Chapter VI: Part THREE: The Boomerang Circuit (2)

The ship settled down once more. There was a thin, hazy overcast here, and clear vision came suddenly as they dropped below it. And the coast and the land before them brought an exclamation from Dona. The shoreline was magnificent, all beautiful bold cliffs with rolling hills behind them. There were mountains on farther yet and splendid vistas everywhere. But more than the land or the natural setting, it was what men had done which caused Dona to exclaim.

The whole terrain was landscaped like a garden. As far as the eye could reach--and the _Starshine_ still flew high--every hillside and every plain had been made into artificial but marvelous gardens. There were houses here and there. Some were huge and gracefully spreading, or airily soaring upward, or simple with the simplicity of gems and yet magnificent beyond compare. There was ostentation here, to be sure, but there was surely no tawdriness. There was no city in sight. There was not even a grouping of houses, yet many of the houses were large enough to shelter communities.

"I--see," said Kim. "The workmen live near the factories or in their compounds. The owners have their homes safely away from the ugly part of commerce. They've a small-sized continent of country homes, Dona, and undoubtedly it is very pleasant to live here. Whom shall we deal with?"

Dona shook her head. Kim picked a magnificent residence at random. He slanted the _Starshine_ down. Presently it landed lightly upon smooth lawn of incredible perfection, before a home that Dona regarded with shining eyes.

"It's--lovely!" she said breathlessly.

"It is," agreed Kim.

"It even has a feeling all its own," he said. "The palace of a king or a tyrant always has something of arrogance about it. It's designed to impress the onlooker. A pleasure-palace is always tawdry. It's designed to flatter the man who enters it. These houses are solid. They're the homes of men who are thinking of generations to follow them and, meanwhile, only of themselves. I've heard of the merchant princes of Spicus Five, and I'm prejudiced. I don't like those factories with the workmen's homes inside. But--I like this house. Do you want to come with me?"

Dona looked at the house--yearningly. At the view all about; every tree and every stone so placed as to constitute perfection. The effect was not that of a finicky estheticism, but of authentic beauty and dignity. But after a moment Dona shook her head.

"I don't think I'd better," she said slowly. "I'm a woman, and I'd want one like it. I'll stay in the ship and look at the view. You've a communicator?"

Kim nodded. He opened the airlock door and stepped out. He walked toward the great building.

Dona watched his figure grow small in its progress toward the mansion. She watched him approach the ceremonial entrance. She saw a figure in formalized rich clothing appear in that doorway and bow to him. Kim spoke, with gestures. The richly clothed servant bowed for him to go first into the house. Kim entered and the door closed.

Dona looked at her surroundings. Dignity and tranquility and beauty were here. Children growing up in such an environment would be very happy and would feel utterly safe. Wide, smooth, close-cropped lawns, with ancient trees and flowering shrubs stretched away to the horizons. There was the gleam of statuary here and there--rarely. A long way off she could see the glitter of water, and beside it a graceful colonnade, and she knew that it was a pleasure-pool.

Once she saw two boys staring at the space-ship. There was no trace of fear in their manner. But a richly-dressed servant--much more carefully garbed than the boys--led up two of the slim riding-sards of Phanis, and the boys mounted and their steeds started off with that sinuous smooth swiftness which only sards possess in all the First Galaxy.

Time passed, and shadows lengthened. Finally Dona realized how many hours had elapsed since Kim's departure. She was beginning to grow uneasy when the door opened again and Kim came out followed by four richly clad servants. Those servants carried bundles. Kim's voice came over the communicator.

"Close the inner airlock door, Dona, and don't open it until I say so."

Dona obeyed. She watched uneasily. The four servants placed their parcels inside the airlock at a gesture from Kim. Then there was an instant of odd tension. Dona could not see the servants, but she saw Kim smiling mirthlessly at them. He made no move to enter. He spoke sharply and she heard them file out of the airlock. Dona could see them again.

Kim stepped into the space-ship and closed the door.

"Take her up, Dona--fast!"

The _Starshine_ shot upward, with the four servants craning their necks to look at it. It was out of sight of the ground in seconds. It was out of the atmosphere before Kim came into the control-room from the lock.

"Quite a civilization," he said. "You'd have liked that house, Dona. There's a staff of several hundred servants, and it is beautiful inside. The man who owns it is also master of one of the bigger industrial plants. He doesn't go to the plant, of course. He has his offices at home, with a corps of secretaries and a television-screen for interviews with his underlings. Quite a chap."

"Were those four men servants?" Dona asked.

"No, they were guards," said Kim drily. "There are no proletarians around that place, and none are permitted. Guards stand watch night and day. I'd told my friend that the _Starshine_ was packed with lethal gadgets with which Ades had won at least one war, and he's in the munitions business, so I wasn't going to let his guards get inside. They wanted to, badly, insisting they had to put their parcels in the proper place. He'd have paid them lavishly if they could have captured a ship like the _Starshine_."

He laughed a little.

"I was lucky to pick a munitions maker. There aren't many wars in the ordinary course of events, but he turns out weapons for palace guards, mobile fighting-beam projectors, and so on. All the equipment for a planet ruler who wants a fancy army for parades or a force with a punch to fight off any sneak attack via matter-transmitter. That's what your average ruler is afraid of, and what he keeps an army to defend himself against. Of course the Disciplinary Circuit takes care of his subjects."

