THUNDER IN THE VOID
A NOVEL
By Henry Kuttner
“I keep my promises, my friend. I’m taking this boat
to Pluto, and I’ll kill a lot of them before they
finally get me. But—even though you have won, you have
lost as well. Because you’re going with me too!”
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
FOREWORD
Late in the Twentieth Century Man, for the first time, burst through the invisible barrier that had always kept him chained to his planet. A new and almost uncharted ocean lay before him, its vastness illimitable, its mysteries as yet unexplored. Magellan, Columbus, Leif Ericsson—these primitives expected great wonders as the searoads opened before the prows of their ships. But the first spacemen thought—mistakenly, as it proved—that the airless void between the worlds could hold little unknown to them.
They did not foresee that actual experience of a thing is far different from abstract knowledge of it. They did not foresee the death that leaped upon them from the outer dark, the strange, enigmatic horror that killed men without leaving trace or clue. The ships came back, crews decimated. Out there lay a menace that slew with blind, ravening fury.
For a time space held its secret. And then the Varra spoke to us, warned us, told us why space was forbidden.