The Black Galaxy

CHAPTER SEVEN Ambush

TIME passed slowly indeed in the other-space. Rod found himself doubting the time-rate of his watch. But a watch did keep the same time in the dark universe as in normal space. He knew it. It had been verified on his three interplanetary trips and in the original testings of the Stellaris when her force-field coils were first tried out But the watch hands moved slowly, very slowly.

Kit looked at him with anxious eyes. There were lights in the ship now but the feeling of weightlessness kept a certain nagging impulse of panic always very close. Still, Kit had been so much more fearful for Rod that the eerie sensation of floating in emptiness could almost be ignored, now that he was safe on board.

"What'd you do, Rod?" she asked.

"I think," said Rod, "that I knocked off the looters and the creatures in the three flying pyramids we saw. I hope so! I even think I did it with one of their own weapons. I hope very much that they haven't any defense against it I can't imagine one."

"Their weapons?" Kit said, startled. "You mean you think you made the same thing they used to kill all the people on this planet?"

"And the Martians," said Rod grimly, "and probably plenty of other races that got civilized enough to be either dangerous or worth looting. Remember, you suggested that the weapon a space-ship turned on us might be supersonic-sound waves?" "Y-yes," said Kit uneasily.

"It couldn't have been exactly sound-waves. Not in space. There was no air—or any solid to carry them. But we use tractor beams as if they were cables to pull things and pressors as if they were beams to push things with. I figured that they might have made a gadget that alternated between sending tractor and pressor beams.

"It would send a thin slice of tractor, then a thin slice of pressor and so on. That would go through space. And when it hit something solid it would generate sound waves in it. If the slices were thin enough and alternated fast enough they'd make supersonic waves—such as you suggested—in anything they touched.

"Air would vibrate in the supersonic range. So would water. So would the bodies of any living creatures such a beam struck. It would break up ceramic ware and not break plastic or metal. Sent from one space-ship to another, it would kill all the crew of the ship on the receiving end. Sent from a ship down on a city—"

Kit turned pale.

"They could—stay out in space and send beams down at a city and everybody'd die! Oh, Rod!"

"Apparently they did just that" said Rod. "Anyhow, that's the sort of gadget I made. There were bus-bars and a monstrous thing that works like a vacuum-tube in the building where we saw the televisors.

"Joe and I—Joe's the electrician who was with us—fixed up a pressor-beam generator and put in a feed-back to the tensor-plate. It starts to make pressors, the feed-back makes it shift to tractors, then the feed-back makes it shift back to pressors and so on. It'll generate supersonic frequencies all right! Simple enough too," he added grimly.

"But—"

"Power for it? There was an isotopic generator in the building with the televisors, too. Probably better than the one we have on the ship here. But I did better than that I knew there ought to be a power-storage unit in the booby-trap pyramid we so carefully haven't touched.

"I cut into that pyramid, hooked up that power to the gadget Joe and I had put together and tied a string to the switch. I focused a tractor to pull the string after we'd come into this space. The stuff it generated couldn't hurt us here. Tractor and pressor stuff would have to be focused to come into this universe from ours."

He made an unconscious movement and rather absurdly floated away from his former position. There was no gravity here. There was always the sensation of interminable fall. While constantly aware of the fact that it was weightlessness, not dropping, it was endurable enough. But nobody would ever be able to sleep where gravity was not.

"To finish the picture," said Rod after a moment "the power-storage unit has probably some hundreds of millions of kilowatts of power stored in it I don't know just how fast if 11 discharge through our gadget but there's a choke-effect there to slow it up.

"My guess and my hope is that my gadget generated the pyramid-folks pet murder-frequency stuff for several successive minutes and that those who happened to be around have lost all interest in looting—and in us."

"If it hit them," said Kit.

"It did," he assured her. "We set it to radiate in all directions. The faster the juice ran out the more deadly that beam was. I can't guess its maximum range but it should be strong enough anywhere on this planet!"

In that estimate he was too conservative. Actually the lethal effect of his device had extended rather more than a planetary diameter beyond the surface on the far side of the world. It had lasted for six or seven minutes and it had wiped out all pyramid-creatures within that limit.

Rod, however, was uneasy. His experience of the alien race was not enough to let him know their resources, and he could not calibrate or measure anything he used.

At the moment he worried mainly over the possibility that the aliens might have some defense against the weapon he thought they used for massacres. But he knew, too, that the danger could be greater than that and of a quite different sort.

As a matter of safety he kept the Stellaris in other-space for twelve hours. If the aliens had a defense against his weapon they'd expect the Stellaris to reappear immediately the weapon was used. But if twelve full hours elapsed they would think the human ship had fled. So he waited.