6

_Vanished World_

Ahead of them loomed the sun, Spicus, many millions of miles away, while beneath them lay the planet, Spicus Five, a vast hemisphere which was rapidly shrinking into the distance. Kim moved over beside Dona and stared reflectively at the instrument-board.

"I got frightened, Kim," the girl said. "You were gone so long."

"I was bargaining," Kim answered. "I told him I came from Ades. I'd a space-ship, so he could believe that. Then I told him what had happened. Selling munitions, he should have known about it beforehand, and I think he did. He doubted that I'd come from Ades as quickly as I said, though, until I recited the names of some of the gracious majesties who are making a grab of planets. Then he was sure. So he wanted to strike a bargain with me for Terranova. He'd supply it with arms, he said, in exchange for a star-cluster of his own in the Second Galaxy. If I'd set up a private matter-transmitter for him...."

Kim laughed without mirth.

"He could colonize a couple of planets himself, and make a syndicate to handle the rest. He saw himself changing his status from that of a merchant princeling to that of a landed proprietor with half a dozen planets as private estates, and probably a crown to wear on week-ends and when he retired from business on Spicus Five. There are precedents, I gather."

"But, Kim!" protested Dona. "What did you do?"

"I did one thing that's been needed for a long time," said Kim grimly. "It seems to me that I do everything backwards. I should have attended to the matter of Ades first, but I had a chance and took it. I think I put something in motion that will ultimately smash up the whole cursed system that's made slaves of every human being but those on Ades and Terranova--the Disciplinary Circuit. Back on Ades we've talked about the need to free the people of this galaxy. It's always seemed too big a job. But I think it's started now. It will be a profitable business, and my friend who wanted to bargain for some planets in the Second Galaxy will make a pretty penny of the beginning, and it will carry on of itself."

The planet below and behind was now only a globe. It soon dwindled into a tiny ball. Kim touched Dona on the shoulder.

"I'll take over," he said. "We've got work to do, Dona."

Dona stood up and stamped her foot.

"Kim! You're misunderstanding me on purpose! What about Ades? Did you find out what happened to it?"

Kim began the process of sighting the _Starshine's_ nose upon a single, distant, minute speck of light which seemingly could not be told from a million other points of light, all of which were suns.

"I think I found out something," he told her. "I thought a merchant planet would be the place to hear all the gossip of the Galaxy. My friend back yonder put his research organization to work finding out what I wanted to know. What they dug up looks plausible. Right now I'm going to get even for it. That's a necessity! After that, we'll see. There were sixteen million people on Ades. We'll try to do something about them. They aren't likely to be all dead--yet."

The sun of Ades swam in emptiness. For uncountable billions of years it had floated serenely with its single planet circling it in the companionability of bodies separated only by millions of miles, when their next nearest neighbors are light-years away. A sun with one planet is a great rarity.

A sun with no satellites--save for giant pulsing Cepheids and close-coupled double suns--is almost unknown. But for billions upon billions of years that sun and Ades had kept each other company. Then men had appeared. For a thousand years great space-ships had grimly trundled back and forth to unload their cargoes of criminals upon the chilly small world.

Ades was chosen as a prison planet from the beginning. Later, matter-transmitters made the journeys of space-craft useless. For six, seven, eight thousand years there was no traffic but the one-way traffic of its especially contrived transmitter, which would receive criminals from all the Galaxy but would return none or any news of them to the worlds outside.

During all that time a lonely guard-ship hung drearily about, watching lest someone try to rescue a man doomed to hopeless exile, and return him to happier scenes. And finally the guard-ship had gone away, because the space-ways were no longer used by anybody, and there were no ships in the void save those of the Patrol itself. Accordingly the Patrol was disbanded.

For hundreds of years nothing happened at all. And then Kim Rendell came in the _Starshine_, and shortly thereafter tiny ships began to take off from Ades, and they fought valorously on distant star-systems, and at last a squadron of war-craft came to subjugate Ades for the beastly Empire of Sinab. Finally there was a battle in the bright beams of the lonely sun itself. And after that, for a time, little space-ships swam up from the planet and darted away, and darted back, and darted away, and back.

But never before had there been any such situation as now. The sun, which had kept company with Ades for so long, now shone in lonely splendor, amid emptiness, devoid of its companion. And that emptiness was bewildering to a small ship--sister to the _Starshine_--which flicked suddenly into being nearby.

The ship had come back from a journey among the virgin stars of the Second Galaxy with honorable scars upon its hull and a zestful young crew who wished to boast of their journeying. They had come back to Ades--so they thought--direct, not even stopping at Terranova. And there was no Ades.

The little ship flashed here and there about the bereft sun in bewilderment. It searched desperately for a planet some seven thousand miles in diameter, which had apparently been misplaced. And as it hunted, a second ship whisked into sight from faster-than-light drive. The detectors of the two ships told them of each other's presence, and they met and hung in space together. Then they searched in unison, but in vain. At long last they set out in company for one of the planets of the former Sinabian Empire, on which there must be some news of what had happened to Ades.

On transmitter-drive they inevitably separated and one was much closer to the chosen planet when they came out of stressed space. One drove down into atmosphere while the other was still thousands of miles away.

