Authors: E. E. 'Doc' Smith
When the interplanetary invaders were discovered upon Valeron, Quedrin Vornel, the most brilliant physicist of the planet, and his son Quedrin Radnor, the most renowned, were among the first to be informed of the visitation.
Of these two, Quedrin Vornel had for many years been engaged in researches of the most abstruse and fundamental character upon the ultimate structure of matter. He had delved deeply into those which we know as matter, energy, and ether, and had studied exhaustively the phenomena characteristic of or associated with atomic, electronic, and photonic rearrangements.
His son, while a scientist of no mean attainments in his own right, did not possess the phenomenally powerful and profoundly analytical mind that had made the elder Quedrin the outstanding scientific genius of his time. He was, however, a synchronizer
par excellence
, possessing to a unique degree the ability to develop things and processes of great utilitarian value from concepts and discoveries of a purely scientific and academic nature.
The vibrations which we know as Hertzian waves had long been known and had long been employed in radio, both broadcast and tight-beam, in television, in beam-transmission of power, and in receiverless visirays and their blocking screens. When Quedrin the elder disrupted the atom, however, successfully and safely liberating and studying not only its
stupendous energy but also an entire series of vibrations and particles theretofore unknown to science, Quedrin the younger began forthwith to turn the resulting products to the good of mankind.
Intra-atomic energy soon drove every prime mover of Valeron and shorter and shorter waves were harnessed. In beams, fans, and broadcasts Quedrin Radnor combined and heterodyned them, making of them tools and instruments immeasurably superior in power, precision, and adaptability to anything that his world had ever before known.
Due to the signal abilities of brilliant father and famous son, the laboratory in which they labored was connected by a private communication beam with the executive office of the Bardyle of Valeron. ‘Bardyle,’ freely translated, means ‘coordinator.’ He was neither king, emperor, nor president; and, while his authority was supreme, he was not a dictator.
A paradoxical statement this, but a true one; for the orders – rather, requests and suggestions – of the Bardyle merely guided the activities of men and women who had neither government nor laws, as we understand the terms, but were working of their own volition for the good of all mankind. The Bardyle could not conceivably issue an order contrary to the common weal, nor would such an order have been obeyed.
Upon the wall of the laboratory the tuned buzzer of the Bardyle’s beam-communicator sounded its subdued call and Klynor Siblin, the scientist’s capable assistant, took the call upon his desk instrument. A strong, youthful face appeared upon the screen.
‘Radnor is not here, Siblin?’ The pictured visitor glanced about the room as he spoke.
‘No, sir. He is out in the spaceship, making another test flight. He is merely circling the world, however, so that I can easily get him on the plate here if you wish.’
‘That would perhaps be desirable. Something very peculiar has occurred, concerning which all three of you should be informed.’
The connections were made and the Bardyle went on:
‘A semicircular dome of force has been erected over the ruins of the ancient city of Mocelyn. It is impossible to say how long it has been in place, since you know the ruins lie in an entirely unpopulated area. It is, however, of an unknown composition and pattern, being opaque to vision and to our visibeams. It is also apparently impervious to matter. Since this phenomenon seems to lie in your province I would suggest that you three men investigate it and take such steps as you deem necessary.’
‘It is noted, Bardyle,’ and Klynor Siblin cut the beam.
He then shot out their heaviest visiray beam, poising its viewpoint directly over what, in the days before the cataclysm, had been the populous
city of Mocelyn.
Straight down the beam drove, upon the huge hemisphere of greenly glinting force; urged downward by the full power of the Quedrins’ mighty generators. By the very vehemence of its thrust it tore through the barrier, but only for an instant. The watchers had time to perceive only fleetingly a greenish-yellow haze of light, but before any details could be grasped their beam was snapped – the automatically reacting screens had called for and had received enough additional power to neutralize the invading beam.
Then, to the amazement of the three physicists, a beam of visible energy thrust itself from the green barrier and began to feel its way along their own invisible visiray. Siblin cut off his power instantly and leaped toward the door.
