[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
out, trying to hem us against that. I think we had better double back there's
one chance in a million "
"No," said Kel Aran. "Follow the course I gave you." On the telescreen, the
navigator showed me the storm. Against the familiar panorama of space; the
velvety blackness, the hard changeless many-hued atoms of stars, the nebulous
"
dust of silver against that stark eternal beauty sprawled an ugly cloud. It
was many-armed, like
Cosmic Storm
145
an octopus of darkness, and it flickered with a weird angry green.
"There it is," said the Saturnian. "A condensation of matter so tenuous and
vast that its gravitational energies never gathered it into a star. A true
cosmic storm!" Awe deepened his voice. "Tempests of incandescent gas. Rain of
molten metal. Hail of meteoric fragments. Lightning of atomic energy. And Kel
commands me to drive straight into it!"
The crimson stars behind were brighter, now. Lines of them spread out, to
right and to left, above and below as if to
herd us into the storm. And among them flashed points of ominous blue. Jets of
positrons that could reach out to smash the very atoms in a target a million
miles away.
Seeking to vary the strained anxiety of that race for life, I went back into
the engine room. Hunched gnome-like amid the strange shinging bulks of his
machines, Rogo Nug was chewing steadily on a wad of his goona-roon.
He spat into a purple-stained can, and plaintively observed:
"Look at that! By Malgarth's brazen bowels, Kel is making me burn the very
life out of the converters!"
He pointed to a crystal tube, with drops of water falling swiftly down it.
Water was the fuel of the
Barihorn.
Hydrogen atoms in the converter were built into helium, with the "packing
fraction" liberated as pure energy to activate the space-contractors. The
freed oxygen renewed the atmosphere aboard.
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
A red light was flashing beside it. A gong clanged at monotonous intervals.
"The warning," muttered Rogo Nug. "Overload!"
Tension of dread drew me back to the pilot-room. That appalling cloud of
green-flickering darkness had grown against the diamond field ahead. Its
spiral arms reached out as if to grasp us. I tried to comprehend its vastness:
a hundred light years meant six hundred trillion miles.
The pursuing cruisers drew inexorably closer. The formation changed again, so
that they formed a double circle of crimson flecks, brighter than the stars.
The flashes of blue came faster. Abruptly, beside us, flamed out a blue-white
sun. I shrank and blinked from its bur^st of blistering radiation.
146
After World's End
"A stray meteor from the cloud, that a beam caught," commented the impassive
dark Saturnian. "It might as well have been the ship."
His face a grim-set mask, Kel Aran came down from the little ray-gun turret of
the
Barihorn.
"The range of their beams is about nine times ours," he said softly. "Means
about eighty times the power." He went to the telescreen. "Wonder what our
friend the Admiral has to say by now!"
That stolidly dark, craftily stupid face flashed on the screen again, and the
great guttural voice thumped from the cabinet:
" must not escape, for he is the last surviving Earthman. I have just received
a communication that should increase your interest in the chase. The
Corporation offers all the revenues of the twelves worlds of Lekhan, to be
divided among those responsible for the capture or death of the Falcon. And
the Emperor has commanded that, if the Falcon escapes, those held responsible
shall die."
A sudden reckless grin lit the face of Kel Aran. His bright eyes narrowed, and
a quick hand swept back his thick yellow hair. And then, while Jeron Roc made
a frantic, futile snatch to halt him, he twisted a knob. In a light, taunting
voice, he called:
"Greetings, Admiral!" ___
The dark, thick-featured face sTared at him, first in stiff stupefaction, then
crimsoned with a seething rage.
"You Earth-rat!" he choked. "You dare " He gulped, caught his breath. "Tapping
my communicator will be your last bit of insolence," he bellowed. "We're
taking you, Falcon for Malgarth!"
Still with that bright smile frozen on his lips, Kel Aran made a little
mocking bow.
"The robot's offer is flattering, Admiral." His soft low voice had the lilt of
a song. "But I'm going to let him keep his star. And I hope the Emperor
doesn't hold you responsible for letting us slip through your fingers!"
Gugon Kul stood gasping, turning swiftly purple.
"Now, Admiral," said Kel Aran, "I'm going to sing you a song. I call it the
Ballad of the Last Earthman."
And he began singing into the Admiral's startled face.
Circus of Space
147
His voice was clear and gay, and the tune had a swing that quickened the
heart. The words told of his boyhood on the
Earth, and his love for the Earth-girl, Verel Erin; of the murder of the
Earth, and his long search for his beloved; of his determination to continue
the stellar quest, "Till I find her or I die!"
The dark-flushed Admiral listened for a little while. Then he began shouting
Page 26
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
orders for the fleet to close in. He thought of something; his big hairy hand
moved quickly; and the screen became a giddy blur.
The stellar cloud now was close ahead. A faint green light pervaded it the
eerie glow of its rarefied nebular gases, it was just strong enough to outline
jagged plunging masses of stone spinning in inconceivable vortices. Brief
explosive crimson flickerings, beyond, suggested the appalling vastness and
power of the cloud.
The Admiral's cruisers were closing in behind, a double ring of scarlet
flares. Blue flickered among them. And white stars burst out in a blinding
swarm about us meteoric fragments exploded by the rays.
The big dark Saturnian looked gravely from his instruments to Kel.
"Still, Kel," he said, "there's the shadow of a chance if we turn back among
them!"
Kel Aran shook his yellow head, and his lips parted with a smile that welcomed
danger.
"No," he said again. "I'm taking over now." And his bright, reckless face
turned to me. "Now, Barihorn!" he whispered.
"If your life is eternal "
Then the dark sky behind and the pursuing crimson stars were blotted out. We
were within the cloud!
CIRCUS OF SPACE
THE LURID GLOW of death was shining all around us. Death rode down upon us on
gigantic ragged boulders. Death shrieked at us from hurricanes of greenly
incandescent gas, and tugged and battered at the ship. Death bathed us in
rains of molten metal, and knocked upon the hull with a hail of meteoric
fragments.
And Kel Aran met death, and mocked it, with the same lilting song that he had
sung the Admiral. He had taken the big
Saturnian's place at the controls. His lean hands moved with a quickness I had
never seen. And the twisting, spinning ship seemed to respond to the life and
the rhythm of his song.
As for my own life, I could not feel it at all eternal. The freaks of chance
might have kept me alive a million years but no chance, I felt, could pick a
safe path through this insane chaos.
"I think," the Earthman interrupted his song, "that the Admiral will not care
to follow us here not even for Mai garth's star!"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]