The leading ship went down at landing-speed, toward a city. The other ship watched by electron telescope and prepared to duplicate its course. But the man of the second ship saw--and there could be no doubt about it--that suddenly the landing ship vanished from its place as if it had gone into intergalactic drive in atmosphere. There was a flash of intolerable, unbearable light. And then there was an explosion of such monstrous violence that half of the planet's capital city vanished or was laid in ruins.

The crew of the second ship were stunned. But the second ship went slowly and cautiously down into atmosphere, and its communicators picked up voices issuing stern warnings that troops must be welcomed by all citizens, and that absolute obedience must be given to all men wearing the uniform of His Magnificence the Despot of Lith. And then there was babbling confusion and contradictory shoutings, and a hoarse voice ordered all soldiers of His Magnificence to keep a ceaseless watch upon the sky, because a ship had come down from overhead, and when the fighting-beams struck it--to kill its crew--it appeared to have fired some devastating projectile which had destroyed half a great city. All ships seen in the sky were to be shot down instantly. His Magnificence, the Despot of Lith, would avenge the outrage.

The lonely surviving ship went dazedly away from the planet which once had been friendly to the men of Ades. It went back to Ades' sun, and searched despairingly once again, and then fled to the Second Galaxy and Terranova, to tell of what it had seen.

That was an event of some importance. At least all of one planet had been rocked to its core from the detonation of a space-ship which flashed into collision with it at uncountable multiples of the speed of light, and was thereby raised to the temperature of a hot sun's very heart. And besides, there was agitation and suspicion and threats and diplomatic chaos among the planetary governments who had joined to loot the dependencies of Ades, once Ades was eliminated from the scene.

But a vastly, an enormously more significant event took place on a planet very far away, at almost the same instant. The planet was Donet Three, the only habitable planet of its system. It was a monstrous, sprawling world, visibly flattened by the speed of its rotation and actually habitable only by the fact that its rotation partly balanced out its high gravity.

The _Starshine_ approached over a polar region and descended to touch atmosphere. Then, while Dona looked curiously through the electron telescope at monstrous ice-mountains below, Kim donned a space-suit, went into the airlock, and dropped a small object out of the door. He closed the door, returned to the control-room, and took the _Starshine_ out to space again.

That was the most significant single action, in view of its ultimate meaning, that had been performed in the First Galaxy in ten thousand years. And yet, in a sense, it was purely a matter of form. It was not necessary for Kim to do it. He had arranged for the same effect to be produced, in time yet to come, upon every one of the three hundred million inhabited planets of the First Galaxy. The thing was automatic; implicit in the very nature of the tyrannical governments sustained by the disciplinary circuit.

Kim had simply dropped a small metal case to the surface of Donet Three. It was very strong--practically unbreakable. It contained an extremely simple electronic circuit. It fell through the frigid air of the flattened pole of Donet Three, and it struck the side of a sloping ice-mountain, and bounced and slid down to a valley and buried itself in snow, and only instants later, the small hole left by its fall was filled in and covered up completely by snow riding on a hundred-mile gale. It was undiscoverable. It was irretrievable. No device of man could detect or recover it. Kim himself could not have told where it fell.

Kim then sighted the _Starshine_ on another distant target, and found the planet Arth, and dropped a small metal object into the depths of the humid and festering jungles along its equator. Human beings could live only in the polar regions of Arth. Then he visited a certain planet in the solar system of Tabor and a small metal case went twisting through deep water down to the seabed of its ocean.

He dropped another on the shifting desert sands which cover one-third of Sind where an Emperor and Council rule in the name of a non-existent republic, and yet another on a planet of Megar, where an otherwise unidentified Queen Amritha held imperial power, and others....

He dropped one small metal case, secured from a merchant-prince on Spicus Five, on each of the planets whose troops had moved into the planets left defenseless by the vanishment of Ades.

"I wanted to do that myself, because what we've got to do next is dangerous and we may get killed," he told Dona drily. "But now we're sure that men won't stay slaves forever and now we can try to do something about Ades. I'm afraid our chances are pretty slim."

7

_One Chance in a Million_

In spite of his pessimism, Kim settled down to the fine calculations required for a voyage to a blue-white dwarf star not readily distinguished from others. Most inhabited planets, of course, circled sol-type suns. Light much different from that in which the race had developed was apt to have produced vegetation inimical to humanity, and useful vegetation did not thrive. And of course sol-type stars are most readily spotted by space navigators. As he checked his course with star-charts, Dona spoke softly.

"Thanks, Kim."

"For what?"

"For not wanting to put me in safety when you're going to do something dangerous. I wouldn't let you, but thanks for not trying."

"_Mmmmh!_" said Kim. "You're too useful."

He lined up his course and pressed the transmitter-drive stud on the control-panel. Space danced a momentary saraband,--and there was a blue-white dwarf two hundred million miles away, showing barely a planet-sized disk, but pouring out a pitiless white glare that hurt the eyes.

"That's it," said Kim. "That's the sun Alis. There should be four planets, but we're looking for Number One. It goes out beyond Two at aphelion, so we have to check the orbit--if we can find it--before we can be sure. No--we should be able to tell by the rotation. Very slow."

"And what are you going to do with it?" demanded Dona.

There were bright spots in emptiness which the electron telescope instantly declared to be planets. Kim set up cameras for pictures.