But time passed very slowly until what might be termed social life within the ship began. The four girls who'd tended the air-purifier system had been classed officially as assistants in biology, and were more or less inclined to feel superior to mere painters and arc-welders and electricians. Some of the men, too, were middle-aged and obviously family men.

But one of the arc-welders was good looking and one of the painters displayed virtuosity on the mouth-organ. Also there was some food aboard ship and there was at least a precedent for expecting to set foot again on a planet with breathable air.

Also there were the lurid tales of riches and jewels and incredible luxury in the empty cities of the planet to which they were still anchored. So, during the tedious wait, barriers broke. Music began somewhere off in the ship. There were voices. There was even laughter.

Kit went to see while Rod sweatingly tried to make calculations and draw diagrams on a memo-pad which had no weight—and while be himself floated head-down in relation to a normal position in the control-room. Kit drew herself lightly along the hand-rails which ran on floors and ceilings and side-walls alike. She came back smiling, floating with extraordinary grace in mid-air.

"Rod! You ought to see!" she told him. "One of the painters has tied himself in place with string. He's playing the mouth-organ and they're having a dance! It's like a Virginia reel in three dimensions! Everybody's got pieces of cardboard and they're using them like wings to fan themselves around with in the craziest set-to you ever saw!"

Uproarious laughter sounded in the ship, which floated in an illimitable emptiness of darkness—in a universe in which no living thing could dwell—alone as surely no human ship was ever alone before—in a cosmos without a single star.

Rod said restlessly, "That's good, Kit. Go and watch if you like. I'd better not. Anyhow, I'm going to try something."

There was reason for his reserve. He was, perforce, the captain of the Stellaris. As such he could join in difficult labor and should share in any danger. But he must remain remote if all his decisions were to go unquestioned. And it was necessary for him to make the decisions. If he relaxed to mere sociable behavior his leadership would no longer be based upon the mystery of commissioned authority. He would have become merely another man.

He pulled himself to the engine-room. Restlessly he set the tractor-beams—those not in use for anchorage—to fan out in all directions through this other-space. Practically nothing was known as yet about the dark universe. Light traveled faster there and inertia was less. Incredible speeds were possible.

So much was known, and nothing else. The other-space could be a mere incalculable emptiness, without the most minute particle of substance anywhere in it Yet in theory a cosmos without mass could not exist A closed universe could not be closed without substance to make the gravitational warp that would close it. So there must be matter of some sort.

But Rod turned on the tractor-beams and fanned them out, merely to be doing something. The odds against any solid object within the distance the tractor-beams would cross within a few hours—even at the tremendous speed of radiation here were enormous.

He went back to the control-room, looking at his watch. Kit rested lightly in a screwed-down chair, staring at nothing. Her face was utterly dismal.

"I—er—I put on the tractor-beams to see if there could be anything solid around," he told her, pretending not to see her expression.

She did not answer.

"I'm hoping," he said awkwardly after a moment, "that we've wiped out those pyramid-makers and that we'll be able to go through one of their ships and pick up some of their stuff. In this space those projectors of theirs that shoot beams of light should be handy. I'd like to know what kind of drive they have—and they've got a sort of flame-pistol that could be useful."

Kit's lips trembled. A tear appeared at the corner of her eye and did not run down her cheek because there was no gravity to draw it. It blurred all her vision and she shook her head to clear it. The tear-drop flew off into the air as a tiny round globule. She gulped.

Rod said helplessly, "I feel like a scoundrel, Kit. I act as if I didn't think about you at all."

"You don't think of me," said Kit "And—and we're likely to be killed any time and—"

"If you looked happy," said Rod doggedly, "as if we were being romantic, the four other girls would envy you. And if romance breaks out in this ship it will be bad! There are ten men and only five girls. Right now it doesn't look as if we've much chance of getting back and if ten men get romantic over five girls—"

"S-some of the men are m-married," said Kit.

"It'll be hard for them to bear that in mind after they give up hope of getting back home and know they're some thousands of light-years away."

Then Rod said grimly, "I look at it this way—we're in the position of people who were shipwrecked in the olden days. But we've no hope of being rescued. No friendly space-ship will ever run across us! So we've got to load up with food. We've got to get weapons. We've got to get tools.

"And if we can't find our way back to Earth—the chance is slim—we've got to find a planet these space-murderers aren't interested in, one that we can settle on. We may have to turn ourselves into a colony and spend all our lives somewhere we can't even guess at yet Right now we've got to keep from doing anything that will start dissension on board."

"You could say something nice once in a while," said Kit miserably.

"If I did," said Rod, "I wouldn't want to stop at that"

The ship stirred—slightly but definitely.

