The Black Galaxy

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Rat Trap

THERE was a dark universe unguessable hundreds of millions of light-years in extent. There was a wandering thing in it, a small thing by comparison with the heavenly bodies of star-studded space. In the Earth's solar system it would have been an asteroid, perhaps.

It was barely eight miles through. Its mass could not be measured because it was not a substance which normally existed in normal space. Perhaps it could be created there. Perhaps it was. Possibly it was some unimaginable end-product which remained when the neutronium core of a dwarf star decayed and ceased to be matter that the other universe could retain.

Gravity did not effect it. Magnetism did not draw it. It had no electric conductivity nor did it change the dielectric constant of emptiness. But it was matter of a sort and it could be alloyed with metal.

Rod verified that fact with samples taken in through the air-lock while tractors held the air from flowing out. He gave it to the small folk, saying that it was probably the substance they had deduced from theory could exist.

Their theory suggested other tests, which they made. They went feverishly to work to make alloys. They tore apart the tattered robot-ship with beams which were stronger than the metal they required.

When the alloy was not too high in metal from normal space they found that it was self-welding. Two bits of it, pressed together, united solidly with the strength of a weld.

The small men joyously improvised a process which turned out that alloy as a foil—and the painters on the ship worked at their trade for the first time since leaving Earth. They coated one side of the foil with paint so that it could be stored in rolls without welding itself back to solidity.

Stored it was—placed in storage where no thief or race of thieves imaginable could come upon it. It was piled on the shattered remnant of the drone-ship's plating, anchored to, the dark-space object by a tractor with a field of its own to retain it and a generator from the colony to keep it in being.

There were two other generators available. They had been on the drone. There was also the pyramid-ship's power device. The small men had taken that apart and found a surface-treatment of the metal, which to them explained everything. They essayed to give the theory to Rod but he was impatient.

"You say it's a matter of a spherical field practically the diameter of the galaxy, with constants calling for the assumption that space is elastic and can be compressed. All right. It warps so it must be elastic. If it can be compressed the Doppler Effect on island-universe spectra simply proves distance and not retreat but let it go.

"That's all right—but when you talk about the selective flow of power in a force-field to surface-treated plates because of molecular changes created by the treatment—" Rod shrugged.

"I'll want to know it sometime. The main thing is that the whole-field will go off instantly the generator's smashed. I'm not going to try to understand right now. I'm already trying to get some of your math and my head is creaking with the load."

He was trying to check the calculations on a device the colonists were building in their store-room lab. It would, they assured him, create a force-field large enough to shift the entire asteroid into normal space.

The mathematical statements had been translated by Joe and he had—as an electrician working on modern equipment—a mathematical training which once would have implied a Master of Arts degree. But this math was beyond him and he translated it blindly. Rod was having trouble with it.

In the end he accepted what was not wholly clear because what was clear was so evidently right He wanted to get at the Stellaris' force-field generators again. He expanded them to their absolute maximum size. At the new adjustment the ship would carry a four-mile sphere of normal space into the dark universe when the field went on.

Then he went back to normal space with the ship. She had then been in the dark universe for a long long time and humans and small people alike crowded to the ports to look at the stars. It was strange to see the hunger of both races to look at far-distant suns which now so peculiarly meant home to them.

He'd told Kit his immediate plans and she was ready with half a dozen of the little folk, all solemnly holding hands. The Stellaris floated at random amid the stars. Twitterings.

"They say, Rod," reported Kit shakily, "that there aren't any pyramid-people around. Space is empty around here. It's nice, isn't it?"

"Pleasant but not what we need," said Rod. "We'll try again."

The jet-drive went on and the ship went into dark space and came out again light-years away. The little folk solemnly strained for a sense of the emotions of the murderers. Nothing. A second dive and a leap of light-years and a third listening search. A fourth—

Excited twitterings. Hands touched Rod. "There are many of the murder-race! Many!"

"Which way?" demanded Rod. "Can you tell? Do they know we're here?"

More flute-like noises.

"They are bored. They know nothing. They are—they are yonder."

A small unhuman hand gestured. Little folk watched avidly as Rod sent a tractor-beam with infinitesimal power groping for the space-ships the small people perceived.

"Got the line," he reported. "Tell me if they're warned."

He swung the Stellaris. Jet-drive. A dive and instant emergence from blackness. Nothing. The switches crashed and crashed again. The enemy ships were invisible. Their presence had been detected by the psychic sense of the small people and verified by tractor.

"Very near," said the high-pitched notes. "Very near! Very, very near. They are frightened! Quick!"

Rod sent the ship ahead in a desperate leap and the field closed in. The fully-expanded field was like a gigantic net which closed about the Earth-ship.

