mental communication, and have a better understanding of the physics we need to explain than has Zezdon Fentes.”

They were over land, a rocky coast that shot behind them as great jagged mountains, tipped with snow, rose beneath. Suddenly, a s.h.i.+ning apparition appeared from behind one of the neighboring hills, and drove down at them with an unearthly acceleration. Arcot moved just enough to dodge the blow, and turned to meet the s.h.i.+p. Instantly, now that he had a good view of it he was certain it was a Thessian s.h.i.+p. Waiting no longer to determine that it was not a s.h.i.+p of this world, he shot a molecular beam at it. The beam exploded into a coruscating panoply of pyrotechnics on the Thessian s.h.i.+eld. The Thessian replied with all beams he had available, including an induction-beam, an intensely brilliant light-beam, and several molecular cannons with sh.e.l.ls loaded with an explosive that was very evidently condensed light. This was no exploration s.h.i.+p, but a full-fledged battles.h.i.+p.

The _Ancient Mariner_ was blinded instantly. None of the occupants were hurt, but the combined pressure of the various beams hurled the s.h.i.+p to one side. The induction beam alone was dangerous. It pa.s.sed through the outer lux-metal wall unhindered, and the perfectly conducting relux wall absorbed it, and turned it into power. At once, all the metal objects in the s.h.i.+p began to heat up with terrific rapidity. Since there were no metallic conductors on the s.h.i.+p, no damage was done.

Arcot immediately hid behind his perfect s.h.i.+eld--the s.p.a.ce-distortion.