Rod dived for the corridor to the engine-room. The movement of the ship could mean but one thing. The tractor-beam had touched something solid. Even hurtling through the air he glanced at his watch. The beam had been on for fourteen minutes. That would mean a hundred and sixty million miles in normal space. It might mean ten or twenty or a hundred times that here. It might mean anything or nothing whatever.

He reached the beam-projectors. Again carefully leaving the anchor-tractors untouched, Rod cut down the power of one after another of the rest. Another stirring. The beam which had struck something was identified. He put pressors in parallel and sent them out to cover the direction.

It was again fourteen minutes before a pressor hit the unseen object the tractor tugged at Rod took a deep breath. It wasn't coming this way, then. Not fast at any rate.

He settled down to finicky, delicate manipulation. It was, in a way, ridiculous for him to try to locate and focus a beam on something of unknown size—an unguessable but enormous distance away—when it was somewhere in a fifteen-degree-square arc of space.

It took fourteen minutes to discover whether an individual beam was even pointed in the right direction. But he had a dozen beams he could use, adjusting them in sequence, and he could shift the unfocused beams to find when they slid off the object.

The three-dimensional dance ended when the painter ran out of breath with which to blow the harmonica. An impromptu theatrical performance began. There was a painter who fancied himself as a tap-dancer. He essayed to demonstrate. With no weight to hold him anywhere his antics were unpredictable even to himself.

The spectators held fast to handrails on walls and floor and ceiling. The girls shrieked with laughter. The men howled. Somebody essayed to juggle. It was impossible. Nothing came back to his hands. The laughter tended to grow hysterical.

It was a wholesome enterprise and it was all very well as long as they could remember that they were not falling into endless nothingness. These antics helped them to remember. But the instant that thought ceased to hold the center of one's mind, muscles tensed in panic, eyes widened and breathing became difficult because one was falling, falling, falling....

It was long hours before Rod heard the curious crisp noise within a pressor-coil which told that it was locked It was focused upon something invisible and unspeakably remote in the absolute black of other-space. Rod looked at the beam-mounting. He made a tiny mark. After half an hour, there was no change in the long-range adjustment. Whatever the object was, it had no great velocity either toward or away from the Stellaris.

If it was a—well—a heavenly body, a burned-out sun in a universe run down, it might be useful. So Rod left a beam on it, drawing the minimum of power. He went floating along the corridor to the control-room and there Kit looked at him steadily, a sheet of paper in her hand. She no longer looked unhappy.

"Rod," she said, "do you remember writing this?"

Rod flushed. He'd written her a note before going out to make the death-beam generator. The Stellaris was to vanish from the planet's surface while he worked—it was to hide in other-space because there were alien looters on the unnamed world.

Pyramid-ships might come to this city. They might beam any area they intended to land on, as a matter of routine precaution. If they did he and the other two men on the planet's surface would die. So he'd written a note for Kit to find in case he didn't come back. And she'd found it.

"I didn't think to tear that up when I came back," he said uncomfortably. "Just—well—forget it, won't you?"

"Hardly!" said Kit She smiled tremulously. "If you really feel this way about me, I want to remember it I won't doubt any more!"

She smiled at him. The temptation was irresistible. But the electrician named Joe came floating into the control-room, flapping two large sheets of cardboard for wings. He braked expertly with them and grinned.

"If I only had a harp," he said, beaming, "I'd feel like an angel for sure!"

"I'm getting set to go back and see what our trick did to those looters and the pyramid-ships," Rod told him, momentarily confused.

Joe raised his eyebrows and made no comment. He fanned himself to a wall and caught hold of a hand-rail. "I'd like to spring an idea," he said.

"Go ahead!"

"Suppose we fix up a couple gizmos like the one we made back yonder on the planet," said Joe. "Then we could put up a scrap if one of them pyramids came after us."

"Providing we shot first," said Rod.

"That's right," agreed Joe. "But suppose we tricked the circuit so the tensor-plate was choked? So when we turned on the juice nothin' happened?"

Rod waited, frowning.

"Then," said Joe, grinning, "if they turned a beam on us, our feed-backs 'ud pick it up an' uncork our beam on them! They start shootin', an' automatic we shoot back."

"Good enough," admitted Rod. "Only we'd still die. That wouldn't kill their beams. It would just kill them."

"Then tie in our force-field switch," said Joe amiably. "They slap a beam on us, we shoot back an' go whammo into other-space. All automatic! A bear-trap. I don't like those guys!"

"I don't either," said Rod. He reflected. "Mmmmmm. You've got something there. I begin to like it. I wonder if they have it"

"It's not likely, Rod," Kit interposed. "They'll kill off other civilizations as soon as they have space-travel. You didn't arm your first ship and there was no plan to arm the Stellaris. Nobody'd be set to fight in their first space-ships.