"Alis One is the only really uninhabitable planet in the Galaxy that's inhabited," he observed painstakingly. "It belongs to Pharos Three. I understand it's the personal property of the king. It has no atmosphere in spite of an extremely high specific gravity and a reasonable mass. But the plutonium mines have been worked for five thousand years."

"Plutonium mines with that half-life?" Dona said skeptically. "You must be joking!"

"No," said Kim. "It's a very heavy planet, loaded with uranium and stuff from bismuth on out. It has an extremely eccentric orbit. As I told you, at aphelion it's beyond the orbit of Pharos Two. At perihelion, when it's nearest to its sun, it just barely misses Roche's Limit--the limit of nearness a satellite can come to its primary without being torn apart by tidal strains. And at its nearest to its sun, it's bombarded with everything a sun can fling out into space from its millions of tons of disintegrating atoms. Alpha rays, beta rays, gamma particles, neutrons, and everything else pour onto its surface as if it were being bombarded by a cyclotron with a beam the size of a planet's surface. You see what happens?"

Dona looked startled.

"But, Kim, every particle of the whole surface would become terrifically radioactive. It would kill a man to land on it!"

"According to my merchant-prince friend on Spicus Five, it did kill the first men to set foot on it. But the point is that its heavy elements have been bombarded, and most of its uranium has gone on over to plutonium and americium and curium. In ancient days, when it went out on the long sweep away from its sun, it cooled off enough for men to land on it at its farthest-out point. With shielded space-suits they were able to mine its substance for four to five months before heat and rising induced radio-activity drove them off again. Then they'd wait for it to cool off once more on its next trip around.

"They went to it with space-ships, and the last space-line in the First Galaxy ran plutonium and americium and the other radio-actives to a matter-transmitter from which they could be distributed all over the Galaxy. But it wasn't very efficient. They could only mine for four or five months every four years. All their equipment was melted and ruined when they were able to land again. A few hundred years ago, however, they solved the problem."

Dona stared out the vision-ports. There were two planets which might be the one in question. But there were only three in sight.

"How did they solve it?" Dona asked.

"Somebody invented a shield," said Kim, as drily as before. "It was a force-field. It has the property of a magnetic field on a conductor with a current in it, except that it acts on mass as such. A current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field tends to move at right angles both to the current and the field. This force-field acts as if mass were an electric charge.

"Anything having mass, entering the field, tries to move sidewise. The faster it moves, the stronger the sidewise impulse. Neutrons, gamma particles, met rays and even electrons have mass. So has light. Everything moving that hits the shielding field moves sidewise to its original course. Radiation from the sun isn't reflected, at right angles.

"So, with the shield up, men can stay on the planet when it is less than three diameters from its sun. No heat reaches it. No neutrons. No radiations at all. It doesn't heat up. And that's the answer. For three months in every four-year revolution, they have to keep the shield up all the time. For three months more, they keep it up intermittently, flashing it on for fractions of a second at a time, just enough to temper the amount of heat they get.

"They live on great platforms of uranium glass, domed in. When they go out mining they wear shielded space-suits and work in shielded machines. The whole trick was worked out about five hundred years ago, they say, and the last space-line went out of existence, because they could use a matter-transmitter for all but six of our months of that planet's year."

"And did you find out how it's done?" asked Dona.

"Hardly," said Kim. "The planet belongs to the king of Pharos Three. Even five hundred years ago the governments of all the planets were quite tight corporations. Naturally Pharos wouldn't let the secret get out. There are other planets so close to their primaries that they're radioactive. If the secret were to be disclosed there'd be competition. There'd be other plutonium mines in operation. So he's managed to keep it to himself. But we've got to find out the trick."

There was silence. Kim began to check over the pictures the cameras had taken and developed. He shook his head. Then he stared at a photograph which showed the blue-white dwarf itself. His face looked suddenly very drawn and tired.

"Kim," said Dona presently. "It's stupid of me, but I don't see how you're going to learn the secret."

Kim put the picture on the enlarger, for examination in a greater size.

"They made the shield to keep things out," he said wearily. "Radiation, charged particles, neutrons--everything. The planet simply can't be reached, not even by matter-transmitters, when the shield is up. But by the same token nothing can leave the planet either. It can't even be spotted from space, because the light of the sun isn't reflected. It's deflected to a right-angled course. You might pick it up if it formed a right-angled triangle with you and the sun, or you might spot it in transit across the sun's disk. But that's all."

"Yes."

"The shield was a special job," said Kim. "For a special purpose. It was not a weapon. But there were all those planets that could be grabbed if only Ades were knocked out. So why shouldn't King Pharos sneak a force-field generator on to Ades? When the field went on, Ades would be invisible and unreachable from outside. And the outside would be unreachable from it. Space-ships couldn't get through the field. Matter-transmitters couldn't operate through it. If a few technicians were sneaked to Ades as supposed exiles and promised adequate reward, don't you think they'd hide out somewhere and turn on that field, and leave it on until the folk on Ades had starved or gone mad?"

Horrified, Dona stared at him. She went pale.

"Oh--horrible! The sky would be black--always! Never a glimmer of light. No stars. No moons. No sun. The plants would die and rot, and the people would grow bleached and pale, and finally they'd starve."

