The voice of the void

By John W. Campbell, Jr.
Author of The Metal Horde, Piracy Preferred, etc.
Illustrated by WESSO
The science of astronomy concerns itself with the great and the small. The distances in the stellar world are inconceivable by man—so much so that the astronomer's unit of measurement is the light year. And within the suns of space, the ultimate smallest units of matter figure—the molecule is broken up and the smaller atom is formed, only to be disintegrated into electrons and protons. Energy and mass enter into the strange cycle. Our young author, who has already become a favorite with readers of scientific fiction, has woven a captivating romance out of the world of ultra-physics—captivating in its adventurousness as well as in its science.
Perhaps you or I would have hesitated to call him human, this strange small man. He seemed lost in the great dim-lighted observatory. On all sides of the room panels of some polished black material glistened in the ruddy light, and on all their great surfaces were instruments and faintly glowing screens. High above the smooth floor a great transparent roof was flung in a half-glimpsed arch, glasslike it was, but the lack of beams told of a strength and toughness no glass ever knew. Through it came every vibration that struck it, infra-light or ultra-light. Now in its center there glowed a great mass of lambent red flame, the dying sun. To Hal Jus, astronomer, the room was flooded with the light of the noon-day sun. The dull red glow that gave even his pale face a ruddy glow was to him pure white. But then Hal Jus could see heat, and to him blue light was a scientific term for a thing beyond human vision.
Ten billion years had wrought strange changes in the human race. For ten thousand thousand millenniums they had lived on the planets of the solar system, but now the mighty sun was dying. There had been no decadence in this race, through all their history had come a constant fight with a persistent enemy, Nature. But it was a kindly enemy, for the contest had constantly developed man to meet the new emergencies.