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

was the most serious problem. This difficulty had finally been overcome by a very abbreviated training course in the actual manipulation of the controls on the home planets, and subsequent training as the squadrons raced on their outward courses.

It was soon decided that there must be another service beside that of the ordinary ships. One plant was devoted to making huge interstellar liners. These giants, made on Venus, were nearly a quarter of a mile long, and though diminutive in comparison with the giant Nigran ships, they were still decidedly large. Twelve of these could be completed within the next month, it was found; and one was immediately set aside as an officers’ headquarters ship. It was recognized that the officers must be within a few hundred thousand miles of the actual engagements, for decisions would have to be made without too much loss of time in the transmission of reports.

The ship must not be brought too near the front lest the officers be endangered and the entire engagement lost for want of the organizing central headquarters. The final solution had been the huge central control ship.

The other large vessels were to be used to carry food and supplies. They were not to enter the engagement, for their huge size would make them as vulnerable to the tiny darting mites of space as the Nigran ships had been to the Interplanetary Patrol. The little ships could not conveniently stock for more than a week of engagement, then drop back to these warehouses of space, and go forward again for action.

Throughout the long wait the officers of the Solarian forces organized their forces to the limit of their ability, planning each move of their attack. Space had been marked off into a great three-dimensional map, and each ship carried a small replica, the planets moving as they did in their orbits. The space between the planets was divided off into definite points in a series of Cartesian coordinates, the sun being the origin, and the plane of the elliptic being the X-Y plane.

The OX line was taken pointing toward one of the brightest of the fixed stars that was in the plane of the elliptic. The entire solar system was thus marked off as had been the planets long ages before, into a system of three dimensional latitude and longitude. This was imperative, in order to assure the easy location of the point of first attack, and to permit the entire fleet to come into position there. A scattered guard was to remain free, to avoid any false attacks and a later attack from a point millions of miles distant. Earth and Venus were each equipped with gigantic ray projectors, mighty weapons that could destroy anything, even a body as large as the Moon, at a distance of ten thousand miles. Still, a ship might get through, and with the death ray⁠—what fearful toll might be exacted from a vast city such as Chicago⁠—with its thirty millions! Or Karos, on Venus, with its fifteen and one half millions!

The tension became greater and greater as with each passing day the populace of two worlds awaited the call from the far-flung guard. The main bulk of the fleet had been concentrated in the center of their great spherical shell of ships. They could only wait⁠—and watch⁠—and prepare! Hundreds of miles apart, yet near enough so that no ship except perhaps a one-man craft could pass them undetected; and behind them were ships with delicate apparatus that could detect any foreign body of any size whatever within a hundred thousand miles of them.

The Solar System was prepared to repel boarders from the vast sea of space!

VI

Taj Lamor gazed down at the tremendous field below him. In it lay close packed a great mass of ships, a concourse of titans of space, dreadnoughts that were soon to set out to win⁠—not a nation, not even a world, but to conquer a solar system, and to win for their owners a vast new sun, a sun that would light them and heat them for long ages to come.

Momentarily Taj Lamor’s gaze followed the retreating figure of Tordos Gar, the Elder; a figure with stooped shoulders and bowed head. His quiet yet vibrant parting words still resounded in his ears:

“Taj Lamor, remember what I tell you. If you win this awful war⁠—you lose. As will our race. Only if you lose will you win.”

With a frown Taj Lamor stared down at the vast metal hulls glistening softly in the dull light of far-off stars, the single brightly beaming star that was their goal, and the dim artificial lighting system. From the distance came to him the tapping and humming of the working machines below as they strove to put the finishing touches to the great ships.

He raised his eyes toward the far-off horizon, where a great yellow star flamed brilliantly against the black velvet of space. He thought of that planet where the sky had been blue⁠—an atmosphere of such intensity that it colored the sky!

Thoughtfully he gazed at the flaming yellow point.

He had much to consider now. They had met a new race, barbarians in some ways, yet they had not forgotten the lessons they had learned; they were not decadent. Between his eon-old people and their new home stood these strange beings, a race so young that its age could readily be counted in millennia, but withal a strong, intelligent form of life. And to a race that had not known war for so many untold ages, it was an unthinkable thing that they must kill other living, intelligent beings in order that they might live.

They had no need of moving, Tordos Gar and many others had argued; they could stay where they were forever, and never find any need for leaving their planet. This was the voice of decadence, Taj Lamor told himself; and he had grown to hate that voice.

There were other men, men who had gone to that