"The pyramid-people have probably never had a real fight in their lives. They won't be looking for anybody to fight back, any more than a hunter expects a rabbit to let go at him with a blaster."

"Something there too," admitted Rod. "But they're probably scary at that. Most likely they started this murder business because they were frightened the first time their ships came upon another race. They wiped that race out because it scared them. Then they looted its cities and found it paid off. Still, if they think that way ..."

A chilly thought came to him. He felt small cold prickles running up and down his spine.

"Right now we've got to take a chance that we hit them hard," he said grimly. "Pass along the word that we're going back to normal space on the planet we found. And Joe—"

"Yeah?"

"Go down in the engine-room. I've got a pressor locked on something in the dark universe. If I throw the force-fields back on, you put power into that pressor. Plenty of it! We'll want to get moving, and fast!"

Joe grinned, let go of the hand-rail and flapped blissfully across the room. He bounced off the doorway and went soaring toward the engines.

Shoutings went through the ship. There was a roll-call, so that the sudden return of gravity would not take anyone by surprise. Then Rod threw off the force-fields.

Weight came back, but no light outside. Rod blinked, then roared, "Lights out! Quick!" It was night outside on the planet, and the lighted ports of the Stellaris would show for miles.

After long minutes Rod put Kit's hands on the switch that would send the Stellaris back to other-space. Quietly—it seemed strange to be able to walk—he went to the air-lock. He cracked it open. There was no sound anywhere. He stepped out into the night. The air was chill and many strange stars shone overhead. It was altogether eerie to stand in such strangeness on the ways of a city that had been murdered, on a planet that had no name, in the weird stillness of its night.

But night had not long fallen. On the horizon there was still a trace of luminosity. A single wisp of cloud, high up, glowed faintly in sunlight from below the horizon. But overhead the sky was deep-blue. Stars twinkled brightly.

And there was silence to crack the eardrums. Perhaps at the edge of the city where the jungle began, boughs and branches whispered in a night-wind. But here all was stillness. Everything was dead. As his eyes adjusted to the starlight the soaring, graceful architecture took form in the dimness.

And then he saw one of the pyramids that had been floating overhead before the Stellaris—its improvisioned weapon radiating death—had fled into the other-space. The pyramid had come down out of control.

It had crashed into the side of a cliff-like structure and rumbled out again. It lay askew with one of its corners still caught in the gap its impact had made. Rod drew a deep breath of satisfaction. The weapon he'd made had worked. There was now no living alien of the murderous race upon this planet But—

Something made him raise his eyes. Stars moved overhead. They moved visibly. Tiny specks of yellow incandescence shifted place among the many-colored distant suns. One winked out completely. Another suddenly appeared.

For an instant Rod thought of shooting stars—of meteors. But meteors do not move slowly. These things did. Especially, meteors do not move in geometric formation, arranged as a slightly skewed triangle which give the appearance from one viewpoint of a pyramid.

The specks were pyramid-ships—a space-fleet of the killer-race! There were literally hundreds of them and they approached the planet on which Rod stood. The flashes of light were sunlight reflected from their polished sides.

Rod went cold all over. But it was obvious enough, once he thought about it. The aliens who put up a pyramid on Calypso had the mentality of people who install elaborate burglar-alarms. It was part of a pattern of thought.

They did not think of mercy, so they would not think of watchfulness. Cold-bloodedness manifesting itself in unwarned race-murders implied a whole psychology. And a suspicion that had come to Rod no more than half an hour since was verified.

The aliens plainly took no chances. As they did not imagine friendly commerce—implying loyalty—between different races, they did not imagine loyalty or, courage in their own. So a pyramid-ship was not trusted to meet and report upon emergencies.

As a power-storage unit and a transmitter was built into the traps they set for other civilizations, so similar devices were built into their ships. In the unthinkable event that one of their crews was wiped out by a race unknown to them the crew was not depended on to report with their last trace of strength.

When the stick-like creatures in a pyramid-ship died the ship itself sent out a death-cry of radiation which could travel across half a galaxy. Perhaps there were relays to receive and transmit communications faster than the speed of light. When a ship was destroyed, a monstrous, overwhelming fleet could be sent instantly to avenge and destroy.

The winking spects of light moved on. Probably they would englobe the planet on which the looting-party had been destroyed. They might blast the planet itself out of existence. Or perhaps—

Rod ground his teeth. He'd made a mistake. He'd lost precious hours out of exaggerated caution. But he would not make that mistake again.

He went back into the ship to give crisp and savage orders.