‘Whoever they are, they know something!’ he shouted as he ran. ‘Don’t want them to find this laboratory, so I’ll set up a diversion with a rocket plane. If you watch at all, Vornel, do it from a distance and with a spy ray, not a carrier beam. I’ll get in touch with Radnor on the way.’
Even though he swung around in a wide circle, to approach the strange stronghold at a wide angle to his former line, such was the power of the plane that Siblin reached his destination in little more than an hour. Keying Radnor’s visibeam to the visiplates of the plane, so that the distant scientist could see everything that happened, Siblin again drove a heavy beam into the unyielding pattern of green force.
This time, however, the reaction was instantaneous. A fierce tongue of green flame licked out and seized the flying plane in mid-air. One wing and side panel were sliced off neatly and Siblin was thrown out violently, but he did not fall. Surrounded by a vibrant shell of energy, he was drawn rapidly toward the huge dome. The dome merged with the shell as it touched it, but the two did not coalesce. The shell passed smoothly through the dome, which as smoothly closed behind it. Siblin inside the shell, the shell inside the dome.
Siblin never knew exactly what happened during those first few minutes, nor exactly how it happened. One minute, in his sturdy plane, he was setting up his ‘diversion’ by directing a powerful beam of force upon the green dome of the invaders. Suddenly his rocket ship had been blasted apart and he had been hurled away from the madly spinning, gyrating wreckage.
He had a confused recollection of sitting down
violently upon something very hard, and perceived dully that he was lying asprawl upon the inside of a greenishly shimmering globe some twenty feet in diameter. Its substance had the hardness of chilled steel, yet it was almost perfectly transparent, seemingly composed of cold green flame, pale almost to invisibility. He also observed, in an incurious, foggy fashion, that the great dome was rushing toward him at an appalling pace.
He soon recovered from his shock, however, and perceived that the peculiar ball in which he was imprisoned was a shell of force, of formula and pattern entirely different from anything known to the scientists of Valeron. Keenly alive and interested now, he noted with high appreciation exactly how the wall of force that was the dome merged with, made way for, and closed smoothly behind the relatively tiny globe.
Inside the dome he stared around him, amazed and not a little awed. Upon the ground, the center of that immense hemisphere, lay a featureless, football-shaped structure which must be the vessel of the invaders. Surrounding it there were massed machines and engineering structures of unmistakable form and purpose; drills, derricks, shaft heads, skips, hoists, and other equipment for boring and mining. From the lining of the huge dome there radiated a strong, lurid, yellowish-green light which intensified to positive ghastliness the natural color of the gaseous chlorin which replaced the familiar air in that walled-off volume so calmly appropriated to their own use by the Outlanders.
As his shell was drawn downward toward the strange scene Siblin saw many moving things beneath him, but was able neither to understand what he saw nor to correlate it with anything in his own knowledge or experience. For those beings were amorphous. Some flowed along the ground, formless blobs of matter; some rolled, like wheels or like barrels; many crawled rapidly, snakelike; others resembled animated pancakes, undulating flatly and nimbly about upon a dozen or so short, tentacular legs; only a few, vaguely manlike, walked upright.
A glass cage, some eight feet square and seven high, stood under the towering bulge of the great ship’s side; and as his shell of force engulfed it and its door swung invitingly open, Siblin knew that he was expected to enter it.
Indeed, he had no choice – the fabric of cold flame that had been his conveyance and protection vanished, and he had scarcely time to leap inside the cage and slam the door before the noxious vapors of the atmosphere invaded the space from which the shell’s impermeable wall had barred it. To die more slowly, but just as surely, from suffocation? No, the cage was equipped with a thoroughly efficient oxygen generator and air purifier; there were stores of Valeronian food and water; there were a chair, a table, and a narrow bunk; and wonder of wonders, there were even kits of toilet articles and of changes of clothing.
