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

space distortion and time field distortion. Then he released both simultaneously.

The velvet black of space was about them as before, but now the disc of the Nebula was tiny behind them! So tiny was it, that these men, who knew its magnitude, gasped in sudden wonder. None of them had been able to conceive of such a velocity as this ship had shown! In seconds, Morey announced a moment later, they had traveled one million, one hundred thousand light years! Their velocity was six hundred and sixty quadrillion miles per second!

“Then it will take us only a little over one thousand seconds to travel the hundred and fifty million light years, at 110,000 light years per second⁠—that’s about the radius of our galaxy, isn’t it!” exclaimed Wade.

They started on now, and one thousand and ten seconds, or a little more than eighteen minutes later, they stopped again. So far behind them now as to be almost lost in the far scattered universes, lay their own Island, and carefully they photographed the Universe that now lay less than twenty million light years ahead. Still, it was further, even after crossing this enormous gulf, than are many of those nebulae we see from Earth, many of which lie within that distance. They must proceed cautiously now, for they did not know the exact distance to the Nebula. Carefully, running forward in jumps of five million light years, forty-five second drives, they worked nearer.

Then finally they entered the Island, and drove toward the denser center.

“Good Lord, Arcot, look at those suns!” exclaimed Morey in amazement. For the first time they were seeing the suns of this system at a range that permitted observation, and Arcot had stopped to observe. The first one they had chosen had been a blue-white giant of enormous mass, nearly one hundred and fifty times as heavy as our own sun, and all the enormous surface was radiating power into space at a rate of nearly thirty thousand horsepower per square inch! No planets circled it, however, in its journey through space.

“I’ve been noticing the number of giants here. Look around.”

The Thought moved on, on to other suns. They must find one that was inhabited.

They stopped at last near a great orange giant, and examined it. It had indeed planets, and as Arcot watched, he saw in the telectroscope a line of gigantic freighters rise from the world, and whisk off to nothingness as they exceeded the speed of light! Instantly he started the Thought searching in time fields for the freighters. He found them, and followed them as they raced across the void. He knew he was visible to them, and as he suspected, they soon stopped, slowing down and signaling to him.

“Morey⁠—take the Thought. I’m going to visit them in the Banderlog as I think we shall name the tender,” called Arcot, stripping off the headset, and leaving the control seat. The other fleet of ships was now less than a hundred thousand miles away, clearly visible in the telectroscope. They were still signaling, and Arcot had set an automatic signaling device flashing an enormously powerful searchlight toward them in a succession of dots and dashes, an obvious signal, though also, obviously unintelligible to those others.

“Is it safe, Arcot?” asked Torlos anxiously. To approach those enormous ships in the relatively tiny Banderlog seemed unwise.

“Far safer than they’ll believe. Remember, only the Thought could stand up against such weapons as even the Banderlog carries, run as they are by cosmic energy,” replied Arcot, diving down toward the little tender.

In a moment it was out through the lock, and sped away from them like a bullet, reaching the distant stranger fleet in less than ten seconds.

“They are communicating by thought!” announced Zezdon Afthen presently. “But I cannot understand them, for the impulses are too weak to be intelligently received.”

For nearly an hour the Banderlog hung beside the fleet, then it turned about, and raced once more to the Thought. Inside the lock, and a moment later Arcot appeared again on the threshold of the door. He looked immensely relieved.

“Well, I have some good news,” he said and smiled, sitting down. “Follow that bunch, Morey, and I’ll tell you about it. Set it and she’ll hold nicely. We have a long way to go, and those are slow freighters, accompanied by one Cruiser.

“Those men,” he began, “are men of Venone. You remember Thett’s records said something of the Mighty Warless Ones of Venone? Those are they. They inhabit most of this universe, leaving the Thessians but four planets of a minor sun, way off in one corner. It seems the Thessians are their undesirable exiles, those who have, from generation to generation, been either forced to go there, or who wanted to go there.

“They did not like the easier and more effective method of disposing of undesirables, the instantaneous death chamber they now use. Thett was their prison world. No one ever returned and his family could go with him if they desired, but if they did not, they were carefully watched for outcroppings of undesirable traits⁠—murder, crime of any sort, any habitual tendency to injustice.

“About six hundred years ago of our time, Thett revolted. There were scientists there, and their scientists had discovered a thing that they had been seeking for generations⁠—the Twin-ray. I don’t know what it is, and the Venonians don’t either. It is the ray that destroys relux and lux, however, and can be carried only on a machine the size of their forts, due to some limitations. Just what those limitations are the Venonians don’t know. Other than that ray they had no new weapons.

“But it was enough. Their guard ships which had circled the worlds of the prison system, Antseck, were suddenly destroyed, so suddenly that Venone received no word of it till a consignment ship, bringing prisoners, discovered their absence. The consignment ship returned without landing. Thett was now independent. But they were bound