The voice of the void

by Jr. John W. Campbell

Hal Jus worked at the controls of the electroscope for a moment and on one of the lambently glowing screens an image began to form, grayish at first, then quickly taking form and color. A great sphere swam on the screen; slowly as Hal Jus increased the power the body seemed to come nearer—it grew larger; it filled the screen, then rapidly there came a picture of low, age-old hills, worn low till they scarcely lifted their heads above the surrounding country. A mighty city of glistening metal buildings rising tier on tier a few miles north seemed to dwarf the hills into utter insignificance. Once a hill had lifted its proud head far into the blue of a two-hundred mile thick belt of atmosphere, but now the once mighty Mt. Everest alone remained as a relic of the high-flung mountains that old Earth had once known.

High in the jet black sky, a scant hundred miles from the ground below, a mighty space-freighter was taking off for Venus. The thin belt of atmosphere permitted it to reach a high speed quickly. Already it was in full stride and heading at 1,000 miles a second for Venus.

The scene on the screen blurred, grew gray, and faded out. Hal Jus was shifting the great electroscope tube. Again the screen glowed, and again an image appeared. It cleared quickly, then suddenly leaped into full life and color. The scene showed mighty machines working in a great pit of freshly tumbled soil. It was a land of intense shadow and where the dim red light of the distant sun did not touch, there was intense, utter blackness. There was no atmosphere here. And now, as a great freighter swung low, a machine on the ground below turned on a ray that stabbed out sharp and brilliant; a moment later the freighter tug lifted a half-million-ton piece of the planet on its attractor beams and rapidly gained headway as it shot off toward distant Venus.

The view became wider, the figure of the machines smaller. Then, as Hal Jus increased the observation distance, the entire planet came into view, as much of the planet Mars as was left. The great excavations were extended over all the surface. They were paring it down from all sides lest they disturb the balance of the planet.

Again the scene went blank. Now there formed on it a view of the starry heavens with glowing pinpoint stars. Suddenly this began to expand; star after star was forced from the field as the growing picture centered on one that burned bright in the center of the field. Mighty Betelguese glowed in the center of the field. It was a blurred image, like a tiny disc, but tremendous as was the power of the instrument, it could not have enlarged the image to that extent. The disc-like appearance was due to the tremendous brightness of the star spreading a bit on the sensitive vision receiver cell.

Slowly the mighty instrument swept over the field. Here and there a star would leap out of the darkness to form a burning disc, as one of the stars distant less than a dozen light years, swept across the field. Then at last came a star that blazed out as a burning disc an inch and a half across, emitting long tongues of shooting flame. Slowly it crept across the field. The instrument was adjusted for the motion of the Earth and this slow creeping was due to the motion of the star through space. Around it, far off across the field, circled a lone, small planet. Hal Jus watched it a while, then turned with a call of greeting, snapping off the current in the mighty instrument as several men walked in. They were seated now in several rows of chairs before the largest of the screens that were suspended on the walls of the room.

For ages men had known that the sun was dying. In our day men can tell that within the next ten or eleven billion years it will become a closed star—not a cold star but a closed star. The energy of the sun comes from the destruction of the matter of which it is composed, which becomes floods of energy. This change is possible at a temperature of 40,000,000 degrees C., but below that it cannot take place. Thus, at the center of the sun, where this change is taking place, the matter is at that terrific temperature. As the sun grows older, more and more of the matter sinks into the center and reaches the region of awful heat. The atoms are so violently colliding with each other at that temperature, that the atoms themselves are knocked to pieces by the violence of their collision. If the molecules of a substance collide sufficiently violently, they are broken up. Thus, at 5000 degrees, the molecules of water collide so violently that they cannot maintain themselves, and the shocks break them down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. But at 40,000,000 degrees the atoms collide so violently they are decomposed into protons and electrons. At this temperature, a further, subtle change takes place, and the electrons and the protons suddenly are gone, and in their place is an equal mass of energy. For energy in any form has mass, and mass in any form is a measure of the energy content. Thus to say "one gram" is an easier way of saying "nine hundred million million million ergs," but the two mean the same to Nature. Now an atom is something like a porcupine with his quills up; it is much bigger in looks than in fact, only an atom has much longer "quills." An atom has much more empty space than anything else. Suppose our porcupines have quills a mile long. If all those quills are on end we won't be able to pack the animals very closely, but if we can induce them to become more friendly and lay the quills down, then the density of our imaginary population of porcupines will be greatly increased. Similarly the atoms, with the electrons revolving in wide orbits, occupy a much greater space than they really need. In the tremendous heat of the Sun, the atoms are so battered, the electrons are knocked off the nuclear protons, and we can imagine the quills now lying down. The density will be far greater. This is demonstrated by the density of some stars which are now known to have a density of over 1000. This is the result of packing the electrons and protons in the center, which is gradually going on in all stars.

Gravity increases four times if the distance is halved. As the matter inside becomes denser and denser, the star contracts, till finally its density reaches a tremendous figure.

The Sun in Hal Jus's day was becoming a closed star. Long since the X-rays had ceased. Gradually the ultra-light and the blue light had diminished; the red and infra- reds had been accentuated; for the light was changed by the passage through that intense gravitational field. Hal Jus had, less than two thousand years ago, predicted the exact time of the Sun's final decay. After ten more years the Sun would be unable to support its family. The planets they now inhabited—Earth, Venus and Mercury—were supported artificially. The atmospheres of all the planets had long since slowly dissipated into space, and with them had gone the water. These vital things were being replaced constantly by transmutation of the elements of the rocks of the planets. Long ages ago Earth had had a large satellite, which had been used through the ages to supply energy for the factories of man, and to supply the necessary atmosphere. The satellites of Mars had gone as had Saturn with its rings, Jupiter with its satellites, along with the asteroids; but before it escaped, much of Neptune had been freighted to the habitable planets. And now, since Mars had grown too cold, it too, was being sacrificed. Already it was honeycombed with great caverns that had been used as sources of materials and energy. Now it was being split up into small parts, and freighted to the other planets. Already the work was well under way. Mars was furthest from the sun, and smaller than either Venus or Earth.

But when men were assured that there was no hope of life in the solar system for more than half a lifetime, they began an even more frantic search for still another way to overcome this last crushing blow of Nature.