Invaders from the Infinite - John W. Campbell (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📗

The relief in Zezdon Afthen’s mind was genuine, and it was easily obvious to the Sirians that the winning ship was friendly, for, with all its frightful armament, it had downed a ship obviously of Thett. Though not exactly like the others, it had the all too familiar lines.

“They welcome us now,” said Zezdon Afthen’s mental message to his companions.

“Tell them we’ll be there⁠—with bells on or thoughts to that effect,” grinned Arcot. Morey had appeared in the doorway, smiling broadly.

“How was the show?” he asked.

“Terrible⁠—Why didn’t you let it fall, and break open?”

“What would happen to the wreckage as we moved?” he asked sarcastically. “I thought it was a darned good demonstration.”

“It was convincing,” laughed Arcot. “They want us now!”

The great ship circled down, landing gently just outside of the city. Almost at once one of the slim, long Sirian ships shot up from a courtyard of the city, racing out and toward the Ancient Mariner. Scarcely a moment later half a hundred other ships from all over the city were on the way. Sirians seemed quite humanly curious.

“We’ll have to be careful here. We have to use altitude suits, as the Negrians breathe an atmosphere of hydrogen instead of oxygen,” explained Arcot rapidly to the Ortolian and the Talsonian who were to accompany him. “We will all want to go, and so, although this suit will be decidedly uncomfortable for you and Zezdon Afthen and Stel Felso Theu, I think it wise that you all wear it. It will be much more convincing to the Sirians if we show that people of no less than three worlds are already interested in this alliance.”

A considerable number of Sirian ships had landed about them, and the tall, slim men of the 100,000,000-year-old race were watching them with their great brown eyes from a slight distance, for a cordon of men with evident authority were holding them back.

“Who are you, friends?” asked a single man who stood within the cordon. His strongly built frame, a great high brow and broad head designated him a leader at a glance.

Despite the vast change the light of Sirius had wrought, Arcot recognized in him the original photographs he had seen from the planet old Sol had captured as Negra had swept past. So it was he who answered the thought-question.

“I am of the third planet of the sun your people sought as a home a few years back in time, Taj Lamor. Because you did not understand us, and because we did not understand you, we fought. We found the records of your race on the planet our sun captured, and we know now what you most wanted. Had we been able to communicate with you then, as we can now, our people would never have fought.

“At last you have reached that sun you so needed, thanks, no doubt, to the genius that was with you.

“But now, in your newfound peace comes a new enemy, one who wants not only yours, but every sun in this galaxy.

“You have tried your ray of death, the anticatalyst? And it but sputters harmlessly on their screens? You have been swept by their terrible rays that fuse mountains, then hurl them into space? Our world and the world of each of these men is similarly menaced.

“See, here is Zezdon Afthen, from Ortol, far on the other side of the galaxy, and here is Stel Felso Theu, of Talso. Their worlds, as well as yours and mine have been attacked by this menace from a distant galaxy, from Thett, of the sun Ansteck, of the galaxy Venone.

“Now we must form an alliance of far wider scope than ever has existed before.

“To you we have come, for your race is older by far than any race of our alliance. Your science has advanced far higher. What weapons have you discovered among those ancient documents, Taj Lamor? We have one weapon that you no doubt need; a screen, which will stop the rays of the molecule director apparatus. What have you to offer us?”

“We need your help badly,” was the reply. “We have been able to keep them from landing on our planets, but it has cost us much. They have landed on a planet we brought with us when we left the black star, but it is not inhabited. From this as a base they have made attacks on us. We tried throwing the planet into Sirius. They merely left the planet hurriedly as it fell toward the star, and broke free from our attractive ray.”

“The attractive ray! Then you have uncovered that secret?” asked Arcot eagerly.

Taj Lamor had some of his men bring an attractive ray projector to the ship. The apparatus turned out to be nearly a thousand tons in weight, and some twenty feet long, ten feet wide and approximately twelve feet high. It was impossible to load the huge machine into the Ancient Mariner, so an examination was conducted on the spot, with instruments whose reading was intelligible to the terrestrians operating it. Its principal fault lay in the fact that, despite the enormous energy of matter given out, the machine still gobbled up such titanic amounts of energy before the attraction could be established, that a very large machine was needed. The ray, so long as maintained, used no more power than was actually expended in moving the planet or other body. The power used while the ray was in action corresponded to the work done, but a tremendous power was needed to establish it, and this power could never be recovered.

Further, no reaction was produced in the machine, no matter what body it was turned upon. In swinging a planet then, a spaceship could be used as the base for the reaction was not exerted on the machine.

From such meager clues, and the instruments, Arcot got the hints that led him to the solution of the problem, for the documents, from which Taj Lamor had gotten his information,