The Black Star Passes - John W. Campbell (reading cloud ebooks txt) 📗

touched the cliff there was intense incandescence that made the rock glow white hot, then flow down in a sluggish rivulet of molten lava! For five minutes longer this terrific spectacle lasted, while Arcot withdrew the Solarite to a safer distance.

The fifty motors of the remaining wing seemed slowing down now⁠—then suddenly there was such a crash and towering flash of light as no human being had ever seen before! Up⁠—up into the very clouds it shot its mighty flame, a blazing column of light that seemed to reach out into space. The Solarite was hurled back end over end, tumbling, falling. Even the heavy gyroscopes could not hold it for an instant, but quickly the straining motors brought them to rest in air that whirled and whined about them. They were more than twenty miles from the scene of the explosion, but even at that distance they could see the glow of the incandescent rock. Slowly, cautiously they maneuvered the Solarite back to the spot, and looked down on a sea of seething lava!

Morey broke the awed silence. “Lord⁠—what power that thing carries! No wonder they could support it in the air! But⁠—how can they control such power? What titanic forces!”

Slowly Arcot sent the Solarite away into the night⁠—into the kindly darkness once more. His voice when he spoke at last was oddly restrained.

“I wonder what those forces were⁠—they are greater than any man has ever before seen! An entire hill fused to molten, incandescent rock, not to mention the tons and tons of metal that made up that ship.

“And such awful forces as these are to be released on our Earth!” For an interminable period they sat silent as the panorama of hills glided by at a slow two-hundred miles an hour. Abruptly Arcot exclaimed, “We must capture a ship. We’ll try again⁠—we’ll either destroy or capture it⁠—and either way we’re ahead!”

Aimlessly they continued their leisurely course across a vast plain. There were no great mountains on Venus, for this world had known no such violent upheaval as the making of a moon. The men were lost in thought, each intent on his own ideas. At length Wade stood up, and walked slowly back to the power room.

Suddenly the men in the control room heard his call:

“Arcot⁠—quick⁠—the microphone⁠—and rise a mile!”

The Solarite gave a violent lurch as it shot vertically aloft at tremendous acceleration. Arcot reached over swiftly and snapped the switch of the microphone. There burst in upon them the familiar roaring drone of a hundred huge propellers. No slightest hum of motor, only the vast whining roar of the mighty props.

“Another one! They must have been following the first by a few minutes. We’ll get this one!” Arcot worked swiftly at his switches. “Wade⁠—strap yourself in the seat where you are⁠—don’t take time to come up here.”

They followed the same plan which had worked so well before. Suddenly invisible, the Solarite flashed ahead of the great plane. The titanic wave of rushing sound engulfed them⁠—then again came the little hiss of the gas. Now there were no hills in sight, as far as the eye could see. In the dim light that seemed always to filter through these gray clouds they could see the distant, level horizon.

Several dragging minutes passed before there was any evident effect; the men from Earth were waiting for that great ship to waver, to wobble from its course. Suddenly Arcot gave a cry of surprise. Startled amazement was written all over his face, as his companions turned in wonderment to see that he was partially visible! The Solarite, too, had become a misty ghost ship about them; they were becoming visible! Then in an instant it was gone⁠—and they saw that the huge black bulk behind them was wavering, turning; the thunderous roar of the propellers fell to a whistling whine; the ship was losing speed! It dipped, and shot down a bit⁠—gained speed, then step by step it glided down⁠—down⁠—down to the surface below. The engines were idling now, the plane running more and more slowly.

They were near the ground now⁠—and the watchers scarcely breathed. Would this ship, too, crash? It glided to within a half mile of the plain⁠—then it dipped once more, and Arcot breathed his relief as it made a perfect landing, the long series of rollers on the base of the gigantic hull absorbing the shock of the landing. There were small streams in the way⁠—a tree or two, but these were obstacles unnoticed by the gargantuan machine. Its mighty propellers still idling slowly, the huge plane rolled to a standstill.

Swooping down, the Solarite landed beside it, to be lost in the vast shadows of the mighty metal walls.

Arcot had left a small radio receiver with Tonlos in Sonor before he started on this trip, and had given him directions on how to tune in on the Solarite. Now he sent a message to him, telling that the plane had been brought down, and asking that a squadron of planes be sent at once.

Wade and Arcot were elected to make the first inspection of the Kaxorian plane, and clad in their cooling suits, they stepped from the Solarite, each carrying, for emergency use, a small hand torch, burning atomic hydrogen, capable of melting its way through even the heavy armor of the great plane.

As they stood beside it, looking up at the gigantic wall of metal that rose sheer beside them hundreds of feet straight up, it seemed impossible that this mighty thing could fly, that it could be propelled through the air. In awed silence they gazed at its vast bulk.

Then, like pygmies beside some mighty prehistoric monster, they made their way along its side, seeking a door. Suddenly Wade stopped short and exclaimed: “Arcot, this is senseless⁠—we can’t do this! The machine is so big that it’ll take us half an hour of steady walking to go around it. We’ll have to use the