Part 22 (1/2)
From behind the _Thought_, where it hung motionless beyond the misty wall, a Thing came.
The Thessian s.h.i.+ps had realized now that the misty sphere that walled them in was impenetrable, and their rays were off, for none they now had would penetrate it. The forts were gone.
But the Thing that came behind the _Thought_ was a s.h.i.+p, a little s.h.i.+p of the same misty white, and it flowed into, and through the wall, and was within their prison. The Thessian s.h.i.+ps turned their rays toward it, and waited. What was this thing?
The ovaloid s.h.i.+p which drifted so slowly toward them suddenly seemed to jerk, and from it reached pseudopods! An amoeba on a t.i.tanic scale! It writhed its way purposefully toward the nearest s.h.i.+p, and while that s.h.i.+p waited, a pseudopod reached out, and suddenly drove through the four foot relux armor! A second pseudopod followed with lightning rapidity, and in an instant the s.h.i.+p had been split from end to end!
Now a hundred rays were leaping toward the thing, and the rays burst into fire and gouts of light, blackened, burned pseudopods seemed to fall from the thing and hastily it retreated from the enclosure, flowing once more through the wall that stopped their rays.
But another Thing came. It was enormous, a mile long, a great, s.h.i.+ning scaly thing, a dragon, and on its mighty neck was mounted an enormous, distorted head, with great flat nose and huge flapping nostrils. It was a Thessian head! The mouth, fifty feet across, wrinkled into an horrific grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers, as it chased after a great battles.h.i.+p whose pilot fled in terror. Faster than the mighty s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous, blood-red wings, the silvery claws tore away great ma.s.ses of relux, sending them flying into s.p.a.ce.
Again rays struck at it. Cosmic and moleculars with blinding pencils of light. For now in the close s.p.a.ce of the Wall was an atmosphere, the air of two great wars.h.i.+ps, and though the s.p.a.ce was great, the air in the s.h.i.+ps was dense.
The rays struck its awful face. The face burst into light, and black, greasy smoke steamed up, as the thing writhed and twisted horribly, awful screams ringing out. Then it was free, and half the face was burned away, and a grinning, bleeding, half-cooked face writhed and screamed in anger at them. It darted at the nearest s.h.i.+p, and ripped out that ray that burned it--and quivered into death. It quivered, then quickly faded into mist, a haze, and was gone!
A last awful thing--a thing they had not noticed as all eyes watched that Thing--was standing by the rent in the Sphere now, the gigantic Thessian, with leering, b.e.s.t.i.a.l jaws, enormous, squat limbs, the webbed fingers and toes, and the heavy torso of his race, grinning at them. In one hand was a thing--and his jaws munched. Thett's men stared in horror as they recognized that thing in his hand--a Thessian body! He grinned happily and reached for a battles.h.i.+p--a ray burned him. He howled, and leaped into their midst.
Then the Thessians went mad. All fought, and they fought each other, rays of all sorts, their moleculars and their cosmics, while in their midst the Giant howled his glee, and laughed and laughed--
Eventually it was over, and the last limping Thessian s.h.i.+p drove itself crazily against the wreck of its last enemy. And only wreckage was left.
”Lord, Arcot! Why in the Universe did you do that--and how did you conceive those horrors?” asked Morey, more than a little amazed at the tactics Arcot had displayed.
Arcot shook himself, and disconnected his controls. ”Why--why I don't know. I don't know what made me do that, I'm sure. I never imagined anything like that dragon thing--how did--”
His keen eyes fixed themselves suddenly on Zezdon Fentes, and their tremendous hypnotic power beat down the resistance of the Ortolian's trained mind. Arcot's mind opened for the others the thoughts of Zezdon Fentes.
He had acted as a medium between the minds of the Thessians, and Arcot.
Taking the horror-ideas of the Thessians, he had imprinted them on Arcot's mind while Arcot was at work with the controls. In Arcot's mind, they had acted exactly as had the ideas that night on Earth, only here the demonstration had been carried to the limit, and the horror ideas were compounded to the utmost. The Thessians, highly developed minds though they were, were not resistant and they had broken. The Allies, with their different horror-ideas, had been but slightly affected.
”We will leave you on Ortol, Zezdon Fentes. We know you have done much, and perhaps your own mind has given a bit. We hope you recover. I think you agree with me, Zezdon Afthen and Inthel?” thought Arcot.
”We do, heartily, and are heartily sorry that one of our race has acted in this way. Let us proceed to Talso, as soon as possible. You might send Fentes down in a sh.e.l.l of artificial matter,” suggested Zezdon Afthen.
”Which,” said Arcot, after this had been done, and they were on their way to Talso, ”shows the danger of a mad _Thought_!”
Chapter XXI
THE POWER OF ”_THE THOUGHT_”
But it seemed, or must have seemed to any infinite being capable of watching it as it moved now, that the _Thought_ was a mad thought. With the time control opened to the limit, and a touch of the s.p.a.ce control, it fled across the Universe at a velocity such as no other thing was capable of.
One star--it flashed to a disc, loomed enormous--overpowering--then suddenly they were flas.h.i.+ng _through_ it! The enormous coils fed their current into the s.p.a.ce-coils and the time field, and the s.h.i.+p seemed to twist and writhe in distorted s.p.a.ce as the gravitational field of a giant star, and a giant s.h.i.+p's s.p.a.ce field fought for a fraction of time so short as to be utterly below measurement. Then the s.h.i.+p was gone--and behind it a star, the center of which had suddenly been hurled into another s.p.a.ce forever, as the counteracting, gravitational field of the outer layers was removed for a moment, and only its own enormous density affected s.p.a.ce, writhed and collapsed upon itself, to explode into a mighty sea of flames. Planets it formed, we know, by a process such as can happen when only this man-made accident happens.
But the s.h.i.+p fled on, its great coils partly discharged, but still far more charged than need be.
It was minutes to Talso where it had been hours with the _Ancient Mariner_, but now they traveled with the speed of _Thought_!