"All but the little gang hidden away in a well-provisioned hide-out," said Kim grimly. "I think that's what's happened to Ades, or is happening. And this is the solar system where the little trick was worked out. I'd hoped simply to raid the generator and find out how it worked, which would be dangerous enough. Look!"

He pointed to the projected image of the sun. There was a tiny dot against its surface. It was almost, it seemed, bathed in the tentacular arms of flaming gases flung up from the sun's surface.

"There's the planet," said Kim. "At its closest to the sun! With the shield up, so that nothing can reach its surface. Nothing! And that includes space-ships such as this. And at that distance, Dona, the hard radiation from the sun would go right through the _Starshine_ and kill us in seconds before we could get within millions of miles of the planet. If there's any place in the Universe that's unapproachable, there it is. It may be anything up to three months before the shield goes down even for fractions of a second at a time. And my guess is that the people on Ades won't last that long. They've had days in which to grow hopeless already. Want to gamble?"

Dona looked at him. He regarded her steadily.

"Whatever you say, Kim."

"Sixteen million lives on Ades, besides other aspects of the situation," said Kim. "The odds against us are probably about the same, sixteen million to one. That makes it a fair bet. We'll try."

He got up and began to tinker with the radiation-operated relay which turned off the transmitter-drive. Presently he looked up.

"I'm glad I married you, Dona," he said gruffly.

As the _Starshine_ moved closer in, the feeling in the control-room grew tense. The little ship had advanced to within twenty millions of miles of the blue-white sun, and even at that distance there was a detectable X-ray intensity.

Kim had turned on a Geiger counter, and it was silent simply because there was no measurable interval between its discharges. A neutron detector showed an indication very close to the danger mark. But Kim had the _Starshine's_ nose pointed to the intolerably glaring sun.

The electron telescope showed the sun's surface filling all its field, and because the illumination had been turned so low, raging sun-storms could be seen on the star's disk. Against it, the black silhouette of the planet was clear. It was small. Kim estimated its diameter at no more than six thousand miles. The _Starshine's_ gyros hummed softly and the field of the telescope swayed until the planet was centered exactly.

There was a little sweat on Kim's forehead.

"I--don't mind taking the chance myself, Dona," he said, dry-throated. "But I hate to think of you.... If we miss, we'll flash into the sun."

"And never know it," said Dona, smiling. "It'll be all over in the skillionth of a second--if we miss. But we won't."

"We're aiming for the disk of the planet," he reminded her. "We have to go in on transmitter-speed to cut the time of our exposure to hard radiation. That speed will make the time of exposure effectively zero. But we have to move at a huge multiple of the speed of light, and we have to stop short of that planet. It may not be possible!"

"Do you want me to press the button, Kim?" Dona said softly.

He took a deep breath.

"I'll do it. Thanks, Dona."

He put his finger on the stud that would throw the ship into transmitter-drive, aimed straight at the disk of planet against the inferno of sun beyond. There was nothing more certain than that to miss the planet would fling them instantly into the sun. And there was nothing more absurd than to expect to come out of transmitter-drive within any given number of millions of miles, much less within a few thousands. But--

Kim pressed the stud.

Instantly there was blackness before them. A monstrous, absolute blackness filled half the firmament. It was the force-field-shielded planet, blotting out its sun and half the stars of the Galaxy. Kim had made a bull's-eye on a target relatively the size of a dinner-plate at eleven hundred yards. More than that, he had stopped short of his target, equivalent to stopping a bullet three inches short of that place.

He said in a queer voice:

"The--relay worked--even backward, Dona."

8

_Dark Barrier_

For a time Kim sat still and sweat poured out on his skin. Because their chances had seemed slight indeed. To stop a space-ship at transmitter-speed was impossible with manual means, anyhow. It could cross a galaxy in the tenth of a millisecond. So Kim had devised a radiation-operated relay which threw off the drive when the total radiation reaching a sensitive plate in the bow had reached an adjustable total.

If in an ordinary flight the _Starshine_ headed into a sun--unlikely as such an occurrence was--the increased light striking the relay-plate would throw off the drive before harm came. But this time they had needed to approach fatally close to a star. So Kim had reversed the operation of the relay. It would throw off the drive when the amount of light reaching it dropped below a certain minimum. That could happen only if the ship came up behind the planet, so the sun was blacked out by the world's shadowed night-side.

It had happened. The glare was cut off. The transmitter-drive followed. The _Starshine_ floated within a bare few million miles--perhaps less than one million--of a blue-white dwarf star, and the two humans in the ship were alive because they had between them and the sun's atomic furnaces, a planet some six thousand miles in diameter.

"We don't know how our velocity matches this thing," said Kim after an instant. "We could be drifting toward the edge of the shadow. You watch the stars all around. Make sure I head directly for that blackness. When we touch, I'll see what I can find out."

He reversed the ship's direction. He let the _Starshine_ float down backward. The mass of unsubstantial darkness seemed to swell. It engulfed more and more of the cosmos....

A long, long time later, there was a strange sensation in the feel of things. Dona gave a little cry.

"Kim! I feel queer! So queer!"

Kim moved heavily. His body resisted any attempt at motion, and yet he felt a horrible tension within him, as if every molecule were attempting to fly apart from every other molecule. The controls of the ship moved sluggishly. Each part of each device seemed to have a vast inertia. But the controls did yield. The drive did come on. A little later the sensation ended. But both Kim and Dona felt utterly exhausted.

