The black alarm

by George O. Smith

For theirs was not yet; the trick at this point was to slow the spaceliner down below the velocity of light before the weakened warp generator went out completely. If the tractors could do this, barriers and swampers and nullers would have nothing to do.

Steve watched the spherical warp, a faint boundary about the spaceliner, and tried to measure whether it was collapsing faster than the speed was diminishing.

And as he watched, it twisted out of its spherical shape. The tractors hurtled back, their beams skewed out of grasp by the twisting of the space warp, their straining drivers hurling them with the release of resistance.

The warp diminished, and the nose of the spaceliner pierced it—

Exposing gross matter to universal space where gross matter cannot exceed the velocity of light.

The mass of the exposed nose increased without limit; the velocity of the nose was smashed back below the speed of light; excess energy poured forth in raw radiation; the intolerable mass curled universal space around it and radiant energy circled the curl.

The artificial space warp—still enclosing the ship that travelled a hundred times the speed of light in subspace—folded over the slowed nose of the ship, buckled, and burst like a soap bubble. The rest of the ship rammed into the curled space and added its mass-energy to the vortex.

A burst of energy flared forth, hit the planes held by barrier ships, flattened against impenetrable planes of force, and hurled the barrier ships back. Their drivers fought, straining to contain the exploding gout of twisted space. Around the edges of the planes seared tongues and sheets of energy.

Steve fanned his cone wide, and he had no time to watch the rest of the swampers dart back and forth to suck away the long reaching tongues.

The warp exploded, hurling bits of its own tangled space invisibly, to emerge as isolated bursts that raved and grew as the twisted space strove to smooth itself out. Nullers darted back and forth, hurling spherical bombs of energy that nullified the growing flames, and the barriers crept forward once more, containing the main vortex.