There was a shrill uproar. The little folk clamored, "They are frightened. They are helpless! They do not know what has happened!"

Rod grimly and squeamishly changed the controls on the Stellaris' bow-weapon.

"I never could kill a rat in a trap," he said savagely. "Here! You do it!"

He put the warm, non-human hand of the leader of the little round colonists upon a switch. "Throw it—and they'll die."

There was a tumult of shill voices. The Stellaris had winked out of other-space and instantly vanished into it again. But with her in her vanishing had gone the contents of a four-mile sphere of emptiness. As once she had carried air to the dark universe, now she carried—nothing, on the first attempts.

But this time the force-field had enclosed a pyramid-ship inside it with the Stellaris. Once before such a vessel had been dragged into the illimitable dark but the crew of that one had been dead. The crew of this was yet alive.

The little folk shrilled at one another in a terrible joy. Their leader trembled with his satisfaction as he savagely threw the switch which sent a beam of utter deadliness into the captive enemy.

It was a trivial payment for the millions upon millions of their fellows but the small people were filled with impassioned joy. They felt—they felt!—the murderers of their race blasted out of life.

"The answer," said Rod, seeing Kit's expression, "is that their power-supply only works in normal space. We ought to know that. So when I snatched them out of the natural universe into this one their power went, their weapons were useless and I think that even the gadget that destroys their star-maps failed to work. At least, that's what I'm after!"

He went to the air-lock, in which were mounted tractor and pressor-beams and a powerful mounted light. With tractors the enemy ship was brought alongside the Stellaris. The two airlocks were lined up.

And—this was the ticklish part—while tractors again kept air from escaping Rod and a welder cut through into the pyramid-ship and went into the revolting reek which was its atmosphere.

With hand-flashes Rod and those who would help him made their way to where only molten metal and charred paper had remained on the other ship they'd searched. But here—here were shining unfamiliar instruments and infinitely ingenious star-maps and all that could be needed to navigate a pyramid-ship the length and breadth of the galaxy.

Rod had Joe and two others load themselves down. He himself carried precious maps. They returned to the Stellaris. A dozen of the small men followed them back to the ship from the blasted enemy, but it was significant that not one of the round men carried a single object as a trophy. Their hatred of the killers of their race was too great to let them look at even a memento without rage.

The Stellaris headed back through dark-space for the asteroid of dark-space matter. Rod and the colony mathematicians pored over the maps and astrogaticn instruments. But they knew the principles by which such things must work and the secrets came easily.

By the time they were near the asteroid the matter was settled. Rod returned to normal space and checked his observations. The colony power-technician by then had worked out a field-flow instrument to detect the power-field of the enemy and to locate its center. His observation checked with the star-maps. Everything checked.

The ship was filled with fluting sounds. The round small colonists were strangely moved. They knew that their dead cities, their dead world, their dead race would soon be avenged. But Rod, touching hands for technical reasons, heard distressed discussions in the back-ground.

The small people had craved vengeance with a fierceness close to insanity, as long as they had little hope of it. But now they had savored it. They had known fully the helpless, screaming panic of the crew which had had to be killed.

It could not be spared.

Descriptions of either of the two races in the Stellaris could not be allowed to go back to the leaders of the pyramid-folk. So the pyramid-ship's crew had to die. But a discussion went on in the Earth-ship with mounting distress.

To destroy a race because it had destroyed one's own might be just and proper—but it made one a murderer too.

And the small people were an inherently gentle folk.

The preparations for moving the dark asteroid to normal space were almost complete when something like a deputation of the colonists came to Rod. The round men were very unhappy, but very much in earnest Rod touched hands and the shrill sounds about him were somehow very solemn.

"We ask," said the leader unhappily, "that we be taken to a near planet we find on the alien's star-maps. As we read the maps, we should be able to live there. We owe you our lives and any hope our race can have of surviving through us and our children.

"If you ask it, we will remain and help you even to the destruction of the murderers of our kin. But unless you ask we prefer to try to build up a new civilization without protection. We have tasted revenge—and we do not like it."

Rod regarded them steadily. "I don't like killing, either," he said grimly. "I weakened just now. I gave the task to one of you. But I am wondering now if a fleet may not be going through one solar system after another, wiping out the life to be found there.

"I am wondering if such a fleet has reached my home planet yet I am wondering if the fifteen of us humans on this ship are the only human beings still alive—as you are the only living members of your race. I don't want to leave my race in danger for one instant if it's living.

"And if it's dead," he added harshly, "I want it to be avenged before I find out! I don't want to keep on living while I hate creatures I have spared. But I'll take you to the planet you've chosen. We need some fresh observations anyhow."