"It--was getting dark, too," said Dona. She trembled.

"When we tried to move," said Kim, "our arms had a tendency to move at right angles to the way we wanted them to--at all the possible right angles at once. That was the edge of the shield, Dona. Now we'll see what we've got."

He uncovered the recording cabinet. There had been no need to set up instruments especially for the analysis of the field. They had been a part of the _Starshine's_ original design for exploration. Now Kim read the records.

"Cosmic-ray intensity went down," he reported, studying the tapes. "The dielectric constant of space changed. It just soared up. The relationship of mass to inertia. That particular gadget never recorded anything significant before, Dona. In theory it should have detected space-warps. Actually, it never amounted to anything but a quantitative measure of gravitation on a planet one landed on. But it went wild in that field! And here! Look!"

He exultantly held out a paper recording.

"Glance at that, Dona! See? A magnetometer to record the strength of the magnetic field on a new planet. It recorded the ship's own field in the absence of any other. And the ship's field dropped to zero! Do you see? Do you?"

"I'm afraid not," admitted Dona. But she smiled at the expression on Kim's face.

"It's the answer!" said Kim zestfully. "Still I don't know how that blasted field is made, but I know now how it works. Neutrons have no magnetic field, but this thing turns them aside. Alpha and beta and gamma radiation do have magnetic fields, but this thing turns them aside, too. And the point is that it neutralizes their magnetic fields, because otherwise it couldn't start to turn them aside. So if we make a magnetic field too strong for the field to counter, it won't be able to turn aside anything in that magnetic area. The maximum force-field strength needed for the planet is simply equal to the top magnetic field the sun may project so far. If we can bury the _Starshine_ in magnetic flux that the force-field can't handle--" He grinned. He hugged her.

"And there's a loop around the _Starshine's_ hull for space-radio use," he cried. "I'll run a really big current through that loop and we'll try again. We should be able to put quite a lot of juice through a six-turn loop and get a flux-density that will curl your hair!"

He set to work, beaming. It took him less than half an hour to set up a series-wound generator in the airlock, couple in a thermo-cell to the loop, so it would cool the generator as the current flowed and thereby reduce its internal resistance.

"Now!" he said. "We'll try once more. The more juice that goes through the outfit, the colder the generator will get and the less its resistance will be, and the more current it will make and the stronger the magnetic field will be."

He flipped a switch. There was a tiny humming noise. A meter-needle swayed over, and stayed.

The _Starshine_ ventured into the black globe below.

Nothing happened. Nothing happened at all.

"The stars are blotted out, Kim," Dona at last said uneasily.

"But you feel all right, don't you?" He grinned like an ape in his delight.

"Why, yes."

"I feel unusually good," said Kim happily.

The vision-screens were utterly blank. The ports opened upon absolute blackness--blackness so dead and absorbent that it seemed more than merely lack of light. It seemed like something horrible pressing against the ports and trying to thrust itself in.

And, suddenly, a screen glowed faintly, and then another....

Then there was a greenish glow in the ports, and Dona looked out and down.

Above was that blackness, complete and absolute. But below, seen with utter clarity, because of the absence of atmosphere, lay a world. Nothing grew upon it. Nothing moved. It was raw, naked rock with an unholy luminescence. Here and there the glow was brighter where mineral deposits contained more highly active material. The surface was tortured and twisted, in swirled stained writhings of formerly melted rock.

They looked. They saw no sign of human life nor any sign that humans had ever been there. But after all, even five thousand years of mining on a globe six thousand miles through would not involve the disturbance of more than a fraction of its surface.

"We did it," said Kim. "The shield can be broken through by anything with a strong enough magnetic field. We won't disturb the local inhabitants. They undoubtedly have orders to kill anybody who incredibly manages to intrude. We can't afford to take a chance. We've got to get back to Ades!"

He pointed the _Starshine_ straight up. He drove her, slowly, at the ceiling of impenetrable black. He worked upon the transmitter-drive relay. He adjusted it to throw the _Starshine_ into transmitter-speed the instant normal starlight appeared ahead.

The ship swam slowly upward. Suddenly there was a momentary impression of reeling, dancing stars. Kim swung the bow about.

"Now for Ades!" he said gleefully. "Did you know, Dona, that once upon a time the word Ades meant hell?"

The stars reeled again....

They found Ades. Knowing how, now, it was not too difficult. There were two positions from which it could be detected. One was a position in which it was on a line between the _Starshine_ and the sun. The other was a position in which the invisible planet, the space-ship, and the sun formed the three points of a right-angled triangle with Ades in the ninety-degree corner.

Kim sent the little ship in a great circle beyond the planet's normal orbit, watching for it to appear where such an imaginary triangle would be formed. The deflected light of the sun would spread out in a circular flat thin plane, and somewhere about the circuit the _Starshine_ had to run through it. It would be a momentary sight only, and it would not be bright; it would be utterly unlike the steady radiance of a normal planet. Such flashes, if seen before, would have been dismissed as illusions or as reflections from within the ship. Even so, it was a long, long time before Dona called out quickly.

"There!" she said, and pointed.

Kim swung the _Starshine_ back. He saw the dim, diffused spectre of sun's reflection. They drove for it, and presently a minute dark space appeared. It grew against the background of a radiant galaxy, and presently was a huge blackness, and the _Starshine's_ space-radio loop was once more filled with a highly improbable electrical amperage by the supercooled generator in the airlock.

