Islands of Space - John W. Campbell (pdf to ebook reader TXT) 📗

at the controls of the Ancient Mariner, increased the acceleration as the ship speared up toward interplanetary space. Soon, the deep blue of the sky had given way to an intense violet, and this faded to the utter black of space as the ship drew away from the planet that was its home.

“That lump of dust there is going to look mighty little when we get back,” said Wade softly.

“But,” Arcot reminded him, “that little lump of dust is going to pull us across a distance that our imaginations can’t conceive of. And we’ll be darned happy to see that pale globe swinging in space when we get back⁠—provided, of course, that we do get back.”

The ship was straining forward now under the pull of its molecular motion power units, accelerating at a steady rate, rapidly increasing the distance between the ship and Earth.

The cosmic ray power generators were still charging the coils, preventing the use of the space strain drive. Indeed, it would be a good many hours before they would be far enough from the sun to throw the ship into hyperspace.

In the meantime, Morey was methodically checking every control as Arcot called out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working to perfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test was yet to come.

They were well beyond the orbit of Pluto when they decided they would be safe in using the space strain drive and throwing the ship into hyperspace.

Morey was in the hyperspace control room, watching the instruments there. They were ready!

“Hold on!” called Arcot. “Here we go⁠—if at all!” He reached out to the control panel before him and touched the green switch that controlled the molecular motion machines. The big power tubes cut off, and their acceleration ceased. His fingers pushed a brilliant red switch⁠—there was a dull, muffled thud as a huge relay snapped shut.

Suddenly, a strange tingling feeling of power ran through them⁠—space around them was suddenly black. The lights dimmed for an instant as the titanic current that flowed through the gigantic conductors set up a terrific magnetic field, reacting with the absorption plates. The power seemed to climb rapidly to a maximum⁠—then, quite suddenly, it was gone.

The ship was quiet. No one spoke. The meters, which had flashed over to their limits, had dropped back to zero once more, except those which indicated the power stored in the giant coil. The stars that had shone brilliantly around them in a myriad of colors were gone. The space around them glowed strangely, and there was a vast cloud of strange, violet or pale green stars before them. Directly ahead was one green star that glowed big and brilliant, then it faded rapidly and shrank to a tiny dot⁠—a distant star. There was a strange tenseness about the men; they seemed held in an odd, compelled silence.

Arcot reached forward again. “Cutting off power, Morey!” The red tumbler snapped back. Again space seemed to be charged with a vast surplus of energy that rushed in from all around, coursing through their bodies, producing a tingling feeling. Then space rocked in a gray cloud about them; the stars leaped out at them in blazing glory again.

“Well, it worked once!” breathed Arcot with a sigh of relief. “Lord, I made some errors in calculation, though! I hope I didn’t make any more! Morey⁠—how was it? I only used one-sixteenth power.”

“Well, don’t use any more, then,” said Morey. “We sure traveled! The things worked perfectly. By the way, it’s a good thing we had all the relays magnetically shielded; the magnetic field down here was so strong that my pocket kit tried to start running circles around it.

“According to your magnetic drag meter, the conductors were carrying over fifty billion amperes. The small coils worked perfectly. They’re charged again; the power went back into them from the big coil with only a five percent loss of power⁠—about twenty thousand megawatts.”

“Hey, Arcot,” Wade said. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be able to see the stars.”

Arcot spread his hands. “I did say that, and all my apologies for it. But we’re not seeing them by light. The stars all have projections⁠—shadows⁠—in this space because of their intense gravitational fields. There are probably slight fluctuations in the field, perhaps one every minute or so. Since we were approaching them at twenty thousand times the speed of light, the Doppler effect gives us what looks like violet light.

“We saw the stars in front of us as violet points. The green ones were actually behind us, and the green light was tremendously reduced in frequency. It certainly can’t be anything less than gamma rays and probably even of greater frequency.

“Did you notice there were no stars off to the side? We weren’t approaching them, so they didn’t give either effect.”

“How did you know which was which?” asked Fuller skeptically.

“Did you see that green star directly ahead of us?” Arcot asked. “The one that dwindled so rapidly? That could only have been the sun, since the sun was the only star close enough to show up as a disc. Since it was green and I knew it was behind us, I decided that all the green ones were behind us. It isn’t proof, but it’s a good indication.”

“You win, as usual,” admitted Fuller.

“Well, where are we?” asked Wade. “I think that’s more important.”

“I haven’t the least idea,” confessed Arcot. “Let’s see if we can find out. I’ve got the robot pilot on, so we can leave the ship to itself. Let’s take a look at Old Sol from a distance that no man ever reached before!”

They started for the observatory. Morey joined them and Arcot put the view of Sol and his family on the telectroscope screen. He increased the magnification to maximum, and the four men looked eagerly at the system. The sun glowed brilliantly, and the planets showed plainly.

“Now, if we wanted to take the trouble, we could calculate when