The universe wreckers

by Edmond Hamilton

And as the World President stepped back, Marlin, unsteady still from our unaccustomedness to Earth's gravitation, and with face drawn, but eyes steady and bright, was stepping forward. Facing the great rank on rank of members of the World Congress he stood, while we others slipped into the seats behind him, facing them for a moment in tense silence as he summoned his energies to speak. In that moment, as my eyes roved across the great hall, I made out the faces of many there known to me, the face, just beneath our platform, was that of my chief at the Intelligence Bureau, Markham, the faces of many others, strange and yet familiar, all turned now toward Marlin. And then, in a voice low at first but gaining in power as he went on, Marlin was speaking to them, his words sounding out through the great room in a hushed, unnatural silence.

He began by reviewing in a few sentences the colossal peril that had threatened and was threatening us, the increased spin of the sun beneath Neptune's mighty ray that soon must result in its division and the solar system's doom. Then, with a reference to that other gathering of the World Congress at which our venture out to Neptune had been decided upon, he came to the start of that venture. While they listened in utter tenseness he told of our start, of our going out from Earth first of all men into the outer void, out past the mysteries of Mars with greater and greater speed. Our onward flight through the terrible dangers of the great asteroidal belt and our narrow escapes in it, our outward rush past mighty Jupiter—these he described in his steady voice, and we felt the tenseness that held all in the great room in dead silence. He told them of what doom had nearly been ours at Saturn, of our fall toward its great rings of death and our narrow escape from them.

Then, with a little pause, he was going on, was telling of our onward flashing flight beyond Saturn out through the vast outer reaches of the solar system, out past the orbit of Uranus toward Neptune itself. In utmost suspense they listened as he told of our arrival at last at Neptune, of our amazement at finding that giant world shielded with an enclosing roof of metal, and of our greater amazement at finding that world, the colossal city that covered it, utterly dead and deserted. Low exclamations of surprise broke from his listeners then as he narrated how he and I had been surprised in the dead city of Neptune by the coming of the Neptunians in their cylinders, their attack upon and pursuit upward of Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, their capture of ourselves and their taking us from Neptune out to the moon-world of Triton. And a low wave of uncontrollable excitement swept across the great room as Marlin told those in it of the roofed and warmed world of Triton and the countless millions of Neptunians on it, and above all of the giant force-ray that was stabbing from Triton's sunward side toward the sun and loosing doom upon us!

And that excitement intensified when he told of what else we had found at Triton, of the other giant force-ray stabbing out from its other side toward a distant star of Sagittarius, of our captivity there and our learning of the Neptunian tongue, our being brought before the great Council of thirty of the Neptunian races. I saw the hundreds before us listening with abated breath as he told them that gigantic epic of the solar system's past that had been told us by the great globe-mechanism of the Council, that story of the Neptunians' past history and of the great doom of increasing cold that had driven them from Neptune to Triton and that now had caused them to seek to split the sun itself to thwart that doom. How they had sent out toward that star in Sagittarius another great force-ray years before, to brace Triton against the back-pressure of the sun-ray and to keep it from being hurled out into the great void, how they had finally sent out the great force-ray toward the sun also, turning the sun ever faster toward the doom of all the other planets, planning to wreck the universe to save their own race. These things he told them through the hushed silence that again had replaced their stir and murmur of excitement.

But excitement held them again when he told how he and I, desperate at the doom we saw hanging thus over Earth, had made our wild attempt to escape from Triton, had dared to cross its surface and had stolen a cylinder, crashing up through the great roof and out from Triton in that cylinder with their pursuit close behind us, how we had been saved from that pursuit by Whitely and Randall in the space-flier, who, although we had thought them dead, had managed to elude their own attackers by a ruse and had hovered near Triton in hopes of saving us; how in the space-flier we had fled back from Triton over Neptune and had smashed our pursuers, while we and they were over Neptune; these things, his voice deep now, he told to the hundreds of his listeners. And then, swaying a little from sheer utter weariness of body and spirit, Marlin told them how we, knowing that never alone could we halt or even reach that giant ray driving from Triton toward the sun, had headed back for Earth at the utmost speed of which we were capable, had flashed back like some great messenger-meteor through the solar system to Earth to carry to the peoples of Earth word of what we had found, to gather the forces of Earth and head back to Neptune with them for a last gallant attempt to halt that mighty ray of doom!

When Marlin's voice had ceased, when he had stepped unsteadily back from the platform's edge, his words seemed reverberating still through the hushed silence that prevailed among the twelve hundred massed members of the World Congress. Then again the World President, his own face as set and strange now as those of the massed members before him, was stepping forward to face them.

"You have heard the report of Dr. Marlin and his three companions," he said, quietly, "and you, and I, and the peoples of Earth listening now, know what situation faces us, what last necessity, even as was foreseen, has arisen before us. That giant force-ray of which Marlin told you, that colossal ray which these Neptunians are stabbing toward the sun's edge from their far moon-world of Triton, is turning the sun ever faster, as all of you know, is decreasing its rotatory period by four hours each passing day. Within hardly more than forty days it will have decreased the sun's rotatory period to that fatal period of one hour, will have increased its spin to that critical fatal speed, at which the sun must inevitably divide into a double sun, a double star, engulfing our planet, and almost all others, in fiery death in that cosmic cataclysm. This is known to you and you know, too, that it is only by halting that giant force-ray from Triton that we can save our sun, our world, from that tremendous cataclysm.

"This much we have known, indeed, and now with what knowledge these four men have brought back from their unparalleled venture out through the gulf of space to the solar system's edge, to Neptune itself, you know also what lies before us. We have, indeed, built during the absence of Marlin and his three friends that great fleet of space-fliers, which we had decided to build. Using the plans of their original space-flier and applying all our efforts toward achieving a quantity production of space-fliers on those plans, we have been able, as you know, to construct in their absence no less than five thousand space-fliers exactly like their own, space-fliers that rest now upon the roofs of New York's great buildings around us, complete now with trained crews and ready to start! The gathering of Earth's forces has thus already taken place!

"And upon this great fleet of space-fliers rests now the fate of the solar system! For that fleet must go out through the solar system now to Neptune and halt the giant ray radiating from Triton's sunward side toward the sun, if the solar system is to live. What perils, what opposition that fleet will meet, Marlin has made clear to you. These Neptunians, most ancient and mighty of the solar system's peoples, are of colossal powers, such powers that they are scrupling not at splitting the sun itself! They have thousands of their great space-cylinders that can whirl through space as swiftly and as well as our own space-fliers. They have as weapons their concentrated force-rays, which we must provide for the fliers of our own fleet before it leaves. They have an ancient science and might that can produce we know not what weapons against us, and they know that our four first venturers escaped back to Earth, and will be expecting now an attack from us, will resist that attack with all their powers, undoubtedly, since they are fighting for the existence of their races, their world, even as we are fighting for ours!

"Thus this great fleet of five thousand space-fliers of ours goes out to battle, to battle between the races of Neptune and Earth that must decide the fate of the solar system for all time. There can be but one fit to lead this fleet out to such battle, and that is Marlin himself, who was the first to discover this peril that hangs over us, who was one of the first to suggest a means of struggling against that peril, and who has led this first daring venture out through a thousand perils to Neptune, and back again to Earth with the knowledge without which we could not act. So that it is he, with these three companions of his, Whitely and Hunt and Randall, who dared all with him and who have done for Earth what he has done, as his three lieutenants, who must command this great expedition of ours which we are sending out to halt the oncoming doom, these gathered forces of all the Earth!