The ship ventured cautiously into the black.

And later there were lonely, unspeakably desolate little lights of the lost world down below.

Kim drove for them with a reckless exultation. He landed in the very centre of a despairing small settlement which had believed itself dead and damned--or at any rate doomed. He shouted out his coming, and Dona cried out the news that the end of darkness was near, and men came surging toward her to listen. But it was Dona who explained, her eyes shining in the light of the torches men held up toward her.

Kim had gone back into the ship and was using the communicators to rouse out the mayors of every municipality, and to say he had just reached the planet from Terranova--there was no time to tell of adventures in between--and he needed atmosphere fliers to gather around him at once, with armed men in them, for urgent business connected with the restoration of a normal state of affairs.

They came swiftly, flittering down out of the blackness overhead, to land in the lights of huge bonfires built by Kim's orders. And Kim, on the communicators, asked for other bonfires everywhere, to help in navigation, and then he went out to be greeted by the bellowing Mayor of Steadheim.

"What's this?" he roared. "No sunlight! No stars! No matter-transmitter! No ships! Our ships took off and never came back! What the devil happened to the Universe?"

Kim grinned at him.

"The Universe is all right. It's Ades. Somewhere on the planet there's a generator throwing out a force-field. It will have plenty of power, that generator. Maybe I can pick it up with the instruments of the _Starshine_. But we'll be sure to find it with magnetic compasses. What we want is for everyone to flick their compasses and note the time of swing. We want to find the place where the swings get slower and slower. When we find a place where the compasses point steadily, without a flicker--not even up and down--we'll be at the generator. And everybody put on navigation-lights or there'll be crashes!"

He lifted the _Starshine_ and by communicator kept track of the search. Toward the polar regions was the logical hiding-place for the generator, because there the chilly climate of Ades became frigid and there were no inhabitants. But it was a long search. Hours went by before a signal came from a quarter-way around the globe.

Then the _Starshine_ drove through darkness--but cautiously--with atmosphere fliers all about. And there was an area where the planet's magnetic field grew weaker and weaker, and then a space in which there was no magnetic field. But in the darkness they could find no sign of a depot!

9

_Gadget of Hope_

Grimly Kim set the "_Starshine_" on the ground, in the very centre of the dark area, and started the generator in the airlock. When it worked at its utmost, and nothing happened, Kim threw in the leads of the ship's full engine-power. There was a surging of all the terrific energy the ship's engines could give. Then the radio-loop went white-hot and melted, with a sputtering arc as the circuit broke.

Abruptly the stars appeared overhead, and simultaneously came the leaping flame of a rumbling explosion. Then followed the flare of fuel burning savagely in the night. The _Starshine's_ full power had burned out the force-field generator, an instant before the loop melted to uselessness.

Kim was with the men who ran toward the scene of the explosion, and he would have tried to stop the killing of the other men who ran out of underground burrows, but the victims would not have it. They expected to be killed, and they fought wildly. All died.

Later Kim inspected the shattered apparatus which now lay in pieces, but he thought it could be reconstructed and perhaps in time understood.

"Night's nearly over," he announced to those who prowled through the wreckage. "It shouldn't be much more than an hour until dawn. If I hadn't seen sunlight for a week or more, I think, I'd go for a look at the sunrise."

In seconds the first atmosphere-flier took off. In minutes the last of them were gone. They flew like great black birds beneath the starlight, headed for the east to greet a sun they had not expected to see again.

But the Mayor of Steadheim stayed behind.

"Hah!" he said, growling. "It's over my head. I don't know what happened and I never expect to understand. How are my sons in the new Galaxy?"

"Fine when last we heard," said Dona, smiling. "Come into the ship."

He tramped into the living space of the _Starshine_. He eased himself into a seat.

"Now tell me what's gone on, and what's happened, and why!" he commanded dictatorially.

Kim told him, as well as he could. The Mayor of Steadheim fumed.

"Took over the twenty-one planets, eh?" he sputtered. "We'll attend to that. We'll take a few ships, go over there, and punish 'em."

"I suspect they've pulled out," said Kim. "If they haven't, they will. And soon! The Gracious Majesties and Magnificents, and the other planetary rulers who essayed some easy conquests, have other need for their soldiers now. Plenty of need!"

"Eh, what?" cried the mayor. "What's the matter? Those rulers have got to have a lesson! We didn't try to free the whole Galaxy because it was too big a job. But it looks like we'll have to try!"

"I doubt the need," said Kim, amused. "After all, it's the Disciplinary Circuit which has enslaved the human race. When the psychogram of every citizen is on file, and a disciplinarian has only to put his card in the machinery and press a button to have that man searched out by Disciplinary-Circuit waves and tortured, wherever he may be--when that's possible--any government is absolute. Men can't revolt when the whole population or any part of it can be tortured at the ruler's whim."

Dona's expression changed.

"Kim!" she said accusingly. "Those things you got on Spicus Five and dropped on the planets the soldiers came from--what were they?"

"I'll tell you," said Kim. "The Disciplinary Circuit is all right to keep criminals in hand--not rebels like us, but thieves and such--and it does keep down the number of officials who have to be supported by the state. Police and guards aren't really needed on a free planet with the Disciplinary Circuit in action. It's a useful machine for the protection of law and order. The trouble is that, like all machines, its use has been abused. Now it serves tyranny. So I made a device to defend freedom."