Far above a great door opened. The cage was lifted and, without
any apparent means either of support or of propulsion, it moved through the doorways and along various corridors and halls, coming finally to rest upon the floor in one of the innermost compartments of the sky rover. Siblin saw masses of machinery, panels of controlling instruments, and weirdly multiform creatures at station; but he had scant time even to glance at them, his attention being attracted instantly to the middle of the room where, lying in a heavily reinforced shallow cup of metal upon an immensely strong, low table, he saw a – a
something;
and for the first time an inhabitant of Valeron saw at close range one of the invaders.
It was in no sense a solid, nor a liquid, nor
yet
a jelly; although it seemed to partake of certain properties of all three. In part it was murkily transparent, in part greenishly translucent, in part turbidly opaque; but in all it was intrinsically horrible. In every physical detail and in every nuance of radiant aura of conscious power it was disgusting and appalling; sickeningly, nauseously revolting to every human thought and instinct.
But that it was sentient and intelligent there could be no doubt. Not only could its malign mental radiations be felt, but its brain could be plainly seen; a huge, intricately convolute organ suspended in an unyielding but plastic medium of solid jelly. Its skin seemed thin and frail, but Siblin was later to learn that that tegument was not only stronger than rawhide, but was more pliable, more elastic, and more extensible than the finest rubber.
As the Valeronian stared in helpless horror that peculiar skin stretched locally almost to vanishing thinness and an enormous Cyclopean eye developed. More than an eye, it was a special organ for a special sense which humanity has never possessed, a sense combining ordinary vision with something infinitely deeper, more penetrant and more powerful. Vision, hypnotism, telepathy, thought-transference – something of all these, yet in essence a thing beyond any sense or faculty known to us or describable in language, had its being in the almost-visible, almost-tangible beam of force which emanated from the single, temporary ‘eye’ of the Thing and bored through the eyes and deep into the brain of the Valeronian. Siblin’s very senses reeled under the impact of that wave of mental power, but he did not quite lose consciousness.
‘So
you
are one of the ruling intelligences of this planet – one of its most advanced scientists?’ The scornful thought formed itself, coldly clear, in his mind. ‘We have always known, of course, that we are the highest form of life in the universe, and the fact that you are so low in the scale of mentality only confirms that knowledge. It would be surprising indeed if such a noxious atmosphere as yours could nurture any real intelligence. It will be highly gratifying to report to the Council of Great Ones that not only is this planet rich in the materials we seek, but that its inhabitants, while intelligent enough to do our bidding in securing those materials, are not sufficiently
advanced to cause us any trouble.’
‘Why did you not come in peace?’ Siblin thought back. Neither cowed nor shaken, he was merely amazed at the truculently overbearing mien of the strange entity. ‘We would have been glad to cooperate with you in every possible way. It would seem self-evident that all intelligent races, whatever their outward form or mental status, should work together harmoniously for their mutual advancement.’
‘Bah!’ snapped the amoebus savagely. ‘That is the talk of a weakling – the whining, begging reasoning of a race of low intelligence, one which knows and acknowledges itself inferior. Know you, feeble brain, that we of Chlora’ – to substitute an intelligible word for the unpronounceable and untranslatable thought-image of his native world – ‘neither require nor desire cooperation. We are in no need either of assistance or of instruction from any lesser and lower form of life. We instruct. Other races, such as yours, either obey or are obliterated. I brought you aboard this vessel because I am about to return to my own planet, and had decided to take one of you with me, so that the other Great Ones of the Council may see for themselves what form of life this Valeron boasts.
‘If your race obeys our commands implicitly and does not attempt to interfere with us in any way, we shall probably permit most of you to continue your futile lives in our service; such as in mining for us certain ores which, relatively abundant upon your planet, are very scarce upon ours.
‘As for you personally, perhaps we shall destroy you after the other Great Ones have examined you, perhaps we shall decide to use you as a messenger to transmit our orders to your fellow creatures. Before we depart, however, I shall make a demonstration which should impress upon even such feeble minds as those of your race the futility of any thought of opposition to us. Watch carefully – everything that goes on outside is shown in the view box.’