The Mayor of Steadheim cocked a suspicious eye upon him.

"I procured a little gadget," said Kim. "I dropped the gadget in various places where it wasn't likely to be found. If one man is under Disciplinary Circuit punishment, or two or three or four--that's not unreasonable on a great planet--nothing happens. But if twenty-five or fifty or a hundred are punished at once, the Disciplinary Circuit is blown out as I just blew out that force-field generator."

The Mayor of Steadheim considered this information.

"_Ha-hmmm!_" he said profoundly.

"Criminals can be kept down, but a revolt can't be suppressed," Kim went on. "The soldiers who are occupying the twenty-one planets will be called back to put down revolts, as soon as the people discover the Disciplinary Circuits on their planets are blowing out, and that they blow out again as fast as they're re-made and used."

"_Hm!_" said the Mayor of Steadheim. "Not bad! And the rebels will have some very tasty ideas of what to do to the folk who've tyrannized over them. No troops can stop a revolt nowadays. Not for long!"

"No, not for long," said Kim. "No government will be able to rule with a dissatisfied population. Not if it has a little gadget hidden somewhere that will blow out the Disciplinary Circuit, if it's used to excess."

"Good enough, good enough," grumbled the mayor. "When rulers are kept busy satisfying their people, they won't have time to bother political offenders. That's sensible enough! But it's too fiendish bad that only those twenty planets have the gadgets on them! I suppose we criminals will have to set up a factory and make them, and then visit all the three hundred million inhabited planets, one by one, and drop one little contrivance on every one. But it'll take us centuries! Space! That's a pity!"

"It won't take centuries," said Kim drily. "I made a deal with a factory-owner on Spicus Five. He turned out the ones I personally dropped, in exchange for the design. He's going to manufacture them in quantity. He'll make a fortune out of them!"

"How? Who'll buy them?" demanded the mayor. "Every king will outlaw them! Space, yes! They'll be scared to death--"

"The kings," said Kim more drily than before, "the kings and despots and emperors will be the ones to buy them. They'll want them to drop in their neighbors' dominions. Every king or ruler will buy a few to put where they will weaken his enemies--and every one has enemies! We don't have to plant the gadgets that make the Disciplinary Circuit into a boomerang! We'll let the kings weaken each other and bring back freedom. And they will!"

The Mayor of Steadheim puffed in his breath until it looked as if he would explode. Then he bellowed with laughter.

"Make the tyrants dethrone each other," he roared delightedly. "They'll weaken each other until they find they've their own people to deal with. There'll be a fine scramble! I give it five years, no more, before there's not a king in the Galaxy who dares order an execution without a jury-trial first!"

"A consummation devoutly to be wished," said Kim, smiling. "I rather like the idea myself."

The mayor heaved himself up.

"Hah!" he said, still chuckling. "I'll go back to my wife and tell her to come outdoors and look at the stars. What will you two do next?"

"Sleep, I suspect," said Kim. It was all over. The realization made him aware of how tired he was. "We'll probably put in twenty-four hours of just plain slumber. Then we'll see if anything more needs to be done, and then I guess Dona and I will head back to Terranova. The Organizer there is worried about a shortage of textiles."

"To the devil with him," grunted the Mayor of Steadheim. "We've had a shortage of sunlight! You're a good man, Kim Rendell. I'll tell my grandchildren about you, when I have them."

He waved grandly and went out. A little later his flier took off, occulting stars as it rose.

Kim closed the airlock door. He yawned again.

"Kim," said Dona, "We had to break that shield, but it was dangerous."

"Yes," said Kim. He yawned again. "So it was. I'll be glad to get back to our house on Terranova."

"So will I," said Dona. Her face had become determined. "We shouldn't even think of leaving it again, Kim! We should--anchor ourselves to it, so nobody would think of asking us to leave."

"A good idea," said Kim. "If it could be done."

Dona looked critically at her fingers, but she flushed suddenly.

"It could," she said softly. "The best way would be--children."

THE END

* * * * *

THE LAST SPACE SHIP

_By Murray Leinster_

Put yourself in the place of Kim Rendell, a handsome, idealistic young man living on a distant planet ruled by a super-efficient government. Here is industrialization carried to its <b>illogical</b> conclusion. Kim Rendell lives in the shadow of mechanized terror, for machines have taken over, and the disciplinary circuit keeps the inhabitants in check.

Rendell is an outlaw because he tried to strike at the very foundations of this so-called civilization. He will not yield to the tyranny of the power-mad, sensuously warped rulers of the astral body Alphin III. He and his girl friend are in danger of psychological torture worse than death.

Kim Rendell goes to the antique museum of Alphin III, which houses _Starshine_, an outmoded space-ship. He conceives the daring plan of using the _Starshine_ to save his girl and himself from the dictators of Alphin III. In this world, teleportation of matter has taken the place of transportation from planet to planet, and solar system to solar system, via rocket and atomic-powered vessels. Nevertheless, Kim decides to steal the last space-ship from the antique museum and flee with his girl.

Thus starts this most stirring novel of love, adventure and the fight against tyranny, by the well-known author of hundreds of adult science-fiction stories.